Mr. Hummel

"Don't loose track of who you are just because it might be easier to be somebody else." Will Shuester, Laryngitis

Kurt, I remember every last detail about the day your mother died. How the hospital smelled. How the nurses touched your shoulder in a pitying way and you didn't shake them off. How when I touched your shoulder, you moved out of my reach.

It always seemed like you were moving out of my reach. I try to say to myself that I understand what you did that day, and why. That I understand you, but I keep thinking…I'd know if something was that bad.

But then the proof came, because Finn and Puck just stood by sadly, but not surprised at all. Even your teacher was upset, emotional. But unsurprised.

Why is it only me you constantly surprise me, kid?

When I first ran into the hospital, the first thing I did was try to check on you. "My son…Kurt Hummel…" I didn't know how to ask after you. I didn't know how much, if anything, I'd be told. "Please."

The nurse gave me a string of words. You remember when your mother was in the hospital. You remember how much I hated those doctorly words. Why can't they speak damn English? Do I look like I have an MD?

But out of that jumble of jargon, only one word jumped out. Only one word I needed. Alive. Except I kept thinking for now. "He'll be out of surgery soon."

After the nurse turned away from me to answer the questions of a man with a hand as big as a saucer, I looked dumbly around the room. Dazed, you might say. Really I wanted to sit down and try to make sense of all this. Didn't we already do this for the year? Wasn't one panicked phone call from the hospital enough?

That's when I spotted those boys, Finn and Puck. No matter how much you defended them to me – and you'd been doing it a lot, because you hung out with them at every opportunity – I still couldn't see past the jocks who'd thrown you in dumpsters for the first two years of high school.

The only thing that stopped me from banging their heads together was the looks on their faces – as if they were as lost as I was. The one, Finn, he was talking to your teacher and shaking like a leaf. The other was punching a hole in his knuckles. But both of them had your blood on their shirts, on their hands.

I needed to know what had happened, son. I put my hands on their shoulders and demanded a story. And, unfortunately, the one they told me was unoriginal. It was believable, too. And it damn near broke my heart.

"How long has this Karofsky kid been after my boy?" I asked, voice low and deadly serious, even as I was thinking, over and over, Why wouldn't you tell me? Why…

"For ever." Finn said dully, wilting under my hands. "But it got worse after Texas. Me and Puck tried to help, but Kurt wound up with bruises anyway."

"So did you." That skinny teacher piped up. He'd looked as completely shocked by the story as I was. Didn't any of you tell a teacher? A counselor? Someone? Did all of those PBS specials go to waste when you finally needed to know what to do? "Puck, you told me the bruises were from football."

I have to give the teacher credit – then and in Texas he actually sounded like he cared. A lot. And he'd come out to the hospital to wait with those boys, even though he didn't need to. He was a naïve, maybe, but he was trying.

Finn was shaking worse now, so badly that I thought that if my hand wasn't on his shoulder he might have fallen over. Puck was trying to wipe your blood off of his hands, even as his own blood pumped sluggishly from the cuts on his knuckles.

And from there, we waited. There was really nothing to say.

By the time you woke up, other people were there. The kids' mothers. A girl I recognized as Mercedes, because you and her spent hours, pre-Texas, making clothes in the basement. A blonde, pregnant girl. A boy in a wheelchair. A girl with dark brown hair who gravitated over to Finn and stood there, not quite as outwardly upset as the others.

What happened? They all asked, and, Is he going to be all right? The boys wouldn't repeat the story, not yet, and the second question couldn't be answered.

It was two o' clock before we could see you. You were stable, the doctors said, and the surgery had gone well. More physical therapy, more healing, just as you were finishing the last round. I sat down next to your bed, stroked your hair. I'd told the doc that Finn and Puck were my sons, because something in me told me that you would have wanted them there. They took up most of the space in the back of the room.

"Hey, kiddo." You looked awful. Your face was swollen, purple, cut. Your hair was gone and your head bandaged instead. More bandages…your leg was broken, and your collar-bone re-shattered. The only thing omitted this time was, astoundingly, your wrists, which were both pale and thin-looking, the only parts of you not covered in casts.

And now I wish that they had been.

I didn't know where to put my hand, but I wanted to touch you somewhere. I decided on your wrist. When I gripped it, my hand covered your entire forearm. You'd been wasting away before my eyes, and I never realized it.

The doctor had said you'd be groggy from surgery, but when I touched your arm your lips parted. Your left eye was completely swollen shut, but your right opened a fraction, stared at Puck and Finn, then rolled over to me. "It's always going to be like this, isn't it?" Your voice was breathy, your words clipped, as if you didn't have enough air to put them through. But worse than that, your voice was dull, resigned.

And I knew what you meant just as those two boys knew what you meant. There were always going to be beatings on the side of the road, always going to be people who looked at you as if you were the devil's spawn, always going to be Do Gooders who preached about the hellfire you were going to meet in the afterlife.

I wanted to tell you so badly that the world was going to change, that you wouldn't always have to live with this, but you were always smarter than me, Kurt. You always knew when I was lying.

Instead, I settled on squeezing your arm very, very gently. "I love you, Kurt." I wasn't one for speeches, but I thought you needed one then. "I love you just the way you are. And those boys?" I cocked my head back to Finn and Puck, still wearing your blood, "They love you, too. And there's a whole club of people out there who love you." I couldn't look at you, all bandaged like you were, so I looked over you at the door, willing my voice to be steady. "And the world may not love you at the moment, but there's always people in it who do. You get that, son? I know those aren't the best words."

You didn't even reply to me, didn't show that you'd heard a single word I'd said. I held your arm for a while longer, rubbing it, holding it, promising myself that this wouldn't happen again. I'd make you a bubble boy before I let someone do this a third time.

But when the nurse came in to tell us you needed rest, you were already taking matters into your own hands. In the weeks after you slit your wrists, I kept thinking about those words, said in a monotone, said without any expression of regret at all. "It's always going to be like this, isn't it?"

And I wonder if I could have changed anything.

(Last letter from Burt Hummel, written 9 June 2010)

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