Hummel Tires & Lube had been a madhouse all day, the severity of the winter storm catching many drivers off guard and prompting a rush to equip their vehicles with chains and studded tires. Snowstorms were not good for business in most places, but for a tire shop, it was better than Christmas.
Burt Hummel had completely run out of supplies by eleven a.m. but he and his two assistant mechanics had been scrambling to service all of the customers who kept flooding in. It seemed like a lot of people already owned traction devices but had never bothered learning how to put them on.
He would have laughed at their foolishness if he'd had the time.
The morning had been so busy that Burt had barely had time to think about his son but now that everything was finally slowing down, he realized that he had not heard from Kurt, and it worried him.
The snow had been accumulating high and fast throughout the morning, making the roads difficult to navigate. Surely the high school would have had sense enough to let everyone get an early start towards home. Even if they didn't, Kurt knew the drill. In an emergency, he was supposed to call and let his father know where he was and that he was safe.
Burt checked his messages and found a couple of missed calls from his son's cell number, placed during the middle of the morning rush when there had probably been too much noise in the shop for anyone to have heard the phone ringing. No messages.
He called the school, only to receive a recording informing him that due to the severe weather, all schools in the Allen County district had been closed for the day. Next, Burt dialed his own home phone number. Three tries, no response. He called Kurt's cell every few minutes, only to repeatedly receive the familiar, cheerful chirp of, "Sorry I missed you. You know what to do!"
Growing increasingly worried, he tried Carole Hudson, who told him that Finn had reached home well over an hour ago but that neither of them had heard from Kurt. She checked with her son, who agreed that he had seen Kurt pulling out of the McKinley parking lot with Mercedes. Finn and Rachel had each caught a ride with Puck, whose ATV could handle snowy days much better than their own cars. Carole tried to calm him, suggesting that perhaps Kurt had decided to wait out the blast at his best friend's house, which was a lot closer to school than the Hummel residence.
"Thanks, Carole. I'll try that next." Burt hung up the phone and sighed. He appreciated the attempt at reassurance but knew that he would not relax until he found Kurt safe and sound. Praying hard, he looked up Mercedes Jones' phone number on the contact list Kurt had helpfully programmed into his cellular phone, and pressed Send.
Mercedes answered on the second ring. Immediately concerned by his questions, she revealed that Kurt had dropped her off at home well over an hour ago but had refused her offer to come inside on the grounds that he needed to go straight home.
"Thanks, Mercedes," he said, attempting to sound calm. "He's probably just having trouble getting through on his cell. Service problems seem to be happening all over the place today. Do me a favor and tell him to call me right away if you hear from him, okay?"
She agreed immediately, saying she would send him a text and an email just in case Kurt was home and did not realize that his calls were being dropped. Burt could tell that he had worried the girl and he felt a little guilty. After all, what if Kurt was safe and sound at home and all this panic was for nothing? Still, he could not help but feel glad that Mercedes was in the loop. She was a very determined girl and would undoubtedly put out a network of phone calls to all the rest of Kurt's friends faster than he could even manage to look up one of their numbers. The more people who were looking for his son, the faster he would be found and the faster Burt could relax.
Seriously considering whether it would be completely jumping the gun to start calling local hospitals, Burt stared at his silent phone, muttering, "Where are you, Kurt?"
To his surprise, one of the mechanics called out, "Hey, Burt! You got a message on the machine. I think it's about Kurt!"
Mentally ripping himself a new one for not having thought to check the garage answering machine, Burt jogged toward the office at the back of the shop. Sure enough, the message light was on. He snatched the receiver from Jesse's hand and restarted the message cycle. The first two were just customer inquiries and he skipped past them quickly. The third message had him frowning in worry. It was all crackly and broken up, as if the speaker's phone signal had been cutting in and out.
"…name is *** Terri Sch***phone number is 419-2***. Your son *** accident. ***he seemed a bit confused *** head pretty hard but ***my house and ***be okay. ***no vehicle, I was hoping you come get*** Street, Apartment***B."
And that was all there was. Burt listened to the message five times, writing out all the information he could gather but he finally had to accept that there just wasn't enough there. All he knew for sure was that Kurt had been in an accident of some kind. And, oh God, didn't that just tie his gut into knots! Was the boy hurt badly? It sounded like he must have cracked his head or something, but the lady on the phone hadn't sounded panicked, just concerned, and Burt was guessing that the rest of the message meant that she had taken Kurt home with her.
Maddeningly, there just hadn't been enough information in the broken-up message to figure out where that home might be. The phone number had been less than useless. All that told him was that they were somewhere in a Lima area code!
Burt sighed loudly, frustrated and frightened. His baby boy was out there somewhere, hurt and needing his father. He could not just stick around here and wait!
Except . . . what choice did he have?
~#~#~#~#~#~
Will Schuester stared out the window of his apartment at the frozen landscape, marveling at the beauty of the deep drifts of untouched white that so thoroughly disguised the identity of cars, bushes, garbage cans and the assorted detritus of a busy street. The thick white flakes continued to fall fast, filling in a few stray sets of footprints left by pedestrians making their way back and forth. He sipped a mug of hot coffee, wondering how everyone had fared getting home in this storm.
He thought about the call from Terri. It had made him feel good to know that she still trusted him to provide help during an emergency, but he was now very worried about Kurt. Had the poor kid been hurt badly? Terri had said that Kurt was disoriented and banged up; making him wish that he could jump in his beat up old car and drive over there to make sure everything was okay. He felt an almost parental protectiveness toward all of his Glee students and Kurt Hummel was such an independent, tough little fellow that the very idea of him wandering out in this storm lost and confused and hurt was almost physically painful for Will.
Maybe he should try. His car would never make it past the end of the block in this storm, but surely there were other options. Taxis? Busses? Only . . . what if he finally got all the way out there, and there was no doubt it would take a very long time to reach his destination, only to discover that Burt Hummel had long since come and gone? He would be stuck with Terri for the rest of the day, maybe even overnight, and that would just be an uncomfortable situation for both of them.
"Maybe I'll just give Terri a call back and see how things are going," he murmured. Yes, that was a sensible option and it would make it much easier for him to decide what to do. He picked up his phone and dialed, sighing when he got a 'We're sorry, the number you have dialed is currently out of service range. Please hang up and try again.'
"Damn it!" he whispered. Glancing at the clock, he wondered whether it would be a good idea to call Mr. Hummel for an update. No, probably not. The roads were a disaster today. If the man was still trying to get to Kurt, he would not appreciate a well-meaning distraction just to satisfying Will's curiosity. And if he had succeeded in reaching his son, he would almost certainly be too busy looking after Kurt to stop and give progress reports.
Will sighed. He needed to quell his own impatience and give the Hummels another couple of hours to get settled. Then surely it would be okay to give them a call.
He could wait that long.