In which Quinn suffers a miscarriage. Painful realizations will be made and personal growth will occur.
I don't own Glee or any of it's characters.
Somehow, impossibly, Quinn has- is having -a miscarriage. In the bathroom at McKinley of all places, her back pressed against the tiled wall. She accepts this as fact as her stomach cramps- awfully, incessantly -and she sits in a cold, dark pool of blood. The blood that wets her skirt so that it clings to her legs, damp and heavy. It is like wetting the bed. It's been years, but Quinn can remember the feeling. Curled in on herself, the mattress beneath her rough against her skin, there had been an unmistakable stink of piss and sweat. A shame as deeply discomforting as the feel of her clothes had pressed wetly into her skin as she burrowed under her blanket, alone, her breath hot against her lips.
Quinn can't decide what it is exactly she's feeling now.
Her head drops back against the wall. Quietly she breathes slow deep breaths that aren't quite enough; light headed, alone.
Quinn Fabray is many things. Stupid is not one of them. The blood, her stomach, her breath: she knows what it means. She makes the realization as if her brain is detached from the rest of her aching body. She accepts- logically, cooly critical -that she cannot find the energy to search for help. Without a phone, her legs boneless and weak, she cannot find the energy to do anything but sit as the blood seeps out of her and her breath doesn't satisfy her tired lungs. The walls are not steady.
Of course this is when Rachel walks in. Oblivious, covered in the grape slushy she has just wiped from her eyes. Her own thoughts, rapid fire as her speech, are filled with indignant righteousness: David Karofosky is a small minded buffoon and she, Rachel Berry, is going to get out of this Podunk town. One day she will write an autobiography where David will have a minuscule, nameless role as a thuggish bigot. That will teach him.
She is not thinking about Quinn Fabray at all. The blonde does not cross her mind until Rachel spots her. Then Quinn is all she can think about for the former Cheerio, barely propped against a wall, is decidedly disheveled and bloody.
It's a scene right out of a horror film, and Rachel can't help the startled shriek that leaps past her lips. She stops nearly as soon as she begins but the sound bounces around the tightly enclosed space, echoing off the white walls.
Uncomprehending, the brunette stares. In her panic and uncertainty she thinks, why is there blood between Quinn's legs? It is a mantra in her head. Why, why, why? Until it clicks. Until the composure filters in and wipes her expression clean save for her eyes.
Her eyes are scared.
"You're having a miscarriage."
Quinn simply looks at her. "Yes" she agrees. So calm it defies the gravity of the situation. "You want to tell that to Finn too?"
Then, expression flat, her stomach seizes and she slides helplessly onto the floor.
In the cold and wet, with blood between her legs, the ceiling oh so white and spinning. The tile presses hard against her shoulder blades. Or do her shoulder blades press hard against the tile? At any rate there is that pressure, firm, and the ceiling, whirling dizzily. Her head pounds pounds pounds in odd synchronicity with the pulse of blood at the apex of her thighs.
Rachel hits her knees against the tile as she drops to the blonde's side. The sound is loud, louder than Quinn's labored breath.
"Quinn." She says. "Quinn." At least twice, maybe a third time. Above fluorescent lights gleam.
How bright and stupid life is, Quinn thinks. Her eyes flicker from the ceiling to a face wreathed in anxiety.
"Rachel." There is red on the otherwise white bathroom floor, staining her otherwise white fingertips. She recalls, vividly, afternoons spent with her sister eating popsicles in the summer heat. Frannie always made a mess of her chin.
"I'm calling 911- they'll send an ambulance. Okay?"
"Okay." Her mouth is ash, hot and dry. Her head is light. Her stomach continues to clench; a cruel, unrelenting fist. The floor smells like urine and vomit. Rachel, like artificial grape.
"You're going to be fine, Quinn. They'll be here soon."
"Alright." She says it to appease the brunette more than anything else. There is a desperation to her voice that goes beyond her normal melodrama, a genuine concern outside of her own self interest. It is strangely endearing.
"Quinn, you have to stay awake."
"Yeah." A tiny smile spreads her lips thin. They are dry and crack painfully with the gesture, but other parts of her hurt more so it is not so bad.
"I'm serious. I need you to keep your eyes open. Please."
Quinn twists so her cheek is pushed against the tile. It is cold. Like the air between her legs, or the hollow pit in her stomach. The place where her baby used to live. "I know, Rachel," she says, feeling very much like there is something pressing her down onto the floor. Maybe it is the hand of god. Something omnipotent. Something Quinn cannot fight, no matter how hard she might try. "I'm just tired."
The singer begins to cry. Quietly, definitively. "I'm sorry" she says. "I am so sorry."
The words are not for this moment. They are large and all encompassing. Quinn cannot bring herself to dwell on their meaning.
It is quiet as Rachel begins to relay information to the dispatcher. The words she speaks are laced with urgency in tone and seriousness in content: blood, pregnancy, three months, ambulance.
Miscarriage.
Quinn closes her eyes in an attempt to shut her ears. It is as close to peace as she can get, stretched thin and ragged out on the rancid floor of the school bathroom, her stomach revolting against the rest of her body. Though even that does not last long. A hand falls on her shoulder, a five fingered star digging softly and insistently into her cardigan. It is Rachel of course, staring down at her. Open, she mouths. The blonde finds herself doing her best to obey. It is a wearisome battle. When she slips there is that small shake of her shoulder and she looks again into brown eyes.
"Stay with me."
You are the only thing that makes sense to me right now, she thinks at the brunette. Yes. She gives another little smile she can't make last.
Her body is heavy. She does not move her arms, or her legs slick with blood. They lay as felled things; slumbering, archaic logs in a deserted wood. Distantly she can picture the moss, the total serenity. Even a lone bird comes to mind, it's call echoing faintly through the trees, each pitch as though from further and deeper in the forest. Her thoughts slow.
"Is this real life?"
Rachel's phone rests on the ground. The owner sits beside it, her legs folded sideways beneath her. In her skirt and argyle sweater she is the picture of a school girl in silent repose. That the normally verbose brunette can manage such a state almost gives Quinn cause to laugh. Still she lets her head rest in the smaller girl's lap without complaint.
A single hand smooths over her hair, each finger gliding as a thin ship through golden waves. "Yes."
Quinn's eyes narrow in pleasure under her touch. Subconsciously she slumps into the brunette as though she means to press herself upon her warmth. She cannot remember the last time her mother stroked her hair in such fashion, yet she distinctly recalls the comfort of it.
"Did I lose my baby?"
She does not mean for it to be a question. She does not mean to say anything at all. It escapes her mouth and this is how it escapes her mouth, as if with a will of it's own.
Stupid.
Rachel's hand hitches. Quinn can feel the fingers trembling against the crown of her head. This is the world's smallest piano playing sad songs for you. That is what Frannie would say if she were here.
Or maybe not, given the circumstances.
Rachel's other hand rises up to rub at her face, the wet eyes and jaw. "I'm not a doctor, Quinn," she says. "I can't say for sure. But-" her voice is a very tiny thing "Yes. I think so."
It is silent. Tranquil even. Yet there is Rachel with her lip, now white, pinched between her teeth. Her fingers, resting lightly upon Quinn's skull, are the most painful anchor to reality the blonde has ever known.
In the silence Quinn reflects on her AP Biology class and what she knows from her readings on pregnancy.
At six weeks a baby's heartbeat will be visible on an ultrasound. By seven weeks it will have eyelids. At eight weeks it will be able to move. At ten weeks it will have ten perfect fingernails. At fifteen weeks it will be able to make facial expressions.
It will be able to smile.
It takes nine months to have a baby. It is unfair god took away Quinn's chance at three. Her child will never breathe on it's own let alone live a life separate from it's mother.
This realization hurts Quinn more than her stomach.
Beginning, so it is short. Thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.