Chapter 2
What If God Was One of Us?
The first week in show choir had been relatively uneventful. Tommy had been possessed of relatively good timing most of his time at McKinley, and so it was here. He managed to avoid the uproar over the Britney Spears number which had resorted in a near riot at the student assembly, and took a lot of negotiating by Mr. Schuster to avoid the whole class getting suspended.
Tommy was actually grateful for this because, unlike the majority of the club save for Brittany, he loathed the former teen idol. As he had once told the rest of the orchestra, she sounded like a cow trying to give birth to an accordion. If she ever had any real talent, her last couple of albums seemed to lack anything resembling music. She seemed more famous for misbehaving than singing. And while Tommy didn't think he would be stoned to death for saying any of this out loud, he was not wild to let this particular element of his preferences become well known before the rest of Glee found other reasons to dislike him.
He figured those reasons would become pretty obvious when their next major assignment happened. For reasons that didn't quite track for him, Finn wanted to try and devote this week's classes to singing about God. This was a subject that made him wish they had decided to devote their week to singing a Britney Spears mash-up. He realized how unpleasant it was not to feel alone about this when Kurt made it very clear that he was opposed to this as well. That should have been obvious to everyone in Glee. This didn't make him any less resentful towards Mr. Schuster when he asked if anyone else felt the same way.
"Anyone see The Invention of Lying last year?" Tom started slowly.
Artie and Tina raised their hands, hesitantly. Tom knew enough about the complicated romantic relationships on this squad to know why they were hesitant about admitting that they had seen it together.
Santana hadn't but admitted she had seen the trailer, and thought it was stupid. "No one can take a world where everybody just tells the truth," she told them. "No one likes it when they keep it real."
"It's a pretty depressing being in a world where everybody tells the truth all the time. There's no fiction. There isn't much in the way of love. A retirement home is called 'A Sad Place Where Homeless Old People Come to Die.' Tommy told them. "Then Ricky Gervais suddenly has the ability to say something that 'isn't so'. The first thing he does is go to his mom, and tell her that dying doesn't lead to oblivion, but to a wonderful afterlife. Since everybody tells the truth, everybody believes him, and begs for more details. So there he is, standing in front of his house, telling people about a 'man in the sky,' and they will be happy up there with him after death."
"I'm not sure I like what you're implying," Quinn, the churchgoer told him. "You can't just pass God off some kind of one-liner."
"Really?" Tom actually felt happier than he had after his opening number. "So there's an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful deity in the sky that monitors everything, like some kind of security guard? Say that's true. Well, he's been doing a pretty lousy job with existence up until now."
No one said anything but he could tell that more than Kurt believed he was on to something.
"Guys, this isn't church, we don't get into religious debate here," Mr. Schuster said.
"How about we make it an academic question? Let's say Jehovah is being graded for his work on Earth. How can he be a perfect being when he's created such a screwed-up planet?" Tommy loved making teachers uncomfortable, and this seemed a perfect opportunity. "Famines, floods, droughts, cancers, and every single thing that he has ever created eventually dies. Would you give him a passing grade for that?"
He clearly had the teacher flustered, and he was pretty sure that Quinn and Mercedes were a little baffled as how to answer as well- not a small accomplishment.
Then Rachel surprisingly spoke up. "Tom has some good points, and I'd be lying if I said some of them didn't make sense," she told them. "But I have to tell you, if you don't believe in something, the world seems kind of empty."
"How can you say that?" Kurt snapped.
"I'm not blind, Kurt. When you come from a family with two dads, let's just say that I've heard some pretty nasty things from people. Abomination in the eyes of God has come up more than once. I'm not sure whether I believe in God even now, but if I didn't think there was some kind of code, some kind of bigger thing..." Rachel trailed off. "It would be hard for me to keep singing."
The debate basically trailed off after that, mainly because Tommy figured he provoked enough disharmony for one day, and was relatively quiet for the rest of their time. Tommy had his own issues with God, and he didn't particularly want to play them out any further than he wanted too. He hoped that the others would let it go.
His hopes were not borne out. He had expected Quinn to peel off with Santana and Brittany towards whatever fresh hell Coach Sylvester was now defining Cheerio practice as. For reasons which defied his understanding, she had peeled away from them towards him.
"Doesn't Coach Sylvester have a throne made up of the bones of tardy cheerleaders?" He was only half-kidding. This particular rumor had been floating around the band for heaven knew how long.
"She thinks I'm gathering intelligence for future efforts," Quinn replied in that same half-sarcastic tone.
"Be careful. Keep standing next to me, whatever ranking you've built up is going to disappear."
"Why are you so angry?"
The question threw him. He had done a lot to make his appearance at McKinley as bland and unassuming as possible. It appeared he hadn't been doing a very good job, if they had weeded out this part of his personality after just ten days.
"I'm not, not really," he lied. "I've just got a lot of baggage."
"So does everybody in glee. Santana and Puck have pretty much made their reputations on it. Besides, if you take a Slushie in the face every other day, you build up a lot of resentment. Hell, I'm the poster child for having everything in my life go to hell in a matter of minutes." Quinn looked at him. "But we leave that behind when we perform. You don't. And you sure as hell don't share."
That much at least was true. During rehearsals for the last week, Tommy had made almost no effort to talk about anything that wasn't school or music related. This didn't exactly make him stand out - that was ninety percent of being in show choir - but afterwards, he hadn't made any additional efforts to hang out with anybody else in the group. He was honestly a little surprised that Mr. Schuster hadn't made an effort to try and encourage him to do something a little more group oriented.
"I know that being in Glee puts us apart from most of the others, but you- you seem to be there by choice." Quinn told him. "Why are you here really?"
"You really don't want to know my story, Quinn," Tommy found himself saying. "My emotional scars are so deep you can almost see them."
"You've done a pretty good job of hiding out at McKinley," Quinn told him. "If you wanted to keep doing that, why'd you join glee?"
She didn't wait for an answer, which was good because right then, he didn't have one.
Feeling himself going through another emotional roller coaster, he did what he normally did when faced with an insurmountable problem. He ran back home.
He spent the next several hours providing himself with other distractions. He channel surfed, listened to his kind of classical music, and did homework. Because he had become an accomplished multi-tasker, he was able to get all of this done, while the problem never really went away.
So he found himself watching a rerun of Seinfeld, only half-hearing the jokes, when his cell rang. He didn't recognize the number, and he was tempted to let it go to voicemail, then realized he wasn't exactly going to lose his reputation as a lone wolf if he didn't try to play along.
"Hello?"
"Tom, are you there?" It took him a moment to recognize the voice, because Finn sounded incredibly distressed.
"Finn, are you alright?" It was a stupid thing to say, but he didn't know how badly he had put his foot in his mouth until Finn uttered his next sentence.
"Mr. Hummel had a heart attack."
It took him several seconds to really digest this. Burt Hummel had been the most vivid parental figure probably at McKinley, mainly because he was the strongest advocate for show choir and his son. Considering half of the club had serious absentee father issues, which meant a lot, even for someone who hadn't been there that long.
"How's he doing?" It was a stupid thing to ask, but it had to be done.
"They're operating on him now."
"What hospital?" Tommy asked, hoping it wasn't the one it had to be.
"St. Ambrose."
It was. Shit. "I don't have a car, but I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Thank you."
He hung up, trying to figure out a way to do this without upsetting his grandparents.
Tommy got there about half an hour later. It didn't take him long to get to the waiting room, but before he did, he made a stop at the front desk. He asked two question. The answer to both of them was yes.
He really hated hospital waiting rooms. They always smelled of antiseptic and urine, but he was pretty sure it was just a cover for the smell of death. Considering how much sorrow he associated with them, it was taking a major effort to maintain his facade of calm. By the time, he got there, most of the club was already there.
Just like at high school, he managed to slip in unnoticed. Kurt was looking straight at the wall, using what had to be an awesome amount of willpower to remain stoic. Tommy knew all too well how difficult that was. Finn, who was a lot more open with his feelings, looked like he was on the verge of caving in. The rest of the club showed various degrees of shock and sadness.
It took him a tremendous amount of effort to keep still, but he managed to do it. For the next fifteen minutes, they sat in silence all trying, not to think of the worst possible scenario.
At the end of that time, a man in his early seventies with graying hair and a mustache appearing at the end of the hall and walked towards them. "Kurt Hummel?" he asked brusquely.
Kurt got up, looking worried, as well he might. This clearly wasn't the doctor he'd been dealing with. "Is my father all right?"
"I'm Dr. Craig, chief of cardiothoracic. You're Burt Hummel's son?" the doctor told him.
Kurt wasn't clear whether to be alarmed or buoyed. "How's my father doing?"
"He suffered a mild arrhythmia. They just finished up surgery five minutes ago. It appears to have been successful, but we're going to have to watch him very carefully for the next few days."
"Dr. Craig, what are his chances?" Kurt asked.
"He's relatively young, but he's clearly going to be at risk, considering we had to do angioplasty. We'll have a better idea when he regains consciousness,"
Kurt seemed able to breathe a little easier. Finn, however, was a little more concerned. "When can we see him?"
"They'll be transferring him to the ICU in a few minutes, but we won't be recommending visitors til at least tomorrow, and then only in the immediate family." Craig looked around. "And since his last name isn't Von Trapp, I suggest the rest of you go home. Isn't tonight a school night?"
The others clearly looked a little puzzled at this sharpness, but Kurt looked at the others. "Look, I really appreciate all of you coming out here, but there really isn't a point, you waiting up all day with me. Go home, and get some rest. I'll see the rest of you later."
Tommy was not immensely surprised that Rachel and Mercedes decided to wait a little longer along with Kurt and Finn. Mrs. Hudson had just gotten up to talk with one of the other doctors who had just come out of the OR.
After about ten minutes, the others began to peel off. Tina turned to Tommy and asked if he needed a ride. He checked the time, and decided it might be better off getting home. He told her he wanted to get something to drink first, and that he'd meet her in the parking lot.
He went to the water fountain. "I'm glad to see that you've finally made some friends," Dr. Craig told them.
"I go to school with them. That doesn't make them my friends." Tommy said coolly.
"Then why did you tell the nurse that I needed to take a look at a patient who wasn't on my service?"
He should've known better than to try and outwit this man. "Because Kurt's been through a lot the last couple of years. He doesn't deserve to have to grow up without a father," he told them honestly.
'That's really all this was?"
"This place has too many bad memories for me. You won't mind if I don't stay any longer than I have to," Tommy started walking to the exit."
"You called in your favor. I hope this makes us even."
Tommy wasn't going to let this stand. "Considering everything that's happened here, you think we'll ever be truly even?"
Dr. Craig chose not to answer this question. "Tell your grandfather I look forward to seeing him at the opera this season," he finished up.
At the end of the hall, he found out that this exchange, like so many at McKinley had been witnessed by the wrong person. Quinn had seen it. "You know the chief of cardio here?" she asked.
"My grandfather had a minor incident with his heart when I was ten. I spent a long time here while he was in recovery. Got to know the staff pretty well."
He hoped that this half-truth would buy her silence, and it did. But only for that night.
Understandably, Kurt didn't show up to school the next day. Everybody in choir seemed to be walking as if there were shadows pursuing them. Tommy wasn't surprised to find that he felt the same way, even though he knew Kurt the least well. Burt Hummel's cardiac episode had stirred up a lot of bad memories, and he hadn't slept that well the night before. He knew he should probably talk about it with somebody - not Miss Pillsbury, who he still considered something of a flake, but maybe he should visit the therapist whose meetings he'd be ducking for the past few weeks. But months of remaining invisible and silent made him remain so here, and he didn't even volunteer to perform.
He didn't hurry out the way that he usually did when the bell rang. Instead, he walked over to Finn and Rachel. "Has there been any change?" he asked.
"My mom called in an hour ago. They say his condition is critical, but that he's stabilizing," Finn seemed more wore down than he usually that. "He's still in the coma. Is this real progress or are they just making up?"
"Finn, I'm sure that if things were getting worse, they'd tell you," Rachel replied. "Doctors may not like explaining things to teenagers, but they don't lie outright."
"Honestly, no news is good news," Tommy added. "They don't want to bore you with details they don't think you'd understand, and can be summed up by a few words."
"You've been through this before?" Rachel asked.
"When I was ten years old, my grandfather suffered a myocardial infarction, which is a fancy way of saying he had a heart attack," Tommy admitted. "It was relatively minor, but because he was over sixty, they kept him in the hospital for more than two months. Every time I went over there, the doctors would say a lot of medical terms that I couldn't follow, and that my grandmother needed to hear twice to make sense of."
"Did he get better?" Finn asked.
Tommy actually managed to chuckle at this. "He's still bitching about how bland everything tastes without salt," he told them. "Has to go in for a checkup every few months, but otherwise he's good."
Rachel looked at Tommy. "We're, uh, heading to the hospital now. I know this is out of your way, but would you mind coming to St. Ambrose with us? " When he hesitated, she added: "I don't think Kurt's slept since Mr. Hummel was wheeled in. Hearing from someone who's been through this before, maybe it'll help ease his mind."
Tommy didn't want to go back to St. Ambrose that soon, but he didn't like the idea of Kurt suffering the same kind of tumult that he had six years ago. So he agreed.
When they had trouble locating Mr. Hummel's room (nurses had not gotten any better at listing directions than they had been since the last time he had extended dealings with St. Ambrose), Tommy didn't bother to indicate that he knew where the ICU was. He had a feeling that Finn needed the distraction as much Kurt did, even if it was in this most horrible of places.
Burt Hummel wasn't sharing his room with any other patients - a small mercy. He looked incredibly pale and washed out, even among the dull white colors of the room. Kurt looked like he was even more overburdened than he had the day before. Mercedes stood a few feet away, her usual spark subdued by what she was seeing.
For a long time, no one seemed able to speak. "Has anybody given any update on him?" Finn finally asked.
"Somebody came in to check his vitals an half an hour ago," Kurt said hollowly. "But no one will tell me how he's doing or when he'll wake up."
Even in his exhaustion, it was clear Kurt was holding on to more hope than he admitted - he was using "when" instead of 'if'.
"It's the way that these places are run," Tommy spoke up. "I think they've got some kind of rule about telling family as little as possible or not having the same nurse visit your room twice."
"You've been here before," Mercedes stated.
"Far more often than I should have," Tommy told them, hoping they would let it go at that. Fortunately, he wasn't the one they were worried about right now.
"Kurt, have you gotten any rest at all?" None of them had heard Mrs. Hudson enter the room.
"I got a couple of hours last night," Kurt said distractedly.
"In one of those chairs? You're not going to do good to anybody, if you collapse right here," Mrs. Hudson replied.
"I can't just leave, What if... something happens?" he finished weakly.
Maybe he was still focused on the worst case scenarios after all.
"You gotta get some sleep, Kurt," Finn told them. "We'll stand watch for a while. Believe me, he won't be alone."
Tommy knew that this wasn't what was worrying Kurt. He also knew that even the most fully meant sentiment still sounded like bullshit when you were in a place like this. But the last thing he wanted to do was make anybody feel worse, so he said nothing.
"Find someone who'll tell me something about Dad's condition, then I'll get some rest." He sounded even more distracted than before, and Tommy who listened to people closely, noticed that he had not said that he would go home.
Nevertheless, Rachel walked out into the hallway to try and find someone who could give them some peace of mind. Tommy knew that hospitals killed that concept just by being there, but Kurt probably knew that by now.
Tommy was beginning to feel pulled by two conflicting forces. As was the case whenever he was in a situation where he couldn't do something useful, he just wanted to get away, and considering that this was a place he had major issues about being in, that urge was twice as strong. But even though he wasn't really one of Kurt's friends, he didn't particularly want to abandon him to the mercies of St. Ambrose, which looked like it was sucking some of his energy every minute he stayed here.
From a purely logical standpoint, he knew this wasn't true. Hospitals were not vampires, they were places that healing took place. But Tommy knew well enough this they were also places where people came to die, and he desperately didn't want Kurt's father to be one of them.
Reluctantly, he told Kurt that he would be right back. Last night had clearly proved that he still had some juice here, and he couldn't think of a better way to use it. Because he didn't particularly want to get credit for it, he looked around until he saw a nurse that looked vaguely familiar.
"Why the hell has no one come in to update us on Burt Hummel's condition?" he demanded, without any introduction.
"I don't know who you think you are," the nurse began.
He had no intention of letting her finish. "Burt Hummel is one of Dr. Craig's patients," he told her. "I'm guessing you know that name even if you haven't bothered to learn his."
"I realize that it's frustrating being here, but you can't expect-"
Again, he cut her off. "I happen to be a very good friend of Mark Craig's." he exaggerated. "He assured me that Burt Hummel would get the very best care possible. Which means he'll probably be pissed royal to know that no one's bother to check in either him or his son for nearly half an hour. So if you don't want to get us both in a lot of trouble, get someone over to Room 329 right now."
In the best case scenario, this was a hell of a bluff. He was therefore very grateful that the nurse ran off without putting up any more of an argument. Unfortunately, he realized very quickly that he'd been a lot louder than he should've been, and that the last possible person he'd wanted to witness this had.
"The chief of cardiology knows you by name?" Rachel told him. "Is that the real reason he came in to check on Kurt's father last night?"
He really didn't want to answer this question. "Rachel, this isn't any of your business, so stay out of it." Tommy tried to walk away, but the diva-in-training followed him.
"You can't just make stuff up like that," Rachel replied. "The Hummels barely get by as it is. They can't afford to have you just order people around like they can afford it."
This was a legitimate point, one that Tommy hadn't even considered. He had, however, no intention of telling anyone in high school this, least of all someone who would probably tell everybody in glee about it.
"Dr. Craig is a very close friend of my grandfather's," he tried again.
"Come on, you can't honestly expect us to believe that. If the chief heart surgeon called in favors for everybody's life he saved,. This hospital would go bankrupt."
Rachel sometimes was too smart for her own good. "Do you want Mr. Hummel to get the best possible care?" he tried a more personal plea.
"Of course I do," she answered, "but I don't want your family to have to pay for it. They can't be any richer than his. Besides, I know they wouldn't have brought Mr. Hummel to this hospital if they had another choice."
His family was somewhat more well off than the Hummels, but somehow he doubted this would carry a lot of weight with her- Rachel's fathers were also a bit better off, and she probably wouldn't even make an offer on this.
He decided to see if he could limit the damage - do triage, as it were. "All right, I'll tell you why I have some pull here, but you can't breathe a word of this to anyone, not anyone in glee, not your boyfriend, and definitely not Kurt."
Rachel now seemed more puzzled than anything, but she agreed. He knew that eventually she'd break and tell someone, but hopefully she could hold off doing this until Mr. Hummel woke up.
"I didn't tell the complete truth about why I knew about hospitals," he told her. "I actually came to this hospital a year before my grandfather had his heart attack." Tommy took a deep breath. "This is the hospital where they brought my mother before she died. She was one of Dr. Craig's patients. He tried to save her life, but he failed. He's been feeling guilty about it ever since."
Rachel took this in. "Why would he feel guilty about that? Doctor's lose patients every day."
"He couldn't save her because my father killed her, and he let it happen," Before Tommy had realized what he had said, he was adding: Kurt's not the only one who has a reason not to believe in God."
For whatever pleasure it gave him, and in his state it wasn't much, this had the power to shut Rachel up. "Not a word of this to anyone. Understand?"
Rachel nodded, and to her credit, she managed to keep quiet about it longer than he would have thought possible.
He was the one who ended up spilling the truth.
The next day, Kurt was back in school, albeit looking even more worn down than he had the last two days. If he had gotten any rest, it didn't seem that apparent to Tommy. He had never heard 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' sung in such melancholy and pain. He wanted to tell Kurt, who was probably fated to go through more pain and rejection in his life than anybody else, that everyone was going to be all right, that his father would recover, that things would be better from here on out.
But he didn't want to lie to him.
As if that weren't hard enough to bear, Kurt wasn't talking to Mercedes, and wasn't exactly being friendly with Rachel either. When the class was over, he approached Mercedes, and asked her point blank what was going on between her and her best friend.
When he heard what she and Quinn and Rachel had done, he wasn't entirely surprised. "You knew how Kurt feels about this, and how damn vulnerable he is. Why'd you do it?" he said without thinking.
"I was thinking that Burt Hummel needs all the help he can get," Mercedes was taking her typical 'don't screw with me' tone, "and even Kurt doesn't believe, maybe something like this would actually help."
"So why do it over Burt Hummel? Hell, there's a chapel in the hospital for that very reason." Tommy reminded her. "Kurt's in pain, and you don't need to shove something in his face."
Mercedes considered this. "Why does this matter so much to you?" she demanded.
"This isn't about me. It's about Kurt," he told her doggedly.
"I'm not blind, Tommy. You've been pissed off ever since Finn came up with the idea for this week's assignment. Now you can believe whatever you want to believe - that's your right. But why do you have to make everyone else think the same thing? I'm pretty sure that's at least as bad as me trying to force God on everyone."
Mercedes had a remarkable astuteness for these kinds of things. "Your belief in God, it's important to you," Tommy started. "You think it could withstand anything?"
"I heard the argument you made two days ago," Mercedes admitted. "It's pretty solid, but I'm pretty sure that my reverend could make short work of it."
"I'm pretty sure I could come up with a solid theological argument, but I'm guessing that wouldn't get you off my case," he told her. "So why don't I just tell you why I really can't believe in God?"
Mercedes was trying to look more welcoming than curious, and wasn't quite pulling it off.
"Everybody in glee knows I live with my grandparents. Nobody knows why. Don't think because I'm about to tell you a secret means that it can be shared." He had to know that this wasn't going to happen, but he was relying on shock value to keep her quiet.
"What's the difference between a drunk and an alcoholic? A drunk doesn't have to go to those stupid meetings," Tommy was trying to deflect because he really didn't like going where he was about to go. "My parents loved each other very much, but they met at a kegger at OSU. Maybe that should've clued my mother into what she was getting, but she always wanted to see the better side of people. Even when they really didn't deserve it."
"Your father drank?"
"I'm getting there. If my dad had been a mean drunk, I might actually be better off. My mother would've realized what a hopeless case he was early on, and left before things got too bad. But most of the time he was mellow when he drank, So she stuck by him, as he missed birthday parties, anniversaries, any other occasion that required being a Dad." Tommy slowed his speech. "My mother kept hoping, but by the time I was nine, she'd had enough. One afternoon, she told my father that she was going to get a divorce. My father seemed to take this the same as he did everything else. He showed up for the meeting drunk. The day she went to the lawyers, for some reason, I'll probably never know why, they got in the same car. My mother was behind the wheel. Maybe they were getting into a stupendous fight, maybe it just got to much for her. Whatever the reason, she didn't see the semi when it hit them."
Tommy was deliberately looking straight ahead. He didn't want to see Mercedes look of pity or whatever she might have on her face. He was going to get through this.
"My father, who when he was tested by the police, was twice the legal limit, escaped without a scratch. My mother had a shard of glass pierce her heart. She wasn't killed instantly, no, that would have been too simple. She managed to make it to St. Ambrose. By some medical miracle which I am not privy to, she survived the loss of blood, and ten hours in surgery repairing the wound. The surgeon who operated on her thought she would live if she made it through the next twenty-four hours." Tommy paused. "One of her stitches became undone, and she bled out before they could save her."
"My father reacted to this, by going on the king of all benders. As far as I know, he never got off it. He just left my house and didn't come back. My grandparents- my mom's parents- managed to obtain custody. And I have never seen my dad since."
"So let me ask you, Mercedes Jones, what God does this? Lets my mother die very painfully, and my father walk away intact? What kind of God gives a sixty-year old man who doesn't smoke or drink a heart attack? What takes a loving mother from her child and gives his father a heart attack at forty-two?" He looked at Mercedes. "Oh, that's right. "A kind, loving God. Your Reverend got an answer for that?"
And with that, he walked away, hoping that he'd left the subject for good, but also wondering why it had taken him two weeks to tell something it had taken him a year to tell his therapist.
Over the weekend, Mr. Hummel came out of his coma. By the time he was up to seeing visitors, it looked like he was going to recover, and the doctors were optimistic. Tommy had not returned to the hospital that weekend, but nobody in the club was giving him any crap about it.
The mood was upbeat when glee met that Monday, and they were giving free reign in the auditorium for once. Apparently, Mr. Schuster had been taking yet another assault from Coach Sylvester on their singing songs about God. (Tommy didn't think it would have made him any more popular had he mentioned that he agreed with the head of the Cheerios for once.) For them to being so on the big stage seemed to be tickling the beast, but he decided not to bring it up, because he felt they needed the win, and he was beginning to feel like he had to get used to performing on stage.
"You know, you've done some pretty good singing, since you got here," Schuster told him. "But you haven't asked for any solos."
"Yeah, you don't really belong to New Directions until you demand a solo for yourself," Artie told him.
He didn't think it worth mentioning that having spent so much time at McKinley fading into the background, he'd been doing much the same in glee. There was also the fact that he wasn't wild about singing about God anywhere, much less here.
"Maybe I'm so old school, I'm afraid you wouldn't recognize my style," he told them, which was at least a half-truth. "But since you asked, how well do you know The Beach Boys?"
The orchestra knew what he was talking about, even if about half the club didn't. But as soon as they began to strike the opening chords, they knew what he was talking about:
I may not always love you,
But long as there are stars above you,
You never need to doubt it,
I'll make you so sure about it.
God only knows what I'd be without you.
He didn't know if they had Beach Boys on their IPods or if some of them had ever watched Big Love. Whatever the reason, they all were on point, by the second verse:
If you would ever leave me,
Life would still go on, believe me
The world could do nothing to me,
So what good what nothing do me?
God only knows what I'd be without you.
God only knows...
There was always a sort of flow in their numbers. He was still out of step and out of place, but he felt a little more part of the group as the number progressed. He even felt a little of the exuberance that they all felt at the end of a particularly good number.
When the number was breaking up, however, he found that Mercedes was looking at him. As far as he knew, she hadn't shared his secret with the rest of the club by now. But for the first time, she walked away from Kurt and over to him.
"Does this little number mean that you've had a change of heart?" she asked.
"About performing in public, maybe a little. About the subject we discussed earlier, not at all." Mercedes looked puzzled, so he elaborated. "Sometimes a song is just a song, Mercedes. You'd better get that if we're going to perform together."
She looked at him for a few moments, then shrugged. "They think Mr. Hummel will be able to check out in a couple days. Think you'll be able to see him before that?"
Nothing had changed in the past week. He still loathed St. Ambrose with every fiber of his being, but he had come to think that he had to be a little less self-centered. "I'll try."
And he did.