fic: the things we've handed down
Title: the things we’ve handed down
Author: andbless_mybaby
Pairing: Puck/Quinn
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Quinn has her baby. It’s both a beginning and an end.
Word count: 2,400
A/N: Written for goldstar94 at the gleefics V-Day Fic Exchange. Love and kisses to my Becca, who beta'd this on the fly the night before it was due, and boosted my morale. The world will never know how much fail she has averted with her awesomeness. This is just a short little story, but it kind of broke my heart to write it.
The morning after Quinn gave birth, Rachel took Puck to the supermarket at the top of the street to buy some flowers. It was February, and the overhead fluorescents seemed too bright. The bouquets all had the anemic, underfed charm of hothouses and cargo jets. Puck stared at the display blankly until Rachel picked out some yellow daisies.
“These are nice,” she ventured. “Cheerful.”
“I thought you bring flowers to, like, celebrate.” His eyes were on the floor. “Nothing’s good right now.”
“You bring flowers to the mother of your child,” she corrected him pragmatically. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Fuck it.” He was holding the stems too tightly, making the plastic crinkle. “I never do the right thing, anyway.”
At the register, it took him a long time to count out four dollars and eighteen cents from the change he’d scooped out of his truck’s cup holder. He kept coming up fifty cents short, and the cashier had her lips pursed. Rachel finally took two quarters out of her own wallet.
_
Baby Girl Fabray was born on a Wednesday night, seven weeks early and tiny as a doll.
It had been a routine visit to the obstetrician, same as the ones that Quinn had been making every month since she found out she was pregnant. When the doctor asked how Quinn had been feeling, Quinn reported some blood she’d noticed after school last week. Not enough to worry about. Plus, she’d been having some cramps and feeling extra tired after she’d been walking around. The doctor had ordered an examination, just to be on the safe side.
It seemed like a complete pain in the ass to have to get someone to drive her over to the Women’s Center. Quinn called Alan, one of the Rachel’s dads. She’d been living with the Berrys since November, and the family had been nothing but accommodating. So Alan didn’t even flinch at leaving work. He’d patted Quinn’s hand in the car, and assured her that everything was fine.
“This happens a lot to first time moms,” he said. As a doctor, Quinn figured he’d know. “False labor is common. They’ll hook you up to the fetal monitors for observation, and let you go after a few hours. You’ll be back home in time for leftovers.”
Turns out that doctors weren’t always right. Because Quinn’s body was definitely in labor.
They’d given her a shot in triage to try and stop the contractions, to no avail. The baby was coming too quickly for the on-call physician from Quinn’s practice to get there on time, so it was a strange voice and set of hands telling her push, sweetie. We need to get this little girl out.
And Quinn was screaming, body on fire, telling him you mean I have to get her out, it’s only me, oh God, it hurts. It hurts. Please make it stop.
But it didn’t stop. They transferred her to a room on the L&D floor, with a bed that folded in half and down to reveal gleaming metal stirrups. She was too dilated for an epidural, and Quinn faintly remembered cursing the nurse who told her that. In the last stage, Rachel bossed her way in by arguing that as Quinn’s Lamaze partner, she had every right to make sure that Quinn was correctly executing her breathing technique. Quinn was too far past rational at that point to give a damn about breathing right, but she gratefully clenched Rachel’s hand as the baby crowned and slid into the world.
She was blue at first, and didn’t cry. There were a lot of people in the room, some of which crowded around the tiny person until she mewled like a kitten, and finally erupted in healthy-sounding shrieks.
“Congratulations,” the doctor said. “You have a daughter.”
Quinn fell back on her pillow, exhausted.
And then the baby was whisked away.
_
Puck found out by text message.
He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the obnoxious trilling of his phone’s message alert startled him awake. The TV in his room was on low, HBO On Demand menu staring him in the face. The remote was an inch or two beyond his fingers. The bed was still made up, and he was still in his jeans.
Confused, groggy, he scrubbed his face with his hands and flipped the phone open.
It was from Rachel.
Q had baby. Long story. Call me.
“Shit,” he breathed, jumping to his feet. “Fuck.”
It took him longer than normal to find his keys, his shoes, and a shirt to wear, because he was hurrying so much. The night was colder than he’d thought, and his breath plumed in front of his face as he shivered, cursed, and tried to unlock his truck without making too much noise.
The dashboard clock told him it was three A.M. It wasn’t until he was already driving down his street that he realized that he didn’t even know exactly how to get to the hospital. At the stop sign, he dialed Rachel. His fingers didn’t seem to want to work, looking for her name in his phone book.
_
The glee club came out in force, as if organized by a drillmaster. (Which meant that Rachel had assigned them shifts, obviously.) It was like Thursday rehearsal had been rescheduled for Quinn’s hospital room, only in teams and with one hundred percent less singing.
Brittany and Santana showed up first, shepherding Mike and Matt from behind. Tina and Artie came with Kurt and Mercedes shortly thereafter. Then Finn and Rachel - the former looking uncomfortable and awkward, hugging the wall - with the Berry fathers, bearing her schoolwork and Chinese carryout for dinner. Shapeless and sore in her baggy gown, Quinn smiled bravely at everyone and cleared space for the cards and gifts they brought. She wished she hadn’t let her hair air-dry, or that she had any makeup at all in the little bag she’d packed.
Puck came on his own, right before the end of visiting hours. Quinn was staring out the window of her room at the cinderblock wall of the building next door, body feeling like she’d been hit by a truck and mind snowy and dazed.
He had a handful of flowers, and her favorite drink from Starbucks. The cup was slippery with condensation, and his fingertips brushed hers when he handed it over.
“Since you can have caffeine again,” he told her.
He sat in one of the hard, plastic chairs alongside her bed, staring at his hands.
“You seen her?” he asked.
“A little bit. Once this morning, and once after lunch.”
“How is she?”
“Small. Ugly.” The faintest flicker of a grin crossed Puck’s face. “She’s got a heart monitor thing, because she’s having apnea episodes.”
“What’s that?”
“Something to do with her breathing. Her heart? I don’t know.”
“Oh.” He stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, and stared at the whiteboard on the wall with the room number and the nurse’s name written on it.
“Her name is Olivia,” Quinn said suddenly.
“Yeah?” Puck pursed his lip. “Olivia. That’s pretty.”
“I didn’t pick it out,” she replied. “That’s what the social worker said her new parents are going to call her.”
He didn’t respond to that, just scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the linoleum.
“If you come back tomorrow, like late afternoon, I can bring you in to see her.” Quinn twisted the hem of the scratchy hospital bed sheet between her fingers. “If you want to, of course. You know, whatever.”
“I’d like that,” he said, quickly. “I’d like that a lot.”
_
That night, Puck’s mom served him a ration of shit for not picking his sister up from the after-school program like he promised. He looked at her blankly as she carried on about complete lack of responsibility and, what if something bad had happened?, until there was enough of a break for him to interject.
“Ma. Quinn had the baby.”
His mother sucked a breath, deep and overwhelmed.
“Can I see her?” she asked quietly. “My granddaughter?”
“I don’t think so.” He pushed spaghetti around his plate with his fork, making nonsense patterns with the noodles. “She’s in the area where they keep the preemies? And Quinn doesn’t even see her much. The people who are going to adopt her are with her all the time, and-”
“Forget I asked.” His mother had a faraway look on her face. “Don’t worry about it.”
That night, he went to his room and sat on his bed. He kept thinking about doing something- reaching for his iPod, or the controller to his PS3, or his guitar - but it was like his body had gone numb and tight on him. Impossible to work.
He didn’t sleep.
_
There were strict rules for visiting the NICU.
Quinn could come and go anytime, except for the forty-five minutes in the morning and evening that the doctors were rounding, or if there was an emergency. (Sometimes, a sick baby stopped breathing and alarms went off everywhere.) Everyone else had to be accompanied by her, and could only enter between nine A.M. and nine P.M. Anyone who got buzzed in had to stop at the giant sinks up front and wash their hands with soap and hot water, to keep germs from getting in.
It was like a greenhouse inside, warm and filled with the tiny buds of new humans in their little incubators. The regular beeps and hums and whooshes of different machines and tubes were steady in the background, but the walls were painted a pretty beige with scenes of fish and seashells all over the place.
There were chairs in the middle of the room, so that parents and guests could pull one up to their baby’s isolette and visit for a while. On schedule, the nurses would come around and stick their hands through the holes in the sides of the incubators to take a temperature, or change a diaper. Then they’d make notes on their charts.
Olivia was sleeping under a special lamp when Quinn brought Puck in to see her, a gauze cover taped over her eyes. She was wearing a diaper that looked three sizes too big, folded over at the waist and with the tape wrapped over her hips on either size. Her wizened, little fingers were slightly curled, as if she were reaching for something.
“Is she sleeping?” Puck whispered.
“Probably.” Quinn traced a finger on the plastic, over Olivia’s face. “Can’t tell.” She turned to the nurse. “What’s that for?”
“Jaundice.” When Puck made a confused face, the nurse continued. “Her bilirubin levels are high. That’s not good. That special light will help her body get rid of the bad stuff. It’s very common in preemies, and not anything you need to worry about.”
“Oh.” Quinn frowned a little, but didn’t stop staring.
“She looks like you,” Puck said. His voice was still very low.
“How can you tell that? Half her face is covered.”
Puck smiled crookedly.
“Her lips are the same as yours,” he offered. “She made a face earlier, and it looked just like one you would make if you were mad.”
“You think she’s mad?” Quinn asked.
“I think she wants out. Life in a box can’t be too fun, you know?”
That one made Quinn laugh, just a little. Encouraged, Puck took her fingers in his and squeezed them. Together, they stared at their daughter until the doctors came in and they got kicked out.
_
Quinn was discharged Saturday morning, because her parents’ insurance allowed only three days after a natural birth. She was getting restless anyway, having read all the glossy magazines Rachel left and seen all the Project Runway DVDs Kurt let her borrow. She could just fit into a pre-pregnancy shirt, but her jeans wouldn’t button over the loose, tender skin across her middle. And the cups of her bra were damp and chafing because her milk had come in.
She was sitting on the side of her bed, feet dangling over her shoes on the floor, when Puck entered the room.
“What are you doing here?” she asked flatly.
“I told everyone else that I was coming to get you,” he said. “Figured it was right.”
“I have so much stuff.” She gestured around the room. “I need help.”
“That’s okay,” he said. It was the gentlest she had ever heard his voice. “We’ll work it out.”
And he did. He borrowed a wheelie cart from the nurse’s station, and loaded up Quinn’s overnight bag, and her computer case, and all the flowers and balloons. He checked the bathroom and under her bed to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.
“Do you want to, uh, say goodbye?” he asked, finally.
“No,” Quinn said resolutely. “Andrew and Kate are in there.”
Puck didn’t ask, gratefully, so she didn’t have to clarify: her adoptive parents.
They walked slowly to the elevator, past the same desk where Quinn had checked in just days earlier. It felt like years, and like she was now leaving something behind. Every cell in her body was screaming stop, and it was all she could manage to put one foot in front of the other and let the doors to the ward close behind them.
His truck was parked in the loading zone out front. He handed Quinn up into the passenger seat, and gingerly loaded her things into the back. And then he got in and they just sat, engine idling.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No.” Her eyes were wet.
“Me neither,” he said. And then she started to cry in earnest.
“I figured-” Quinn could barely talk for the sobs shaking her shoulders. “I figured I’d at least get to hold her, you know? Send her off to her new mommy and daddy. Watch the car drive away…” The word car got her, and her tears became too overwhelming to say more.
Puck slipped an arm around her shoulders. It was the closest he’d been to her, physically, since the night they conceived Olivia, and it seemed like a circle was being completed. He touched his head to hers, and didn’t say anything.
She cried for a long time.
Eventually he did, too.
end.
Author: andbless_mybaby
Pairing: Puck/Quinn
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Quinn has her baby. It’s both a beginning and an end.
Word count: 2,400
A/N: Written for goldstar94 at the gleefics V-Day Fic Exchange. Love and kisses to my Becca, who beta'd this on the fly the night before it was due, and boosted my morale. The world will never know how much fail she has averted with her awesomeness. This is just a short little story, but it kind of broke my heart to write it.
The morning after Quinn gave birth, Rachel took Puck to the supermarket at the top of the street to buy some flowers. It was February, and the overhead fluorescents seemed too bright. The bouquets all had the anemic, underfed charm of hothouses and cargo jets. Puck stared at the display blankly until Rachel picked out some yellow daisies.
“These are nice,” she ventured. “Cheerful.”
“I thought you bring flowers to, like, celebrate.” His eyes were on the floor. “Nothing’s good right now.”
“You bring flowers to the mother of your child,” she corrected him pragmatically. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Fuck it.” He was holding the stems too tightly, making the plastic crinkle. “I never do the right thing, anyway.”
At the register, it took him a long time to count out four dollars and eighteen cents from the change he’d scooped out of his truck’s cup holder. He kept coming up fifty cents short, and the cashier had her lips pursed. Rachel finally took two quarters out of her own wallet.
_
Baby Girl Fabray was born on a Wednesday night, seven weeks early and tiny as a doll.
It had been a routine visit to the obstetrician, same as the ones that Quinn had been making every month since she found out she was pregnant. When the doctor asked how Quinn had been feeling, Quinn reported some blood she’d noticed after school last week. Not enough to worry about. Plus, she’d been having some cramps and feeling extra tired after she’d been walking around. The doctor had ordered an examination, just to be on the safe side.
It seemed like a complete pain in the ass to have to get someone to drive her over to the Women’s Center. Quinn called Alan, one of the Rachel’s dads. She’d been living with the Berrys since November, and the family had been nothing but accommodating. So Alan didn’t even flinch at leaving work. He’d patted Quinn’s hand in the car, and assured her that everything was fine.
“This happens a lot to first time moms,” he said. As a doctor, Quinn figured he’d know. “False labor is common. They’ll hook you up to the fetal monitors for observation, and let you go after a few hours. You’ll be back home in time for leftovers.”
Turns out that doctors weren’t always right. Because Quinn’s body was definitely in labor.
They’d given her a shot in triage to try and stop the contractions, to no avail. The baby was coming too quickly for the on-call physician from Quinn’s practice to get there on time, so it was a strange voice and set of hands telling her push, sweetie. We need to get this little girl out.
And Quinn was screaming, body on fire, telling him you mean I have to get her out, it’s only me, oh God, it hurts. It hurts. Please make it stop.
But it didn’t stop. They transferred her to a room on the L&D floor, with a bed that folded in half and down to reveal gleaming metal stirrups. She was too dilated for an epidural, and Quinn faintly remembered cursing the nurse who told her that. In the last stage, Rachel bossed her way in by arguing that as Quinn’s Lamaze partner, she had every right to make sure that Quinn was correctly executing her breathing technique. Quinn was too far past rational at that point to give a damn about breathing right, but she gratefully clenched Rachel’s hand as the baby crowned and slid into the world.
She was blue at first, and didn’t cry. There were a lot of people in the room, some of which crowded around the tiny person until she mewled like a kitten, and finally erupted in healthy-sounding shrieks.
“Congratulations,” the doctor said. “You have a daughter.”
Quinn fell back on her pillow, exhausted.
And then the baby was whisked away.
_
Puck found out by text message.
He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the obnoxious trilling of his phone’s message alert startled him awake. The TV in his room was on low, HBO On Demand menu staring him in the face. The remote was an inch or two beyond his fingers. The bed was still made up, and he was still in his jeans.
Confused, groggy, he scrubbed his face with his hands and flipped the phone open.
It was from Rachel.
Q had baby. Long story. Call me.
“Shit,” he breathed, jumping to his feet. “Fuck.”
It took him longer than normal to find his keys, his shoes, and a shirt to wear, because he was hurrying so much. The night was colder than he’d thought, and his breath plumed in front of his face as he shivered, cursed, and tried to unlock his truck without making too much noise.
The dashboard clock told him it was three A.M. It wasn’t until he was already driving down his street that he realized that he didn’t even know exactly how to get to the hospital. At the stop sign, he dialed Rachel. His fingers didn’t seem to want to work, looking for her name in his phone book.
_
The glee club came out in force, as if organized by a drillmaster. (Which meant that Rachel had assigned them shifts, obviously.) It was like Thursday rehearsal had been rescheduled for Quinn’s hospital room, only in teams and with one hundred percent less singing.
Brittany and Santana showed up first, shepherding Mike and Matt from behind. Tina and Artie came with Kurt and Mercedes shortly thereafter. Then Finn and Rachel - the former looking uncomfortable and awkward, hugging the wall - with the Berry fathers, bearing her schoolwork and Chinese carryout for dinner. Shapeless and sore in her baggy gown, Quinn smiled bravely at everyone and cleared space for the cards and gifts they brought. She wished she hadn’t let her hair air-dry, or that she had any makeup at all in the little bag she’d packed.
Puck came on his own, right before the end of visiting hours. Quinn was staring out the window of her room at the cinderblock wall of the building next door, body feeling like she’d been hit by a truck and mind snowy and dazed.
He had a handful of flowers, and her favorite drink from Starbucks. The cup was slippery with condensation, and his fingertips brushed hers when he handed it over.
“Since you can have caffeine again,” he told her.
He sat in one of the hard, plastic chairs alongside her bed, staring at his hands.
“You seen her?” he asked.
“A little bit. Once this morning, and once after lunch.”
“How is she?”
“Small. Ugly.” The faintest flicker of a grin crossed Puck’s face. “She’s got a heart monitor thing, because she’s having apnea episodes.”
“What’s that?”
“Something to do with her breathing. Her heart? I don’t know.”
“Oh.” He stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, and stared at the whiteboard on the wall with the room number and the nurse’s name written on it.
“Her name is Olivia,” Quinn said suddenly.
“Yeah?” Puck pursed his lip. “Olivia. That’s pretty.”
“I didn’t pick it out,” she replied. “That’s what the social worker said her new parents are going to call her.”
He didn’t respond to that, just scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the linoleum.
“If you come back tomorrow, like late afternoon, I can bring you in to see her.” Quinn twisted the hem of the scratchy hospital bed sheet between her fingers. “If you want to, of course. You know, whatever.”
“I’d like that,” he said, quickly. “I’d like that a lot.”
_
That night, Puck’s mom served him a ration of shit for not picking his sister up from the after-school program like he promised. He looked at her blankly as she carried on about complete lack of responsibility and, what if something bad had happened?, until there was enough of a break for him to interject.
“Ma. Quinn had the baby.”
His mother sucked a breath, deep and overwhelmed.
“Can I see her?” she asked quietly. “My granddaughter?”
“I don’t think so.” He pushed spaghetti around his plate with his fork, making nonsense patterns with the noodles. “She’s in the area where they keep the preemies? And Quinn doesn’t even see her much. The people who are going to adopt her are with her all the time, and-”
“Forget I asked.” His mother had a faraway look on her face. “Don’t worry about it.”
That night, he went to his room and sat on his bed. He kept thinking about doing something- reaching for his iPod, or the controller to his PS3, or his guitar - but it was like his body had gone numb and tight on him. Impossible to work.
He didn’t sleep.
_
There were strict rules for visiting the NICU.
Quinn could come and go anytime, except for the forty-five minutes in the morning and evening that the doctors were rounding, or if there was an emergency. (Sometimes, a sick baby stopped breathing and alarms went off everywhere.) Everyone else had to be accompanied by her, and could only enter between nine A.M. and nine P.M. Anyone who got buzzed in had to stop at the giant sinks up front and wash their hands with soap and hot water, to keep germs from getting in.
It was like a greenhouse inside, warm and filled with the tiny buds of new humans in their little incubators. The regular beeps and hums and whooshes of different machines and tubes were steady in the background, but the walls were painted a pretty beige with scenes of fish and seashells all over the place.
There were chairs in the middle of the room, so that parents and guests could pull one up to their baby’s isolette and visit for a while. On schedule, the nurses would come around and stick their hands through the holes in the sides of the incubators to take a temperature, or change a diaper. Then they’d make notes on their charts.
Olivia was sleeping under a special lamp when Quinn brought Puck in to see her, a gauze cover taped over her eyes. She was wearing a diaper that looked three sizes too big, folded over at the waist and with the tape wrapped over her hips on either size. Her wizened, little fingers were slightly curled, as if she were reaching for something.
“Is she sleeping?” Puck whispered.
“Probably.” Quinn traced a finger on the plastic, over Olivia’s face. “Can’t tell.” She turned to the nurse. “What’s that for?”
“Jaundice.” When Puck made a confused face, the nurse continued. “Her bilirubin levels are high. That’s not good. That special light will help her body get rid of the bad stuff. It’s very common in preemies, and not anything you need to worry about.”
“Oh.” Quinn frowned a little, but didn’t stop staring.
“She looks like you,” Puck said. His voice was still very low.
“How can you tell that? Half her face is covered.”
Puck smiled crookedly.
“Her lips are the same as yours,” he offered. “She made a face earlier, and it looked just like one you would make if you were mad.”
“You think she’s mad?” Quinn asked.
“I think she wants out. Life in a box can’t be too fun, you know?”
That one made Quinn laugh, just a little. Encouraged, Puck took her fingers in his and squeezed them. Together, they stared at their daughter until the doctors came in and they got kicked out.
_
Quinn was discharged Saturday morning, because her parents’ insurance allowed only three days after a natural birth. She was getting restless anyway, having read all the glossy magazines Rachel left and seen all the Project Runway DVDs Kurt let her borrow. She could just fit into a pre-pregnancy shirt, but her jeans wouldn’t button over the loose, tender skin across her middle. And the cups of her bra were damp and chafing because her milk had come in.
She was sitting on the side of her bed, feet dangling over her shoes on the floor, when Puck entered the room.
“What are you doing here?” she asked flatly.
“I told everyone else that I was coming to get you,” he said. “Figured it was right.”
“I have so much stuff.” She gestured around the room. “I need help.”
“That’s okay,” he said. It was the gentlest she had ever heard his voice. “We’ll work it out.”
And he did. He borrowed a wheelie cart from the nurse’s station, and loaded up Quinn’s overnight bag, and her computer case, and all the flowers and balloons. He checked the bathroom and under her bed to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.
“Do you want to, uh, say goodbye?” he asked, finally.
“No,” Quinn said resolutely. “Andrew and Kate are in there.”
Puck didn’t ask, gratefully, so she didn’t have to clarify: her adoptive parents.
They walked slowly to the elevator, past the same desk where Quinn had checked in just days earlier. It felt like years, and like she was now leaving something behind. Every cell in her body was screaming stop, and it was all she could manage to put one foot in front of the other and let the doors to the ward close behind them.
His truck was parked in the loading zone out front. He handed Quinn up into the passenger seat, and gingerly loaded her things into the back. And then he got in and they just sat, engine idling.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No.” Her eyes were wet.
“Me neither,” he said. And then she started to cry in earnest.
“I figured-” Quinn could barely talk for the sobs shaking her shoulders. “I figured I’d at least get to hold her, you know? Send her off to her new mommy and daddy. Watch the car drive away…” The word car got her, and her tears became too overwhelming to say more.
Puck slipped an arm around her shoulders. It was the closest he’d been to her, physically, since the night they conceived Olivia, and it seemed like a circle was being completed. He touched his head to hers, and didn’t say anything.
She cried for a long time.
Eventually he did, too.
end.