Once in a blue moon, Kurt Hummel called in sick to work.
Even less frequently, he called in when he wasn't actually sick.
It happened on the days when he just needed a mental vacation from the stress of his job. On the days where he felt his three-year-old son needed a day spent with his father, rather than in his preschool class. Kurt hadn't been "sick" in nearly six months. He could use a vacation.
Blaine was already gone for the day. It was a Thursday. Kurt could catch up on his work the next day and be good to go for the weekend.
He slept in. Or rather, he slept in until Micah came bouncing into his room and started jumping on the bed to get him up.
Kurt sat up and grabbed his son, tickling him until he was out of breath. Then, he let him help make pancakes for breakfast, because that's what they did on their days off.
He planned to take Micah to the hospital to go see Blaine at lunch, but for the morning they went to Central Park, since the weather was so nice for April.
"I want to play on the big playground," Micah decided, holding Kurt's hand while they walked down the sidewalk. "I'm three years old!"
Kurt was apprehensive. His son was small for his age, and the "big" playground for the older kids just seemed a little too dangerous for him still, with the steep slides and bigger equipment.
But, there weren't too many families out that day, so the playground wasn't crowded. Kurt could keep an eye on him. He would be fine.
"You can play on the big playground until I say it's time to go," Kurt agreed. "Got it?"
His son nodded and let go of his hand, already darting away to scale the metal ladder leading up to a fire pole that seemed terribly too tall for him.
Kurt watched him like a hawk, nearly having a heart attack when he tried to run up the slide and fell down on his face, slipping back down.
But Micah was unharmed, and he laughed it off as he ran around to the other side of the jungle gym. Kurt watched him climb up the ladder again, thinking he was going to go down the slide again.
It was the moment that he looked down at his phone that things changed. He had sworn he had just looked down for half a second, but when Kurt pocketed his phone and looked back up, he saw his son, swinging helplessly from the monkey bars that were so, so, so too big for him, and his grip was quickly slipping.
"Daddy!" Micah cried, kicking his legs in the air.
Kurt lunged for him, but was too late. His son fell, he didn't even know how many feet. It had to have been at least six or seven.
He stretched out his little hands to break his fall. When Kurt first heard his screams and automatically knelt down to help him, he thought Micah was crying because the wood chips he landed on had scraped his hands up.
Looking back, he wished that were the case.
His son, his little baby three-year-old son, had landed on his arm so badly that his elbow was bent out of place, and there was blood everywhere.
He didn't know what to do. His son needed him, and he needed to call for help, but Kurt had a tendency to freeze when he was panicked, and he wanted to cry but not in front of Micah, and it felt like his world had shattered into a million pieces, in just the half a second that he took to look at his phone.
Blaine hated the quiet days at his work.
Sure, it was nice to have a little break from the usual hustle and bustle of the emergency room, but in a way, the silence was almost worse. It was ominous, usually meaning something big was about to happen.
And that day was no exception.
It was a Thursday. Blaine had to work from six that morning until six that night, but then he was off until Monday, so he could spend the long weekend with his husband and son, maybe go to the park on Saturday if the weather stayed nice. He and Kurt had a date planned for Saturday night. Just dinner and a show, but still, it had been a surprise from Kurt, since they had both been working so much lately.
It was just about lunchtime. Blaine planned on grabbing a salad from the cafeteria and taking a quick power nap in the on-call room, until it happened.
It was an ortho case, and Blaine loved a good broken bone. The patient was only three, coming in via ambulance. For a minute, Blaine's heart sank. Micah had just turned three the week before. He couldn't imagine him being hurt like that.
He went outside to take a look at the damage as the ambulance pulled up. That was when it happened.
The doors popped open, and his husband jumped out.
"Kurt." His name rolled off Blaine's tongue, as he put the puzzle pieces together.
Kurt saw him and immediately burst into tears, crying into his shoulder. Blaine watched a group of nurses and the head pediatric orthopedist take their son inside out of the corner of his eye.
"What happened?" Blaine asked, gripping Kurt's shoulders. "Talk to me. It's okay, they're taking care of him."
Right now he couldn't be a doctor. Right now he was a husband, and a dad.
"I took the day off," Kurt gushed, drawing in a shaky breath and sniffling. "I took him to the park. I shouldn't have done it Blaine, it's my fault!"
Kurt tried to keep talking, but Blaine cut him off. "Stop. It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault. Got it?"
Kurt nodded, eyes wide. Blaine had never had to show him his doctor side before, but now it was coming out.
"I let him go on the big playground, the one he's always bugging us about not letting him play on?" Kurt continued.
Blaine knew just the one. He didn't think Micah was too little for it, but at the same time he knew how easy it would be for him to get hurt on it.
"I looked down for a second, Blaine, just a second! And he had climbed up to the monkey bars, and he fell, and his arm, and there was so much blood, and he was screaming, and another mom had to call 911 because I couldn't do anything, and I was useless, and now he needs me and I'm not there and he's probably scared to death!"
Blaine pulled Kurt close, and just let him cry. He let him cry for several minutes, and he admittedly got a little choked himself, too, because Micah was their baby, and they had done everything they could to protect him, but sometimes it just wasn't enough.
When there were no more tears to cry, Kurt pulled away and dried his eyes. Blaine knew they needed to get inside and be with him, but he wasn't sure if Kurt could handle seeing him without breaking down again.
"We're about to go in there and be with him while they examine him," Blaine warned. "And they're going to x-ray him, and it's going to hurt, and he's probably going to cry. A lot. And they're going to give him an IV, and you've seen him when he gets his shots at the doctor's office. But we both have to make it seem like everything is okay. Micah's not blaming you for what happened, and neither am I. We can't fix it at this point, so let's go make this as pleasant as possible for him. If anyone can do that, it's you."
Kurt nodded. Blaine knew better than anyone that Kurt could put away his emotions to give their son what he needed. They sealed it with another hug, and Blaine gave him a kiss, because the only thing Kurt needed was reassurance, and Blaine knew exactly what to do when it came down to it.
They walked inside the sliding doors of the emergency room, and located their son by his cries. It was the first time Blaine had seen him up close. His shirt was cut off, and his left arm rested on a pillow.
His elbow was dislocated, and Blaine was about to ask why the heck they hadn't put the joint back in place when he saw the rest of the injury.
His radius and ulna, both forearm bones, were cutting through his skin, exposed and bleeding freely.
Blaine looked back at Kurt, who looked white as a ghost. There must have been so much blood at first that he didn't see how severe the break was.
Three pediatric nurses worked on him, one to stop the bleeding, another to insert an IV in his good hand, and the third tried to distract him and make him look away from his mangled arm, but none of them were having very much success.
Kurt took over the third nurse's job. He sat up by his son's head, stroking his hair and taking his hand, so the IV nurse could get the needle in.
"Daddy, it h-hurts!" Micah shrieked, fat tears pouring down his round little cheeks. Kurt kissed his forehead, shushing him and holding his hand more firmly, so the nurse could finish off the IV and tape down the tube.
"Look, buddy, all done," Kurt said, gesturing to his hand. "No more needles. You were so brave. Look who I found? Papa is here. You never get to see Papa at work."
Micah saw Blaine in his white coat and frowned. "No, Daddy, no doctors," he pleaded.
Blaine realized he must look scary to Micah, who never saw him in his scrubs. "I'm not your doctor, buddy," he said, poking his son in the nose. "Look, I have a surprise."
Blaine took his stethoscope from around his neck and held it up to his heart. "Remember when the doctor let you play with this when you were sick? You can listen to my heart."
Micah was distracted, for the moment, and Blaine could tell the pain medicine they gave him was starting to work. He was gradually able to talk to them more, rather than sob or scream, and he even managed to stop crying completely for a little while.
Well, until the orthopedist came to look at his arm. Any little touch or movement set him off, and, just like Blaine had predicted, the x-rays were torturous.
"Can't they take them without having to move him around so much?" Kurt pleaded, breaking down a little when his son was out of earshot.
Blaine shook his head, as much as he wished otherwise. "They won't turn out clear either if he doesn't hold still."
Kurt cringed as his son let out another cry as the radiologist positioned him. Blaine thought back to just an hour earlier, when the day had been so, so quiet.
An hour later produced hundreds of more tears from their son, two blurry x-rays and four good ones, and enough paperwork to last a thousand years.
Micah wanted to be held. Kurt and Blaine didn't dare move him, but a nurse came in and managed to situate him in Kurt's lap with minimal tears, which was a miracle.
Kurt held him, talked to him, sang to him. Blaine did the paperwork. That was how it usually seemed to pan out.
Micah needed surgery, but they had to wait several hours since he had eaten right before he got hurt. The pediatric surgeon, who introduced herself as Dr. Beck, explained the procedure at length to Kurt and Blaine. Kurt still held Micah, but the little boy was too out of it to understand what the doctor was saying.
The operation was nothing new to Blaine, but he saw the looks on Kurt's face and could tell it wasn't sitting as well with him.
"Mr. Hummel, do you have any questions?" the surgeon prompted.
It took Kurt a moment before he actually spoke. "Just… the idea of pins and screws in his arm, when he's only three…"
Dr. Beck nodded and smiled warmly at him. "I understand. They can be removed later, especially since he's still growing, but for now they're necessary to ensure the bones heal properly."
Blaine was the one to sign the consent form.
They admitted Micah for the night. His surgery was slated for eight o'clock that evening. It was supposed to take roughly two to three hours, and then hopefully he would get a full night of sleep, and they could take him home the next day.
Kurt called his boss again, this time for a much different reason.
Micah slept in Kurt's arms for about an hour. He woke up saying his stomach hurt, but there wasn't much anyone could do since he wasn't allowed to eat.
"I want to go home," he whimpered. "Daddy, I want to go home. My tummy hurts."
Kurt smoothed back his soft brown hair and wiped his tears away with his thumb. "We're going home soon," he told him, his voice soothing and soft. "We'll go home and you can sleep in the big bed and have pancakes for breakfast again. I bet Aunt Rachel and Uncle Finn will come over to see you, too."
That got a little smile out of him. Micah stuck his thumb in his mouth, tangling the IV tube a little, but Blaine quickly fixed it. He watched his husband tend to their son, giving him little kisses and all the reassurances he needed, until they had to start getting him ready for surgery.
Some nurses came in and took him from Kurt's arms, and Blaine didn't know who was more upset by that. Micah cried and kicked his legs and pleaded over and over again for Kurt to hold him, until one of them injected a new something into his IV, and he stopped fighting, instead going limp on the bed, his eyelids struggling to remain open.
Blaine and Kurt stayed on either side of him, as the nurses took him down the hall to the operating room door, and they couldn't go any further.
"We'll let you know when he's out of surgery," the nurse told Blaine, and that was that.
Waiting seemed impossible. Blaine had sent countless families to the waiting room before. Now, he was on the other side of things. His whole world was at the mercy of a woman with a scalpel.
Blaine just sat, forcing himself to not look at the clock. Kurt called his parents, then Finn and Rachel. It was kind of surprising to Blaine to look outside and realize that it was now nighttime. The whole day had passed as a blur. That morning felt like an eternity ago.
It was well past ten before the surgeon came out to talk to them. They stood simultaneously to hear her report.
"Micah is in the recovery wing now," she told them with a smile. "He did very well. There were no complications, he's just lost a lot of blood for someone his size, so we gave him a transfusion. Other than that, he's doing just fine. Would you like to see him now?"
The walk to their son's room felt like it was ten miles long. Finally, Beck pushed open a door, letting the two of them walk in first.
A nurse stood by the head of Micah's bed, adjusting a setting on one of his monitors. Their little boy, looking so small in the bed meant for an adult, slept peacefully, his mouth hanging open a little. He had a new tube in his good arm, delivering blood to his body. His broken arm was wrapped up tight, elevated and no longer falling apart.
"He should wake up here in just a little bit," the doctor spoke up again. Kurt and Blaine had been so busy with Micah they had both forgotten she was in the room. "He may be a little disoriented at first, but that's perfectly normal. Just page a nurse and she'll come check him out and see how he's doing. Then they'll move him up to pediatrics until he goes home."
Kurt and Blaine thanked Dr. Beck, and she left with the nurse, leaving them alone as a family again.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. They didn't need to. Kurt sat, stroking Micah's hair and watching for any signs of distress from him, and Blaine held his little hand, waiting for the moment he began to come around.
When he began to stir, Kurt initially panicked.
"Hey, he's okay," Blaine assured him. "Hit that button, the red one on the wall. That'll page the nurse."
Kurt obeyed, just as Micah's eyes flickered open. He blinked a few times, then yawned and twitched his hand.
"Papa," he murmured, his voice a little hoarse from the tube that had been down his throat. "Where'm I?"
Blaine smiled at him. "We're at the doctor. Remember how you hurt your arm? They put it back together. It's nighttime now. We'll go home in the morning."
Micah looked over to Kurt, then down at his arm. He bit his lip a little, then began to cry.
"Hey, buddy, no tears," Kurt said, trying to cheer him up. "You're okay. Does it hurt?"
Micah shook his head and sniffled, but he still didn't stop crying. "I-I feel weird. I wanna go home, Daddy."
Blaine thought back to his eye surgery he had in high school, over a decade ago. The thing he remembered the most was how awful he felt after waking up. His eye didn't hurt, he just felt sluggish and not good in general.
"We're gonna get to go home in the morning," Kurt promised him. "What can we do to help you feel better right now, though? Would you like something to eat or drink? Your tummy's been pretty empty all day."
Micah nodded, sticking his thumb in his mouth. Once the nurse came back in and they moved him up to a new, bigger room on the pediatrics floor, Blaine went down to the cafeteria in search of something Micah would actually feel up to eating.
He managed to eat a peanut butter and jelly before deciding he was too tired for anything else. Blaine remained steadfast by his side as he fell asleep, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing.
Kurt didn't realize he had fallen asleep until he woke up, cramped on a couch with a sore neck. For a second, he forgot where he was, until he glanced over and saw his husband and sleeping son. The events of the previous day came flooding back. Micah. The monkey bars. His surgery.
Kurt yawned as he sat up. Blaine looked over at him.
"Hey, you're up," he said softly. "You crashed almost as soon as you laid down."
Kurt looked at his phone to see what time it was. Just after seven. "Did the doctor say when he can be discharged?"
"She came in about twenty minutes ago. They want to do more x-rays and a physical therapist is supposed to come fit him for a sling. I don't think they're in any rush, but it'll definitely be today."
Kurt got up and sat on the edge of Micah's bed. He was out like a light, no doubt from the abundance of drugs they had him on.
"Well, if we're going to be here for the better part of the day, I think I'll run home real quick, here before he wakes up. I'll get his blanket and some clothes for him to wear home. Do you want anything? I can bring breakfast, too."
Kurt stood, slipping on his jacket and smoothing back Micah's untidy hair.
"Uh, just some coffee," Blaine decided. "When you come back they're probably going to make you sign in as a visitor at the nurse's station, so have your ID. We'll be here."
Kurt gave his husband a kiss and made his way out of the hospital, functioning completely on autopilot. He still felt in a daze, like the previous day had been a dream.
Being back at their apartment felt weird. Kurt hadn't been home in almost twenty-four hours. He found his son's blanket abandoned in his bed, and he got him a change of clothes, before showering and dressing himself.
He made a pot of coffee. Two cups for himself, and he poured the rest into a thermos to bring back to Blaine. He had tried hospital coffee before, and it just didn't cut it.
Kurt shuffled out the door, back to the hospital. He didn't want Micah to wake up when he wasn't there.
He emerged from the subway station two blocks from the hospital. Kurt wasn't surprised to hear all the sirens and see the red and blue lights from down the street. Ambulances came in all the time. What he was shocked to discover was that the lights didn't belong to the ambulances.
Instead, police cars. Easily half a dozen of them.
Kurt walked a little quicker, heading towards the hospital's main entrance.
Yellow tape. Men in uniforms. A helicopter overhead. Something was wrong.
Blaine hadn't slept a wink. He was used to it, though. So he wasn't surprised when Kurt passed out on the couch in Micah's room. He was fine to stay awake with him, even though their little boy was passed out from his painkillers. Blaine was a doctor. He could survive days with little to no sleep.
Almost as soon as Kurt left to run home, Micah began to stir. He pulled his hand away from Blaine's to rub at his eyes, and he yawned as he became awake of his surroundings.
"Good morning, buddy," Blaine said. Micah jumped a little. He didn't seem completely awake yet.
"Papa," he exhaled dramatically, closing his eyes again. "I wanna go home."
Blaine smiled at him. His little son, only three and already so much like Kurt. Apart from being nearly identical to his husband when he was that age, Micah had already picked up on Kurt's sense of humor and wit. He was impossible not to love.
"We're going home today," Blaine promised. "Daddy went home to get your blanket and some clothes for you to wear. You don't want to go home in the yucky hospital gown."
Micah moaned a little, and his expression changed.
"What is it?" Blaine asked. "Does your arm hurt?"
Micah nodded, almost imperceptibly. He stuck out his lower lip. Blaine wasn't surprised that it had started to bug him again, now that the anesthesia had worn off, and they were slowly taking him off the meds in his IV.
"Let's just wait until Papa gets back. He said he would bring back breakfast. I think some food in your tummy will help your feelings."
Suddenly, Blaine's pager began to fire at him. He jumped, startled. He thought he had turned it off for the night. Technically he was off the clock, so he didn't have to respond. He just hadn't had time to go back to his locker and put it up. He didn't even have his phone on him.
"What'h that?" Micah asked, lisping as he sucked his thumb.
Blaine read the display, and it felt like someone had twisted his stomach into a knot. Fear filled his mind, until he remembered his three-year-old was in the room.
"It's how doctors talk to each other," Blaine explained. "But I'm not working right now."
Micah closed his eyes. "Papa, my arm still hurts," he whimpered, sticking out his lower lip.
Blaine stood up. He glanced outside Micah's room, where he had a clear view of the nurse's station. Doctors were beginning to gather. "I'll go tell a nurse that it hurts, okay? I'll see what she can do. I'm gonna be right back, buddy."
He slipped out of the room into the commotion of nurses and doctors who were just as confused as Blaine was.
"We're on a lockdown?" he asked. He didn't know many of the pediatrics staff, but he was pretty good friends with a nurse named Holly. She happened to be dating Blaine's superior, so Blaine had been on a double date or two with them.
"It might just be a drill," the head nurse spoke up, addressing everyone's concerns. "But just in case, they've isolated each floor. No one is coming in or out of this hospital. Finish your rounds, in case we go to the next level of lockdown."
Blaine's mind rushed to Kurt. He was going to be scared out of his mind, even if it turned out to just be a drill. His hand instinctively rushed to his scrub pocket to text him, until he remembered he didn't have his phone.
And the locker room was on the next floor, which meant he had no way to talk to him.
"Hey, how's your boy?" Holly asked Blaine, gesturing to Micah. It knocked Blaine out of his state of anxiety.
"He's okay," Blaine shrugged. "He slept really well, so that's good. But his arm's really bothering him. I think his nurse lowered the dosage of his meds too fast. Do you think you can change it?"
His friend smiled as she found Micah's chart. "Oh. Yep. I'll get on it."
Blaine thanked her. "Oh, let me know if you find anything out about this lockdown. Kurt went home, and I guess they're not going to let him back in now."
Holly assured him she would, but Blaine returned to his son feeling worse than ever.
Kurt pulled out his phone to try and call Blaine. No answer, three times in a row. He sent him a text, too, but still no luck.
"Excuse me," he tried, getting the attention of one of the police officers. "I was here just an hour ago. What's going on? My husband and son are in there."
The short, round man held up his hand. "No one goes in or out, sir. A shooter took out one of the nurses, and they don't know where he is now. The SWAT team is on their way to contain it. As soon as they gain control of the situation, they'll begin evacuating the patients."
Kurt's world stopped. A shooter. In the same building as his entire family, everything that mattered to him.
He tried to find words. "What…what? I was here just an hour ago and everything was fine! Who is it? Who would enter a hospital with a gun?!"
"I'm afraid that's all we know for right now, sit. We'll evacuate patients as soon as it's safe to do so, but for now all we can do is wait for backup."
It was a nightmare. It had to be. Kurt was going to wake up in his own bed, and his family would be safe at home, happy and healthy with no broken bones, and certainly no deranged killers lurking in the building.
Holly gave Micah some more medicine, which helped relax him so he wasn't quite so upset. "Daddy's taking forever."
Blaine bit his lip. He knew why, but he didn't dare scare his child with talk of the lockdown.
No one seemed to know much more than they did initially, but everyone was on edge and tense. It was in the atmosphere.
Blaine heard sirens. They were only on the third floor, so they were easily audible, but the ambulance bay was on the complete opposite side of the hospital. Something wasn't right.
He got up and peered out the window of Micah's room. His heart dropped into his stomach when he saw the police cars clustered on the hospital grounds. It wasn't a drill.
Micah gave up on thoughts of breakfast when his new pain medicine made his stomach start to hurt. Blaine gave him little sips of water to try and combat any nausea, but he quickly became miserable.
A quick check from Holly confirmed it: he had a fever. Low-grade, 99.6, but still there. As if things couldn't get any worse.
"Look out the window before you leave," Blaine whispered to her. He watched his friend's face change as she saw the cops assembled on the ground, so far below them.
"I'll get him going on some antibiotics," Holly told him, her voice distant as she left the room.
Blaine curled up with his son next to him in the bed, trying to keep him from having chills. "I want Daddy," Micah murmured. "My tummy hurts."
Blaine held him close. "Just wait a few minutes, buddy. That pain medicine should start to help you here soon. Daddy is on his way."
But he wasn't. And Blaine was terrified for whatever was happening to his hospital. But he didn't have time to be scared. His son was sick and hurting, and needed him.
Micah fell asleep. Blaine stayed with him for a little bit, until he saw his coworkers assemble in the pediatrics lobby again. Blaine joined them, desperate for an update.
No one seemed to have any official news, but the words "gun" and "shooter" were passed around. Blaine wasn't sure if he wanted to believe them or not. The hospital had some of the best security staff in the city.
But then again, he had seen all the police outside.
Blaine pulled Holly aside. "Is there a gunman?"
His friend bit her lip and looked him dead in the eyes. She was the same height, if not slightly shorter, than Blaine. "Dr. Beck was walking to radiology to check on her patient in CT. She could hear the gunshots coming from the ER waiting room. She said it was chaos, but that she saw the SWAT team is here. They've shut off the elevators to try and isolate him, but they're supposed to be stationing guys at every stairwell."
Blaine glanced back at his sleeping son, oblivious to the fact that their lives were in danger.
Holly saw his fear. "Blaine. You're both going to be fine. Kurt's going to be waiting for you as soon as we're out of here."
He could only hope.
Kurt saw the SWAT team vans show up, watched as the heavily armed men poured into the hospital.
He just wanted to be with Blaine and Micah.
More people had started to gather, including news vans filming live segments and ambulances from other hospitals, prepared to transport patients as soon as they were given the okay.
Kurt walked away from the hub of policemen, and listened in as a newswoman ran a report.
"I'm Amber Whitley, live from Manhattan at the NYU Medical Center. Police reports from throughout the morning have given officers reason to believe that an armed shooter entered the hospital sometime this morning, and has not yet been captured. The hospital was placed on lockdown over an hour and a half ago, and SWAT team members are scouring every inch of the one hundred thousand square foot medical center.
"The suspect in question is believed to be a man named Gabriel Knox. Knox was previously admitted to the hospital's psychiatric ward, but was discharged approximately six weeks ago. Critical patients are awaiting transport to various other hospitals, but not until the first floor has been deemed all clear. There's no telling how long this standoff will turn out to be, but stay tuned to NY Channel 5 for updates. Back to you, Glenn."
The cameraman packed up his things, and they rolled out. Kurt tried to digest all the information he had just received, but he was just scared. Did Blaine know what was going on? Surely he had to. Kurt had left nearly two and a half hours earlier.
What really worried him was Micah. Was his baby okay? Surely he didn't know what was going on. No need to scare him, when he was already in a world of hurt with his broken arm.
It would be okay, he told himself. Micah would be fine. He knew Blaine wouldn't let anything happen to their little boy. And surely by now the hospital security, all those cops, and the SWAT team had gotten control of everything, right?
Micah slept through the commotion. Blaine tried to shut off the outside world and focus on his son and his needs. Holly promised to come back with an update.
His son woke up around lunchtime, groggy and confused. "Papa. I'm tired, Papa."
Blaine squeezed his little hand. "You just woke up, buddy. How does your arm feel?"
Micah looked down at his bandaged limb, as if he had forgotten it was broken. "Feels okay. I'm cold."
Blaine got him another blanket and tucked it around him. "I want my blanket, Papa."
He remembered, Kurt was supposed to bring back Micah's blanket for him. Before everything changed. "You can have your blanket when we go home. It'll be waiting for you in your bed."
Blaine looked up to see what was going on in the lobby. Silence. The floor looked deserted, until Holly rushed into the room, shutting the door behind her, breathing like she had just run a marathon.
"Go in the bathroom," she whisper-shouted. "Now. Go."
Blaine had never experienced fear like that before. Fear of not only losing his own life, but the life of his son, his baby, his whole world. Just three years old.
He detached the IV from the port in Micah's little hand with shaky fingers and scooped him up, shushing him as he began to cry from the sudden pain in his injury.
He crouched with his son in his arms on the closed toilet seat and slid the bathroom door closed, trying to soothe his child and simultaneously listening to what was happening outside.
"Micah," he whispered into his ear, probably sounding meaner than he intended. He softened his voice. "Buddy, you have to stop crying. I know it hurts. But you can't cry. There's a bad guy in the hospital, and if he hears you crying, then he'll find us here. So just breathe. Papa's right here. We're going to be okay."
Blaine wasn't sure if he was trying to reassure Micah or himself at that point. His only focus was keeping them alive.
He didn't see what had happened to Holly. Blaine heard the door to the room open, but he had no clue if it was his coworker, or him.
"There are only children on this floor." There was his friend's voice, shaky but firm. "Babies. Just babies."
A man's voice, low and gruff and sounding like it belonged to the lowest human on the planet, asked if she was a nurse.
A pause. No answer.
He asked again, shouting, demanding an answer. Micah squirmed in Blaine's lap, and Blaine could feel his scrub top soaking from the tears of his frightened little boy. Blaine rubbed his back, keeping him close so he would know his papa was still there.
"N-No," Holly lied. Blaine could hear her crying. "I'm a-a-a s-s-st-student. A st- a student."
Blaine heard the click of a gun being loaded. He jammed his hands up against Micah's ears, waiting for the fatal shot, but none came. The door to the room clicked shut, and Holly appeared in the doorway several seconds later, the color completely drained from her face, her entire body shaking.
"Are you okay?" Blaine asked, standing to assess her.
"He's gone," she said, her teeth chattering together. "All gone. We're safe now. He's not coming back."
Micah began to cry again, painful sobs racking his whole body. Blaine got him hooked up to his IV again, and he held him while Holly jumped straight back into her duties as a nurse, getting him a pillow to rest his arm on, and checking his temperature again.
"Blaine, he's gone up. 100.5," she told him. Blaine wanted to yell, to swear, to kick something. They were supposed to be going home, not locked up in the hospital, with his son developing a fever, and a gunman just down the hall.
Micah was still howling, and nothing helped. "I don't know if he's crying because he's sick or it hurts, or if he's just scared," Blaine admitted. "Kurt would know. I just don't know what to do!"
His frustration was reaching a breaking point. Blaine knew he had to pull it together for Micah's sake. Holly didn't need it, either, after what she had just experienced.
He took a deep breath. Hugged his son close, rocked him. "What hurts, buddy? Does your arm hurt? Or do you just feel yucky?"
Micah sniffled and rubbed his eyes before sticking his thumb in his mouth. "Don't let the bad guy get me, Papa," he pleaded, more tears spilling down his face.
Blaine pressed his lips to his son's head, kissing his feverish forehead and drying his tears. "The bad guy left," Blaine told him. "He's all gone. He's not going to get you, Micah."
Micah still seemed unconvinced. All Blaine knew to do was tell him they were going home soon, because if they could survive that, then they could make it through anything.
When men in all black armed with guns bigger than Micah showed up on the floor, Blaine about had a heart attack.
But they were there to help, not destroy. They declared the pediatrics wing was all clear, and that immediately outside the hospital, ambulances would relocate all patients.
Blaine thought, for a minute, that wouldn't apply to them. Until he remembered Micah's fever. He looked down at his sick little boy and knew they were going to be okay.
Holly must have read his mind. "He has to go, Blaine. If it's a post-op infection, they need to treat it now. You carry him. I've got his IV bag."
"Are we going home?" Micah asked, the slightest hint of hopefulness in his voice. Blaine didn't want to break his heart, but he couldn't lie to him.
"No, buddy. We're going to see another doctor. Then we'll go home. It'll be like taking a field trip, like you do at school."
Micah whined, but he quickly hushed when Blaine carried him out into the hall and he saw the guys with guns. He hid his face in Blaine's shoulder and began to freak out.
"It's the bad guy!" he insisted. "Papa, there he is!"
Blaine shushed him, walking towards the stairwell where another one let them out. "No, those are good guys," he explained. "They helped find the bad guy. They're keeping us safe, that's why there are so many of them. They're protecting us."
His son shook like a leaf in his arms, but then they were outside, and the morning was behind them. Blaine scanned the crowd of what had to be hundreds for his husband, and when he finally saw Kurt running towards him, nothing else mattered.
It was 2:18 in the afternoon when the first three floors of the hospital were said to be all clear. Pediatrics was on the third floor. Kurt knew that much. So when patients and doctors and nurses began buzzing with the chaos of trying to locate family members and get the patients to other hospitals, he watched the doors like a hawk for his family.
It took twenty minutes. After the first wave of patients, they came out a few at a time, depending on how critical their condition was. Micah was about to be discharged, so Kurt tried not to worry when he still hadn't been released.
But the fear remained. Kurt knew he wouldn't be able to relax until he saw with his own eyes that his husband and son were okay.
The Channel 5 newswoman returned to give another update, that the gunman still had not been captured, but they had closed in on his location, and were letting patients leave.
It was almost three before he saw the doors open again. Kurt shoved through a crowd of family members and bystanders to see if the faces looked familiar.
He did a double take. It was his husband, perfectly fine, carrying their son and looking around. Kurt nearly knocked over a mother with her two kids trying to get to his own family.
"Kurt," Blaine said, throwing his free arm around him and kissing him until they caught their breath.
"What the heck happened in there?" Kurt asked. "I was here hours ago, and they wouldn't let me in. Are you alright? Is he okay?" Kurt looked at his son in Blaine's arms, blinking heavily and shivering from the slight breeze. He draped his blanket over him, and kissed his cheek.
"He has a fever," Blaine told him. "He's going to need to be moved to another hospital. Micah, do you want to see Daddy? Look, he's here now."
Micah looked at Kurt, and stretched out his good arm wordlessly, letting Kurt hold him.
"Hi, baby," Kurt soothed, kissing his head and patting his back. "I brought your blanket."
Micah nodded, sucking away at his thumb, while Blaine gave Kurt a shortened version of the day's events. Kurt began to cry when Blaine told him how the shooter had been in the room, while he hid away in the bathroom with Micah.
They finally managed to get going in an ambulance, bound to spend another night in another hospital. Kurt would sleep at the hospital for the rest of his life, though, if it meant his family was alive.
Later that night, when everything was sorted out, Micah with his antibiotics and x-rays taken care of, Kurt held him while he slept. Blaine sat next to the bed, and the two were silent for a long while, debriefing their days separately. Neither one could imagine what the other had gone through.
Kurt felt Blaine take hold of his hand, and he squeezed it. No words were exchanged, and they didn't need to be. All they needed was each other, and their little family, and that was enough.
Author's Notes:
Guys. This started off as a little drabble about emergency room Blaine saving the day when his son gets hurt. Then I watched the Grey's Anatomy episode about the shooter and this happened. 7,000 words later, after spending the majority of Christmas locked in my room to finish it, this oneshot was born.
Nothing says Merry Christmas like avoiding family to please the readers. I hope you liked this! Consider it my Christmas gift to you. While I'm at it, I'll go ahead and update my other story as well. If you haven't read it yet, give it a shot! It's got some Mama Hummel and baby Kurt, so basically all you could ever need.