Dean lifted the gauze bandage to look underneath. The wound in the middle of Sam’s right palm seemed to have slowed to a sluggish leak, which was good, and the left palm had stopped bleeding almost an hour ago, which was very good.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
Sam looked miserable as he laid propped on pillows in his bed. The gauze wrapped around his forehead was dotted red, but it stopped the blood from dripping into his eyes, and his hands and feet were elevated on more pillows to slow the blood loss. Dean tried to check the head wounds again, but Sam dodged his head away impatiently.
“There’s good news in this?”
It was all Dean’s fault in the end. When he knocked the curse box off the shelf and scattered the contents on the floor, he spent the next hour carefully picking each artifact up with tongs and placing it back inside. Somehow he missed a small wooden crucifix that slid underneath the shelving. Of course, it was just Sam’s bad luck to pick it up off the floor.
They didn’t notice the stigmata until about an hour later, when Sam saw the bloody mark on the back of his hand as he flipped pages on a lore book in the library. When he walked into the kitchen to show Dean, his older brother flipped out at the blood that was starting to drip down from his hairline.
A quick exam in the Bunker’s medical room showed all the marks were there - hands, feet, temples and a large wound that had opened up along his rib cage. After a heated discussion about safety procedures and curse boxes, Dean began to clean the wounds, carefully washing each one out with holy water, and then dressing them with military precision. It soon became apparently that Sam wasn’t going to be walking around until his feet healed up, so they set him up in his bedroom.
While the whole thing was an accident, the symbolism wasn’t lost on Dean. Sam had offered himself up for sacrifice twice, putting himself before everyone else to slam Lucifer in his cage and to close the gates of Hell. It would be a cruel joke if this curse was what got his brother in the end.
Ten hours and four sets of clean bandages later, it looked like they might be out of the woods. And it was about time. Not being able to read or move around, with only Netflix for company, Sam who normally was as patient as a monk in seclusion was mentally climbing the walls.
“Fine.” Sam sighed, his pale face pinched as he shifted uncomfortably. “What’s the good news?”
“Bleeding is slowing. I think the curse is wearing off.”
“Finally.” Sam’s brow contracted. “So, what’s the bad news?”
Dean picked up the remote control by Sam’s hand. “You just finished up all the Firefly episodes on Netflix.”