Author's Note: This is inspired by something I once read in another fandom. Here's a start. Probably going to be a two or three-shot. :)
"Wheels?" Amber Riley hovered over me, looking concerned. Beside her, Mark Salling smirked and crossed his arms, much in the way he would if he were playing the character of Noah Puckerman. "You okay? You hit the wall again."
"How many fingers am I holding up?" added Mark, flipping me the bird.
"Hilarious, Mark," I mumbled, rubbing my head. How did I hit the wall anyway? I couldn't even remember coming to the set that day. Apparently, we were about to shoot an episode. I was even in costume as Artie – suspenders, gloves, button-up shirt, and of course, his wheelchair.
"Who's Mark?" asked Mark, deadpan.
"Artie, dude?" Cory lumbered over, looking freakishly tall from where I was sitting. "You look confused. Did you hit your head just now?"
"Why are you calling me – oh!" It dawned on me that we must be rehearsing. Mark, Amber, and Cory were trying to continue as though I hadn't just screwed everything up. But I couldn't go on. I didn't know what I was supposed to say next. I wasn't even sure what episode we were doing. "Sorry… I'm completely lost. Line, please?"
"Line?" Jenna joined us. "Artie, this is glee club, not theatre." She grinned, as though I were playing some kind of clever joke. "Very funny. Maybe you should audition! I think you could be an actor." She gave me an adoring smile, the kind of smile that she would give me when we were in character as Tina and Artie.
"Stop calling me Artie." I was getting weirded-out now. "You're worse than the fans. Nobody ever calls me Kevin anymore. Seriously, we just have to start the scene all over. I screwed it up, I know. Could we just take five?" I had to get out of there. "Just let me just go to the dressing room and get my script…"
I meant to stand up and head to the dressing room, but it didn't go as planned. Instead, I lunged forward in my wheelchair and would have fallen out completely if Cory hadn't reacted so quickly. My legs refused to move. It was like my feet were glued to the footrests of my chair. Even stranger was the fact that they seemed numb.
Oh.
"I-I-I'm… paralyzed!" I screeched.
"You forgot about being paralyzed?" Cory settled me back in the chair as I reeled from my sudden discovery. The rest of the cast had gathered around me at some point, all of them looking seriously disturbed. Cory exchanged a troubled glance with Matthew Morrison.
"Should we take you to the nurse, Artie?" Without waiting, Matt headed over to his desk, which was full of scripts and miniature candy bars. But much to my surprise, he opened the drawer to reveal actual nurse passes. It was then that I realized the prop guys weren't just working overtime.
I was Artie Abrams. And As Matt handed me the nurse pass, I realized that this was not Matthew Morrison the actor. This was Will Schuester, the teacher. Somehow – I had no idea how – Glee was real. Glee was real, and I was Artie Abrams the Wheelchair Nerd.
"We still don't have a nurse," said Naya. "Principal Figgins won't hire one. Ms. Sylvester got the Cheerios a private nurse, but she probably wouldn't let her see Artie."
"Well… then maybe Ms. Pillsbury could help us figure out why Artie -?"
"- Kevin."
If not for the terrifying fact that I couldn't move my legs, I wouldn't have believed any of it. Besides, Glee wasn't exactly popular for being realistic. Only in the Glee Universe, for instance, would seeing the school guidance counselor be an acceptable substitute for seeing the school nurse. And in spite of the overwhelming evidence that I was truly now in the Glee Universe, I had to plead my case anyway.
"Please," I said. "Just listen to me. I can't even figure out how I got here in the first place. I am not Artie Abrams. And I'm not paralyzed either. Well, I mean…" I stared at my legs, willing them to move. Nothing happened. "… I mean, I wasn't paralyzed before. My name is Kevin McHale."
"The basketball player?" asked Heather, using that hilarious, faraway voice that she does for Brittany. "Funny. You don't look tall enough."
"No!" I closed my eyes, praying that I could wake up. My newest theory was that this was a nightmare. It was common to have nightmares about being stuck in the body of your TV personality, right? Maybe lots of actors suffered from these kind of hallucinations. "Not the basketball player. Kevin McHale, originally from the boy band NLT. But now I'm an actor. I play Artie on a Glee. It's… a show on FOX."
I looked around and realized Matt was on his phone. He was using the phone on the wall that, to my knowledge, was just a new prop that we needed for one of the episodes in the back nine. " … thinks he's a basketball player or an actor named Kevin McHale and doesn't know how he ended up in a wheelchair. Okay. Yeah. We'll be right there."
"Artie," said Matthew, hanging up. "Or Kevin, whoever you are. Ms. Pillsbury needs to see you. Tina, can you take Artie to Ms. Pillsbury's office, please?"
Jenna – or Tina, I wasn't certain any more – nodded and steered me out of the room. As she pushed me down the hall, I tried to think of something to say to her, something that would remind her that we were really Jenna and Kevin, good friends who happened to be on a hit show together. Maybe I could bring up something we'd talked about on Twitter?
She spoke up before I did. "It isn't like you to do something for attention, Artie." I twisted around to look up at her and she gave me a sympathetic smile. "I guess you really did hit your head. I hope you figure it out soon and stop giving everyone new names. Besides, Mercedes looks nothing like an Amber. All the Ambers I know are skinny, blond, and obnoxious."
"I hope so, too, Jen- Tee… Tina."
"I always liked the name Jen," she mused, seeming to accept my "head injury" without further questions. "Nice choice, Artie. I never liked my real name anyway."
I closed my eyes once again as Jenna-Tina pushed me. Maybe… maybe I could just go back to sleep and wake up again. I couldn't wait to tell everyone about this dream. Perhaps this was my subconscious getting impatient while we waited to film the back nine. Either way, I was just ready for it to be over.
