Chapter Three: Vending Machines
Careful not to make a sound, he crept through the hall, balancing his weight on the tips of his feet, glancing around to make sure he wasn't being watched. Heart racing, he slipped stealthily around the corner and into the room, silently rejoicing at his victory. He inched closer, even closer, and he was almost there, reaching his hand out with glory in sight…
"Finn Christopher Hudson, what in God's name do you think you're doing?" his mother chided, blocking the stove with her body. "I already told you, we're not eating until Kurt gets home."
"But mom," the large boy whined, stomping his foot childishly. "I'm starving!"
"Maybe you should have thought of that before leaving your brother to drive himself home," Carole stated, opening the pot and stirring around its contents. As the spicy smell wafted towards his nose, Finn's stomach churned, and a long whimper escaped his lips.
Burt, already sitting at the dinner table, lifted a finger in agreement. "Finn, you really shouldn't have left him there alone. But Carole, he's got a point. The stomach wants what it wants. We don't want the food to get cold, either."
The nurse raised an eyebrow. "It's on the stove, Burt. The stove that gives off heat, just to be clear."
Finn paused for a moment as the couple exchanged playful banter, reaching for his phone. Scrolling through the log, he saw it had been over an hour since he'd left Kurt with directions to the locker room. Strange… the school wasn't that far from their home. He brushed the thought away — Kurt must have seen a sale somewhere and decided to go late-night shopping, or even decided to get some schoolwork done at the public library that seemed to never close (not that Finn would know). But still, it was Friday Night Family Dinner, and Kurt knew that. He wouldn't just…
"Mom, I'm gonna go check something upstairs," he announced distractedly, making his way up to his bedroom when his mother voiced her acknowledgment. Grabbing his laptop, he logged into his email, pulling up the only one left unread. It was from Coach, detailing what had gone on at the meeting earlier that day. It was the usual — drills, game plays, cardio. As he was looking through the time stamps, he realized that the practice would have ended an hour before Glee was let out.
That didn't mean anything, right? He knew the football guys liked to pick on his brother, but he'd been so diligent at protecting Kurt during school. Leaving him alone couldn't have meant… no, who would wait around for an hour just to pick on his kind, innocent brother?
The answer to that: David Karofsky.
People called Finn a lot of things, both bad and good — handsome, athletic, sometimes not the cleverest. But while Finn wasn't academic or book-smart, he had a gut that always did him good (unlike Burt, who'd maybe had one too many beers over the years). Finn knew when something was wrong, or when someone he loved was in danger.
He didn't hesitate for a moment before grabbing the keys to Carole's minivan and speeding off towards the school, with barely a moment of explanation to their parents. He didn't even realize he'd forgotten his coat until he stepped out of his car into the school parking lot, and the penetrating cold bit through his skin and into his bones.
The lot was empty — almost. There was one car left, parked awkwardly in the middle of an otherwise vacant area, that stood out to Finn. There was something ominous about the dark of the moonless night swallowing the vehicle whole, something that drew him towards it. When he was close enough to see the silver scratches in the paint, he stopped.
It was his car.
The one Kurt was supposed to have driven home hours ago.
"The one time I wanted to be fucking wrong," he cursed under his shaky breath, sprinting towards the school. Throwing the door open, he paused to catch his breath when his eye caught on a familiar pair of high-heeled boots tucked away behind a fake plant — clearly not meant to be hidden, only removed and put somewhere safe enough for a minute or two away.
They were Kurt's favourite.
As if he didn't already have enough reason to worry about his little brother. Carefully, he picked up the boots, cradling them to his chest like a football. Kurt would certainly never let him hear the end of it if he damaged his precious boots.
He rushed down the deserted hall, past trophy cases with his name on them, past his locker from freshman year, past the ball-and-chained library he'd only ever been in because the back row of dusty history books were excellent insulators of sound. He passed the choir room that held his favourite trophy of all and continued down to the gym, stepping into the locker room.
"Kurt?" he called out, voice bouncing off the confining walls. Finn had never felt anything but at home in this room, but in the dark of night without the cheer of a game, without his teammates clapping his back and sweat sticking his hair to his forehead, without knowing that Kurt was safe in the bleachers, complaining to Burt about how the rain was ruining his perfect 'coif' (whatever that meant), it seemed heavier, louder, like he could see it in the eyes of his brother.
But he couldn't see his brother.
"Kurt, it's me. Where are you?" he called. After another moment of silence, he began to doubt that Kurt was here. Maybe he couldn't find the keys and got a ride from someone? Maybe his phone died? He relaxed, realizing that he had been worried over nothing. Kurt was fine.
If he wasn't, he would have called out, right? He would have made some kind of noise, anything...
Kurt wasn't here. Dinner was at home. It was time to go.
"Shit, it's cold out there," he mused, setting the boots down on a bench and rubbing the goosebumps on his arms. He figured he couldn't drive his own car home since he'd taken the minivan there and apparently the keys weren't even in his locker either, but he might as well grab his jacket while he was in the locker room.
When he took another step, the automatic lights turned on overhead, a familiar buzz that reminded him of summer cicadas. He found his locker, #5 to match his jersey, and pried it open, smiling sheepishly to himself when he realized that Kurt was right and he had, in fact, forgotten to lock it. His letterman jacket was there, hung on the middle hook with care, and he grabbed it and slid his arms through, warming up almost immediately. Cold fingers twitching, he stuck his hands in the pockets — his left hand slammed into a cold, sharp object, and he stopped, breath hitching in his throat. He pulled it out.
It was his keyring.
"There are so many reasons this could be here, Finn," he told himself, shaking his head. "Don't jump to the worst possible conclusion." It was unlike him; he was always one to see the bright side of things, even when no one else could. But you know that feeling you get when you know something bad is about to happen, that one that settles heavy on your shoulders and anchors your stomach to your feet, that one that makes you feel like you're walking through a horror movie? That was how Finn was feeling, and Finn's gut was never wrong.
When he turned around, his scream pierced the icy air like a knife dipped in the pit of the sun. It was a scream that echoed off the walls, leaving its own inky soot against them like a squash ball in a court, its design practically lost in the breadth of his brother's.
He suddenly wished that the lights would turn off again. He wished that the bloodstains on the floor led to a body that was anyone but Kurt, selfish as that may sound. He wished that Kurt's hair was in its perfect coif and not matted to his scalp, that his clothes were immaculate and not torn and clawed at, that his diligently moisturized skin wasn't split and sliced.
He wished he had driven Kurt home like he had promised that morning, when everything was better than okay, when he wasn't standing here wondering whether or not his brother's eyes would ever open again.
They ask questions to people who witness a crime. They ask for details, like what time it was, what cars were in the lot, what he was wearing. Then they ask harder questions, like who would want to hurt him, or had he been acting strange lately, or did he have any secrets. What they don't understand is the overwhelming pain that floods the mind during times like these, or the method by which it saves itself from shutting down completely — blocking, deflecting, hiding.
Hours passed. The tiny emergency ward held few empty chairs that night, and Finn gave his up to a tearful elderly widow. Of course, this meant he had idle feet, which led to him pacing across the floor until his mother stopped him with a hand on his arm. He broke down, curling up on her lap like a weeping child, clutching the fabric on her shirt. She didn't mention that he was getting far too large for this and just held him closer, gazing up at her husband beside her.
Few things could break Burt Hummel, as was a well-known fact. Few things could wrench tears from his eyes, shatter his heart, his soul. One of those things was Kurt's mother's death ten years ago. Elizabeth had been his soulmate, his one true love, the mother of his child; that wound would forever be there, had been open and bleeding for the better part of a decade, but his darling nurse had sewn it up with expert hands. But this time… Burt was quite sure that no one could fix this. Nothing could fix this. Not the sun, moon, or stars.
Just his son, his moon and stars. His universe.
He'd been in a hospital many times throughout his long life, the most recent being a follow up after his serious heart attack. And, while that had been terrifying, this was darker. This wasn't the will of nature; it reeked of man. So, instead of feeling helpless, he could feel vengeful.
Anyone who looked at him would tell you there was murder in his eyes.
Officers were still asking Finn questions when the code came over the speakers. Even if they hadn't known what it meant, the cloud of doctors rushing into the OR spoke for itself. This was, again, hazy from Finn's narrative; it all comes back to pain in the end. All he could really remember were the softness of Carole's cotton blouse and the way the officers had to hold his step-father back as he shouted in the direction of Kurt, flailing his arms and crying fat tears. He couldn't even remember what he had been shouting, other than an abundance of the name that couldn't seem to leave his head. Even then he didn't hear Burt's voice, but a warped sound that spun in his ears and made his head throb.
Burt sat down eventually, and they kept on waiting. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. There was nothing else for them to do, lest they focus their energy on something entirely self-destructive like the mechanic seemed to be doing. And Finn… Finn's mind was like a broken record player, and all he could see was that, whether his eyes were open or closed. And the guilt… the guilt was just selfish. Sure he felt like death, sure he was being torn apart at the seams, but Kurt…
So he closed his eyes, and he rested against his mother, not asleep but not awake, in this wholly separate state of just being there, but not really.
"What does that even mean?" Carole asked, clutching her husband's arm and weaving her fingers into her son's messy hair.
"It's like he's there, but not really," Burt murmured, breathing shakily through his nose. "Alive, but not awake. Fate's cruelest joke on the people who love him."
Dr. Anderson sighed, glancing back in the direction of the room before turning to face the family. "His response to stimuli is minimal, at best. We believe the part of his brain responsible for wakefulness is not functioning properly, and we have diagnosed him to be comatose. But favourably, we have found that some brainstem areas are still functioning, like his pupils responding to light."
"So he will wake up?" Carole asked with bated breath, gaze boring into every crevasse in the doctor's face. "Our son will wake up?"
"I'm afraid that, while a positive sign, these functions do not indicate when, or if, Kurt will regain consciousness," Dr. Anderson replied, pity heavy in his eyes.
"What can we do?" Finn whispered, gaze firmly planted on the tiles below his feet.
Dr. Anderson gave him a hopeful, sympathetic smile. "You can speak to him, let him know you're there. Talk to him as though he were awake. If he can hear you, I'm sure he'll appreciate it." His smile faltered, and he sighed softly. "Otherwise, I'm afraid it's up to him. But, from what I've seen and heard, he's a strong one."
"Thank you, doctor," replied Carole, the other two lost in their all-consuming thoughts, unable to speak. Finn wasn't quite certain, but he thought he saw the doctor nod, and then he was gone. He hadn't given the man much thought; he was just a face. Sure, he'd been the one in there with his brother, but that idea was of a reality that he wasn't a part of.
In that moment, Finn's thoughts were so occupied by the image of his brother's broken body that he didn't have enough of himself left over to hold himself together.
That night, Friday Night Family Dinner was made up of granola bars from the hospital vending machine.
The next forty-eight hours were spent standing in one corner or another; Burt had a monopoly on the chair by Kurt's bed (hands grasped together in a way that reminded him too much of when Burt was in his place), and there was nowhere else to plop his butt down. He supposed he could have found something, but to be honest, he would rather have stood. That way, he had an excuse to stare at the floor as he put one foot in front of the other, pacing along the threshold, too frightened and ashamed to go any further inside.
Still, during those forty-eight hours, Finn never once left the hospital, despite what he told his mother. Instead of heading home, the nights he spent in pitiful, disturbed sleep in the cold, loud waiting room while Burt slept, hunched over his son's crumbling form. Carole watched over her husband, pacified with the thought that Finn was at home, sleeping in his own bed — any guilt he felt over lying to his mother was just added to the pile already working at tearing apart his soul.
It was only on the third day that Burt finally caved and let Carole drag him out to take a shower. For a while, Finn just stood in the doorway, watching the breath go in and out of his brother through the ventilator. The chair by his bed was empty with both Carole and Burt away at the same time — for the first time — and it looked wrong, desperate, like Kurt was begging him to come closer… and so he did, resting gently in the chair as though he wasn't worthy to fill his step-father's shoes.
"The doctor said that maybe you can hear me," he began, not touching the boy but staring intently at where his arm rested against the mattress, unable to look at his bruised face, "so I figured I'd start from the beginning. It's been three days since… what happened. You're in a coma, by the way. I don't know what it feels like in there, so I just thought I'd let you know."
Finn took a deep breath. "I don't know exactly what happened to you, Kurt, but I think I know. Honestly, though, I hope to God I'm wrong because there's nothing worse than what my imagination has come up with. Please, just wake up and tell me that none of it is true… that I've made it all up in my head. And I know this sounds selfish, but it's crushing me. It's so heavy. I can't…"
His throat closed up, and he wiped the tears from his eyes. He laughed humourlessly. "Would you look at that, I'm crying. Now all I need is for you to wake up and make fun of me for it. Not that you would — guys can cry, too. That's what you would say. I guess you were right. I am crying, after all."
Resting his head against the soft bedsheets, Finn closed his eyes, letting his tears get soaked up by the white fabric. Exhausted, he whispered three little words to his brother before dozing off into a deep, dreamless sleep. Soon after, Carole returned, a soft, sad smile spreading across her features at the sight. She gently placed a blanket over her son's curled up form, sitting herself down in the plastic chair she'd brought with her, soon joined by her husband.
In the melancholy quietude that followed with them wrapped up in each other, neither one of them noticed the man with gorgeous black curls and a straight-lipped smile turn solemnly away, heart swirling chaotically with a mix of warmth and sorrow.