Rachel held her breath and remained motionless, confident that the sound of her high heels hitting against the white tiles of the floor would make her sick. She scrutinized the room as if she was frightened, though she went to the same place every day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, dressed all good and with some small gift timidly held tightly between her thin hands. It was flowers this time. Chocolates of the previous day seemed ridiculous, knowing that no one would have eaten them.
She looked around, with forehead wet of sweat. It was February, but the hospitals - the stagnant smell of the medicines and the knowledge of how many people came in without getting out - made her sweaty and nervous. They were overwhelming, and Rachel felt like closed in a closet, where the air was slowly failing.
Only the small light of a table lamp illuminated the room, while the blue curtains that covered the large glass windows, despite the cold afternoon sun, were tight. The almost dark room gave a ghostly feeling, and Rachel shook her knees.
A thought struck her like a sharp knife, and Rachel had to strive not to let the flowers fall on the ground while she tried to suppress the pain she felt by taking her hands to her chest.
That room looked like an mortuary. They wanted to make her believe she was dead.
She tried to breathe, and everything felt heavy.
No.
Rachel shook her head as if to drive out the mischievous thought that would destroy all her defense, forcing her into a desperate cry.
She focused on the smile of some cute stuffed animals that were in the room. A white rabbit and a thick coated kitten holding a small red heart between his paws. She tried to smile, but that smile looked more like a disgusting grimace.
She saw a note, which reported "Hope you wake up soon". She had noticed it even the day before, and it seemed more depressing than encouraging.
Tulips were abandoned distractedly in a water-proof vessel. Maybe a gift from a cheerleader who had spoken to her once or twice.
Rachel had bought her some white roses.
Her favorite flower were gardenias, but roses made her think of Quinn, her perfection, her fairness, her unreachability. No flower had the same regality and beauty of a rose, and Quinn likewise possessed a natural grace that forced people to turn and admire her.
The way she was moving, like a princess. Oh, Rachel loved it.
Her blond hair falling on her shoulders, her brown eyes with green reflections when she stared at a textbook, her crystal clear voice when she sang a song in the choir room.
Her perfect beauty.
Even when Quinn looked at someone like they were less of her, Rachel found her charming.
Rachel stepped to the bed of that hospital room. Quinn looked less like herself with pale, almost grey skin, tired. Her lips looked dry, purplish, and her blond hair was fickle, abandoned without care on the pillow. Her skin, which Rachel remembered as a smooth white and rose-colored surface, now looked more like a wall that slowly began to crumble.
Quinn.
The girl lying on that bed was Quinn Fabray, and Rachel know that under those closed eyes there were still her sparkling irises, which Rachel was so scared to look at.
Sleeping Beauty. Rachel saw her like that.
The brunette took a stool, and sat beside Quinn. She could see her chest rising and lowering at a slow and programmed pace, like the ticking of a clock. Quinn was alive, and someday she would wake up. Rachel was sure.
She would walk back to the top of McKinley's corridors, her hands resting on his thin hips and her look like the whole world belonged to her. Rachel would turn as usual to fix her figure, wondering how to draw the attention of that creature so mysterious and perfect.
Or maybe they would be greeted in a friendly way, and Rachel would be able to thank her for preventing her from marrying Finn.
Rachel leaned the bunch of roses beside the Sleeping Beauty, and took a long sigh.
Or maybe she will not wake up anymore.
Rachel felt a lump in her throat, and for a moment she had to close her eyes from Quinn's figure, a Quinn too different from the one she knew, a wounded Quinn, a girl laying between life and death.
Every day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Rachel remained silent at the girl's bedside, but she knew that sooner or later she would have to talk or she would go mad.
She wondered if Quinn was able to listen to her, or if her words would be lost in the walls of those spectral rooms, as meaningless sounds.
It did not matter, or maybe it did. Rachel preferred not to think about it.
The idea of having her talk before she was too late was tormenting her like an insect buzzing in her head uninterruptedly. Rachel had to get rid of it, or that weight would have crushed her.
She grabbed Quinn's pale hand, and held it tighly. It was warm, gentle and smooth.
Somehow that warmth led Rachel to hope that the girl was about to wake up.
"Quinn ..." she whispered, as if it were a prayer, approaching her lips in the girl's ear.
She had not prepared any speech. No Rachel Berry's monologue was going to be pronounced, and the brunette felt insecure, as if she had suddenly lost her voice on a Broadway stage.
"The first time I looked at you, Quinn, I said to myself I should hate you. You were Finn's girlfriend ... and I loved Finn. I loved that he was everything I should have wanted for a boyfriend."
Rachel remembered that time, two years earlier, when she was still a little girl blushing for everything, and she had never had a boyfriend. The model student who loved singing and following the quarterback of the football team for which she had a crush, hoping that he would notice her.
Beside Finn there was always Quinn, the blond cheerleader, beautiful and popular. And Rachel stared at her every morning, hoping to be able to look at her closer.
"I was forced to hate you, because I could never be up to you," Rachel continued, as the tears pushed out of her brown eyes, ready to wring her cheeks as rivers full.
She imagined to look at Quinn with the Cheerios uniform, with Santana on her right and Brittany on her left, singing a song for the Glee Club. Those short red skirts that left little to the imagination, the ponytales, the bright smiles.
Rachel stared at Quinn even when she was not next to Finn, and that thought worried her. She thought that by not talking about it to anyone that obsession would simply disappear, for this reason she continued her life by treating everything she felt as a matter of no importance. She was Finn's girlfriend, she would become his wife, and Quinn, with her sexy uniform and her green eyes, would become only a reminder of her teenager years and confusion.
Rachel removed one of her hands from that fragile one of Quinn, and wiped her tears trying to find the right words. The words that Quinn deserved to hear.
"But I realized that I ... I did not hate you, Quinn. Just looking at you made me feel good, and this scared me."
Rachel was so secure of herself about her talent, but inside she was still a broken little girl.
"I pretended it was not true, I masked everything with jealousy. Because in my eyes you were perfect even when you were not with Finn. You were perfect, and I wanted to look at you. "
Had she accepted Finn's proposal to get married just because she wanted to forget about Quinn and live in pretending? She did not know, Rachel had never stopped thinking about it.
"It was true. I wanted to look like you ... being beautiful, and popular ... "Rachel sobbed, covering her mouth with her thin hand. The truth made her still nervous, despite everything.
Quinn was going to her wedding when the truck crushed her car.
Rachel wondered if Quinn would try to stop her to pronounce the fateful yes, or if she would have been silent, with her damsel dress, while Rachel Berry became Rachel Hudson.
Or maybe Rachel herself would have changed her mind, would have left Finn to approach Quinn, would have take her hand and leave with her from that church without looking back.
She wanted to do it. She had thought of doing that so many times.
Honesty terrorized her, but at that moment she knew she had to be honest. For the first time in her life.
"But admiring you was not the only reason I was looking at you, Quinn. I could not take my eyes off you because I ... because I ... "
Rachel swallowed, and stroked Quinn's cheek, then slid her hand in her blond hair.
Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps a spell would wake her up, or maybe she would sleep forever. No one could say it for sure.
Rachel wanted to be her Princess Charming.
"Because I loved you. No, I love you. I love you, Quinn. "
Rachel loved Quinn Fabray because she had seen and touched her fragility, because although she was so beautiful and unreacheble she had a human side, and Rachel, seeing it, had fallen in love with her.
Quinn was the girl who could control her life and her emotions without even trying. Quinn was the girl who could look her in the eyes and tell her the truth when no one else could.
Quinn, McKinley's perfect rose, had allowed the not popular schoolgirl with the passion for singing approaching her, and Rachel felt so much regret about not being able to grab that hand of her. She wanted to, she needed to.
And perhaps Quinn was paying her indecision with her life.
Rachel loved her, and at that moment she was ready to put aside her fears and scream that love to the world.
She stood up and wondered if with a kiss the Sleeping Beauty would wake up. A kiss from another princess who had lived her life in a tower made of insecurity and fear.
Rachel unraveled a blond hairline from Quinn's forehead, and approached her face to her, so motionless, like the one of a porcelain doll.
The dark-haired girl smiled, in tears.
"I love you, Quinn. Sorry I did not say it before. Please wake up. "
Rachel took a breath, and it seemed to her that her words were locked in her throat with barbed wire. It did hurt her, tried to talk again, but it was a pain she was willing to bear.
"You have to wake up. We must be together, grow old together. I'll tell you I love you every day of my life, Quinn. You just have to wake up ... Wake up Quinn ... "
Quinn's cheek was wet with Rachel's tears as she leaned over and leaned her lips to those of Sleeping Beauty. A light, innocent, soft, almost childish kiss.
"Wake up," Rachel whispered, breaking away with sadness from her lips.
"I just wish this spell could work," Rachel thought, touching Quinn's hair again.
She took the girl's hand again, sitting back on the stool. She ran with her mind, as she did for years.
Rachel saw Quinn behind her, with a white dress covering her thin and fair body. Her hair was brushed by a warm spring wind. Rachel wondered if she was approaching.
She did not remember why she was in that place. She was confused, scared.
"How long is it?" She asked.
Quinn turned, with a bright smile on her pink lips. Her eyes looked at her in adorable and loving way, while Rachel tried to return that smile, even though her cheeks were still wet with tears.
She did not remember that so much time had passed.
"You said you loved me," said Quinn, and Rachel knew that was true. She would not deny it, she would not run.
It was spring, and Rachel saw only the white roses. And Quinn.
"I asked you to wake up."
Rachel did not know if her spell had worked, but Quinn laughed, and Rachel liked to look at her laughing.
"Do you love me?" Rachel asked.
Quinn approached her and stretched out her hand. Rachel grabbed her this time, without hesitation.
Sleeping Beauty slowly opened her hazel eyes. Someone had broken her spell.
She blinked as the objects, still blurred, again took on the forms she had learned to recognize over the years. A table lamp, tulips, stuffed animals, a bouquet of white roses. She wondered where she was, what had happened.
She turned and she saw the little dark-haired princess at his side, sleeping, eyes still full of tears. Quinn's hand in the smaller ones of her.
She smiled softly, sensing Rachel's silky hair making her tickle on her naked arm.
"I love you," Quinn murmured, and then decided to wait for her to wake up.