Labor hits hard, harder than that time she fell off the top of the pyramid when some idiot freshman buckled and sent them all toppling, harder than the time she pulled her hamstring at cheerleading camp, harder than the time during summer vacation when she and her sister were nearly pulled under the ocean by a huge wave. All the pleasure she thought she'd experienced at the moment of conception is as nothing compared to the pain.
New Directions splits up at the hospital, Mercedes and Puck with Quinn, everyone else off to Matt's bedside. There's some noise made about Kurt's shoulder, too, but by that point the nurses are making Quinn stand up from the wheelchair, and it takes both Puck and Mercedes to keep her on her feet and walking. Quinn keeps looking around for her mom, asks Mercedes to call the house phone, then the cell phone, but no one picks up.
Her mother won't be here for the birth of her granddaughter. Her mom isn't going to be here for her at all.
While Puck and Mercedes change into scrubs, the nurses help Quinn into a gown and onto the bed. Quinn can't stop crying, desperately afraid (she can't control the way her body is tearing itself apart, she can't stop this baby from coming) and furious in her desolation (she'd thought her mom would at least be here for this much, damn her).
And it all hurts, great tearing rending pains all through her heavy stomach and in her private parts (which aren't remotely private anymore since she has to spread her legs painfully wide and let strangers stick their heads in, and she feels so much resentment she's almost choking on it).
Her eyes roll up to the ceiling in desperation as contractions seize her body with barely any rest in between. Quinn squeezes her eyes shut, her sobs raw, scraping through her throat. She struggles to breathe, huge gasps for air as she feels things shifting in her abdomen and lower, the baby moving, the doctor's encouragements, pain that feels like it will never, ever end.
The doctor is telling her to push, and Quinn tries, screaming, swallowing not enough air in between contractions that won't let up. Puck is hovering near her legs without speaking, his eyes huge, and she fucking hopes he's looking, she hopes he sees what he's done to her because he was too stupid to pull out. She glares at him, and the only words she's been able to speak since the damn storm threw her into labor are a chanted, "You suck, you suck, you suck!" as Mercedes tells her to breathe. Quinn tosses her head back against the pillow, her teeth clenched as she pushes hard.
The baby is crowning. Pain tastes like metal, shoots through her like the lightning. The doctor is entreating her to breathe, too, Mercedes is telling her the baby's coming, Puck is silent but his eyes are still wide as he watches from a safe distance. Quinn surges up over her distended abdomen, collapses back down again, cries disconsolately for her mom, cries disconsolately in general, and just as she's about to ask for some of their mythical pain drugs, the pain stops.
Instantly Quinn tries to sit up, but they take her baby off to be wiped off and cleaned up. She's within two seconds of pitching a Fabray fit when one of the nurses, beaming like a saint on a card, lays her daughter down beside her. Quinn melts with relief, a smile working its way through the muscles of her face like it has a right to be there as she looks down at the baby, her baby.
She reaches out to rest a hand on her baby, her baby's small pink chest, and gasps. Everything seems to come into focus, the sharp antiseptic smell of the hospital room, the striations of gold and green in her daughter's enormous, doe-like eyes, her baby's impossibly soft skin, even the tiny, fluttering patter of her heart, loud as raps against a door. Puck's gloved hand curls on her baby, their baby's chest, the latex just barely touching Quinn's hand, and Quinn feels every molecule of the glove sliding against the cells of her skin. She can see the individual hairs in Mercedes' weave, hear the rustle of her Regionals dress against the scrubs, hear footsteps down the hall, all with the same intensity as she feels her baby's chest rise and fall with tiny, steady breaths.
In confusion Quinn's hand twitches up, and the overwhelming awareness of everything subsides. Puck's eyes meet hers.
Emotions tumble through her, battering her back and forth in waves. She feels so in love she could weep with it, or shout with it. She's so in love it hurts her physically like a punch to the heart, leaving the muscle bruised and aching. She wants nothing more than to sweep Beth into her arms and hold her close, shield her from this whole fucked-up world, promise to be there forever, and never, ever leave her like her father did, never leave her that devastated and alone because that's not what fathers do, and she might be just as shit at fatherhood as she is at everything else, but she'll figure it out, she'll make it work if she just gets the chance. Her hands itch with the urge to pick Beth up, but she can't, she shouldn't, they're just going to give her up anyway, right? Even though she loves Beth more than words can say, and even though she loves Quinn more than she would have thought possible—
Quinn's brow furrows with confusion; Puck looks back down at their baby, his eyes soft and warm, and the tsunami of feeling vanishes, leaving Quinn wrecked and small. She looks back down at their daughter as well, tightening her hand around their baby's little fingers, shuddering as her senses sharpen so fast and so acutely that she can see the bright shine of tears in Puck's eyes.