Disclaimer: The characters of Supernatural do not belong to me.
Dr. Farraday
This was it.
I'd taken care of this boy for over ten years now. Sure, there were times he wasn't my biggest fan, but overall, I think we got along great. I'd been trying to bring him back for almost an hour now, and damn it, he was coming back.
"Doctor, he's gone…"
"He's not gone until I say he's gone. Keep going."
One of my colleagues, Dr. Finn, grabbed my arm and tried to reason with me. Jack had stood up for me more than once in the last few years, and I knew he wouldn't just stand in the middle of one of my calls because he disagreed with it. He'd only do it if he truly thought I was hurting the patient, or if he thought I'd lost perspective.
Yeah. I lost perspective that day. Sue me.
"Steve, come on. He's gone."
I took a deep breath. "We've been at it fifty-six minutes. If it hits the hour mark, I'll stop. I swear. Just, please. Four more minutes."
Jack nodded. "Okay. One hour."
As I've come to find out, miracles aren't a thing. There was no miraculous recovery here. Four minutes later, I couldn't do it, and Jack did it for me.
"Time of death, 4:56pm."
Now came the moment I'd been dreading for a decade. I looked out in the hallway and that's where I saw him. He was pacing up and down, looking guilty, and damn it, what I wouldn't give to convince him that this wasn't his fault. It was mine.
Jack pointed me outside. The two of us had a deal. If one declared a kid dead, the other had to go tell the parents. We hadn't formally decided on this, but we took turns doing it. It was a decent enough system-we shared the guilt and the hurt and the 'what if we had done this differently' questions rather than spreading them around.
It was time to bite the bullet, so I nodded and left the surgical team to do their job. I walked outside and had the moment I'd known was coming for almost eleven years now.
I told John Winchester his son was dead.