Disclaimer can be found on author's personal page.
Title: I Count the Days and Miles
Summary: "She's so sick, Noah. We don't want to give up hope, but you're our – her – last chance."
A/N: Oh, dear… I have officially become a GLEEtard. It was bound to happen, folks.
Just a warning – this is kind of an angst-ridden, sobfest. It's also what happens when I listen to a cocktail of "Beth," sung by Mark Salling, "Everything We Had," by The Academy Is…, "Highway 20 Ride," by Zac Brown Band (from which I mooched the title), "More Time," by Needtobreathe (the lyrics at the end), and "My Little Girl," by Tim McGraw. Give or take a few weepy songs.
A/N2: Let it be known that I am a professional writing major… I am not pre-med, nor are any of my roommates… Any medical jargon in this story is as close to legitimate as possible. Please don't leave me a message telling me about my medical knowledge fail – I am already aware.
xxXxx
He has just rolled into bed after a particularly brutal day concerning a murder investigation when his phone rings. He contemplates letting the call go to voicemail and checking it after he had a few hours of REM sleep under his belt, but a nagging voice in the back of his mind tells him that if he doesn't answer, and it's Quinn, or Sarah, in Boston working on her law degree, or even (God forbid), his mother, he'd be in deep shit for days.
Not raising his head from the pillow, he throws his hand out to the small table next to the bed where his cell is vibrating angrily, the pre-programmed ring shrill and annoying. He grumbles and turns enough that his voice isn't muffled as he answers with a gruff, "Hello?"
"Noah Puckerman?" The woman's voice is hesitant, and he wants to scream. He's answered the damn phone for a fuckin' telemarketer. He really needs to ask one of the guys at work how to block solicitors' numbers.
"Speaking," he growls, trying not to bite the poor woman's head off just yet. He'll at least let her get out her spiel before he shuts her down. Or not. "Look, lady, I don't know what you're selling, but I'm not interested."
"I am not selling anything, Mr. Puck-Noah. I don't know if you even remember me; hell, it's been almost sixteen years." Her voice loses its hesitant quality as she picks up speed. "In fact, the last time I saw you, you were sixteen yourself, standing in the hospital with a woe-is-me look on your face, so I would appreciate it if you would drop the attitude for five minutes and listen to what I have to say, because it's important and-" her breath hitches and he sits straight up at the sound of muffled sobs. He hears the phone being handed off and strains to hear what's going on at the other end.
"Puck?" His stomach all of a sudden decides to get real cozy with his feet and plummets. Quinn sounds so defeated, so heartbroken, that it physically hurts him to breathe just hearing her.
"Quinn, what's up? Who was that?" His mind is racing. He tries to place the voice – it almost sounds like Rachel. A really desperate, dramatic, messed-up Rachel. Oh, God. "Is it Finn? Did something happen? Is anyone hurt?"
There's a watery laugh from the other end and he hears Quinn repeat his words, sounding far off, like she's holding the phone away from her mouth. "Finn thinks it's funny that you thought of him," she says, speaking into the phone again, and he feels more than a little annoyed.
"Seriously, Quinn, I just got off a double, I'm exhausted, I can't feel my feet, and if you called me just to freak me out, I will read you your rights and put you in a holding cell for a night. Cut the bullshit. What is going on?"
For a moment, all he can hear is the steady breathing of the girl he would have given the world to, and then Quinn sighs. It's laced with tears and sadness, and his stomach does that swoopy thing again that he hates.
"It's Beth. She's so sick, Noah. We don't want to give up hope, but you're our – her – last chance." Ice floods his veins and her breath hitches as she began to cry. "You need to come to New York. Please."
He's up and out of bed his brain registers what his feet are doing. "I'll be there in a few hours." He hangs up before she can say anything else and starts throwing clothes into a bag. His eyes catch on a baby food jar on the dresser, filled with guitar picks. He picks it up slowly, weighing it in his hand. There are fifteen picks in the jar – one for every year he hadn't been able to give his daughter a real birthday present. He had hoped to give them to her someday, on the off-chance that she had ever wanted to meet her father.
Quinn's words come echoing back, filling his apartment with dread and self-loathing.
"She's so sick… Last chance…Give up hope…"
For the first time in almost sixteen years, ever since he came home without his baby girl, Noah Puckerman sits on the edge of his bed and weeps.
xxXxx
Ten hours, fifteen cups of coffee, and three guilty cigarettes later, Noah walks into JFK with his eyes peeled. He's jittery from caffeine and lack of sleep, not to mention the combined fear of seeing his daughter for the first time and not knowing how he's going to help. The feeling of helplessness really does nothing but make him all-out angry as fuck. He spots Finn first and almost starts laughing like a psychopath in the middle of the airport. Even at 31, Finn's still gangly, and wonderfully oblivious. Noah almost wants to run and hug him, the giant port in the storm, and then he sees Quinn.
Quinn, with her hair long and blonde around her shoulders, her eyes red and puffy from crying, and her stomach swollen with child.
He decides to ignore the jolt that goes through him upon seeing her pregnant (it's not like he hadn't known) and goes to Finn first, dropping his bag and encasing his childhood friend in a back-slapping, enthusiastic, "It's been way too long, man," kind of hug. He catches an armful of Rachel next (where the hell did she come from?) and disregards the way she tries to catch his eye to make sure he's not collapsing under the stress of a situation about which he doesn't know shit.
Finally, he pulls himself together and turns to Quinn. To him, she's barely changed since graduation – still strong and tough and a little bit scared. She offers him a weak smile, he holds his arms open, and she's right there, hugging him like he always wished she would in high school, before he had stopped being such a dick and started being responsible for his dumbass self.
Quinn kisses his cheek when they finally pull apart, and he has to swallow the lump in his throat to ask the question that's been running laps in his mind since he got on the plane.
"What's wrong with Beth?"
xxXxx
As it turns out, they don't want to tell him in the airport (go figure), so he has to wait until they can get over to the hospital before he gets any news, which only fuels the frustration rushing around in his blood. He has to ride in the back with Quinn, since Rachel's driving and Finn can't fold his legs enough to not sit shotgun. It's awkward for all of five seconds until he can't stand it anymore and has to ask:
"So, how's Dick?"
The snort from Finn makes the death glare from Quinn totally worth it. She huffs and stares out her window, one hand coming to rest on her inflated stomach. "Nick is fine. He stayed in Simi Valley with Sophie and Cara."
Noah tries very hard not to roll his eyes at this statement, and he catches Rachel watching him in the rearview mirror. Barely a year after college graduation, Quinn's marriage to Nicholas Russell had been quick and the subject of many scandal theories among the glee club alum. Kurt had helpfully done the math and figured out that the couple's oldest daughter, Sophie, had been born a little too quickly to be kosher. Seven years later, it still makes Noah angry thinking about it – Quinn had had no problem marrying Nick when he had knocked her up, but Noah was never good enough.
"You had the maturity of a chimpanzee," Mercedes had told him at the wedding after Mike and Finn had wrestled his drunk ass into a car before he made a spectacle. "This guy will be good for Quinn. You were never anything but trouble."
Sitting in the back of Rachel Berry-Hudson's car, on the way to New York hospital where his baby is hurting, looking at Quinn and another man's baby growing inside of her, Noah kind of has to agree with Mercedes.
He had been pretty messed up.
They leave Noah's bag in the car and head up to the third floor where Shelby Corcoran meets them at the elevator. Suddenly it all clicks: why he thought she had sounded like Rachel on the phone, why Rachel and Finn are there in the first place, and Noah realizes that Shelby must have wrangled his number from Quinn, because out of everyone, she's the most happy to see him. Noah feels a weight press down on his shoulders when he sees the tissues crumpled in her hand. He looks up into her green eyes and sees the same look that he saw when Sarah had her appendix taken out and his mother didn't leave the hospital – she's terrified for her child.
"Okay, Shelby," he says. "Fill me in."
xxXxx
Beth's kidneys are failing.
Because Quinn had her so young, and because she was a few weeks early, she's always had a weak immune system. Apparently, she gets sick easier than most kids, and once she's sick, it's for a while. Shelby tears up when she tells how Beth caught pneumonia and then ended up in the hospital with renal failure. The stress from the pneumonia had been too much on her system, and when everything went to hell in a hand-basket, Beth's kidneys had front row seats.
Noah can't keep himself from tearing up when Quinn starts crying into Finn's shoulder. She blames herself for this whole thing, obviously. Guilt eats away at Noah like a parasite – he can't help but think "If I hadn't gotten her pregnant…" There's no point playing the blame game, because he would win every single time.
They're all sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room because Beth's asleep. Noah hasn't seen her in almost sixteen years; he figures a few more hours won't kill him. His leg still bounces with nervous energy, even more so when Shelby and Quinn start holding hands, sharing a box of Kleenex. There's one little detail that keeps bothering him, and that's his role in all this. He's starting to suspect that he might know, but no one's flat out told him, and that bothers him worse than all the crying.
He stands and everyone looks at him, and for a moment, he wants to bolt. He puts on his "I'm a cop, bitch," face and looks straight at Shelby.
"What do I need to do?"
Shelby sniffs and blinks at him through tear-hazy eyes. "You mean… Quinn hasn't filled you in?"
Noah deliberately doesn't look at Quinn at this, even though he's screaming on the inside. The feeling that he was Quinn's last choice is growing stronger. For now, he just shakes his head and keeps looking at Shelby. She meets him dead on, and her voice doesn't even waver when she says:
"We need you to get tested, to see if you're a match for Beth. I've tried, Rachel's tried, Finn's tried… Even Finn's step-brother…" Noah glances at Finn who has the decency to look ashamed. Another reason for Noah to be angry – Kurt fucking Hummel had been told about Beth's condition before anyone had even thought to give Noah a call. He tries to focus back on Shelby through the red haze creeping into his vision.
"Quinn would have been tested, but she's pregnant, so she couldn't donate even if she was a match. The doctors have told us that, provided we find a donor quickly, there are excellent chances that Beth could be saved."
"What exactly are 'excellent chances'?" Noah asks.
Shelby flinches at the steel in his voice. "She'd have a better chance at life. What more of a reason do you need?"
"You're right. I don't." Noah whips off his jacket, tossing it to Finn before he rolls up his sleeves. "Point me in the right direction, people."
xxXxx
He's a match. It takes three days for his results to come back, and when they do, Noah cries. Full out, like a baby, in front of Finn and Kurt, who's come by to check on Beth, whom he swears is a "fashion ingénue," whatever the hell that means. He's in Finn and Rachel's apartment, sobbing on the couch, thanking God in every language he can think of. It's when he starts muttering in Hebrew that Kurt sighs, pulls Noah up off the couch, shoves him into his jacket, and pushes him towards the door. "You've been avoiding the hospital until the results came back – don't you think it's about time you met your daughter?"
At that moment, Noah understands why everyone likes Kurt so much – he plays the bullshit card so well, he knows when to call others out on their own. He lets Finn drive him to the hospital. The elevator ride up to the third floor is the longest he's ever taken in his life. He walks past Quinn, steered largely by Kurt as his elbow, frog-marching him to Beth's room. Noah's fingers are clenched around the baby food jar in his jacket pocket – if he doesn't hold onto something, his hands will shake and he'll feel like a complete wuss. They stop in front of Beth's door, and then he's inside, shutting the door gently behind him.
Beth's sitting up in her bed, her long, dark hair in a braid that comes over her shoulder. She has his eyes and his hair; she has Quinn's skin tone and bone structure. She's the perfect combination of the two of them and his throat aches. Shelby's sitting in a chair next to her bed, reading, but she closes her book and leaves when Noah steps further into the room. Beth smiles and its all Noah – he's reminded of Sarah, and desperately wants to tell his little sister how much her niece looks like her. Better yet, he wants to tell Beth how much she looks like her aunt. This would be so much easier if his mouth wasn't so dry and his tongue wasn't nailed to the roof of his mouth.
"Hi," she says.
"Hey, kid," he replies, and just like that, she's laughing at him and he's smiling harder than he has in years. Beth pats a spot on her bed and he sits, slipping his jacket off to put it on the chair as he goes.
"It's really lame that I'm just now meeting you, y'know?" she starts enthusiastically. "I'm in the glee club at my high school, and we had to find songs that had our names in it, and I sang 'Beth.' Quinn started crying when I told her, so kudos on not busting into tears."
Noah laughs. "I'm a manly man. I don't cry."
"Sure." Beth's fingers twine in her hair, and she stares at the ceiling. "So, apparently, you're going to give me a kidney?"
"That's the plan."
"Am I allowed to be straightforward, then?"
He wasn't expecting that. Noah watches her face carefully, wondering what she's going to ask. He's wondered about this moment for years, carefully pondered every possible answer. He doesn't want to disappoint her. He puts on his best brave face and smiles. "Shoot."
"Okay. Do you like avocados?"
The question catches him so off-guard that his answer is immediate.
"I love them."
"Me too! All my friends think I'm weird that I like avocados, and not just in guacamole, but whenever, but I'm like, 'No way, it's gotta be hereditary!' and Quinn had no idea what I was talking about. Thank God, I'm not a total freak!"
Beth sits up, wraps her arms around him, and he feels the tears creep their way up through his tear ducts. He had so badly wanted to hug her for years, and now that it's finally happening, he doesn't know that he'll be able to let go. Noah buries his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of his baby girl.
"You know, you don't have to be totally manly… I mean, this is a tear-worthy moment, right?" Beth's voice is strained and muffled into his chest, and he can feel the hot tears seep through his shirt. A single tear courses down his cheek and falls into her hair before he can stop it. Noah nods and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
"This is a very tear-worthy moment."
Beth pulls back, misty-eyed, and smiles up at him. "I promise not to tell if you won't."
Noah smirks. "Deal."
xxXxx
Before the doctors prep them for surgery, Noah asks to be taken to Beth's room.
She looks tiny in her bed, plugged in and IV'd up. He reaches over the railing on her bed, grasping her hand in his. She doesn't look at him – her eyes are already closed, like she's preparing to drift off to sleep (he refuses to think of any other possibility), and he doesn't want to disturb her. Grabbing a pen from Rachel's purse, he draws a quick heart on her hand, on the expanse of skin between her thumb and her index finger. Next to it, he writes "You + me = guacamole." He can see her iPod on the bed next to her, set to the playlist that he made yesterday while she worked on her homework. A little bit of what she likes, a little bit of his favorites, a few glee tunes from back in the day, and, of course, "Beth."
Between math and English, they had discussed music, movies, and what few books they had in common. Noah is surprised at how much Beth loves to read, and loves the passion in her voice when she talks about "The Count of Monte Cristo," her favorite.
"I just think that the Count's legit, you know? He does vengeance so well."
Noah's not ready to leave her just yet, but he has to be prepped for the operation. He has time to press a kiss to her forehead, and he thinks he sees her mouth quirk before Rachel's ushering him out of the room.
He's amazed that she's not a mom yet.
Noah called Sarah the day before and filled her in on everything. He didn't think he could talk to his mother… The crying alone that would have ensued just might have killed him. Sarah had taken it all very well – she only yelled at him about not calling her sooner for an hour instead of the three he had expected.
He briefly contemplates texting her before they wheel him into surgery, to tell her that he's going in, and that everything's going to be fine, but then Quinn takes his phone and he glares as they wheel him away.
Right before they put him under, Noah conjures up Beth's face, awake and smiling, in his mind. He remembers what she looked like as a baby, pink and wrinkly and perfect. He doesn't want to lose her again.
Lord, I know I haven't been to Temple in a while, but please. Please, please, please.
xxXxx
Coming out of the anesthesia is a bitch, and Noah tells the nurse who's checking on his vitals as much as he slowly wakes up. He's surprised to find Finn and Kurt waiting in his room, like Pinky and the Brain sentinels. For a wild moment, he thinks something's wrong with Beth, and then Finn smiles and Kurt's laughing at the panicked expression on his face and he knows she's fine.
"Can I see her?"
Finn shakes his head, leaning back in his chair, kicking his feet up onto Noah's bed. "They're still finishing up, but it looks like everything went really well. She'll be out for a while, but it looks good, so…" He trails off as Quinn walks in the room, looking like the guiltiest person on earth. It only takes a glance between Kurt and Finn before they're gone so fast Noah wonders if he imagined them being there in the first place.
Quinn takes Finn's abandoned chair, easing herself into it with simple grace. Noah watches her and she watches him, and for a moment, he's wondering if they're both not blinking, or if that's just him, and if it's the anesthesia making him feel this way.
"When are you flying back to Ohio?" Quinn asks quietly and his mind scrambles for an answer. He's got an idea, but it's not one that he wants to share with anyone – especially her – just yet.
"I don't know if I am…When are you going back to California?" Noah pulls out his best Arnold Schwarzenegger accent and draws a small smile from Quinn. However, not even quoting the entire saga of Terminator movies, word for word, can save him from her selective hearing.
"What do you mean you don't know if you are?"
He had hoped to avoid this particular conversation for a while. He picks at a loose thread on his hospital blanket, wondering if he should give her a half-truth or avoid the question altogether. He goes with his usual plan, since it's worked so well for him in the past.
"Should you have flown out here? I mean, you're just about ready to pop, right?"
She grimaces. "Charming, and no, I'm only in my second trimester. I've had two perfectly healthy girls… There's no reason this pregnancy shouldn't go as planned."
The stark, factual tone in her voice twists his gut in a million directions. "Wow. You've totally distanced yourself from the fact that Beth is your daughter… It's like she's not even yours." He doesn't say ours. That would imply that Quinn ever wanted anything with him, which he doubts. He sheepishly remembers the babysitting incident. What kind of an idiot would ever think that sexting with Santana while babysitting with Quinn was a good idea?
Oh, right…
"She was never mine, Noah. The only way I could reconcile myself with giving her up was by convincing myself that she was never really mine. She was always destined to be someone else's."
All the anger that he's felt for days rushes up in a red haze, making his vision blurry. He hopes he's not crying again, as it would really lose the pissed-off aura he's going for. "Maybe for you, but I wanted her. Every birthday, I'd separate myself from the world and wonder if she was happy. While you were off in your perfect marriage with your perfect asshole of a husband, I'd be missing her. You never let me be a father, Quinn. Do you remember Mercedes' graduation party? How you told me that you would never forgive me for taking away your first chance at motherhood? Well, I'll never forgive you for taking away my first chance at fatherhood. I bet you would have called everyone in the fuckin' glee club before you called me."
Her silence is every bit of confirmation he needs. Noah glares as hard as he can from the hospital bed, trying to get his message across and melt Quinn's brain at the same time.
"I will not let you ruin this for me." He takes a deep breath before the plunge. "I'm going to stay here. Maybe I'll even join the NYPD. I'll be a part of Beth's life, if Shelby will let me. I want to be better than my father." The last bit catches him off-guard and he has to avert his eyes to keep from sobbing like a small child. He hates to think that this entire ordeal has been simply because he didn't want to be like his bum father, but a small measure of it is exactly that.
When he has the strength to look up again, Quinn's studying him with something scarily similar to pride. "You grew up. Somewhere in between graduation and this moment, you stopped being Puck and started being Noah. I'm sorry I wasn't around to see it."
"We all have to lie in the beds we've made. Some are just less comfortable than others."
"That made little to no sense."
"Shut up, it totally did."
And just like that, they're okay again.
xxXxx
"Noah!" Beth crows from her bed as he comes in carrying a gift bag and a small tin of Rachel's sugar cookies, Beth's favorite. As it turns out, Shelby and Rachel have been in contact for a while, ever since Rachel came to New York for her Broadway career. It's weird to Noah that his daughter is Rachel's adopted sister, but he supposes that's par for the course in the way his life is going. He puts the gift bag and the tin down on the table beside her bed and perches next to her, avoiding jostling the bed too much. The doctors want to watch her for any signs of rejection, but they think it's going to be a pretty successful recovery, for which Noah is infinitely grateful.
Beth's eyeing the bag greedily. "You know, my birthday's not for another few weeks… Is this some new Jewish holiday that I don't know about?"
Noah laughs, running his thumb over the back of her hand where his heart is still visible. "Not quite, babe. I have to go back to Ohio to take care of some things, and I don't know if I'll be here for your birthday, so I wanted to give you your present early. But, before I do…" he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the baby food jar, the one with all her birthday guitar picks. He hands it to her, and Beth immediately unscrews the lid and dumps all fifteen picks onto the bed, sifting through to look at the different colors and textures.
"There's one for every year that I missed," he explains as she examines each one with infinite care.
"I'm taking bass lessons right now, but I think I'll save these. My birthday picks."
"I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you how sorry I am." His voice is gruff, but at least he's not crying. "I mean, hell, I named you. I was supposed to be around."
She looks up with tears in her eyes. "I know. It just…makes me sad to think that I was a mistake, or-"
"No." Noah cuts her off there, because she's breaking his heart. "Never think that I didn't want you, Beth. You weren't a mistake. You were, and always will be, my greatest act to date. We were sixteen and barely able to take care of ourselves, let alone perfect little you." He sighs, picking up a green Dunlop pick. "I always wanted to be a great dad for you, baby. I still do, as a matter of fact." He looks up to see hopeful eyes. "I think I'm going to see about transferring up here, see if they need any homicide detectives. Ohio's too damn boring."
Beth laughs a little at that, wiping her eyes on her blanket. "Maybe I'll even get to call you Dad?" she asks and Noah nods emphatically.
"Anytime you want, kiddo."
"Cool." Her attention's back on the gift bag and the cookie tin. "You better not be holding out on me with Rachel's cookies."
Noah laughs. "I wouldn't dream of it." He reaches for the tin and pries off the lid. "Now, you're not really supposed to have anything like this, but I figure the doctors took enough out of both of us that they owe us a good cookie."
"Agreed." Beth takes one and digs into the present he sets on her lap. It's an album of his sophomore year, of the year that she was growing in Quinn's belly, of the year they should have won Regionals. She shrieks with joy at Kurt's Cheerios uniform and laughs at the pictures of Noah and Finn in their football gear, saying that she had totally pegged Noah for the type.
He doesn't even worry about what she means by that.
I promised you the world again,
Everything within my hands;
All the riches one could dream,
They will come from me.
"The sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: wait and hope."
The Count of Monte Cristo.
xxXxx