The low volume of the TV set in the corner was practically screaming at Blaine as he sat in the near-silent waiting room. The secretary was filing her nails with a focused scowl, and Blaine was mentally debating with himself as to whether he should ask about the wait yet again.

He had been sitting there for nearly twenty minutes, left with his thoughts and nothing to distract him. At night, there was always the television or the uneven surface of his ceiling where images were hidden away for the sleeping mind - a clown here, a dog there. During the day, there was work. Always work. Nothing but work. A new case that needed to be won, new research that needed to be found, new paperwork that need to be filled out.

But now?

There was nothing. The TV in the corner was stuck on an infomercial about a fitness program that he didn't need. All the magazines were outdated and full of gossip about celebrities he didn't care about. He had left his iPod on the counter that morning before he left, too flustered to remember a jacket even in the chilly winter weather.

There was nothing to distract him from the one thing that had tried and tried to worm it's way into his thought process, and this time, he couldn't just push it away like it was nothing. He had to face up to it eventually. He knew that. He was just delaying the inevitable.

He had cancer.

Breast cancer, to be more specific. Blaine couldn't help but laugh humorlessly at that. The gay kid would end up with breast cancer, wouldn't he? If only his old tormentors could see him now. He idly wondered if they would feel bad for what they did. For making every day a nightmare. Would they have treated him so badly if they had known he would die such a young death?

And that's the other thing Blaine refused to think about. Death. To be honest, he didn't want to die. At least not yet. There were so many things he still had to do. Get married. Adopt some kids. Go skydiving. Eat octopus. Learn all the words to a rap song. The Gallon Challenge.

He couldn't do any of those things bald and weak and puking his guts up every five seconds.

He couldn't do any of those things dead.

Blaine's doctor had reassured him that everything would be fine. The tumor was too large to surgically remove at the moment, but a few rounds of chemotherapy would shrink it a bit. It would then be removed along with the breast tissue on the right side of his chest. He didn't want to have to do this again. And then everything would be okay.

He would be fine.

He wouldn't be dead.

Blaine was finding all of that too good to be true.

"Blaine Anderson?" a lyrical voice called out. Blaine looked up to the doorway - the one he had mentally debated running out of multiple times, the one that had taken him two and a half minutes to open - to find a man standing there. He was wearing pink scrubs and no shoes, a bright clipboard rested in his hands. His smile was wide and comforting, and he was staring straight at Blaine with questioning eyes.

As he stood up and gave the nurse a small, nervous smile of his own, Blaine tried to remember how to breathe. In and out. In and out.

"It says it's your first time," the nurse said softly, closing the door after Blaine and leading him down the hall a bit. He tapped the clipboard lightly with a long, delicate finger and arched an eyebrow in Blaine's direction.

He took a moment to register that the nurse was actually talking and, more specifically, that he was actually talking to him. Blaine closed his eyes and shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts. "I'm sorry?" he asked gently as the nurse pushed open yet another heavy white door and ushered him inside.

The room was large and bright, floor to ceiling windows covering the wall to his right. Counters full of food and refreshments, along with large cabinets storing blankets and pillows separated the room into two. Dozens of chairs lined the walls, patients connected to all sorts of beeping machines sat in every other one. The fluorescent ceiling lights seemed dangerously bright as the nurse led Blaine over to a chair in the far corner.

"It's your first time receiving chemotherapy, correct?" the nurse asked Blaine once more.

Blaine hesitated a moment before nodding just slightly. "Yeah," he mumbled as the nurse pointed to the plush, peach-colored chair in front of him. He gulped and sank into the seat slowly. "It's… It's my first time."

"Well then," the nurse stated clearly, a smile on his lips as he typed quickly at the computer log-in screen. He turned to Blaine and grinned down at him before extending a hand in greeting. "I'm Kurt, your nurse for this evening."

Blaine paused for a second, staring at the hand in front of him intently. It was pale and thin - the fingers long and the skin taut. He took it in his own hand, giving it a shake that was far less firm than normal. When his gaze followed up the arm and into the nurse's - Kurt's - eyes, Blaine was slightly shocked at the kindness there (Also, what the hell color was that? Were eyes supposed to be that mesmerizing?). It wasn't like he had expected to be tortured during his chemo treatment. He just hadn't expected to look around and see smile after smile on both the nurses' and the patients' faces. There were no elderly bald women hunched over in their chairs, coughing up blood and petting at their wrinkles. There were no men in smelly bath robes attached to oxygen tanks and getting blood transfusions.

Aside from the occasional bald head, everyone looked rather… normal. Some of the patients looked happy even. Blaine watched the woman a few seats down from him. A man he assumed was her husband sat in the chair next to her. He seemed to be in the middle of telling her a story as he held her hand tightly and talked a mile a minute. The woman was laughing hard, bringing up a hand to make sure the scarf tied around her head was still on right. The man in the plush chair to Blaine's left had his head buried in a book as the younger man Blaine assumed was his son tapped away at an iPod.

A small cough brought Blaine's attention back to the man in front of him. He blushed brightly before releasing Kurt's hand, staring at his lap in embarrassment as he realized he had been holding his hand the entire time he had been looking around (it's not his fault they were so soft). "Sorry," Blaine mumbled quietly. He heard Kurt chuckle softly and step away, back towards the computer with his own muttered, "It's fine."

Blaine gnawed on his lower lip nervously as he twisted his hands in his lap.

"So Blaine," Kurt began, making him glance back up from his lap, "it says your tumor's in your breast?"

"Uh," he stammered, blushing once more and looking away, "yeah. Breast cancer." No matter how stupid it may have seemed, Blaine was somewhat embarrassed to say he had breast cancer. He didn't have breasts. Whether he was gay or not, the male-human need to be seen as masculine and more manly than everyone else in the room was almost constantly present, and saying you had breast cancer certainly lowered your masculinity. Pink had never really been his color.

Kurt nodded absently and typed at his computer some more, the keys clicking loudly with each tap. Blaine squirmed in his seat and clenched his jaw, wondering what he could possibly be typing. He knew there wasn't any wrong answer to Kurt's question, but he still felt like the man was judging him, like his answers needed to be perfect and correct or else he'd fail and not even be allowed to receive the chemotherapy. There was an awkward pause after Kurt stopped typing, and Blaine could feel his gaze on the side of his face. "Do you want to talk about it?" Kurt asked after a moment.

Blaine was startled. "I'm sorry?" he asked, eyebrows raised in question.

Kurt turned away from his computer so he was fully facing the scared little man sitting in the chair before him. "Your diagnosis?" he inquired with a comforting smile. "Some people like to talk about it their first time in here. One woman with ovarian cancer went into full detail of her detection -" Kurt visibly shuddered as Blaine let out a small, almost silent chuckle. "Never getting that out of my head, that's for sure."

"Um…" Blaine began with a shake of his head. How exactly would he start this?

Kurt quickly shook his own head, a worried look on his face. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he reassured quickly, placing a firm hand on Blaine's shoulder. His eyes were clouded with concern, making them an almost gray color and Blaine found himself entranced once more.

"No," he said after a moment, turning his gaze back to the hands in his lap. "No, it's fine." Blaine gave him a small smile and nod as Kurt took his hand off his shoulder, retracting the warmth and comfort that had spread through his body with the touch, as well. He felt suddenly empty as Kurt went back to the computer, glancing back at Blaine every few seconds as he waited for him to begin. "Uh," he stuttered, mentally cursing himself for his fabulous vocabulary of the morning, "I first found the lump… in the shower." Blaine glanced up from his lap at that to see Kurt's reaction, hoping he wouldn't notice his reddening cheeks. He didn't usually tell attractive men he just met about his time in the shower, but Kurt just looked at him from over his shoulder and grinned, giving him an encouraging nod to keep going.

Taking a deep breath, Blaine stared intently at his hands before closing his eyes and recalling the morning a few days previous.

tbc

Don't own anything. :)

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