chapter two
chapter one
That night, Kurt dreams.
He’s in a meadow and the stars are scattered along crushed velvet and there’s a summer breeze. The trees whisper their secrets to him and his fingers collect the ghosts from the grass. He’s walking towards a deep, golden light that draws him closer closer ever closer, and there’s music, singing, something old and forgotten, and his breath catches.
But as he approaches the light shrinks back, becomes smaller, until it’s nothing but a drop of blood drawn from a needle and there’s a figure through the darkness staring at him and it’s Blaine, of course it’s Blaine.
Kurt smiles his name.
And all Blaine can say in reply is,
“Who?”
-
Kurt wakes up the next morning with tears shining on his face.
-
The hospital feels like a prison now, a glass tank clouded with feelings that close in to suffocate him.
-
It’s hard to describe the feeling, the one where you know the person you love above anything else has their life poised between scissors.
It’s like a stretching, something that descends into a burning like the dancer’s muscles as she pirouettes through the finest performance of her life, as she steals the audience of their breath silently, a thief, and she hides her pain behind her masque and an easy smile as the notes hold her before she’s reaching up and she’s traced by fire and she turns into an arabesque and falls.
-
The worst thing is Kurt can’t cry.
He doesn’t feel enough to cry.
-
He’s a prisoner, kept in time’s cage.
Slowly, hours and days and seconds and minutes become indistinguishable from each other, and everything begins to lose meaning through the sand timer running away.
-
They leave them alone most days.
They come in twice, just to check stats, change the drip, ask a rhetorical “are you alright?”
Then they leave and just let him drown.
-
The silence is deafening.
-
That evening, Kurt walks through prosaic hospital corridors.
Everywhere’s the same; it all smells of disinfectant, lit with a sterile glow, corridors with obnoxious posters peeling from the walls.
There’s the sound of a child crying, a man on crutches, a mother and daughter holding hands as they walk free. It’s a washed-out blue, shaded with pastel and blotted with water.
It’s hard to comprehend how so many emotions can be stitched together in one place; relief, sadness, anger, happiness, a lazy calm and frantic rush.
And it’s even harder to understand how, in the midst of everything, he feels nothing.
-
That night, he kisses Blaine’s burning forehead, feels the evidence on his lips of the fever decreasing.
How ironic, that the one time he wants to hold Blaine the most is the one time that he can’t.
-
“Mr Hummel, are you awake?”
It’s Doctor Smith.
“What time is it?”
“It’s just before midday. Rough night?”
“You could say that, yeah.”
Kurt lifts his head from Blaine’s bed, smoothes out the imprint he’s made.
“We’re going to take Blaine for a final scan now. His fever’s receding, and we hope there’s little chance of any more seizures. But we need to see what kind of damage has been done. Check the pressure in his brain and observe what’s happened. He’s going to pull through but we don’t know what he’ll be like the other side. But he’ll survive. That’s good, right?”
Kurt manages a weak smile as they wheel Blaine out of the room.
-
But the more he thinks about it the less good it seems.
Blaine, brain damaged.
Blaine, incapacitated.
Blaine, unable to walk, talk, do anything.
Blaine, but not Blaine.
And finally he feels something.
A cold, creeping terror.
-
When Blaine returns Kurt can’t bring himself to look.
-
“We’ve had Blaine’s MRI back and we’re identified the areas of damage. The main area we’ve noticed significant problems in is his temporal lobe, so he’s likely to have problems with his memory, as well as possibly with his sight and speech. Maybe movement as well. We won’t know the extent of the damage until he wakes up, and we’re hoping to do that tomorrow. We’ll need to keep him in for a for a couple of weeks, keep him on the Acyclovir just in case and to make sure it’s all cleared up, and we can monitor him to see what kind of further treatment or therapy he’ll need. That’s all we know now. But he should be back with us tomorrow if all goes as planned.”
-
Twenty four hours.
That’s all.
That’s all the time Kurt has until Blaine’s back.
Blaine’s going to wake up.
He’s coming back.
-
But what if Blaine can’t walk or speak or see anything?
What if Blaine can never play the piano or sing again?
What if Blaine doesn’t remember him?
He’s heard the stories; Wernicke’s Aphasia, anterograde amnesia, maybe it’s like that film he saw once with that guy that -
No.
That’s not going to happen to Blaine.
Is it?
-
Kurt doesn’t sleep that night.
He sits, head low and submissive to whatever he’ll find when Blaine wakes up.
-
He mulls over what it will mean.
Blaine could have to leave work; his job as an English teacher and director of the school choir. He couldn’t do that any more.
He’d become a teacher because he wanted to make a difference, to change a child’s life, to watch them bud and bloom and grow outwards into the jungle of the world. Knowing his pupils left his lesson having learnt something was the best feeling in the world to Blaine, and he wouldn’t be able to do that any more.
How much of a difference did Blaine truly make?
And then there’s more.
Blaine might not be able to enjoy music, the theatre, every little indulgence he and Kurt shared. He might not be able to read.
He might become completely helpless.
And Kurt, instead of being his husband, would become his carer.
They’d lose everything they’ve ever known.
-
The last thing Blaine would have ever known Kurt to say was to go to sleep after the last round of tests.
Nothing special or fancy.
No “I love you” or even just a “You’ll be okay”.
Just
“Go to sleep, now.”
What if Blaine doesn’t know?
-
Kurt leaves Blaine’s room at 9:03am to walk the hospital corridors once more, take a breath outside in the last dregs of the morning.
He returns at 9:57.
By 10:00 Dr Smith has joined them.
“We’re going to stop adding the sedative to Blaine’s drip now so he’ll wake up in his own time. A few hours or so, we expect. There’ll be a little movement - maybe twitching fingers, eyelids, something small at first. What I want you to do is press the call button at the side of Blaine’s bed as soon as you notice it and we’ll come and be here for when he wakes up fully.”
And so Kurt waits.
He’s getting tired of waiting.
-
He watches as the activity on the monitor slowly rises, as the rates quicken along with his nervous heartbeat.
Blaine’s breathing becomes more pronounced and he looks less peaceful, but there’s a spark there instead, something new and vibrant and alive.
And maybe, just maybe, he’s going to be okay.
-
Kurt takes Blaine’s hand in both of his.
-
And soon, just as promised, Blaine’s fingers flutter in his grip.
-
There are four of them surrounding the bed as Blaine begins to stir.
One nurse notes down stats, keeps an eye on the monitor.
Another toys with her hair absent-mindedly, sitting next to Doctor Smith as they wait.
And Kurt, eyes fixed on Blaine’s face, just looking out for the moment when Blaine can see the world once more.
-
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Blaine blinks and opens his eyes, staring.
“Hey there, beautiful.” Kurt smiles at him, just hoping for a response, for something.
“Kurt -” Blaine whispers, his voice strained from the lack of use. He gives up and just returns Kurt’s smile instead, a faint etching of his lips.
“Hello there Blaine. How are you feeling?”
“Wait - who are you?”
“I’m Doctor Smith, Blaine, you’ve seen me before.”
“I don’t think I have. I’m sorry, but I don’t recognise you in the slightest.”
Kurt looks up at her, eyes wide.
“Mr Hummel, do you have anything in your wallet that we could use to test Blaine’s memory? A photograph or something?”
Silently, from his pocket, Kurt withdraws a picture of the New Directions ten-year reunion; all the members that could make it, including Mr Schuester and Ms Pillsbury and a few of the other teachers as well.
“That’s perfect, thank you,” she comforts him as he hands it over. She shows the picture to Blaine. “Now Blaine, can you tell me who this is?”
“That’s Kurt.”
“Well done, now how about this man here?”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“How about this lady here?”
“I’ve never seen her before in my life. She’s very pretty, though.”
Kurt looks over and notices she’s pointing at Rachel.
“Okay, let’s try something else. Do you know when this photo was taken?”
“The New Directions Reunion. It says so on the banner.”
“I know what - do you recognise this handsome man right here?”
“Nope, not at all.”
And suddenly all colour seems to have drained from the room.
Blaine can’t even recognise himself.
chapter three