Author's note: I know we are all just completely and utterly gutted right now. I'm sure that all glee fans everywhere are gutted, but really, we of the good ship faberry are in the special hell right now. After watching the ep, I could hardly even get to sleep last night. It's literally like the writers said, "The only thing left that we haven't tried to stop Quinn from lezzing out for Rachel is to hit her with a truck. And oh yeah, let's make it Rachel's fault."

Part of me wishes I could just say, to hell with this, our girls are safe from this kind of madness in my world; but the truth is, that wouldn't give us (me) the necessary catharsis to feel better. I need to see the storyline work itself out to a happy ending through this whole crash situation; and I bet a lot of you do, too. So with that in mind, this chapter does carry a moderate to major angst warning, plus another for graphic descriptions of blood and guts. But, it goes without saying, I would NEVER inflict any permanent damage on Quinn or Rachel. I hope you'll find some comfort in this chapter...and it certainly won't be seven weeks until the next one!

…...

Take Me As I Am

Season 3

Chapter 13: On My Way

…...

The next morning, Quinn was awoken by the tinny jingle of "Somebody to Love" playing on her cellphone, which was her personalized ringtone for her girlfriend. She rubbed her eyes and groped blindly for the phone on the bedside table, knocking over a bottle of water onto her pillow that sent her jolting out of bed as she grabbed the phone and tumbled onto the floor.

"Ughh, fuck...morning, starfish," she yawned, rubbing her eyes as she surveyed herself woozily.

"Quinn, are you just waking up?" Rachel gasped in horror, the sound of her obvious panic rousing the blonde girl even more thoroughly than the splash of water to the face or the tumble out of bed. "I was just calling to check that you're on schedule and almost ready to leave! Our flight leaves in two hours! What the hell are you doing?"

"Two hours?" Quinn squeaked, her eyes going immediately to her alarm clock...which was blinking a steady rhythm of 12:00am. "Oh, fuck me, my alarm went out Rach. And my mom must've left for work early..." Which was why she'd planned to leave her car at Rachel's and get a ride to the airport from Rachel's dad. Shit.

"Quinn Cordelia Fabray, if you make us miss our flight I will never forgive you!" Rachel shrieked; but Quinn was already on her feet and running to the bathroom for her toothbrush.

"We're not gonna miss our flight Rach, I promise. I'm already packed, and I'm not even going to shower, okay? I'm just gonna brush my teeth and throw on the nearest available clothing, and I'll be there in twenty minutes, okay baby? We are not missing your Julliard audition again, I swear on my life."

"Okay. Fine. Do it. Just get here as fast as you can," Rachel whimpered; and before Quinn could respond, the line went dead. With a soft groan of frustration, Quinn grabbed her toothbrush and proceeded to run around her room trying to pull on her clothes while brushing her teeth and throwing a few final toiletries into her suitcase (all right, so she'd lied about being completely packed; but only a little). Ten minutes later, with the vague suspicion that she'd put on her underwear backwards, she was out the door.

…...

Twenty minutes turned into twenty-five, and Rachel texted Quinn with the caps lock on to fully convey her anxiety level. WHERE ARE YOU?

ON MY WAY, Quinn texted back. Rachel huffed and threw herself back down on the couch, then got up and started pacing again. She wasn't mad at Quinn; her alarm didn't go off, and her mother wasn't in the house, which was why Quinn planned to drive herself to Rachel's so they could ride to the airport together in Jacob's car. If anything, it gave Rachel a slight pang, as it always did, to think about how fast her sweet girl had been forced to grow up. She took care of herself, and never complained that it was too hard. If anything, Rachel was angry with herself now for not giving Quinn a wake up call earlier, just to make sure she was covered.

And even knowing that as the minutes ticked by, there would eventually come a point when they'd miss their flight; even then it didn't mean the end of the world. Her Julliard audition wasn't for a whole four days; it was the only opening the admissions office could grant her, and it just happened to fall neatly halfway through her spring break. So even if they did miss their flight today, Rachel knew her dads had purchased the optional travel insurance (always take the optional travel insurance, Daddy loved to harp on about it), well they'd just transfer their tickets to the next flight to JFK. It wasn't as if there wouldn't be another one. As she thought through all her contingency plans, Rachel began to calm down, and her heart rate slowly returned to normal.

That was when the phone rang. "Hi Daddy," Rachel sighed, flopping back down on the couch and putting her legs up over the arm. "You're lucky you caught us, we're leaving for the airport as soon as Quinn gets here. What's up?"

"Rachel, there's been an accident." Michael's voice was low and grave.

"What do you mean?" Rachel asked bemusedly, innocently confused as to why her father would call home from his job at the hospital to tell her there had been an accident. Of course there had been an accident—there were accidents every day in farming country, that was what kept her father gainfully employed in the county emergency room.

"Rachel, it's Quinn."

"What? No," Rachel shook her head, another snort of incredulous laughter bubbling to her lips. "Quinn's on her way over. She just texted me."

"She ran a stop sign, baby girl. She got hit head-on by a pickup truck. You need to go get your dad and get here now." Rachel blinked and looked around the room, her eye honing in on every useless detail like it was a delicately crafted shot in a movie, and somehow significant; the magazine pile fanned out on the coffee table with little colored tabs that her dad left to hint to his husband what he'd like for his birthday. The picture on the piano of her smiling seven-year-old face with the missing front tooth, that she'd always found embarrassing, but Quinn adored. Her daddy's ratty and rumpled, half-finish Sudoku puzzle challenge book on the side table, with the pencil still sticking out. Even the tiny motes of dust floating in the beam of sunlight pouring in through the windows. Rachel saw it all at the same time, like time didn't even mean anything at all.

"Rachel! Snap out of it, baby girl. I need you to bring the phone to your dad so I can talk to him."

"Of course. We're coming. We're coming right now," Rachel nodded, already running for the stairs. A blast of trembling adrenalin had just blasted straight from her chest out into the rest of her body; it felt like the time she'd tried a tablet of Noah's Ritalin for recreational purposes. Everything was clear and sharp and immediate, just a question of lining up tasks and executing them. Get to Quinn. That was task number one. That was all there was.

On the way to the hospital, Rachel group-texted the entire glee club. Quinn had a car accident. We're on our way to the hospital. Please come asap. Then she silenced her phone and shoved it back in her purse, determined not to give it a shred of her attention once they got to the hospital. "Dad, she'll be all right won't she? What did Daddy tell you?"

"We don't know yet, Rachel, I don't know anything. All I know is that it's serious and they're prepping her for surgery." Jacob's voice was as grim as his husband's, and as controlled. Neither of them, a distant part of Rachel's brain was relieved to note, were in any danger of falling apart right now. They were going to do whatever needed to be done. It was such an inexplicable comfort.

"You called Judy?" She asked, more just to have something to say than because she doubted it.

"Before we left," Jacob nodded. Then they were pulling up to the ER parking lot, and Rachel jumped out of the car before it came to a complete stop and ran straight to the admittance desk nurse without waiting for her dad.

"Quinn Fabray," she choked to the harassed-looking nurse, gripping the formica countertop tightly in her trembling hands.

"Are you family?"

"Yes. We're her family. My dad's just parking the car, he's right behind me." The nurse nodded without further interrogation, looking back at her computer monitor and tapping rapidly on the keys to bring up Quinn's status. And for once, Rachel didn't feel the slightest qualm about fudging a state-sanctioned family tie with her girlfriend, rather than raise an ACLU-oriented ruckus for gay rights and demand to be treated equally without having to lie. In this moment, nothing that would add even one extra minute to the length of time it would take before she saw Quinn was worth anything to her. Not even civil rights.

"Well your sister got into a head-on collision," the nurse said gently, leaning down to talk to Rachel in a much softer, though still businesslike, voice. "It looks like she was wearing her seat belt, thank God, but there's some internal bleeding and a punctured lung. They had to operate right away." Rachel nodded, tears finally welling up in her eyes and spilling silently down her face.

"But she'll—she'll be okay?"

"That's a complicated question right now, hon. I really need to speak to your parents." Rachel nodded, looking up to see her father running towards them across the lobby. The nurse continued explaining what she could of Quinn's status to Rachel and her father; how the impact of the truck's grill had broken two of her ribs and driven them into her lung, which now had to be re-inflated; how the blow had ruptured her spleen, which by itself was causing life-threatening internal bleeding that the doctors were doing everything they could to stop. How two of the fingers on her left hand had been severed in the collision, but another set of doctors were working on reattaching them.

That did it. Rachel barely had a chance to turn her head before she vomited all over the floor. Her father grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and rubbed her back. "I'm sorry," Rachel whispered, stricken. She had never gotten nauseous so fast before, not like that.

"It's okay, baby," Jacob hummed gently, keeping up the gentle circles on her back and raising an eyebrow imploringly at the nurse, who turned and fetched a paper cup of water.

"The janitor will clean that up, honey, it's all right. Why don't you just come sit down over here." The nurse lead them to a set of hard plastic chairs on the other side of the room, closer to the swinging blue doors that lead to Quinn, and they sat obediently, with the promise that a doctor would keep them informed the moment they had something to report.

"Quinn, please, don't die," Rachel whispered to herself, rocking back and forth in her seat with her arms wrapped around her knees. She knew Quinn couldn't hear her; but it didn't matter. "Please don't die...please, God, please don't take her..." Time began to lose meaning again, so quickly, as she sat there rocking; just like it had before, on the phone with her daddy, when she could see the dust motes. She could feel her dad's hand on her shoulder, but other than that the entire sensory world was faded and receding. It was her fault. Her fault. Her fault Quinn was rushing, her fault Quinn was texting and driving. Her fault Quinn hadn't seen the oncoming traffic. Rachel had never known guilt like this before, so sharp it felt like grief. But Quinn was not going to die. She just wasn't.

Time continued to float aimlessly by; Santana and Brittany were the first to show up. Rachel was jolted out of her rocking when she looked up and saw Santana's face, reflecting back her own stricken expression. The girl sprinted across the room in almost the same amount of time it took Rachel just to stand up, and instantly Santana's arms were locking around her, and Rachel was sobbing. Santana didn't say a word; just held her fiercely, humming a wordless tune as the shorter girl's sobs worked themselves out, and eventually tapered to sniffles. After a while, Rachel noticed that Brittany had joined them; then Quinn's mom was there hugging Rachel's dad as they cried together. Then Mercedes was there, then Kurt, Blaine and Puck. Once Rachel and her dad had relayed the brunt of what they knew (they left out the graphic details, both wanting to spare the others such nightmarish images when they closed their eyes) they all lapsed quickly back into silent waiting mode, numb with shock and exhaustion as all their adrenalin levels shot up and crashed back down again as the hours ticked by.

Finally, a doctor walked out from behind the swinging blue doors and said, "Quinn Fabray family?"

…...

Quinn was out of the operating room in "serious but stable" condition when Judy, Jacob and Rachel (whom the doctor took to be Quinn's mother, father and sister, none of them bothering to correct her) were finally allowed in to sit by her bedside. It was made clear that she probably wouldn't wake up for hours, or possibly even days; but the worst was over, and the doctors had repaired all the damage they could. Her spleen and lung were repaired, the ribs and fingers were set, and the blood she'd lost was being replenished by transfusion. The main worry the doctors still had was the swelling in her wrenched spinal column; but they wouldn't know anything about the severity of the damage until the swelling went down. She might be fine in weeks or months; or she might, the doctor had admitted when pressed, never walk again. But he swore it was truly to early to tell anything, and encouraged them all not to think about that as they sat around her bedside, waiting for her to wake up. Then he lead them to her room, harshly lit and filled with beeping instruments.

Quinn was paler than she had ever been. So much paler even than when she'd had mono, Rachel wouldn't have believed it was possible. Her face was bruised, nicked, a butterfly bandage on her cheekbone. Her left hand was completely encased in snowy white bandages. Monitors were hooked up to her heart rate, beeping out a steady electronic pulse, while a bag of rich red blood dangled from an IV pole, slowly dripping into the sleeping girl's veins. There were oxygen tubes in her nose. Rachel sat in the hard plastic chair on one side of Quinn's bed, and Judy sat on the other; while Jacob alternated between hovering over them and taking the final seat in the far corner of the room.

"We're all here, baby," Rachel whispered, picking up Quinn's limp hand—the one that wasn't smashed up and held together with bandages—and rubbed it against her cheek.

"Dad, she's cold," the little starlet said urgently, rubbing her girlfriend's icy-cold hand with both her own, and blowing on it. "Can we give her another blanket?"

"It's shock. Her body's still in shock," Jacob said hollowly, as he jumped to his feet and began rooting through the room's tidy cupboards for extra blankets, looking relieved to have something to do. "Here we are," he said absently when he found them, unfolding two—they were so thin, after all—and draping them over Quinn's sleeping body. Then he reached out and gently, excruciatingly gently, smoothed a lock of blonde hair back from her face.

"She's such an angel when she's sleeping," Judy remarked quietly, the first words she'd spoken in what felt like hours. Rachel picked up her girlfriend's chilled hand again, and pressed the soft palm to her face, her lips. Please, God, let her wake up, the dark-haired starlet prayed; to God, to the Universe, to anyone who would listen. I'll do anything. Just let her wake up. Eventually, Rachel fell asleep with her head resting on Quinn's hip, one hand still entwined with her girlfriend's to keep it warm. When she woke, she urgently had to pee; but it was hard to make herself let go of Quinn's hand, and slip her warm fingers back out of the blonde girl's sleeping grip. As the cool air hit her warm palm, the unconscious girl stirred and whimpered softly in the back of her throat.

"Quinnie?" Judy gasped, sitting up straight from her dozing position and examining her daughter's face closely. Quinn's eyes were moving back and forth under the lids as they fought to open, soft sighs of interrupted dreams on her lips.

"Mom, I'm thirsty," she rasped softly, eyes still closed, like a sleepy child who didn't want to get out of bed. Jacob leapt out of his chair and filled the little plastic cup on Quinn's bedside with water from the pitcher, complete with bendy-straw, and handed it to Judy.

"Thank you Jake," Judy murmured absently, and in the back of her mind Rachel thought it was hilarious that her dad let Quinn's mom call him Jake. He used to hate that nickname. Judy held the straw to Quinn's parched lips, and the mostly-asleep girl took a few slow sips.

"Thanks, Mama," she murmured softly, twitching her nose sleepily. It was almost like she was just waking up on a lazy Sunday morning...almost as if the hospital and all its beeping machinery and life-saving tubes and monitors could completely disappear, if Rachel could just tilt her head the right way and close one eye. "Gotta get up for Rachel...Rachel's waiting for me. Gotta go fast..." Quinn yawned, and the iron band around Rachel's heart constricted. Again. My fault.

"Oh, Quinn...I'm so sorry," Rachel whispered, picking Quinn's hand up again and kissing her knuckles, squeezing her eyes shut as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Mmm...s'okay Rach. M'okay. Just...sleep...little longer..."

"It's okay, baby. You can sleep as long as you want. I'm right here holding your hand, Quinn. I'm right here." Rachel squeezed Quinn's hand gently for emphasis. "And I'll be right here when you wake up."