Hello everybody! Here is my quick present to you for the holidays. With that said, I am off to Ireland a little today to spend Christmas with my family so I will see all of you after the holidays!
Hope you all enjoy and have a safe New Years!
Rachel Corcoran – January 2012
(Part I)
Against all odds, Rachel's fever begins to break by the next afternoon.
Everybody had been so expectant of the worst that when Rachel so much as opens her eyes the next morning, it is cause enough for celebration... When she opens her eyes the next morning with a temperature that has dipped down just below one hundred, they are ecstatic...
Mostly, Rachel is just happy for an opportunity to see another day.
Where her mother and brother, aunt, grandparents and friends are all sensing a renewed sense of hope in the revelation, Rachel sees only a chance to tie loose ends, to say the goodbye's that she so feared she would never have the opportunity to make...
Rachel identifies a second chance but this is only in the shortest term of ideals.
This morning, Rachel's head is all over the place, buzzing about frantically as though her brain is already trying to make up for all of the lost time that it will endure... Every couple of minutes her body seizes up in pain, a personal revolt against Rachel's insistencies upon ingesting as few pain killers as humanly possible in order to keep her mind free and clear to focus on the more immediate task at hand which she knows will require the utmost conscious of efforts...
She wants to remember everything that she can while she still can.
But her conscience and her body do not seem to want to cooperate and the sudden loss of control leaves Rachel weary as she drifts back and forth slowly between the land of the living and a realm far beyond anything that she can properly comprehend just yet... Even though she is wide awake Rachel feels dazed, almost as though she is floating inside of an alternate universe, trapped somewhere between the conscious world and that by which she has yet to fully discover.
She lays stiff as a board, completely still inside of her bed for fear of the slightest motion bearing unimaginable pain down upon her. But not even that works... An agony spreads inside of her, slowly moving from the tips of her toes up through her very core leaving her grimacing with a low groan that escapes involuntarily from her lips in response.
"Hey, are you okay?"
The question is distant. It takes Rachel a moment to place it as her eyes roll open and upwards to focus in upon her brother, hovering continuously above her in his dedicated vigil, committed to the promise that he had made to stay sober and at her side for as long as he had to.
Rachel forces herself to smile gently in response, but the motion does not last as she studies the concern deep down inside of her brother's eyes... Noah had lost track of himself some time ago – the concept is not distant – but ultimately he had managed to find out who he was once more... Noah had made the promise to her never to lose himself ever again... Both siblings find it miraculous that Rachel's worst has the tendency to bring out the best in him.
She can barely manage her answer before her exhausted eyes are closing on their own accord once more... Rachel has been drifting into and out of consciousness all morning long, stirring in her sleep every once in a while, sometimes even speaking before ultimately falling into the trap of unconscious once more...
Even she can tell that she already has one foot on the other side.
This time when her eyes drift shut, it is to an immediate, unsettling image... She is inside of a graveyard. It looks immediately familiar although it takes her a moment to recognize it as the same one that her father is buried inside of; it has been years since Rachel had been to visit, after all.
There isn't a terribly large number of people present... Rachel spots her mother quickly, draped in all black and trembling at the knees despite her best attempts towards feigning stability... Noah stands directly besides her, looking stunningly sharp in a pressed black suit although his eyes are sad and determinedly fixated at the freshly dug earth beneath his feet.
The rest are all present out of obligation... Rachel recognizes her aunt behind Shelby, flanked on either side by her grandparents... Even her Uncle Ephraim has managed to make the trip alongside his wife and three children... The realization of the seriousness of the situation all comes together in the presence of her mother's eldest brother... Her Uncle Ephraim and his family are the people that Rachel only sees on the rare holiday that he doesn't have to work or in times of unspeakable tragedy; she can only assume that a funeral can be classified as both...
It is only after she places a few stray members of the glee club cramped uncomfortably alongside the back of the unit, looking as though they would rather be anywhere but here that Rachel identifies the event as her own... Of course, she can not see herself. The only thing that is left of her by now is a shell inside of a thick wooden frame lowering slowly inside of the ground as people toss flowers to meet her at the bottom as if this will make a difference in the fact that she is gone...
A piece of her wonders briefly whether or not she will find the opportunity to see her father again... An even larger piece of her wonders whether or not she even wants to and suddenly, her thoughts are infiltrated with a littering of questions whose answers seem impossible.
But she isn't allowed to linger.
Terrified of what is to follow, Rachel comes back into consciousness with a rush of air that is so sharp and so sudden that it gets stuck deep down in the very pit of her chest.
Her eyes snap wide as she chokes on absolutely nothing more than a thick balloon of pure oxygen, her body turning naturally on its side, curling into the fetal position as the pain radiating up the length of her spine reminds her that despite her dream, she is far from dead...
For now.
"Noah..." She calls miserably after the brother that she knows had been by her side in the moment that her eyes had closed, but not even she can be certain of how long she had been asleep for... All of these hours, the minutes and seconds, they have all tended to begin meshing all together in these last couple of days...
Her voice is raspy and forced through short, gasping breaths but she needs somebody to anchor a confidence inside of an otherwise uncertainty and there wasn't a human being in this world that she trusted more than her brother.
"Shit, Rae... are you alright?" He is by her side in an instant, leaping instinctively to his feet in his display of surprise towards Rachel's rude awakening... His features come slowly into focus, but this time she does not see him adorned in the suit and tie that she had envisioned within her dream state, but the ratty old pair of dirty sweats that he had been living inside of in these past twenty four hours... "Do you want me to go get mom?"
"I need you... do me... a favor..." She breathes in airy fragments, downright ignoring his questions as Noah's muscles tense immediately in preparation to fulfill her desires, even if it means running to the edges of the universe and back.
"Sure..." He nods slowly; attentive and prepared, hoping for the best while habit reminds him to expect nothing less than the very worst.
"Can you make sure that people come to my funeral?" Rachel forces her voice to clear despite the physical pain that the seemingly simple motion causes... Noah falters visible. Even Rachel can sense the shift in the air patterns before them as the tension gathers thicker with each passing second.
She feels badly for catching him so off guard but Rachel is far too aware of the idea that she is dying to allow this to slip past them unnoticed.
"Noah..." He stays quiet for so long that eventually, Rachel is forced to prompt him.
"People will come, Rachel..." He finally sighs with a forced tone of disinterest, his voice deepening alongside the indication that he does not want to talk about this right now despite the fact that the choice isn't really one that either of them are free to make. "I'll be there... and mom..."
"You guys... don't count." Rachel shakes her head with a firm persistence, "You have to come... I'm talking about real people."
"What, I'm not a real person now?" He flashes her his infamous grin, practically forcing Rachel to swallow her response as she purposefully slows the conversation in a silent indication of just how nice it is to see him smiling again...
When she retains her silence, Noah's smile gradually falters into stone. His eyes drop alongside his expression as his head bobs slowly in an indication that he has accurately interpreted Rachel's quiet as a desire for him to produce a true answer that she will feel comfortable in carrying tightly alongside her.
He breathes deep, audibly as his fingers brush through bushy hair that he so desperately needs to cut in a characteristic nervous habit that Rachel has long since learned he had inherited from their mother to the exact... Back and forth and back and forth his ministrations take him until finally, he is confident in himself enough to match her eyes once more.
"I'll make sure that people come, Rae," He assures her. "Hell, I'll even drag them there myself if I have to."
"Thank you..." She breathes in her response, comforted in her belief that Noah truly would be willing to resort to physical violence in order to procure guests and mourners if that is what he had to do in order to keep his promise to his sister, although silently Rachel hopes for Noah's sake that things will be much easier than that...
Then again, the Corcoran's always did have a thing for theatrics.
"Do you think that I can ask you a question?" He asks after a handful of seconds of comfortable silence, turning back onto her initial request; a favor for a favor...
"Mhm..." She nods timidly, almost afraid of what he is going to ask, the possibilities all being much too vast for her to narrow into one specific point...
"Why is all of this so easy for you?" She sneaks a single, bleary eye open and turns her head towards her brother... The truth is, she had never thought about her predicament in this way and now that the consideration has been placed, not even she is entirely certain of the answer... It had never been easy. Rachel thought that out of everything, this was the most obvious point of all. "I mean... look at you, Rach; look at this... You do know that all of this is still entirely avoidable, right?"
"People keep telling me that..." Rachel shakes her head slowly but there remains the hint of a smile written upon her face so that Noah isn't entirely certain how to perceive the response. He cannot be sure if she is angry at him for even asking or if she is simply so far away at this point that she just doesn't even care anymore.
He is willing to bet on the latter although he knows that he would never admit to this out loud.
"You mean mom keeps asking you that?"
"I thought that was... implied..." Rachel shrugs in the reminder that the only people that actually do ever make their way through this hospital to come visit her is him and their mother, occasionally their aunt and grandparents and sometimes Quinn, who Noah knows is in no position to be anything but supportive regarding Rachel's decisions...
"That's because we know you, Rach..." His voice begins to rise, indicative of a building lack of understanding bubbling inside of his gut and projecting behind a tone that is almost desperate.
"I already told mom, Noah..."
"That you're more afraid of living than you are of dying, I know..." He paraphrases her actual words with a harshness behind his voice that he does not particularly mean... The two siblings silence almost immediately. With a sigh, Noah mentally slaps himself for his inability of possessing any morsel of self control... "I'm sorry, it's just... I tend to learn a lot when me and mom are actually talking to each other, I guess..."
"I guess that's one way of putting things..." Rachel ignores his explanation but still, she quiets... That was not the way that she would ever word her particular predicament but then again, the more she things about it, the more it seems to be the most accurate thing that she has heard in a long time.
"Fine..." Noah reasons with his sister's need for more sensitive terms, displaying his willingness towards compromise in a struggle to provide the euphemisms that Rachel so desires. "You're afraid that the cancer will only keep coming back."
"I don't think that that's entirely unreasonable." Rachel pleads her case as her fingers begin to fidget against the threaded blanket draped across her matchstick thin body... Her eyes glance upwards every couple of seconds. Briefly, she watches as Noah's mouth opens in a silent expression of words before closing once more.
He doesn't have a response.
Sure, he wants to tell her that this is in fact just about the most unreasonable thing that he has ever heard of. Yes, he wants to tell her that she is just being crazy. But the more that Noah thinks about it, the more he understands that it is impossible for him to put himself in Rachel's shoes and understand what it might be like to be so afraid to live while the rest of them are bogged down by their innate fear to die.
"The price that you are willing to pay for an uncertain future is too high, Noah." She beats him to the production of a physical response and the second that she does both know that this argument is over in favor of Rachel's side... But Noah has never been one to take well to losing and he cannot help but to cling onto that final thread of hope that foolishly forces himself to believe that this is not actually the end as they know it.
"It is not a price, Rachel!" He loses his patience, bursting to his feet in a manner that leaves Rachel flinching... Regret pools inside of his gut the second that he sees the motion against the tired lines inside of Rachel's face, forcing himself into his seat once more.
"I'm sorry..."
His face falls gently in his apology but eventually, Rachel manages a soft shrug in her response although offers no words as to indicate to Noah whether or not she had truly been hurt by his outburst.
"Please don't think anything less of me, Noah..." She murmurs and the fear inside of her weak voice leaves Noah physically shuddering against the idea that his sister believes him to think of her as anything less than his greatest hero.
"I don't..." He chokes quickly, his head shaking vigorously from side to side as if to emphasize his words that he can only pray will resonate across the surface of Rachel's skin... "I think that you're the bravest person that I've ever met... honestly."
"I don't know about that much..." Her face glows red; a flush of color against otherwise pale white cheeks as she plays the modest card as she always tends to do... The small smile that creeps across the corners of her lips is indication enough however, to tell Noah that he has said the right thing.
He watches her eyes carefully as they glaze within seconds... She looks suddenly far away, like her mind is a million miles from her physical body... His face falls briefly, his heart clenching inside of his chest as he swallows around the staleness of his own words for just a moment before allowing the lingering question to slip unconsciously past parted lips.
"Are you scared at all?"
Her neck cranes slowly in order to face him, eyes settling into deep thought as she considers her answer to her brother's question carefully although ultimately, she merely shrugs, responding in the most careful way that she can possibly think to do.
"I don't know yet." She chokes quickly but turns her head immediately away from Noah out of embarrassment to be crying in front of her brother... She has put up such a strong front up until this point. It absolutely kills Rachel to think that this will all be wasted in a momentary lapse of control.
"I'm sorry, Rachel..." Noah tenses in response to her tears, permanently fearful of doing anything that may cause discomfort for his sister that he was supposed to be protecting as though his life depended on it. "I didn't mean to make you... I'm sorry."
"I just don't want to be alone is all." She hiccups in response to his awkward apology, stilling Noah in the unexpectedness of his words... His head raises from its previous position fixated pointedly against the floor, their eyes matching for an extended handful of seconds as he attempts to look straight through her and deeper inside of her words.
"You won't be."
She needs to hear it. Rachel needs to know that somebody is willing to stay with her and hold her until all of the pain is gone... Noah knows that as long as he stands here and tells her that he will miss her one last time every time, she will be able to stay strong...
But even this notion is starting to get harder.
He speaks with a confidence behind his voice, determined to rise up against the worst that it can possibly gets, but his heart pounds with a fear that he hopes will not resonate beneath his tone.
"I can promise you that much."
A knock at the door provides a saving grace towards a conversation that both Rachel and Noah understand was bound to get heavier before it could ever lighten... Rachel's neck cranes slowly, her head turning to identify the source in terms of a rare visitor, but the second that her eyes clear she understands that she has spoken too soon...
Suddenly, she would rather be lingering on her and her brother discussing the topic of her impending death.
"Um... hi Rachel..." Finn shuffles softly on unsteady feet, lingering inside of the doorway as his hands clutch against a bouquet of flowers so tightly that his knuckles blanch.
Rachel swallows heavily, the sound wrapping itself around her brain and squeezing gently as Finn takes the initiative to move forwards alongside the understanding that neither Noah nor Rachel were going to be the first ones to take the step towards inviting him inside...
Rachel attempts to narrow her eyes, to put on a display of utter hatred directed straight towards him, but there is absolutely no fight left inside of her body. The most that she can manage is confusion, a sense of betrayal that matches that by which she feels every time Finn is so much as mentioned, let alone in her presence...
Luckily, her brother manages to glare enough for the both of them.
"Um... how are you feeling?" Noah scoffs audibly against an answer that seems obvious and Finn stumbles over his reaction, tripping against his own two feet, coughing against his attempts towards covering up his tendency to falter as he retreats a comfortable distance away from Noah just in case the notoriously overprotective brother choose to reach out and throttle him.
"I'm not allowed to have flowers in here." Rachel ignores his question and focuses on the flash of pride that beams across Noah's eyes as she criticizes Finn's failures towards a peace offering although she cannot tell if either boy registers her words for a more deeper intent towards criticizing his failures as a boyfriend as a whole, "It's part of my infection precautions..."
"Oh..." Finn is thrown aback by his immediate errors, stepping back the handful of steps that he actually had managed to take forwards in order to toss the flowers abandoned against the hallway floor, "I'll just... I'll just leave those out there then."
His eyes dart nervously between Noah and Rachel, not entirely certain which Corcoran he should be more afraid of in this moment, but when Noah and Finn's eyes finally do meet, there is the ghost of a mutual understanding that sparks behind otherwise stony expressions.
Rachel's brow raises gently as she lingers between the two, suddenly wondering whether or not this visit is truly as much of a surprise as she had originally believed...
"I'm gonna go grab something to eat." Noah forces himself up and onto his feet, his willingness to leave Finn and Rachel alone together with such ease silently confirming everything that Rachel had previously been thinking... This had to have been planned. Noah and Finn had to have spoken with each other at some point... Rachel is almost curious. "I'll be back in five minutes... In exactly five minutes."
Noah emphasizes the given time frame that he is willing to provide Finn with in order to fix this mess that he has created and Rachel bites her tongue against informing her brother that he could give them five minutes or five years together – it wouldn't make a difference...
His eyes don't leave Finn's as he pauses directly in front of the much taller boy, neither making a sound as Noah glares, silently warning Finn with sharp, piercing eyes not to mess up this second chance that he has been so gracefully blessed with before pushing past him, nudging Finn hard with his shoulder and turning sharply outside and into the hallway.
For a long time there is only complete silence.
It lasts for only seconds but each one of those seconds feels like an additional lifetime... Rachel's heart pounds inside of her chest, placing strain on the tightness that she already feels building against her constricted ribs.
She forces a couple of deep breaths that hitch against the back of her throat, trying desperately to control the obviousness of her motions as she attempts to adhere to the advice that her brother had always told her regarding staying tough in the face of your opponent... Of course, this was much easier to do when she was twelve years old and standing up to Quinn Fabray whom up until that point, she had considered a mortal enemy in front of the entirety of her gym class...
Finn... well Finn was different. With Finn, she had not anticipated this feeling, this disappointment, and if anything that only made it harder.
"What are you doing here, Finn?" When she is finally comfortable enough with he stable pattern of her breathing to trust her own voice, Rachel manages to ask the burning question... Her words or soft but at the same time, the shakiness is barely noticeable so that she can be nothing less than grateful regarding the tiny victory.
"I guess I just thought that it was about time I came to visit..." He shuffles uncomfortably so that Rachel can easily see the truth behind his eyes; he had come today under the premises that the end is coming soon, and although he hadn't possessed the capacity to see things that way before it had always been clear as glass to Rachel...
Maybe that is why they had not been able to see things eye to eye.
"You must have heard that I'm dying..." She is joking of course, but the content is much too grim for either of them to respond in anything more than an awkward grimace.
"Quinn came to talk to me..." Finn coughs nervously into the back of his hand as he begins to shift his body weight back and forth between his own two feet, Rachel's eyes subconsciously hypnotized by the continuous back and forth motions. "Puck too... Well, Quinn talked to me, mostly Puck just yelled but... I'm sure you get it."
"So basically you got a verbal berating from the two most outspoken people in our school." Rachel translates his own explanation, indicating that she does indeed fully understand where he is trying to go with his words.
"Uh... yeah... Whatever that means." Finn shrugs but his face is skewed with a look of dazed confusion so comfortably familiar to Rachel that her heart can't help to quicken even faster than it is already pacing.
She forces her self to shake her head away from him, her eyes tilting downwards as she once again begins to toy with the corners of her blanket, picking at it until the threads finally begin to come apart between her fingertips... She cannot deny her surprise in the revelation that both Noah and Quinn – both of whom have a long and complicated history with Finn – have chosen to reach out to the boy for her sake in order to rectify a situation whose time frame for forgiveness was very near up...
But she does not make this known. In fact, she doesn't so much as allow her expression to change so that once again, the silence builds between them until it thickens and coils inside of her stomach to the point of nausea.
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay..." Rachel's response is automatic as she quickly shakes her head against Finn's decision to break through that barrier with a long awaited apology... But it is only after Rachel rejects his bid for forgiveness that he projects the confidence to say all of the things that have been a long time coming, trying to drill inside of her head that he means every word of it.
"No it's not." He denies her quick acceptance because Finn knows just as well as Rachel does that her throw away response offered simply to fill up an otherwise inevitable silence was made simply because Rachel is much too polite to ever say what she truly thinks regarding Finn's treatment of her. "I got scared, Rachel and I know that that's not an excuse and that I probably sound like an idiot saying that in front of somebody who is as brave as you but I was a coward and I'm sorry that you got stuck in the middle of that I just... I was hoping that maybe there was still some time left for me to fix it."
She nods; a sharp, quick jerk of the head as she inhales against his sincerest of apologies... Breathing slowly, she closes her eyes and inhales, breathing out as genuine a tone as she can possibly muster.
"Thank you."
Finn nods his head slowly but his eyes turn down towards his feet as they begin to tap gently against the tile floor below him, trying to avoid what both him and Rachel quietly understand that she is trying to communicate – that she does not want to leave this world holding onto any grudges as stupid as that produced by a fleeting teenage romance sparked by an undertone of tragedy, both having grown much too old in these past couple of months to be pinned against anything such as that.
"So..." Rachel coughs gently in an attempt to continue conversation rolling alongside the hope that eventually they will be rid of these terrible silences that burst inside of their skulls like a nuclear explosion entirely. "I heard through the grapevine that you're joining the army.."
"I uh... I'm leaving for boot camp on June 22nd." Finn nods in his confirmation; a short, confident bob of his head as his face skews timid awaiting for Rachel's unpredictable response to the news.
"The day after graduation..." She expresses her sentiments, falling back slightly in her surprise as she slowly begins to understand the exact reason that Finn had decided to come and see her today – because they both now share a mutual understanding of what it feels like to have absolutely no idea where they might be tomorrow... "Seems a little bit hasty, doesn't it?"
"I guess that I'm just ready for a change of scenery is all." Finn shrugs as if to play on the idea that his recent, chronic display of screwing up royally had played no role in his decision to leave Lima as quickly as humanly possible without looking back once.
"Well, have you really thought this through?" Rachel stutters in the fear that she had inadvertently contributed to a life altering decision that knowing Finn, he had probably not thought through in its entirety... "I mean, have you... I don't know, looked into going to West Point or the Naval Academy at all? I hear that they have a really good football team... They were even looking to recruit Noah last year until my mom squashed the idea of him going into the military..."
"No," Finn laughs with a shake of his head but Rachel's face remains somber. "I'm not smart enough to go to West Point or... wherever..."
"Don't say that..." Rachel whispers with a frown, shaking her head against his insistencies towards self deprecation, disappointed that he can display them so quickly without so much as a second thought.
"Eh, it's true..." He waves her off, uninterested in her attempts towards making him feel better when he had been the one to come here and try to make her feel better. "Besides I'm not enlisting so that I can play football, I'm enlisting so that I can become a better man than the person that I was in high school... I'm ready to put the past behind me, Rachel, to forget about it."
"Do you want to forget about me?" Her sunken, brown eyes reach upwards to meet his own just as his brow begins to wrinkle with regret towards his word choice that he had not intended Rachel on interpreting as she had...
"I wouldn't be able to forget about you even if I tried." He smiles, that famous lopsided grin that forces Rachel's own lips to tilt as she nods softly as if to indicate that she believes every word that he is telling her. "The first part of me becoming a better man is to make up for everything wrong that I ever did and the biggest thing that I have ever done wrong is screwing up everything that I did with you... I want to fix it, Rachel."
"There might not be a lot of time left for that..." She speaks with a breathy disposition behind her voice, a heavy heart melding inside of painfully truthful words...
Rachel watches Finn carefully for his reaction as he nods his head in a soft agreement before taking a step forwards closer towards her. Bending at the waist, he leans closer into her, his movements slow and deliberate as his arms snake around her frail back to pull her in tightly against his warm chest, his lips lingering downward against her forehead so that Rachel can feel the very weight of his heavy heart bearing down against her skin.
Rachel closes her eyes and despite all of the odds, finds herself leaning into his touch, into the acknowledgment that there will at least be one other person by her side to help guide her through the journey that she knows she would never be able to complete alone.
"I know... But I will be there, Rachel." He is firm in the promise of assurance, "For whatever time that there is left... I promise."
"Thank you, Finn..." She hiccups, pulling away from his arms out of embarrassment as she finds herself forced to wipe at moistened cheeks with the back of her taut hands.
She laughs but her motions are sad and forced in an obvious attempt to dissipate the emotions currently lingering between two sated bodies... Finn does not reciprocate her actions. Instead, he only stares, brooding and poised.
He stands tall but at the same time, Rachel can't help but to wonder whether or not it will be foolish of her to hold him to a promise that she knows as much as he does is bigger than all of them.
"It's enough to make you give up sometimes, huh?"
"Not this time." Finn straightens his spine confidently, his chest puffed outwards in the understanding that he has let Rachel down once before, he needs to do as much as humanly possible in order to instil a sense of confidence inside of Rachel towards him once again.
"Okay..." She breathes, readily believing him despite having entered this conversation with a heightened sense of caution. He smiles reassuringly and she reciprocates the action as a soft slight slowly begins to sift through an otherwise darkened cave so that for the first time in a long time, Rachel actually feels as though there might be a possibility for her to be saved after all.
There is a perception about the dark that leaves Rachel remarkably uneasy.
She can only assume her response to be natural; an innate reaction to the loss of light, but there is something about her room being lit by nothing more than a dull, fluorescent lamp dangling above her head that absolutely terrifies her.
Noah sits comfortably in front of the television and flips through the channels so quickly that Rachel's head spins... She might be the one that is dying here, but that is still not an excuse for her brother to give her the rights to pick what she wants to watch for a change. Surprisingly, it is a sense of normalcy that provides nothing but comfort.
Her mother stands outside in the hallway. Rachel watches her carefully through the window, using her peripherals as not to be too obvious as she speaks to a large group of very official looking employees that look much more like lawyers than any doctor that she's ever seen; business suits and perfect hair and make up although on the inside, Rachel knows they must be fuming for being forced to work late into a Saturday evening...
She cannot hear a word that any of them are saying through the closed wooden door, but based on her mother's very animated non-verbal cues, things are not going very well and Rachel is not stupid enough to assume that this has nothing to do with her... In the end, she is forced to close her eyes and turn away just to keep her mind from wandering too far into the plethora of possibilities...
It has not been a particularly good night.
Rachel has been tossing and turning since mid-afternoon, blaming the vast energy expenditure that she had taken for granted earlier this morning for her lack of initiative towards doing so much as anything right now.
Pain throbs dully inside of her gut, gradually spreading from her toes through her fingertips... Flashes of white hot agony have become so frequent that she half wishes that she could just keel over and die right here, right now simply to get the inevitable over with already.
"Hey Rach?" She doesn't even realize the fact that she had allowed a soft groan of protest to escape from beyond her lips until her brother is calling out to her... Sneaking a gentle eye open, it takes a long time for Noah's features to defog around her.
She can only wonder if she looks as bad as she feels... Probably worse, is the closest thing to an answer that Rachel can come up with...
"Are you okay?"
"Great..." She mutters, the single syllable being the only thing that she can force her ravished body to produce as her eyelids instantly grow heavy all over again, leaving them open for anything more than several seconds at a time being enough to exhaust her in this moment.
"Do you want me to go get mom?" He fidgets nervously and Rachel can hear the panic rising inside of his voice as he bypasses her response to his previous inquiry without second thought and prepares to call for back up out of fear that the bitter end is here to come in any one, fleeting moment that he is not ready to face on his own.
"Not yet..." She assures him and Noah only nods, watching carefully as every breath that she takes grows a little paler than the last...
But it is almost as though Shelby can sense her children's subconscious desire for her presence from through the walls of the enclosed room, a maternal instinct that has her slipping carefully through the door just as Rachel begins to procure second thoughts against the accuracy of her previous statement.
This time the mother is alone. Absent is the entourage that she has spent the better part of the last hour arguing with, and Shelby does not hesitate upon closing the door firmly behind her in an indication of the family's desire for privacy...
Through eyes open to nothing more than thin slits, Rachel watches as the first thing that Shelby does is to lock eyes with Noah as he continues to hover over her otherwise prone form.
They wear matching expressions; a deep sadness that cannot be expressed into any form of words as it settles deep inside of their very core and resonates alongside the idea that they have exhausted all possible options of saving Rachel's life devoid of a miracle.
Nobody says a word, but at the same time they all know.
Shelby's tired features are only emphasized by the dim light inside of the room, creating the illusion that she is literally sinking inwards. She looks exhausted and Rachel knows that a lot of this has to do with her mother's desire to count herself awake, holding onto every second leading up to their demise... She holds every detail of their family being together deep inside of her mind understanding full well that it can be lost at any given second in the day.
"We're taking Rachel home."
"What!" Noah's response is abrupt and entirely involuntary. A loud yelp accompanied by a crack in his voice emphasizes his surprise.
Both mother and son cringe at the volume of his expression, immediately turning towards Rachel for fear of disturbing her, but the girl's eyes only flicker closed in the satisfaction that she will be at least granted the opportunity to be safe inside of her own home once more.
"The hospital and I, we worked something out so that Rachel can spend the rest of the time that she has left at home." The words explode between them like a bomb; the emphasis that the girl before them, so physical in presence right now is dying and that while it may not happen tonight or tomorrow or even the next day if they're really lucky, the end is not inevitable. "We'll have a live-in nurse to help and... and they'll give her medicine to keep her... to keep her comfortable... I just think... I think that Rachel would prefer it this way."
"That's bullshit!"
"Noah..." Shelby warns, motioning towards him with both hands to settle; a silent plea as her eyes flicker between her two children in search for a means by which to satisfy both of their needs, "Please..."
"Why are you giving into them?" The anger is still apparent deep within the pit of his voice, but Noah's volume drops considerably alongside the underscore of a reminder that the sister whose fate they are discussing remains directly before him. "You know what those people can be like... The only thing that they want to do is shuffle Rachel around and get her out of here as quickly as they possibly can for space and you're just letting them do it... You don't want Rachel to come home, mom I know it. I saw you out there yelling."
"I wasn't yelling." Shelby sighs, her exhaustion clearly apparent behind her voice as she attempts to detract Noah away from a reluctant path towards the acceptance that she knows they are all going to need in order to get through these next couple of days.
"Trust me mom, I know what it looks like when you're mad." He doesn't falter nor does he fall for her excuses. Noah has always been hopelessly stubborn – just like his mother. "You were yelling."
She is quiet for lack of a response when Noah finally does rip himself away from Rachel's bedside in order to pace in frantic circles, his quick, jerky movements indicative of his desperation to regain at least a sense of control...
When his gaze tears over towards the large picture window hanging over their small city, looking up towards the millions of stars that he has seen millions of times, his muscles finally relax with defeat as he begins to wonder how it is possible for something to appear so much bigger than before all within a matter of seconds – a phenomenon that Shelby has been trying to figure out for years.
"I can't do this..."
When Noah finally does look back towards her, it is in a burst of light that glimmers slowly out of his face. His eyes search her own, desperate for a glimpse of indecision towards his mother's final decision, but when this never comes, he is left to slide his palms up and down across his face as if trying to rub out the disbelief.
He misses her already but this goes without saying, because Shelby feels the exact same way.
"Believe me Noah, there is nothing in this world that I would rather make you do less than this..." Shelby's eyes dance across his own, exhausted expressions masking the inadequacy each feels towards an impossible situation.
"Then why are you?" The undersides of his eyes are red rimmed as he attempts to hold the tears back inside of his skull. His words are sharp, but Shelby tries desperately not to take them too personally out of a mutual understanding towards just how hard this is for all of them.
"Because if you don't do it today than eventually there will come a time that you hate yourself for wishing that you had." Shelby swallows hard, shaking her head slowly against his defiance, personal experience dictating an understanding that she does not want her son to ever have to figure out for himself.
"I don't understand how you're so calm right now." He begins to pace; the shadows caused by his filtering into and out of the light behind Rachel's closed eyes is enough in itself to make her dizzy... Even she can tell that his movements are rigid and tense as he attempts to piece everything together. When she finally does manage to sneak a single eye open softly, it is only to watch Noah glare with disbelief towards their mother in an attempt to understand how it is possible that she is so easily accepting Rachel's fate when mere days ago, Shelby had been calling on favors from the Gods themselves for a means of saving Rachel's life.
"Because I love her too much to keep doing this, Noah." She informs him through a surprisingly soft smile displayed behind impossibly sad eyes. "We have to say goodbye."
He considers her words, stumbling briefly over the possibilities in his response without ever actually emitting a single sound before ultimately swallowing in defeat with a shake of his head as to indicate just how lost he has become amidst all of this confusion.
"What if I don't know how to?"
"I know that this is hard..." Shelby reaches out towards him and places a hand against his firm shoulder, squeezing it tightly still just grateful that he is not pulling away from her comforting embrace like he had been so prone to doing in these past weeks, "I'll give you a map when I figure it out for myself, but for right now I'm going to have to be honest with you Noah, I am winging every move that I make... I just... I can only hope that I don't do too bad a job because I'm really going to need you to follow my lead over here in these next couple of days and pray that it takes us in the right direction, okay?"
"Okay..." The boy nods his head in an indication of his willingness to work with his mother for the first time that he can truly remember in the understanding that right now everything they do has to be with Rachel in the forefront of their minds...
They will have an opportunity to linger inside of themselves later.
"When is all of this gonna happen?" Noah takes a deep, firm breath as if to force both himself as well as his mother to believe just how strong he can be throughout all of this, his spine straightening instinctively as his eyes narrow in upon his mother's, determinedly clear of all tears and in fact, any indication of lingering sadness.
"Tomorrow morning," Shelby follows his lead through a mutual understanding, appreciative of his effort at mother and son focus on the task at hand and not the future that it will eventually bear down upon them, "Maybe even later on tonight, it all depends..."
"I should probably text Quinn..." The memory sparks inside of his subconscious desire to keep moving in an effort to prevent himself from getting lost inside of his own head, a reminder that the blonde had been adamant earlier this afternoon about stopping in on her latest project towards repentance that even Noah was surprised, he was believing. "She wanted to stop by a little bit later... I should tell her not to bother."
"Keep her updated... Tell her to stop by the house if we bring Rachel home tonight." Shelby nods, surprised even at herself for so much as making the suggestion, still not entirely used to the blonde's presence in their family settling on the more positive spectrum of things. "I'm sure that Rachel would like that."
Shelby swallows into silence, her eyes lingering over towards her daughter's still form as the girl drifts like lightening, into and out of consciousness. The only sounds amidst the quiet room are those of her son's fingers dancing across the key pad of his cell phone and Shelby finds comfort in the dulcet tones of a message delivered in a matter of mere seconds.
"She'll be there."
Shelby embraces an opportunity of having to wait but a mere handful of seconds for answers...
Waiting... It is all they seem to do these days and Shelby is so tired of it.
Her body sits frozen in her stillness but inside of her head, her mind begins to race as her knees collapse from beneath her, forcing herself into a chair on the opposite side of the bed from where Noah sits. She makes herself comfortable in the understanding that her moment for rapid answers has come and gone. Here, she will be waiting for a long time coming although she does not complain as the motion is accompanied by a strong sense of wishful thinking, begging for this moment never to end although deep down Shelby knows that eventually it must.
Time creeps slowly inside of the room. On one side, Shelby latches herself onto Rachel's hand while at the other, Noah presents himself diligently at his post, each grabbing hold tight as if this will be enough to keep Rachel here with them – silently begging her to please just stay.
Waiting to die remarkably turns out to be pretty dull.
Rachel has easily identified a readily set pattern of events that follows into the hours... She has her moments of blissful, painless lucidity but even those are beginning to grow briefer and briefer. Ever stronger are the violent revolts, her body releasing its tirade against her ever daring to embrace those moments in which she almost feels – dare she say it – good, so good in fact that she can almost forget about the crippling pain that is only bound to return.
The most excitement that she has had is the promise that at one point within the next twenty four hours, she will be granted sanctuary inside of her own bed, but at this point she is too tired to even express this, so instead she waits.
"You should call Uncle Ephraim, mom..." Rachel fades slowly into and out of a fuzzy conversation between her mother and brother as they plan for the worst around her rapidly diminishing form. "Do you think that he would want to come down to see Rachel?"
Rachel considers the question inside of a greater scope. She has not seen her uncle since her Bat Mitzvah three years ago... Ephraim Berry was a busy man that lived in Boston with his trophy wife, three perfect children and a multi-million dollar architecture firm that he had personally raised from the ground up. It isn't as though Rachel is bitter or anything, it is just that the fact that she barely knows her mother's eldest sibling apart from a handful of holiday visits is astounding.
She can only guess that her funeral must be considered an important occasion.
Against her better judgment, Rachel laughs at the mere idea for reasons that are completely unknown, even to her... But her tongue feels fuzzy as though she has been dry swallowing fire balls all afternoon, topping it off by stuffing a furry animal inside of her mouth. The noise comes out barely above a whimper. Neither Shelby nor Noah so much as notice.
"Your aunt called him already this afternoon..." Shelby responds quietly, her hands weaving automatically through her hair so that Rachel can immediately tell that her thought processes are going much along the same; lines as Rachel's; that a tragedy large enough to warrant a visit from Ephraim is a tragedy of disproportionate means. "He'll be here tomorrow night."
"What about grandma and grandpa?" Noah swallows trying desperately to accommodate Rachel's particular love of being surrounded by as many people as humanly possible. "And Aunt Krista..."
"They're at the house, getting it ready for Rachel."
"Oh..." And just like that it is over. Mother and son fade back into obscurity; a silence that Rachel knows is now bound to linger with limited interruption for hours to come.
"Shelby!"
When the hours that Rachel had previously predicted quickly turn into nothing more than mere seconds, the girl's reaction is violent in her surprise...
The sound of footsteps pounding with resolve inside of her otherwise quiet room has her jerking painfully from a previously relaxed position inside of her bed, her heart racing in a rush that sends such an indescribable pain through her spine that it leaves her trembling.
Adrenaline pours inside of her veins, initiating the hyperactive response that has her eyes focusing inwards towards the source of the intrusion... Her mother and brother shoot upwards from their seats, blocking her vision only briefly before she manages to identify her own doctor through the cracks between their bodies.
"Dr. McCarthy..." Shelby sounds desperate as if begging will prevent this man from delivering any more bad news to the unsuspecting family, silently informing him that if he doesn't have anything good to say in regards to Rachel's condition, he will be better off just keeping it to himself at this point. "What happened? I thought you said that they weren't going to be ready to move Rachel for another couple of hours..."
"We aren't bringing Rachel home tonight."
Rachel's heart plunges into her stomach as the one thing that she had been truly looking forward to vanishes before her very eyes... Tears flush inside of her exhausted sinuses but Rachel doesn't have the energy to so much as allow them to fall. She cannot begin to imagine what could have possibly gone worse than what her current condition has indicated that has restricted her from the courtesies of being allowed to die in her own damn home as opposed to inside of this God forsaken hospital, but she is certain that whatever it is, she doesn't want to hear it.
"What?" Shelby's voice is drained and devoid of understanding... Rachel can practically hear as her brain churns inside of her head just trying to keep up with the flurry of directions that her emotions are being thrown inside of.
"A teenaged girl was just brought into the ER." The doctor explains slowly. "She was in a car accident and has been declared brain dead."
His announcement is met with a silence that he has clearly not been expecting. The air is so thick that Rachel can practically taste it.
"I'm sorry..." Shelby follows her temporary setback with a violent stutter as she voices in the respect of her entire family, a lack of understanding towards why he is providing them with this information... She sounds almost offended as if to ask this man if his intentions are to simply rip their hearts further from their chests in relaying this painful story that hits much too close to their current predicament to be particularly comfortable. "How does this effect my daughter?"
Rachel knows that tone. She has heard her mother speak it a million times before although she can never in her life remember a time that it had been directed towards Dr. McCarthy."
"Shelby, the girl's parents have agreed to donate her organs."
He recognizes Shelby's understandable aggravation and cuts straight to the point before the mother has the opportunity to raise her guard too high around either of her children.
The effect is immediate and expected. The room freezes into an impenetrable stillness as the doctor's words seep slowly across the surface of their skin and deep down into their very bones themselves... It seems so obvious now that Rachel is disappointed in herself that she had not expected it.
"She is a match with Rachel," He nods through a bright smile, continuing only after he is certain that the family has shaken off their shock long enough to actually hear him. "And the donation of her kidney to Rachel has just been approved."
"Is this..." Shelby pauses, swallowing heavily against a sudden bout of dry mouth; the confident and poised singer with a voice that could put the rest of the world to shame silenced in a struggle to structure her words around a brain torn between screaming for joy and resisting elevating her hopes for fear of being only disappointed yet again, "Is this some kind of a joke?"
"No Shelby..." The man laughs but this is only because he has had the pleasure of being acquainted with this woman long enough to anticipate this reaction from her, "It's not a joke."
"Oh my God..." The astonishment builds quickly inside of her chest, swelling until her heart literally begins to ache underneath the pressure. "Oh my God!"
Shelby is repetitive in her uncharacteristic loss for words. Her body begins to tremble, physically shivering from her head down inside of her very toes as the tears quickly swell against the undersides of her eyes. Her hands jut out in front of her as she looks for someone, anyone to latch onto in an expression of a relief untranslatable by mere words alone. She finds Noah, her fingers clutching onto the shoulders of his t-shirt, surprising him by the suddenness of her actions as she pulls him into her body and holds on for dear life.
He accepts her actions, sitting like a frozen block of ice against her body, dumbstruck by their unforeseeable turn of fortunes until Shelby pulls away from him, attempts to straighten herself up quickly. She wipes her eyes with the balls of her hands, scratches her fingers like a makeshift comb through the tangled web that has since become of her hair, primping for her second chance.
"When will it happen?" She coughs in an attempt towards sounding as official as humanly possible, but her hand continues to grip onto Noah's own, their fingers lacing as she squeezes him to near painful proportions.
"We've already waited long enough, I think..." He smiles, Shelby's head nodding automatically alongside his words in an indication of her agreement. "The donor will be brought into surgery within the next hour or two, Rachel won't be too far along after that. We will like to start prepping her immediately."
"Can I go with her?" Shelby's question sounds rushed; she is asking simply out of formality. She is already halfway out the door before the words have so much as finished leaving her mouth.
"Shelby..." The doctor's tone has her pausing. She has not particularly been expecting to receive a definitive no in response so that when the doctor hints subtly towards this unexpected direction, she is thrown back with a force that has her grip against Noah's hand tightening, leaving the boy wincing. "I would actually like to take this opportunity to maybe speak with you and Noah in my office... There are a couple of... uh... stipulations that we have to discuss."
He chooses his words carefully but both Shelby as well as Noah immediately recognize exactly what it is that he is trying to say...
They had both been so overrun with relief – a flush of happiness that either craved just as much as the other – towards the idea that Rachel has suddenly been given this miraculous second chance that they had completely forgotten that it was only just that – a chance...
It is not as though the fact that there is currently a girl somewhere inside of this hospital that has befallen victim to a terrible, senseless tragedy for the sake of others' lives will automatically save Rachel's... Rachel was still sick; sick beyond a measure that they could truly comprehend. Her chances are not definite... Hell, they probably aren't even so much as good.
"I'll give you three a minute..." The doctor steps back in recognition of the idea that this is a decision that this family must discuss together.
Shelby and Noah swallow hesitantly around his departure. His absence darkens the room once more and now clouded with the uncertainty of choice, the mood is perhaps more grim than it had been even before.
Nerves lacing through their veins as the magnitude of their decision slowly begins to seep through their pores, both lock eyes only briefly before turning back towards Rachel, matched in their uncertainty. Everything is moving much too quickly than either of their exhausted brains can manage to keep up with.
They can either lose Rachel tonight, or they can save her.
"What should we do?" Noah breaks the silence but Shelby only shakes her head before taking a slightly uneasy step forwards closer towards Rachel as if to merely indicate what her final decision will be – to ask the one person who deserves more than any of them to make her voice heard.
"Rachel... Rachel...?" The girl is awake but her eyes are so glazed over and despondent that Shelby makes the mistake of assuming that she had been apart from the world this entire time. She shakes Rachel's shoulder gently, but in her haze each jolt feels like a punch that leaves her head rattling as her eyes begin to drift rapidly through various stages of focus. "Honey, you have to wake up I need you to listen to me... I know that you're tired Rachel but this is important... The doctors, they found a kidney for you Rachel. We found a match."
Rachel manages a nod, hoping that the movement will be enough to translate into an understanding that she had been present enough in her focus during Dr. McCarthy's speech to have heard everything that he had told them.
"Noah..." She groans for her brother's presence when her eyes lose him in the midst of her mother's movements about his body, her weak profession being the sole word that she can manage in her effort to project a desire to have her entire family by her side, the memory being all that she knows will be able to guide her through these next couple of hours bound to be the most difficult of her life.
"No, no Rachel, it's not from Noah..." Shelby misinterprets Rachel's statement, emphasized the girl's continuous struggle in expressing herself as Rachel gulps heavily and attempts to align her brain into a state of focus towards performing such seemingly menial tasks.
Frustration grows inside of the pit of her stomach when she stutters briefly over the depletion of oxygen inside of her lungs and fades into silence once more. She has never before experienced something like this; a fit of weakness that leaves her body wracked in tremors that Shelby interprets as a representation of her fear although Rachel cannot be entirely certain of this herself... Her mother is sent into a flurry trying to comfort her, her hand rubbing in gentle circles up and down the length of Rachel's arm, friction providing the confidence that Rachel hopes she will be able to hold onto.
"The donor is random, sweetie..." Shelby explains what Rachel already knows but the younger girl humors the worried mother who absorbs comforts through rambling; a nervous habit characteristic of their entire family. "We don't know who it is... That person, she was an organ donor. That means that she wanted this, Rachel. She wants to give you this gift and you are going to be okay... Everything is going to be okay now."
"Okay..." Rachel swallows the bitter taste inside of her mouth and forces herself to at least attempt to sooth her mother's fears that Rachel is certain are insurmountable even in comparison to her own in this moment... It is not the first time that the thought had passed through her mind, the idea that this whole thing, it may have been killing her physically, but it was killing her family as well, only in a much different sense...
The difference was that at least for Rachel, there was an end in sight.
"Is this..." Shelby swallows briefly mid-question as if to allow her an opportunity to reconsider the idea of whether or not she truly wants to complete her words. Breathing steadily for a handful of seconds, Shelby eventually shakes her head against her own selfish thoughts and continues in a determination to trust her daughter's every decision in terms of her own life – whatever that decision may be. "Is this really what you want, Rachel? I mean... after everything with Noah and the... and the risks... It's up to you honey and I don't want you to feel pressured by me, or Noah, or the doctors or anybody... This is about you and I want you to know that it is okay for you to say no... Just remember what I told you last night... I know that you're tired, and I know that you're scared. It's okay if you don't want to do this."
It is an indication of just how far Shelby has come simply by her ability to ask Rachel this question. It brings to her daughter, a spread of comfort across the length of her body; a warmth that has the girl beaming as she slowly nods her head without second thought.
"I... I want this." Rachel promises, staring upwards towards her mother as the older woman offers her an assuring – albeit watery – smile.
"They're gonna have to take you upstairs to get you ready for surgery soon and I'm not going to be able to come with you but me and Noah will get a chance to see you before they... before they..."
"Before they cut me open?" Rachel forces as much of a smile as she can manage as she completes the sentence that Shelby can't seem to finish herself.
"Yeah..." Shelby nods in her confirmation; her voice is permeated by the ghost of a laugh, but still, her eyes darken.
"Hey..." Rachel stiffens in response to a profound guilt collecting against the moisture on her mother's cheeks. She swallows briefly against her dry mouth. Taking her time, she speaks when she can. "Don't cry mom. I'm gonna be fine."
"No... no, it's okay... I know that you will be." Shelby shakes off her daughter's concern although even her best efforts are difficult to believe as she nods confidently and wipes the tears quickly away through a heavy inhale that sucks them all back inside of wherever it was that they'd come from... She smiles brightly, reaching downwards in order to grab onto Rachel's hand with both of her own, squeezing as tightly as she possibly can as though terrified to ever let her go again.
"Hey mom?"
"Yeah?" Shelby snaps to a vigilant attention, dutifully prepared to deliver Rachel anything that she can ask for, even if it required her moving to the ends of the Earth and back just to give it to her.
"You're hurting my hand."
"I'm sorry." Shelby jumps backwards stiffly in an expression of her permanent fear of befalling upon her daughter, any more damage than what her already frail body can possibly sustain.
"It's okay..." Rachel shakes off the apology in acknowledgment of her mother's desire to cling tightly onto her, fully understanding what it means to so desire a little something extra to hold onto.
"Alright..." Shelby nods softly. She leans close into Rachel once more but does not retain her post at the girl's hand as she takes their physical parting as the first of many painful steps towards their impending, painful parting of ways; Shelby's being forced to trust her own daughter's life at the hands of a team of doctors that she doesn't even know. Rachel knows that it must be killing her, but she silently applauds her mother's confidence as she attempts to absorb her bravery. "I'm going to see you in a little while, Rachel... But still, I want you to know that I love you very, very much – more than you will ever know, okay?"
"N-Noah...?" Rachel's breathing increases towards her mother's parting sentiments. She feels badly, ignoring the woman's expression of unconditional love but she tenses terrified in the fear that she will be unable to see her brother before she is sent into surgery because despite all of them constantly informing her that they will have an opportunity to cross each others paths once more before she is taken into surgery, Rachel has since developed a few trust issues in terms of doctors and their promises... She needs to see her brother.
Just in case.
"He's right here, honey..." Shelby does not hesitate in her assurances, stepping back slightly as she beckons with her hands for Noah to shuffle closer. He approaches nervously, hands deep inside of his pockets as his presence completes the formation of a tight circle between the three family members that they all wish that they could hold onto forever.
"Hey sis..." Noah greets her awkwardly, none certain of exactly what to say in the midst of all of the muddled chaos plagued with an uncertain endpoint. "It uh... it looks like I managed to weasel my way out of this one."
"You do have a gift for that..." Rachel manages a soft laugh towards her brother's graceful attempt towards lightening the mounting tension that hovers above them, but the relief is short lived, their faces falling the second the motion gets stuck at the base of her throat, pushing upwards and out of her mouth in the form of a painful, ragged coughing fit.
The sounds are puny and pathetic but each one hurts worse than the last. Her family watches her with a nervous content but Rachel forces herself to wave them off before they have the opportunity to say anything. She doesn't want what can very well be her final moments with the people that she loves the most in this world to be them asking her if she was okay when the answer was already so clear.
"We'll, uh... we'll be right down her waiting for you so please don't be the diva that you always are and take forever up there." Noah attempts to diffuse the tension lingering against the space created between their bodies but his voice is so stiff and devoid of its usual charm that it is hard to look past what they are all thinking.
"You're the one that always hogged the bathroom in the morning." Rachel breathes a playful retort gently but she quickly fades into silence. Her body is tensed in an overwhelming pain. She tries desperately to screw her face into a neutral expression but she does not fool either her mother or brother for one second.
Rachel swallows heavily. She knows that they are trying their bests, but they are afraid and so is she. No amount of joking in a not so subtle attempt towards avoiding the truth is going to change this.
"Noah..." Her voice changes drastically. It is choked with a fountain of tears as the nerves slowly begin to take over; a true and trite fear seeping out from within her words as her brother leans inwards just a little bit closer in order to catch the softness of her words; an underlying terror practically silencing her. "You promised me that I wasn't gonna die alone."
"You won't." Noah's response is immediate. Rachel hasn't heard him sound this confident in weeks.
Noah ignores the feeling of his mother's muscles tensing violently besides him in her response to Rachel's words, in the acknowledgment that her two young children had so much as had this conversation with each other because right now, Noah knows that his primary focus needs to be on Rachel and Rachel only.
Him and his mother would have plenty of time to catch up with one another while Rachel was in surgery.
"Listen to me, Rachel that's not gonna happen okay and I'll tell you why... I've got this feeling, you know... This gut feeling and you know how I am with these kind of things, I'm always right." Noah flashes her his famous, brilliant smile that most girls would kill for an opportunity to see. His face glistens with a confidence that has Rachel physically relaxing beneath his words. "Chances like this, they only happen for a reason. You taught me that, remember? There is no way in hell that you have made it this far only to... only to... Anyway, you're gonna be fine, Rae. I just know it."
"Pinky promise?" Rachel smirks as she makes a jerking motion with her hand, but she barely has the energy to lift her pinky outwards towards Noah in the sibling's classic expression of a means of offering each other only their most sincere of promises.
"Pinky promise." Noah smiles confidently and helps Rachel to complete the action that she simply cannot do on her own, wrapping his own bold finger around Rachel's own before shaking with a surprising gentleness that does not compliment his lumbering size.
"I'm... holding it against you if... you're wrong."
"You can haunt me for the rest of eternity." Their words are heavy but it is the first time that they have spoken with such ease all night. "Hold me to that."
"Oh Noah..." She laughs gently but the image quickly fades into nothing beyond a lingering smirk; a ghost of everything that her family knows her to be truly capable of. "I love you the most, okay?"
"Nah, that's impossible..." He challenges her sentiments of faith through a small shake of his head highlighted by a casual shrug of the shoulders, "Cause I love you the most."
"Alright..." Rachel mouths upwards in her acceptance towards her and Noah's faux argument but her eyes are wandering in an attempt to cram as many as these short memories as possible into the back of her mind within a matter of the minutes that they have left with each other. "Mom..." She calls out to the woman, vying for the attention of the entirety of her small family and even though Shelby is busy speaking with the orderlies designated to take Rachel away from them, she manages to pull away without so much as a warning the second that she hears Rachel's voice calling to her.
"Honey, Noah and I... we're gonna have to go now." Shelby speaks slowly as if to prolong their time together. Her hands weave around the back of Rachel's bald head, cradling her as if she were an infant again as she leans further inwards towards her, ensuring that Rachel will hear. "We'll see you in a little while. I am going to be right downstairs waiting for you – me and your brother and your aunt and grandparents – and when you get of surgery with your brand new kidney feeling as good as new again, I will be the first person that you see when you wake up, okay?"
"Okay..." Rachel's response is distant, her eyelids already growing heavy before so much as a single anesthetic has been injected into her veins.
"I love you." Shelby mutters softly, keeping her voice strong for the sake of her daughter, under the impression that putting up this facade of utmost confidence will be the one thing that will keep her from becoming a complete and total nervous wreck in the hours leading through Rachel's surgery.
"Not... as much as I... love you..."Rachel manages an impressive response and although it leaves Shelby faltering slightly, she forces herself to regain composure because she knows for a fact that it is not a choice; she has to...
Leaning forwards, she places a gentle, lingering kiss directly against the top of Rachel's head before she straightens, forcing her spine to stiffen with a final nod of her head and a gentle squeeze of Rachel's hand as Shelby allows them all to know that she is ready as she will ever be to allow them to take her daughter away from her.
They barrel through the stairwells, fully understanding that just because the step had been taken for Rachel to be physically removed from their care does not mean that they are quite ready to sit around and fiddle with their thumbs in waiting for the next several hours quite yet.
Shelby pushes past every body that gets in her way. She is just in the process of throwing elbows when Noah's cell phone goes off.
He considers ignoring the intrusive nuisance. He is having a difficult enough time keeping up with an aggressively over-determined Shelby as it is, but one quick glance down towards the screen tells him that it is Quinn calling and the reminder that she is supposed to be sitting outside of their house within the next couple of minutes to visit a girl that won't even be there forces him to answer in his eagerness to spread the good news that she no longer has to bother.
"Hey!"
Noah answers the phone with an enthusiasm prevalent behind his voice; a tone that he has not heard emit from within the depths of his own mouth for weeks now. "Where the hell are you? Something huge is happening."
"Noah..." Quinn's voice does not pose nearly the same level of intensity or excitement as Noah's does. In the essence of the muddled chaos, Noah does not even notice. "I'm downstairs with Brittney. We're... we're in the ER."
"I thought that you were just going straight to my house?" His mind is too focused to consider any different possible meaning behind Quinn's words as he is thrown into a pitfall of confusion. Quinn has come to visit Rachel enough to understand that trying to make it to the inpatient centers through the Emergency Room was the equivalent of trying to make it in through a maze. "Why would you ever come in through the ER entrance? Are you guys lost down there? You are, aren't you?"
He's laughing, shaking his head against this minor inconvenience because his mind is far too preoccupied in his relief to care that he is now going to have to fish through the vast Emergency Department of Lima Memorial Hospital in order to locate his friends.
"Listen Quinn, I can come down to find you but you're going to have to give me a couple of minutes because Rachel is..."
"Noah, listen to me!" She cuts him off abruptly, emphasizing her words with a pure desperation that forces Noah to halt in his tracks.
"What happened?"
He stops, his mind finally focusing inwards in concentration. He is experienced enough with this tone to understand that something has gone horribly wrong amidst all of the gladness.
"Brittney and I, we're... we're in the ER, Noah." She enunciates the word in with a mannerism that clarifies her initial sentence in an instant. His feet still to a complete halt below him, frozen as his eyes quickly begin to widen with a sense of realization.
"Why?" Is all he can manage as he becomes only vaguely aware that even his mother has paused in her ministrations in order to stare, silently inquiring towards him as to what the hold up is.
"We don't know anything officially yet, nobody has come to talk to us so I don't want you to panic but... but I don't think that it's good, Noah.."
"Quinn, what happened?" His voice raises to a dull roar despite himself.
"There was a car accident." Quinn breathes and Noah's heart immediately catches somewhere inside of his constricting throat.
"A teenaged girl was just brought into the ER." Dr. McCarthy's words from mere minutes prior ring clearly inside of Noah's head, vibrating incessantly between his very ears. "She was in a car accident and has been declared brain dead."
"Santana was hurt, Noah."
Miriami – Thank you so much, it's quite the honor! Their little family has definitely experienced a lot of pain but it is far from over. Their emotions are going to be all over the place in these last couple of chapters. I will gladly keep writing as long as you want to keep reading! Haha. Thanks again!
Guest – I'm sorry to make you cry! Thank you for the support it's greatly appreciated!
Gleefanficfan – Well let me be the first to welcome you back! Haha. I actually really love that concept and that whole idea and the big thing that I was trying to build on was that the entire family was scrounging pretty desperately to make peace as quickly as humanly possible and as time progressed they found that it was easier. Now that they have been thrown this left hook, their emotions are going to be in a little bit of a scramble all over again and they are going to have to embrace this sense all over again. Thank you for all of your kind words and beautiful suggestion it is all very much appreciated!
Princess-N-xoxo – Thank you, thank you! Reality had definitely started to set in for Shelby and Noah. As hard as it was, they both knew that making peace was the only real option that they had for Rachel's sake. I'm actually surprised that you're the first person to mention Santana! She dropped off the face of the Earth for a bit and I tried to throw in a few subtle hints but Santana was always a vital piece to this story. Thank you again for all of the lovely words!
Just Me – Rachel definitely has that effect on her. They all are almost impossibly stubborn but at the same time they are realists and this unfortunately, is not unfamiliar territory for them. I've actually noticed that the majority of people have told me that they too were intrigued to see what would happen if Rachel died which I was surprised about because I thought that there would be a bounty for my head if I ended up killing her in the end. I've known from the beginning that I didn't want this story to have a "happy" ending per se, like you said it isn't realistic and I didn't think that it would be fair to the people that have taken this journey with me but the longer I was writing the more I swayed towards the direction I did because it felt right to me. There will be a little more insight into Noah in the next chapter, particularly between him and Rachel. Shelby has grown a lot. She went into this thinking that she knew how everything would happen because she has been through it before and learned the hard way that that was not the case but she is growing, and I promise that she isn't angry with Rachel she is just entering the grieving process before Rachel is even gone. And oh my god I hope your eyes feel better! I thought getting styes every once in a while was bad. It means even more that you put in such a thoughtful review with your eyes swollen shut! Thank you!
Gleeks09 – Thank you so much! I'm glad you've had a chance to connect with these characters like I have it means a lot!
TheCdKnight – Glad to be giving you another chapter again! There is no way that Noah is not taking the opportunity to go to school and play football after all of this that is one thing I can assure you and I've been considering a sequel centered around Noah in college and Rachel as a senior in high school but we'll see. I am touched by your kind words they mean so much, really!
Lila – Friendly reminder that this – believe it or not – is not actually the only story on this website. Feel free to pass it by next time.
Guest – Haha I'm sorry!
WittyNinja – I know, I know things were always going to get worse before they ever got better.
Hazelbutton2002 – This has definitely been an emotional roller coaster. It is emotionally exhausting just to write but I hope you don't take it in the wrong way when I say that I'm glad that it can translate from my mind to your reading so thank you!
Seher143 – Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words! I love writing this family's journey I'm glad that you can take it with me.
Baygirl123 – Thank you!
Bueller806 – Oh god, please don't stop breathing I would feel terribly guilty if I was responsible for killing you! With that said, thank you so much! It's always nice to know that everything that I see inside of my head is at least quasi-translatable emotions wise. Now stock up on those nutrients!
FlatWeasley – I'm sorry for the tears but there are still a few twists in this journey before it is finished so stay strong! Thank you for the review!
