Hi everyone! Here's chapter ten. I hope you all enjoy it.
Reviews are much appreciated.
Thank you to Miranda for beta'ing.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.
Now that he had tended to one of the problems that had popped up in the last half an hour, he had to find Tina, who was probably feeling absolutely horrible about what had happened. She wasn't sitting right outside of the door, like he'd been expecting, or curled up in one of the chairs in the waiting room. The nurses hadn't seen her either, so he began to roam the hallways, trying to figure out why she could have possibly gone.
Eventually, he found her in the maternity ward, looking at all the newborn babies. He wheeled up next to her, taking in all of the innocent, sleeping faces in front of them. He said, "Sorry I didn't come find you sooner."
"I needed a few minutes by myself," she replied.
"You didn't do anything wrong, Tina. You just…you're probably the first person besides a doctor who's done that. Touched her legs, I mean. When I was here, I'd have an imprint of my mom's ring on my cheek every night because she was afraid to touch me below the neck."
"What does that have to do with this?"
They continued to stare at the babies and not look at each other. He didn't think that this conversation needed eye contact. It was probably better this way. Because he didn't know if he would be able to talk to her if he could see her eyes. And she didn't know if she'd be able to listen.
"I'm trying to tell you that no one is as fearless as you are when it comes to Cassie. When it comes to people like her and me. Her parents are the exact same way mine were."
He'd observed them a bit when he'd been in the room at the same time as him. Last time, they tended to just let him talk to her without interference. They'd gone and gotten something to eat and catch up on their lives for an hour. Maybe they didn't want to butt in, he wasn't sure.
But they reminded him so much of his parents that it was a little bit scary. The way that they would only touch their daughter's head and hair, the voices they spoke to her in. It was all so reminiscent.
Tina crossed her arms over her chest as if she was guarding her heart.
"You couldn't have reacted like that," she whispered.
He wasn't sure whether to tell her the truth and possibly make her more upset or tell her something to make her feel better. He thought for a minute for saying, "I…yes. The first few times. It's not really a response that I could control. It was instant. Unavoidable, just like that was. Instead of feeling in your legs, you have to feel in other places, almost."
"Wow, that makes me feel so much better."
He pondered as to how to respond to that. He knew that she was upset and she didn't know what to say to any of this. He had never been dishonest with Tina, per say, but he did evade the truth a lot when it came to talking about his condition. He was vague with her. It wasn't like he felt like it wasn't any of her business, because it kind of was. One day it would get to the point that she would have to know, but for now, he liked that things were good between them. Simple.
He was a hard subject him for him to talk about, to explain. He knew the stories, he knew what he felt, but he wasn't sure how he was ever going to put it into words.
And there were certain things that, frankly, he just didn't remember. He has absolutely no recollection of being in the ICU, for example. He was so drugged up to keep him stable and pain-free from all of his various injuries that that entire week of his life is just…gone.
The last things he remembers is the few minutes before the accident, then nothing. Nothing in the next seven days, at least.
In some ways, he feels like that's probably a good thing. His family was the most distressed them and he still doesn't know if he would have been able to handle that.
"Let me be honest," he said, watching one of the nurses pick up a baby and hand it over to a beaming new mother, "It would upset me if anyone came too close too quickly. After an accident like that…nothing can be too sudden. She wasn't expecting you to do that, Tina. And it wasn't wrong, what you did. That reaction isn't something you should take personally. If she's anything like me, she'll spend the next few years just relearning all these things that used to be easy, like having people come close to her."
What he was telling her was more true than she would ever know. She'd met him probably a year after he'd stopped flinching when people came up to him too fast. Artie didn't have that issue at all anymore, unless under special circumstances. He could let Tina sit on his lap and he didn't mind when she'd come up behind him so quickly that he wondered if she'd appeared out of thin air.
But when he was in the hospital, even his own mother had to inch into the room, as not to scare him and get him upset.
"Just like me, she has to learn how to balance everything. Her emotions, the way she deals with life, everything."
For the last eight years, it seemed like the most important thing in his life was balance. Having some kind of routine. A plan of action. Whether it was a back-up plan or a way to get out of something that made him uncomfortable or he just couldn't do, there was always something he could turn to. He needed to have some kind of day-to-day pattern. Something that gave him that sense of normality that constantly evaded him. So many years were spent trying to hammer down a routine. Finding out what worked and what didn't.
He, quite literally, lead a life of trial and error.
Sometimes that bothered him. Especially when it comes to the things that he loves but can never fully do. Like dancing. Or being that normal boyfriend that he so wanted to be. Everything had to be adapted and adjusted for him. He can't count how many times his mother had spent hours on the phone with the school, trying to get him the things that he needs. Special buses. A key to elevator. Extra time to get to his classes.
He's seen how people roll their eyes when he can't do something and it hinders the rest of the group. Like that's his fault. Like a car accident was entirely upon his shoulders.
It would never be easy, he knew that. Because he lived in a world that wasn't made for him.
The fact that he could never do things on the fly annoyed him too. Everything had to be set in stone well in advance.
Spontaneity was not a word in the vocabulary of his life.
Tina tried to interject that sense of never knowing what was going to happen into his life with the things that he could do easily. She'd call on a Saturday morning to go explore the town they knew so well. Or go to see a movie that looked cheesy.
Once, she'd gotten him out of the house at eleven at night, claiming to his mother that she was having a crisis and needed him to come over right away. Really, she just wanted to go to the grocery store and push him as fast as she could down all the empty aisles. They'd had races in the cereal aisle, him in his chair, her on a shopping cart.
There's a problem with leading a balanced life. Sometimes it's impossible, because you're almost never the only one in the equation. You have to take other people's balancing act into account. The world is a million personality and ability levels all in one big melting pot.
He had to balance the time he spent with his family and the time he spent with his friends. His friends and his girlfriend. His girlfriend and by himself. Everything would crumble if one thing was laid on too heavily.
And he knew the line. Like when he would start to get frustrated when he was with a group of people for too long. He would be tired. He would want a moment to himself.
Everyone has to make do with the situation that they're in. He had a pretty good life. He had a family that loved him and a roof over his head. He had understanding friends. A supportive girlfriend. And, of course, he was alive. So easily he could have been dead.
From what he's been told, if a few extra seconds had gone by, it was a lot more likely that he could have died.
It wasn't something someone should dwell on. You should just count your blessings and move on when it comes to almost dying. Also, it hadn't really had that big of an impact when he was eight. By the time he was out of his drugged out state, the fact that he could have died had kind of blown over. Everyone was focused on him recovering.
If he had even been two years older than he had been, well, he thinks his parents would have spent a lot more on therapy than they already had.
He was glad that he had been naïve enough to not even have it be a passing thought. He wouldn't have known if someone hadn't explained it to him. Told him how lucky he was.
But really, was he lucky? He was alive, so he supposed so. He would rather be alive than dead, but was being this way really a fair exchange? A life for his legs.
Tina put her hand against the glass, watching all the happy people smiling and shredding tears of joy. She felt like crying too, but not for the same reason as them. She knew she shouldn't feel guilty .Artie had just expressed to her that she shouldn't. But she couldn't help it. She had just made a little girl cry. How could she not feel bad?
Despite the fact that they still weren't looking at each other, Artie took this lull in the conversation as a chance to reach other and take her hand, squeezing it.
She sighed and finally turned to face him. "I didn't hurt her, did I?"
She was surprised when he chuckled, "Tina, of course not. You just scared her a little, that's all."
"Why are you downplaying this?"
"I'm really not," he replied, his thumb rubbing the back of her hand, "I doubt she'll remember or care about this in the morning."
"Why are you so good at making me feel better?"
"Years of practice," he smiled, "Are you ready to go?"
She left go of his hand, "Yeah."
She put her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt as he cast one more glance at the babies in their incubators before putting his hands on his wheels in preparation to start moving.
Those babies had it easy. They didn't know how complicated the world was yet.