A/N: Warning here. Dean's condition is completely made up by me, so I get to treat it how I choose to treat it. Also, yes, Sam's chapters are in first person while Dr. Farraday's chapter was not. John and Pastor Jim's and Dean's chapters will likely be in first person too. I tried to write Sam's chapter the way I did Dr. Farraday's and it just wouldn't work the way I wanted it too. I also don't want the doctor to be the emotional focus on the story, so I feel like making his chapters third person and the others first accomplishes that.

Sam

Having a sick brother sucks.

It sucks all the way around.

Obviously, it's rough on my brother. Dean makes it seems like it's not, but it is. He shows one face to the rest of the world, and I think he has them fooled. He has them convinced that he can tough this out, and I think he might even have my dad fooled. But not me. I see it. I see all the times that people tell Dean he's an inspiration, he's so strong, and all that other crap.

They aren't there when Dean sneezes and my dad wants to take him to the emergency room. I can hear my dad now. If we go the first time you have a symptom, we can kill this before it starts. They aren't there when Dean has to go through chemo, and he comes home and throws up so many times in a night that he can't talk.

Those people can go out and kick bricks.

But you might be wondering. It's obvious that being sick would suck for Dean. Why would it suck for us?

For my dad, it's because he can't ever rest. From the time he wakes up in the morning, his first and last thoughts belong to Dean. Is Dean's color good and is his temperature normal? Does Dean feel sick? Can Dean eat normally? Has Dean taken his prescriptions? Is Dean well enough to go to school? How are Dean's grades?

Is Dean happy?

I know it's selfish to think this. I know that. But I can't help it. It would be nice if he asked me those questions sometimes.

Dean being sick sucks for me because it makes me invisible. I have to get myself up for school every day. If Dean's not feeling good, I make my own dinner. I check over my own homework, take care of my own laundry, and do most of the other household chores. If something in the house needs to be fixed, and it's beyond my normal skill set (one of the only benefits of this whole mess is that I can do stuff most kids can't even imagine), I leave a note for dad that it needs to be taken care of. Whether or not he remembers is a whole other issue.

There's one person who seemed to negotiate this whole sick thing flawlessly.

My mom was amazing. She could take care of both Dean and me without making either of us feel like we were getting the short end of the stick.

See, here's the thing. Dean's cancer is…weird. It's something that none of the doctors have never seen before. He was diagnosed at six with leukemia. He was sick for a while and the doctors looked for a donor for him for a bone marrow transplant. Mom refused for a few days to even have me tested. I was just a baby, she said, and she wouldn't put me through it unless it was absolutely necessary.

It became absolutely necessary.

I donated to Dean and it hurt. It hurt a lot. My earliest clear memory is waking up after that operation and being scared for a second, until I saw her. Mom was sitting by my bed sleeping. The second I started crying, she woke up and gave me a hug and didn't leave until it was time to go home a few days later.

Now, I know that my memory's probably off. I was two years old, scared and in pain. Dean was in the hospital then too, in a separate room, and I'm sure Mom left at least a few times to go and check on him. But that's what I remember the most. I was in the hospital, being what Mom told me was a 'superhero' and trying to save Dean, while Mom sat next to my bed and rubbed my back to help me sleep and held me when I was hurting.

That was the one bright spot in this whole messed up situation.

Things were as fine as they could be for the next few years. Dean's cancer came back two years later, when he was eight and I was four-no, wait. I should explain better. Dean seemed to get another form of cancer. Instead of leukemia this time, it was in his kidney. They took the kidney out and the cancer seemed gone. Six months later, it was in his bones. Don't ask me how they knew for sure, but each of the cancers was new.

At some point in the whole unbelievable scenario, one of Dean's doctors came up with a theory. Even though Dean's cancers seemed to be unconnected, there was no way one kid could actually have so many separate cancer battles and come out through them. So he came up with a theory.

If the cancer came back again, treat it the same way that the first cancer was treated. In the meantime, give him blood transfusions ever three months and hope-yes, you read that right, hope-that it kept things in remission for good.

Before this could be tested, the worst thing that could happen happened.

Mom went out one day for cookies. We didn't have any cookies at home and I wanted them and I wasn't feeling good so she went out. She checked out with the cookies and started home, which was only about three blocks, and never made it there. She was hit by a drunk driver and that was that.

So that's how things got from somewhat good to the state they're in now. With Mom around, everything seemed okay. Like yeah, it'll be bad sometimes, but not so bad that you couldn't pull through it relatively unscathed.

Since then, Dean's had two cancer scares and we repeated the whole process. Bone marrow donation, I'm hurting when I wake up but relatively okay, and Dean gets over it. But it's different now. There's no one there when I wake up, just when Dean does. A nurse sees me awake and goes to my dad, who pulls himself away from Dean long enough to come and say hi and good job buddy to me, then goes right back to Dean until we go home. I'm so utterly sick of it.

Oh, there's one more important thing to know about me. I get sick too. I get these weird stomachaches a lot. Around once a month, I feel really, really nauseous. I've tried to convince my dad that I need a doctor, but he holds the are you dying card above me and I don't get to go. I've been to my school nurse about it twice, who called Dad to pick me up. Dad picked me up each time but gave me a really long lecture about how I needed to suck it up and get over it. I asked Dr. Farraday, Dean's main doctor about it, and without actually saying the words, he pretty much told Dad that I'm seeking the same attention that Dean gets and if Dad just indulges me a little, the stomachaches'll go right away.

Screw you, dude.

So after twice of being yelled at for this, and once of actually being grounded, I stopped saying anything. I suffered through the nausea and occasional vomiting. I would go to school with a headache from throwing up sometimes, and be groggy from not sleeping the night before. My grades are a train wreck from this, not that Dad's even cared enough to take a notice. I guess it's just something I'm stuck with, at least until Dean gets better.

Dad got home and told me what happened at Dean's appointment. His liver has a few cells that look cancerous on his liver, and Dr. Farraday's going to discuss with Dean's 'team' of doctors to see if a bone marrow transplant is the best decision this time. If it's not, Dad told me, a liver transplant was in order. They're going to decide in a month.

That was last night. In a month, doctors and my dad get to decide what else is going to be taken out of me.

I feel awful for feeling this way, and maybe it makes me the most selfish person on the face of the planet, but I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being used for spare cells for my brother. Now I may have to have a part of me cut out? Like actually, physically cut out with a knife? What happens if Dean needs something else? If his other kidney fails and he ends up needing a transplant? What happens if he needs a pancreas or some other body part?

Six days from now, I have surgery. Again. And I just woke up from a nightmare that's got my wheels spinning out of control.

My dad came to me and said that Dean needed a heart transplant. His cancer was back and in his heart now, so I had to give him my heart. I was dragged to the OR screaming, but the doctor did it. He took my heart out, I flatlined, and he put my heart in Dean. Dean sat up and went with my dad back home while the doctors continued to look down on me.

There's no way I'm getting back to sleep tonight, so I have to call a friend. I picked up the phone and dialed the house in Blue Earth that was about the only place me and Dean had ever been allowed to go for vacation. Jim picked up like he always did, and I told him everything. I told him about Dean's need for a liver, how the doctors couldn't decide the best way to approach this, and I finally admitted to Jim the truth. The deep, dark, ugly truth that I didn't want to admit to anyone.

I didn't want to do it anymore. I wouldn't give Dean my liver or bone marrow.