You know those few hazy seconds in the moments between when your eyes open and your brain catches up? Like in the morning when you wake up from the previous night's sleep, and you wake up feeling so well rested, so refreshed, so comfortable that you've convinced yourself you're probably still dreaming?
In those split seconds before you come crashing back down to reality, the world seems still. It seems like the rest of it stopped, just once in time and waited for you to blink your eyes and catch up to it.
I wake up before my eyes open… And the way I'm feeling is nothing like those split seconds. The way I'm feeling is like when you have that dream that you're falling, and you can feel the air rushing around you as you plummet to your death. And usually, you wake up before you hit the ground. And you wake up with your heart pounding so hard that you can hear it in your ears, you wake up with sweat stains on your t-shirt and your hair sticking to your forehead. And you sit up and look around and try to make sense of what the hell you see.
In my case, it feels like I never woke up. It feels like I actually hit the ground.
How long was I asleep? Did I miss dinner?
"You can start her on a morphine drip just to keep her comfortable, but keep supplementing with heparin to keep her heart in check." I hear a man's gravelly voice talking and even though it's a little bit fuzzy sounding to me, I can hear enough to know that I don't recognize it.
Who is in my room? Why is he talking about medicine? Did Mercedes leave the TV on during one of her stupid General Hospital reruns?
"If anything changes with her heart, page me immediately. I mean it, Charlotte. If there's even so much as HINT of irregularity in her heartbeat, page me right away. Do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Page me. I'm not about to let this little girl die."
What little girl? Who's dying?
"Alright Dennis, I got it. Page you." Someone else speaks, and she has a really smooth voice with a heavy southern accent. It kind of reminds me of the way Mom talks.
Holy crap, Mom…. MOM! I have to apologize to her, I have to tell her that I'm sorry RIGHT AWAY before she kicks me out! I was awful to her, I was terrible! She's downstairs making dinner, I smell it. She's still in the kitchen, I have to go, I have to apologize right now! RIGHT NOW!
Despite the fact that my eyelids feel like someone dropped ten pound weights on them and it hurts to open them up, I force myself to do it anyway. And the light that beats down into them is so bright and so fluorescent that I close them just as fast as I opened them because they burn.
Why are there lights on? I never sleep with the lights on.
I squeeze my eyes tight to try and ward off the burning sensation in them, then open them up again. Everything's a little fuzzy, so I have to blink a few times to bring everything into focus. As I'm blinking, I start to roll over onto my side so I can get out of — OW! OW, OW, OW, OW! MY ARM! MY ARM IS BURNING, OW! OW! OW!
This time when I blink, piping hot tears spill out the corners of my eyes and dribble down to my earlobes. I don't know why I'm crying, but I am. I go to suck in a breath so I can cry out in pain, but I'm in even more pain… My mouth hurts. My mouth hurts so bad and my throat hurts. My throat is burning, it feels like I swallowed fire! It feels like I swallowed fire and it's so unbearable and it hurts so bad that my stomach hurts too. My throat hurts… my throat really really hurts… and I can't get up. I can't get up…
"M-M—" I try to open my mouth to call Mom but my tongue hits something cold and shiny and hard. Like plastic. And then the awful metallic taste of blood is all over my tongue and it's nasty. It's so nasty. It's nasty and my throat is burning and my arm hurts and there's something in my mouth and I don't see my mom…
I see a… a… a blonde girl? In blue scrubs? Her hair is short like mine, but she's older. And she has a stethoscope around her neck. She's talking to someone tall. He's tall and he has gray hair and his scrubs are blue too and he's looking at something in his hands. And there's a light above me that is too bright. And something to my left that's beeping. And something on my right making a really loud noise, like a motor or something. Where's my mom? I want my mom. I want my mom. They're trying to do something to me. They're trying to hurt me, I want my mom. I want my mom, she can save me. She can help me. I want her to hold me. I want her to hold me and give me medicine to stop my throat from hurting. Why am I alone? Where's my mom? Everything hurts and I don't know where I am and I'm so scared and I just really want my mom. Mommy…
"She's waking up," the blonde girl says to the tall guy and suddenly they both come rushing over to me. And that makes me cry even harder because I want my mom, not them.
Why is this happening to me? I went to sleep in my room. I had a fight with my mom and I went to sleep in my room and now I'm here. And I don't even know where "here" is. Did they give me away? Did she kick me out? Is that why she's not here? I just want her. I want her… I'm sorry for cussing, I just want my mom…
"Her stats are checking out great. She's coming outta that anesthesia pretty well." The blonde girl shines a light in my eye and I try to turn my head away so she can't do it, but I'm stuck. I can't even turn my head… can I just have my mom…? "I think we can remove the tube. I don't want it in her throat any longer than absolutely necessary."
"Get the morphine drip started before we do anything. She's gonna be in a lot of pain… a lot more pain than she even needs to be in, thanks to the idiots at St. Rita's." The guy sounds kind of angry and I don't think I like him…
"Tell me about it. They shoved a tube down her throat, which was completely obliterated. Made the surgery ten times harder than it even had to be." The nurse is mad like the guy and maybe I don't like either one of them…
"M-M…" I try again to call out for Mom even with the tube in my mouth. How is Mom gonna know I want her if I can't even call her?
The girl starts messing with the wires and tubes that are connected to my arm. I feel her jerking around and pulling, like she's trying to screw something into me or something and it hurts. Why is she hurting me?
"Hey Lucy!" She talks loud like she knows I can't hear her very well or something. "I'm gonna need you not to talk, okay sweetness?"
Why can't I talk? I wanna talk. She called me Lucy. Mom and Dad must not even be here. If they were here, they would have told her not to call me Lucy. They're not here...
"I just gave you some medicine that will make you feel comfortable in a few minutes, okay?! We're gonna give that some time to settle in and when it does, I'm gonna get that tube outta your mouth!" She takes her gloves off and tosses them into the trashcan before she puts her hands underneath the weird gown I'm wearing and touches my boobs. My BARE boobs.
Where's my bra? And where are my clothes? Why are you feeling me up?
"I'm just putting a couple probes on you, okay?! I wanna use them to take a look at your heart!" She pushes the button on a monitor and stares at it for a minute. "I'm Dr. Barnes, okay?!"
Okay, Dr. Barnes… Dr. Barnes. She's a doctor. I'm in a hospital for some reason. I'm in a hospital and I'm all alone…
Even though everything on my body hurts right now, my face cracks and I feel more hot tears running down my cheeks and dripping to my ears. I'm alone… I'm here all alone with nobody but a doctor with me. I don't even know her…
"Oh, it's okay, sweetness. You don't have to cry." She uses a really soft paper towel to blot my eyes. "It's okay. We're gonna take real good care of you. I know you're scared, but it's okay." She's very gentle with the way she starts peeling tape off my cheeks. "I'm gonna get this thing outta your mouth now, okay? It might hurt just a little, but I promise it won't be too bad. That medicine should be kicking in and working on you now."
She peels the tape off both my cheeks and uses her two fingers to raise my chin up a little. She starts tugging on the tube that's down my throat and I know she said that it shouldn't hurt but it does! It hurts so bad! It hurts and I taste blood and it feels like she's ripping my throat out! Why is she ripping my throat out?! I know she says it's just a tube but it has to be my throat. It has to be. It hurts so bad and I can't see much of it that she takes out of me but it's really bloody and it has to be my throat. She's ripping my throat out.
"There we are," she tries to smile at me when my throat is completely ripped out. I can close my mouth now and when I do, I realize that my jaw is very sore. "Is that better?"
"...I want my mom…" Saying that is the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. My throat burns so bad when I talk and my voice doesn't even sound like my voice anymore. It sounds more like a series of shrieks. I'm so much pain, someone please just get my mom.
"Your mom will be right back, okay?" She uses the paper towel to dab my eyes dry once again. "You were taking so long to wake up, she went down to the bathroom and to get something to drink since you were enjoying your nap so much." She's here?! Mom's here?! They didn't kick me out?! They didn't give me away and abandon me?! She's here?!
"Everything is going to be a-okay." She starts shoving these two soft tubes up my nose and hooking the wire behind my ears. My eyes are really heavy all of a sudden. I feel weird. I feel like everything inside of me is turning to liquid and sloshing around and all of my senses are fuzzy. I don't feel good… "I'm gonna get your nurse down here in a few minutes and she's gonna help me run some tests on you."
I hear everything she's saying, but it's like I'm drifting in and out of consciousness. The more I blink, the harder it gets to keep my eyes open. My throat doesn't hurt as bad anymore and neither does the arm that she shoved the medicine inside of. Nothing hurts, but I also can't really feel anything and I'm not even sure if my legs are still attached to my body. I can't even feel myself breathing. I feel like a shell. Like I'm just a carcass lying in this bed and the only thing that's alive is my mind. I just really want my mom…
"Quinn?" Somebody calls my name as soon as I close my eyes for good, and I have to open them back up again. My hearing is all fuzzy so I don't know who it is…
I only called her name because it doesn't look like her in the bed. She has tubes up her nose and a bunch of IVs in her left arm. Her lips are really red — probably stained from the blood — and there are still little traces of red at the corners of her mouth that they have yet to wipe off. Her eyes are sunken. Her cheeks are hollow. I know it's my Quinn in that bed because I would recognize her aesthetically pleasing cheekbones just about anywhere. Yet, it really does not look like my Quinn.
"Oh, sweetie, you can't be in here yet." The doctor leaves Quinn's side and comes over to where I'm standing at the door instead. "The family has to come in here first. Family before friends."
She's not explaining it to me in a bitchy way or anything. She's actually being very nice about not letting me cross the threshold. I'm not paying attention to her, though. My eyes are solely on my Quinn because I thought I saw her blink and I thought I heard the doctor talking to her, so that must mean she is awake. Yes?
The doctor keeps explaining why I can't see her before her parents see her. I'm tuning her out for the most part. I'm tuning her out because I just saw my Quinn blink again. She's awake.
"My GOD!" I blow right past the doctor without even caring and full sprint the entire five steps it takes to get me to Quinn's bed. I'm not sure if it's okay to touch her, especially when she looks so fragile and breakable, but my hands go right to her cheeks. "Baby, I—" I never call Quinn "baby", but it just kind of came out of my mouth. Just the way the tears just come out of my eyes like little rivers.
"R-R… chel?" She tries to say my name but it sounds like a tiny little mouse squeak. It hits me all at once. I might not ever hear Quinn say my name again.
"Shh, shh," I press my finger to her lips and wipe her tears with my thumbs. "I'm here. I'm right here."
It feels like we're in a movie or even a stage play. This is act three and the moment before everything falls into place and is resolved. I run into the room and embrace Quinn and cry over her body, just thankful that she is going to make a miraculous recovery. She holds me and tells me that she forgives me for everything and that this whole experience made her realize that life is short. I apologize and beg her to love me again. She kisses my forehead and tells me that she never stopped loving me. The credits start to roll as the camera zooms out on me lying on Quinn and Quinn holding me in her arms. The narrator starts talking and says that we lived happily ever after.
I thought about this moment the entire time we waited for her to wake up. Mercedes slapped me and we went our separate ways for a bit. I went down into the cafeteria to get some water and calm down. I expected Quinn to be awake when I came back half an hour later, and she wasn't. An hour went by and I hung out in the waiting room by myself while Mercedes and her parents got to sit inside Quinn's room. Her dad came out to update me every so often and after an hour and a half, they went to get food and use the bathroom. I couldn't help myself. I had to come in here and see if she was awake.
I imagined how it would feel to see her face again. Every time I put my head against the wall and closed my eyes to try and sleep, I had a horrible image burned into me. All I saw was her on the bathroom floor, bleeding and probably wishing that somebody was there with her. I started to think about how it would feel when I saw her again instead. I imagined that I would cry, just like I'm doing now. I imagined that I would tell her I love her. I imagined that she would be able to hold me and speak. I imagined the doctor coming out and telling me that she wasn't going to wake up at all. I imagined having to go back and see my Quinn comatose. I imagined that scenario so hard that I even wrote a song in my head about it.
"I rushed here." I take my hands off her cheeks because I don't know how she's feeling and I don't want to crowd her. I use my t-shirt to wipe my tears and stand back so she can get a good look at me. She probably needs to laugh. I know my Quinn well enough to know that she will laugh at my outfit. "That's why I'm wearing the latest from Rachel Berry's pajama collection."
Her eyes are like pools of honey when they look at me. From my lime green Wicked t-shirt, to my black flannel pajama pants with yellow stars on them, all the way to my pink bunny slippers. I look ridiculous, but for Quinn? I don't mind that much. She grins very soft, and I can tell that it hurts.
I sit down at the edge of her bed and nuzzle my hand underneath of hers. Our eyes meet and one single tear rolls down her right cheek. When I see her cry, all of my tears are unleashed and I feel like I can finally deal with it.
It's the moment in the movie where the main character (me) finally realizes just how serious the situation was. She was strong for so long, just trying to hold everyone up. She was busy being the glue that held the family together. Now that there's no real danger anymore and the love of her life is going to be fine, she can cry and let herself feel all her emotions. It's the most powerful moment in the entire movie, trust me.
"You scared me to death…" I tell her through my blubbery, messy tears. "I thought I was gonna lose you. I thought I was gonna have to do this without you. And I can't. I can't do this without you. So don't make me do this without you. Don't… don't turn into one of those sad stories everyone tells in the hallways of McKinley. Don't leave me here." She closes her eyes and nods at me very slowly. "I love you. I love you so much."
She parts her lips and I can hear the breath moving through her mouth and the shape of her lips forming to say "I love you too", but no words come out. So I put my finger to her lips again.
"Don't say it," I whisper. "I already know. You don't have to say it."
Actually, no. Scratch what I said earlier about me finally crying being the most powerful scene of the movie. This kind of thing happens all the time during rewrites and shooting the scenes, I've seen it with my own eyes. Sometimes the actresses have so much chemistry (me and Quinn) that things happen and you can't help but put them into the script. So what's really the most powerful scene of our movie is what I do next.
Even with the blood on her lips and blood at the corners of her mouth, I hold her face steady and I kiss her. It's one of those very simple kinds of kisses, you know the one where you don't open your mouth but your lips are still smashed against each other and it's still meaningful? I can taste her blood on my lips, but that doesn't stop me from kissing her again.
The doctor is still in the room, she's been hanging out in the corner with a nurse that got here a few minutes ago ever since I ignored her and came in anyway. They're talking amongst themselves and not exactly paying attention to us, but the can clearly see us kissing. Quinn's usually not okay with us kissing publicly and openly like this, but I'm hoping that she starts to feel like me. I feel like all of that doesn't matter. I could have lost her tonight and my life could have shattered. I used to hate kissing her publicly too because I was worried about what people would say or think. That's all secondary now. That's all so stupid. I would kiss her in front of a thousand Bible-thumping homophobes if it meant that she will never scare me like this again.
I still have my lips pressed up against hers when the door to her room slides open. I pull away from kissing her, but because I'm embarrassed. I pull away from kissing her because I know that it's Mercedes and her family coming in now, I know they'll want their time with my Quinn, and also I'm pretty sure Mercedes still hates me.
Her parents have still been nice to me, so I guess that's a plus. But I'm almost 100% certain that Mercedes would throw me to a pack of wolves if she had the chance. I really don't want to cause anymore problems tonight. I want everyone to just be happy and rejoice over the fact that Quinn is okay and she is still with us. I want this to be all about Quinn. So I step away from her even though I don't want to.
"Oh God," Mom says in a really loud whisper as she covers her mouth and rushes over to me. She's the first one out of everyone in the room and I can't see when anyone else enters because she's too busy squeezing me and kissing my cheeks. I've never seen her cry so hard…
"Hi, baby," she starts stroking my hair away from my face and keeps rubbing my cheeks like she's trying to figure out if I'm real or something. I just want everyone to tell me what's going on. Rachel's yelling at me because I scared her. Mom's acting like seeing me alive is like seeing the second coming of Jesus Christ. Everyone is SUPER emotional. And I have no clue why I'm even here.
"Mmmommy…" I know the doctor said I should try not to talk, but how am I supposed to communicate if I don't talk? How am I supposed to find out what's wrong with me if I can't ask?
"Oh no," Mom shakes her head and kisses my forehead. "No, no, no, no, no. Don't talk. Don't talk, baby. Don't talk. It's okay. It's okay. We here. We all here." She steps aside so I can finally see Dad and Mercedes too. "Me, Daddy, 'Cedes, Rachel… we all here."
They're all here… they're all here and they all look like they've had a really bad night.
Rachel's in her pajamas and her hair isn't brushed. Her ponytail is falling out and barely hanging on by a thread, and her eyes were all red and blotchy. She has a really big purple bruise on her cheek that I can't even ask how she got. Mercedes is wearing sweatpants and a hoodie herself, and her hair is all frizzy and tied up in a messy bun. Her eyes are just as red as Rachel's. Even Mom and Dad look a mess. Did I get into an accident of some sort? Did I fall? Did I hit my head? Did I have some sort of dizzy spell? Did I pass out? They're monitoring my heart… maybe I had a heart attack?
"You have no idea how much we love you, lil girl," Mom kisses me on the cheek for the millionth time. "Scared the hell out all uh us."
Mercedes goes over to the side of my bed that isn't occupied by Mom, and she grabs ahold of my hand. I can't really feel her touching me because that pain medicine the doctor gave me I assume, but it's nice to know that she's holding my hand. It's nice to know that she's here. Even Dad's touching me. He's got his hand on my ankle and he's rubbing it the way a good Dad would do to comfort his daughter.
"I thought I lost you for a second," Mercedes mumbles under her breath. "I don't ever want to feel like that again…" Her face cracks and she starts crying really hard and I've never EVER seen Mercedes cry like this… Oh my god, what happened… what did I do?
"How she doing?" Mom finally lets me go, but I can tell she didn't really want to. Don't let me go. I wanted you bad. Hold me again. I needed you. I still need you. She goes over to Dr. Barnes instead and leaves me all alone again. I mean, I know I'm not really alone because everyone else is here, but I want my mom. I want her by my side. Her and Rachel. That's who I want.
"She came out of the anesthesia very nicely," Dr. Barnes closes my chart and nods her head at Mom. "She's going to be in a lot of pain for a long time. We have her on morphine right now to keep her comfortable and she's still on an IV antibiotic."
"You said we can take her home in a few days though, right? She gonna be good to go?"
"The goal is to get her out of here by the end of the week, yes. But I can't really make that promise just yet. There are still many factors that play into how long we need to keep her. My colleague — Dr. Howland, the cardiologist — is still monitoring her heart very closely. I'm monitoring the infection in her chest, and I'd like to get her cleared by the psychiatrist before we send her on her way."
"Mmmkay, well how far she gotta go physically? How long she gonna be in pain? How long 'til her throat feel better?"
"I would say that I don't plan on releasing Quinn until she can swallow soft foods. Which will be a process. It could be anywhere from two days to two weeks, it's hard to be sure. It all depends on her comfort level. I'd like to keep her until she can eat."
"She can't eat right now?!" Mercedes leaves my side too and walks over to the doctor and her mom to join in the conversation. "How is she getting nutrients, doesn't she need to eat?! Didn't we literally talk to that nutritionist guy like an hour ago to figure out WHAT to get to her eat? And now you're saying she's not eating?!"
"She's being fed through a tube that goes straight into her stomach right now, but it's easily removed. I can remove it as soon as she's able to tolerate a soft food."
"So she can't leave until she can eat?" Rachel sighs. "What about the infection? You said she has some sort of infection?"
"It's a slight one, but it is an infection nonetheless." Dr. Barnes is so calm through everyone's questions and I'm trying to listen and see if I can get a sense of what happened to me, but I'm still very lost. "You see, the problem when someone ruptures their esophagus is that there's a hole in a place where there shouldn't be a hole. Unfortunately for Quinn, the first hospital widened that hole when they intubated her, and that allowed some fluid to leak through that hole. And that fluid got into places it shouldn't be in and caused an infection. A little bit of that liquid built up and got trapped in her mediastinum, the area behind her breastbone. We drained that during surgery — along with the blood she aspirated — but the fluid caused a slight infection. We caught it early so it likely won't become a problem, but I'm treating it with two different antibiotics and I'm watching it very closely. It's not a cause for concern."
"And what about her heart?" Rachel asks next. "Is her heart okay? What's the other doctor saying about —"
"Oh, so now you care," Mercedes rolls her eyes at Rachel and just when I thought I had most of it all put together, she rolls her eyes at Rachel and I'm confused all over again. Maybe she's just mad at Rachel for kissing Finn. She's loyal that way. If I'm mad at somebody, Mercedes is always mad with me.
"Mercedes, how many times and how many ways do I have to tell you that I'm SORRY?" Rachel sounds more annoyed than anything and I really wish these two wouldn't fight… not right now. Not when I'm still trying to figure out why we're here in the first place. "What do you want to do?! You wanna hit me again?! Go ahead. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm here for QUINN. I love Quinn and I'm —"
"Stop saying you love her, for God's sake! You know Rachel, you might fool everyone else, but you don't fool me. You don't love Quinn. You never have. You don't give a damn about her. All you care about is yourself."
"I know you're hurting right now and you're worried about Quinn, so I'm going to pretend like you didn't say that." Rachel sounds really hurt… why are they fighting? "Look, I'm sorry. Whatever I did that made you so angry, I'm sorry. What can I do to make it up to you?"
"You can leave, that'd be a start."
"I'm not going anywhere. She needs me here. She needs me and —"
"NO, RACHEL. YOU KNOW WHEN SHE NEEDED YOU?! SHE NEEDED YOU WHEN SHE WAS FORCING HERSELF TO THROW UP EVERYTHING SHE ATE. SHE NEEDED YOU WHEN YOU WERE BUSY MAKING OUT WITH FINN. SHE NEEDED YOU TO BE THERE FOR HER, TO DO THE RESPONSIBLE THING AND TELL SOMEONE THAT SHE IS A GODDAMN BULIMIC!"
Oh no… oh no, oh no, oh no… they know…
"I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!" Rachel finally defends herself. "Don't you think if I knew what to do, I would've done it?! But I didn't know! Okay, yes. I knew she struggled with it, I knew it was a problem, I knew she was doing it, but I didn't KNOW that it was like this. Should I have told someone? YES. I made a mistake! But I thought she was okay. I thought it was a one time thing, like a slip up or something because it's something you have to work at. She has a therapist, she sees a psychiatrist, she's on medicine… I thought she was okay. I thought she was working through it. If I had ANY idea that she was still doing it and it was this bad, I would've told… god, I would've told… I would've told… I love her… I would've told…"
"But you knew," Mercedes talks to her through clenched teeth. "You knew. And you said nothing. We sat out there for hours, waiting. Hoping. Trying to figure out what was wrong with her. And you knew the whole time and said NOTHING. You are the most selfish, arrogant, simple-minded, intolerable —
"Mercedes, now stop it," Mom puts her hand on Mercedes shoulder and sounds like she means business. "You ain't gonna blame Rachel for none of this. This is nobody's fault."
"It's hers! She should've told us! She should have —"
"I thought she was getting help! I didn't think it was a problem anymore!" Rachel yells back.
Please don't fight… Stop fighting… it's not Rachel's fault...
"BULLSHIT. YOU SHOULD HAVE —"
"Okay, if you need someone to blame for not catching it sooner, then fine. Blame me. But you're not about to sit here and pretend like this is about me not telling you when in reality, it's all about you being jealous that this is the ONE thing Quinn trusted me with and not you."
Please stop fighting… it's making me feel… I feel...
"YOU'RE DELUSIONAL!"
"AM I?!"
Mercedes lunges at Rachel like they're about to actually fist fight each other but my eyes are fluttering shut before I even see anyone throw a punch. And at first I think that I'm just drifting off to sleep because that morphine made me feel loopy and sleepy….
But then I hear a bunch of monitors and sirens beeping before everything goes black.
A/N: For those of you who missed it (because I added the note after the chapter was published) The Jones House is a real location in Lima. Google it if you want to see it!