When Dean first tells Rayan about Bobby's illness, she thinks her father is playing some cruel practical joke. After loudly calling him the world's biggest jerk, the teen storms out of her bedroom and rushes into Bobby's office, hands flying through the air in pure indignation.
But her anger is short lived, because the moment Rayan steps into the cluttered room and spies Bobby sitting behind his desk she knows that her father wasn't lying to her.
The cancer surrounds the old man like a smoky fog, and Rayan's not sure how she never noticed it before. The haze screams 'death' at her, and for the hundredth time in her life, Rayan curses whatever screwed up power she has. No one should ever have to see a sickness crawling over his or her family member's skin
Yet two weeks later, Rayan finds herself in the driver's seat of the Challenger with Bobby hunched over in the passenger seat and a surly Castiel sitting stiffly in the back as the trio made their way to the hospital for the old man's first round of chemo.
Since neither Sam or Dean could take Bobby in for his first appointment with their jobs, so Rayan volunteered to skip one day of school in order to drive him in, refusing to allow Cas to angel zap the old man to the hospital. She was too afraid of what it might do to Bobby after the chemo had been administered. Plus, there are only a few days left in the year, so it's not like she'll miss much. The angel in the back is just added security for Rayan that Dean insisted upon.
Plus, the impromptu trip gave Rayan the opportunity to grab one of the last necessary items needed for the summoning spell, however unpleasant the task might be.
"You guys are not going to like what I have to say," Andy states as he marches into Rayan's room where she and Alabama are doing homework.
Alabama turns a raised eyebrow towards the boy. "And just what aren't we gonna like?"
Andy sighs and flops onto the bed beside Rayan, spreading out several pieces of notebook paper with his untidy scrawl covering the lines. "It took me a while to decipher the Latin, but I figured out the next item on our grocery list is."
"That's a good thing," Rayan interjects, turning a crooked smile towards her best friend. "It's just a matter of finding a dealer."
"It's not going to be that simple," Andy admits as he points out a specific section on one of the pieces of notebook paper. "Here's what we need."
Alabama leans over the page and quickly scans the indicated section before her nose wrinkles up in disgust. "You've got to be jokin', right? Infants blood?"
"Shut the hell up," Rayan gasps as she quickly reads over the paragraph herself. "That can't be right, Andy. You must have gotten the wrong word or something."
"I swear I've triple checked the instructions, and that says infants blood. Not lamb, or human, or dead mans. Infants."
Alabama wipes a hand over her face, as if trying to smear the image of the written words from her brain. "Death is one seriously messed up dude," she demands as she turns away from the translation and back towards her biology homework.
"Well he is Death," Rayan admits with a sigh. "We should have expected something like this, since we are summoning the most powerful creature out there. So the question is, how are we going to get our hands on baby blood?"
"I'm not gettin' my hands near any babies," Alabama demands with a shake of her head. "That's some seriously bad karma we'd be gettin' into with that shit."
"It's not like were actually going to kill an infant, Alabama," Andy scolds with a roll of his eyes. "We live in the twenty first century now, and there are such things as hospitals. Where blood is drawn from humans of all ages hundreds of times a day."
Rayan turns a skeptical eye on Andy, but follows his train of thought nonetheless. "Are you suggesting that we sneak into the hospital and steal some blood samples?" When Andy simply shrugs his shoulders, Rayan lets a wicked smile crawl across her face. "Andy, you have officially just become a Winchester."
Turns out that the sneaking into the hospital part of the plan won't be necessary, since Bobby has his appointment. But Rayan's not stupid, and she knows that getting away from Bobby, into the blood lab, and then stealing a vial of blood is going to be damn near impossible.
Scratch that, because the 'damn near' part isn't necessary. Getting that blood is going to be impossible, plain and simple.
"You all settled in, Gramps?" Rayan asks Bobby as she flutters around him like a chicken with its head cut off. "Do you need anything? Another pillow?"
"Darlin', I'm gonna knock you upside the head if you don't sit down and stop worrying about me," Bobby growls as he swats as his granddaughter's hovering hands. "Now the nurse is gonna be in here any second, and she'll get me all set up. You just need to sit that pretty butt down and read a magazine."
Sure enough, before Rayan even has a chance to respond a young nurse with red hair and a hundred watt smile steps into the room wheeling some machine that looks more like a torture device to Rayan than anything else.
"Hi there, Mr. Singer!" the girl chirps with way too much enthusiasm for nine in the morning. "My name's Holly, and I'll be your on call nurse during your chemo sessions."
"Nice to meet you, Holly," Bobby says respectfully, holding his hand out for the young nurse to shake.
Rayan watches Bobby and the nurse share idle chatter as Holly hooks the old man up to all of the machinery needed for the treatment, but as soon as she's sure that there's nothing more she can do, Rayan stands from her chair and clears her throat to grab everyone's attention.
"I'm going to head down to the cafeteria and grab something to drink, okay?" Rayan says as she starts to slink away from the door. "I'll be back soon to watch crappy daytime TV with you Gramps."
"Sounds like a plan, darlin'," Bobby agrees in his rough voice. Rayan almost makes it to the door before that same voice is calling out to her. "And take Cas with you. He's making me nervous hovering in the corner like that."
Rayan nods and turns towards the angel. "Come on, feather butt. I'm thirsty."
"I do not have a feathery behind," Cas states after the pair have walked a ways down the hall.
"It's a nickname, Uncle Cas," Rayan tries to explain to the angel. When he simply blinks back at her, Rayan does nothing more but shake her head and turn to walk farther down the hall towards the elevators.
A quick hand on her arm stops her, and the teen turns back to face Castiel once again. "I took the liberty of finding a name and location of the blood sample you seek. It will not affect the baby's health at all, because it is simply a routine precaution the doctors are taking for the infants care."
Rayan looks down at the scrap of paper the angel is holding out to her and slowly takes it from Castiel's hand. She reads over the paper's contents before turning her green eyes up to the angel and nodding in thanks. "Not to sound ungrateful, but couldn't you have just snagged the vial for me?"
"Of course not," Cas says with a few rapid blinks of his bright blue eyes. "That would be considered helping, which I said I would not do."
Rayan considers trying to explain to the angel that by simply finding the right sample, he has already helped. But after a careful moment of consideration, the young Winchester decides that it's better not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Instead, she turns a innocent smile on the angel. "Do you think you could stand guard outside the lab and just let me know if someone is coming? You wouldn't even have to go inside, Uncle Cas."
There are a few moments of careful consideration on Castiel's part, but the angel eventually nods his head slowly in agreement. "I suppose standing watch would be acceptable."
Getting into the blood lab is ridiculously simple, and it literally only takes Rayan five minutes to locate the vial she needs. And soon enough, the young Winchester is exiting the lab with the blood of Jennifer Chen, aged three weeks old, tucked safely in between her index finger and thumb.
Alas, nothing in Rayan's life can go smoothly, and just as she's walking out of the lab doorway she bumps into the hard chest of a young man wearing the blue overalls of a janitor.
The boy can't be more than her age, and Rayan is instantly mesmerized by his grayish blue eyes and dark brown hair. And it appears that the young man is just as enthralled with Rayan.
That is until he notices the vial of blood cradled in her hand.
"What are you doing with that?" the young man asks, the deep bass of his voice sliding off his tongue like velvet. "What were you doing in the lab?"
"Uh…I was just….uhm, Dr. Tomlin asked me to pick up one of his patients blood samples. I'm an intern," Rayan chokes out, knowing that her lie isn't believed.
"Dr. Tomlin isn't a pediatrician," the man says as he leans against the handle of his mop. "And only vials with green tops hold blood samples of infants."
Rayan swears up a storm in her head mentally, and frantically searches the hall for her angel uncle that was supposed to be keeping watch for her. She should have known better than to expect the angel to understand what being a lookout actually meant.
"Listen," Rayan begins as she puts on her most winning Winchester smile. "Is there any chance that you could just forget you ever saw me? We could just part ways here and pretend this never happened."
"Not a chance in hell," the young man says with a charming smile that could equal Rayan's own. "But I'll tell you what I can do. I'll call security, and we can let them sort this out."
And Rayan just can't have that, because she's already in a big enough shit storm with just the young janitor. So, she does what any Winchester would do in this situation.
"I'm really sorry," Rayan says as she takes a step closer to the young man.
"Sorry for what?"
"This," Rayan mumbles before hauling back and throwing her fist not holding the vial forward, catching the young man square in the cheek and knocking him out cold.
The young Winchester takes a moment to study the handsome janitor's face, long enough to feel bad about leaving the inevitable bruise on his face, before turning on her heel and jogging down the hall towards the elevator. It only annoys her slightly that she can't get his bright eyes out her mind, or the sound of his voice. She'll have to find out from Holly what his name is later.
But first, she's got an angel to find.