August 19th, 2011
Blaine walked briskly through the dormitory hallways, trying to look as though he knew exactly where he was going. He sort of did—room 214—but he'd passed a 210 and then a 221 and now he wanted to find a way to turn around without looking like he made a mistake.
"Can I help you?" someone asked. Blaine stiffened. Was it that obvious that he was lost? But he turned around to answer.
The boy who'd asked if he needed help was cute and tall. Not as tall as Kurt, and maybe not as cute. But cute all the same.
"Um. I'm moving into 214?"
The boy laughed. "Yeah, the teens can be confusing. There's a little corridor down there—you just passed it. You're down there, along with 211-219, and me."
"Oh. Which room is yours?"
"Why, you wanna come see me in it later?"
Blaine coughed loudly. Must've inhaled wrong. The boy laughed again.
"Just kidding. My name is Michael. I'm on the residential staff, so I've got 220. Right by the vending machines."
Blaine tried to think of a witty response, or even just a normal friendly response, but he couldn't. "Well, thanks," he said, and turned around to find his dorm.
"No problem," Michael said after him. "Come by anytime."
He drew out "anytime" and it sounded lecherous. Blaine blushed and walked faster.
April 17, 2014
Kurt was sitting in one of two chairs in the hospital hallway. He hadn't been in to see Blaine yet. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson said he was having trouble speaking and remembering, and Kurt was afraid he wouldn't know who he was. "He hasn't recognized me yet," Burt told him the day before, "But he doesn't shy away from me like he does with the nurses." He seemed proud. Kurt was just scared.
But he'd flown from New York, he'd arranged his exams so he could take them from Ohio, and his dad decided that today was the day to visit.
Cooper was there, too. He told Kurt he was scared, too, even though Blaine did recognize him-"His eyes don't look like they're really seeing me," Cooper said. "But I think he knows I'm his brother."
Cooper went in first. He left the door cracked. Kurt could hear Cooper saying, "Hey, Squirt," and something that sounded like a gurgle in reply. He felt sick.
"How's it going?" Cooper asked. Kurt guessed Blaine replied, although he didn't hear it, because Cooper chuckled and said "Yeah, I bet." They talked for a few more minutes, then Cooper poked his head out and asked Kurt, "Do you want to come in?"
Kurt released a breath he didn't know he was holding. He stood up and walked to the doorway. He could see Blaine's bed out of the corner of his eye, and thought of the tubes, and the seizure he'd had when he was here last, and he steeled himself. He walked in.
Blaine didn't move his head but his eyes swiveled towards Kurt. He seemed to smile a little bit, and Kurt felt better. Blaine moved his mouth around some hoarse sound. He coughed slightly and tried again.
"Hey, Michael," Blaine slurred. Cooper's eyebrows went up. Kurt's stomach fell. He turned around and walked fast towards the end of the hallway, to the waiting room, where his dad was, even as Cooper called after him, "Kurt! Wait!"
April 19th, 2014
Everything in Blaine's sight was blurry. His head was a little less fuzzy now, but it didn't matter, because he still couldn't clearly interpret anything he could see. He had almost gotten the hang of some names—He knew Cooper, of course. And his parents. And he kind of knew who Burt was, he knew he was the familiar man in flannel whose memory had comforted him the first time he awoke. He knew who Michael was. He was too cute and tall to forget. He thought Michael had come to see him, but Cooper told him he hadn't. Blaine supposed that made sense. They didn't know each other very well. They just lived in the same dorm, that was all. But why did he think he'd seen him?
Another thing Blaine couldn't grasp was why he was in a hospital. He had the feeling that someone told him why, but he couldn't remember. Sometimes he couldn't even remember that this was a hospital. Every time he woke up, before he began to notice the blurring of the world and the annoying ringing in his ears, he thought he was at home, or at school. In his own bed.
At one point, he thought he was somewhere else entirely. He couldn't put his finger on it. He couldn't put his finger on a lot of things, but this memory in particular bothered him. It was the most persistent memory, and the one that was always just beyond his reach, just out of the corner of his eye, but the clearest of them all. It came to him a few days ago. He woke up and thought he was somewhere warm, somewhere that smelled slightly floral (although that could have been the wilting tulips on his bedside table), a place where, in the background, a soft voice sang a song he'd always loved. He wanted to be there. Why wasn't he there? Why was he here instead?
He tried to ask Cooper, but the thought was too difficult and vague to translate. Instead he just said "Where am I?" and Cooper said "You're in the hospital" and Blaine said "Oh," and it felt like they'd practiced those lines over and over again.
Blaine hated feeling confused. He told Cooper this, but it came out as "I have fell conscion." He heard the words come out wrong and hated that, too. Cooper smiled and nodded as if he understood. Blaine knew he didn't, because he wouldn't be smiling if he'd understood. But—and maybe this was the worst thing of all—Blaine's feelings of anger, of sadness, of happiness, any feelings at all, really, did not last long. Inevitably, he always fell back into a state of semi-consciousness, where he had no feelings. Where he forgot anything he'd already felt that day.
Today, with Cooper by his bed, he drifted in and out of awareness. He swam between all the feelings in his mind, never touching any of them. He swam strongly towards the one memory he wanted, the comforting one, the soft voice, the floral smell, and was reaching out for it, just about to graze it with his fingertips, when sleep overtook him.
