FIC - Maintenance
Title: Maintenance
Author: verucasalt123
Rating: R for language
Genre/pairing: Gen (Yes, this is me, writing SPN-fic with no sex in it. Say "Christo" if you want.)
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Word count: 2,410
Summary: John honestly just didn’t realize it was so important.
Originally written for the ohsam Sam-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge, but I don't think it turned out really Sam-focused enough, much more John and Dean-focused, so I'm just posting it here on my journal for now.
For this prompt : John still dealing with the death of Mary never finished getting Sam his vaccinations and boosters. Never thinking it would be a problem he simply forged the medical records for Sam. Years later it comes back to haunt John when Sam gets sick. It could be anything from meningitis to polio.
John remembered taking Sammy to a clinic when he was a baby, not much more than a year old, and getting him some vaccinations. He didn’t know what they were, he just let the nurse stick the screaming toddler with whatever it was time for him to get, trusting that they knew what they were doing. He had taken Dean in because he needed his shots before he started kindergarten in a few weeks, so he just let them do the same to the baby when they said he was supposed to have them too. The nurse gave him a pamphlet as they were leaving that listed out the timeline of which vaccinations were needed at what age. John was fairly certain he’d never looked at it. Mary had been dead less than a year and he was still reeling from the loss but not yet so far down the Family Destruction Avenue that he considered forging Dean’s shot records.
A couple of years later, it was time for Sam to go to kindergarten. As with all his other paperwork, John had forged the immunization records himself. He had no idea what Sammy had gotten shots for and what he hadn’t. The words on the page were just a blur to him, all initials and acronyms and medical jargon that he didn’t even recognize. All he did was check some boxes and scrawl the signature of some non-existent physician. The kid had to go to school, they needed verification, John was good at making things up, and he didn’t give it another thought.
Until eight years later.
Sam never got sick. A bout of the sniffles here and there, sure, but nothing serious, not ever. When Dean was little, he used to get fevers, scary high fevers that made him hallucinate and weep but John never had to deal with any of that with his younger son.
He came back from a hunt to their little month-to-month rented apartment and found a completely frantic Dean, which was alarming to say the least. Dean was creeping up on eighteen, and there was almost nothing that was capable of getting him riled up unless it had to do with his little brother.
“Sam’s sick, Dad. Real sick.” John felt his stomach churn with fear.
The past few days had been tough. Dean was past going to school at that point, so at least he’d been there to do what he could for Sammy. At first, Sam just said his throat hurt. Dean sprayed Chloraseptic into his mouth and sent him off to school. But by the time he got home, his throat and cheeks were swollen and he was running a temp of 101. Sam’s eyes were heavy, he just kept saying he wanted to go to sleep, he was so tired, so Dean let him. When he woke, though, nothing was better, and everything was worse. Sam was crying, saying his whole body hurt, not just his throat. OK, so maybe it was the flu. There was no coughing or congestion but Dean had the flu twice and remembered being tired, achy, having a fever.
He tried feeding him some soup, thinking it might not hurt his sore throat too much, but Sam kept insisting that he wasn’t hungry. Intimidation tactics in full force, Dean got him to take a few spoonfuls, but he didn’t have the heart to force him to eat while Sam was openly crying, making his face even more pitiful with all the swelling that was already there.
That was the part Dean couldn’t figure out. He couldn’t remember his face swelling up when he had the flu. Maybe this was just some different strain, or Sam was having an odd reaction to the bug, hell, it was anyone’s guess. Dean had more medical knowledge than a high-school dropout of his age ought to have, but he couldn’t make this diagnosis with any certainty. He just told Sam to go on back to bed and decided that he’d make sure he stayed home from school the next day. To be honest, he felt like an ass making him go that day, not realizing Sam was really sick.
Sam stayed in bed the whole next day, drifting in and out of sleep, still refusing to eat on the grounds that he wasn’t hungry. The swelling wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t getting better, either. Sam’s complaints of full-body muscle aches and inability to stay awake for more than an hour at a time continued through the day and night, and into the morning.
Dean had barely slept at all, trying to watch over Sammy and make sure he didn’t take a turn for the worse. But at some point he must have drifted off, because he woke up to his brother shaking his shoulder and trying to hold back his tears once again. Sam’s eyes were wide, and he was visibly trembling - from fear or from the fever, Dean couldn’t guess. Until he was informed of the latest and certainly most bizarre symptom in the constellation of current “things that are wrong with Sam”.
Sam had no reason to hide anything from Dean. His big brother had taught him everything he knew, and fairly recently, taught him things about puberty, his body, the changes he could expect. So it was with little hesitation that Sam shared his other symptoms. His testicles were swollen and painful. He showed Dean, who examined his brother’s genitals in a completely clinical way, the same way he’d look over a scrape or a bruise. His balls were swollen, all right, and the Tylenol he was dosing Sam with every four hours wasn’t helping the fever or the pain. Dean was ready to take him to the hospital himself when their dad showed up.
Clearly, it was serious, whatever it was. The triage nurse at the ER got Sam back into a room within half an hour. “Fever of unknown etiology” was apparently a catchphrase for “something is very wrong”. John ran down the list of symptoms for the doctor on call that afternoon, with Dean filling in the gaps since he was the one who’d actually been there (John tried hard not to think about the massive weight he’d put on Dean’s shoulders for all these years, but wasn’t all that successful). They mentioned the testicular swelling quietly because they didn’t want to embarrass Sam, this was a sensitive subject at his age but the doctor needed all the information.
John and Dean waited impatiently as the doctor examined Sam, both of them just standing in the hallway instead of returning to the waiting room. Neither of them said a single damn word to each other, didn’t even look each other in the eye the whole time. John knew Dean was anxious about his brother’s illness, but he could tell that he was also angry that his father had been far away and unreachable when all this started. It was a bit of a dilemma, really, for both of them. Dean cherished his role in taking care of his little brother, but at the same time resented his father for the distance and unavailability that their lifestyle had forced on all of them. John was thankful that Dean loved and cared for Sam so well, but the crushing weight of leaving them alone so much got to him in the moments when he wasn’t single-mindedly pursuing the demon who’d killed their mother.
Finally, the physician came out of the exam room, still looking down and making notes in her chart. It seemed like she was headed to the waiting room to fetch them and was surprised to see the two men standing right there in the hallway to hear whatever it was that she had to say.
“You’re Sam’s father?”
“Yes ma’am, is he all right? Can we see him now? His brother and I have been really worried.”
“I can tell”, she replied. She looked at Dean and said, “Why don’t you go on in there and sit with your brother for a while? He’s probably falling asleep again but you can keep him company while I talk to your dad, okay?”
The words came out sounding patronizing, Dean thought she was dismissive and talking to him like he was a child, but he pushed it aside. He wanted to see Sammy, so he did as she asked.
“So what is it?” asked John, praying to everything he could think of that she would tell him it was something harmless and temporary and he didn’t need to worry.
“It appears as if your son has contracted mumps, Mr. Smith”, she said, evenly but with just a hint of accusation in her voice. “This is exceptionally rare for boys his age. Has he not been vaccinated?”
In the space of a moment, John caught a clear memory of filling out those forged immunization records so many years ago. He was overwhelmed with guilt, ignorance and uselessness. How the fuck was he supposed to know how important that shit was? Mary had always taken care of it when Dean was a baby. And anyway, nobody got mumps anymore. When he was a kid, yeah, sure, he remembered kids coming down with it, just like everybody got chicken pox at some point. His boys had both had chicken pox, at the same damn time, too. But that wasn’t something that really happened anymore, nobody got fucking mumps. He knew a few people with kids, and he’d never heard of any of them getting this particular diagnosis. Never heard either of his kids say one of their classmates had it. It was like smallpox or something, just this illness that was part of the history books in their part of the world.
Oh. Then it all clicked into place in his already regret-laden brain. Well yeah, right, you stupid mother fucker, John thought to himself, it never happened anymore because decent parents made sure their kids got their immunizations. John was well aware of the fact that he did not fall into that category. He might get a nomination for Absent Parent of the Year or People’s Choice for Most Clueless Father on the Planet, though, he was sure of that.
“He got some shots when he was a baby”, was the only response he had.
“He should have had a booster before he started school. Do you remember if he had that or not?”
“We, uh…we move around a lot, for my job. I’m not really sure…” Christ, he was the shittiest dad on the planet, he was sure of that.
“Well, either way, he’s got mumps now. It’s a viral infection and will run its course in a week or two. But there is a complication having to do with the swelling of his testicles. It’s a side effect of mumps, called orchitis. Those symptoms will disappear on their own as well, along with everything else. You’re his father, so you can choose when the time is right to tell him, but there is a chance this could make him sterile.”
John was reeling. “Sterile? You mean there’s a chance he won’t be able to have kids?”
“It’s not a certainty, just a possibility. Not something that’s necessary for you to discuss with him at this age, but it’s only fair, at some point, for him to know there’s a chance he won’t be able to father any children.”
Fair. It’s only fair. That’s what she said. But John knew better. Nothing in their life was fair, and on top of everything else, his lax parenting had just heaped another big load of unfair on top of his younger son.
He checked them out as soon as he could. These doctors didn’t know a goddamn thing about what was fair and what wasn’t.
This time, John took the printout of scheduled vaccinations and made an appointment at the free clinic in town for the earliest time he could get, which was ten days later. He called the doctor’s office in Lawrence and asked for a list of the shots they’d given Sam and Dean that one time they were there. By the time the appointment rolled around, Sam had started feeling better and Dean was back to normal enough that he was capable of bitching about having to be subjected to immunizations that were for children. As usual, John cut off any backtalk with nothing more than a glare in his son’s direction, and both boys were given several shots and another list of boosters and additional vaccines that were required.
They all knew that they wouldn’t still be in that town six months later, but John swore to himself that wherever they were at the time, he’d make sure to get them another appointment.
He’d sworn lots of things to himself over the years, though. That day at the hospital he’d sworn he was going to tell Sammy what the doctor said about possible future complications. He hadn’t done it. But he would. Eventually. And he’d do this vaccination thing, too. Really. He was sure of it.
Six months later, he was in Nebraska on a lead after the yellow-eyed demon, Dean was with him, and Sam was in a motel room watching movies and not even thinking about how he’d been so sick earlier in the year.
A year later, John was looking for a book in the trunk of the Impala when he came across the list of shots his kids were supposed to get. He pushed it to the side, sure that he’d get around to making sure it happened in the next town.
Author: verucasalt123
Rating: R for language
Genre/pairing: Gen (Yes, this is me, writing SPN-fic with no sex in it. Say "Christo" if you want.)
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Word count: 2,410
Summary: John honestly just didn’t realize it was so important.
Originally written for the ohsam Sam-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge, but I don't think it turned out really Sam-focused enough, much more John and Dean-focused, so I'm just posting it here on my journal for now.
For this prompt : John still dealing with the death of Mary never finished getting Sam his vaccinations and boosters. Never thinking it would be a problem he simply forged the medical records for Sam. Years later it comes back to haunt John when Sam gets sick. It could be anything from meningitis to polio.
John remembered taking Sammy to a clinic when he was a baby, not much more than a year old, and getting him some vaccinations. He didn’t know what they were, he just let the nurse stick the screaming toddler with whatever it was time for him to get, trusting that they knew what they were doing. He had taken Dean in because he needed his shots before he started kindergarten in a few weeks, so he just let them do the same to the baby when they said he was supposed to have them too. The nurse gave him a pamphlet as they were leaving that listed out the timeline of which vaccinations were needed at what age. John was fairly certain he’d never looked at it. Mary had been dead less than a year and he was still reeling from the loss but not yet so far down the Family Destruction Avenue that he considered forging Dean’s shot records.
A couple of years later, it was time for Sam to go to kindergarten. As with all his other paperwork, John had forged the immunization records himself. He had no idea what Sammy had gotten shots for and what he hadn’t. The words on the page were just a blur to him, all initials and acronyms and medical jargon that he didn’t even recognize. All he did was check some boxes and scrawl the signature of some non-existent physician. The kid had to go to school, they needed verification, John was good at making things up, and he didn’t give it another thought.
Until eight years later.
Sam never got sick. A bout of the sniffles here and there, sure, but nothing serious, not ever. When Dean was little, he used to get fevers, scary high fevers that made him hallucinate and weep but John never had to deal with any of that with his younger son.
He came back from a hunt to their little month-to-month rented apartment and found a completely frantic Dean, which was alarming to say the least. Dean was creeping up on eighteen, and there was almost nothing that was capable of getting him riled up unless it had to do with his little brother.
“Sam’s sick, Dad. Real sick.” John felt his stomach churn with fear.
The past few days had been tough. Dean was past going to school at that point, so at least he’d been there to do what he could for Sammy. At first, Sam just said his throat hurt. Dean sprayed Chloraseptic into his mouth and sent him off to school. But by the time he got home, his throat and cheeks were swollen and he was running a temp of 101. Sam’s eyes were heavy, he just kept saying he wanted to go to sleep, he was so tired, so Dean let him. When he woke, though, nothing was better, and everything was worse. Sam was crying, saying his whole body hurt, not just his throat. OK, so maybe it was the flu. There was no coughing or congestion but Dean had the flu twice and remembered being tired, achy, having a fever.
He tried feeding him some soup, thinking it might not hurt his sore throat too much, but Sam kept insisting that he wasn’t hungry. Intimidation tactics in full force, Dean got him to take a few spoonfuls, but he didn’t have the heart to force him to eat while Sam was openly crying, making his face even more pitiful with all the swelling that was already there.
That was the part Dean couldn’t figure out. He couldn’t remember his face swelling up when he had the flu. Maybe this was just some different strain, or Sam was having an odd reaction to the bug, hell, it was anyone’s guess. Dean had more medical knowledge than a high-school dropout of his age ought to have, but he couldn’t make this diagnosis with any certainty. He just told Sam to go on back to bed and decided that he’d make sure he stayed home from school the next day. To be honest, he felt like an ass making him go that day, not realizing Sam was really sick.
Sam stayed in bed the whole next day, drifting in and out of sleep, still refusing to eat on the grounds that he wasn’t hungry. The swelling wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t getting better, either. Sam’s complaints of full-body muscle aches and inability to stay awake for more than an hour at a time continued through the day and night, and into the morning.
Dean had barely slept at all, trying to watch over Sammy and make sure he didn’t take a turn for the worse. But at some point he must have drifted off, because he woke up to his brother shaking his shoulder and trying to hold back his tears once again. Sam’s eyes were wide, and he was visibly trembling - from fear or from the fever, Dean couldn’t guess. Until he was informed of the latest and certainly most bizarre symptom in the constellation of current “things that are wrong with Sam”.
Sam had no reason to hide anything from Dean. His big brother had taught him everything he knew, and fairly recently, taught him things about puberty, his body, the changes he could expect. So it was with little hesitation that Sam shared his other symptoms. His testicles were swollen and painful. He showed Dean, who examined his brother’s genitals in a completely clinical way, the same way he’d look over a scrape or a bruise. His balls were swollen, all right, and the Tylenol he was dosing Sam with every four hours wasn’t helping the fever or the pain. Dean was ready to take him to the hospital himself when their dad showed up.
Clearly, it was serious, whatever it was. The triage nurse at the ER got Sam back into a room within half an hour. “Fever of unknown etiology” was apparently a catchphrase for “something is very wrong”. John ran down the list of symptoms for the doctor on call that afternoon, with Dean filling in the gaps since he was the one who’d actually been there (John tried hard not to think about the massive weight he’d put on Dean’s shoulders for all these years, but wasn’t all that successful). They mentioned the testicular swelling quietly because they didn’t want to embarrass Sam, this was a sensitive subject at his age but the doctor needed all the information.
John and Dean waited impatiently as the doctor examined Sam, both of them just standing in the hallway instead of returning to the waiting room. Neither of them said a single damn word to each other, didn’t even look each other in the eye the whole time. John knew Dean was anxious about his brother’s illness, but he could tell that he was also angry that his father had been far away and unreachable when all this started. It was a bit of a dilemma, really, for both of them. Dean cherished his role in taking care of his little brother, but at the same time resented his father for the distance and unavailability that their lifestyle had forced on all of them. John was thankful that Dean loved and cared for Sam so well, but the crushing weight of leaving them alone so much got to him in the moments when he wasn’t single-mindedly pursuing the demon who’d killed their mother.
Finally, the physician came out of the exam room, still looking down and making notes in her chart. It seemed like she was headed to the waiting room to fetch them and was surprised to see the two men standing right there in the hallway to hear whatever it was that she had to say.
“You’re Sam’s father?”
“Yes ma’am, is he all right? Can we see him now? His brother and I have been really worried.”
“I can tell”, she replied. She looked at Dean and said, “Why don’t you go on in there and sit with your brother for a while? He’s probably falling asleep again but you can keep him company while I talk to your dad, okay?”
The words came out sounding patronizing, Dean thought she was dismissive and talking to him like he was a child, but he pushed it aside. He wanted to see Sammy, so he did as she asked.
“So what is it?” asked John, praying to everything he could think of that she would tell him it was something harmless and temporary and he didn’t need to worry.
“It appears as if your son has contracted mumps, Mr. Smith”, she said, evenly but with just a hint of accusation in her voice. “This is exceptionally rare for boys his age. Has he not been vaccinated?”
In the space of a moment, John caught a clear memory of filling out those forged immunization records so many years ago. He was overwhelmed with guilt, ignorance and uselessness. How the fuck was he supposed to know how important that shit was? Mary had always taken care of it when Dean was a baby. And anyway, nobody got mumps anymore. When he was a kid, yeah, sure, he remembered kids coming down with it, just like everybody got chicken pox at some point. His boys had both had chicken pox, at the same damn time, too. But that wasn’t something that really happened anymore, nobody got fucking mumps. He knew a few people with kids, and he’d never heard of any of them getting this particular diagnosis. Never heard either of his kids say one of their classmates had it. It was like smallpox or something, just this illness that was part of the history books in their part of the world.
Oh. Then it all clicked into place in his already regret-laden brain. Well yeah, right, you stupid mother fucker, John thought to himself, it never happened anymore because decent parents made sure their kids got their immunizations. John was well aware of the fact that he did not fall into that category. He might get a nomination for Absent Parent of the Year or People’s Choice for Most Clueless Father on the Planet, though, he was sure of that.
“He got some shots when he was a baby”, was the only response he had.
“He should have had a booster before he started school. Do you remember if he had that or not?”
“We, uh…we move around a lot, for my job. I’m not really sure…” Christ, he was the shittiest dad on the planet, he was sure of that.
“Well, either way, he’s got mumps now. It’s a viral infection and will run its course in a week or two. But there is a complication having to do with the swelling of his testicles. It’s a side effect of mumps, called orchitis. Those symptoms will disappear on their own as well, along with everything else. You’re his father, so you can choose when the time is right to tell him, but there is a chance this could make him sterile.”
John was reeling. “Sterile? You mean there’s a chance he won’t be able to have kids?”
“It’s not a certainty, just a possibility. Not something that’s necessary for you to discuss with him at this age, but it’s only fair, at some point, for him to know there’s a chance he won’t be able to father any children.”
Fair. It’s only fair. That’s what she said. But John knew better. Nothing in their life was fair, and on top of everything else, his lax parenting had just heaped another big load of unfair on top of his younger son.
He checked them out as soon as he could. These doctors didn’t know a goddamn thing about what was fair and what wasn’t.
This time, John took the printout of scheduled vaccinations and made an appointment at the free clinic in town for the earliest time he could get, which was ten days later. He called the doctor’s office in Lawrence and asked for a list of the shots they’d given Sam and Dean that one time they were there. By the time the appointment rolled around, Sam had started feeling better and Dean was back to normal enough that he was capable of bitching about having to be subjected to immunizations that were for children. As usual, John cut off any backtalk with nothing more than a glare in his son’s direction, and both boys were given several shots and another list of boosters and additional vaccines that were required.
They all knew that they wouldn’t still be in that town six months later, but John swore to himself that wherever they were at the time, he’d make sure to get them another appointment.
He’d sworn lots of things to himself over the years, though. That day at the hospital he’d sworn he was going to tell Sammy what the doctor said about possible future complications. He hadn’t done it. But he would. Eventually. And he’d do this vaccination thing, too. Really. He was sure of it.
Six months later, he was in Nebraska on a lead after the yellow-eyed demon, Dean was with him, and Sam was in a motel room watching movies and not even thinking about how he’d been so sick earlier in the year.
A year later, John was looking for a book in the trunk of the Impala when he came across the list of shots his kids were supposed to get. He pushed it to the side, sure that he’d get around to making sure it happened in the next town.