It's amazing, the things you think about right before you die.
Kurt fidgeted in his hospital bed. He had just woken up, and it looked to be the middle of the night. His hospital room was drab and boring: white walls, white bed sheets, white machinery. He glared down at the IV in his arm; what wouldn't he do to just paint the walls? Kurt had asked Rachel so many times to please hang some cloth or something up so he could at least pretend he was in his beautifully self-designed New York apartment.
Rachel. He had just realized she was still here, holding his hand. Sprawled in the chair beside his bed, she looked twenty years older than she did awake. Was she really only 35? Finn and the kids had been taking their toll as of late so he was glad, if anything, that she was able to get some rest in the hospital with him.
He thought of yesterday (or was it the day before? He didn't know how long he had slept), when all of the people he cared about were around him. His dad, Carole, Finn, Rachel, Sam, Mercedes, Santana, Brittany? They had all been there, just to say hi. To see how he was doing. He could really just die happy knowing that even without him, everything would be fine. The adoption papers for Santana and Brittany's second child would go through, Finn and Rachel's daughter would terrorize her baby twin brothers, and everything would go along the same. He could just give in to the cancer, like this, happy…..
"No." He thought. "No, it's not quite as easy as that." He thought of all the crazy things he had been thinking about the past few nights; the people he had done wrong, the things he wanted more than anything to change.
Reaching for the stack of old yearbooks, he spent the rest of the night going through all of them. Remembering his dreams, his enemies, his friends.
He got to his senior yearbook just before dawn. He didn't even bother looking through every page, but instead skipped to the very dog-eared section that was the class of 2013. The then-Juniors. He scanned the first page, waiting for the familiar jolt of regret in his stomach. Acosta, Allison. Aguirre, Kelly. And there he was: Anderson, Blaine. Kurt looked at Blaine's face: the triangular eyebrows, the wide bright smile. You could even see a bit of Blaine's bow tie on the bottom edge of the picture. Kurt smiled at all the hearts he had drawn around Blaine's name and reached out an index finger to trace Blaine's face.
"Time to check your vital signs, dear!" said a way-too-cheery hospital nurse. Rachel woke with a start, as Kurt was subjected to needles and thermometers.
"How ya feelin', Kurtie?" Rachel said, squeezing his hand.
"Peachy." Said Kurt, rolling his eyes.
"What time is- oh my god, Kurt, I have to go! I need to feed my kids, I shouldn't have slept so long, Finn doesn't even know how to change a diaper-"
"I understand!" said Kurt, giggling. "Could you just bring the phone book over here before you leave? I want to call a few people."
She did so and ran off, already glued to her phone. The nurse finally finished and Kurt was left alone, with his memories and a phone book.
It was time to make a few things right.