Disclaimer: I own nothing that has anything to do with Supernatural or the characters, unless you count the DVDs. This is just for fun.

Hey folks! Just a quick fic, hopefully it's good!

Read, Enjoy, Review!

The hunt had been nothing out of the ordinary for supernatural hunters Sam and Dean Winchester.

They were heading back into town to their latest motel when it happened.

It happened in an instant, the blink of the eye. A snake sprang out from underneath the driver's seat of the Impala, and bit Dean through his jeans, puncturing his calf.

It didn't hurt as much as people say did does, but having a snake now wrapped around his leg, squeezing it tighter by the second was more than enough to cause Dean to swerve the car.

"DEAN!!!" Sam screamed as they swerved towards oncoming traffic.

Dean was in no shape to even think enough to pull the car over.

In a split second decision Sam grabbed the wheel of the car, pulled the car to the kerb, and pulled on the handbrake to bring the car to a halt.

Sam didn't even notice that the cars behind them came way too close to running up the back of their car, he had bigger problems. His brother had been bitten by a snake, a snake that was wrapped around his brother's leg, and of course the fact that the snake was in the car with them, and could strike again.

At this point you may be asking how a snake came to be in their car, it was really quite simple. In haste to kill the beast, to prevent another death, Sam and Dean left the car doors open, when they came back to the car it was soon forgotten.

Sam could kill nearly any supernatural monster, but this... this he had no idea what to do. He had kept up his first aid knowledge, mostly on treating injuries, but he remembered enough of 'bites and stings' to know that the every second that snake was squeezing Dean's calf, the faster the venom was going into his bloodstream.

"Fuck! Sam, get this damn thing off me!"

Not knowing what else to do, Sam grabbed his handgun from the glove compartment, and he fired the gun, he shot the snake, the snake let go, but that wasn't all he shot.

"SAM!" Dean had enough to deal with; getting shot in the leg definitely didn't help anything.

But that injury was forgotten when Dean began to gasp for breath. Dean felt as though he was drowning, no matter how hard he tried he couldn't breathe, he was suffocating. You would have expected that he would have grabbed at his throat, reaching out to his brother for help, or anything else Dean fell unconscious.

It all happened in a matter of seconds, and as Sam watched Dean turning deathly pale, his eyelids slipping shut, his body going limp, Sam feared that this would be the time his brother would die, that after everything they had seen his brother was going to die from a snake bite.

Sam wasted no time in shifting Dean into the passenger seat, and drove at break-neck pace to the local hospital.

Sam hated hospital waiting rooms. He truly hated them, to Sam they meant anxious waits, fear that his father or brother, often both would die, he hated everything about it.

And of everything could have forced him to be there, a snake bite, really? Of everything they hunted, Sam still struggled to believe that something so ordinary had been the cause.

Sam sat waiting for three long hours before a doctor came out to meet him.

Sam allowed no time to be spent on pleasantries before asking about Dean.

"Your brother is very lucky to be alive, Sam. We believe that the snake that bit him was a coral snake, and a large amount of venom entered his body, we believe that he was bitten a number of times, he was also shot."

"About that," Sam was quick to explain, well to give a false, not incriminating version of the truth, "You see, we're from Chicago, and the streets there aren't always safe, we kept a handgun under the seat. And when Dean got bitten, when there was this snake wrapped around his leg, I was running on adrenaline, and I just shot the thing. There wasn't too much damage from the shot, was there doctor?"

"The bullet grazed your brother's leg, it will leave a nasty scar, but there wasn't any severe damage. The snake bit on the other hand is very serious, what happens with a coral snake is when their venom, a very potent neurotoxin enters the bloodstream it very quickly paralyses the breathing muscles; that's what makes them the tenth deadliest snake in the world. We have given him the anti-venom, and he has needed to be placed on a ventilator, which I'm sure is worrying to you, but we hope that he should only the ventilator overnight, until the venom has cleared from his body completely. It is good news, it was touch and go for a while there."

If Sam ever heard those words again, touch and go, used in reference to his family's lives, it would be too soon; it was hardly the first time, yet it naturally still unnerved him.

The doctor had a nurse show Sam upstairs to the intensive care unit. The unit itself was only small, four beds, yet actually better equipped than many other units the Winchester's had needed the services of over the years. Dean's bed at the far corner, a ventilator sitting pride of place to the right of the bed, it's tubing snaking, no pun intended, to another tube that was placed in Dean's airway. It was an all too familiar sight to Sam.

"Is there anything I can get you?" The young nurse who had escorted Sam upstairs asked gently as Sam took a seat at his brother's bedside.

"Thank you, but I think I'm all set. Just need to get Dean sorted out."

After the nurse had left, Sam slumped down in the chair, exhausted both physically and emotionally, and it promised to be a long night for the youngest Winchester.

It had only weeks since Dean's last near death experience, the heart attack he'd had after managing to get himself electrocuted. Surely there should be a limit on just how much one family should have to go through, though if there was, the Winchester's would have exceeded their limit years ago in Sam's opinion.

Sam didn't even take in how bad the situation was, he couldn't or he would have fallen apart, his brother was in the hospital again, he had been on death's doorstep again, and though he was sure it would hit him later, Sam swore that he wouldn't let himself feel all the pain, the fear, everything; it was too much.

Dean survived his ordeal, and three days later Sam was wheeling him out to the car; his muscles had been severely weakened by the experience, and the doctor had told them that it may very well be months before Dean was fully recovered. But that hadn't effected his attitude, and by this point Sam's resolution not to let this latest incident effect him had well and truly crumbled, and Dean was going to take full advantage of that.

"Dude you're the one who left the door open, I know for sure I didn't. And you are so going to be freakin' waiting on me 'til I get back on my feet."

Sam just sighed, he knew the truth, but honestly he was just grateful to have his brother alive, cleaning up and delivering food to him was a price Sam was more than willing to pay.

He just wished that this was going to be the last time.

The End