1994

"Where were you? Do you realize how important this appointment is?" Henry shouted through the window of his truck.

"Obviously I was at Gus's house," Shawn nonchalantly responded, "I didn't know that you were showing up to pick me up from my play date," his tone was sarcastic. He was seventeen, way too old for his father to be chasing him around like he was a little kid.

"I paged you two times, and you didn't get back to me Shawn! do you know how much per month I spend on that thing? When I page you, you call me back!"

Shawn shrugged, "Gus was doing something with his computer, and when Gus uses the computer to play on the American Line with some child prodigy, no one could use the phone at his house."

He rolled his eyes as he got into the truck and looked his dad, "Have you ever considered that having to wear a wire may interfere with the homing device?" He had been tempted to take the battery out of his pager, and put it into his Walkman, but several girls from his baking class thought that having a pager was cool. He gave them all his pager number, and hoped that when the thing went off it was one of the girls trying to contact him. A pager was actually a cool electronic accessory, unlike the halter monitor, which was the uncoolest of uncool accessories.

All week before the big doctor's appointment, he had to wear the strange contraption under his shirt. The little suction cups attached to various pulse points, with glue, and the battery pack at the bottom made him self conscious especially when a freshman girl in his baking class noticed, and asked him if he was wearing a wire as part of doing undercover police work like Brenda on General Hospital.

"The halter monitor isn't going to interfere with the pager," his father said dismissively changing the subject. "Your mother is already at the doctor's office. She told me she was going there directly after work and we're going to meet her there."

Shawn carefully reached into his backpack, found a package of Gushers fruit snacks, then carefully tried to grab one as the car stopped at a stoplight.

"No eating today, they're doing a blood test and they need to know what your fasting blood sugar level is." His dad looked at him out of the corner of his eye, as if gauging his reaction. "They also might want to do a catheterization."

"I thought today was just the day when they tell me if I'm having a boy or a girl, no delivery room?"

"You never know what they're going to find, so you should be prepared for the worst." Henry grumbled nervous that his son probably had not fasted. "And I hope you kept that thing on. It was still on last night the last I saw."

"Yes I did dad," Shawn responded dismissively. He suddenly couldn't wait for his eighteenth birthday, and his freedom as well.

Present

Maddie anxiously paced the hallway outside of Shawn's room. After hearing about Shawn's hospitalization Larry insisted on driving down to Santa Barbara from San Francisco, which took most of the night. She tried to sleep on the trip, but she was too worried about what was happening with Shawn.

Was luck that her travel plans to be in Auckland had been canceled because of bad weather? What kind of luck leads to your son being in the hospital, she thought to herself.

She stopped in her tracks upon noticing her ex husband's eye. "What did you say to Juliet?" Juliet was the only person she could think of who could have gotten away with socking Henry. She angrily paused, and then took a deep breath. "Actually I really don't want to know what you said to her," her tone caustic. Having to deal with her ex husband being angry was bad, having to deal with him on no sleep and with her son in the hospital was worse.

Henry had his moments of anger when he had no control of a situation. He got mad at something minor, lashed out, which made the focus of his anger do something they'd regret, and then everything was their fault for doing it. Nothing was ever his fault. She had spent too much of her life playing that game, and was able to see it from a mile away. He was never the bad one. He almost always made other people be the bad one, and act as if he were the wronged party.

Her ex husband nervously took a deep breath and seemed to have bitten his lip, "I made a mistake, and said some things I shouldn't have to Juliet. She overreacted, but it was my fault."

"You probably deserved it," she said dismissively. Now was not time to be listening to her husband's excuses, she thought as she started to turn away. She was her to see her sick son, not to clean up the messes created by her ex husband's temper. Having Shawn sick was bad enough, but having Henry doing things to worry Shawn and make him angry was far worse.

A defensive Larry interrupted. "Wow Henry, now that you've managed make everyone in your life run to every corner of the world; Maddie, Shawn, and even your own little brother, it is time to start going after the people in your son's life. Chase his girlfriend away while he is in the hospital." He gave a fuming Henry a sarcastic admiring look. "What an ingenious thing only the great Henry Spencer could think up! Next, don't forget to make sure to do the same with his best friend Gus by pointing out every little thing he has done wrong. You can't have a happy family, you need your son to be just as miserable and angry as you have always been."

Henry gazed angrily at Larry. "You shut up! Don't forget that you played a part in ruining his entire life. If it weren't for you he would be on the force. Maybe he would have gone to college!"

"Well, you were the one who made sure he had an adult record for something he did at seventeen. How could you be callus enough to throw your own son in jail? " Larry's shot back attempting not to make a scene in a hospital. "Thought you would teach him a nice lesson? The only thing that mattered was Shawn becoming a cop. It isn't as if he had any musical talent? You are lucky that he came back into your life. If you were my father, I would have changed my last name."

It took virtually all of Henry's willpower not to throttle Larry, throw him against a wall and knock some sense into him.

While Larry was dealing with Henry, Maddie made her way into her son's room.

"Goose," she said as she walked into the hospital room, shocked to see her son looking so weak and frail. His hair was now a mess, and their were bags under his eyes, not to mention the fact that he was on nasal oxygen and a number of IVs.

"I came as soon as I heard," she said as she kissed him on the forehead. His response was a tired smile, as he settled in the bed. This shouldn't be happening, she thought to herself. They were at the point where their son should have been coming to see them in the hospital. What she would not have given to have switched places.

"Dad is doing a bad job trying to not to see me. What did he say to Jules?" He looked her in the eye in expectation of something honest.

She paused, unsure of how what to say, although, knowing her son, her half a second of delaying things gave her answer away.

"I don't know honey, all I know is that she gave him a black eye." Shawn's expression at the news was a mix of concern and puzzlement. Probably worried about how badly his father had treated Juliet for her to punch him in the face. "

"I'm sure he had it coming," She said in her best attempt to lighten the situation.

She still wasn't quite sure what to say. Her son was observant, but at this point it was better for him not to know what was going on behind the scenes, the less he knew the better. She was wrong when she thought the days of hiding fights from a sick child were behind her.

She broke from her musings as the monitors hooked to Shawn seemed to be going faster, which from her years of experience she knew weren't a good sign. At that moment her son's eyes seemed to roll back into his head, as the cardiac monitor began to speed up even more. A nurse ran in, and said something about v-tack, as a team of doctors and nurses rushed in and ushered her out.

The only thing she could do is stand outside and watch helplessly as the doctors and nurses worked on her son, trying to save his life.