Chapter 7

"Are you okay in here?"

"Huh?" Kurt tore his eyes away from the black screen of the heart rate monitor to look at Blaine.

"You seem really upset, if you need to get out of here—"

"I'm perfect right where I am," Kurt squeezed Blaine's hand in his and sat up a little straighter in his chair.

Blaine glanced toward the hall where his mother was trying, once again, to get in contact with his father, "I know hospitals aren't easy for you, Kurt."

Kurt looked down toward the peach colored blanket under their hands, "They're all the same; have you ever noticed?"

Blaine looked around the room. The TV hanging in the corner, the mauve and green trimmed wallpaper; the plant hanging in the corner to try to give some semblance of cheer and life, "I haven't spent that much time in hospitals, but I'll take your word for it. You'd think they'd try for something a little less… bleak."

"I don't know that a change in interior decorating would make a hospital feel much more inviting," Kurt shrugged; he glanced down at his hand clasped in Blaine's; he frowned, "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?" Blaine tore his eyes from the window to look at Kurt with confusion.

Kurt motioned his free hand down at their clasped ones, "Fidgeting."

Blaine untangled his hand from Kurt's and held up the appendage for Kurt to see. His thumb jerked in that strange little ticking motion even without Kurt's hand beneath it; his previously mellow expression took on an edge of anxiety, "It's just been doing that; I'm not trying to."

Kurt carefully took hold of Blaine's wrist and laid his hand out on the bed; he touched his hand to the base of Blaine's thumb; felt the quick flurry of muscles contracting and releasing under the pads of his fingers, "For how long?"

Blaine shifted in the hospital bed, "Off and on for a while."

"What's a while?" Kurt looked up from Blaine's hand to his face; a wary frown crossed his features.

"A few weeks maybe?" Blaine pulled his hand out of Kurt's grasp and folded it protectively across his middle.

Kurt felt a twist of nerves in his stomach, "And you didn't think it was worth voicing a little concern over?"

"It didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time," Blaine bit his lip and stared down at his lap.

Kurt closed his eyes, you're being paranoid; relax, "We'll get it all sorted out soon enough."

When Kurt opened his eyes again, Blaine was chewing at the thumbnail of his good hand.

Kurt reached up and pulled his hand away from his mouth, "You always regret biting your nails; keep them away from your mouth."

Blaine smiled half-heartedly at him, "Old habits die hard."

Elizabeth breezed back into the room; she looked discontented, "I just got a hold of your father; he can't get back any earlier that tomorrow night."

"He doesn't have to come back early, Mom, it was just—"

"Don't you dare use the word 'just' and 'seizure' in the same sentence, Blaine Anderson, there is no 'just' to be had in that sentence," She fussed over the edge of his blanket as she spoke.

He closed his hand—Kurt noted it was the unaffected one—over his mother's, "I'm going to have another one if you don't calm down."

"That isn't funny," She huffed, but she closed her hand tightly over his.

"I'm not trying to be funny, you are truly exhausting me with your stressing though," Blaine smiled for her.

"If you're tired you should—"

"Mom," Blaine groaned, "I've slept for like seven hours straight; I just need you to calm down."

"You just wait until you're a par—" She trailed off; her face flushed.

"Until I have kids and they're trying to tell me to settle down and see how I feel then," Blaine finished for her.

Kurt felt the shift in the atmosphere as though it were a tangible temperature change. Blaine's voice would have sounded casual in anyone else's ears, but Kurt could hear the tension, the sad note to his syllables, begging for that final seal of acceptance.

Elizabeth nodded stiffly and glanced Kurt's way, "Yes."

Blaine stared down at their clasped hands quietly, "Mom, you know—"

A knock on the door cut him off; they all looked up to see a man in a white lab coat standing in the doorway, "Hello, I'm Dr. Cameron."

Kurt gave the doctor an appraising look. He's developed a knack for profiling doctors. This one had thick, grey hair atop a face that looks a bit younger than the silver locks on his head would suggest; he was averagely built with little else notable about him except the teal suit shirt peaking out from beneath his lab coat. Kurt approved of this doctor—experienced, well put-together; a pleasant smile. All good things.

Elizabeth was not so easily charmed, she frowned at him, "Where is Dr. Patel? She was in with us this morning."

Dr. Cameron nodded, unfettered by the slight wariness in her tone, "Dr. Patel asked I take over your son's case. She wanted a more senior opinion to her own, but of course if you'd like to continue with her, that is entirely up to you; I just want to run a few check ups to better assist her."

Elizabeth relaxed and nodded, "Oh, of course, I didn't mean to imply anything negative... I really am sorry; it's just been a long day."

"No need to apologize," The doctor waved a hand in the air casually; he turned his attention to Blaine and smiled amicably, "You must be Blaine, then."

"Pleasure to meet you, sir," Blaine returned the smile, but Kurt felt an alarm go off in his head as he watched the doctor. That tone. He remembered that tone.

"Mind if I run a few check ups? I know you've been through these already; I just wanted to check a few of them for myself; I won't make you re-answer everything, though; I promise," The doctor kept smiling, his tone all cheerful notes and regretful kindness.

More alarms. Kurt tensed enough beside the bed to draw the doctor's attention to him.

"And who might you be?"

"Kurt Hummel," Kurt stated tersely.

"My boyfriend," Blaine added, turning his smile toward Kurt.

"It's really supposed to be family only in here," Dr. Cameron said not unkindly.

"He was with Blaine when the seizure happened," Elizabeth supplied, "Blaine couldn't answer some of Dr. Patel's questions, maybe Kurt could help?"

Kurt looked to Blaine's mother in surprise. He saw the guilt still etched across her features form the earlier misstep; he recognized the attempt at redemption and welcomed it if it meant he could remain in the room.

The doctor looked between Blaine and Kurt's anxious faces before nodding slowly, "I suppose we can make an exception from time to time."

"Thank you," Kurt relaxed just a little in his seat.

The doctor nodded absently as he pulled a pen out of his breast pocket; he peered down at the clipboard in his hand before looking back up at Blaine, "This was your first seizure of this nature?"

"My first seizure period," Blaine replied.

The doctor nodded, "Do you remember the events leading up to it?"

Blaine frowned, "Um, sort of. We—me and some friends—went to get breakfast; I wasn't feeling well, so Kurt was going to take me home... I don't remember after that."

"It was raining really hard, but we wanted to get out of there, so we tried to run for my car. It happened in the parking lot." Kurt supplied. He didn't mention the confusion of Blaine's hand suddenly disappearing from his. The terror of finding him crumpled on the ground like a broken doll.

The doctor kept bobbing his head up and down, "It's common to forget the events surrounding a seizure. I'm looking at Dr. Patel's notes and it says here you've been getting headaches."

Blaine nodded his head but offered no further explanation.

"Five to six times a week for about three to four weeks?" The doctor looked from the paper to Blaine's face.

"You didn't tell me they were that frequent," Kurt murmured under his breath.

Blaine shrugged noncommittally, "I told you, I didn't think they were that big of a deal; I always get headaches when I'm stressed."

"In cases like these, Blaine, it's a good idea to mention anything that doesn't feel quite right," Dr. Cameron was scribbling something in his notes, "Just to try and see what we can learn about possible causes."

Blaine nodded, throwing a guilty glance Kurt's way.

"You told Dr. Patel no to dizziness, but yes to a little clumsiness as of late; care to elaborate?"

"I just…" Blaine shifted uncomfortably beneath the scrutiny of the other three. He let out a long breath, "I never used to mess up choreography."

Dr. Cameron didn't query over what Blaine did involving dancing; instead, he nodded, "Do you experience numbness in your legs or arms or is it disorientation?"

"I don't really know… it's like… like when you walk into a doorframe or catch your side on a countertop or something, and you're not even really sure how you managed to misinterpret the space, you just… did."

The doctor bobbed his head up and down yet again, scribbled some more. When he looked up, his attention was on Kurt, "Have you noticed any personality changes?"

"Personality changes?" Kurt echoed, his tone more surprised than he'd meant it to be.

"Mood swings, irritability; that sort of thing," the doctor kept his tone light, but it only made the edge sharper on Kurt's paranoia.

"Um, no, not really… we've been studying for finals, so if he got a little snippety, I guess I would have felt like it was all sort of natural." Kurt looked to Blaine for confirmation.

"He shouts," Elizabeth said abruptly, her gaze turned to Blaine, "You yelled at me for vacuuming your room while you were studying."

Blaine looked stricken, "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Mom, I—"

She shook her head quickly, "I'm not angry, honey, I just thought it was worth mentioning. You hardly ever raise your voice at your father or me, and it was the third time in a week that you got angry with one of us."

"Dad wouldn't let me bring Kurt with to church on Sunday," Blaine gave his mother a pointed look, "I think my yelling was justified in that instance."

"We can talk about that later, Blaine," His mother spoke in a hushed tone, she gave a meaningful look toward the doctor before looking back at her son.

"All right, all right, so nothing incredibly drastic, but the change is there," the doctor nodded quickly to move on from the subject, "You also mentioned a few communicative type problems and maybe some short-term memory lapses; is there anything else unusual you didn't already report to Dr. Patel?"

Blaine shook his head; his expression stony.

Kurt felt dizzy with the number of anomalies he had somehow managed to miss-memory troubles, tripping up at practice, mood swings, the headaches-an entire list of oddities he should have caught onto. He would not let yet another thing slip notice, "Your hand, Blaine."

A wash of sudden remembrance colored Blaine's features; he held out his hand on the bed for the doctor to see almost timidly, "Oh, yeah... there's that."

The doctor put down the clipboard on the end of the bed to take Blaine's hand in his own. He watched the little flurry of movement silently; prodded Blaine's palm.

His mother looked on in horror, "Why is it happening?"

"Could be a localized seizure," The doctor murmured, turning Blaine's hand over between both of his, "How long has that been going on?"

"I'm not sure," Blaine looked nervously down at the appendage as though it weren't his own at all, but rather some thing he had just stumbled upon for the first time, "It comes and goes... Why, is it bad? I thought it was just a muscle spasm or something."

The doctor gently let go of Blaine's hand, his smile finally fading.

Kurt resisted the urge to bolt from the room. While the air of false cheer and feigned nonchalance had only set off a few precursory sirens in the depths of his memory, that look sent him into full lockdown mode.

There was news to be had. Bad news. Kurt found Blaine's hand and locked it in his own almost instinctively.

The doctor looked down at the clasped hands on the bed—Blaine's mother on one side and Kurt on the other—a clouded look of wary suspicions fell over Blaine's face; his voice sounded breathy in Kurt's ears, "What's wrong with me?"

"A team of doctors have been looking at your scans from earlier today, Blaine," the doctor spoke slowly; carefully; he looked between Blaine and his mother, "Based on what we've gathered, it would appear you have a tumor that—"

"What?" Elizabeth's voice sounded more like a sharp intake of breath than an actual word.

The doctor's face remained placid, his voice calm, "It's located in the frontal lobe of your brain and it's about—"

Kurt wasn't listening. His mind was filled with Blaine's hand suddenly limp in his own and a memory that couldn't be quieted.

He was six years old and he was having a wonderful time. He'd been abandoned with the secretary in a clinician's office while his parents went into the mysterious backrooms to "have a little talk with the doctors", but he didn't mind at all. Upon entering the office, his mother had presented with not only a new coloring book, but also a brand new box of crayons. Not just the regular twenty-four pack either, oh no, this was the crayon box: the one hundred twenty set complete with a novelty box to store them all in. Kurt was in heaven. He laid on his stomach behind the front desk and contentedly selected just the right shade of blue for Cinderella's dress—there were over eight different variations of light blue—it was a mentally consuming process for his little head, so he was surprised when his parents seemed to reappear only moments after having left him.

"Hey, buddy, how's the coloring coming?" His father knelt down beside him, a fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he watched Kurt replace his crayon back in the box with the utmost care.

"Good; I did this one for Mommy," He presented his mother with the finished Snow White picture that the secretary had helped him to cut from the book.

"Kurt, baby, that's beautiful; what color crayon was this one?" She pointed to a dwarf's hat.

"Razzmatazz," Kurt giggled over the name; he'd liked it the second he plucked it from the box.

His mother giggled too, and his father had a funny smile plastered across his face- it was too big; too forced, but Kurt didn't question it. As they drove home, Kurt clutched his crayon box as tightly as his father held his mother's hand in the front seat. When they arrived back at the house, his mother made him a peanut butter sandwich and they'd all sat together while he ate. His parents laughed when he said something silly, and asked him about what he wanted to get Rachel Berry for her birthday party, but they said little directly to one another. When he finished and asked permission to go up to his room and color, his parents had exchanged a look.

"Come sit with us in the family room for a bit, buddy, we have to talk to you about something." His father said, his voice gentle.

Kurt complied, but something was making him nervous, he felt the same way he did when there was the potential he was going to get in trouble. He hoped his parents hadn't found the Barbie he'd "borrowed" from Rachel's house and hid under his bed. He pulled himself up onto the couch, his little feet dangling down in the space above the floor while his mother settled in beside him and his father took up his usual residence in his armchair to face the two on the couch.

"Am I in trouble?" Kurt asked in a small voice.

"No, of course not!" Burt looked alarmed, "You didn't do anything wrong at all, kiddo."

Kurt nodded, reassured. But now he was confused. Why was his mother stroking his hair like that, and why was his father looking so sad?

"Kurt, today when we went to the doctor's office, your mom had some special tests done," His father spoke slowly; his voice thick.

Kurt bobbed his head up and down. He'd already known that was why they were at the special doctor's office so far away from their usual family practice.

"Some of those tests, though, buddy, they didn't look so good," Burt continued, glancing toward his wife.

"What was wrong with them?" Kurt looked up to his mother's face.

"They said I was sick, honey," His mother spoke sweetly, gently.

"Like with strep throat?" Kurt asked, looking for confirmation from either parent, "Noah Puckerman in Miss Lotty's class had strep throat last week."

"No, buddy," Burt let out a long breath, "Your mom... she has cancer. Do you know what that is?"

Kurt nodded slowly. Old people got cancer—his great aunt Rose and his Grandpa Frank had had cancer, but he had never met them—he'd only heard from relatives of their existence. They'd been dead before his birth.

"When someone has cancer, they have to take medicine that can make them very, very sick, but in the end it makes them feel better," His mother explained, her hand still warm on the top of his head, "and sometimes they have to do surgery to get some of the cancer out."

"Do you need surgery?" Kurt asked in a small voice. He was still trying to grapple with the concept of someone not old and in his immediate vicinity having cancer.

She nodded, "Yes, I do."

He felt his lip begin to tremble because, while cancer was confusing, he knew about surgery. Surgery meant scary things and big knives.

"It's going to be okay, though, Kurt," his father's voice shook with the same threat of tears that stung Kurt's eyes, "The doctors are going to do a very good job and we'll take good care of mom while she gets better, won't we?"

He'd nodded his head up and down, but the tears fell anyway. It was hard to keep them at bay with the comforting smell of his mother's perfume so near and his father's strong hand on his knee.

Burt moved to the couch to sit on Kurt's other side and the little family hugged one another tightly. Kurt felt safe there, cocooned between his parents' warm embraces. When they told him everything would be okay, he believed them with every fiber of his being.

He tried to snap himself back into the moment, but the present was no better than the memory.

Elizabeth was crying; the doctor was still talking in that placid tone—about surgery and tumor size and treatment options; something about smaller outcroppings, less of a concern… The world sounded the same way it did when, as a child, Kurt would lie back in the bathtub—nothing exposed to the air except his toes so the noise around him was all muted notes and murky, distorted sounds; like the soundtrack to the world had been slowed, but everyone moved madly on. He turned his gaze to Blaine. Blaine sat ramrod straight with unblinking eyes and a quiet mouth.

Kurt clamped his hand down tight, and Blaine looked over at him slowly, lost in the same underwater murkiness Kurt was.

Elizabeth and the doctor spoke—circle upon circle of talks about Blaine and his father and their health care plans and timelines. Kurt and Blaine stared at one another in muted confusion because this wasn't a part of their plan. This wasn't the way life was supposed to go.

"Blaine," The doctor broke into their crystalline bubble of silence.

Blaine turned his attention back to the doctor.

"Blaine," the doctor said his name again as though it could snap Blaine from his daze, "We're very good at what we do here; we have top of the line neurosurgeons and an excellent oncology department; you're in good hands. But we need to be aggressive with this thing, which means we need to act now to get a treatment plan going for you. Do you understand that?"

Blaine blinked at him and nodded; his voice sounded detached; dreamy, "When are you going to do the surgery?"

"We can get you in as early as tomorrow morning," Dr. Cameron reached out a hand to squeeze Blaine's shoulder, "I know this is scary; I know this is sudden—"

"I graduated yesterday," Blaine looked up at the doctor. As though desperate for him to understand, he repeated, "Yesterday."

The doctor nodded, "I know, but I'm afraid life doesn't let us choose when bad things happen, and even if we could, there's never a good time for these things. All we can do now is fight this as hard as we can, but that has to be your choice, Blaine, your mother and I can say whatever we want, but you're eighteen; the final call on how we deal with this is yours."

Blaine closed his eyes and held very still for a long moment, he nodded slowly, "…okay."

"Okay?" The doctor repeated.

Blaine opened his eyes and nodded again.

"We'll schedule you for the morning then;" Dr. Cameron scribbled another note down on his clipboard, "I'll send someone down to give you a bit of an orientation on how the procedure will go."

"Thank you for your time," Blaine mumbled.

"A word in the hall, please, Mrs. Anderson?" The doctor tucked his pen back into his pocket.

She nodded, but seemed reluctant to let go of Blaine's hand, "I'll be right back, honey; after I talk to Dr. Cameron, I'm going to call your father and see if he can't get an earlier flight back."

Blaine nodded; his hand lay lifeless on the bed when she finally let go.

"I'll see you soon, Blaine," Dr. Cameron shut the door quietly behind him and Elizabeth.

The silence that covered the room felt oppressive. For a moment, Kurt felt like he was back in his dream from the waiting room, but now the pieces on the table had some semblance of order. The picture it created was an ugly thing.

"They're going to cut open my head," Blaine's voice split the air like a knife and Kurt felt a twisting, hurting something in his chest when he looked up to meet Blaine's eyes.

Unshed tears clung to his dark lashes and his jaw worked with the effort to hold back his near-hysteria.

"They'll fix it," Kurt's voice was reedy and tight, "They'll do the surgery and it'll—"

"They're going to fucking take a knife to my skull and cut apart my brain, Kurt," Blaine's voice caught in his throat, "Are you understanding that at all?"

"Yes," Kurt felt hot tears slipping out of his control, burning hot tracks down his cheeks.

"I—I—" Blaine looked around the room as though hoping for a hidden camera; someone to jump out and declare it was all an awful joke. When nothing appeared, he met Kurt's eyes again; his expression all terror and anguish, "Kurt, I have cancer."

Kurt nodded his head—he didn't have any words to offer to deflect the ugly diagnosis or any of its implications—all he could do was climb up on the bed beside Blaine and hold him close while he dissolved into tears and terror. Kurt wrapped his arms around him tighter, tighter, tighter, "It's going to be okay; shhh, it's going to be okay."

When words offered no solace, Kurt turned to the one thing he knew always spoke to Blaine. Even after Blaine was quiet in Kurt's arms and the only remnant of his terror was the vice-like grip he maintained on his hand, Kurt kept singing. It comforted him, too, to feel the notes flowing out the way they always did. The way they always would.

Waiting for your call, I'm sick, call I'm angry

Call I'm desperate for your voice

Listening to the song we used to sing

In the car, do you remember

Butterfly, Early Summer

It's playing on repeat,

Just like when we would meet