Hey guys! So I've been slacking, I know (please don't kill me haha). But I wrote this chapter in an angry impulse fit when I was mad/depressed about the Yankees losing the other day. Literally wrote this chapter in tears, I'm surprised I didn't just kill everybody off right here in his chapter I was so mad haha.
But anyway, bad news for me is good news for all of you because I literally cranked this puppy out in 24 hours. So I hope you enjoy it, as always big thanks/shout out to everybody paying it the slightest bit of attention, love you all.
Chapter 5
Playing God (And Raising Hell)
(Will Schuester)
The mere sight of blood used to be enough to send William Schuester into absolute pieces.
As a child, he used to tell his parents that when he grew up, he wanted to become a surgeon, until one day, when he was eight years old, his best friend at the time, Craig Mari fell off of his skateboard cruising faster than a car down a steep incline and tore his face up so badly that he needed to have three different plastic surgeries just to put it back together again, all with Will watching horrified in the background.
Somehow, Will had managed to cry even harder than his poor injured friend had on that day and ended up sobbing the entirety of his bike ride home before he sprinted straight through the front door, pushed past his two bewildered parents, and hunched immediately over the inside of the toilet bowl, throwing up the entirety of his stomach's contents into the water below until the thing was damn near overflowing.
It was that night that his father came into his bedroom as he was recovering from his recent episode, placed a firm hand against his shoulder and told him – "Son, maybe you should consider going into accounting."
Yes, the mere sight of blood used to be enough to send William Schuester into absolute pieces, but following the events of Friday, June 4th, 2010, Will was certain that had somebody so much as mentioned the word blood to him ever again, he would probably just drop dead right there on the spot.
His hands were shaking, sweat dripping so heavily down his forehead that it obscured his vision, but Will Schuester was determined.
Refusing to allow any of these outside nuisances get in his way, he continued in his application of a heavy pressure against the carotid artery of Jamie Porter's neck, blood seeping endlessly from the bullet hole lodged deep underneath the skin so that it puddled relentlessly across the floor, smearing across his hands, his clothes, everywhere…
On occasion, he found himself glancing over his shoulder towards where Rachel and Shelby lay, his eyes subconsciously lingering as, like himself, the older woman desperately attempted to maneuver a successful method to stop the blood flowing from Rachel's chest in rivers.
But there was just so much of it… The hallway immediately outside of the barricaded door in front of them had already been painted red, and Will knew that this classroom, their makeshift bunker, was well on its way to achieving an identical, if not worse-off status.
"Rachel," Beside him, Will's male lead breathed with a steep sigh of relief towards the police presence directly outside of their classroom, a sigh of relief that Will believed to be unwarranted although he would never say so out loud and subsequently and subsequently destroy the final bit of hope that the boy still had left inside of him, "Rachel, the police are here. We're going to get you out of here; you're going to be okay now."
Will couldn't help but to cringe towards the promise, watching as Finn clutched onto Rachel's hand, the girl glancing up towards him with a grimace and a false nod that made it so that it became starkly apparent to Will that Finn was the only one inside of this room still in denial about the intentions of the police directly below them.
Will knew the reality of the situation. Shelby knew it, hell, even Rachel seemed to have known it… And deep down within his very heart of hearts, Will knew that Finn must have known it too.
The police weren't coming for them, at least not within the time frame that they required in order to get Rachel and Jamie out of this classroom alive.
"Finn, Finn listen to me," Will re-routed the direction of conversation quickly, desperate for answers, desperate for a plan that would leave him in a better position than being stuck inside of an abandoned classroom with the threat of two of his students' deaths lingering directly above his head like a shadow and fear of the unknown fogging his mind to prevent any trace of rational thought from escaping, "Did you see anything? Did you see who the shooter was, Finn?"
"N-no," He watched as the younger boy's face set into a horrified confusion as he slowly begin to process the magnitude of such a seemingly simple question… Shaking his head slowly from side to side, Finn hunched awkwardly above Rachel's frame, miniscule in size as compared to his own so that the scene could have been humorous had it not been so dire.
"No, but I saw Josh Feingold and Kevin Ryan, Mr. Schue…" Will nodded somberly in his recognition of Finn's statement, a silent confirmation that he too had run into Josh Feingold and Kevin Ryan in his travels, most likely mere moments before Finn had, "Josh told me that one of them was that Jacob Ben-Israel kid… you know the one in the AV club, with… with the gossip columns."
With a sharp inhale of oxygen, Will reacted with an involuntary emotion towards Finn's news, rubbing his fingers harshly through the frayed ends of his frizzled hair as he forced himself to turn away from the explanation…
He knew Jacob Ben-Israel, of course… He knew him from the countless stories of torment that Rachel used to saunter into glee club with about him, he knew him from the time he'd actually allowed him to fill in as their twelfth member for Sectionals in Finn's absence…
He knew all of the things that people always said about him, he knew about Jacob's power throughout the school, what he was capable of, what he could do… But still, never in Will's wildest of imaginations could he have ever imagined Jacob Ben-Israel to be capable of this much damage, of this much pain.
"But he's not the only one Mr. Schue… I don't know who else or how many, but he's not the only one."
Will chose not to respond to Finn's final statement, turning away in the hopes that the boy would understand that he physically couldn't find it inside of him to respond as all words merely sunk low within the depths of his body, leaving his stomach feeling as if somebody had just filled it with a bucket of ice…
He couldn't hear a damn thing, the noise narrowing in around him in a natural response implemented by his body in an effort to try and block out the desperate gasps of strangled air escaping from Rachel's mouth every time that she inhaled – gasps that sounded just as painful to Will as he was certain they felt to Rachel.
"I took them out of the school, Mr. Schue." Finn rambled incessantly, leaving Will with the distinct impression that the boy believed that if only he just continued to speak, maybe he'd be able to convince himself that everything was going to be alright. "I saw Brian Saralli… he's dead, Mr. Schue, they shot him… right in the head… he was bleeding everywhere, and Leah Monahan… I don't know if she was alive or not, she was just… lying there, she wasn't moving or anything. Oh God, Mr. Schue… I think she was dead… I don't know what the hell is going on… why is this happening?"
Will couldn't help but watch captivated as his male lead's composure began to unravel right in front of his very eyes, leaving Will unable to come up with a single damn thing to try and help retain the boy's sanity
His heart went out to the boy; it went out to all of his students, really –
It extended towards the ones who had been forced to run for their lives through the hallways of their own high school, stepping on top of their dead and bleeding friends in their wake. It extended towards the ones with not a single clue as to what was happening around them, why it was happening, or whether or not they would be next…
It extended towards the ones who hadn't been as lucky as the rest to have such an opportunity.
"Okay Finn, listen to me, it's gonna be okay, it's all gonna be okay." Will's eyes locked with the taller boy's in front of him as he extended his arms in a calming motion against Finn's shoulders in one final effort to allow the boy to relax as much as humanly possible at the moment, although his efforts merely seemed counterproductive as the teen visibly shook at his knees to the point that Will was starting to become nervous that his large body would physically tumble and crash underneath the pressure. "How about… how about you check up on what the police are doing outside."
He offered the assignment in terms of a suggestion, trying to occupy the boy's mind with something other than the situation at hand, if only for just a second.
Finn nodded, the boisterous young man looking more and more like a scared little toddler with each passing second as he turned his attention away from his teacher to focus on the image displayed beyond the glass of that stupid half-opened window, still dangling outward mere inches as if mocking them in their inability to escape from it.
Will's eyes gazing intently upon Finn's form, he watched the boy survey the scene before him for several tense seconds, unable to help the feeling of hopelessness dancing across his stomach as the teen's face faltered, his features shrouded with disappointment.
"They're… they're not doing anything." Finn expressed his panic, his voice emitting in soft gasps between heightened breaths, but Will had to be completely honest; he wasn't particular shocked by this recent revelation, at least not nearly as much as Finn appeared to be in this moment.
This tended to be how situations such as this one worked; at the very least, that was what he had gathered from his many years of watching marathons of CSI and Law and Order on the television…
In times of crises, the police tended to be notorious for waiting to proceed only when the moment was right for them…
Of course, this right moment, more often than not, was only after enough kids had already been killed, after enough bullets had already been fired…
And usually by then, it was already too late.
"They aren't even moving!" Finn was practically screaming by the time he'd turned from the window, glancing hopelessly between Shelby and himself in search of the answers that neither of them had.
"Finn…" Will was surprised to hear Shelby Corcoran's voice break through the barrier of silence first, her voice being the last he'd expected to speak up in an effort to comfort Finn; especially considering how much she already had on her plate. "I don't think that they're going to come in here."
Her voice was soothing to the point that a soft wave of calm passed briefly through his body before he fully registered the undercurrent of panic behind her tone.
Subconsciously, Will looked downwards towards the young boy, bleeding endlessly from his neck directly underneath him; his eyes dancing between him and Rachel as he emitted an audible sigh towards his seeming lack of options; their final hope fading into impending failure directly in front of their very eyes.
Beside him, Shelby inhaled steeply, her chest expanding and contracting heavily around her rib cage as her face contorted in a manner that told Will how desperately she was trying to plan out their next move.
But ultimately, Shelby remained silent, and although her mouth opened and closed in a series of unspoken words several times, she had nothing; and Will knew it.
"No, no," Finn shot down her apparent skepticism although his defiance had faltered in his hesitancy. "They just don't know that we're in here. We just have to let them know that we're here, that we need help, then they'll find us, then they'll come…"
Will's eyes turned away from the boy, exchanging a lingering glance of uncertainty towards Shelby so that he'd missed Finn's renewed approach towards the cracked window until he heard the teen's voice bellow across the classroom, echoing off of the walls and straight into his very own ears.
"HELP!" The sudden outburst of noise forced Will to cringe in his instinctual fear, his head darting backwards towards where Finn had jammed the majority of his upper body through the small opening in the wall; his intentions becoming instantly obvious as he gathered all of the air he could muster to power yet another pleading scream, "HELP, WE'RE IN HERE, HELP!"
"Finn, Finn, no," Will begged the boy to quiet, the potential consequences of having one of the shooters respond to his bid for help instead of one of the armed officers running rampant in his mind as he rushed forward and wrapped his arms across the broad teenager's chest, pulling him outwards from the window with a single, firm tug. "We can't draw attention to ourselves Finn. It will be okay, they're gonna come."
For a split second, the boy fought, thrashing and pulling against his teacher's grasp, but his bid for freedom only lasted mere seconds before his muscles slackened against Will's body and he turned in the man's arms, looking down upon him with a look in his eyes that Will had never seen expressed in a human being before.
"We have to let them know that we're up here!" He pleaded with Will, longing for his mentor to give him the answers that Will knew, he did not have. "We have to get them out, Mr. Schue… Maybe… maybe if we make a sign, they'll see it… they'll know we're up here."
Somewhere in the back of Will's mind, a light bulb had just clicked on… Why the hell hadn't he thought of that?
"That's… not a bad idea actually." He whispered gently in his agreement, speaking more to himself than he had been to Finn before, in his refusal to waste another second, he released his grip on Finn's shoulders - leaving a set of bloody handprints on Finn's white shirt behind in his wake - and darted towards the front of the room in search of a set of materials that could allow him to procure a visibly noticeable cry for help.
Quickly, he spotted an oversized white poster board lying precariously behind the teacher's desk so that he literally threw his body over the bulky piece of furniture in his bid to snatch it.
His eyes danced only briefly across the poster, the message Sergeants of World War II written in bright neon bubble lettering across the top popping out in front of his eyes – but what exactly it was about Sergeants of World War II, Will would never know, he didn't have the time to linger, so instead, he flipped the poster over onto its blank backside and grabbed the first writing utensil that he found; pulling the cap of the thick, black permanent marker off with his teeth before leaning forward to write his message in giant block lettering below -
"2 bleeding to death HELP"
He moved with a rapid efficiency; filling the letters with unevenly smeared black ink so that they popped effectively, hopefully visible to the rows of police officers, two stories below them.
Ringing a roll of duct tape securely around his wrist, Will shuffled his feet as quickly as they would possibly move him towards the windows, positioning the poster with the utmost precision facing outwards, as close towards the hoards of emergency vehicles as he could possibly make it.
With his chest heaving, Will leaned outwards and away from the windows, placing his hands on his hips as he stood side by side against Finn, both men pausing in their success, relieved by their achievement.
Staring intently forward, Will watched, waiting for results so that he couldn't help but allow himself to slip into a steep trap of naivety that convinced him that rescue would be immediate, his eyes gazing unblinkingly out of the window until a sudden and shrill scream originating from directly behind him, shot through his skull so that his blood positively froze within his very veins.
"Will!"
Shelby's voice was high-pitched, animalistic in her panic; so powerful, that it forced Will away from the window and by her side without him so much as acknowledging the fact that his body was moving.
Dropping to his knees besides the two identical women, he ignored the dull ache that accompanied his knee caps connected against solid linoleum and surveyed his eyes quickly across the scene, immediately noticing the fact that something was different here than it had been before…
Shelby's eyes were boring a hole straight through him, while meanwhile Rachel… well Rachel's eyes were once again closed, firmly shut and unmoving, her head rolled limply to the side, her mouth dangling open slightly underneath her slackened muscles as her face began to turn steadily whiter, her lips steadily bluer…
The thought entered Will's mind before he so much as had the opportunity to scold himself for even thinking in such a manner – Rachel looked dead… and for a second there, Will was convinced that she actually was.
"Will, she's not breathing!"
Panic coursed through every crevice of Will's body, but he did not have the time to freeze up, Rachel didn't have the time for him to freeze up, he knew that; so instead, he did the first thing that came into his mind…
Fumbling to gain control of his arms, which had suddenly appeared to have transformed into solid rubber, he lifted a shaking hand towards the prominent vein against Rachel's neck, two fingers groping desperately for a pulse that he never found.
"Okay… okay…" Will muttered to himself, fear laced heavily in his voice as he forced the large knot of bile that had just risen up the length of his throat back down, begging himself to ignore the voice in the back of his mind as it rang in an incessant loop over and over again…
It's too late.
"Shelby, slide back a little… I need some room." Will snapped, his frustrations emanating from his pessimistic conscience towards the woman hovering restrictively over his shoulder as he established a firm stance above Rachel's body, prepared to attempt something that he had never attempted before, something that he wished he would never have to attempt ever…
With one final, shuddering deep breath, Will pressed the ball of his right palm firmly against Rachel's still chest, lowering his left hand atop the right, intertwining his fingers to form the steady complex before pumping violently downward.
At the very beginning of the most recent school year, Principal Figgins had decided that it was in the best interest of the entirety of the William McKinley High School district to train every single staff member in the life-saving art of CPR.
At the time, Will had professed the never ending, two hour a day, three times a week class as nothing but a tremendous waste of both time and money.
Now, Will was silently thanking God that it had ever happened.
In his frantic efforts, he found himself pressing so hard against Rachel's chest that he could literally feel the entirety of her tiny ribcage compressing underneath the pressure of his hands, and although he grimaced openly at the foreign feeling, he refused to allow himself to stop, continuous in his desperate efforts to pump Rachel's heart for her.
He counted his compressions, muttering quietly under his breath as he rounded the coveted number thirty before lifting his hands up and away from Rachel's chest, turning to hover above her face as he tilted her chin backwards, pinched her nose firmly shut, and lowered his mouth directly downwards on top of hers, blowing two forceful breaths of air into her ailing lungs, watching through his peripherals as her chest responded; rising and falling in synchronization with his own directed breathing pattern.
Turning back towards her, he checked once again for the slightest sign of life, but still, despite his best efforts, there was none to be found.
He hesitated, hands trembling as they hovered motionlessly above her small chest. His eyes pointed downwards, scanning across Rachel's pale face, her blue-tinged lips, and as much it killed him, as much as he hated himself for thinking it, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe it was time to let her go.
His breath hitching upwards suddenly in his throat, a strangled sob escaped his mouth as tears streamed endlessly from beneath his eyelids, obscuring his vision of the motionless young girl in front of him, the girl whose future had been so bright, so full of success…
It was a future that – as Will was suddenly aware of – lay entirely upon the idea that her life was currently resting precariously within his very own hands.
"Will… Will, please." Shelby begged in response to his hesitation, her choking sobs emitting from her throat with such a forceful vigor that she could barely so much as breathe, leaving Will nervous with the idea that if she kept up at this rate, he would soon be performing CPR on both women.
"Please help her, Will. Please!" Her voice trembled, dripping with emotion to the extent that Will could barely distinguish between the words… But despite hearing her in only fragmented syllables, her implications remained prominent.
His entire body wracked with vigorous shudders as he curled his hands once more, ready to continue this vicious tug-of-war between life and death… He furrowed his eyebrows in determination, curled his lip inward and inhaled deeply in his preparation to breathe not only for himself in this moment, but for Rachel as well…
Raising his arm high upward and into the air, Will balled his fingers into a tight fist, and with a quick utterance of prayer, he slammed his arm downwards with all of the force that his muscles would allow, striking Rachel directly in the center of her chest, wasting no time before repeating the process over and over again in rapid succession.
"Come on Rachel, don't do this to us." He screamed his orders towards the unconscious girl in front of him as he continued pounding his fist downwards against her sternum, feeling as the skin swelled and bruised underneath the pressure of his blows before her ribs merely gave way and cracked like match sticks. "Come on Rachel, breathe!"
It wasn't perhaps, the most orthodox method of revival, but the traditional route had already proven to fail them once before, and as Will's efforts literally marked the difference between life and death, he knew that he had to be willing to take a little bit of risk.
To his right, a resounding bang filled the room, loud enough to block the noise of skin-on-skin contact created in the wake of Will's revival efforts, but in his defiance, in his focused poise, Will refused to stop, or even so much as pause in his efforts.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as a desk rolled across the ground with a crash, coming to a halt mere inches away from him upside down and legs sticking out into the air… Behind the fractured furniture, he made out the fleeting image of Finn, sunk low to the ground, face buried deeply into his palms in tears so that he quickly managed to piece two and two together, recognizing Finn's unsuccessful attempt at breaking the glass window currently trapping them inside their own personal hell.
But Will knew that it never would have worked… he just wished that he could have professed that to Finn before the boy managed to put so much faith into a window-bound escape route.
The entire thing had been the idea of Sue Sylvester herself, her active booster club's fundraising ultimately accomplishing the task of lining all of the school windows with bullet proof glassing…
She'd put the motion into the board's mind last spring after a student had accidentally thrown a baseball through one of the windows during his gym class, striking one of her precious Cheerios with a stray piece of glass…
She had marched the poor girl to Figgins immediately - dragging her to his office so forcefully by the wrist that she probably inflicted more damage to the girl's arm than the glass had – presenting to him the miniscule scratch the broken fragment had left behind alongside the argument that even the slightest tarnish in the Cheerios' perfect appearance could be enough to cost them that years' national title.
With the thought of Sue Sylvester deep in the back of his mind, Will's fist came down suddenly with even more of a crashing force than it had before slamming relentlessly against Rachel's fragile body…
But his arm was quickly tiring; his muscles screaming at him to stop so that a part of him couldn't help but think that maybe he should listen.
He was certain of his failure, positive that Rachel was now long gone… In fact, he had just convinced himself that he would only make one last attempt at reviving her when it happened…
His final, shuddering fist landing down upon the center of Rachel's sternum, striking as if he'd hit a button that had been there all along, signaling for Rachel to begin breathing once again.
The girl coughed and spluttered ceaselessly, her muscles tensing in a sense of overwhelming pain as blood emanating from deep within her lungs emitted from her mouth, peppering Will's button down with tiny red specks as her eyes fluttered briefly and the smallest amount of color began splotching back into her deathly white cheeks.
"That's it Rachel, breathe honey, just breathe… Nice deep breaths, there you go." Shelby practically pushed Will out of the way in her efforts to rush back to Rachel's side, carefully instructing her in the method to go about breathing again seeing as how she'd clearly forgotten how it was done.
Rachel's chest shuddered violently underneath her as she struggled to take the deepest breaths that she could possibly muster tears involuntarily stinging at the corners of her eyes as she coughed slightly and spit to the side in an effort to get the irony clang of blood out of her mouth.
Will found himself staggering backwards, stumbling from the scene as he panted through both the physical and mental exertion that had just plagued his feeble body.
Flipping the off switch against his primary senses, he tuned out the world around him as a whole; Finn's shuddering sobs as he pressed his body so deeply into the concrete wall that it looked as if he were trying to disappear completely through it, Shelby's cries of thankful gratitude as she gathered the daughter she barely knew deep within her arms, the echoes of gunshots that Will was starting to believe would never disappear humming incessantly below.
Suddenly, everything had begun to mesh, joining together into one large, hazy cloud as Will continuously back pedaled towards the center of the room, his motions only ceasing upon his grazing of a solid, motionless object below him…
His eyes scanned across the mass, travelling carefully up and down the body of Jamie Porter so that he couldn't help but notice that the teenager was laying eerily still against the ground below him…
He couldn't describe it, the connection that he had so unwittingly formed between himself and this boy that he barely knew, this boy whose life he had professed it as his duty, his responsibility to keep alive…
Scrambling to his hands and knees, Will struggled to drag himself the remaining distance towards the still boy, skating through the viscous layers of blood lining the floor, making the tile slick as ice… Jamie's face had faded a translucent white to the extent that the blood plastered against his skin contrasted horribly against the color, reflecting in the overhead fluorescents so that it gave Will the illusion as if it were glowing… The boy's chest was still, his muscles flaccid, his eyes shrill, wide, forever staring so that Will couldn't help but think that he was staring right at him; judging him in his death for how it was he had gotten there…
It was a valuable lesson that Will had ultimately come to learn; that life was something that left your lungs, your heart, your brain first… but your eyes last.
Will stumbled flailing away from the teen, his heart pounding violently inside of his chest…
Jamie Porter was dead, and this time, it wasn't the same as it had been with Rachel; there was no reversing this, no changing it; Jamie Porter was dead and Will knew that he was entirely to blame.
Guilt wracked each crevice of his body, the weight of his conscience plunging himself downwards into an all time low who's magnitude Will had never before experienced.
He had been so biased, so concerned in his efforts to save Rachel, to save his star that in the process, he had completely forgotten that there was a second student in his wake just as desperate, just as worthy of rescue as Rachel had been.
But now it was too late.
Turning his back determinedly away from Jamie's body, Will forced his eyes away, the sheer fault cumulating within his veins not allowing him to make direct eye contact with the blank, judgmental stare so that instead, he did the one thing that he could possibly think to do in that moment…
Walking back towards the window display, still proudly exposing his homemade cry for help, Will gently peeled backwards the tape he'd used to stick the device to its casing, removing the poster before resting it across the desk beside him.
Reaching downwards and onto the floor where he had discarded the previously used, still un-capped permanent marker, Will leaned cautiously over the poster board and, in two fluid movements drew a large, prominent X directly through the number two, replacing it instead with a single, thick vertical line directly adjacent to it.
Silently, and very much so aware of the fact that Shelby and Finn's eyes were boring a hole directly through the back of his head, he repositioned the poster back into its original slot before sliding down the wall besides Finn, clapping the ailing boy gently on the shoulder in his wake, just praying to God that somebody would respond to his desperate call for rescue –
"1 bleeding to death HELP."