A First-timer's South Park fanfiction. Better not to give away anything about it up front, might ruin the tale.
DISCLAIMER: One does not own south park
_______________

If there's something I learned about life in my own limited time on this earth, it is that it isn't fair.
Don't get me wrong, you will never hear me say I am in any way unhappy about how my life turned out. It just didn't turn out fair, and that's a fact.

My name is Kenny McCormick. I've spend the last three years in a two-by-four gloomy hospital room. It is a most depressing sight. The walls are painted in a sickening tone of hospital white, and there's only one small, barred window to provide a source of light. My bed's far too small and my only furniture besides a closet is a desk with a matching, uncomfortable chair.

Spending such a long time alone, confined to a single room, does something to a person. If you let it, the solitude will get the best of you and you will eventually go crazy. But before you do, you will come to face yourself, your memories and your past. This is what I must be going through right now, locked in here with nothing but my thoughts, and it made me realize just how lucky I have been.

Let me tell you something about my friends. They really are the most awesome people I ever had the pleasure of knowing. Some say that true friendship is something even harder to find than true love, and I can't disagree: Some people go their entire lives without finding friends that truly fit them, that they are closer to than anyone else. But I did, and I'm grateful for that every single day.

We didn't use to be so close. In a simpler time I would know Stan and Kyle, the dynamic duo. They were inseparable, always doing everything together and knowing pretty much everything about each other: it was quite disturbing to be frank. Being around them, you couldn't help but feel like the third wheel. And that's how I had often felt.

I knew Eric Cartman, the dreaded insensitive bastard who was a jerk to everyone and remained under the illusion everybody loved him for it. I'm not sure if he hated us all or it was just his unique way of acting. All I know is that I avoided spending any one-on-one time with him.

This was a time that I would hang around them rather than with them. I remained mostly silent in their company. They would often be off doing things without me, and I'd sit in my room, looking out the window, watching the clouds.

All that changed for the better when we got reacquainted, When I got finally got released from my first period of long, long, near-perfect solitude and realized just how limited by time with them would be.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I could happily spend years praising my friends and the great times we had, but unfortunately I do not have that much time left. What I want to tell you about was the twist of fate that turned my life around the day I turned thirteen.

I had no great expectations about my birthday. Hell, last year pretty much everyone forgot. I remember wearing this little paper hat on top of my usual parka that day. Which seemed like a funny thing to do back then: I would just sit around wearing it, and if somebody would come up to me asking 'whats with the little hat?' And I would respond saying 'Oh I just put it on for my birthday', and they would say 'Oh... happy birthday!' and I would smile at them, my day brightening up just a tad.

Stupid, huh? Who the hell does that?

I know that may seem like the silliest thing to you. But, mind you, I did a lot of stupid things to get attention back in the playful days. Most of these things were far more stupid than wearing a paper hat, and far more dangerous as well. Honestly, I could very well have ended up death with all the daredevil stunts I pulled off. But every day I woke up perfectly unscathed, so I kept right on doing them.

Anyway, the whole hat thing backfired. I believe some jocks placed some kind of bet on who would be the first to knock it off my head, because I ended up getting shot at by twenty-something different kind of balls, and ended up in the nurse's office for the rest of the day.

This year, my father did manage to remember my birthday. That day he stormed into my room and started his drunk-mans-speech:

'Kenny, now that you are thirteen it is high time to learn about the importance of money.'

I knew all about the importance of money, mostly because we had none. My father didn't like to be interrupted and/or contradicted though, so I saved myself a beating and remained silent

'Now that you're thirteen' he repeated 'you are finally old enough to be able to legally donate blood.'

He walked up to me and leveled his head with mine. I could smell that he had had more than his usual three shots for breakfast. At first I considered telling him that thirteen was in no way a legal age for donating blood, but I soon realized that in his current state, rambling on something 'giving back to the community' and the 'years of care and love we gave,' he wouldn't be listening to any kind of reasoning.

I'm not sure what speech he had planed to justify his plans in trading of my blood for booze, but I didn't feel the need to listen to his rambling. I instead preferred to get it over with, so I let him bring me to the car and got in the back seat and tightened the hood of my parka (which was my poor man's alternative to fastening the seat belts our ancient rusty car of course lacked).

My father got in the front seat and took a single one of the many spirits he had stashed in the glove box. Good thing we were heading to a hospital.

On the way to the hospital he shared with me his drunken takes on the meaning of life, with interesting, deep questions like 'What is the charming thing about the prospect of death?' (To which the answer was, and I recall this till this day: 'You will follow many but still head off alone'). He barely took notice to the road ahead and we nearly hit many a pedestrian on the way there, but we didn't crash that day.

We arrived at Hell's Pass hospital about thirty minutes later later. It was a three minute drive tops, but no radiator and a drunk driver only get you this far. My dad stumbled out of the car and dragged me by the arm into the hospital and up to the reception booth, where a nurse whose left boob was smaller than her right (I couldn't help but noticing, sorry) was sitting, reading a magazine.

'I'm sorry, This hospital is too understaffed to provide any more care for the intoxicated' the nurse said, not bothering to look up from her Science Daily 'Go throw up in an alley somewhere...'

I don't know if my dad even heard her 'Yes, I'm here with my son for, like, a blood donation kind of thing'

'Oh' The nurse said, still not truly deeming us worthy of her precious time 'I suppose that's all right. What's his blood type?'

'Oh, I'm not sure. Whichever pays the most'

'Very funny, sir' The nurse replied dryly. 'I'll ring in a doctor for you, take a seat if you must.'

My dad dragged me with him to the cramped waiting room hospitals tend to have. Even as we sat down, he still kept a firm grip on my arm. Maybe he half thought I would make a break for it once he let go (a part of me wondered if I would), or maybe he just thought he'd fall down otherwise. With his other hand he rumbled through the stale magazines that lay on the center table in search of a playboy or something similar. I myself settled for a car magazine, looking at all those expensive new models I knew I would never own.

You know, the untrained eye may read all this and conclude that I must hate my father. I don't really. We don't do all the father-son bonding things you often see in the feel-good television shows, but we still get along well. He and my mom drink far too much, but I think that their shared love for alcohol is one of the reasons that they are still together with all the fights they have. I think they still love me, in their own clumsy way. With that thought firmly manifested in the back of my head I've fooled myself into thinking that those rare cases of domestic abuse and my parents beating me is normal. As a result I felt pretty comfortable at home. Hell, I might even go as far and say that we had a stable family.

'Mr McCormick?' a voice called

'Huh.. w-what?' I felt a strain through my shoulder as my father jolted up at the sound of his name and forced me on my feet. He might have completely forgotten where he was.

'We're ready for you and your son, if you will just follow me.' The voice had belonged to a chubby doctor, whose I would later get to know as Dr. Harris.

Dr Harris had led us up two flights of stairs and into a tiny operation room with nothing but a white cabinet, two even whiter footstools and some kind of a bed that you only ever see in hospitals. He had sat down on one of the footstools and started filling in a form or another. Me and my father kept standing in the doorway and patiently waited for him to finish, as I looked around the room.

'All right' the doctor began, putting down his pen and looking up at us. 'So, little boy, you want to donate some of your blood to help others? That's very brave of you'. Great, he just had to pull the whole kiddy talk on me.

I said nothing. My father, on the other hand, responded straight away.

'Uhm, I was under the impression that he would get paid for this?'

'Oh... Oh yes of course,' the doctor said, squinting his eyes lightly as he took in my father's appearance. My father glared right back at him. For a short while they just stood there, eyes fixed on each other, until finally the doctor looked back on his form and continued.

'The hospital is willing to compensate all donator's for a sum of up to fifty dollar. Of course, we will first have to run some standard checks to see if the donator's blood is eligible and free of any diseases'.

My father suddenly looked at me and jerked my arm ever-so-slightly. Please don't let me have any diseases, I thought.

'All righty then' The doctor concluded. He then took from the cabinet a unnecessarily large syringe. I had always entertained the idea that Dr. Harris enjoyed freaking people out by using oversized stabbing and cutting equipment. Even now, he had his eyes tightly locked one mine as he presented the needle. I didn't twitch, needles couldn't scare me, I've had a lot more painful things happen to me in all kinds of surreal accidents, and I've always got out okay. You get used to the pain after a while too.

'All right, you can let go of your son now, Mr McCormick,' the doctor said. My father seemed reluctant to do so at first, but finally I felt his hold on my arm slacken. I walked up the doc and, not bothering to wait for any kind of invitation or instruction, I sat down on the bed.

Dr Harris first stood up and went to clean the syringe, then pulled up one of the footstools next to the bed and sat down. He rolled up the left sleeve of my orange parka, revealing my unusual pale skin.

'All right, this may hurt a little. Remember kiddo, there's no shame if you have to cry a little bit'. He licked his lips at that idea.

I ordered myself to keep perfectly rigid as he worked with the needle. I wasn't giving him the satisfaction.