Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!
IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!
This story is a 1st person POV swap of With Heavy Eyes, a Berry-St series story originally posted on April 21st 2014.
"Little Boy"
In Gen1!world: Burt (POV), Kurt, Rachel
Berry-St series
I can't even remember time before I had Kurt in the garage with me. He wasn't walking yet when I started bringing him in. He would sit, and he would watch me work, or he would talk with the other guys, or the customers. The more he grew up, I knew he only came anymore to spend time with me, and there was no reason to complain about that. Today though… He's been acting strange for a while, weeks, and I've been trying to get him to talk to me. He doesn't do it, but I'm not giving up. He's being even stranger now, staring at the wall.
"Hey, you alright?" I ask him. He looks at me like he forgot I was there. Now I see what he's been looking at. The picture on the wall, him and his friends in Glee Club.
"What? I… Yeah, fine, Dad." He's trying to shake me off; he's getting better at it every day, no matter how hard I try to hang on. Maybe after I'm done here today I'll take him for takeout, see if I can finally get to…
The stool scratched the ground, half a second before I heard a heavy thud, and it's hard to explain the amount of fear and bargaining that happened after that, in the time it took for me to turn and look. I knew something had gone wrong, but maybe I was imagining it.
"Kurt?" My son is on the ground. My son isn't moving. "Kurt!" Go to him, no, get the phone, call for help, he could be… He still wasn't moving.
I found it was easier to focus when I was focusing to get help for my boy. I called 911. My son lost consciousness and fell, he might have hit his head. I was to keep from moving him and wait for the ambulance. I got down on my knees next to him, and I just wanted to pick him up, but… no…
"Kurt? Kurt! Hey, buddy, wake up!" I gave his cheeks a few taps, harmless… and he woke up. It felt like I hadn't breathed since he'd fallen.
"Ow! Ow! Let go, stop!" he pushed my arm off. Was that a good sign?
"What the hell happened, one second you were sitting up there and the next I see you on the ground and you're not waking up. I called an ambulance, they're on their way." When he heard this, he looked up at me.
"No, I'm fine, I…" He was trying to get up, but I put a stop to that right away.
"You stay there, they said not to move you." I knew I would do the same thing he did in his place, but I wasn't giving him a choice. I could hear the siren now, and thank goodness for that. I don't know how much longer I could have kept him down. "Look, they're here."
I tried not to hover too close around the paramedics, to let them do what they were trained to do, but all I could see was them examining my son, asking him questions, their equipment all over the garage floor… My heart felt all over the place, but I had to keep it together, for Kurt's sake. I told the paramedics everything they might need to know, allergies, previous hospital visits. They put a brace on him, loaded him on to a gurney. They were taking us to the hospital.
The ride to the hospital was a blur. I was in the back of that ambulance, looking at Kurt, strapped down so the only way I knew he was awake was by looking and seeing that his eyes were still open and alert. I wasn't going to say anything and get him more worried. I was just going to be there, with him, so he knew he didn't have to be afraid. I sure wished I had someone there to tell me that, because I was terrified.
We made it to the hospital, and I went to get him signed in. By the time I made it back, they had wheeled him off for some tests, but a nurse came and told me Kurt wanted me to make a call, to a girl. Rachel Berry. I knew the name, she was in his Glee Club. Why he'd want to see her now though, I had no idea. For a while I wasn't going to do it, but if he was awake enough that he could make a request like that, who was I to deny him?
I had Kurt's phone, so I found the number. When I called her, she was obviously surprised to hear I was calling, and then even more when I told her the reason. But she must have been Kurt's friend more than I knew, because she was on her way. They hadn't even brought him back out yet by the time she showed up. She was a lot more concerned about what had happened than I thought she'd be. She asked so many questions I couldn't keep up with her. When the nurse came for me, I didn't know if I was more relieved to see Kurt or to get away from his friend's questioning anymore.
We'd been waiting in Kurt's room for two minutes when they wheeled him in… and the first thing he said was…
"Rachel!"
I stood there, watching her go up to him, the two of them whispering together, and then… she was leaving, gone. What the hell was going on with those two?
"What did you tell her? You're not on drugs, are you? Is that what it's about?" I could hear myself, didn't mean to sound so upset, but this day…
"No, no, it's nothing like that, I swear. Make them run a test if you have to, blood, pee, anything, it's not like I haven't been put through the ringer already." He looked exhausted, confused, and whatever I thought I needed to know… it didn't matter. I just wanted him to be okay.
They were keeping him overnight, and when it was time for him to go to sleep, he made me promise to get some sleep, too. I told him I would. I tried. But it never happened. I sat there, next to his bed, and I watched him sleep, until after the sun came up.
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!
