A/N: Hello again, friends!
I just want to take a moment to tell you all how much I appreciate all of you for reading this fic. All of you who have stuck with me since the beginning and those of you who just started reading, every time I see that this story has more views, reviews, and favorites it just warms my heart. You all are the best!
Sadly the next time I'll have a chance to post will probably be after Thanksgiving. I'll do my best to get the next chapter up as soon as I can!
Disclaimer (how do I always forget this?): In case you all were magically under the impression that I own glee, I am here to tell you that you are wrong. I know, I'm pretty disappointed about it too.
"Doctor Thompson to OR 3 please, Doctor Thompson to OR 3," came a calm voice through the crackling speaker system in the staff lounge. Oliver Thompson stood slowly from the couch, stretching his arms over his head, all his muscles and bones popping and groaning in protest. He headed toward the operating rooms, glancing at the board with the surgical schedule on his way past, to see which surgeon needed a consult. His heart sank a little when he saw that it was Dr. Hummel's case. He knew most of the details of the little girl's condition, and Kurt was a fantastic doctor – if he was asking for help, it meant things were not going as planned in that OR.
As he entered the room, holding a mask over his face, he could feel the stillness and silence of the room part around him. The tension was palpable in the air, as if everyone was holding their breath, no one wanting to make the first move.
Kurt was the one who finally broke the silence. "Chief, I need your opinion on something."
Oliver moved to stand next to the other doctor at the operating table, his eyes widening as he examined the patient's brain. "I'm all ears."
As Kurt talked, Dr. Thompson could tell the other man was not so much looking for help or permission as he was creating a battle plan. He was talking through every step to make sure he hadn't missed anything, no crucial details overlooked. The Chief nodded his head as the narrative went on, he couldn't have thought of a better plan himself.
Kurt looked at his superior expectantly as he finished his monologue, waiting for some reassurance.
"If the parents agree, you have my permission to proceed." He said finally. Kurt nodded and the Chief headed for the door, pausing to look at the other man one last time before he took his leave.
"There's no one better suited for this case, Dr. Hummel."
Kurt felt himself begin to blush slightly under the praise. He cleared his throat loudly. "Emma, come with me to talk to the parents?" The nurse nodded and followed him out of the operating room.
As the two of them walked down the long hallway to the surgical waiting room, Kurt could feel his heartbeat speeding up with every step. He could practically feel the panic the four adults in that room were feeling right now. His throat was dry and he wondered if he would be able to tell them anything at all.
The moment he came around the corner, Blaine, Claire, Sarah, and Wes descended upon him like pelicans to a jumping fish.
"What happened?" Wes asked quickly. Kurt noted the guarded eyes narrowed into a glare that let him know that Wes still hadn't forgiven him for all that had happened between Blaine and him. Kurt couldn't blame him though – he hadn't even forgiven himself, how could he expect that kind of acceptance from others?
"The bleeding has been under control for quite some time now. Once we allowed her brain to swell, it stopped almost completely. There is no visible damage from the last surgery – everything is healing up nicely and, since she has been acting fairly normal since, it is probably safe to say there should be no lasting effects…" Kurt broke off as Claire interrupted him, as so many worried mothers often do.
"But if there's no damage, what happened earlier today?" She asked, clutching one of Blaine's hands in both of her own, as if she was using him to anchor her firmly on the ground.
"It's the other tumor that caused the bleeding. It's grown... It's grown a fair amount." Kurt could feel the change in the room with his words. Suddenly hope turned to sheer terror, all four of them leaning closer to him, hanging on his every word, trying to process the fact that their child, despite treatment, was getting worse.
"We have a couple of options here. The first would be to continue the chemo and radiation. The risk of memory loss is lower and we could monitor the tumor to see if it shrinks at all."
"But it's not shrinking now." Blaine said, his voice quiet and hoarse and numb. "It's growing. So the chemo wouldn't necessarily shrink it, right? It could just keep growing."
Kurt nodded sadly. "That is always a risk. There's another option here, though. It would be my recommended course of treatment, but the risks are a bit higher." The other four stared at him silently as he continued.
"As the tumor has been growing it's been…filling out. It's gotten bigger, but it's also gotten more defined. The perimeter of the tumor is easy to see and, while it is still in a dangerous area for us to be making any cuts, if we are careful, we could be able to remove the whole thing."
Claire's knees gave out slightly, and Blaine caught her under her arm and helped her down into a chair. Wes dropped his coffee cup onto the floor and it blossomed out into a light brown puddle on the tile floor. Sarah bit down on her knuckles to hide her soft gasp and Kurt could've sworn he saw a smile behind her balled fist.
Kurt shuffled his feet a little, uncomfortable as the foursome had broken into soft and highly-guarded celebration. There was a chance, and that was all they needed for their hope to come flooding back to them, twice as strong before.
"I just need your consent before we do the surgery, since the original course of treatment you agreed to did not include this."
Four distinct voices said 'yes' before two in the group realized, with a cough and a blush, that Kurt was not asking for their permission. He nodded at the others, then turned to make his way out of the waiting room and back to the several hours of delicate work he had waiting for him. A soft call of "wait" stopped him in his tracks.
Blaine was standing just behind him, looking sheepish, as though he regretted speaking up. "If this…if this all works out, is that…it?"
Kurt thought for a moment, then nodded carefully. "As far as the brain portion goes, yes. She will likely have to get the other tumor around her spine removed later in life, but that is not life-threatening. Ava will likely make a full recovery if the surgery goes as planned."
Blaine's face melted into pure joy and gratitude, his smile as bright as the overhead lights in the operating room. One second, Kurt was staring into his beautiful eyes, bright and hopeful. And the next second…
Well, a lot can change in a second.
Suddenly he had two arms were full of the short, dark haired man. Blaine's lips were pressed firmly against his, warm and needy. By the time Kurt realized what was happening – by the time he realized how badly he wanted to kiss him back – Blaine's lips were gone again.
Several beats of silence. Everyone was frozen. Blaine's eyes were wide and conflicted, emotions chasing one another across his face as he realized what he'd done.
Kurt didn't wait to see what emotion the other man decided on, he didn't want to know. If he saw regret reflected in those beautiful eyes...he wouldn't be able to take it. He practically sprinted out of the room and down the hall back to where he had come. Emma was hot on his heels. As he slowed his pace, she opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.
"Not a word." His tone was pleading, but with a sharp edge to let her know that now was not the time. She put her hands up in a sign of surrender, then held the door to the scrub room open for him.
As Kurt stepped across the threshold, he imagined himself physically shedding any and all feelings he had related to the case beyond that expected from a doctor to their patient. He refused to let himself be distracted. His problems could be dealt with later on, he had a child counting on him to do everything he could to help her, and he was not going to let her down.
Blaine watched Kurt run away, feeling something in his chest constrict. He had been stupid and reckless and he had made a huge mistake. He couldn't help feeling that he had just ruined any chance he had at bringing Kurt back into his life by wanting too much too fast. But in the heat of the moment, everything in his brain had gotten fuzzy. His judgment was clouded and he had acted on impulse. It terrified him more than he cared to admit that, when he had let his guard down, he was willing to let Kurt back in that quickly.
Blaine fell heavily into a chair behind him, running a hand through his curly hair that hadn't been brushed or gelled in several days. He gripped the soft hairs, having the sudden urge to pull them from his head in frustration, all the while one continuous thought filled his head: how could you be so stupid?
Sarah and Claire were both smiling, somewhat smugly behind his back. Claire leaned over to whisper into Sarah's ear – "it's been less than two weeks, you owe me twenty bucks."
Wes was staring at his friend incredulously, his mouth opening and closing rapidly as he searched for something to say. He seemed to think better of it though, and clenched his jaw shut, the tension in his neck evident. He settled for glaring at Blaine, practically boring holes into his head with the intensity of his dark brown eyes.
Blaine was oblivious to everything else going on in the room, completely wrapped up in his own thoughts. He eventually spoke, startling the others.
"Well shit."
It had been a while since Kurt had logged this many consecutive hours in the operating room. Tumors of this size weren't often operated on, and word had traveled quickly throughout the rest of the hospital. There were other doctors standing quietly around the edges of the room and watching through the window into the scrub room. The interns had gathered in the gallery and were furiously taking notes. This much attention made Kurt uncomfortable – not because of the pressure, or because he was afraid of making a mistake, but because he knew that if he was the one on the table, he wouldn't want this large of an audience. Several doctors had tried to make audio or video recordings of the surgery – for teaching purposes only, of course – but Emma had politely asked them to refrain, per Kurt's request
As the surgery stretched on toward sunrise, most of the onlookers left to tend to other patients or to nap in an on-call room until their next shift started. Many doctors would've been slightly miffed if they had a surgery go this long past its scheduled time frame, but Kurt was glad for the distraction it provided. He would focus on curing Ava, and not on the implications of what had transpired in the waiting room.
Around the time most people with 9 to 5 jobs would be sitting down to their morning coffee and cereal, Kurt dropped his tools down on to the tray beside him with a satisfying clang. "Dr. Caston," Kurt addressed the assisting surgeon. "I'll take her to recovery, could you and Emma please speak to the family?"
The other doctor stared at Kurt curiously for a moment, before nodding slowly and following Emma out of the room. Kurt could feel the looks of the other people in the room, hear their barely-there whispers. Rumors traveled fast around this hospital, and his life seemed to be filled to the brim with gossip to be shared over coffee carts and in the cafeteria. He gripped the handles on the back of Ava's bed so hard that his knuckles began to pale, and he kept his head high as he pushed her out into the hall.
When the doctor who had previously been assigned to Ava's case came into the waiting room, Blaine felt his heart sink past his toes and somewhere into the subbasements of the hospital. Something had gone wrong, he was sure of it, and Kurt couldn't face them. He couldn't look Blaine in the eye and tell him what terrible fate had fallen upon his daughter. But Blaine quickly realized that if there was anything Kurt was not, it was weak. This thought didn't make Blaine feel much better, though. If Kurt hadn't stayed away because of something to do with the surgery, he was a no show because of what Blaine had done.
Any thoughts not completely focused on his daughter faded immediately when the doctor smiled and said "we got the whole tumor out."
Blaine felt impossibly light as the words came out of her mouth. It felt as though all of his blood vessels had been laden down with lead and terror, and suddenly they were pure again. He was quickly weighed down again, though, as Claire practically threw herself into his arms. She hugged him fiercely, then wrapped her arms around the doctor, who hugged her back politely, then went back to her prepared speech.
"If all goes as planned, Ava should wake up late tonight or early tomorrow morning, at which point we can test her memory and see how she is doing. We can't fully guarantee anything, but I will tell you that the surgery went smoothly, and – baring any complications in the next 24 to 48 hours – we expect her to make a full recovery." Smiles were wide across the faces of the four adults in the room. Claire grabbed her phone out of her pocket and went to the hallway to call Austin.
Dr. Caston watched her go, then addressed Blaine. "Ava will need some therapy as well as some additional tests and chemotherapy to make sure there is not a recurrence, but we can talk about that later." She smiled, and patted the man's shoulder gently. "For now, I would suggest going somewhere to sleep and clean up. You won't be able to see her for a few hours." Blaine nodded and thanked her profusely, then went to round everyone up to head to a motel.
Wes and Sarah drove their rental car to a breakfast place nearby to pick up food for everyone. They had decided to stay until Ava woke up so they could say their goodbyes, then head back to California to straighten out the mess they had left behind.
Sarah watched the houses go by, the city skyline visible in the rearview mirrors as they drove away from the heart of New York. She knew she couldn't put it off any longer, there were no more excuses.
"Wes, pull over." Her voice was barely a whisper. Her husband looked confused, but complied. As soon as the car stopped, he put a hand on the back of her neck. She leaned into his warm touch.
"Do you feel sick?" He asked her, looking worried. She shook her head.
"No, no… I'm not sick. I'm–I'm pregnant." She replied shakily. She bit her lip, feeling tears pressing at her eyelids.
Wes could feel the pace of his heartbeat speeding up as he tried to comprehend how such a simple statement had just changed everything.
"You're…We're having a baby?" He whispered. Sarah nodded once, then tears started falling in sheets down her face as she talked a mile a minute.
"I was going to tell you and then Blaine called and everything got so crazy and you lost your job and I got scared because I don't know what to do because I can't keep dancing if I'm pregnant or when we have a young child and–"
Wes made a soft and soothing shushing noise as he rubbed Sarah's back gently. "It's all going to be okay. We'll figure it out. I can get another job and I can start doing vocal lessons and we have some money saved up." He ducked his head down so he could look at her face.
"Hey," he said, nudging her shoulder a little with his. "We can do this." Sarah nodded, then grasped one of his hands, intertwining their fingers as her tears subsided. Wes pressed his other hand to his wife's stomach, then kissed her on the cheek and whispered "you're going to be an amazing mom."
A/N: Shoot me a review if you feel the urge! Thanks for reading!