Quinn woke to an unpleasantly fuzzy feeling in her mouth. Her eyes felt gummy and swollen, as if she had slept with her contacts in. Slowly, a rhythmic beep appeared in her ears, sounding as if it was coming from down a long tunnel. She forced her eyes open, blinking repeatedly in an attempt to clear her vision; bright white above her shone down and she wondered for a moment if she was dead.
As she stared at the bright white above her, a dark form suddenly appeared in her vision; she blinked twice more, and the figure solidified into the head and shoulders of a man in green surgical scrubs. A light was shone into her eyes; she blinked yet again, squinting.
"Quinn," he said. His voice sounded almost as distant as the beeping had at first, but was becoming clearer. "Quinn, can you hear me?"
"Yeah," she tried to say. Her voice came out a barely-audible croak; she licked her lips and tasted dried blood.
"Good," he said warmly. "I'm Dr. Michaels. You're at the hospital."
"Why?" she managed to force out.
His smile slipped slightly. "You fell down some stairs. You cracked your head pretty good on the floor, so you have a concussion, which is why you probably don't remember much."
Slowly, Quinn closed her eyes, trying to put together the small flashes of memory she could hold onto. She took a deep breath, and cried out softly at the pain the permeated her torso when she did. Her eyes flew open.
"The baby," she whispered. "Is she okay?"
Dr. Michaels looked down at his clipboard, clearing his throat. "When you fell," he said slowly. "The placenta pulled away from the uterus. It's called placental abruption. In some cases it's mild, but the trauma was severe in your case."
"No," Quinn said, shaking her head. She ignored the stab of pain in the base of her skull. "No."
"I'm very sorry," he said. "We had to induce labor to save both of you, we did everything we could, but the fetus… the fetus was stillborn."
"She wasn't a fetus," Quinn said. "She was a baby." She latched onto the terminology, focusing on her anger instead of the reality of the situation.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "We tried to save her."
Quinn shook her head again and again. "No," she repeated. "No, no, no."
Dr. Michaels watched her with a pained expression on his face. After a few long moments, during which Quinn fell silent and stared at the wall as far away from him as possible, he cleared his throat and placed her clipboard on the footboard of her bed. "If there's anything we can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask. There's a nurses' station just outside your room."
With another apology, he left the room quietly. Quinn continued to stare bleakly at the wall, eyes wide and unblinking. She was aware of the sting of an IV in one arm, that there was pain in her head and neck, that her wrist hurt and was encased in a splint, but all she could focus on was the dull ache in her abdomen, the words the fetus was stillborn echoing in her head like a jackhammer. The beeping of the heart monitor faded from her perception, the wall in front of her blurring; all she could see was a little girl with blonde curls and Puck's eyes, and all she could feel was pain in her stomach, and all she could hear was the word stillborn. Tears dripped down onto her pillow and quiet sobs wracked her body, intensifying the pain in her abdomen, and eventually she cried herself back into unconsciousness.
When she woke up again, it was dark outside. An arrangement of flowers stood on the table in the corner of the room. Rachel was curled up in one of the chairs, her small frame resembling a ball of argyle and dark hair. A massive letter jacket was spread over her, but she was the only other person in the room.
Quinn looked away from Rachel's sleeping form, a strangely numb feeling wrapped around her. She spotted a pitcher of water and some Styrofoam cups on the table beside her bed. Moving slowly, she pushed herself into a sitting position; pain ripped through her body and she couldn't swallow the gasp it pushed past her lips. Rachel's eyes flew open.
"Quinn," she said softly, her voice raspy with sleep. "Are you—" She cut herself off, teeth clacking together audibly as she shut her mouth. Quinn remained silent, not meeting her eyes, and reached with her uninjured hand for the pitcher.
"Here," Rachel said. She bolted from her chair, the jacket falling to the floor. "I've got it." She poured a cup of water out, handing it to Quinn carefully. Quinn took a shallow sip, wincing as she swallowed; her throat felt like sandpaper. Slowly, she finished off the cup, handing it back to Rachel without a word.
"Can I get you anything?" Rachel asked. She fidgeted with the cuffs of her sweater, trying desperately to catch Quinn's eye.
Quinn said nothing, her eyes traveling around the room. She paused as she took in the flower arrangement, then the jacket.
"The flowers are from the Cheerios," Rachel said wryly. She opened her mouth to say something else, but then thought better of it and simply shook her head. "The jacket is Noah's."
Quinn raised an eyebrow dispassionately. A part of her wanted Puck in the room, not his jacket; she wanted the boy with the sad eyes who told her she was beautiful to be there with her when she felt like someone had cut her open and shoveled out every single bit of what made her Quinn and left her body a shell housing nothing but pain and death. A louder part of her—the one that had made her push him away that day in the hallway after glee practice a month ago, the one that had been convinced that she needed more punishment than she had reaped for his mistakes—said nastily that this was that punishment she thought she needed and curling up in Puck's arms was far more than she deserved.
"After you went into surgery, he was in a panic. When the doctor came out and told us that—" She paused again, wringing her hands together; the cuffs of her sweater looked stretched beyond repair. She took a deep breath and forged on. "He shut down for hours. Not even his mom or sister could get him to talk. Then he just snapped out of it. He made Brittany tell him what happened, and—and he came in here, and I was half-asleep, and he just looked at you for the longest time. Then he looked at me and said that it was cold in here and gave me his jacket and walked out." She bit her lip. "I think he went to murder Karofsky."
"Good," Quinn said softly. "I hope he does."
"Quinn, you don't—"
"I do," she interrupted. She continued to stare blankly at the flower arrangement. "I really do."
Rachel sighed. "I kind of do, too," she said. She returned to her chair, folding Puck's jacket and setting it over the footboard of Quinn's bed. "I can't believe him."
Quinn redirected her gaze to her hands, resting limply in her lap. Her right wrist was covered in a bulky Ace bandage, wrapped around a splint. She traced her fingers from her left hand along the line of the splint, prodding lightly until a finger hit a swollen spot at the base of her hand.
Silence hung heavy in the room as Quinn continued to stare at her injured wrist and Rachel stared openly at Quinn. Outside, the sound of nurses striding up and down the hall, papers shuffling, doors opening and closing, drifted through the walls. Quinn could hear people in the hallway chatting and laughing, the sounds muffled by the door but made distant by the hollow feeling in her chest.
"Quinn," Rachel said finally. "Please, say something. Tell me what you want me to do." She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, staring at Quinn as the blonde stayed silent. "Quinn, come on, please," she said. "I know that I can't imagine what you're feeling right now, but please, tell me what you want me to do to help."
"I was going to keep her," Quinn said quietly. She looked up slowly from her wrist. "I decided when we were watching Casablanca the other day. I was going to keep her. I was going to name her Sarah, after my grandmother, and her middle name was going to be Noelle for Puck. I was going to keep her, and I was going to be a better mother to her than my parents were for me, and I was going to let Puck be as much of a father to her as he always wanted to be, and we were going to be a family because we both wanted it and I was so tired of punishing myself and I just wanted to be happy."
"Quinn," Rachel whispered, her voice wavering. "Oh, God. I am so—"
"Don't say it," Quinn snapped. Her voice was stronger than it had been since she'd woken up. "Don't you dare say it."
"Okay," Rachel said. "Okay. I won't. I… is there anything I can do?"
"Go," Quinn said. Her chin drooped to her chest, her eyes locking back on her wrist.
"What?"
"Go," Quinn said again. "I want to be alone."
Rachel didn't move for the longest time. When she did, she stood slowly. Moving towards the door, she paused and turned back. She pulled Quinn's cell phone out of her purse and set it on the bed next to Quinn's leg.
"I'll be in the waiting area with everyone else," she said gently. "Call if you want anything." She reached out, her hand hovering over Quinn's shoulder; she let it hang there for a long second before pulling it back to her side. "I get that you want to be alone. But you aren't alone. You've got all of us here to help you; we're all just down the hall. And if Noah hasn't been arrested for killing Karofsky, he'll be back down there soon."
Quietly, Rachel made her way out of the room and shut the door. Quinn slowly lay back down and curled into a ball, welcoming the pain in her stomach at her movements as a way to focus on something besides the terrifyingly hollow feeling in her chest. She stared at the window, eyes following the edges of headlights of passing cars until she drifted off once more.
When Quinn woke again, pale sunlight was leaking in through the windows, patterned across the wall opposite her bed. Puck was slumped in an uncomfortable-looking position in one of the chairs, Rachel once again curled up in the other one. Quinn numbly took in the dried blood spots on his shirt, the shadow of a bruise over one of his eyes and that both his hands were bandaged, his wrists splinted like hers. A brief moment passed in which an actual emotion nosed through her numbness, as she felt a minute concern for him and hoped that he hadn't actually killed Karofsky and set himself up to get arrested.
Silently, Quinn stared at the two of them and thought of Sarah Noelle Fabray. As stoic as she tried to force herself to be—because stoicism was all she could see getting her through this disaster—she could do little to avoid the barrage of images flurrying through her mind. Sarah Noelle Fabray, with blonde curls and Puck's eyes, watching wide-eyed as Puck taught her how to throw a football, listening earnestly as Rachel prattled on about the wonderful nature of Broadway, tumbling in the grass as Quinn and Brittany and Santana taught her how to execute a perfect round-off. Sarah Noelle Fabray, who would have had the voice of an angel and Quinn's wit and Puck's obstinacy, who would have picked up Rachel's determination and Brittany's love for the world and Santana's ability to stare at and scare the pants off of anyone who tried to threaten her. Sarah Noelle Fabray, who may have had a dysfunctional family and parents who could swing between adoration and hate and back again in six seconds but would have been loved by all the people Quinn loved, because she would have been Quinn and she would have been Puck, only so much better and so much more.
Puck woke first, eyes fluttering open almost girlishly; he grunted as he stretched, not aware that Quinn was awake where she sat, propped up by pillows. He started minutely when he noticed that her eyes were open. A painful silence stretched between them, and Quinn could find the energy neither to speak nor to look away.
"Hey," he said eventually, his voice a low rumble. Quinn couldn't tell if he was speaking quietly in an attempt not to wake Rachel, or if he was afraid that she might shatter if he spoke too loudly.
"Hi," she whispered in response, after a long hesitation. Her throat ached, parched from sleep and crying. Her gaze drifted down to where his bandaged hands lay awkwardly in his lap; unwillingly, one of her eyebrows rose and she looked up at him questioningly.
"He's not dead," Puck said dully. "Cops got there before that. I think Mr. S called. He kept them from arresting me, too."
"They arrested him?" In her emotionless fantasies of Karofsky being executed, being tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, stoned to death, she had not once considered what might actually happen to him. Unsurprisingly, his being arrested felt simultaneously more solid and more appropriate.
"Yeah," Puck said. "For assault. All four of them, actually."
Quinn nodded absently. Her eyes slid back down to his hands. "Tell me you at least beat the shit out of him."
"Yeah," he said with a half-hearted snort. "Guy's a pansy anyways. It wasn't even a challenge. Little bastard won't be eating solid food for six months. Or be able to hold a fork. Or even breathe very easily."
"Good," Quinn said softly.
Puck nodded. He rested his elbows on his knees, staring at his injured hands with an almost thoughtful look on his face. Quinn stared at her own wrist, fingers once more tracing along the splint.
"Rachel said you didn't want her to say sorry," he said, not looking up from his hands. "Which I get. I don't want anyone to try to apologize to me about it, either." He took a deep breath. "We're in the same boat here, Quinn. I never got to see a sonogram or anything, but that baby was as much as part of me as you, and I'm just as broken as you are. I know you weren't going to keep her and I get that, too, now, I think, but—"
"I wanted to," Quinn whispered. She looked back up at him, tears heavy in her eyes. "I decided after the last sonogram. I just hadn't told anyone yet… I was going to tell you first, I just wanted to figure out what I was going to say and how I was going to manage it all and—"
"You…" he croaked out. "You were going to keep her?"
"Yeah." Quinn dropped her eyes back down to her wrist. "Sarah Noelle Fabray. Or Puckerman," she added softly, looking up at Puck almost shyly. "If you still wanted to be a part of her life."
"If I…" he breathed out. Tears shone in his eyes, and the sight of them made Quinn's start to fall, dripping down her cheeks and falling onto the blanket covering her. "Of course I did."
He finally stood from the chair, moving to sit beside her on the bed. Hesitantly, he took her uninjured hand, cradling it between his own; Quinn collapsed against him, tears spilling from her eyes as she sobbed into his shoulder. The body-wracking sobs reawakened both the pain in her abdomen and Rachel, who uncurled from her position in the chair swiftly and made her way to Quinn's other side. Quinn continued to sob against Puck's shoulder, her tears soaking his t-shirt; he held her impossibly gently, his chin resting on her hair. She felt Rachel perch on the bed as well, a hand tracing soothingly up and down her back; she reached blindly with one hand and her sobs slowed minutely when Rachel's fingers slid through her own, letting Quinn grasp her hand as tightly as she could while she cried.
By the time Quinn had cried out all of her tears, the three of them were mashed together in a tangle of arms, Rachel and Puck both wrapped carefully around Quinn. Quinn still gripped Rachel's hand tightly, her head resting exhaustedly against Puck's shoulder; she could feel him trembling slightly still. Rachel was warm and solid on her other side, her free hand running through Quinn's hair. At one point in time, a nurse had come in to check on Quinn; she had taken one look at them, all three crying, and left the room silently.
Quinn was the first to break the silence. "Have my parents come by?"
Rachel's hand stilled, and Puck stiffened. "I don't know," Puck said, his voice a low rumble.
"I know Santana called them," Rachel said softly. "She and Brittany were the only ones who had talked to them before, so she volunteered." She paused, then added wryly, "Actually, Brittany volunteered, and Santana kindly suggested that perhaps she should do it instead."
Quinn nodded absently. Santana always had been overly protective of her friends, and Brittany especially; it was no surprise that she would jump at keeping Brittany from getting lost in the melodrama that would be caused in explaining this to Quinn's parents. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised," she said, her voice soft and bitter.
"They might have come by since we got in here, though," Rachel said hurriedly. "You're only allowed two visitors at a time, and we've been in here since around midnight, so they might be out in the waiting room with the others." Over Quinn's head, Rachel shot Puck a significant glance; he blinked twice before nodded.
"I can go check, if you want," he said. Quinn nodded silently, raising her eyes momentarily to meet his. The moment she did, she fell back into her thoughts of their daughter with his eyes, and she dropped her gaze quickly, not wanting him to see her crying again. He carefully untangled himself, pausing to press a painfully gentle kiss to the top of her head before exiting the room.
Silence stretched throughout the room again. Quinn shifted, turning so she was now curled up against Rachel, who remained quiet as she let Quinn find a comfortable position. Once she had, Rachel's hand returned to her hair, fingers sliding through it slowly. The minute tremors that had yet to leave her body slowed slightly as Rachel pulled a blanket higher over Quinn's shoulders.
"I can't be with him now," Quinn whispered, her breath ghosting across the wrinkles in Rachel's sweater. She was grateful that Rachel remained quiet, the only notice that she had heard a hesitation in the movements of her hand, brief but noticeable. "I look in his eyes and I see her. I can't."
"Maybe not now," Rachel said gently. "No one will expect anything from you yet. We'll all be here to help you, but you set your own pace."
"It's not fair," Quinn said. "I know I made all kinds of mistakes, but she didn't deserve to be punished for it. She didn't do anything wrong."
"Quinn, this isn't a punishment," Rachel said. Her voice was quiet but sharp, and her hand stilled once more. "This has nothing to do with anything you did."
"It's penance," Quinn said. She stared blankly out ahead. "It has to be. I lied, I sinned, I broke the rules and tried to cover it up, and this is what happens."
"No," came a voice from the door, wavering but strong. Quinn's breath caught in her throat at the familiar tones of her mother's voice; she slowly looked over her shoulder, as if moving too quickly would cause an apparition of her mother to vanish.
Instead, her mother still stood in the doorway, clutching at her purse with nervous hands, her eyes rimmed in red. Puck stood behind her, watching Quinn with tense shoulders, as if prepared to bodily drag Mrs. Fabray out if she upset Quinn.
"This isn't penance," Mrs. Fabray said. She stepped into the room, setting her purse on one of the chairs. "This isn't God at all. This is just misfortune. You did nothing to deserve this."
"That's not what Daddy would say," Quinn said, unable to stop herself.
"Your father is very set in his ways," Mrs. Fabray said carefully. "He has his idea of how the world should be, and he stands by those beliefs regardless of everything. But not even he would say that you deserved this, sweetie. No one would and no one is."
Tears welled in Quinn's eyes once more; she thought she had none left, but apparently she was wrong. "Mom," she choked out. Her mother was at her side in an instant, hugging her tightly and kissing her forehead; both of them trembled and cried together as Quinn let herself sink into the comfort of her mother's arms that she had wished for so desperately the last time they spoke.
All the while, Puck stood in the doorway, arms hanging limply at his side and his own tears spilling over once more, and Quinn never let go of Rachel's hand, refusing to let her move away from the bed.