Chapter Four
AN: I somewhat promised another chapter two weekends ago and I thought this would be up by then, but I honestly don't know what happened. All I know is that in the last two days I got a baseball to the ankle bone, hit my head off a cabinet and twisted my leg when I went to walk down some stairs, so my luck has been absolute crap, but hey, at least I'm not sick anymore and here's a slightly longer chapter than the previous ones for you amazing people to hopefully make up for the gap. As usual, any and all mistakes are my own. Enjoy!
Not long after the serious topics of conversation faded and the girls began talking about what Quinn had missed at school and what, if anything, the rest of the glee club had been up to for the past week, nurse Jamie entered the room for Quinn's hourly check up.
"Hey girls," Quinn and Rachel acknowledged the young nurse with small smiles as she jotted down a few notes from the machines still attached to Quinn. "How are you feeling today, miss Fabray?"
"Pretty good, all things considered. Just a bit of stinging in my leg. Other than that, nothing really." The blonde replied as the nurse put down her charts and pen in a compartment on the side of Quinn's bed and stood opposite Rachel.
"Mind if I take a look?" She asked, already beginning to peel back the blanket covering Quinn's right leg. The younger girl shook her head as Rachel's eyes looked down to where the nurse was exposing the bruised and bandaged leg. Both girls winced, neither having seen the extent of the injury. "Don't worry, it looks worse than it actually is and the stinging is typical after having a surgery like yours." Jamie's hand moved down to the base of Quinn's sock clad foot. "Can you bend your ankle to push your foot against my hand?" Her foot managed to move an inch forward before the pain forced her to return it to its former position. "That was good. Really good, actually." The smiles on both Rachel and Jamie's faces almost made Quinn forget about the pain. Almost. The look on her face didn't go unnoticed by the nurse. "Think about it this way: the pain means that you can feel it and feeling it means that your nerves are still doing their job, which means that with some hard work in physiotherapy, you'll be back to cheering and dancing in no time."
Rachel smiled appreciatively at the nurse, while Quinn looked at her confused. "How did you know that I cheer and dance?"
"I told you that Rachel was here everyday, right?" She began as Quinn nodded her confirmation. "Well she sure likes to talk." She said good-naturedly with a cheeky smile on her face, just before Rachel huffed indignantly. "I'll let you two get back to whatever you were doing before and I'll be back just after nine when my next shift starts." She grabbed her charts and made her way over to the door. "Have a good day, girls." The nurse chirped from the doorway before opening the door and slipping out into the bustling hallway.
The room was silent for a moment or two as the girls fidgeted with their hands and occasionally looked up at one another, only to catch the other's eye and look away as quickly as possible. Why does this always happen? Quinn thought to herself, before taking the leap of faith for both of them. "So…" One word was all she got out before she realized that she hadn't thought of a topic to talk about.
"Yeah…" Rachel's one worded rebuttal seemed to trigger something in the blonde's mind as the simplest topic became apparent.
"What do you have planned for the rest of the day?" She used to make fun of the thirteen year old boys at Christian summer camp who used to say stupid and unoriginal things like this, but now, now that she was that pubescent boy, her sympathy kicked in and she felt his pain.
Rachel was pensive for a second. "Uh, well…" She began, her voice nervous and timid. "If you want I can stay here with you for the last hour or so of visiting hours."
"I'd like that. The smile that punctuated Quinn's reply seemed to calm the brunette's nerves as her shoulder's relaxed back down and she exhaled a breath neither had noticed she'd been keeping. "But I should let you know that Santana and Brittany will probably be here in the next little while." Rachel nodded non-chalantly. "Just, you know, fair warning." The blonde added, not understanding why Rachel would willingly put herself in a fourteen by twelve room with the usually crude Latina.
"I will have you know that Santana and I have come to a recent truce and I might even consider her a friend." Quinn's look could only be described as disbelief as her eyebrows rose to new heights. "Don't give me that look, Quinn."
"What look?"
"That one you always do. Your eyebrows," The smaller girl's eyes widened comically as she tried to lift her eyebrows to mimic the blonde, but eventually gave up and just used her fingers to push them up like Quinn just had.
Quinn exhaled out a chuckle as she shook her head slightly. "I just can't believe you referred to Santana as your friend." Now it was the brunette's eyebrows' turn for attention as they knitted together in confusion. "It's nothing against you, Rach. It's just…" Quinn stopped herself, trying to think of the best way to explain Santana without insulting her. "I've known her since my first year at McKinley and I can honestly say that there's only one person that she'd consider her friend and that's Brittany."
"What about you?" Rachel spoke up.
"How do I put this…" Her voice trailed off for a moment as she thought of an explanation. "She's like my sister. We're so much alike in how we think and what we do, that we've never really been friends." A perplexed look grew on Rachel's face. "Okay, you don't have any siblings and I have an older sister, but she's a lot older than me so we have a completely different kind of relationship, but just imagine having a sibling that's roughly the same age as you, okay?" The blonde began as Rachel nodded her head and started doing as the other girl had asked. "Usually there are two types of relationships; the one where you have so many things in common and you enjoy spending every moment together or the other type, the one where you may not spend too much time together, but you will always love one another and have each other's back." Quinn stopped for a moment to gage the look on the brunette's face and make sure that she understood what she was trying to say. "Santana and I are the second one. When she's going through a rough patch, like when she was outed by Finn -which I really hope you talked to him about that because that was so many levels of wrong- I tried to be there for her because nobody wants to see their sibling suffer like that or if I'm going through a rough time like at the end of last year after the prom stuff and everything, she was there for me and she tried her best to comfort me."
Rachel nodded several times, her understanding evident. "I get it." Her mind went directly to the boy she'd known long before glee club even started, but who was always afraid to let anyone know that they were actually friends. "Puck and I are the same way. He's even said numerous times that he thought of himself as my big brother because we've gone to synagogue together nearly every Saturday for around ten years."
"Exactly, so you get it." Quinn began. "Another thing was that Santana and I were, and still sometimes are, always competing. Cheerios, boys, popularity - no matter what there was always something between us and we were basically forced to hate each other most of the time. I guess for you and Puck that would be the fact that he was -as he always says- a stud, while you were basically tortured and ridiculed at school for years," She paused for a second, her voice turning low and regretful. "Mainly because of me."
The added afterthought truly showed the regret Quinn felt and Rachel finally understood why Quinn was always so timid around her since they'd called truce - she was afraid of hurting her again. "I really do forgive you for that, Quinn." The brunette started. "You actually helped me, believe it or not." The blonde's head lifted up slightly to avert her eyes from where they were looking down at her lap up to Rachel. "Those years of slushies and name calling made me stronger and in a way it actually trained me for what I'm sure will be future years of paparazzi constantly following and harassing me."
The comforting smile on Rachel's face did nothing for the blonde. "Nobody deserves to go through what you did in high school, though." The brunette had never seen this look in Quinn's eyes, so apologetic and full of regret.
"You're one to talk." Rachel rebutted immediately. "You got pregnant, kicked off the cheerleading squad, kicked out of your home, ridiculed by your peers, your parents divorced, you had a baby, you gave the baby up for adoption, tried to make all of the stress inside you disappear by cutting off a bunch of your hair and going into a rebel phase and then Beth and my mom came back and it so obviously hurt and tortured you, but no one really reached out." The smaller girl inhaled deeply after the long list. "And now that things have finally started to turn around; you got into Yale, we're going to regionals and you're back on the Cheerios - you get hit by a truck." Rachel shook her head at how ludicrous it all sounded because all of this had happened to one girl between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. "Your life's been no piece of cake either."
The room was silent again, as both girls took a moment to reflect on their lives since they'd first encountered one another back in freshman year. It's amazing to think that of those three and a half years, so many of their memories include one another. Not just glee club competitions and tug of war using Finn, but moments of insecurity and comfort, talks of the present and future… Their lives had been roller coasters for much of it, from the constant ups and downs of relationships to twists and turns of high school - the only thing that ever seemed to truly progress at a relatively constant rate was their friendship. They went from loathing, to camaraderie, to confiding, to where they were now; Rachel at Quinn's bedside because she honestly can't imagine being anywhere else.
"Alright, enough of this deep emotional stuff." Rachel breaks Quinn from her thoughts. "I think the only way that you will recover as quickly as possible is if you think and do something positive." Her smile infects Quinn as soon as it hits the tan girl's face. "Let's do something fun - within the confines of your bed, of course." The brunette begins, Quinn still dazzled by the smile she is sporting. "I brought some cards we can play with, we could watch TV, listen to music, I brought a book I can read to you, it's a new Barbra Streisand biography, so I don't know if you-"
Rachel's long-winded list/rant is cut short by Quinn's hand reaching out to gently grasp hers. "Cards sound good, Rach." She says simply as the brunette looks down at their point of contact. "And maybe we could talk some more. No deep emotional stuff, I promise." The bed-ridden girl gives Rachel her signature half-smile as she the brunette nods a few times before reaching down with her free hand to gather the box of cards from her purse by her feet. "We'll have to play either crazy eights or go fish because I honestly don't know how to play anything else." Quinn adds through a chuckle as Rachel pulls the cards from their packaging and begins shuffling them before nodding her head in understanding.
Their game of crazy eights goes on for a few minutes before the conversation picks up an easy topic at the hands or rather mouth of Rachel. "Sue stopped by the hospital a few times this week to see you." The words come out casually as Quinn looks up from her set of cards to look at Rachel's bowed head and furrowed brow, trying to determine which card would best be laid next. "She was only here for a few minutes each time; she'd just walk up to the main desk, ask them something -probably if you were awake or not- and then she'd leave. I don't think she even saw me right behind her sitting in the waiting area each time." She pulls an eight of clubs out of her right hand and lays it down. "Hearts." She says, indicating what the new card suit will be. "She really cares about you, you know? I don't think she'd ever admit it, but you're probably the only person -at least of the students at McKinley- that she's ever really liked. Everyone else she either makes fun of constantly or tolerates because she knows that her words don't really faze us anymore." Rachel finally notices the silence of the other girl as she looks up to gauge her reaction to everything she'd just said. "You okay?" The question leaves her mouth, as she notices the distanced look in her eyes. "Earth to Quinn." She sing-songs as the blonde continues to look past her at nothing in the distance. "Penny for your thoughts?" Her hand waves back and forth as yet another attempt to get the other girl's attention. "Maybe a nickel?"
"Huh?" Her eyes snap back to the present and the amused look on Rachel's face. "What were you saying?"
"What were you thinking about?" She knew there was something going on in that head of Quinn's, she just didn't know what.
The Quinn smile is back again. "You're pretty perceptive, you know that?"
The Queen of spades is placed on the top of the pile, causing a mischievous smile to pull at the smaller girl's lips after Quinn begins to pick up five cards from the deck. "What do you mean?"
She can't believe that she once was good at this game because she currently has sixteen cards in her hand. "I mean, you're kind of spot on." She slides the cards together in a uniform pile and places them face down on the pull out tray in front of her, forgotten for the time being. "When you saw me in my Cheerios uniform and I told you I'd be at the wedding, I'd just left her office and I can honestly say I'd never seen her so kind for such a long time." Rachel follows her actions and holds her cards in a pile on her lap. "She obviously let me back on the Cheerios," Quinn averts her eyes from Rachel down to her damaged leg. "Which I probably won't actually be able to be on because of the accident, but she kept talking to me about how she'd always kind of reminded me of her in several ways and she'd thought that was why she's never actually insulted me…" Her voice trails off.
"She likes you because you've stood up to her ever since you joined the glee club." Rachel states in an attempt to finish off the blonde's thought. "You and Kurt both and it shows in how she acts around you. She's no longer Sue, the master lord of all that is rude and cruel. She's just Sue, really."
"Yeah." Quinn moves her head up and down slightly. "Exactly."
At that moment Judy returns to the room to inform the girls that Santana was on her way and that Brittany couldn't make it because she was off at a motocross tournament. Their game of cards ended immediately, Quinn being the one to wave her white flag, seeing as Rachel only had a few cards left and because the blonde was beginning to slide down from her semi-upright position in the bed and it was slowly becoming less and less comfortable.
AN: Leaving it off here and in the next chapter will be Santana, some news about Quinn's recovery/release time and possibly Sue, then things will start to pick up in both speed and story, since I'm sure at least one of you who is following this story is starting to think that at this pace it'll be chapter forty before it's the next week in the story. Alrighty, so that's it. Thanks for reading.