Burt had managed to hold his impatience in check for an hour but when no more calls about Kurt came through, and a second call to Mercedes revealed that none of Kurt's other friends had heard from him either, he could not take it anymore.
"I'm going out there," he said bluntly.
Jesse tried to stop him. "Burt, that's nuts! What if Kurt calls? You heard that lady on the message. He's inside somewhere, safe from the storm. What good's it going to do for you to go out in this shit? I mean, c'mon, are you figuring on stopping at every apartment building in Lima to ask if they happen to have a Terri S living there?"
"Not a bad idea," he snapped back, irritated by the lack of support. He knew his friend meant well but Jesse wasn't a father. He just did not understand. "It's better than waiting around doing nothing! You stay here. If anybody calls, just give me a buzz on my cell. I'm going to start at the school and work my way towards home. Maybe I'll get lucky."
The mechanic sighed deeply, knowing that tone all too well. Burt's mind was made up and there was no point in arguing with him. "Fine, but if you fall down and bust your ass out there, don't expect me to be the one to explain to Kurt why his father is in traction!"
Squeezing his shoulder at the mild joke, knowing it for the good-luck wish that it was, Burt smiled tightly. "Thanks, Jess."
"Just . . . find the little squirt, okay?"
He nodded, recognizing that his friend was also deeply worried about the boy he had known since Kurt was an unusually fashionable 4th grader.
Burt's 4x4 was well equipped for snow, with the best snow tires and traction balancing equipment on the market. He occasionally received some mocking from his son for the ugly, faded paintjob and the fact that the truck was nearly as old as Kurt, but he had never found a better vehicle for driving in heavy winter weather.
Wrapping himself up well in coat, cap, gloves and muffler, he pulled out of the garage and started out on what he strongly suspected would be a long and fruitless waste of time.
But at least he wasn't sitting around doing nothing.
~#~#~#~#~#~
Will had tried Terri's phone 3 more times but had no more luck than the first. He finally had called the number on his contact list for Kurt's dad, unable to take the suspense any more, but that line had also proven to be a no-go.
Knowing that he was stuck inside his small apartment with nothing to do but worry was making Will stir-crazy. He decided to check on his other students, just to make sure the rest of them had not experienced the same difficulties as Kurt.
Mostly he spoke with parents, relieved to hear that the kids had arrived safely, holed up in their respective rooms or out playing in the snow with siblings. He did not speak with any of the kids themselves until he called Mercedes. She answered on the first ring, barely taking the time to say hello before anxiously asking if he'd heard anything about Kurt.
"Wait, what about Kurt? Did something else happen after his dad went to pick him up?"
There was a pause, confusion filling the short silence, then Mercedes asked him what he was talking about, explaining that Kurt had driven himself towards home but never reached it. His father had received a partial message at his garage saying that Kurt was hurt, but nobody knew where he was or how badly he was injured.
"Oh, my God," Will groaned. How could he have been so careless as to assume that Terri had reached Burt Hummel when he knew full well that her phone was not working properly? "I know where he is. I need to call his dad right away."
Mercedes eagerly pressed for details but Shue put her off with a repeat of his need to call Burt Hummel. Not happy but understanding and agreeing that Kurt and his dad had to come first, Mercedes helpfully provided Burt's cell number.
Extracting a stern promise to call her back with details as soon as possible, Mercedes let him go, saying she would give the rest of the Glee kids an update.
Caught between guilt for his own short-sightedness and irritation that nobody had thought to include him in this inter-glee web of texting, Will drew a deep breath and punched in the new cell number.
~#~#~#~#~#~
Burt felt as if his heart was crumbling in his chest. He had only gotten about half way to the high school, his intended starting point, when he had seen it. A huge SUV, covered in snow and resting crookedly on the side of the road with its front left fender crunched against a utility pole. He did not know what made him so certain that it was Kurt's Navigator; he could not even see enough of the vehicle under its coat of white to make out the real color, but he was.
Parking safely a few feet in front of the SUV, Burt jumped out of his own truck and plunged through the snow. Logically, he knew that his son was not inside but he could not stop himself from calling anyway. "Kurt! Kurt, are you there?"
The driver's side door was standing open. Snow was piled up in the foot well, on the driver's seat and along the inside of the door. As Burt checked the inside of the empty vehicle he found Kurt's messenger bag in the floor of the passenger seat, where it appeared to have slid when the vehicle impacted with the pole.
Burt's stomach clenched when he suddenly realized that the airbags had not deployed. There was a circular impact crack on the driver's side window and as he gently blew away some of the gathered snow he felt tears gather in his eyes. There was blood on the glass.
When Burt leaned over the snowy seat to pull his son's bag out of the foot well, he noticed Kurt's phone lying next to it, having popped out of the small pocket meant to house it. Checking the display, he sighed. Eighteen missed calls and at least a dozen unread text messages. A number of those calls were from his own number but an equal amount were from Mercedes, Finn and other worried friends. Somehow, that only made him feel worse.
As Burt looked over the car, hoping for any tiny clue that might indicate where his son had headed after leaving, he realized that the key was still in the ignition. The engine was dead, indicating that the car must have been left running until the battery finally ran out. Kurt had hit his head and then wandered off without turning off the vehicle, grabbing his possessions or even remembering his phone. The knowledge turned Burt's blood to ice.
"God, Kurt, where are you?" he whispered. "Please be okay!"
Burt gathered his son's possessions and returned to his truck, but then he simply stood there. Where should he go next? Concussed and confused, Kurt could have wandered off in any direction and the ever deepening snow made the possibility of finding tracks completely hopeless. All he knew for sure was that at some point, Kurt had run into the mysterious Terri S who had decided to take him somewhere where she could call for help.
"Think, Hummel!" he ordered himself in a hiss. Kurt had been coherent enough to give the woman his number, right? Otherwise, how could she have known where to call? Yet, for some reason Kurt had not been able to place that call himself, arguing that perhaps he had been hurt pretty bad. Not so bad that the woman had called an ambulance, though. Burt felt a surge or irrational rage toward the unknown helper. What kind of a moron discovered a bloody, confused, presumably injured kid wandering alone through the streets and didn't think to call for medical help?
He took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself. The woman's phone reception had been crap. Maybe she could not get through, or the emergency lines had all been tied up or something. The latter seemed fairly likely considering all the major accidents his radio had been reporting all morning long. Okay, so maybe she had done all she could under the circumstances. Maybe.
That still did not tell him where to start looking.
Kicking the tire of his truck so hard he damn near broke his foot off, Burt screamed, "Fuck!" Glaring up past the snowflakes to the gray sullen clouds overhead, he jabbed a finger skyward. "Listen, you! I know we haven't been on speaking terms much these last nine years but I need some help here! Help me find my boy, Kurt, or so help me, I'll . . ."
How exactly he could threaten a supreme being he was not even all that sure was really up there, Burt did not know. Fortunately, he did not have time to come up with anything creative. The ringing of his phone interrupted the rant.
Eagerly fumbling the item out of his jacket, he looked at the display and frowned, not recognizing the number. "Hummel," he answered sharply, already planning to rip the caller a new one if it turned out to be a salesman or something.
"Mr. Hummel, it's Will Schuester," the man said. "Kurt's glee-club advisor."
"I know who you are," he snapped. "Look, I'm sorry but this isn't a good time. My son is . . ."
Schuester burst forward, interrupting. "I know! I just talked to Mercedes, that's why I called. Kurt is at my ex-wife Terri's house."
Terri . . . Terri Sch-something . . . "Schuester," he said out loud, sinking to his knees in the deep snow. "Where," he stopped to clear his throat as the word came out little more than a croak.
Fortunately, Will seemed to understand. "Are you anywhere near Lake Ridge drive?"
Burt paused to consider. The street signs were pretty much impossible to read today, but he had lived in Lima his entire life. "Mile and a half or so," he estimated.
"Terri lives just off of Lake Ridge, on Taylor. Those new apartments they built last year?"
"I know them," he agreed, hope filling him with strength as he struggled to get up off his knees, brushing away the snow as he climbed up into his truck and put it in gear. "Yeah, I know right where they are."
Will gave a sigh of what sounded like extreme relief. "Go to apartment 24B. Terri called me just before her phone went out and she told me Kurt was there with her. I'm sorry I didn't let you know sooner but she said she was going to call and tell you, and I thought . . . God, I am so sorry!"
Tempted to scream out all of his frustration in a tirade so powerful that it would have the mild mannered chorus teacher weeping and wetting himself within minutes, Burt forced himself to stay calm, "Don't apologize. You couldn't have known. Did she say anything else? Do you know if Kurt was hurt bad? I found his car and it looks like he struck his head. There was . . ." he gulped, barely able to say the word past the sudden lump in his throat, "blood."
"I don't know," Will said apologetically. "Terri said he seemed disoriented but refused to go to the hospital. Apparently he insisted on going home but she didn't know where that was, so she took him to her place and called me instead. If I had only realized . . . "
Cutting off yet another attempt by the teacher to apologize for not being omniscient, Burt said, "Schuester, what matters is that I get to Kurt now. I . . . thanks for calling. I owe you one."
"I'll settle for a call-back letting me know Kurt is okay," he said, so sincerely that Burt felt his irritation with the man easing. Schuester was kind of an ass; something about his always positive, 'anything to please' manner tended to rub Burt the wrong way, but Kurt respected the guy and Schuester really did seem to care a lot about the kids; about Kurt.
"Will do," he said shortly, hanging up the call quickly as his truck skidded a bit on a deep rut of hard frozen snow where some heavier vehicle had apparently passed and tamped it down slick. He needed to pay more attention to where he was going. It wouldn't do Kurt a hell of a lot of good if his dad came within a mile of rescuing him only to drive off the road and get himself killed!
"I'm coming, son," he whispered. "You just hold tight. I'm coming.