How to Save a Life (Book Two/The Life Series/Supernatural)

Dream a Little Dream of Me

Dad and I were working a case together.

I walked into the motel room, closing the door behind me, looking toward him asleep on the bed. "Hey, Dad. Up and at 'em. We got work to do." Dad didn't answer or move. "Dad?" I walked toward him, shaking his shoulder lightly. "Wake up." I shook him more prominently. "Wake up. Do you hear me? Wake up. Dad, wake up!" I turned around to the door, starting to panic. "Help! I need some help in here!"

~~

I got Dad to the hospital, calling Sam and Dean, standing with a doctor at Dad's bedside. "So, what's the diagnosis?"

"We've texted everything we can think to test," the doctor told me. "He seems perfectly healthy."

"Except that he's comatose," I told him.

"Miss, Snyderson, you're his daughter," the doctor told me. "Anything we should know? Any illnesses?"

"No, he—he never gets sick," I told him. "I mean, he doesn't even catch a cold. Doctor, is there anything you can do?"

"Look, I'm sorry, but we don't know what's causing it... so we don't know how to treat it," the doctor told me. "He just... went to sleep, and didn't wake up."

I looked at Dad numbly.

~~

I walked into the motel room, leading Sam and Dean inside with me.

"So, what are you guys doing in Pittsburgh?" Sam asked.

"Taking an extremely lame vacation," I told them sarcastically, closing the door behind us, walking toward them.

"Ha, smartass," Dean told me. "I think he means, what kind of job are you working?"

I walked toward the closet, turning on the light. "Take a look for yourself."

I pushed the clothes in the closet aside, revealing a map on the wall behind them, with all sorts of news clippings and pictures of roots, mushrooms, seeds, post-its with addresses and numbers, a piece of paper about a plant, and a map where "Pittsburgh" was written in big letters, underlined.

Sam and Dean walked closer.

Dean chuckled. "You and good old Bobby, always covering up your tracks."

"You make heads or tails of any of this?" Sam asked.

I took one of the papers about a plant, reading the title of it. "'Silene capensis, which—"

"Of course means absolutely nothing to me," Dean told us.

I rolled my eyes, handing them different papers to help get them caught up. "Here. Obit." I took a newspaper clipping, reading from it. "'Dr. Walter Gregg, 64, university neurologist'."

"How'd he bite it?" Dean asked.

"Actually, they don't know," I told them. "They say he just went to sleep and didn't wake up." I handed the paper to Dean. "That sound familiar to you? All right, um... Dad and I were looking into the doc's death. You know, hunting something—"

Dean looked up. "That started hunting you guys."

I nodded. "Yeah. But nothing's happened to me so far. All right, Dean, why don't you go check out the doctor yourself? I'll try to get Sam caught up on all of this."

"All right, if it means that I can skip the research, I'm all for it," Dean told us, handing the paper to me, walking out, leaving.

I looked at Sam, sighing.