Chapter Two: Though It's Easy To Pretend

Author's Note: Due to summertime insomnia and the fact that I had a Dr. Pepper at 10 o'clock at night, I have finished this chapter and the chapter that follows it. So I will be posting this chapter now, and will post chapter three later on in the day. As always, I do not own Glee. I just love the show and want to write about it. The chapter title comes from "Careless Whisper" by Seether (although the original version is by Wham)

Two weeks had gone by, and so far, none of the interns in the program have quit, but there's rumors that one of them on Dr. Ryerson's service is ready to quit because he's been yelled at too many times.

"Think about how much that would suck." Finn said, taking a bite into his turkey sandwich at lunch the day the rumors started to swirl. "To make it this far into the field, then want to quit because of being yelled at. Total waste of money."

"Some people just aren't cut out for the medical life. Some people just can't handle it." Rachel said, trying to distract Finn so she could steal some of his French fries.

Over the last few weeks, Finn and Rachel had become best friends. Sure, Finn wanted to be more than friends, he knew he'd have to wait it out. From what he'd heard from Rachel's conversations with Jesse, things were incredibly rocky between the two of them. More than once, she'd come home from a date with him and have mascara marks all over her face. It took all the strength Finn had not to track that son of a bitch down and hurt him.

But that's not something that supportive best friends would do.

"Geez, Rach, if you want the fries why don't you just buy them for yourself?" Finn asked, teasing her. He knew the answer. She felt like there were "spies for her daddies" (her terminology, not his) all over the hospital, and she'd be in huge trouble if they ever saw her eating fries (something about the unhealthiness of the whole thing, Finn wasn't really sure what was going on when she talked about it with Quinn).

She gave him a look and rolled her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, probably a snarky comment, but the table started beeping as everyone's pagers started going off.

"Shit, it's an SOS from the Chief. What do you think happened?" Puck asked, wiping the hot sauce off his face.

"It must be something important if he's paging interns." Blaine said, already sprinting for the office.

The page from the Chief was not all that important. Apparently, after only two weeks on the job, the interns had to fill out an evaluation about how they thought everything was going, and if there was anything the hospital could do to improve itself.

"I have to admit, I was disappointed. I thought it would be something cool, like a guy got his arm chopped off and we had to attach it ourselves," Puck said that night at Rolling Greens. He knocked back his shot back. He signaled to Pat, the bartender, to pour him another one.

Going out to Rolling Greens after every hospital shift had become a tradition with the roommates. It was right down the street from the hospital, and it was a great way for them to blow off a little steam after a grueling day at the hospital, especially when Dr. Sylvester gets mad at them for something that was completely out of their control (Rachel still hadn't forgotten how their resident had snapped at her when a patient was flirting).

"I hate to cut it short tonight, but I need to head back to the hospital. I'm on call tonight and this is the only real break I'm getting." Tina said, standing up from her bar stool.

"Good thing you were drinking Coke. Dr. Sylvester could probably smell liquor on someone from like two hundred feet away," Kurt said, trying to be funny. Instead he got a glare from Tina and a wet napkin thrown at him by Puck.

Finn chuckled to himself and looked down to the other end of the bar. He saw Rachel sitting by herself, slowly stirring her drink with a small straw and a dazed look on her face. Picking up his Bud Light, he walked down to the end of the bar that she sitting at and sat down next to her.

"Hey, Rach. How's it going?"

She sighed and kept stirring the drink. "It's been a crappy day. I watched Dr. Sylvester complete a perfectly good surgery, then I found out the patient went into cardiac arrest when he got back to his room. Dr. Chang managed to get him back to normal, but he's in a coma now. And if he dies, that's the first patient of mine that died. And on top of that, Jesse and I broke up this morning." She took a sip from her glass. "I wish I was drinking something stronger, but I'm really not in the mood for alcohol tonight so I'm drowning my sorrows in Coke." Rachel heard her pager go off from inside her purse and she started to dig through it to find out what was happening. "Damn it." A few tears slid out from the corners of her eyes. "He died."

Finn reached out and wiped her tears away. "No one wants to see a pretty girl crying. Especially when Puck is just down at the other end of the bar, and he'll make fun of you for crying. So why don't you go pull yourself together, and I'll pull the car around to the back entrance and I'll drive you home for the night."

Rachel sniffed and smiled at her best friend. "Thank you, Finn. You really are my best friend. You know that, right?"

Finn's smile faltered just a little bit. Why did he always have to be the good guy?

"Yeah, I know that."

Later that night, when it was still just Finn and Rachel at the house, Finn was in his room, watching a movie on his laptop, something he'd rarely been able to do since he started the internship. He looked up when he felt like someone was watching him and saw Rachel was standing the doorway.

"Hey, Rach, you know you can come in if you want to. It is your house and everything."

"No, it's fine. You're watching a movie and looked so peaceful. I can go bug someone else…somewhere else."

"No, it's fine. I've seen this movie a thousand times, anyway." He paused the movie and gave his full attention to Rachel. "Come on in."

She walked in and sat down on the bed next to him. "I have too much going on in my life right now. Between this internship and Jesse…I was at my breaking point. So I told that to Jesse and we broke up. I thought that would make me feel better, but it really doesn't. And now…this is happening and I can't deal with it all."

"What's happening?"

She sniffed and Finn could tell there were about to be tears. "Two nights ago, I found out I was pregnant. So this morning I told Jesse, and he told me to get rid of it."

"Oh, Rach. You didn't…"

"Of course not. I told I wouldn't do that to my baby, and that's when he said he was done with me. So now I'm completely alone and I'm going to have a baby with a man who doesn't even want it. I just don't know what I'm going to do," she said, burying her head in his chest.

Finn didn't know what to say, so he started rubbing her back in small circles. It was something his mother used to do for him when he was little and was scared about something.

"You won't be totally alone. You have a house full of people who I'm sure will try and help you with the baby. And I'm your best friend, right? I'll be here to help you out with everything." He kissed the top of her head. "I love you, Rach, and I won't let anything happen to you or the baby."

Rachel looked up at Finn, her tears making her eyelashes stick together. "Really? You'd do that for me?"

"That's what best friends are for, right?" he repeated.

He felt Rachel nod against his chest and she went limp in his arms. Either she had just died on him, or she was so wiped out from the day that she fell asleep. Finn moved her to lay her down on the bed, then stood up and pulled one of the blankets on his bed up to keep her warm. He learned that his room got a little chilly in the night, and Rachel needed sleep, not to wake up in the middle of the night shivering. He then went to the linen closet across the hallway from his room, grabbed a blanket, went downstairs, and curled up on the couch for the night.

"Finn. Finn. Finn!"

"What? What's going on? Who's dead?" Finn asked, jolting awake from his uncomfortable nap on a bench in the locker room. He saw Rach standing there with a slightly amused smile on her face. "Hey. Are you okay? Is the baby okay?"

"It was a false alarm. I just came back from the clinic. And thankfully, my daddies weren't there today, because that could have been a disaster. And I used a fake name, so they won't ever find out about this." She sat down on the bench next to him and took his hand. "But I wanted to thank you for everything you said last night. It was so sweet and I didn't even have to ask." He heard her pager go off and she sighed. "Well, I guess I have to go." She smiled at him and started to walk out of the room before turning around to face Finn again. "Someday, you are going to meet a wonderful girl and you're going to sweep her off her feet and the two of you will fall madly in love. And whoever that girl is…she'll be lucky because you really are a great guy, Finn." She gave him another smile before leaving to see what the page was about.

Finn groaned and leaned back on the bench. He'd already found the girl that Rachel was talking about; she just needed to realize it.