It wasn't until the nurse and her charge were practically in front of him that Castiel even noticed that he'd been joined by another patient. Between the pain and the exhaustion, falling asleep while sitting up was strangely possible. But while the nurse gave him a look of pity before she wandered off, she apparently hadn't realized that he might not be fit for conversation at the moment.

Maybe the fever was getting to him, though, because he was fairly certain the boy who'd been placed with him had just asked him if he was a dream guide.

Under normal circumstances, that might not have been so strange. Angels could enter the dreams of humans to deliver messages or for any other reason, but he hadn't been capable of something like that in weeks.

Still, if he'd heard correctly, that meant the stranger thought that he was dreaming, and Castiel could at least correct that. So, after a long pause as he tried to force the world to make sense, he finally found the energy to respond. "No. You're not dreaming."