Sam
**Thirteen months old. A motel in Indiana. Two in the morning.**
I had read seventeen pages about teething. Seventeen. On three different websites, one medical, two parenting forums, and I’d taken notes because I was Sam Winchester and I took notes when the world stopped making sense.
Chill the teething ring. Massage the gums. Ibuprofen only in exceptional cases. Chamomile tea on a clean cloth. Distraction. Patience.
Patience.
Johanna had been screaming for four hours.
Not crying. Screaming. That high, thin, desperate scream that sounded like someone was tearing her apart from the inside. Her face was red, her eyes swollen, her mouth open, and I could see her gums—swollen, white where the teeth were pushing through, and I knew it hurt, I knew it, but knowing didn't help. Knowing never helped when it came to pain.
Dean had fallen asleep an hour ago. Not voluntarily. His body had simply given out. He'd been sitting in the armchair with Johanna in his arms, and then his eyes had closed and his head had tipped to the side, and Johanna had kept screaming, and I'd grabbed her before she fell.
Now I carried her. Back and forth. Back and forth. The way Dean always did. But I wasn't Dean. My steps were different, my rhythm was different, my heartbeat was different, and Johanna knew it. Babies knew everything.
“Shh,” I said. “Shh, Jojo. I know.”
But I didn't know. Not really. I knew what the websites said. I knew it was normal, that it would pass, that millions of babies teethed and survived it. But none of those babies was Johanna. None of those babies was lying in my arms, screaming like the world was ending, looking at me with Dean's eyes—green, huge, full of tears—and I couldn't do anything.
Nothing.
I'd exorcised demons. I'd survived Lucifer in his cage. I'd seen things that drove people insane, and I was still standing. But a thirteen-month-old baby with a toothache brought me to the edge.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. Lay Johanna against my chest. Her ear over my heart, the way Dean did it, but with me it was different. My heartbeat was slower. Calmer. Dean always said I had the heart of a monk. I always said he had the heart of a race car. Johanna knew both. Needed both.
She got quieter. Not silent. But quieter. The screaming became whimpering, the whimpering became that small, shaky breathing that broke me every time.
I laid my hand on her back. Felt her ribs beneath my fingers. So thin. So fragile. How could something so small hold so much pain?
“I brought you something,” I whispered.
I reached for the nightstand. The teething ring. I'd kept it in the mini-fridge's freezer compartment for an hour. Cold. Not ice-cold. The website had said not ice-cold, just chilled, because too much cold could hurt the gums, and I'd tested the temperature with the back of my hand three times because I was Sam Winchester and I checked three times.
I held it to Johanna's mouth. She opened her eyes. Saw the ring. Looked at me. And then she bit down.
Hard.
Her tiny jaws closed around the cool silicone, and she chewed, and her face relaxed. Not completely. But enough. Enough for the whimpering to stop. Enough that her eyes weren't so desperate anymore.
I exhaled. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath.
She chewed and looked at me. Green eyes, damp, tired, but calmer now. Her hand rested on my chest, right over my heart, and her fingers moved to the rhythm of my heartbeat. As if she were counting along.
“Better?” I asked.
She made a sound. Not a word. Not yet. But a sound that seemed to say: Yes. Maybe. For now.
I leaned back. Held her close. And then it happened.
It came without warning. Without reason. It just came, the way things came when you'd pushed them down for too long.
I cried.
Not loudly. Not sobbing. Just tears running silently down my cheeks, into my hair, onto the pillow. I cried because this baby was in pain and I couldn't do anything except chill a teething ring. I cried because Dad was dead and would never see Johanna get her first teeth. I cried because I'd been in Texas, with Amelia, while Dean was alone and Dad died alone and Johanna came into the world alone.
I cried because for thirteen months I'd pretended I was strong enough for this. Like I knew what I was doing. Like I could read parenting books and scour websites and make lists and everything would be okay if I just knew enough.
But knowing wasn't enough. Knowing was never enough.
Johanna looked at me. The teething ring hung from her mouth. Her eyes were big and serious, much too serious for a baby, and she lifted her hand and put it on my cheek. On the tears. Her fingers were wet and warm and sticky, and she made that sound—not crying, not laughing, something in between—and I thought: She's comforting me. Thirteen months old, and she's comforting me.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Sorry, Jojo. It's me. Not you.”
She laid her head back on my chest. The teething ring fell out. She didn't need it anymore. My heartbeat was enough.
I held her and cried quietly and hated myself for it and loved her for not judging me.
Eventually it got light. Gray light through thin curtains. Indiana in winter. Johanna was asleep. Finally. Her mouth was open, her cheeks still red, but her face was relaxed. Peaceful. The way a baby was supposed to look.
I lay still. Didn't move. Breathed shallowly because any movement could wake her, and if she woke up, it would start all over again, and I didn't know if I could get through it one more time.
Dean woke up. I heard it—the crack of his joints, the groan, the sound of him rubbing his face. It took him three seconds to understand the situation. That was Dean. Three seconds for everything.
“How long?” he asked. Quietly.
“Since you fell asleep.”
Silence. Then: “Jesus, Sam.”
“It's okay.”
“No, it isn't.” He stood up. Came to the bed. Looked down at Johanna, sleeping on my chest, her mouth open, one hand clutching my T-shirt. “You should've woken me.”
“You haven't slept in three days.”
“And you?”
I didn't answer. Dean sat down on the edge of the bed. Ran a hand through his hair. He looked tired. Not normally tired. The exhaustion of someone who'd been raising a baby for thirteen months while hunting monsters and never grieving his dead father.
“How bad?” he asked.
“Bad.”
He nodded. Reached out and laid his hand on Johanna's back. Beside mine. Two hands on one tiny back. His thumb brushed over her hair—blond, fine, warm.
“Her first tooth is coming through,” I said. “I felt it. Bottom left. Tiny. But it's there.”
Dean looked at me. And then he smiled. Not the grin, not the sarcasm, not the mask. A real smile. Tired and sad and proud and everything at once.
“Her first tooth,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“We should write it down. Somewhere. The date and all that.”
I stared at him. “You want to start a baby book?”
“Shut up. I'm just saying—you forget this stuff. And someday she's gonna ask. When did I get my first tooth? When did I crawl for the first time? And then we'll be standing there and won't know because we were too busy hunting ghosts.”
He was right. He was so damn right, and it hurt because it meant Dean was thinking about a future. About someday. About a Johanna old enough to ask questions. And that was—that was more hope than I'd ever expected from him.
“Okay,” I said. “I'll write it down.”
“On that laptop thing of yours.”
“On that laptop thing of mine.”
Dean looked down at Johanna again. She slept. Breathed. Lived.
“First tooth,” he said quietly. “Thirteen months. Indiana. In the middle of the night. Sam cried.”
“I did not—”
“Your eyes are red, Sammy.”
I swallowed. He looked at me. And there was nothing but understanding in his eyes. No mockery. No joke. Just: I know. I know what it's like. I know what it feels like when you can't protect her.
“It's okay,” he said. “It's okay that it hurts.”
And that was the closest Dean Winchester would ever come to saying “I love you.”
Johanna sighed in her sleep. Her mouth moved. Chewing. Even in her sleep she chewed, because the teeth didn't stop, and the pain didn't stop, and nothing ever stopped in this life.
But we were there. Both of us. And that had to be enough.
It was enough.