John

Having a sick kid is the equivalent of a full time job.

Having a sick kid and a healthy kid means never getting any rest.

My days revolve around Dean. I wake up every morning at five and check on him to make sure he's still breathing. After so many cancer scares, it's just par for the course. When he is, I go check on my other son, Sam, and watch him sleep for a few minutes. I know Sam doesn't think I pay much attention to him, and to a degree, he's right. When you have one child that's constantly sick and one that's at least mostly healthy, it's hard to give them both what they need.

There's one specific morning that things started to change. I can see it now and I wish I could turn it around.

I walked into Dean's room and found him already awake. That scared me. Dean never woke up before seven. But he'd gone to sleep early the night before, so he ended up getting up early. Once I was satisfied he wasn't sick, Dean came with me to the kitchen and helped me make breakfast. For a few minutes, I almost forgot Dean wasn't a healthy kid.

Almost.

Sam came in the kitchen around 6:30, and I immediately felt bad. Dean and I had already eaten our breakfast and all that was left was a couple of cold pancakes, barely a spoonful of cold eggs, and one piece of bacon. Sam looked at the table and frowned. I stood up and went back to the stove.

"Hey, buddy, sorry. I guess me and Dean's appetite was bigger than I thought. Give me a minute and I'll whip you up some too."

"No. It's okay. I'll just eat cereal."

"It's not a problem…"

"Dad, I have to leave in thirty minutes. I have to go to school half an hour early today. I don't have time for you to cook."

"Why do you have to go to school early?"

Sam's face morphed right into what his mother used to call his 'sour milk' face. He said nothing, just grabbed the Lucky Charms, a bowl, poured himself his breakfast, and sat at the table quickly and unhappily munched on his cereal. I felt myself growing more and more impatient, but I remember Mary's voice from times past. Getting impatient will just make him shut down. But what do I actually say, babe? Do I just let him stew? Clearly something was bothering him. How did I get him to open up?

"So, Sam, how's school going?"

God bless Dean. He tried hard to help me with his brother. The two of them could fight like cats and dogs, but they loved each other. Dean was in his sophomore year of high school, and since I'd retired early from the police department after Mary died, he'd decided to be homeschooled. It was a thousand times easier for me to keep an eye on Dean when he stayed home than if he was gone for eight hours to a place I couldn't see him. I brought up the idea of Sam being homeschooled too, but the idea was promptly shut down.

"It's fine, Dean."

"Sam, why do you have to be at school early?" I asked again.

Sam's face soured again. "I volunteered to help set up."

"Set up for what?"

"You forgot, didn't you?" Sam said. "Parent's day, Dad. It's today."

And there it was. I remembered Sam asking (okay, begging) me to be at his school the next to last day of the year for Parent's Day. He was getting some kind of award and wanted me to see it. I agreed at the time but stupidly forgot to ask the time and day. And of course, I had forgotten it entirely in the two weeks since and made an appointment for me and Dean to go for his checkup that day. Sam got up and put his bowl in the sink, throwing it in just a little harder than was necessary.

"Sam…"

"Let me guess. You have to take Dean to the doctor and you can't make it."

What was I supposed to say to that? "Yeah."

Sam shook his head, and I could see him giving up. "Fine."

"Sam, I'm sorry…"

Sam did something then that he hadn't done before. He turned around and he looked at me. Really looked at me. Then he spoke, and he was calm. Eerily, scarily calm.

"You're always sorry, Dad. You're always sorry and you always feel bad but nothing changes. Dean comes first every single time. And I get it. I do. He needs you more than I do. But I need you too. I'm your kid too. I'm not just spare parts for you to use when Dean needs them."

"Hey!" Dean objected.

"What, Dean? It's not your fault? I know that. It's not your fault, Dean. It's not my fault, it's not dad's fault, it's not anyone's fault. And I love you, but I'm sick and tired of everyone focusing on you all of the time. Because you've never had to eat dinner by yourself, or wake up in the hospital by yourself, or be in pain by yourself, or do your homework by yourself. So while you being sick might not be anyone's fault, it would be nice if someone took responsibility for taking care of me for a change."

With that, Sam took his backpack and left for school. Dean and I just looked at each other for a minute, not sure what to say. I wish I could say that I moved Dean's appointment and went to Sam's school that day, but I didn't. We went and came back home to find Sam waiting for us. Before I got out of the car, Dean grabbed my arm.

"Dad, wait."

"What's wrong?" I asked automatically.

"Nothing. At least with me." Dean said. "Look, I've been thinking about Sam."

"He'll be fine, Dean."

"That's just it, Dad. I don't know if he will or not. He's really upset. And the more I think about it, the more I see that he has a point."

I wanted to argue with Dean, but I couldn't. I'd been thinking about Sam all day too.

"I just thought about it, and Sam's right. Ever since Mom died, he's pretty much been on his own. He's given me blood more times than I can count, we've gone through two donations, and those things hurt like a bitch, Dad."

"Language, Dean." I said automatically.

"Sorry, Dad. But Sam's woken up twice, in pain, and no one was there for him. Mom would turn over in her grave if she'd been there."

"I know, Dean." John said. "I know that, I do."

"Look, I have an idea. I know the doctor said I'm getting worse. But I'm okay for right now. Take Sam somewhere tonight and talk to him. Let him know we appreciate everything he's done. That we do see it and he's not just spare parts." Dean was quiet for a minute, and he looked out the window before he kept going. "And tell Sam when we have the surgery, you'll be there when he wakes up."

That surprised me. I knew Dean loved his brother, but he'd never woken up alone from surgery before. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Dad. Sam's always alone now. He's saved my life who knows how many times. It's time we pay him back however we can."

I smiled. "Okay, Dean. You're a good brother, you know that?"

"I just want to Sam to know he is." Dean said. "Why don't I go in and tell him you're waiting for him out here?"

"Good idea. Lock the door after we leave, okay?"

I ended up taking Sam out that night, and we actually had a decent time. He caught me up on the things he was up to at school. He admitted that a couple of times that year he'd forged my signature on permission slips to go on field trips. I was feeling so guilty I couldn't even get mad. We had the talk Dean wanted us to have, and I apologized again for not going to Parent's Day. Everything seemed fine, until all of a sudden it wasn't.

"Hey, Dad? I talked to uncle Jim today. He said he'd take me to camp if you needed to stay here."

Shit. I had known Sam had something on his mind. He was supposed to be going to camp in two weeks, but Dean's surgery had been moved to two and a half weeks from now. We had just made peace and now I had to break it all over again.

"Sam, I'm sorry, buddy. You're not gonna be able to go to camp."

Sam, who'd been finishing up his sandwich, stopped eating and put it down. "Why?"

"Dean's surgery got moved up…"

"Surgery. So the doctor decided on the liver donation."

"Yeah. And it has to happen at the end of the month…"

"So this wasn't about spending time with me. You were buttering me up, trying to sweet talk me so I wouldn't make a scene about not going to camp."

"What? No."

"Really, Dad?" Sam asked. He huffed and put his sandwich down, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Sam, honestly. I for…"

"Of course. That's it. You forgot about camp. Just like you forgot about today."

"Sam, what do you want me to do?" I asked, trying so very hard to control my temper. "Seriously, what do you want me to do here? If I let you go to camp, Dean's surgery gets pushed back and he gets sicker. If I don't let you go to camp, you're pissed with me."

"That never seems to matter any other time."

"You know what?" It was at that moment I felt my temper snap. "I'm sick of this. Do you know what your brother asked me for in the car? He asked me to make sure you were okay. He was told today that he was gonna die if he didn't have this surgery…" Sam started to say something else, but I was on a roll. "Shut up, Sam! You don't get to talk anymore. Your brother, not one hour before we got home, was scared shitless because he was told if he didn't do this he'd die. But instead of wallowing in that, he spent most of the ride home making me feel better and making me promise to be there for you. And now you're whining because I wasn't at your stupid ceremony this morning and because you can't go to play useless games with kids you don't even know. Get the fuck over it and stop being so selfish, Sam. I'm just trying to make sure your brother is here for another damn day. Until we get the news that he's not sick anymore, suck it up and deal with it because what you want will never come before your brother's health. And if I hear one more damn complaint about how I never do anything for you, then your selfish ass will be kept in your room until the day you turn eighteen, when I'll throw you out on the street and never think about you again. Do you understand me?" I didn't give Sam the chance to answer me, because I realized the rest of the restaurant was staring at me. "Get up and get your ass in the car. We get home, you go straight to bed."

Yeah. Dad of the year award goes to John Winchester.

We didn't say anything else the rest of that night. Sam had one more day of school, and when I woke up the next day there was a note on the kitchen table. I got my selfish ass off to school three hours early. I wanted to throw and break plates. The sun wasn't even up and I hadn't slept the night before, except for a few tossing and turning minutes where I'd heard Mary's voice over and over in my head telling me what a shit thing I'd done the day before. I had to fix this with Sam, but how?

I'd never get the chance to find out.

Around lunchtime, there was a knock at the door. Dean was at the table nibbling on his soup. His color was looking worse that day than the day before, but he begged me not to take him to the hospital. I was keeping a close eye on him, but I got it. He'd been to the hospital so much that I didn't want to go again either. I left him just long enough to go to the door. There was a guy standing there with a pizza box from the Domino's down the street.

"John Winchester?" he asked me.

"Yes, but we didn't order anything."

He opened the box and I saw it didn't contain a pizza, it just contained a manila envelope which he practically shoved in my hands. "You've been served."

"What the…?" But the guy was gone before I could say anything else.

I opened it up and saw someone coming up the driveway. It was my old friend, Jim Murphy. Jim came every other week or so to check on us, but he always called ahead. I didn't have time to think about it, though, because when I read the papers, it took all I had not to punch him in the face or worse.

Jim was suing me for custody of Sam.