Faithful are the Wounds

Author: pratz

Disclaimer: RIB's

Notes: I was out in areas without the internet, so I've just watched the last three episodes of Glee in a rushed marathon. While I'm glad that all is right again with the world that Quinn is dancing and that makes all is right with the world, her recovery is one hell of messed up logic. No, seriously. Oh, and I'm a slow writer, and to write this, I must rewatch Glee from the beginning to confirm things. If you're still here reading this story, you deserve the best chocolate cookies in the world.

P.S.: I'll be forever thankful for a beta reader, God, please.

-.-.-.-

Chapter Two

An inch.

The door handle was only an inch from the tip of her fingers, the metal piece shiny and inviting, but she could not find it in herself to reach and just open the door—the damn door that would lead to the wrecked New Beetle's driver seat in all its messed glory.

Ironically, it was, she thought, justifying her use of the word. Glory was surviving a direct hit—from a truck nevertheless. Glory was surviving a car crash that left two thousand and seven hundred pounds of metal and leather in a complete wreck in a junkyard. Glory was surviving a real life horror that left the driver's door hollowed in a dent into the interior, the seat thrown off its hinge, and the whole dashboard splattered with shards of tempered glass and blood.

Most importantly, glory was surviving all the split second of an accident while somehow remaining conscious all the time.

The nauseous wave hit Rachel at the horrific image of Quinn somehow being aware of what happened to her that day like a Muhammad Ali punch to the stomach, twisting her insides in a tight clench that made her throw up.

Beside her, Kurt scooted away with a loud shriek that was more of surprise than disgust. He intuitively held her hair away from her face, his other hand rubbing her back softly. "I told you this isn't a good idea," he said sympathetically. "You okay?"

She shook her head. Of course she was not, but she was the one who insisted to come to see Quinn's car—or, more accurately, the remnant of what used to be Quinn's car. Heaving a dry breath, she pulled her handkerchief from the pocket of her dress to wipe her lips. One step at a time, Rachel, she reminded herself. You can only take all of this one step at a time.

Still, her voice shook when she said, "Let's go back to the hospital."

Kurt sighed.

-.-.-.-

Despite her seemingly tame understanding when Rachel had been too much of a coward to visit Quinn, Santana's glare directed at her could have stabbed, killed, and mutilated her into pieces. Really, nobody could ignore the simmering anger beneath Santana's façade, and Rachel could not help flinching at the heat even though Santana looked collected.

"Well?" Santana donned her infamous hands-on-hips stance, a HBIC patented pose that hit Rachel with a pang more only because it reminded her of Quinn.

"I've seen it," Rachel said. "The car, I mean."

"And?"

She swallowed. "I'm here."

Santana took two steps forward, invading her space. "Two weeks, Berry. Two goddamn weeks and you suddenly came to me and demanded to know about, let me quote, the extent of Quinn's injury so you could prepare yourself better when you visited her in the hospital." Santana poked at her left shoulder—hard. "I don't give a damn if you didn't care enough to drop by before, but you apparently have the guts to think it's you who shoulder the heaviest burden, and all of this is just to clear your conscience off your guilt."

"I don't—"

"Shut it." Santana poked at her shoulder again, purposefully harder this time it made Rachel wince.

But she knew, too, that she deserved it. Even before she braced the storm that was Santana Lopez about an hour ago, she knew.

She had pulled Santana aside in the hospital, purposely catching her since she knew Santana would be there. After all, it was her first step to face her demon—literally.

And the demon told her everything.

Rachel had never expected to hear a list of injuries flow from Santana's mouth so smoothly she would have thought that Santana was merely listing the names of the glee club members. It started with an intracranial injury that led to doctors' working their asses off for three hours nonstop to find two—two!—bleeders beneath a cerebral contusion on the upper left side of Quinn's head. Coming next was cervical radiculopathy, a serious injury to the neck since the head was jostled, followed by a thoracic spine injury and a lumbar radiculopathy—pinched nerves, Santana simplified. A punctured left lung came next, and Rachel's mind was tortured by the image of Quinn's body unable to provide oxygen for itself as her lung kept undoing her effort to inhale. Last but not less horrible, Santana finished the list with a temporomandibular joint disorder, torn muscles, and multiple cuts and bruises.

For the first time in her life, Rachel was glad that her extensive vocabulary was not quite expanded to cover medical terms.

Santana had told her, exactly five minute before That Dreadful Call that Changed Everything, that Quinn was not coming to her wedding. Now, with her mind swarmed with the realization of Quinn's injuries and a white hospital door that simply stood between her and Quinn, Rachel wished that Quinn really had not decided to come that day.

'Do me a favor, Berry,' Santana had said, 'and go see what's left of her car.' Her tone was unsympathetic, but there was no bite behind it. 'And come back here when you're ready.'

'But I am.'

'For yourself, yeah.' Santana had glared. 'Come back here when you're ready for Quinn.'

Am I?

You are, she answered for herself. You are, Rachel.

"You sure are the most obnoxious person I kn—" Santana trailed off, eyes widening as she looked past Rachel's shoulder.

She turned around to find a hulking man with, for the love of all that was drama, certain green eyes and high cheekbones.

The man approached them in a series of imposing gaits, and Rachel suddenly could pick up actual livid waves emanating from Santana.

The Latina recovered fast from her temporary shock and with a hand effectively stopped the man even before he could come closer to Quinn's room. "You're not welcome here," she spat at the man.

"Santana," the man acknowledged with a stiff nod.

"You have no rights to be here."

"I have every right. I'm family."

Rachel's eyes widened in sick realization.

Santana somehow put herself between the man and Rachel—and the door. "I don't want to make a scene because that's the last thing needed here, but you know my father works here and it's a doctor order to keep any possible disturbance away. You have five seconds to leave before I'm calling security. One. Two."

"I just need to talk to Judy."

"Three."

"Fine." The man raised a hand in a mock surrender, finally giving up his forced politeness. "I'll see Judy at home, then." And Russell Fabray had never been more detestable as he turned his nose at Santana, at Rachel, and at the door.

An inch, Rachel realized. She was merely an inch away from slapping Russell Fabray.

That, and there was another inch between her and Quinn's door.

-.-.-.-

Quinn was lying on her side when they entered the room, halfway dozing off with her right hand folded under her head. Yet at the sound of people entering her room, she snapped awake with a wince as the sudden movement pulled at her muscles. Rachel saw the way Quinn's eyes brightened as she caught Santana's figure, but she could not help the lurch in her stomach when Santana stepped aside and Quinn's eyes met hers.

"You have a visitor," Santana said, half dragging Rachel to stand close to the side of Quinn's bed.

Quinn simply nodded, and Rachel could not help comparing it to Russell Fabray's earlier gesture—and it made her sicker.

When Rachel decided on the lamest greeting known to humankind in the form of a timid 'Hi, Quinn,' Santana rolled her eyes and growled out loud. "I'll go grab some coffee. You two'd better not kill each other because if you do, I swear I'll kill you for the second time myself for this headache."

Then silence.

Two weeks and what now, Rachel? she asked herself. Say something!

Quinn did not appear to want to start the conversation, but her appearance spoke clearly enough for herself. The thin hospital gown could only hide so much, after all. Rachel could see crisscrossed scars down Quinn's left elbow to her wrist. There were two stitches above Quinn's left eyebrow and a few small cuts across her jaw, and Rachel swallowed the nauseous bile once again.

"So, Quinn," she began, "h-how are you?"

"Drowsy," Quinn said. "Just had another surgery, that is."

"Another?"

Quinn shrugged. "The docs said it's to relieve the pressure on the fifth column of my spine."

Rachel did not realize that her hands were shaking until she fisted them tightly.

"Speaking of which," Quinn tilted her head at the books on her night table, "thanks for them."

She wanted to say that it was nothing, that the books piling up beside Quinn's bed were nothing compared to what Quinn had to endure, that no, she did not deserve Quinn's thanking her. And at that moment, there was nothing that she wants more than tattooing her shaking hands with a permanent reminder of her cowardliness: a single line of a poem she once read that said mortemortemortemortemor.

But she could not say anything—not when Quinn was lying on her side because her back was obviously too sore to be lied upon because she had just another surgery because she was involved in an accident that made a team of surgeons cut her open repeatedly because she had said she would come to a wedding that she did not even approve.

Yet Quinn could still think of giving Rachel a copy of Tagore's book with that line about wounds and healing.

That was it.

The sickening rolls inside her could not be contained anymore, so she bolted. If her infamous storming out of glee club practices were a dramatic trademark, this was a desperate flight of the bumblebee where she was no longer a butterfly which was building her wings inside Leroy's cocoon arms.

"I-I'm sorry—I should go—my fathers—"

"Wha—"

"I-I'll come again tomorrow." That was so uncharacteristic and uncalled for her, she knew.

Quinn tried to reach for her. "Wait! Rachel, don't—ow."

Quinn's loud gasp made Rachel turn around, finding Quinn scrunch her eyes close tightly, face contorted in pain. Her uninjured hand, which was halfway reaching out to stop Rachel's panic escape, froze in midair, and she fell back against the bed with a thump.

Shocked, Rachel rushed to Quinn's side, frantically grabbing Quinn's hand, already having a horrible assumption of what was going on.

"Can't—" Quinn gasped for air, and Rachel's heart twisted from all the pain displayed on Quinn's face. "Call—nurse—"

She immediately reached around Quinn to punch the emergency call button near the headboard, hitting it more than it required to, and that was the moment when her eyes caught the stain on the back of Quinn's thin hospital gown.

"Oh my God," she whispered in terror.

She would never, ever be able to forget the red stain that burnt her eyes for the rest of her life.

Santana returned just as a nurse and an intern ran into the room. Unsurprisingly, her first reaction was to forgo the tall tumbler of coffee she had and bellowed, "What the hell is going on, Berry?"

The intern pushed herself between Santana and Rachel. "I need you two to wait outside," she said before Rachel could answer Santana.

"Is she al—she's going to be okay, right?" Santana whipped around to glare at Rachel. "I left you only for ten minutes and this happens? Why can't you do something right for once, hobbit?"

"Please wait outside, Miss Lopez!" the intern said louder, obviously knowing who Santana was.

Santana's words should have stung worse and she should have felt the rough grip Santana had on her arm as the Latina cursed and dragged her out—she seemed to be doing that a lot today, but the only thing in her mind was a constant prayer of Quinnpleasebealright.

-.-.-.-

Two mentally exhausting hours later, she was sitting next to Quinn's bed, holding Quinn's uninjured hand—the one not attached to the IV.

Behind her, Santana leaned against the wall with hands folded across her chest. Even with the distance, Rachel could still know Santana was still seething. An angry Santana was a raging bull; an infuriated Santana was a volcano waiting to erupt. That much she learned today.

'She ripped her back open to make you stay,' Santana had said through gritted teeth when they had been waiting for Quinn's surgery. 'I swear if you even have the slightest idea to freaking run away again, I will make your New York dream remain a dream.'

Rachel held Quinn's hand more firmly. Quinn's hand was clammy and cold, and it weighed so lightly it distressed Rachel.

The last time she held Quinn's hand was when the glee club sang Dog Days are Over. It had been an action out of the spur of the moment. She had dragged Quinn to the edge of the stage to stand with the rest of the club, and the sensation at that time was so unlike this. Back then, Quinn had been happy—or at least as happy as she could appear to be, and her hand had been warm in Rachel's.

When was the last time you pay attention to other people? she heard the mocking question in her mind. When was the last time you looked at people who were not Finn?

Even Santana had been doing a better job than she did at that. The Latina had proven that her anger was a form of protectiveness even though she would never admit it out loud.

You're an inch from seeing her bleed alive, she told herself.

But she was also an inch away from seeing Quinn heal—just as Quinn promised. The way Quinn endured surgery after surgery confirmed it to her. If she could not believe in herself, she could believe in Quinn.

Because this was Quinn—the toughest, strongest, most inspiring person she had ever met.

"I'm staying, Santana," she said. "I am."

She did not need to turn around to see Santana nod in approval.

-.-.-.-

Next chapter preview:

"Sean, this is Quinn Fabray. Quinn, meet Sean Fretthold."