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Okay, here's the next installment. Hope you enjoy.

Once Nurse Candy had settled Sam into the bed upstairs, the two brothers sat in comfortable silence for a while. Dean knew that Sam was awake, but didn't want to speak in fear that he could be going to sleep.

Sam knew that these were the last few hours of peace that he would be able to have with Dean. He sat there holding his brother's hand, out of a need to be close, even if it was short-lived. He had known what was going on for over a year, and hadn't said anything, hadn't found it necessary. Dean would know now, and he was going to be pissed. He might even leave Sam to deal with this all by himself. Looking at his brother, he felt like crying. How had he let this happen? After just sitting there for a while, holding onto his brother's hand, he drifted off to sleep.

Dean watched his brother throughout the night, just sitting there in a hard plastic hospital chair, holding the hand that Sam had grasped earlier. It pained him to know that his brother was so frightened that he would want to hold his hand and so left it there. Under normal circumstances, he would have snorted and made some Samantha crack, but now, in the dead of the night, it didn't feel right.

Sometime during the night, Dean had fallen asleep in his chair, and now, he awoke to the sound of a nurse's voice over the speaker. There was a huge knot in the back of his neck from the position that he had slept and he checked on Sam. His baby brother was so still, but when Dean grabbed the hand back, Sam reflexively squeezed back. "Just checking that you're all right, man."

The doctor, a tall man with white hair, came into the room where they sat. "Hello, my name is Dr. Lambert. I assume that you're Dean Winchester." He said, looking at the chart. 'Yeah, it would have been a lot more impressive if you could have done that without looking, doc.' "How has Samuel been overnight?"

"His name's Sam. He's holding his own. Had a little scare down in the ER, but he's okay." Dean said, followed closely just under his breath. "He's always okay."

"We have you listed as his next of kin, and he has verified that we can give you information. Would you care to step out in the hall so we can talk and let him sleep?"

Dean nodded and quickly abandoned the chair, following the older doctor. They walked down the hallway to what looked like a commons' area. It was empty, but it still made Dean a little paranoid. The look the doctor had on his face told Dean that this could not be good.

The doctor looked straight at Dean and spoke. "It's no use being indirect with someone who has been less than honest with me from the start. How long have you known about your brother's Leukemia?"

Time stood still for Dean and he felt as though he had been sucker punched hard. How long had he known what? He could hear himself talking, but couldn't feel it. "Less than a minute..."

The doctor sighed, realizing that he had made a huge mistake. He had told a family member who didn't know the extent of his patient's illness point blank and gruffly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester."

"You can call me Dean. How...how long has he known?" Dean was dumbfounded. The news had managed to knock down some walls that he usually kept up and he felt lost.

"Your brother was diagnosed over a year ago, last August, with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. It's usually a childhood disease, but not uncommon in adults."

Dean snickered a little to himself. To him, Sammy was a child, and always will be. "What are his chances?"

"If we start treatment right now, he has an eighty percent chance of survival. The disease has had a while to progress, so we're looking at a very high risk case, because of the length of time that he has waited to seek treatment. As a matter of fact, I'm surprised that you haven't seen any signs of this before now." The doctor explained. It was best in most cases to keep the family informed.

Dean looked at him, anguished that he might have been able to help Sam. "What was I looking for?"

"Him being tired all the time, tiring easily, sleeping a lot, paleness, weakness, weight loss, loss of appetite, shortness of breath, complaints that his bones hurt. He may have bruises that can't be explained because the impact was less than what would have caused ahealthy person to bruise. Older bruises may have a hard time healing. There are red marks under his skin. I saw them last night, and that was why I bothered to look at his medical history. He could have nosebleeds. At this stage, he could have headaches and vomiting. Does any of this sound familiar?"

Dean leaned forward in his seat, grasping his head in his hands, trying to absorb all the things the doctor was telling him. How much had he let slip by under the radar? Memories were coming back to him. At the Asylum, Sam's nose had bled. None of the other people had reported nosebleeds. Not even the cop's nose had bled. Why hadn't he noticed it? At the hotel, before they went back to Lawrence, when Sam had walked in front of his face, he noticed that Sam was losing weight. Why hadn't that woman, Missouri, noticed this? She could have done something, damnit! She could have saved them from this moment right here. The other stuff, he was noticing that stuff last night as they sat in the emergency room. He knew Sam was hiding something from him! He looked back at the doctor who was waiting for an answer. "Yeah, yeah it does. What can we do?"

"There are some treatments we can try. First would be chemotherapy. Again, at this point, there's not many options that we do have. As soon as he agrees, we can get him started on that. Do you have any questions, Dean?" The doctor had leaned in to try to comfort him. 'Yeah, how can I stop this from ever having happened in the first place? How do I turn back time? Any answer to those questions, doc?'

"No, I'm gonna... go call my dad. He needs to come down here." Dean said, as way of excusing himself out of the situation. He just needed to make this go away.

Okay, sorry that what the doctor was saying was kind of clipped. I didn't know how else to put the information that I wanted there in there. About the nurse's voice in the speaker: Each room has a TV and there's a TV/call nurse speaker on the bed. Sometimes nurses will call each other by means of this speaker.

GuestTypePerson: I am from Northern IL. As I wrote this, I looked out the window and saw the snow (melting thought it is) and I had heard Wisconsin has been getting worse so ;)

Hoped you enjoyed this chapter. Another should be posted soon. Have a wonderful day.

Happy hunting!