If this fic doesn't make sense quite yet, hang in there with me! I promise it will all come together over time. :) Enjoy! And many thanks to LunaSolTierra for the prompt suggestion!

"Oh my God!"

"Not again!"

Those were the last things she heard before slipping into unconsciousness for the third time in the semester. She didn't know why these fainting spells were occurring. The first time it happened, she thought it was from the heat of an unusually warm post-summer day. The second time, she wrote it off from a dissatisfying lunch. But this time she had no excuse or explanation. When she finally came to, her sense of hearing gradually returned to her. She waited for its full return before opening her eyes.

"Mr. Schue, if I may," she heard her longtime rival piped up. "I understand that Mercedes is captain of our glee club, but if these…episodes keep happening how are we supposed to be given confidence when our leader can't even make it through rehearsals?"

"Lay off, Rachel," warned Mercedes' closest friend, Kurt Hummel.

As Mercedes' cracked her eyes open, she heard their teacher, Mr. Schuester, say, "Kurt's right, Rachel—as much as I understand where you're coming from, Mercedes will be alright." His eyes then went to his leading lady and relief subtly overcame him. "You need to go see the nurse, Mercedes."

She blinked slowly a few times and nodded her head; as she made to sit up, she felt a pair of capable hands grip the back of her arms and help her to her feet. She looked over her shoulder and cast a grateful smile, "Thanks, Joe."

"No problem," he replied, giving her a smile in return.

"Get well soon, Mercedes," she heard Kurt quietly plea behind her.

Joe escorted her from the auditorium to the nurse's office. The nurse had become familiar with Mercedes by now and offered to call her mom before even asking what had happened.

"Just lie here and rest, sweetheart," droned the elder woman.

Mercedes obeyed, seeing as she didn't really have any other options. She stared at the ceiling and sighed, wondering how she was going to maintain her 4.2 GPA if she kept having to go home. And as irritating as Rachel was, she had a point—she couldn't be much of a leader to the glee club if she was passing out halfway through rehearsals. Sectionals was coming up, along with the fall production of Chicago and Mercedes had the role she wanted—Matron Mama Morton. She didn't want to give up her solo number; her lines of narrating events in the production or even her duet with Rachel who bitterly landed the role of Velma Kelly, while Mercedes' dear friend, Tina Cohen-Chang was given the coveted Roxie Hart role.

Performing was important to Mercedes. She had worked hard the previous three years in high school, and this year was especially important to her. On top of it being her senior year, she had plans of applying to four schools around the country: UCLA, NYU, Ohio State, and Morris Brown, all the while hoping to obtain scholarships for music. Singing—making music, had been a dream of hers ever since she joined her church's choir at the age of 8. Now she was lying on this cold, uncomfortable vinyl and tissue-covered bed, wondering what was going on with her and if it was going to jeopardize her future in the long run.

"Okay, sweetheart," the nurse spoke in her monotonous nasal voice, interrupting Mercedes' thoughts. "I spoke to your mother—she's on her way to come get you."

"Thank you," Mercedes replied in a hoarse voice.

The nurse wandered away again and Mercedes shut her eyes, saying a silent prayer that she would be okay; come hell or high water, she was going to graduate at the top of her class and go on to make a career out of her passion.

His breaths were hard and heavy. His bent arms swung with each long stride he took. It was the first time in a long time he felt confident he could pick up on his old routine of jogging around the neighborhood. He slowed down as he reached the front yard of his little Lima cottage, cutting across the lawn to get to the front door. He cocked his head from side to side, stretching the muscles and performed a few jumping jacks before reaching to the strap on his thick bicep to shut off his iPod.

"Hey Sam!"

The blond-headed male looked up and saw his next door neighbor, Quinn Fabray tipping a watering can over her rose bush while waving at him with her free hand. Sam smiled and waved back, "Hi Quinn."

"Good to see you out and about again. How are you feeling?"

"Never better, thanks." He huffed with one nod, still trying to catch his breath. He reached in the pocket of his jogging shorts and pulled out his key to let himself in. With a vague glance about the white and rustic gold motif of his home, he made his way up the stairs to shower. As he stood under the hot rushing water, his mind flashed back to what his life looked like almost two years ago.

He couldn't ignore his headaches anymore. They evolved into frequent migraines and one day, he collapsed to the floor, seizing violently by the dinner table of his parents' home. His longtime girlfriend rushed to call 9-1-1 and his younger siblings went into a panic along with his mother. An ambulance arrived and rushed him to the hospital, taking him directly to the emergency room. To the shock of him and his loved ones, through several tests and scans it was discovered that he cancerous tumor growing on his head. The doctors informed him that it was treatable and could be safely removed, given that he go through some chemotherapy.

His girlfriend feared for the treatment, as did Sam but the odds for survival would be in his favor if he were to endure it, and so he did.

The decline in his health was stressing out his loved ones; they didn't say it to him directly, but he knew. At this point, he wanted to give up. He was sick of making them feel anguished and worried. He was sick of feeling tired and useless all the time. He hated that his hair had been falling out so much that he ended up having it all shaved. He hated that everyone around him was always pretending to be okay when there was evidence to the contrary dressed all over their face. His mother and father spoke quietly about his conditions on nights when they stayed with him in the hospital and assumed him to be sleeping. He heard them comment on how unfair it was for their son to be going through such an ordeal at 20. They were so proud of him and his best buddy, Puck pursuing their own comic book company immediately after high school; to see it possibly end soon—for Sam at least—was devastating for them, and he felt no different on the matter. He missed hanging out with his friends and worried the business was going to fail under his absence. Puck and he had worked hard throughout high school, creating, developing and publishing their own independent comics, and it only paid off significantly once they graduated and decided to sell one superhero's story to Marvel.

After months of chemo, being in and out of the hospital, he was finally cleared for the removal of his tumor which led to a long road of recovery. He made a steady incline on his health and at age 22, he was in complete remission. In addition to recovering from the surgery, he spent the next year, building his strength back up, and making plans to start a family with his girlfriend.

He was young, healthy now but his two-plus years of dealing with cancer and a tumor made his hopes of having a family amplify. He wanted to get married one day but his girlfriend was happy with them being the way they were, and was okay with having a child out of wedlock. Sam quieted on his hopes of marrying her anytime soon but he remained verbal on his desire for children. They began trying as soon as possible, but the pregnancy test results were either negative or a false positive.

Sam thought about this, and the tension it caused between his girlfriend and him, as he stepped out of the shower and dried off. They had a number of arguments—both about having a baby as well as minor, insignificant things. She had gone to the doctors several times to find out possible diagnoses to why she couldn't conceive, but no official explanation was offered to her. All they were left with were that some eggs are not very receptive to sperm; from there they were given suggestions of adoption and surrogacy. His girlfriend feebly proposed a surrogate to carry their child and while he didn't catch her lack of enthusiasm over the suggestion, he was more than willing to go through the process of surrogacy.

"You home, Sam?" He heard from downstairs, followed by the closing of the front door.

Sam was fastening his belt as he replied, "Yeah, up here."

"Okay. I'm gonna freshen up before they get here," his girlfriend, Janelle replied, coming up the stairs.

He pulled a blue fitted v-neck over his head and went back to the bathroom; for a moment his green hues gazed at his reflection in the mirror. He was glad his hair grew fast; most of it had grown back, save the three-inch scar running from the hallow of his right ear towards the middle of his head.

"Hey you," he heard at his left.

"Hey," Sam smiled softly and stepped over to peck her lips. She was a petite blonde with blue-green eyes and a faint sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks. They met each other in high school and carried on an interesting relationship over the past four years—breaking up and getting back together twice before Sam and Puck received a generous payment for their comic. Sam's persistence to have a family nearly drove them to a third, and possibly final break-up but their recent fixation, more so Sam's, on surrogacy kept them together.

"What time's the first girl coming over?" asked Janelle.

"Noon. We're only interviewing three people."

"I know."

He looked at her but she wasn't looking at him. Her back was turned as she changed out of her chef's uniform and shimmied into a form-fitting dress. Sam's brows rose at her choice of outfit.

Janelle turned around and quickly picked up on his expression, "What?"

"Nothing, just…well we're meeting people to potentially carry our kid."

"So?"

"So…don't you think we should try to make a good impression?" he asked with a hesitant smile.

Janelle found nothing humorous in his criticism of her outfit. "Sam there's nothing wrong with what I have on. Everything's covered and I'm comfortable. If they don't like how I dress then they're not the one to carry our kid and we move on to the next one."

He watched her storm out of the room, trailing a stream of fury with her. Sighing, he spritzed a light amount of Axe across his chest and followed after, doing his best to push aside her irritation. Today, he was going to meet the woman who was going to give him the child he craved.

Please leave reviews! What do you think so far? I know exactly where this story is going, so of course there is more to come! Let me know if you're intrigued for more or not. Apologies for any spelling/grammar errors.