Beating, Ch. 3
"No. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time." Mr. Hummel's voice was concrete, gray and flat, shot through with cracks and crumbling at the edges. "He's not ready."
"I'm sorry." Will was a little taken aback. "I heard he was out of the coma, so I thought we –"
"You heard wrong." Will's stomach swooped and dropped a few feet. "He's awake. Kind of. He'll get better. That's what they say."
"I'm sorry –" Will struggled to keep his tone diplomatic, treading carefully. "He's awake, but...?"
"I don't get the medical jargon, Mr..."
"Schuster."
"Yeah. The doctors spout plenty of stuff I don't understand, but I get the gist. Far's I can see, he's awake. He opens his eyes when you talk to him. He can move some. He don't need the ventilator anymore, mostly. But he's still not totally out of the coma – don't ask me what that means, I don't know – and he's not ready for visitors. I'll let you know when he is."
"Wait – please." Will could hear Mr. Hummel starting to hang up, but he couldn't bear to leave the questions unanswered. "I know having all the Glee kids tramping in at once wouldn't be a good idea. But some of them have been asking, and I think Kurt might like to see them. They'd come alone, maybe in pairs, they wouldn't stay long – maybe you could ask Kurt what he wants, see if he can give you some sign...?"
"He screams, Mr. Schuster."
Will froze.
"My son screams. Screams and flails and I try so hard to calm him, it's all I can do, and I can't –" Burt broke off, choked out one sobbing breath, and continued. "The doctors say it's 'cause he wants to talk, wants to move better, he just gets frustrated and has to let it out. Like when he was a baby, when he had colic –" Another choking breath. "They say he'll get better, and I figure he will. He calms down if I stay with him. And then I'll be sitting there, holding his hand or stroking his hair, and then he'll look at me and smile so sweet, the way he always – ah, shit." Burt was crying openly now. Will wished he could throw the phone at the wall, hide under the table. He held the receiver away from his ear, listened to the weeping from a ways off, closing his eyes and pretending it was a television from another room, nothing to do with him at all. He pulled the phone back reluctantly when Burt started talking again: "But then when he falls asleep, he'll wake up screaming again. And that ain't about how he can't talk, it's about whatever's in his dreams." A beat. " I guess we know what that is."
"Yes," Will said. There was a long pause.
"So – look, I got to get back to Kurt." Burt's voice flattened out again. "Thanks for those CDs. I'll tell him you called."
"Great. Thank you." Will sagged against the wall. "And you'll call me when he can have visitors?" He was expecting a quick response – sure, yeah, whatever. He wasn't sure if Mr. Hummel would really call. It would be enough to get off the phone, start trying to deal with this in his own head.
Instead, there was a silence. Like Mr. Hummel was weighing something in his mind.
"Mr. Humm--"
"Look, I just got to know one thing. Then maybe I can call you, later, when things are better. But you got to tell me straight, okay?"
"Sure."
"The guy Kurt was with in the locker room. The guy who – well, you know. Was that one of your Glee kids?"
Will closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hummel. I have no idea."
"Was he – you know, dating – one of them?"
"Again, I don't know. I'm sorry. I wish I did."
"There's football players in your club, right?"
"Two of them. But that doesn't mean –"
"I know. But if you had to guess –"
"I couldn't. I'm really sorry."
"Don't bullshit me."
"I'm not. Seriously."
"Right." Mr. Hummel sighed. Then, his voice hardening: "Was it you?"
Will was stunned speechless for a second. "No. No," he said, too quickly, overcompensating in his surprise. "No. That – I'm not gay. I've never had an affair with a student," he added, belatedly. "I never would. It – no. And I don't have a football uniform," he added, senselessly.
"Okay then." Burt sighed again. "I didn't really think it was. But with you being so interested in how he was –"
"I care about him a lot. He's a special kid."
"You don't have to tell me. Look, I got to go, all right? I'll call you if he can have visitors and he wants to see some of your kids. They can write letters or whatever."
"Good. I'll have them do that."
And they did. They sent things with the letters: a tub of hand moisturizer, a Patti LuPone poster, a set of musicals on DVD. Kurt smiled when he got them, was delighted to have the nurse rub the moisturizer into his hands, watched The Wizard of Oz on endless repeat. Without realizing it, Burt's thoughts on the Glee kids began to shift. Before, they'd been the group who coaxed Kurt out of the closet, got him singing girls' songs in public -- the group where he probably met the guy who set this whole thing off with a locker-room blowjob. Now, they were Kurt's friends and his support system, probably the only ones who'd stand between Kurt and the worst of the world when he went back out into it. Burt knew now that he would call Will as soon as Kurt could have visitors.
But there was one visitor who didn't wait for Will's okay. A guy who sneaked in after dark, hoodie pulled up over his head and cowling his face. He sat in the waiting room, hunched over, arms holding himself together, looking like the rest of the people waiting with bloodshot eyes for news about their loved ones. And when he saw Mr. Hummel head down the hallway toward the vending machines, he got up quickly and moved into Kurt's room.
Kurt was asleep, his eyelids flickering from time to time. The guy in the hoodie glanced once over the bandages covering the left side of Kurt's head, the black and purple bruises trailing out from under it and curling along Kurt's jaw, and flinched away. Face averted, he took something out of his pocket and placed it in Kurt's hands, clasped on his stomach. Then, as Kurt began to stir, he moved fast for the door and got the hell out of there. The room was empty again by the time Kurt opened his eyes, considered the Discman.
When Burt got back into the room he asked Kurt about the Discman, but Kurt gave him a look that said he didn't know. Burt reached for the CD unit, and Kurt's fingers tightened on it – no, don't take it from me. He waved a pinky in the direction of the headset. Burt didn't like it much, any of it. But he slid the headphones gently over Kurt's ears.
Kurt pressed the play button with one finger and listened for a minute. Then a smile slipped gently over his face, and he closed his eyes.
The CD was a recording of the boy who had brought the Discman, singing songs for Kurt. A cappella, soft and clear. There were some crackles in the audio here and there, some wavering in the notes. The boy had made it at home, probably singing straight into a computer microphone, burning the audio to a CD. No one else would have heard him singing; no one else would have known. No one but him and Kurt.
Kurt held the Discman close. Burt watched him. Kurt's body was relaxed. He looked peaceful. In Kurt's ears, the boy sang a ballad from RENT:
Without you,
The eyes gaze
The legs walk
The lungs breathe
The mind churns
The heart yearns
The tears dry
Without you.
Life goes on
But I'm gone
'Cause I die
Without you.
Kurt drifted off to sleep. There were no nightmares as the Discman whirred softly in the still air of the hospital room, as Kurt's clasped hands warmed the plastic shell where the music lived and the boy's voice sang softly to him through his dreams.
Outside, the boy's boots crackled on loose stones and gravel as he walked away from the hospital. Soon he was jogging. Soon after that the jogging turned into a full-out sprint. Faster and faster, breath chopping through his chest, and finally he'd reached the football field and he could collapse on the ground, press his face into the new-cut grass and scream.
What he'd just done could wreck everything. He was already sorry he'd done it. He'd never be sorry he'd done it.
And he wondered what it would be like to live the rest of his life with this kind of fear. He supposed he'd find out soon enough.