Here it is, the penultimate chapter! It's hard to believe that there is only one left after this. Special thanks to all of you who have stuck around and continue to encourage me and give me support and advice and suggestions and all the rest. You all rock. See you soon.
Chapter 53 – I Shall Believe
Rachel P.O.V.
When the ambulance that Brittany and I were riding in pulled into the Emergency Room of Lima Memorial Hospital, Dr. Medina had already been waiting for me along with what seemed like enough personnel to field an entire football team.
They'd tried to keep me in the stretcher and pull me into the back, but I had put up a fair fight. I ignored the chaos, ignored everybody's instructions and instead, looked over my shoulder at every turn. peered behind every single curtain, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santana. My mother and Sheriff Walker had both told me that she was still alive, but I still haven't seen that for myself yet. How do I know that they hadn't just said it because it was what I needed to hear?
"Rachel…" Dr. Medina finally whispered inside of my ear, her voice soft and crisp as her heavy hand fell against my shoulder. When I turned to look at the doctor, her face expressed not only a look of concern, but also an experienced tint, because she knows what I am like. She knows me well enough to understand that I will not stop until I find what I am looking for.
"Where is she?" I asked, the undersides of my eyes damp.
"Santana has been taken into surgery, Rachel. She's going to be there for some time. Now please, let us take care of you."
That was almost two hours ago.
Since then, I had allowed the doctors to take care of me like Dr. Medina had asked, but I still haven't heard anything on Santana and while it was nice to have a familiar face present in my old doctor, all of the panic had been for naught because I am fine and so is Brittany. Now, all we need is for Quinn and Santana to be fine too.
The doctors had run just about every test on me in the book. I had sat through multiple X-Rays, even on parts that didn't hurt, an MRI that took much longer than normal thanks to a technician in training, and an orthopedic consultation on my ankle which wasn't even broken, just badly sprained…
I see Sue only fleetingly during my time in the Emergency Room. Between me being in and out of tests and Sue buzzing across rooms to keep track of the other three girls, she is a very busy woman. Mostly, she stops in just to make sure I am still complying with the doctor's orders, but does end up staying the entire time the police interview me about what happened tonight.
I fumble through my version of events, making sure to specifically leave out any mention of the party that had started the night. I don't want to get anybody in trouble, particularly not Quinn, Santana, and Brittany, who had sacrificed too much for me to have me just turn around and rat them out.
Luckily, the police don't ask about it. The way that Sue had been glancing at me sideways the entire time, I can tell that she had not forgotten what Santana and I had been doing before she found us, but she never says anything either.
Despite my semi-secrecy, my conversation with the police lasts nearly forty-five whole minutes. In fact, I am pretty sure that the only reason they do leave at all is because Dr. Medina eventually comes inside to kick them out, claiming that I need my rest.
I don't know if I had given them the answers that they need. I don't know if I even have them, even though I had been right there the entire time. To get what they were really looking for, they would have to talk to Andrew and according to Dr. Medina, he was in no shape to be having a conversation with anybody, including the police.
I find myself having a hard time feeling bad for him.
I have been tucked away alone in my tiny, cordoned-off cubicle in the Emergency Room for nearly twenty minutes. I thought that it would be nice to get some time to myself for a change, but I quickly discover that being on my own is only making the anxiety buzz deeper inside of my chest, and leaves my idle mind with no choice but to wander to places that I am not sure I want to go.
Nervous energy quickly bets the better of me. I know that I would hardly be able to sleep like Dr. Medina had suggested I do, so I don't even bother trying.
Instead, I pace the area of my small room, trying and struggling to get used to the crutches that the doctors had given me in order to keep the weight off of my busted ankle. The exertion turns out to be embarrassingly hard. I try to blame it on my ordeal and not on the current state of my fitness, but between that and the anxiety, the frustration gathers and the heat builds inside of my head, and in the end, I throw the crutches down to the floor and turn to the sink to splash some water against my face to try and cool myself off.
I lean down and scrub my face with my hands, removing the last of my makeup from earlier; the last remnants of just how innocently this whole night had started. When I am done, I look up into the hazy mirror that is hanging loosely from the wall and stare into the strange look in my eyes. I don't even feel like it is me that I am looking at anymore.
"Rachel?"
I hear my name waft in gently from the hall and I turn away from the sink basin. Dripping, I realize too late that the only thing that I have to dry myself off with are a couple of cheap, scratchy paper towels.
"Yeah?" I call out hesitantly. The sound of the sink faucet had drowned out my ability to recognize the voice, but I know I wouldn't be able to get away with pretending that I was not here. I am afraid to find out who it might be: Dr. Medina here to drag me to another test, Lucy here to drag me to another foster home, a strange surgeon here to tell me that she is very sorry, but Santana had not made it through surgery…
Instead of any of these scenarios, it is Brittany's face that pops up in between the crack in the curtain. I haven't seen her since the doctors had separated us despite the fight that she had put up against us being separated on the drive over here.
I know that Brittany's parents had arrived at the hospital not long after we had. I pictured them both sitting with her, holding her hand as she got stitches sewn into her forehead, and I can't help but to feel a pang of jealousy, a sense of just how badly I wish my own mother was here right now.
Brittany watches me pat-dry my damp face with a handful of paper towels, careful to avoid the increasingly tender bruise on the side of my eye. She has a thick bandage taped just above her left eyebrow, but aside from that and a couple of scratches and bruises, she seems okay.
"How are you feeling?" she asks me, taking a tentative step further inside of the room. She looks like she is unsure as to whether or not she should be here and I wonder if that has anything to do with the distant look in my eyes. I want to tell her that what happened to us tonight is not her fault, but I don't want to say anything too quickly. What happened to us tonight seems to be beyond words, and to have this be the first actual conversation voluntarily held between Brittany and I seems almost obscene.
"I'm okay," I shrug, and then nod to the bandage on her forehead. "How about you?"
"I'm okay too," she nods and then hunches forward, clearly uncomfortable. She shoves her hands inside of her pockets, her eyes turned down to the floor. I watch her spot the crutches that I had thrown down earlier, but she doesn't mention them. Instead, she steps around them and walks further into the room. "I was just wondering if you wanted some company."
I nod my head so that Brittany wouldn't hear the way that I know my voice would wavier had I spoken. I do not hesitate to invite her further inside and we both seem surprised by that. I guess that I just hadn't realized just how tired of being alone I really was until Brittany had thought to ask.
Even surrounded by doctors, nurses, and police officers, I felt alone. I needed somebody who knew what I was feeling. I needed somebody who could tell me that they understood. Brittany is the only person on the planet who is not in surgery or delivering a baby who can do that.
I know that we are only a step above strangers, but Brittany's presence is like a blast of cool air on a hot day. I try not to show it. I don't want to come across as being childish, especially considering how this night had started and how it had ended.
"Have you heard anything about Santana?" Brittany asks, pulling myself out of my head. She is looking at me hopeful, almost begging. Her posture is still stiff, but my invitation seems to have loosened her up a little bit as though she was afraid that I would say no.
"She's alive," I assure her, but then scrunch my face sympathetically, because as good as this news is, I know that she wants more just as much as I do. "She's still in surgery, though. The doctors say that it might be a while."
The blonde nods her head softly but it is obvious that the lack of news is disappointing. The two of us fall into a brief sort of silence and I can actually see the muscles in her face twitching gently with the effort that she is exerting to try to come up with something else to say.
"How about your mom?" she finally settles on. "Have you heard anything from her yet?"
"Sue talked to her a little while ago while I was getting an MRI. She should be here in another hour or so. She's probably driving at hyper-speed right now so I don't really expect to hear from her. Besides, Andrew took my phone before so there's that…"
My voice fades at the mention of Andrew, realizing the mistake only after it had already come out of my mouth. I stiffen, watching Brittany do the same. I shouldn't have mentioned him. I don't know if she is ready to talk about what happened tonight, understanding what it is like to have to do so at your own pace. I was used to Andrew ruining my life, but this was something new for Brittany.
"How about your parents? Where are they?" I ask quickly, my voice tight as I say the first thing that pops into my head in order to change the subject.
"They're talking about some stuff with my doctor for my discharge," Brittany tells me, going along with my obvious subject deferment. "They were having a hard enough time accepting the fact that I was eighteen before all of this. Something tells me that this is not going to make that better."
"They're letting you out?" I ask, my face falling with jealousy. I don't even bother to mask the disappointment in my voice that I have yet to receive similar news although I was perfectly fine and had barely been injured more than Brittany had been. I know that I am only fifteen, and thus it was unlikely that I would be released without my mother present, but that was what Sue was here for and besides, it's not like I was going to go far with Santana still in surgery…
"It's just a cut Rachel," Brittany tells me, pointing to the bandage on her forehead as though to prove a point. "It was an easy fix. You're a lot more messed up than me. Your ankle, is it broken? God, I can't believe that I did that to you. I never would have crashed the car if I'd known… I am so sorry."
Her face is apologetic, mortified, frightened; it is such a slew of emotion, I cannot pinpoint a single one. She is afraid that she had done irreparable damage to me when in fact, she had been the one to save my life. If anything, I should be apologizing for doing irreparable damage to her. Besides, out of all of the injuries that I had received from another hand tonight, Brittany has the least to apologize for.
"It's not broken," I assure her. "Just a little sprain. I'm gonna be fine, Brittany."
"That's good because Santana would kill me if I killed you," Brittany breathes, a steep sigh of relief and then pauses, sinking a little bit. "I guess I just wanted to stop in and make sure that you were okay before my parents took me back home. I tried to convince them to let me stay until there was news about Santana and Quinn but they insisted that I go home and get some rest. Honestly, they're kind of freaking out. I don't think that they know what to do."
"Don't expect that to go away any time soon," I tell her all-knowingly. "Are they pissed about the car?"
"I don't think so," Brittany tells me, shaking her head. "I think that they're mostly grateful that we're all okay. To be honest, I don't think that they know what to feel right now. I don't think that I know what to feel right now."
She admits this and then falls silent and when I do not immediately say anything to feed off her cheap attempt of humor, the room swelters with an uncomfortable quiet. The mood between us changes immediately. The air feels twenty degrees colder. The discomfort wallows in between us and if it were a measurable entity, we would be drowning in it.
"Why did you do all that stuff for me tonight, Brittany?" I finally ask. My voice hangs low, carries through the thickness in the air, and hits Brittany like a punch.
"What do you mean?" Brittany's face contorts, confused. She looks like she doesn't know what I am trying to ask her, but I know well enough to know that she is probably just trying to be polite.
"You could have killed yourself tonight trying to help me," I clarify, watching as Brittany's eyes soften like she is only now understanding exactly the scope of what I am asking.
"Anybody would have done that, Rachel," she insists.
"No, Brittany," I tell her sharply, my eyes focusing in on her hard. "I'm pretty sure that most people would not have done that."
Brittany sighs and looks down at the floor, trying hard to think of something to say. She sits herself down at the foot of my bed, moving closer instead of retreating like there is something physical about the bond that we share now.
"Listen…" Brittany starts slowly through a long breath. She takes her time with talking. It looks like she is waiting to hear something just as much as I am. "I know that Santana and I have been dating for a while and that I should have gotten to know you better than I did, especially considering how important you are to Santana. She cares about you an awful lot, Rachel. She talks about you so much that it feels like I know you anyway. And for what it's worth, anything that is important to Santana is important to me too."
"She took a bullet for me tonight…" I breathe out, my voice distant like I still can't believe that that actually happened, which now that I think about it, I still can't. "You know how people are always saying that they'd do stuff like that for you? She actually did it."
Brittany looks up at me sadly. Her bright blue eyes are red-rimmed, but they're dry so that I can't tell if that redness is from emotion, or just exhaustion.
"She's going to be okay, Rachel," Brittany tells me. "You said it yourself."
"But she took a bullet for me. And then you crashed your car into a tree for me. You both almost got yourselves killed for me."
My eyebrows furrow and I watch as Brittany's do the same as we both try to reason through the implications of this.
I can feel my insecurities regarding everything that happened tonight start to heighten. I had made everything worse. I had almost gotten my friends, my family killed while meanwhile, they rallied around me. They had put themselves in harms way in order to fix my stupid mistakes, to try to keep the cracks in my foundation together before even I knew that they were falling apart.
Andrew had come into our home tonight underestimating not me, but everybody around me. He already knew that he could get to me. He had come tonight because he thought that I was alone. He thought wrong which meant that he hadn't gotten away with me, but what were the consequences? Santana had been shot. Quinn had gone into an early labor. Brittany had gotten her head sliced open.
The burden of the responsibility I feel weighs a thousand pounds, especially towards Santana. I have been so terrible to her lately. She could have done so much better than me as a sister. She had spent her entire life rescuing me and when I finally had the opportunity to reciprocate, I had failed. So yeah, she could have done so much better than me as a sister. The thing is, I know that I couldn't have gotten a sister better than Santana.
This entire arrangement was starting to feel incredibly one-sided.
"But we didn't," Brittany tries to emphasize. I try to take her words into consideration. I try to push through all of this uncertainty. I try to remind myself of just how lucky I am to even have friends who would do something like this for me. I don't know why it is so difficult.
"But you could have," I say again, refusing to let it go. "And what did I do? I lied to go to a party, I got in a fight with Santana, I snuck away to my house where I shouldn't have been, got Santana shot, got you kidnapped, and had to get convinced not to shoot Andrew."
Keeping a running list of everywhere that I have gone wrong tonight somehow makes me feel worse. I thought that people were supposed to learn from their mistakes. Apparently, the only thing that I have learned is how to make things worse.
I look down to the seafoam green tiles on the hospital floor. They are familiar in a way that makes me feel like I have never really escaped them in the first place. Even when I had been discharged, I was still locked up in here, waiting to come back, a different breed of person than the one that I had been when they'd first dumped me here. I might walk out of here on my own tonight, but would I have really survived?
"You know, when Santana first told me what was going on with you I really didn't know what to think," Brittany admits to me after a long time. "My world felt so distant from even the possibility… It made me feel so selfish because I had been so wrapped up in the way that Santana was treating me, I didn't even consider that there had to be a cause behind it. Then she finally told me and my heart broke. I tried to imagine what it felt like to be fighting in secret for so long, but I couldn't. The point is, Rachel that you have been doing this on your own for a long time. You fought hard, but even the best pitchers need a closer. Accepting help isn't a sign of weakness. Your sister taught me that one. Accepting help is a way to prove that there are people in this world who truly love us. You have that, Rachel. You have that and more."
I hang my head, concentrating hard on the floor. According to Brittany, Santana hadn't taken that bullet and she hadn't crashed that car because of me, they had done it for me. For the first time, I am starting to realize that there is a distinct difference between the two.
I look up at Brittany, focusing in on the bandage on the top of her head. It is not just me bearing the scars of Andrew's actions anymore. Now we both wouldn't be able to look in a mirror without remembering what happened to us. They ran in jagged lines, connecting us like a map. The thing about them is that scars do not form on people who roll over and die. They form on the ones who had fought back and link them together for life.
"I've never had anybody other than Santana before," I admit to her. My voice doesn't sound so much defeated anymore as it does exhausted. "I know that makes me sound like a huge loser or whatever, but the point is that I'm not very good at letting people in. I've never had friends who would do something like that for me before."
"Well get used to it, Little S because you're stuck with us now."
"Brittany!"
Both of our heads snap up at the sound of Brittany's name as it wafts into my cubicle from the hallway. I have never met Brittany's mother before, but I know that tone well enough to recognize a worried mother who has already almost lost her daughter once tonight, only to have that child slip out of her sight again.
"You didn't tell your mother that you were coming in here, did you?" I ask Brittany, watching her cheeks flush red.
"Must have forgot," Brittany smirks, jumping off of the edge of the bed and making her way back towards the hallway. "I'll see you later Rachel. Just remember what I said, okay? There's no sense wasting your energy beating yourself up over what happened tonight. We're all in this together now, yeah?"
"Yeah," I nod as Brittany's eyes settle.
"Call me when Santana is out of surgery?"
"I don't have a phone," I remind her.
"Your mom has my number," she informs me. I am about to open my mouth and ask her how that had come to be, but close it again without uttering a word. Knowing Brittany and knowing my mother, I am not really so surprised.
"Okay," I settle to say instead.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Rachel," she tells me and then pauses, reconsidering. "Or later on today, I guess. Take care of yourself, alright?"
"I will," I promise. "You take care of yourself too."
She offers me a single wave and then disappears into the hallway. Her visit has lightened something inside of me and I deflate, if only just a little bit.
I reach down and pick up the crutches that I had thrown against the floor earlier in a fit of frustration. I shove them underneath my armpits, much calmer than I had been the first time I had tried to use them and sit down, taking Brittany's old spot at the edge of the mattress.
I don't realize how badly my body is throbbing until I take the weight off it and vaguely remember Dr. Medina telling me that I should expect to be sore the next couple of days. Sore seems like an understatement. I feel like I had been hit by a truck.
Looking for a little more relief, I scoot backwards against the mattress until my back hits the bed rest behind me and I sink inside of it. Like before when I hadn't noticed the throbbing in my body, I only realize how tired I am now that I am laying down.
With a sigh, I curl into the mattress further, blinking rapidly, trying to keep my eyes from staying closed. I know that I shouldn't be sleeping. I should be waiting for news about Santana and Quinn. I should be staying vigilant, making sure that Andrew does not escape the doctors and police officers to come finish what he started. I should be keeping watch because that is usually Santana's job but Santana isn't here to do it, passing the burden onto me…
I know that I shouldn't fall asleep but I blink again and this time my eyes don't re-open until I hear a voice wafting into my room from somewhere outside in the hallway and somehow, I know that a lot of time has passed between me closing my eyes and subsequently re-opening them even though it only feels like a second.
I shoot up inside of the bed with a gasp as I attempt to regain bearing of my surroundings. I am still in the same room that I had fallen asleep in and I am still by myself, which means that my mother probably hasn't arrived yet and no more than an hour or so has passed.
I feel my breathing start to subside as I continue to convince myself that I hadn't missed anything important. If Santana was out of surgery, somebody would have woken me up. If Andrew had escaped, he would have found me by now. I am still here. I am still okay.
Once my heart isn't pounding so hard inside of my ears anymore, I am able to hear the voice that had woken me up a little bit clearer and immediately, I recognize it as Sue's.
"Quinn had the baby? Are they alright?" I hear Sue ask. She must be talking to Judy. I suck in a breath so sharp that I am surprised that Sue doesn't hear it. I feel my ears poise, hoping that I will be able to identify the answer to Sue's response even through a one-sided phone conversation.
"Oh, thank God," she breathes. I can hear her relax through the curtain and feel myself do the same. Quinn and her baby seem to be alright despite the fear that her little girl had been far too early.
"No, I'm downstairs with Rachel right now," Sue says after another pause. "She's fine. She's fast asleep. The poor kid was probably exhausted. Hopefully she'll get a few hours of sleep at least."
I tense at the mention of my name, at Sue's hopes of me committing to being well rested when the reality was that I had only gotten an hour or so of sleep in. I cringe guiltily as though it were my fault that my body was far to tense for sleep.
"You're calling the adoption agency now?" I hear Sue ask and all thoughts of guilt subside as I sit up in the bed, trying to get closer to the conversation as though this would make a difference in whether or not I could hear Judy's answer.
Sue sounds as surprised by this news as I feel. It has to be pushing midnight, if not past it already. I recognize that Judy probably has the same nervous energy that my mother probably has and Brittany's mother certainly had, and she is trying to expel some of it by trying to be as productive as possible, but it is late, and we have all been traumatized enough tonight. I think that maybe, she is jumping the gun a little bit.
Judging by the way that I hear Sue sigh, I know that she is thinking the same thing.
"Do you want me to come upstairs?" she finally asks and then there is another pause. "Okay. What room is Quinn in? 426? Sure, let me just check on Rachel one more time and I'll meet you up there."
Sue hangs up the phone abruptly and without warning. I have to scramble to lay back down inside of the bed and only just manage to pretend to be asleep before Sue comes barging back into my room.
She bursts in like a bull but the second that she crosses that threshold into my cubicle, I hear her body slow down, like she had just crossed the veil between night and day.
I can hear her breathing, slow but heavy and can feel her eyes on me although mine remain shut. She is staring at me so hard that I am afraid she had noticed that I am faking sleep and is now waiting for me to come around and admit to it on my own.
I almost do it, too but then she finally moves. I hear her take a couple of steps closer towards me and then I feel her place a hand down against my knee and squeeze it gently like she is trying to gather the remaining energy from the two of us and combine it to power what she knows she has to do next. A thousand unspoken words pass through Sue's single touch. I wonder if she would be doing this if she knew I wasn't really asleep and realize that she probably wouldn't.
I – and everybody else in Lima – have always seen Sue as this impenetrable casing. Because of this, I never once paused to consider that she had been as much involved in everything that happened tonight as the rest of us were. She had to bear witness just like we did. If we were hurting, chances are that she is too.
It makes me feel guilty to pretend to be asleep just so she will leave. It's not like her presence is unappreciated, it's just that hearing her talking on the phone had given me an idea and I know that Sue would never allow it, even if I begged. This was the only way.
After Sue finally leaves, I wait another two or three minutes just to be sure that she is really gone. Then and only then do I roll out of the bed, arming myself with my crutches before making my way slowly over towards the hallway.
I peer cautiously through the curtain, searching for a familiar face that might be waiting to stop me. There are a lot of people present, but nobody that I recognize so I push forward.
The Emergency Room is chaotic, which is a good thing for me because it means that nobody pays me any mind. The sound of feet trampling, darting between a maze of sick and injured people is like an earthquake. I hear people shout instructions to one another over heads, I see people weaving through patients and families who stand dumbfounding by these new surroundings. I see loved ones flow like a river, calling out the names of those they care for the most, hoping for the best but expecting the worst…
I don't know which direction to go. I hadn't paid close enough attention when the doctors had moved me to remember where the elevators are and people are flurrying around me too quickly to ask.
My body feels numb as I start to wonder what the hell I'm doing; sneaking out of the Emergency Room at two o'clock in the morning to make sure my friend and my sister are okay, that they're still alive.
I stand stupidly in the center of the room and allow my brain to short circuit randomly as it attempts to process everything. In the end, I have to force myself to fall back into step with those around me. I gain steam as I move. I don't slow down because I'm afraid of what might happen if I do. I'm not going to sit down here and feel sorry for myself anymore. I'm not going to make it that easy for Quinn and Santana to get rid of me.
I find the elevators after a couple of minutes, but I can't move nearly as quickly as I want to with these crutches weighing me down. They are clunky and awkward and I have never had to use them before which means that it takes me a while to get used to them. Pacing around my little box of a room had been one thing. Wandering cluelessly through Lima Memorial Hospital is a whole other story.
By the time I get to the elevators, the lack of progress starts to manifest itself in frustration. I put some of the weight back down against my foot, settling to just walk. My leg is still throbbing but the doctors had given me something in the ER to take down the swelling and the boot that they had put around my foot at least stabilizes it enough so that with the help of the crutches, I can walk without it hurting too bad.
When I emerge on the fourth floor, I walk slowly, partially because of my injury and partially because I am afraid of what might happen should I turn a corner only to run into Sue or Judy. Luckily, I don't see them anywhere. In fact, by the time I find Quinn's room, tucked away in a quiet corner of the ward, I realize that I do not see much of anybody.
There is a small window inside of Quinn's door that has a light streaming through it. I would like to think that that means that Quinn is awake, but hospital rooms are never fully dark so it is hard to tell.
I peer through the window just to be sure. Knowing Quinn, I expect her to be in bed, wide awake with her mind racing a million miles a minute, just like mine. I am not surprised when I find her in that exact position.
What I am surprised to see is a bulky, see-through incubator with the smallest little human I have ever seen tucked inside. Besides the obvious factor of the impending adoption plus the idea that the baby had been early, I would have thought that both Quinn and the doctors would be wary about having the baby in such close proximity, but the little girl seems to be okay and despite the glazed, distant look in Quinn's eyes, so does her mother.
I knock on the door softly so that I don't startle Quinn. The blonde's head snaps up to the door. When she sees that it is just me, her face softens visibly. She stares for a moment, but quickly nods her head to invite me inside.
I push the door open with a soft click and step into the doorway, lingering there for a moment just in case Quinn should change her mind and decide that she doesn't want visitors.
"Hey," I offer after a tense moment.
"Hey," she reciprocates and when I don't get any hint that she wants me to leave I risk taking another step.
"How are you feeling?" I ask, swallowing through the discomfort as I attempt to find something to say to Quinn, as if there is anything that I could say that might make up for everything that she had been through tonight.
"I'm okay," she tells me. Her tone is flat, but I can tell that it is not a physical ailment that is bothering her. "How about you?"
"I'm okay too," I promise her.
"I heard that Brittany took you for a pretty wild ride tonight," Quinn tells me, nodding at the crutches underneath my arms. Her tone has the hint of a joke in it, but I still wonder where she had heard the story from. Probably Sue. How much had her former cheerleading coach told her? How many details had she given? Did she know how that story ended? With me holding a gun and the Allen County SWAT team and my own mother struggling to talk me down?
"Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna get in a car with her anytime soon." I crack a joke in return, forcing a smile. Quinn smirks like she appreciates the attempt. She is probably as sick of talking and thinking about how miserable she feels as I am. With that in mind, I push slowly further into the room, using the quiet to encourage me.
My eyes find the infant in front of me like I can't believe that she is really here. Is it possible that something so incredible can come out of months of fear and anxiety and broken families? Apparently.
"This is your baby?" I hear myself ask in a testament to my disbelief.
"No, it just came with the room," Quinn tells me. Her sarcasm is still intact. Good.
"Funny." I roll my eyes at her. My voice is dry but with a smile that tells her how nice it is to hear something other than gloom for a change. "Does she have a name?"
"No…" Quinn sighs and I hold my breath, afraid that I have asked the wrong thing. "I'm afraid to give her a name. I don't want to make it any harder to let her go."
I nod my head solemnly and look inside of the incubator again, hovering over it from above. The baby's slick, purpled face is peering out from a swaddle of blankets. The little girl seems to be asleep, but she is pressed into the side of the incubator, as close to Quinn as she can get as though instinct is already telling her where to find comfort should she need it upon waking up in these horribly unfamiliar surroundings.
As though she senses a presence staring down at her, the girl's cloudy blue eyes blink open. She looks right at me looking at her and I feel my heart skip a beat, clueless.
I gape down at the incredible creature in front of me because I don't know what else to do. I force what I hope looks like a smile but it must not go so well because a second later, the little girl's face scrunches and then, she starts to wail.
"What do I do?" I ask Quinn, panicking although I know that Quinn has just about the same amount of experience with babies as I do.
"Pick her up," Quinn answers expertly. I guess that growing a miniature human being inside of you automatically provides at least some sense of how to care for one seeing how confident Quinn seems in her answer.
"How?" I ask stupidly, holding my hands out awkwardly in front of me like I suddenly don't remember how to use them.
"Just watch out for her head," Quinn instructs me. I swallow nervously, but Quinn seems to have confidence in me because she doesn't say anything as I discard my crutches against the wall to free my arms completely for the crying infant before sliding them underneath the fussy girl.
She wriggles slightly inside of my hands, but she is so tiny that I am afraid to tighten my grip for fear that I might hurt her. She is light but remarkably, also seems to be exactly the right weight. There is something inside of her face that captures me. She is screaming her head off, her cheeks red with exertion, but underneath that, she is five pounds of pure possibility. I hope that that never goes away for her.
"There you go," Quinn encourages. I look at her like she is crazy. I don't know where she is possibly seeing my success.
"She's still crying," I remind Quinn, my voice dipping, fearful that I am doing something wrong.
"Just hold her a little bit closer," Quinn instructs. I wonder how she knows all of this. Had she read it in one of those how-to mom books or was it just engrained inside of her DNA now?
I follow her advice, pulling the crying girl into my chest. She lets out one violently hoarse sob but the second she processes the skin-to-skin contact, it reduces to a couple of hiccups and then, silence as she gets used to the idea of being held in a stranger's arms.
"Wow…" I breathe, the sense of victory spreading through me like a physical warmth. She hadn't been crying because I had frightened her, she was crying because she didn't know how else to process this brave new world. I reason that I know the feeling well and smile down at the little girl as she coos up at me, trying to take me in.
"It's pretty cool, huh?" Quinn asks me. I nod my head. The idea of Quinn's daughter being here is very cool. I just hope that it doesn't result in some kind of karmic distribution where just because she had been brought into this world means that Santana is going to have to leave it…
"Yeah," I tell her, looking up at Quinn for a moment. She is looking right at her daughter. She doesn't even seem to notice me. There is a glimpse of pride inside of her eyes and I can't help but wonder if she is just making it harder on herself for when the two inevitably have to be separated.
"Sue and my mom are calling the adoption agency," she tells me after a moment as if she is reading my mind. I look up at her. She is looking at the baby inside of my arms rather than at me, but her face has changed to reveal a scope of sadness that I cannot possibly fathom. The lines in her forehead are as deep as canyons.
"Yeah, I know," I admit. At this, Quinn actually does look at me with a tone of confusion.
"How?"
"I kind of overheard Sue talking to your mom downstairs on the phone," I admit sheepishly. "I pretended to be asleep and well, long story short I heard Sue say your room number so after she left I came up here."
"Nobody knows you're up here?" Quinn asks me. She sounds a rough mix of nervous for my actions and impressed by them.
"I wanted to see you," I insist. "I wanted to know how you were doing."
"I don't know how I'm doing," Quinn admits. Her eyes are wide, honest. They look completely empty which is how I know she is telling the truth and I only just remember that this is the exact same thing that Brittany had said to me earlier.
"Yeah, me neither," I breathe in agreement, looking down at the infant who is nestling herself into the crook of my elbow trying to find a more comfortable position, weighing down my arms with a surprising amount of strength for such a tiny thing.
"Do you mind if I sit down?" I hear myself ask Quinn. "She gets heavy after a while."
"She weighs five pounds, Rachel," Quinn laughs, but waves me in the direction of a large armchair in the corner of the room anyway.
She watches me carefully as I move with her child inside of my arms. She observes every move that I make with a precise caution, making sure that I make no sudden movements as I ease my way into the chair.
"Be careful with her," she reminds me as though I had forgotten that it might not be wise to make any sharp movements while holding a newborn.
I settle into the seat, smiling softly at Quinn's heightened concern as I make myself comfortable. Despite her uncertainty, it would seem that motherhood looks good on Quinn.
"You're good at this you know," I voice my thoughts out loud. The blonde looks up from her daughter to stare at me; uncertain yet hopeful.
"I have no idea what I'm doing…"
"I don't think that anybody does when it comes to stuff like this," I shrug. I think about my own mother, who had spent the first fourteen years of my life struggling to maintain a perfect exterior while her insides were turning to mush. It was only after she started admitting her faults that she was able to learn from them and I can't help but to think that Quinn has the advantage of starting from the very beginning.
"I've never even had a fish, Rachel," Quinn continues to chastise herself. "But there's this voice in the back of my head that I can't get rid of. I just… I don't think that I would be able to live with myself knowing that I didn't at least try."
I look at Quinn hard, absorbing the desperate look in her eyes. For the first time, I am starting to realize that it is not comfort that Quinn is looking for tonight, but advice.
"You want to keep her, don't you?" I ask. Quinn's eyes turn down for a moment, staring at her child hard. When she looks back up at me, her face is full of uncertainty, of pain from an impossible decision that she has no choice but to make.
"My dad quit on me and it sucked," she reasons, her brows scrunching hard in the middle like she is trying not to cry.
"You're not quitting on her, Quinn," I tell her. "Comparing this to what you went through with your father is like comparing apples and oranges."
"My life was so screwed up. I don't want my kid to have to deal with the same."
She talks like she hadn't even heard me. I'm not entirely sure what I can say to her so I say nothing. While Quinn's family situation is far from ideal, Quinn had found herself through her experience. I think about everything that I have been through in the last couple of months, and everything that Quinn has been through and I realize that the two of us had been made into the people who had fought back from Andrew tonight by our experiences. We might have had to learn the hard way, but do I think that it would make Quinn a better mother in return? Absolutely.
Now that she is finally emerging from the hold that her father has kept over her for her entire life, she is starting to see possibilities that she never even considered. Now she is starting to think that she might actually be able to make this work.
"The adoption agency says babies tend to move through the system relatively quickly," Quinn breathes. "I still don't know though… You were in foster care, Rachel, what was it like?"
"I was in a placement for two weeks, Quinn," I point out, frowning. "It's completely different. You can't base your decision whether or not to put your daughter up for adoption based on what I went through."
"I guess…" Quinn shrugs but it is clear that she is not pleased with the answer. "I just keep thinking about her spending the rest of her life in some foster home with no one to love her. Who's she going to go to if she needs somebody? There's no place like your mother's arms, you know?"
"Yeah, I know…" I breathe, thinking about how desperately I wish I could be in my own mother's arms right now. "Have you talked to Noah yet?"
"He's here actually," Quinn tells me. I look up at her surprised and even check over my shoulder just to make sure that Noah hasn't been standing silently behind me the entire time.
"Where is he?" I ask Quinn when I don't see anybody.
"I made him go downstairs to find me something to eat. I'm not really that hungry but I just… I just want as much time alone with her as I can get right now." Quinn pauses, swallows. "I know he deserves as much time with her as I do but I… I don't know. Does that make me selfish?"
"I don't think so," I answer her honestly. "Did your mom call him?"
"No…" Quinn breathes with a wisp inside of the end of her answer that tells me that there is something else there that she still has not told me.
"What is it?" I ask, bracing myself.
"He found out after a couple of kids who live around the corner from you left the party. When they saw that their street was completely blocked off by the police, they went back and told everyone what was going on. You know how gossip spreads around Lima… Anyway, Noah recognized the house and you know how he's always getting in trouble for stupid stuff, he knows some of the cops. He managed to get the story."
"So, you're telling me that everybody knows what happened?" I ask, cringing.
"I don't think that Noah told anybody the details but yeah… pretty much," Quinn nods at me sympathetically. "Noah came right here when he found out that I was in labor."
"What does he want to do?" I ask, forcing myself to concentrate on Quinn and not on the fact that the entire student body probably knew what had happened at my house tonight by now.
"He won't say so but I think that he wants to keep her too," Quinn tells me. "I can see it in his eyes every time we talk about it. He's wanted to keep her from the beginning. He doesn't want to lose her. He's been talking about maybe joining the military after he graduates. He'll be away, but he can send us money while I finish school, and the baby will at least have insurance, some stability…"
"What about you?" I ask.
"What about me?" Quinn asks. I frown and look back down at the little girl inside of my arms. She rolls over in her sleep and makes a tiny moan of displeasure but all it takes is a couple of good bounces against my knee and she relaxes without waking up for even a second. "I don't have time to think about myself anymore, Rachel. It's all about what's best for my daughter now."
"Have I ever told you about the first time I ever met Andrew?" I ask suddenly. Quinn looks up at me, a hint of both curiosity and confusion in her eyes as to where I am going with this. I know that I have never told Quinn this story because I have never told anybody this story, not even Santana. I had mentioned a watered-down version of it to Kurt once looking for advice but he had dismissed it and after that, I swallowed the rest down.
"It was right after we won Sectionals. My mom took Santana and I out to dinner and she brought Andrew with her. We knew about him but we hadn't met him yet and when we left, my mom asked one of us to drive back with Andrew because he didn't know where we lived. I volunteered."
Quinn breathes, her eyes widening. "Jesus Rachel, was that the first time that he-"
"No." I stop Quinn before she can even finish that question. "He didn't touch me that day, but a car cut him off and he freaked out at the guy. He got out of his truck and started banging on the car, screaming and cursing… It scared the hell out of me and when I looked back on it a couple of weeks later, I realized that that was the moment that I knew something bad was going to come out of this, something really bad. The problem is that by the time I realized it I already thought it was too late."
"God Rachel," Quinn breathes. "That story… what happened to you…"
"It happened to us," I remind her solemnly. My mouth is a thin line. That story, the entire story, it is a lot but to be able to tell it means that I survived, we survived. We had made it this far, there is no way that we were going to lose anybody in this final lap. "It happened to us because I let it happen."
"Rachel, you didn't-"
"The point is, Quinn," I cut the blonde off, "That I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself because of it. I spent a lot of time asking what if. What if Santana had gotten in the truck with him that day instead of me? What if I just told my mom what happened then and there? What if I didn't think I had anything to prove to Santana by going to that party tonight? I spent so much time fighting against my instinct and second-guessing myself and look where it got me… The only what if I ever really needed to ask was what if I didn't put what I knew in my heart was right aside for the sake of everybody else? Sometimes, you just need to trust yourself. I didn't because I thought that I was alone, but I wasn't and neither are you. You have to know that whatever you choose, we'll be there for you. All of us."
Quinn breathes deeply, her eyes falling down to her baby in my lap where they linger for a long time. She is quiet for the entire time that she is staring and for the life of me I can't figure out if this is a good sign or a bad one.
"So, what happens next?" she finally asks. Her voice is tinted with a sadness that makes it distant, like she is as far away as another galaxy even though she is sitting right here in front of me.
"I can't answer that for you, Quinn."
"I mean with everything," she clarifies. "What happens to me and my daughter? To you? Santana? Brittany? Do you move again? Leave Lima? Leave Ohio? God, it's like there is a wall in front of me now. I don't even know which way is up, forget about figuring out the right direction to move in."
I don't answer her. The truth is, I have been asking myself the same questions since the ambulance ride, after the world had finally slowed down long enough for me to process what actually happened tonight. What did happen next? We moved across town to get away from Andrew and that hadn't worked so where could we move this time? Despite everything that happened, Lima has become my home, or at least the people here have. I didn't want to leave. Then again, would I have a choice?
"I'm waiting for Lucy to come down here any second to take me away again," I admit to Quinn before I even realize that I am talking out loud. Somehow, I feel myself pull Quinn's daughter into my body a little bit tighter, like if I am able to hang onto this one thing then everything else will be okay.
"Have you heard from her?" Quinn asks quietly. Her breath is tight, like she is as nervous for the answer as I am.
"Not yet," I shake my head. "But I'm usually the last to know when things like that happen. By the time I figure anything out, they're already dragging me away."
"But your mom had nothing to do with any of this," she argues with me, but it is fruitless. She is preaching to the choir with this one.
"Usually, the way that they see it, that might be the whole point," I remind her. "The crazy thing is that if they do take me away again it will be all my fault. I'd deserve it but my mom… she did everything that she could to keep me safe and I did everything I could to fight against her. I don't know why I guess I just… I've never been normal, you know? And suddenly, all of this happened and I just wanted to be a regular teenager so bad. I forced it. I ignored all of my problems hoping that they would just magically disappear but it just made everything worse."
"So, you're telling me that I should stop doing that?" Quinn asks me. I shrug. I hadn't planned it, but in a way I guess that is exactly what I am trying to tell Quinn.
"Look where it got me," I shrug.
"You can't keep blaming yourself for wanting to be a kid for a change," Quinn tells me.
"And you should listen to your own advice every once in a while," I nudge her and then sigh, my face falling. "What we want doesn't matter, Quinn. We're not kids anymore, we have to face that. It might not be fair but life usually isn't. We have no say in the things that already happened, but what about what comes next? We've been through enough that we should be able to trust our instinct. We've made enough mistakes to know one when we see one, right?"
Quinn shrugs her shoulders. She looks unconvinced.
"Do you ever think about what your life was like nine months ago?" she asks me after a moment.
"Sure," I shrug as if this answer should be obvious. "I think about it all the time. I didn't know Andrew nine months ago. I always think about what I could have done to have ever avoided meeting him but sometimes it feels like he has been in my life forever and now it's hard to remember what things were like without him."
"I hated you nine months ago," Quinn piggybacks off of me, reminding me of the less than conventional way that the two of us had become friends. "I hated everybody, actually. I was counting down the seconds until graduation, planning how I would run away from Lima and my parents… I didn't think anything of it. When I first found out that I was pregnant, I just figured that would be another thing that I could let go of. Now I don't know what I'm gonna do… What about you? Do you still want the same things that you wanted out of your life before everything that happened to you?"
"Sure," I shrug again. "I don't see why any of that has to change."
"You still want to go to New York?"
"I'm not going to let Andrew define how I spend the rest of my life."
"I wanted to go to Yale."
"There's no reason that that has to change," I tell her.
"If I keep my daughter than she will be three years old by the time I graduate high school," Quinn points out. "How am I supposed to go through Yale with a toddler?"
"Yale isn't so far away from New York," I shrug. "And your sister is close by, and who knows, maybe your mom can go to Connecticut with you and help you…"
"I just don't want to be a Lima Loser," Quinn sighs, not impressed by my multitudes of options, clearly overwhelmed.
I look down at the baby still inside of my arms. The little girl's eyes are wide open and alert, which surprises me because I hadn't heard a peep from her that would have suggested she had woken up. I don't want the first thing that she sees on my face to be a frown so I force a smile and feed her my index finger, trying to keep her occupied before she can even think to cry again. Out of instinct, she latches on with a surprising strength for such a little thing.
"For what it's worth Quinn, I can't see somebody brave enough to do what you did tonight rolling over and accepting becoming a Lima Loser just because things are hard."
She doesn't say anything. I pause and wait for her to think of something but before she can, I feel somebody staring at me and look up towards the door.
Expecting Mrs. Fabray or Sue or maybe even Noah, when I see my own mother staring back at me instead, a rush of relief washes through me that is so powerful that it takes everything inside of me not to cry.
My muscles tense. I have been waiting so desperately to see my mother before that our distance had felt impossible. Now that she is right here in front of me, I can't seem to move.
"Are you okay?" Quinn asks me when her child makes a small cry from inside of my arms that forces me to remember where I am and loosen up instinctively.
"My mom is here," I hear myself mumble without even realizing that I am speaking. I stand up to my feet as fast as I am comfortable doing with an infant in my arms so that I can tip her carefully back inside of her incubator.
I only just see the way that Quinn's eyes dart from her baby to the door before I start to hobble towards my mother as fast as I can without using my crutches.
I rip open the door, not even caring about causing a scene and plow myself into my mother's chest before she can even process that I am in front of her. I hold onto her tight, feeling the warmth overtake me as she returns the embrace, squeezing me so hard it feels like she is trying to blend my body into hers and I realize that Quinn might have had a point in what she was saying earlier: there really is no place like inside of your mother's arms.
My mother makes a big deal about having a moment to herself to talk to Quinn.
Under normal circumstances, that would leave my curiosity buzzing but tonight, I am so tired that the second that my mother points me in the direction of a couple of waiting chairs, I sit down.
Before I can even start to wonder what she might want to talk to Quinn about, I blink and my mom is back in front of me, shaking my shoulder and telling me to wake up. I blink up at her slowly. I hadn't even realized that I had fallen asleep.
She wants me to go back to my room in the ER to show face and get some sleep, but the five or ten minutes that I had gotten seems to have given me a renewed buzz and I know that I won't be able to sleep even if I tried. Instead, we go downstairs to prove to Dr. Medina that I am alive and then, somehow, I manage to convince both her and my mother to discharge me.
There had been a moment of tension after my mother had asked for my discharge papers, like she was afraid of being denied them as she had the last time I had been hospitalized and CPS had been debating my fate behind our backs. There are no problems for now, but as a nursing assistant guides my mother and I upstairs to a surgical waiting unit to wait on news of Santana, I can see the fear of losing me slowly slide out of her face, and for a fleeting instant, I see it replaced with something else entirely: disappointment.
I walk next to my mother much slower than I have to, even on crutches. My hips and my knees feel like they are moving on rusty hinges. My ribs are starting to ache from the kicks that Andrew had rained down on me earlier. The doctor had assured me that they weren't broken, but they sure felt it.
My eyes are cloudy with exhaustion even as I continue moving forward. My mother is staring at me hard again. When I look at her, the disappointment is gone and only the worry is back again. I wonder if her fear is even specific at this point or if it is just how her face looks these days.
The waiting room is large, spacious, and thankfully, completely empty. We are left with the promise that Santana's doctors will come here to speak with us as soon as there is news and then settle slowly in our silence.
My mother takes a long time making sure that I am comfortable. She is obsessing over me even though I am fine because I am here for her to panic and fret over and Santana is not. Santana is in surgery; dying or already dead for all I know.
I close my eyes, trying not to think like that. My conversation with Quinn had distracted me for a couple of minutes but now that that is over, I am back to thinking about Santana tenfold.
My mind has been wandering very cryptically ever since arriving here but I guess that is to be expected. The worrying hold that I have regarding Santana's fate is back to being a strangling force. It is like a snake is wrapping itself around my chest, squeezing tight and forcing me to confront the reason why Santana's ending might be written for her tonight while meanwhile I am sitting here just fine despite my fault.
I think about what it might be like to nod off innocently inside of this chair only to forget to wake up. I wonder what would happen… I would think that it is pretty obvious that Santana would get a straight shot into heaven after everything she has done for me, but I am afraid that once it gets to be my turn, there will be some incredible injustice at the gates of heaven, barring my entrance.
Maybe it will be an overflow; a no vacancy sign glowing high over the pearly gates. Or maybe I would just straight-up be denied. Was selfishness one of the deadly sins? I can't remember.
"Rachel?"
My mother pulls me out of my frantic thoughts. My face must look distressed because when I look up at her, she is leaning forward with her elbows against her knees, staring at me hard. I can't read what she is thinking inside of her face, but that is a staple of her expression these days. It is hard to break down that look.
"Are you okay?" she asks me. I nod my head slowly.
"This is just taking a lot longer than I expected," I tell her, hoping that she might understand despite my vagueness what all of this idle time is doing to my sanity.
"No news is good news, right?" she asks me, rubbing her eyes. She sounds like she truly believes what she is saying, which puts my wandering thoughts a little more at ease.
Now that we are finally starting to settle, I can see the exhaustion seeping inside of my mother's features. She is coming down hard from the fear of Santana and I being killed at Andrew's hands and now that she is, it is getting harder for her to mask everything else that she is feeling about this night.
"Are you okay?" I turn the question around and she forces a tiny smile.
"I'm just a little tired," she nods. Her eyes are blood red. For her to say that she is a little tired seems like the understatement of the century.
"What did you talk to Quinn about?" I risk asking. I know that I shouldn't, but I cannot keep sitting in this silence and I don't know what else to say.
"Just giving her a little bit of advice," she tells me. I can tell by the way that she says it that the details of that advice will remain secret forever. "Old mother to new mother."
"You're not that old, mom," I tell her, trying to lighten her mood a little bit. She gives me a tired laugh, sweeping her fingers through her hair.
"Thanks, Rach."
"She wants to keep the baby, you know," I tell her, pushing a conversation that my mother is clearly trying to stall at every turn.
"Yeah, I know." She nods her head slowly. I can't tell what she is thinking based on her tone alone, so I have to ask.
"What do you think about it?"
"It's not my place to think anything about it," she tells me, shaking her head. She knows as well as I do that this is a situation that does not warrant an opinion nearly as much as it warrants a promise to help and support a friend no matter what she decides. "But whatever Quinn decides, Rachel, she is going to need some good friends to help her and support her no matter what."
She looks at me seriously, silently asking me if I am up to such a monumental task. I nod softly, making the promise without Quinn even being here to see. The way I see it, it is the least I can do for everything that she's done for me.
"I know," I tell my mother in a small voice. Now I am thinking about Quinn again. I think about the inevitable support that she will need whether she decides to keep her daughter or give her up, and the support that Santana will need throughout whatever recovery she will be left to face, and the support that I will need as I try to figure out where to go next…
The night had started in a celebration of Santana getting into college. If she does leave in the fall as was the plan before everything changed, then it will only be me and Quinn left. If we lose her tonight, then it will still only be me and Quinn.
I start to think about what Quinn had asked me earlier about what comes next. Will my mother want to move us again? Will she even be able to or will we have to stay put for a trial, for Santana's recovery, for another CPS investigation?
All of these questions are starting to make my head hurt. I groan and lean forward, thrusting my head in between my knees in an effort to ease the pounding between my ears.
"What are you thinking about, Rach?" I hear my mother ask me. She sounds concerned. When I look up at her, I notice that she looks concerned too.
"Have you heard from Lucy yet?" I ask her. It is a question that has been hovering dangerously inside of my head for hours and as much as I'm unsure whether or not I want to know the answer, not knowing is drilling a hole inside of my chest that hurts even more.
My mother's face darkens. I swallow, almost regretfully. "No," she shakes her head. Her voice is entirely different now.
"Are you expecting to?" I push. My mother stares at me. Her lips are a thin line, her eyes narrow. I can tell that she is trying very hard not to think about that.
"I really don't know, Rachel," she tells me. Her voice is cool, like she is trying very hard to distance herself from the idea. She has enough heaviness inside of her heart waiting to hear whether or not Santana is alive, she cannot worry herself over whether or not I am going to be taken away from her again too.
She sighs and turns her eyes down towards the floor. I can tell that she is trying not to get upset with me after everything that happened tonight, but it is like the more that I talk, the more she is realizing that tonight's events had been entirely preventable if I had just cooperated with all of the protections that she had put into place.
"I'm really sorry, mom," I choke, pointing my eyes down towards the floor.
"I know you are, Rachel," she tells me but somehow, the disappointment that has seeped inside of her voice only makes me feel worse. "Listen, we can talk about the party and everything else that happened tonight later, okay?"
"You know about the party?" I ask, my eyes snapping up to find hers. I had no idea. As far as I knew, all my mother knew was that Santana and I had somehow ended up inside of our house alone. Who had told her about the party? The police? Would I get in trouble for drinking? Would everybody else? I was already the town freak, I didn't need to be the town snitch as well.
My mother sighs and closes her eyes for a moment, trying to swallow any kind of emotional response she might have before finally, she opens her eyes and nods her head.
"I got the alert from the alarm company that somebody walked into the house," she says slowly. "When I checked the cameras, I saw you in the house alone with Quinn and I called your sister."
She had talked to Santana. It was probably immediately after our fight and Santana was so determined not to tell her that the two of us had been fighting that my mother had actually convinced Santana to spill the secret of the party. It would only be a couple of minutes later that she would check the cameras again only to find Andrew in the house with us this time.
"It's my fault," I choke, struggling not to cry. My mother looks at me hard for a moment. Finally, she exhales deeply before shaking her head. As disappointed as she may be at me, she would never let me linger on a thought like this.
"You know, Rachel, the police told me that Andrew has been planning this for some time now," she breathes. "If it wasn't tonight, it would have been tomorrow or a week from now or maybe even a month. You and your sister should have known better going to that party tonight, but what Andrew did, it wasn't your fault. It never was."
I take a shuddering breath and feel a couple of tears drip down my cheeks. I press my hands together tightly and look up at my mother who is staring at me with an impressive sense of calm.
"We will talk about you and Santana going to that party, Rachel, I promise you that," she tells me sternly, but then, her eyes soften. "But for right now, we're all still here. You're going to be okay and hopefully Santana will too. For now, that is good enough for me. Let's just focus on that, okay?"
The doctors wake us up during the quietest part of the morning.
It is starting to get light outside. I can see the soft pink glow of the sky through the large framed windows of the waiting room. The staff must be in the midst of a shift change because when I look into the hallway, nobody seems to be moving. It is just me and my mother and two unfamiliar doctors hovering above us.
I blink awake and groan at the dull pain that has started to creep into my bones. I don't even remember falling asleep.
My back stiffens. I sit up begging my foggy brain to clear long enough to comprehend the fact that there are doctors here, probably to tell us about Santana. I have been waiting for this moment all night, I can't let something as mundane as sleep interfere.
Nerves start to overtake me as I watch my mother stand from her seat with shaky knees.
My world is still blurred around its edges but it is finally starting to clear as I stumble to follow my mother to my own feet.
My heart is pounding inside of my ears. I don't realize that the doctors are already talking to my mother because I can't hear anything through the sound. I pause, trying to remind myself that I want to hear this but then I watch my mother hunch forward and brace her hands against her knees and I almost fall backwards into my seat because this reaction can only mean one thing: Santana is dead.
For a moment my entire world shuts off. My vision is tunneling inward until all I can see of the world is a tiny pinprick. I try to remember how I had felt in the moment that I had learned that my father had died, but that entire experience had been a blur too and I can't remember a thing.
"So, she is going to be okay?"
Through the tiny pinpoint of my consciousness, I hear my mother ask the question that counters everything that I am assuming. For a moment, I am overwhelmed with confusion. Is this my mind playing tricks on me? Am I that desperate to commit to every last strand of hope I can hold on to?
My eyes dart up and look at the two doctors standing in front of me, waiting for an explanation. I wish that I had been listening from the beginning. When the doctors give my mother a soft smile and nods, I feel my heart start to race.
"She's upstairs in recovery. The nurses are just starting to wake her up from the anesthesia now. She'll be a little bit groggy between that and the pain medication, but you're more than welcome to go see her."
She's okay. I am so relieved that my knees go weak and I almost fall back down into my chair. Suddenly, I realize why doctors are always telling people to sit down before delivering news, good or bad.
My cheeks swell, heavy, and I am afraid that I'm about to cry even though Santana is going to be okay. It is just that I have been waiting to hear this all night and finally, I am really starting to believe everybody who has been telling me that I am the one who had won tonight, not Andrew.
"Come on, Rachel."
I blink up when I hear my name and when I do, I notice that my mother is already in the doorway, beckoning me to follow her with a sense of urgency like she is as unwilling as I am to believe that Santana is okay until she can see it for herself.
I shake my head and force myself back into focus. Concentrating on the task at hand, I pick up the crutches that I had long ago discarded against the floor and pull myself upright so quickly that my head spins.
I rush to rejoin the group, nearly tripping over myself in my haste. My knees are knocking against each other, which doesn't help and I can tell that my mother can literally hear them because she turns over her shoulder to look at me with an almost guilty expression. She forces herself to slow down, crouching slightly so that we are eye-to-eye.
"Hey…" she soothes me quietly, rubbing her hands up and down my arms. "She's okay. It's going to be okay. Everything is fine."
I nod my head and wipe at my eyes with the backs of my hand because I feel like I am crying even though my cheeks feel dry. I don't know why I am acting like this. My mother is right; Santana is going to be fine. So why does it still feel like my heart is about to pound straight out of my chest?
"Breathe, Rachel," my mother coaches me in a whisper, recognizing the tell-tale signs of my being overwhelmed. "Just breathe, okay?"
I nod my head again, letting the soothing motions of my mother's hands against my arm calm me down. I don't want to embarrass myself in front of Santana's doctors. I don't want to take away from what Santana needs right now by having my mother focus only on me. Instead, I remind myself that the only thing that will really get me to relax is to see for myself that Santana is alright, but I will have to make it to her first.
"I'm okay," I swallow and force myself to get moving again. My mother doesn't seem entirely convinced, but she knows as well as I do that we both need to see Santana so she puts a gentle hand in between my shoulder blades and coaxes me forward, supporting me upright as much as she can while preserving a little bit of strength for herself.
The doctors take us up one floor. Santana is still in Recovery which means that she doesn't have her own room yet. The unit is crowded like the Emergency Room had been, although slightly less chaotic. There has got to be at least twenty beds, most of which are full, separated by nothing more than a curtain.
My eyes start to scan back and forth for Santana. I wonder if when I see her, she will be conscious enough to know that she had woken up in a world that was very different than the one that she had lost consciousness from just a couple of hours ago. I feel like everybody in the room is staring at me, judging and I suddenly feel very self-conscious as I start to think back to what Quinn had asked me earlier about how often I thought about what my life was like nine months ago. I realize now that I had underplayed my answer to her without even realizing it.
Nine months ago, I had been the girl who danced in between rooms, a limitless specimen, a child who didn't care who saw her as anything else. These days, I never forget that at any time, somebody might be watching me. I never forget how I had come to be so much older than what I actually am…
I spot Santana before the doctors actually point us out to her, tucked away in a corner that is partitioned by a wall on one side and a curtain on the other. People filter in and out of her tiny cubicle, shaking her slowly, trying to rouse her back into this world despite it being less than ideal compared to her unconsciousness.
She seems reluctant to rejoin the land of the living and I cannot say that I blame her. Her eyes are closed, but every time the nurse tries to force her awake, she tries her hardest to push the woman out of the way. I have tried to wake Santana up in the morning for school before so I sympathize with the woman's assignment, but Santana's reaction is so quintessentially her that the weakness of Santana's movements isn't even enough to mask the relief of seeing that she moving at all.
I feel a hand against my shoulder and only then do I realize that I have stopped walking. I look up at my mother who is staring down at me with an encouraging, yet all-knowing look.
"You okay?" she asks me for the millionth time tonight.
I nod my head. I don't know how to communicate with her that as happy as I am to see that Santana is alright, now that the fear of losing her is starting to dissipate, it is starting to be replaced with an entirely new kind of fear: that Santana will be so obscured by drugs and pain that she won't even bother to hold back on what she really thinks about everything that happened tonight once she sees me. I am afraid that I won't be able to survive her telling me that it was all my fault, that I had almost gotten her, Brittany, and Quinn killed tonight, that it should be me laying in this bed instead of her…
I sit in the background, looming in the shadows while my mother takes short, stuttering steps closer towards Santana. My sister's eyes are still closed, but they are squeezed shut like she is trying to force herself to remain unconscious.
Her face is so pale that the veins beneath her skin are glowing. Her body looks like a road map to absolutely nowhere and I try not to feel nauseous at the site of a small bag full of blood dangling above her head but I can't help but to feel a little bit queasy anyway.
My mother presses herself directly up against Santana's bed and wipes some of the dark hair off of her forehead where it contrasts terribly with her pale skin and the white pillow underneath her.
"Santana…" my mother breathes to her, her voice no more than a wisp of air.
"Go away," Santana groans back. She sounds exasperated and angry from all of this interference around her. Clearly, she does not realize the scope of what is happening around her.
"That's enough, Santana," my mother tells her, but her voice is soft. "It's time to wake up now."
"Five more minutes," Santana groans. It is as though she thinks that my mother is trying to wake her up for school or something. I wonder what kind of drugs the doctors have her on and start to think that maybe it is for the best that she doesn't remember anything that happened tonight…
"The nurses want you up now, Santana," my mother tells her. Her fingers are dancing along Santana's hairline, keeping her rooted inside of this reality despite Santana's resistance to it.
"No, they don't," my sister insists. The corners of my mother's lips tip up slightly through Santana's stubbornness: how good it must be to have some little piece of the familiar in this otherwise very abnormal night.
"I'm never going to complain about how difficult you are to wake up for school ever again after this," she mutters faintly to Santana as finally, seeing no way to avoid the constant intrusion any longer, Santana slowly starts to blink her eyes open, allowing me and my mother's relief to bulb like flowers in the spring.
Santana blinks away from the lights that blare down into her eyes, bright fluorescents that glare down like it is the middle of the day rather than just breaking the cusp of dawn. My mother is patient and gives her all of the time that she needs to adjust but the glazed confusion in Santana's eyes makes me nervous and I hide behind my mother just a little bit more so that I won't have to see the realization that dawns inside of my sister's face when she finally does figure out where she is and how she got here.
She starts to realize that she is somewhere unfamiliar very slowly. She takes in the loud, bright room first and all of the tubes and wires that she is attached to second. I watch as the pain slides into her features and her eyes squeeze closed again, overwhelmed by it.
For a second, everything is silent as I watch the memories flood back into the tiny muscles controlling her expressions and then, her eyes fly open with a gasp, like she is trying to figure out how to stop her lungs from feeling empty as everything that happened tonight comes back to her like a punch.
"Where is she?" I hear her gasp to my mother. Her voice is groggy but there is no mistaking the panic. The drugs are making it so that her eyes move a beat behind her brain. I am standing right in front of her, but she hasn't spotted me yet and the only alternative that she can think of is that I am still with Andrew.
"Santana…" my mother tries to calm my sister, but she is already trying to push herself up and out of bed. Her face is determined, showing no signs of the pain that she must be in. Taking a bullet to keep your little sister from being killed must have a way of hardening a person.
"Where is she, mom?" Santana asks again, ignoring all attempts from my mother to interfere. Her voice is panicked as she struggles through the maze of tubes and wires weaving her to her bed like a tightly knit sweater. Eventually, she grows frustrated enough that she starts to try to rip everything off to free herself. Luckily, she is too drugged up to move very quickly, and my mother manages to pin her hands back down to her sides just before she can manage to pull the oxygen tubes out of her nose.
"Santana, you need to calm down," my mother tells her seriously, sharp eyes meeting completely panicked ones.
"He took her!" Santana cuts her off. She is trying to thrash out of our mother's arms but she is so weak, her efforts are hardly successful. She had missed so much while she was unconscious, she has absolutely no idea and still, after everything that I had done to her tonight, the first words out of her mouth are to try and save me. "Andrew got away with Rachel. He took her. Please tell me that she's alive. Please tell me that she got away from him."
I can hear the alarm bells ringing off of all of the machinery that is connected to Santana as the panic starts to settle behind the veil of pain killers. I recognize that the only person who can convince Santana that I am not with Andrew or worse is me, so I shake my head out of the trance that Santana's initial reaction seemed to have put me in and step out from behind my mother where Santana can see me.
"Sanny…" I hear myself whisper in a low sort of voice, sounding remarkably childish especially in using a nickname that I had not called my sister in years.
Our eyes lock immediately. There is a wild look inside of her face that lingers for just a moment after she sees me like she is trying to decide whether or not I am real. She must come to the conclusion that I am because a second later, her entire body falls flaccid against the bed.
"Thank God," I hear her mutter, watching her chest heave up and down trying to compensate for the oxygen she had lost while holding her breath over me. She closes her eyes for a moment, squeezing them like she is in an impossible amount of pain thanks to the less-than-graceful way that she had woken up. There is a line of sweat billowing against her forehead, but all of the monitors that she is attached to are gradually starting to blink back down to normal.
"Do you want me to go get a nurse, hon?" my mother asks Santana, wiping her damp hair back away from her face.
"I'm okay," Santana forces herself to say and even though that might not be entirely true, my mother relaxes a little bit anyway. "I just want you and Rachel."
I wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands and scramble to move closer to my sister per her request. Her sentiments leave me determined to fulfill her desires. It is the least that I can do after she almost died for me tonight.
I press myself directly against the mattress and reach out to hold onto her hand tight but even still, I want to be closer to her and before I can tell myself that it might not be a good idea, I scramble into the bed next to her and press myself up against her good leg.
"Rachel, be careful," my mother hisses at me, but doesn't think to stop me as I lay down as close to Santana as I am comfortable with doing against the fear of hurting her. My sister smiles at me, using all of the strength that she has to wrap her arm around my shoulders and squeeze me in close. I rest my head down against her shoulder, settling inside of the crook of her neck, taking in the comfort of her embrace and the warmth of her skin. To realize just how close I had come to losing all of this tonight makes me choke up all over again.
"Are you okay?" Santana asks me, never skipping a beat because she is always the one who is trying to save me even though she is the one who could use a little bit of saving right about now.
"I'm fine," I hiccup into her ear. "Are you okay?"
"My leg hurts," she admits, testing out the strength in her heavily bandaged leg, trying to move it slightly only to regret the action when a burst of pain causes her to grit her teeth hard.
"Do you remember what happened?" my mother asks timidly, not knowing which answer she would rather have Santana tell her more: that she remembers nothing or that she remembers everything.
"He shot me," Santana says with a grimace although it is hard to tell whether this expression is more from pain or from anger. "That asshole shot me."
Santana opens her eyes, looking up to our mother for confirmation. When the woman nods her head at her through pursed lips without even scolding her for her language, Santana groans, falling back against her pillow as she struggles to piece together the rest of what happened tonight, finding each detail to be worse than the last as they all slowly start to seep together.
"We thought you were dead, you jerk," I mutter into her neck, trying to convey just how much she had scared me tonight although Santana only somehow manages a little laugh.
"You can't get rid of me that easily," she tells me. She looks down at me, taking me all in. Her eye sockets are hollow, her skin pale. She looks exhausted, but she is still here and she seems as gracious that we are approaching the end of this marathon as I am, even if the details are still a little bit hazy.
"What happened to your foot?" she asks me suddenly, glancing down at my booted ankle.
"Your girlfriend broke it while we were trying to get away from Andrew," I tell her and Santana stares at me with utmost confusion on her face for a moment before she closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose with a groan.
"What the hell did I miss?" she mutters. She sounds incredibly frustrated with the idea that a large chunk of her life seems to be missing although a part of me wishes that I could forget some of the finer details of what happened tonight too.
"We'll fill you in when you're a little more awake, honey," my mother assures her, but Santana does not seem satisfied by such a vague answer.
"You're gonna be okay though, right?" she asks, turning to me seriously. Her voice shudders when she asks this like she is terrified of what my answer might be even though I am lying next to her completely fine.
"I'm gonna be fine," I promise, but Santana does not look so convinced.
"I… I saw what he did to you, Rachel," she stutters, the agony written inside of her eyes at the mere memory. "You were on the floor and he was kicking you and I tried to stop him but I… I couldn't help you. I let him take you and I couldn't stop him. I'm so sorry, Rachel."
Her apology melts the last of my nerve like wax, severing the final thread that I had to hold onto. I feel my lower lip tremble and my face melt. My head is pounding, which makes my bruised eye throb and the combination of all of these sensations is enough that I finally feel myself break.
"I'm the one who should be sorry," I choke, pressing my face into her neck, feeling my hot tears spread along her skin.
"For what?" she asks, almost appalled.
"You got shot because of me," I sob, upset that this isn't as obvious to her as it is to me. "I thought you were dead and it would have been all my fault."
Santana turns to look at me, her face falling. Her eyes stare into me as though she is looking at a ghost.
"I thought you were dead too," she admits in a soft voice. "I… I let him take you and I thought he would have killed you for sure. It scared me so much, Rach."
I gape at her, open-mouthed. This entire time I had thought that Santana would never want to talk to me ever again between our fight at the party and then me almost getting her killed. I never would have guessed that she was having the same thoughts about me. Selfishly, I never thought about what she was thinking at all.
"Nothing happened to me," I try to assure her, but my voice is deflated.
"I watched him take you," Santana tells me, shaking her head. She sounds terribly confused, like she is having a hard time sorting her memories between the fuzz of her injury. "I watched him leave with you. He tried to drag you out of the house and then he… he shot me. I thought that that would make him stop, but he took you anyway. I can't remember a lot of what happened tonight. Why can't I remember?"
"The doctors say that that's perfectly normal, Santana," my mother interjects, noting the panic creeping into Santana's features towards her temporary amnesia. She reaches forward, squeezing Santana's good knee in support. "The anesthesia and the pain medication might make you a little bit confused for a little while, but it's not permanent. You'll be back to your normal self in no time."
"I remember Quinn…" Santana says slowly, still trying to piece together the events of tonight despite our mother's assurance that it will all come back to her in time. I want to tell her to hold onto this grace period where she is able to forget but bite my tongue against doing so. "She was having her baby. Is she alright?"
"She had it," I tell Santana, smirking at the notion of actually having something good to tell her for a change. "Both Quinn and the baby are perfectly healthy."
"She's beautiful, San," my mother agrees. "You'll have to go upstairs and meet her when you're feeling a little bit better."
Santana nods her head and closes her eyes momentarily, still struggling to force her brain to work as efficiently as she would like. When she opens her eyes again and looks up at me, I can still see the traces of confusion rooted deep inside of her face.
"How'd you get away?" she asks me after a moment.
"That is a very long story that Rachel and I can fill you in on when you're feeling a little bit better." My mother intercepts the answer. I don't say so, but I am glad that she did. Not only am I not really in the mood to talk about it, but also, I have a feeling that it would only distress Santana in a time where we're supposed to be trying to make her feel better.
Normally, I know that Santana would try to fight against this response, but she must really be exhausted because her face relaxes as she leans back and falls into her pillow, satisfied.
"How long was I out for?" she finally breathes.
"Just a couple of hours," I tell her. What I don't mention is just how long those couple of hours had felt. "The ambulance brought you here and the doctors took you into surgery right away. We're in recovery right now just waiting to get you a room. I'm already discharged and Quinn will probably be discharged tomorrow or the next day. It's just you we're waiting on now."
"Andrew?"
"Arrested," I tell her. I don't tell her that he is somewhere inside of this hospital recovering from devastating injuries because like earlier, I don't want to get her worked up when I do not need to.
"So, we did good?" she asks in a small voice. Everything about the question sounds remarkably childish, from the way that she says it to the way that she looks up for validation from our mother afterwards. Still, for the first time tonight, I see a new expression in her eyes, one in which she truly believes that I am okay and she is okay and our future is going to be okay. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. Sure, we may not have crossed the finish line yet, but at least we are free.
"I could have gone without the heart attack you girls gave me tonight," my mother sighs but gives Santana a nod and a soft smile. "But yeah, you did good, Santana. I'm very proud of you."
Santana lets out a small smile, satisfied, but it does not linger.
"Why am I so tired?" she finally asks, clearly frustrated by this fact.
"You had a long night," my mother tells her. "You both did. You girls should try to get some sleep while you can."
I feel Santana settle against me like she doesn't have to be told twice. I allow her body to fall against my own, grateful to be the one supporting her for a change and lean into her further like I still can't believe that this is an opportunity that I still have after nearly losing her.
After a moment, Santana's breathing falls evenly against my body. Following its rhythm, I feel myself lose this final battle against sleep for the night, finally finding peace with the idea that we do not choose where our stories start and stop. Instead, our stories become the tellers of us and I have to believe that there is something powerful in the reason why neither mine nor Santana's were destined to stop tonight.
