In One Moment
Title: In One Moment
Author: Chewinggum20
Word count: 4892
Rating: NC-14
Summery: One shot. What happens when in one moment everything changes.
A/N: Taken from this glee_angst_meme. Don‘t read if sensitive to this type of story.
A/N2: Sorry for any mistakes, I’ve read and re-read it and now my eyes are blurry so I can only apologise. Hope you enjoy.
In One Moment.
You don’t know what it was that convinced you that this was a good idea, but you suspect your own foolish need to be popular is what finally ended with you standing on the top of this pier preparing to launch yourself off of it. You hear a few of your glee friends below you already in the water, screaming for you to jump and to stop being so chicken about it, you don’t think they know the extent of your fear of heights and water. You look behind you to see Quinn laughing harmlessly also goading you to just to do it. So the fear of seeming not cool trumps your fear of heights and you jump. You scream for the few seconds it takes your mind to catch up with your falling body, but once it does you start to think this isn’t as bad as you thought, that maybe when you have your feet back on dry land you might jump a second time. You hear your glee friends cheering and clapping, and you see the water nearing, seconds later you feel the freezing water hit you like a thousand needles, and then you don’t feel much of anything at all.
~#~
You wake up to a myriad of sounds around you. Your eyelids feel heavy and you think the light above you is a little too bright. Your mind is hazy and your having a hard time remembering anything at all and then like a train hitting you, you see flashes of jumping into that water and it all going incredible dark. You begin to get slightly agitated, which is being made worse by something digging into your throat and you have no idea what it is but you want it away, and it is not until you go to move it that you realise you cant move. It must be a dream, that’s all that’s running through your mind as you start to panic, why cant you move and why are your eyes not opening how you want them to.
You decide you need to calm down, at the very least you can control your emotions and so you focus on what’s happening around you, what you can hear, and sure enough you feel your heart rate lower. You hear two men and immediately you can tell they are your fathers, you can hear a machine, actually you can hear several machines, which just confuses you more. You hear a girls voice and it sounds so familiar but for some reason you cant figure out who it is and frankly you don’t care. You turn your attention back to what you feel. There is a slight burning sensation in your left hand, and something is still digging into your throat. You try once more to move your arm but no matter how much you try it is impossible. So you focus on your eyes, you have a feeling you can move them and so you focus all your energy on them to open. It takes a while but eventually they do and the light is even brighter. You hear the girl gasp and shout for a nurse, but before anything else can happen you feel sleep overtake you again.
~#~
You wake again to the same noises, to the same feelings and to the same inability to move. You try once more to open your eyes and to your mild delight it’s easier this time. You can even manage to keep them open. You hear the same girl gasp and the same shout for the nurse. You can’t see much of anything happening, you can just make out the scurrying of feet against floor. In your peripheral vision you can just about see uniforms hurrying around. It frightens you and you feel the tears burning at your eyes and roll down your cheek, and then you feel gentle hands wipe them away and a pair of intense hazel eyes looking down at you. You begin to feel calm. Its Quinn, a familiar face is all it needed to anchor you down in this confused chaos in which you have no idea what’s happening. She smiles down at you just stroking your cheek, tears are rolling down from her eyes and you want to offer words of comfort but that same thing you felt digging into your throat last time is preventing anything from coming out of your mouth. So you settle with the hope that your eyes say everything you want them to, perhaps show her how scared you are and that you want to know what’s happening.
After a little while of lights being shone into your eyes and various other tests you were being informed about as they were happening but couldn’t feel, everyone finally leaves you alone except for Quinn. She stays with you. Its quiet for a while apart from the beeping and ‘whooshing’ sounds coming from near by. You have established you are in a hospital, that much has been made clear and you have a feeling its linked to the jump, that now keeps playing repeatedly in your head. You also start to suspect more and more that this is not a dream and is actually reality, and that’s what’s scares you most, that and the fact you still have no idea why you cannot feel much below the digging in your neck.
“Your dads will be here soon” You hear Quinn say and you search for her until your eyes lock onto hers. She looks as lost and scared as you feel, “they will explain everything to you” You shut your eyes tight because you don’t want to wait anymore, you just want to know why the hell you’re in the hospital. You look back at her but you realise she can’t read minds, your going to have to try and tell her that you want to know now.
“te …m…now” It takes more effort then you thought it would and it doesn’t come out at all clear but you can see by the hesitation in her eyes that she heard you but doesn’t want to answer. You watch her as she looks down at the floor contemplating and then locks eyes with yours again.
“You jumped off of the pier remember?”
“y…”
“Well you … um … you jumped and … and you … Oh God I’m so sorry Rach I shouldn’t have told you to jump, I don’t know what I was thinking I knew it looked too shallow and … I’m sorry” You watch her breaking down, all the while clutching your hand but you can‘t feel it. You suddenly realise what’s happening, why you cannot feel her touching you, why you cannot move anything. You know what is happening now and you don’t want her to tell you, you don’t want to hear it.
“Go” you whisper Not out of choice, if you could you’d shout at her and show her how frustrated and mad at this whole situation you are but you can’t so you will have to settle for that choked out whisper.
She looks at you like you just punched her and you cant help but wish that that was the case because then this situation would be a hell of a lot better.
“Go” you say again, and she gets up with tears streaming down her cheeks and runs out of the room. Now your alone and now its your turn to cry. You cry yourself until you’re so exhausted and then you sleep.
~#~
The next time you wake Quinn isn’t there but your dads are. They are both hovering above you stroking your hair and kissing your forehead. A chorus of ‘oh my god she’s awake’ being said over and over. It makes you a little sad that you cannot share that same enthusiasm. After it’s established you’re very much awake, they start to calm down and the crying lessens. You look between them, one on either side of your bed, each with one of your hands in theirs, and again you cannot feel a thing. It starts to annoy you that people still insist on holding your hands, when you assume they know you cannot feel it. You start to think it’s almost as if they are torturing you by constantly reminding you.
You find you are able to move your head a little better today, whereas before it was slightly stiff, now you can control its movements.
“Honey are you okay?” Your dad says, and you know he can read you like an open book so you shake your head. “What’s wrong?”
Everything, you think to yourself and how can he not know that already. Your mind goes back to what happened between you and Quinn, you had managed to persuade yourself that you wanted to know nothing about the situation you are in, but now you find yourself wanting to know.
“Wha…happen…” You stare at him intensely, hoping he will realise that you don’t need to be told about the jump, that much you know from the re-runs in your head. No you want to know the extent of your injuries, you just want to be told now so that this confusion can go. You continue to stare at your dad and you see the emotional struggle he is facing trying to find the words to tell you, but in the end he can’t and so your daddy takes over, he always was the stronger one.
“The doctors say you broke your back in an area known as the thoracic region” He takes a deep breathe, “that’s why you can’t feel anything or move your arms and legs. They also say you have badly bruised your neck at the cervical area and that’s why you can’t breathe on your own too well, but you have a tracheotomy tube to help you breathe. They reckon its not permanent its just until the bruising heals”
He looks at you with slight optimism in his eyes and you want to laugh because seriously how is there anything positive in this. You would consider yourself a calm person normally but you have never wanted to lash out and hurt something so badly as you do right now, and it figures that the only time you want to is the time you can’t do a single goddamn thing about it.
“How…lon…” you ask, afraid of what the answer would be.
“I don’t know how long Rachel, we’ll take one day at a time” you were afraid he was going to say that.
~#~
A few weeks pass, and almost everyone you know has been to visit, some more then once. You don’t even want any visitors, you want to shut yourself away from everything that reminds you of who you once were and what you were capable of doing. You wish everyone would leave you alone, everyone but Quinn. You pretend not to care that she hasn’t been back since you told her to leave that one time, but you do. She was the first face you saw and the first person to calm you down and you can’t help but feel guilty at the way you told her to go.
In the weeks that have passed nothing much has changed. Not like you had wanted them to, but that’s just typical of you, always wanting things too much. Your still in bed in the same motionless state you have been in all along. You are still dependent on a stupid machine to breath for you. You still have doctors and nurses running their tests just to tell you that there is still no signs of improvement, and your dads still try to find a positive out of what’s being said.
Two things have changed though; you can talk better after ongoing work with a speech therapist, and your wish that you had just died the day of the accident becomes stronger with each passing day.
~#~
It’s a Wednesday, fours weeks after you last saw her, that Quinn comes to visit again. She looks like she has been crying and she stands by your door silently asking for your permission to enter.
“Come in” you say and you can see it surprises her with how much clearer you sound, granted everything still comes out as a half whisper, but you can form full words now. She sits beside you just fiddling with her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry” you say because you are and you know it will break the tension.
She looks up at you with fresh tears in her eyes and smiles, “I’m sorry too” and that’s all it takes for a friendship to start between the two of you.
~#~
Its now been fourteen weeks since the jump. Twelve weeks since you first woke up to this hell. That’s ninety-eight days its taken for a bruised neck to heal enough to notice some changes. You can move your index and middle fingers and you have some movement in your wrists on both hands but little else. The doctors inform you that because of the break in the T2 and T3 part of your back, you will probably regain some movement back into your arms but only after extensive physiotherapy. They also tell you that they hope to remove the breathing tube from out of your throat in a week or so. To your dads and Quinn this information seems like giant leaps in the right direction, to you it feels like you are going at a snails pace with no hope of going any faster; but you fake excitement just to see a smile on everyone’s face.
There are moments when you can’t fake it though, and those moments are usually when your alone with Quinn. The two of you have developed a strange kind of bond over the weeks. She is the one person you feel you can tell your inner most thoughts to. What you don’t tell her is that it’s because a small part of you blames her. She was after all one of the ones that laughed while telling you to jump, and you think its because of that you don’t feel too guilty when telling her your darkest thoughts. Maybe you hope it will make her hurt a little, just give her a glimpse of what you feel every waking hour.
Sometimes you are frightened with how strong your depression has got hold of you. Never before, even through your years of high school bullying, have you ever yearned to be dead as much as you do now. You see no future. All you can do every day is think about what it will be like years down the line, and then suddenly years have never seemed so long before. The doctors are telling you the strength in your hands will increase and will enable you more independence and an easier way of living. To you independence means you will be able to empty your own catheter and change you own stoma bag, and you’ll be given an electric wheelchair so you can go on pretending your completely fine about being a disabled young woman. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
It is these thoughts that have been plaguing your mind for a while now, and the longer they manifest the more you want to blame somebody. It’s just a coincidence that Quinn is the only other person in the room.
“Quinn if I needed anything would you help me?” you ask looking deep into her eyes, showing that this was a serious conversation.
“Of course Rachel. You know I would”
“Even if it means doing something completely against your religion and morals?”
“Rachel? Come on stop being silly … what do you mean?”
“I want to die” you say it so calmly and emotionless that you even scare yourself.
“What? Don’t be stupid, you’ve heard what the doctors have said Rachel. Your slowly getting back your movement and they think …”
“Exactly they think Quinn, everything is a guessing game, nothing is for certain … and all the while I’m left to just lie here while everyone goes round guessing what my recovery will be ... How much longer will I have to lie here? … How many bed sores will I have to go through … how many more body washes?” Your crying now, all the pent up frustration and anger spilling out of you, another thing your unable to control. “I have to be fed through a tube Quinn … I cant even fucking breath by myself … My future use to be a detailed thought out plan about how I would get to Broadway … now its how many more physio sessions I have to go through to even begin to see movement in my arms … I can’t live like this I want to die!”
Quinn is crying as well, big heavy sobs and you don’t look at her, you don’t even offer any words of comfort. You just look up to the ceiling and wait for her to say something.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to help me, please just help me do it”
She stands up. She is shaking with what you only assume to be anger at what you just requested, but you feel no guilt for what you have just asked her. You want this so badly you just don’t care what you are putting your friend through.
“I can’t believe you just asked me to help you. How could you Rachel? I love you, you’re my best friend how could you even think I would help you kill yourself.”
“You obviously don’t love me enough … If I could I would have done it. Quinn I am so unhappy, everyday is another struggle to get through and I cant do it anymore. I just can’t”
Quinn sits back down, she is looking at you and you think she can see your soul and how completely broken you are. It scares you that someone can see what you harbour there, the messed up fantasies of all the different ways you would kill yourself.
“How … How would I even do it? How would I get away with killing you?”
You never anticipated the effect it would have on you, actually hearing Quinn contemplate helping you die, and the guilt smashes into you with so much force that you imagine you forget to breathe.
“I’m sorry .. Oh my God Quinn I’m sorry” and then you both start crying hysterically and you’ve never felt so connected to another person as you do right now with Quinn.
~#~
It doesn’t take long for you to realise that depression doesn’t take a day off, and although you promised yourself that you would not talk to Quinn about you suicidal thoughts anymore, you can’t help but bring it up again.
You have just finished another supposedly optimistic conversation about being able to try out your new wheelchair soon, and while this has everyone around you almost crying with happiness, it was a giant slap in the face for you. So after the doctors left and your fathers went with them to gather more information, you are once again left with Quinn.
“I cannot take this any longer Quinn” You choke out. She looks at you with scared eyes and you know it is because she cannot handle another of these conversations.
“Please Rach … Don’t”
“Don’t what? Don’t wish that every day I just stopped breathing … Don’t worry Quinn I wont ask you to help me this time.”
She looks at you, eye brows furrowed. “What … how else will you manage it?”
“Once Finn took me to see a friend of his who was paralysed like me … and this friend told me that when they got him in the wheelchair he drove it straight into a swimming pool in an attempt to kill himself”
You glance over to Quinn and you see she has her head buried in her hands and she is crying again, this time you do feel a slight guilt knowing how mean you are being by telling her these things. She looks up to you, wipes her eyes and stands up.
“Fine … fine kill yourself … But if you do then I will kill myself” She looks at you and you can tell she is being completely serious.
“What? Don’t be silly Quinn why would you do that?”
“Because it may break my heart watching you go through this hell Rachel but at least I have you here. So if you die I die”
“Your being irrational Quinn, you have everything to live for”
“I have nothing if I failed to help the one person I promised myself I would help”
You both just stare at each other, and for the second time since this all began you can feel her staring right at your soul and you think maybe this time she can see some hope there.
“Help me” You whisper.
~#~
You start seeing a therapist on a weekly basis and Quinn is right there with you at every meeting. You soon start looking upon Quinn as your rock. You start to feel some of this optimism everyone has been feeling and with the help of some new medication and a lot of talking, you start having days where the depression is hardly there.
Soon enough you are being placed in your wheelchair. At first it was a huge task just to get you seated in the thing, often taking a team of four or five professionals to hoist and sit you correctly. After several more tries though that team becomes two, with the promise that one day it will be your dads able to get you in it by themselves.
You are hesitant to admit you quite like the chair. It does give you more freedom and its nice to sit up after lying down for so long. It gives you the opportunity to get out of your hospital room with Quinn; but you can’t help but notice the unspoken fear in Quinn’s eyes that you’ll stick to your suicide plan and you think that that is why she is beside you at any given opportunity.
One night when your lying back in your bed and its just you and Quinn again, you turn to watch her reading.
“Hey you look uncomfortable there, come and lie beside me” You say and you watch her smile as she places the book down and slides in to lie next to you. She grabs one of your hands and gives it a squeeze and it never fails to make you smile because now you can feel it.
There is some silence between you both, as you both lie there her head resting gently against your shoulder. You take a deep breath and kiss the top of her head, “Thank you” you whisper.
She looks up into your eyes “What for?”
“For everything. For not giving up when I’ve given you plenty of reason to. Just for everything, I feel I don’t thank you enough, actually I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you.”
She giggles and you smile, and she rests her head back down.
“Do you think that only lovers can be soul mates?” you ponder while looking at the ceiling
“Hmm?”
“I mean do you think that someone can meet their soul mate but never be more then friends?”
“Yeah, why”
“I think you’re my soul mate, and I think that it was fate that all this happened for me to realise it. I mean I’ve known you for years and we haven’t really ever spoke and then this happened and suddenly your one person I couldn’t live without”
You feel wetness on your neck and you know she is crying, “I think you’re my soul mate too” she whispers “I’m just sad we never knew it sooner”
You kiss the top of her forehead again and smile softly.
~#~
One day your therapist suggests going back to the place where the accident happened and having Quinn explain everything that happened. You know it will drag up new emotions for the both of you but you can’t deny wanting to know what happened, and so Quinn agrees and you both arrange a day to visit the pier.
It’s a Saturday you both go and you are both nervous. You cry when you see the pier, when you see how high it is and how you were ever stupid enough to think jumping from it was ever a good idea. She tells you everything with such detail you can imagine it all happening in front of you.
They all laugh and cheer when they watch Rachel falling, she actually did it maybe she was cooler then they all gave her credit for. She was the first to jump, everyone else noticed how shallow the water was and all chickened out of going first. They watched as Rachel entered the water at an odd angle, some even cringed, Mercedes whispered to Kurt ‘that’s got to hurt’. Soon the brunette re-emerged from the water face down, but everyone carried on laughing “come on Rachel cut it out” Finn shouted. “Yea Rach” shouted Puck, the laughing changed slightly as everyone became a little more nervous. Brittany was the first to approach her, “Rachel you jumped god that was so coo…” and it was that primal scream that started the panic. As the cheerleader turned her over and everyone’s thought process was the same ‘oh my God she’s dead’. Then everyone froze screaming and looking at one another clueless. It was Quinn who had watched it all unfold from the top of the pier who had rushed down and dragged the lifeless girl onto the bank. She slapped the brunettes cheek in a panic “Rachel wake up, please Rach wake up…Phone for an ambulance, don’t just stand there” She tried to calm herself down, she had seen this somewhere, in one of those paramedic shows on TV. She tilted the girls head back and put her ear to the girls mouth. Shit she wasn’t breathing. Santana who had been the one to phone 911 was shouting at her “Is she breathing … Q, is she breathing?” “errr no what do I do?” “You need to tilt her head back … yeah like that and then pinch the top of her nose” Quinn followed the instructions given to her, hoping to God she was doing it right “Okay now what?” “Right now you need to place your mouth over hers and breath five times into her mouth … right now you need to do compressions on her chest Quinn thirty times, keep repeating the breathing and compressions until the ambulance get here” “How long will they be” “As soon as they can … please tell them to hurry” So Quinn did as she was told until she heard the sirens approaching and then once the paramedics took over and told her she did a good job she cried the hardest she had ever cried before.
You look up to her and see the tears glide down her cheek, and you grab her hand and squeeze it slightly, “Thank you for bringing me here” you tell her and all she can do is look down and smile.
~#~
Another one hundred and sixteen days pass and its now been one year since the accident. A lot more has changed, but its okay now because you’ve grown accustom to change. You no longer reside at the hospital, you are back home surrounded by all your familiar things, although your bedroom is now downstairs and has been completely redesigned. You are back at school and back in glee and although you can no longer deliver mind blowing solo’s, you can give kick ass harmonies and that’s fine with you.
You have come to realise what’s important, and it kind of annoys you that it’s the cliché thing of what really matters in the end are family and friends. So you make a point of surrounding yourself with them everyday.
You have also found a way of doing something that involves two things you like doing the most. You go around to local schools and give talks on the dangers of jumping into shallow waters, which enables you to talk to your hearts content and be on stage in front of an audience.
You still get the odd days where you feel the depression creeping back in but then you stop and you think, you have friends, you have your dads and you have Quinn and with those three things you have a future to look forward to.
Author: Chewinggum20
Word count: 4892
Rating: NC-14
Summery: One shot. What happens when in one moment everything changes.
A/N: Taken from this glee_angst_meme. Don‘t read if sensitive to this type of story.
A/N2: Sorry for any mistakes, I’ve read and re-read it and now my eyes are blurry so I can only apologise. Hope you enjoy.
In One Moment.
You don’t know what it was that convinced you that this was a good idea, but you suspect your own foolish need to be popular is what finally ended with you standing on the top of this pier preparing to launch yourself off of it. You hear a few of your glee friends below you already in the water, screaming for you to jump and to stop being so chicken about it, you don’t think they know the extent of your fear of heights and water. You look behind you to see Quinn laughing harmlessly also goading you to just to do it. So the fear of seeming not cool trumps your fear of heights and you jump. You scream for the few seconds it takes your mind to catch up with your falling body, but once it does you start to think this isn’t as bad as you thought, that maybe when you have your feet back on dry land you might jump a second time. You hear your glee friends cheering and clapping, and you see the water nearing, seconds later you feel the freezing water hit you like a thousand needles, and then you don’t feel much of anything at all.
~#~
You wake up to a myriad of sounds around you. Your eyelids feel heavy and you think the light above you is a little too bright. Your mind is hazy and your having a hard time remembering anything at all and then like a train hitting you, you see flashes of jumping into that water and it all going incredible dark. You begin to get slightly agitated, which is being made worse by something digging into your throat and you have no idea what it is but you want it away, and it is not until you go to move it that you realise you cant move. It must be a dream, that’s all that’s running through your mind as you start to panic, why cant you move and why are your eyes not opening how you want them to.
You decide you need to calm down, at the very least you can control your emotions and so you focus on what’s happening around you, what you can hear, and sure enough you feel your heart rate lower. You hear two men and immediately you can tell they are your fathers, you can hear a machine, actually you can hear several machines, which just confuses you more. You hear a girls voice and it sounds so familiar but for some reason you cant figure out who it is and frankly you don’t care. You turn your attention back to what you feel. There is a slight burning sensation in your left hand, and something is still digging into your throat. You try once more to move your arm but no matter how much you try it is impossible. So you focus on your eyes, you have a feeling you can move them and so you focus all your energy on them to open. It takes a while but eventually they do and the light is even brighter. You hear the girl gasp and shout for a nurse, but before anything else can happen you feel sleep overtake you again.
~#~
You wake again to the same noises, to the same feelings and to the same inability to move. You try once more to open your eyes and to your mild delight it’s easier this time. You can even manage to keep them open. You hear the same girl gasp and the same shout for the nurse. You can’t see much of anything happening, you can just make out the scurrying of feet against floor. In your peripheral vision you can just about see uniforms hurrying around. It frightens you and you feel the tears burning at your eyes and roll down your cheek, and then you feel gentle hands wipe them away and a pair of intense hazel eyes looking down at you. You begin to feel calm. Its Quinn, a familiar face is all it needed to anchor you down in this confused chaos in which you have no idea what’s happening. She smiles down at you just stroking your cheek, tears are rolling down from her eyes and you want to offer words of comfort but that same thing you felt digging into your throat last time is preventing anything from coming out of your mouth. So you settle with the hope that your eyes say everything you want them to, perhaps show her how scared you are and that you want to know what’s happening.
After a little while of lights being shone into your eyes and various other tests you were being informed about as they were happening but couldn’t feel, everyone finally leaves you alone except for Quinn. She stays with you. Its quiet for a while apart from the beeping and ‘whooshing’ sounds coming from near by. You have established you are in a hospital, that much has been made clear and you have a feeling its linked to the jump, that now keeps playing repeatedly in your head. You also start to suspect more and more that this is not a dream and is actually reality, and that’s what’s scares you most, that and the fact you still have no idea why you cannot feel much below the digging in your neck.
“Your dads will be here soon” You hear Quinn say and you search for her until your eyes lock onto hers. She looks as lost and scared as you feel, “they will explain everything to you” You shut your eyes tight because you don’t want to wait anymore, you just want to know why the hell you’re in the hospital. You look back at her but you realise she can’t read minds, your going to have to try and tell her that you want to know now.
“te …m…now” It takes more effort then you thought it would and it doesn’t come out at all clear but you can see by the hesitation in her eyes that she heard you but doesn’t want to answer. You watch her as she looks down at the floor contemplating and then locks eyes with yours again.
“You jumped off of the pier remember?”
“y…”
“Well you … um … you jumped and … and you … Oh God I’m so sorry Rach I shouldn’t have told you to jump, I don’t know what I was thinking I knew it looked too shallow and … I’m sorry” You watch her breaking down, all the while clutching your hand but you can‘t feel it. You suddenly realise what’s happening, why you cannot feel her touching you, why you cannot move anything. You know what is happening now and you don’t want her to tell you, you don’t want to hear it.
“Go” you whisper Not out of choice, if you could you’d shout at her and show her how frustrated and mad at this whole situation you are but you can’t so you will have to settle for that choked out whisper.
She looks at you like you just punched her and you cant help but wish that that was the case because then this situation would be a hell of a lot better.
“Go” you say again, and she gets up with tears streaming down her cheeks and runs out of the room. Now your alone and now its your turn to cry. You cry yourself until you’re so exhausted and then you sleep.
~#~
The next time you wake Quinn isn’t there but your dads are. They are both hovering above you stroking your hair and kissing your forehead. A chorus of ‘oh my god she’s awake’ being said over and over. It makes you a little sad that you cannot share that same enthusiasm. After it’s established you’re very much awake, they start to calm down and the crying lessens. You look between them, one on either side of your bed, each with one of your hands in theirs, and again you cannot feel a thing. It starts to annoy you that people still insist on holding your hands, when you assume they know you cannot feel it. You start to think it’s almost as if they are torturing you by constantly reminding you.
You find you are able to move your head a little better today, whereas before it was slightly stiff, now you can control its movements.
“Honey are you okay?” Your dad says, and you know he can read you like an open book so you shake your head. “What’s wrong?”
Everything, you think to yourself and how can he not know that already. Your mind goes back to what happened between you and Quinn, you had managed to persuade yourself that you wanted to know nothing about the situation you are in, but now you find yourself wanting to know.
“Wha…happen…” You stare at him intensely, hoping he will realise that you don’t need to be told about the jump, that much you know from the re-runs in your head. No you want to know the extent of your injuries, you just want to be told now so that this confusion can go. You continue to stare at your dad and you see the emotional struggle he is facing trying to find the words to tell you, but in the end he can’t and so your daddy takes over, he always was the stronger one.
“The doctors say you broke your back in an area known as the thoracic region” He takes a deep breathe, “that’s why you can’t feel anything or move your arms and legs. They also say you have badly bruised your neck at the cervical area and that’s why you can’t breathe on your own too well, but you have a tracheotomy tube to help you breathe. They reckon its not permanent its just until the bruising heals”
He looks at you with slight optimism in his eyes and you want to laugh because seriously how is there anything positive in this. You would consider yourself a calm person normally but you have never wanted to lash out and hurt something so badly as you do right now, and it figures that the only time you want to is the time you can’t do a single goddamn thing about it.
“How…lon…” you ask, afraid of what the answer would be.
“I don’t know how long Rachel, we’ll take one day at a time” you were afraid he was going to say that.
~#~
A few weeks pass, and almost everyone you know has been to visit, some more then once. You don’t even want any visitors, you want to shut yourself away from everything that reminds you of who you once were and what you were capable of doing. You wish everyone would leave you alone, everyone but Quinn. You pretend not to care that she hasn’t been back since you told her to leave that one time, but you do. She was the first face you saw and the first person to calm you down and you can’t help but feel guilty at the way you told her to go.
In the weeks that have passed nothing much has changed. Not like you had wanted them to, but that’s just typical of you, always wanting things too much. Your still in bed in the same motionless state you have been in all along. You are still dependent on a stupid machine to breath for you. You still have doctors and nurses running their tests just to tell you that there is still no signs of improvement, and your dads still try to find a positive out of what’s being said.
Two things have changed though; you can talk better after ongoing work with a speech therapist, and your wish that you had just died the day of the accident becomes stronger with each passing day.
~#~
It’s a Wednesday, fours weeks after you last saw her, that Quinn comes to visit again. She looks like she has been crying and she stands by your door silently asking for your permission to enter.
“Come in” you say and you can see it surprises her with how much clearer you sound, granted everything still comes out as a half whisper, but you can form full words now. She sits beside you just fiddling with her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry” you say because you are and you know it will break the tension.
She looks up at you with fresh tears in her eyes and smiles, “I’m sorry too” and that’s all it takes for a friendship to start between the two of you.
~#~
Its now been fourteen weeks since the jump. Twelve weeks since you first woke up to this hell. That’s ninety-eight days its taken for a bruised neck to heal enough to notice some changes. You can move your index and middle fingers and you have some movement in your wrists on both hands but little else. The doctors inform you that because of the break in the T2 and T3 part of your back, you will probably regain some movement back into your arms but only after extensive physiotherapy. They also tell you that they hope to remove the breathing tube from out of your throat in a week or so. To your dads and Quinn this information seems like giant leaps in the right direction, to you it feels like you are going at a snails pace with no hope of going any faster; but you fake excitement just to see a smile on everyone’s face.
There are moments when you can’t fake it though, and those moments are usually when your alone with Quinn. The two of you have developed a strange kind of bond over the weeks. She is the one person you feel you can tell your inner most thoughts to. What you don’t tell her is that it’s because a small part of you blames her. She was after all one of the ones that laughed while telling you to jump, and you think its because of that you don’t feel too guilty when telling her your darkest thoughts. Maybe you hope it will make her hurt a little, just give her a glimpse of what you feel every waking hour.
Sometimes you are frightened with how strong your depression has got hold of you. Never before, even through your years of high school bullying, have you ever yearned to be dead as much as you do now. You see no future. All you can do every day is think about what it will be like years down the line, and then suddenly years have never seemed so long before. The doctors are telling you the strength in your hands will increase and will enable you more independence and an easier way of living. To you independence means you will be able to empty your own catheter and change you own stoma bag, and you’ll be given an electric wheelchair so you can go on pretending your completely fine about being a disabled young woman. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
It is these thoughts that have been plaguing your mind for a while now, and the longer they manifest the more you want to blame somebody. It’s just a coincidence that Quinn is the only other person in the room.
“Quinn if I needed anything would you help me?” you ask looking deep into her eyes, showing that this was a serious conversation.
“Of course Rachel. You know I would”
“Even if it means doing something completely against your religion and morals?”
“Rachel? Come on stop being silly … what do you mean?”
“I want to die” you say it so calmly and emotionless that you even scare yourself.
“What? Don’t be stupid, you’ve heard what the doctors have said Rachel. Your slowly getting back your movement and they think …”
“Exactly they think Quinn, everything is a guessing game, nothing is for certain … and all the while I’m left to just lie here while everyone goes round guessing what my recovery will be ... How much longer will I have to lie here? … How many bed sores will I have to go through … how many more body washes?” Your crying now, all the pent up frustration and anger spilling out of you, another thing your unable to control. “I have to be fed through a tube Quinn … I cant even fucking breath by myself … My future use to be a detailed thought out plan about how I would get to Broadway … now its how many more physio sessions I have to go through to even begin to see movement in my arms … I can’t live like this I want to die!”
Quinn is crying as well, big heavy sobs and you don’t look at her, you don’t even offer any words of comfort. You just look up to the ceiling and wait for her to say something.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to help me, please just help me do it”
She stands up. She is shaking with what you only assume to be anger at what you just requested, but you feel no guilt for what you have just asked her. You want this so badly you just don’t care what you are putting your friend through.
“I can’t believe you just asked me to help you. How could you Rachel? I love you, you’re my best friend how could you even think I would help you kill yourself.”
“You obviously don’t love me enough … If I could I would have done it. Quinn I am so unhappy, everyday is another struggle to get through and I cant do it anymore. I just can’t”
Quinn sits back down, she is looking at you and you think she can see your soul and how completely broken you are. It scares you that someone can see what you harbour there, the messed up fantasies of all the different ways you would kill yourself.
“How … How would I even do it? How would I get away with killing you?”
You never anticipated the effect it would have on you, actually hearing Quinn contemplate helping you die, and the guilt smashes into you with so much force that you imagine you forget to breathe.
“I’m sorry .. Oh my God Quinn I’m sorry” and then you both start crying hysterically and you’ve never felt so connected to another person as you do right now with Quinn.
~#~
It doesn’t take long for you to realise that depression doesn’t take a day off, and although you promised yourself that you would not talk to Quinn about you suicidal thoughts anymore, you can’t help but bring it up again.
You have just finished another supposedly optimistic conversation about being able to try out your new wheelchair soon, and while this has everyone around you almost crying with happiness, it was a giant slap in the face for you. So after the doctors left and your fathers went with them to gather more information, you are once again left with Quinn.
“I cannot take this any longer Quinn” You choke out. She looks at you with scared eyes and you know it is because she cannot handle another of these conversations.
“Please Rach … Don’t”
“Don’t what? Don’t wish that every day I just stopped breathing … Don’t worry Quinn I wont ask you to help me this time.”
She looks at you, eye brows furrowed. “What … how else will you manage it?”
“Once Finn took me to see a friend of his who was paralysed like me … and this friend told me that when they got him in the wheelchair he drove it straight into a swimming pool in an attempt to kill himself”
You glance over to Quinn and you see she has her head buried in her hands and she is crying again, this time you do feel a slight guilt knowing how mean you are being by telling her these things. She looks up to you, wipes her eyes and stands up.
“Fine … fine kill yourself … But if you do then I will kill myself” She looks at you and you can tell she is being completely serious.
“What? Don’t be silly Quinn why would you do that?”
“Because it may break my heart watching you go through this hell Rachel but at least I have you here. So if you die I die”
“Your being irrational Quinn, you have everything to live for”
“I have nothing if I failed to help the one person I promised myself I would help”
You both just stare at each other, and for the second time since this all began you can feel her staring right at your soul and you think maybe this time she can see some hope there.
“Help me” You whisper.
~#~
You start seeing a therapist on a weekly basis and Quinn is right there with you at every meeting. You soon start looking upon Quinn as your rock. You start to feel some of this optimism everyone has been feeling and with the help of some new medication and a lot of talking, you start having days where the depression is hardly there.
Soon enough you are being placed in your wheelchair. At first it was a huge task just to get you seated in the thing, often taking a team of four or five professionals to hoist and sit you correctly. After several more tries though that team becomes two, with the promise that one day it will be your dads able to get you in it by themselves.
You are hesitant to admit you quite like the chair. It does give you more freedom and its nice to sit up after lying down for so long. It gives you the opportunity to get out of your hospital room with Quinn; but you can’t help but notice the unspoken fear in Quinn’s eyes that you’ll stick to your suicide plan and you think that that is why she is beside you at any given opportunity.
One night when your lying back in your bed and its just you and Quinn again, you turn to watch her reading.
“Hey you look uncomfortable there, come and lie beside me” You say and you watch her smile as she places the book down and slides in to lie next to you. She grabs one of your hands and gives it a squeeze and it never fails to make you smile because now you can feel it.
There is some silence between you both, as you both lie there her head resting gently against your shoulder. You take a deep breath and kiss the top of her head, “Thank you” you whisper.
She looks up into your eyes “What for?”
“For everything. For not giving up when I’ve given you plenty of reason to. Just for everything, I feel I don’t thank you enough, actually I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you.”
She giggles and you smile, and she rests her head back down.
“Do you think that only lovers can be soul mates?” you ponder while looking at the ceiling
“Hmm?”
“I mean do you think that someone can meet their soul mate but never be more then friends?”
“Yeah, why”
“I think you’re my soul mate, and I think that it was fate that all this happened for me to realise it. I mean I’ve known you for years and we haven’t really ever spoke and then this happened and suddenly your one person I couldn’t live without”
You feel wetness on your neck and you know she is crying, “I think you’re my soul mate too” she whispers “I’m just sad we never knew it sooner”
You kiss the top of her forehead again and smile softly.
~#~
One day your therapist suggests going back to the place where the accident happened and having Quinn explain everything that happened. You know it will drag up new emotions for the both of you but you can’t deny wanting to know what happened, and so Quinn agrees and you both arrange a day to visit the pier.
It’s a Saturday you both go and you are both nervous. You cry when you see the pier, when you see how high it is and how you were ever stupid enough to think jumping from it was ever a good idea. She tells you everything with such detail you can imagine it all happening in front of you.
They all laugh and cheer when they watch Rachel falling, she actually did it maybe she was cooler then they all gave her credit for. She was the first to jump, everyone else noticed how shallow the water was and all chickened out of going first. They watched as Rachel entered the water at an odd angle, some even cringed, Mercedes whispered to Kurt ‘that’s got to hurt’. Soon the brunette re-emerged from the water face down, but everyone carried on laughing “come on Rachel cut it out” Finn shouted. “Yea Rach” shouted Puck, the laughing changed slightly as everyone became a little more nervous. Brittany was the first to approach her, “Rachel you jumped god that was so coo…” and it was that primal scream that started the panic. As the cheerleader turned her over and everyone’s thought process was the same ‘oh my God she’s dead’. Then everyone froze screaming and looking at one another clueless. It was Quinn who had watched it all unfold from the top of the pier who had rushed down and dragged the lifeless girl onto the bank. She slapped the brunettes cheek in a panic “Rachel wake up, please Rach wake up…Phone for an ambulance, don’t just stand there” She tried to calm herself down, she had seen this somewhere, in one of those paramedic shows on TV. She tilted the girls head back and put her ear to the girls mouth. Shit she wasn’t breathing. Santana who had been the one to phone 911 was shouting at her “Is she breathing … Q, is she breathing?” “errr no what do I do?” “You need to tilt her head back … yeah like that and then pinch the top of her nose” Quinn followed the instructions given to her, hoping to God she was doing it right “Okay now what?” “Right now you need to place your mouth over hers and breath five times into her mouth … right now you need to do compressions on her chest Quinn thirty times, keep repeating the breathing and compressions until the ambulance get here” “How long will they be” “As soon as they can … please tell them to hurry” So Quinn did as she was told until she heard the sirens approaching and then once the paramedics took over and told her she did a good job she cried the hardest she had ever cried before.
You look up to her and see the tears glide down her cheek, and you grab her hand and squeeze it slightly, “Thank you for bringing me here” you tell her and all she can do is look down and smile.
~#~
Another one hundred and sixteen days pass and its now been one year since the accident. A lot more has changed, but its okay now because you’ve grown accustom to change. You no longer reside at the hospital, you are back home surrounded by all your familiar things, although your bedroom is now downstairs and has been completely redesigned. You are back at school and back in glee and although you can no longer deliver mind blowing solo’s, you can give kick ass harmonies and that’s fine with you.
You have come to realise what’s important, and it kind of annoys you that it’s the cliché thing of what really matters in the end are family and friends. So you make a point of surrounding yourself with them everyday.
You have also found a way of doing something that involves two things you like doing the most. You go around to local schools and give talks on the dangers of jumping into shallow waters, which enables you to talk to your hearts content and be on stage in front of an audience.
You still get the odd days where you feel the depression creeping back in but then you stop and you think, you have friends, you have your dads and you have Quinn and with those three things you have a future to look forward to.