“The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”

~ L.Fraqnk Baum, The Wizard of Oz

Days of Glory – Chapter Four – Best Laid Plans

“Have you thought of maybe going camping?” Blaine asked, standing in the kitchen with his hands around Kurt's waist.

“What...with the baby?” Kurt asked, turning and looking at him as if he were crazy.

“Why not? It's perfectly safe – we can do a dry run in the meadow and see if there are any problems. I think it would be fun!” Blaine countered, leaning forward to kiss Kurt's neck with his soft lips. Kurt smiled for a second before realizing what his husband said. He pulled away from Blaine's hands and moved two steps back before facing Blaine with his argument.

“I can think of half-a-dozen: bears, cougars, wolves, wind, rain, elk...” Kurt started putting up fingers to count, but Blaine just took his hand and kissed each finger.

“It's summer, honey. The nights are clear, the weather is warm, and I think it would be great,” Blaine cooed, smiling up at Kurt.

“Okay, anything for you. When do you want to try this?” Kurt asked. He was whipping some cream to top the mulberry pie Blaine had made earlier that evening.

“Katura is three months old – no time like the present,” Blaine smiled. He had picked the baby up out of her swing in the corner of the kitchen and was touching noses with her as he waited for the dessert.

“Okay – I'll get everything ready for tomorrow night. Is that soon enough?” Kurt asked. He walked across the floor and set Blaine's slice of pie on the table, then sat down beside his husband with his own plate of dessert.

Blaine took a fork and cut a bite of pie, making delicious humming noises as he chewed and swallowed.

“This pie is great. Good job, babe,” Kurt complimented. He grinned as Blaine took a bit of the whipped cream and fed it to Katura. “Is that good for her?”

“It won't hurt her, stop being an old lady, Kurt.”

“Me? Who wanted to put a snowsuit on her the first time we took her out – it was 70 degrees that day!” Kurt answered back, a smirk on his face.

“I didn't want her to get cold, how was I to know?” Blaine looked offended and Kurt snuggled into his arms.

“It's okay. I didn't know, either. It was a good thing Shannon was walking by and told us to go put something sensible on her,” Kurt soothed him. He kissed Blaine's cheek and put his hand to his jaw. “Am I forgiven for teasing you, sweetheart?”

“Yes. I guess I'm still a bit sensitive about it. I just want to be the best dad for Katura, don't you?”

Kurt nodded and gave Blaine a kiss on the lips. Katura, sitting in her daddy's arms giggled and babbled a bit of nonsense.

“Say 'Tatay',” Blaine coaxed.

“No, say 'Daddy' first,” Kurt said, pulling his daughter close to whisper it in her ear.

“Hey, that's not fair!” Blaine frowned, holding his hands out for Katura to see so she would want to come back to him. Kurt set her on his other side, farther from her tatay.

“Don't think I won't climb across your lap to get her, mister,” he warned and Kurt couldn't hide his smile any more. He set Katura down on Blaine's lap and pulled his husband close, his arms around the two of them. He began kissing Blaine's ear, humming into it as he stroked down his arm.

“You can't get out of it that easy,” Blaine tried to say, but he was trying not to giggle and finally slid down to the floor, Katura in his arms. Kurt followed him, rolling him on his back and took Katura, setting her gently on the floor beside her tatay.

“Awww, babe, let's cuddle,” Kurt said in his most sorrowful voice, then leaned over Blaine and kissed him passionately. Blaine's arms went up to curl around Kurt's neck, returning his passionate kiss. They just kissed for a while, then sat up. Katura was sound asleep.

“Let's take her up to bed, she needs her rest,” Blaine admitted, although he would rather have held her a while.

Up in her nursery, Blaine laid her down and adjusted her oxygen tube. Kurt tucked her bunny blanket around her, turned on the apnea alarm and both gave her a kiss on the head.

Midnight

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz

“What?” Kurt asked, sitting straight up in bed.

“Hey, what the...?” Blaine said, looking up at Kurt, blinking his eyes as Kurt turned on the bedside lamp.

“The alarm!!!” Kurt shouted and scrambled from the bed, racing down the hall to Katura's bed, Blaine a half-step behind him.

“Katura!” Blaine shouted, reaching past Kurt to look at the indicators on the panel. “Her O2 is down to 91,” he said aloud as Kurt picked her up very gently and held her close to his chest. She woke up slowly and seemed a bit groggy.

“It's back up to 98,” Blaine said, still watching the changing numbers. “Do you think it's a false alarm or do we call the hospital?”

“She seems okay, just not very alert from being woken up I think. I would wait a while to see if she seems better before panicking. She is a little warm, though,” Kurt said. He was a lot more worried than he sounded and Blaine could see that plainly.

“Okay. Here, I'll get her into a dry diaper and you fix her a bottle?” he suggested. Kurt agreed and passed her to her tatay.

An hour later, Katura was sleeping in her bed, the alarms on her monitors reset and her daddies sitting in the two rocking chairs.

“It's been over an hour and she looks peaceful. Let's get back to bed, okay babe?” Blaine suggested as he watched Kurt's head droop down once more. He'd been dozing off for the last twenty minutes.

“Is the monitor reset?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I'm pretty sleepy and she looks okay,” Kurt agreed and they went back to bed.

“Maybe she'll sleep until six today?” he hoped out loud. Over the past month the fathers had taken turns getting up to feed her during the night. At first they both got up each time, but the visiting nurse insisted that they needed more sleep. She was sympathetic, but adamant they take turns. So they took her advice and it was going well.

Kurt leaned over to kiss Blaine and snuggled close, falling asleep almost instantly. Blaine found it hard to fall asleep and finally sat up. He decided a glass of warm goat milk would be nice and crept downstairs to get some for himself.

Sitting on the settee in front of the fireplace, he thought about how much his life had changed over the last three months: from the joyous letter that first introduced them to their new daughter to now – daddies to the precious little scrap of a girl. She was still so tiny, although she was gaining weight and looking as if breathing was easier than when she first came home.

Blaine was beginning to feel sleepy sitting by the warm fire. His head nodded several times and he almost dropped the glass of milk. Each time he startled awake until he did drop the glass and jumped up off the settee, determined to go back to his warm bed and cuddle close to Kurt.

After cleaning the spilled milk and broken glass, Blaine was on his way up the stairs to get back into bed and get warm. He stopped in Katura's room to check on her. Glancing at the clock he saw it was 3:15 in the morning. He must have dozed off for longer than he realized sitting in front of the fire. He walked over to the baby's crib, automatically looking at the monitors to be sure his daughter was sleeping comfortably. They all looked normal. Well, then, the only thing to do was to tuck the bunny blanket around her shoulders once again.

He took the blanket from where it was bunched at the bottom of the crib and spread it back over her tiny body, then leaned over to kiss the top of her head, careful not to jostle her awake.

HOT!

That was all that registered in his mind. Katura was burning up. He switched on the lamp beside her crib and checked the vital signs on the monitor once again. The light woke Katura and she took a big breath and let it out in a loud wail that morphed into a congested cough.

Blaine went to her immediately and picked her up, detaching the monitor and putting her up on his shoulder to pat her back and whisper comforting words.

“Hey now, little bit, no crying. Your tatay is here, baby. Come on, lets quiet down...you're too hot to be fussing this much, honey. Shall we see how hot you are?” he cooed at the baby, setting her down in his lap as he sat in the rocker. He reached over to a drawer in her dresser and took out the instant read infant thermometer and put it in her ear. He looked at the read out: 103.7° F [39.8° C].

Blaine got up, set the thermometer on the top of the dresser and grabbed a dry diaper, then went back to his bedroom with Katura. He looked at Kurt, so sweet curled around Blaine's pillow and sound asleep. Blaine hated to wake his husband, Kurt had been the one to get up with Katura for the past few nights – claiming he couldn't sleep so he might as well be the one to do the midnight feeding.

Blaine's eyes stung thinking about all the little things that Kurt did for him every day. He was struck by how much all of that meant to him: not just getting up with the baby but setting Blaine's clothes out, picking up the dishes that tended to be left all over the house and wash them when it wasn't his turn to do it. Blaine would find a magazine he liked sitting beside his chair after Kurt made a run down to Corvalis or he'd cook a special supper with fresh-caught trout when Blaine got home from a rough day in the forest. There were a million little things that added up to the fact that Kurt was the most thoughtful, kind, and romantic husband anyone ever knew. Every day Blaine was grateful that Kurt was his.

Katura struggled, perhaps feeling her tatay was no longer concentrating his mind only on her. Blaine jumped a bit, the movement startling him. He looked back over at Kurt and made the decision not to wake him just yet. He left the bedroom and went into their shared office and closed the door.

Ring!

“Hello, this is the answering service for Drs. Wallace and Wallace. How can I help you?” the disembodied voice came over the phone.

“Hello. I apologize for calling at this early hour,” Blaine started.

“It's my job, no apology necessary,” the cheerful voice said, “How can I help you?”

“My daughter, Katura Hummel-Anderson, is a patient of Dr. Wallace and she has a fever of 103.7. She has RSV, is on oxygen, and her SIDS alarm went off last night,” Blaine said, trying to stay calm. Tears came to his eyes but he blinked them away.

“Which doctor do you see?” the woman asked and Blaine started to get anxious, wanting to get the doctor on the phone so he could do something for his daughter.

“She is seen by Iris Wallace,” he supplied, remembering that the pediatrician was in practice with her father.

“And your daughter's name again?”

“Katura Hummel-Anderson,” Blaine said, getting more impatient.

“Stay on the line and I will contact the doctor for you.”

Blaine sat on Kurt's stool at his drafting table, leaning his arm against the weathered wood of the desk. Kurt had been working on an architectural project and the plans he was drawing were on the drafting table. Blaine, looking for something to occupy his mind while he waited, glanced at the drawing on the desk. It was a large building...ah, a library. Blaine remembered this one, the last big project Kurt was working on before they went to meet Katura for the first time. Blaine couldn't help but smile, he was so proud of Kurt and his ability to create such beautiful architecture.

“Mr. Hummel-Anderson? This is Dr. Wallace. What's up with Katura?” the doctor's sleepy voice came over the phone.

Blaine explained what had been going on with Katura since the alarm went off last night. As he was finishing up, Katura woke up and started to cry again, pulling at her face. Blaine walked down the hall to her bedroom and set her in her crib, then stepped into the hallway and closed the door so he could hear the doctor.

“Has she been doing anything unusual?” the doctor asked.

“She keeps pulling at her oxygen cannula, which is something she doesn't usually do,” he said, “but that's the only thing I've noticed. We started using 'new skin' bandages on her cheeks to minimize the chafing from the tape,” he told her.

“That is probably not an issue – could it be that she is pulling at her ears, not the tubing?”

Blaine stopped to think.

“Yeah, she could be trying to pull at her ear. Now that I think about it, she is only grabbing at her left ear. What do you think is going on?” he asked.

“Most probably an ear infection. Let's see, you and your husband live quite a ways from here, right?' Dr Wallace said, “If you can get to Philomath by say, 6:30 this morning, I will meet you there. It may be a better alternative than taking her to see an unfamiliar doctor at the ER. I don't think we should mess around with an ear infection with this little lady, she has enough on her plate. Can you get her here by then?”

“We'll be there. Thanks for calling me back so soon, and sorry for waking you up,” Blaine said, his anxiety still just as bad. His baby girl was so sick – he wondered if there was anything he could do in the meantime. Dr. Wallace must have read his mind.

“You can give her a dose of baby tylenol to help with the fever and the earache pain and a warm cloth held over the sore ear might alleviate the pain a bit if she will tolerate it. I'll see you in a few hours.”

Blaine was ending the call when he looked up to see Kurt standing in the hallway, leaning against the doorframe of their bedroom and rubbing his eyes.

“What's up...is Katura sick?” Kurt asked, seeing Blaine's face looking so sad.

“Yes. Her fever is 103.7 and she was pulling at her face, so I called Dr. Wallace. She wants to see Katura at 6:30 this morning. I guess we better get dressed. I'm just going to give her a dose of tylenol and get her a bottle,” Blaine explained to his husband. Kurt came over and put his arms around Blaine, tightening his grip when he heard Blaine trying to stifle his sobs against Kurt's neck.

“Oh, babe, she is going to be okay. We caught it so early that I bet she will be fine in a few days. Why don't you get her bottle and I'll get the tylenol and sit with her. Okay?” Kurt tried to placate the curly-haired man. Blaine just hugged him tighter.

“Dr Wallace also suggested a warm cloth over her ear might take the edge off the pain,” Blaine said.

“Okay, I'll fix that for her,” he answered and rubbed his eyes one more time.

They could hear Katura in her bed, the crying settling into quieter fussing. She sounded tired.

Kurt held Blaine a bit tighter, then loosened his grip and pulled back to look at Blaine's face.

“Hey, she's gonna be fine. I promise,” Kurt said as he went in the bathroom to get a warm cloth before coming back to Katura's room.

Half an hour later, Katura was asleep. She was still alarmingly warm but the tylenol had started to work on her fever. The fathers were in their bedroom getting dressed because they had to start early to get down from their mountain home to Philomath and Dr. Wallace.

“Just because we're in a hurry does not mean you get to dress like a rag-picker,” Kurt admonished him.

“What's a rag-picker?” Blaine asked, looking at Kurt with narrow eyes.

“I don't know exactly,” Kurt laughed, “but my grandmother used to say that when she didn't like what I was wearing.”

Blaine laughed, too. He looked down to see he had put on a chocolate brown dress shirt with gray twill trousers. What was he thinking? He blushed to have made such a mistake and guessed he was more tired and worried than he had thought. Kurt must have noticed it, too, because he came over to wrap his arms around Blaine's shoulders and give him a kiss.

“I guess I better change my shirt...” Blaine mumbled to himself and turned to see his husband holding out a hanger with a black linen shirt and one with a light blue and gray checked vest that matched his trousers. Blaine took the clothes, silently thanking his husband with a gracious smile. Kurt smiled back.

Almost two hours later, Blaine turned the last corner and pulled into the parking lot of the doctor's office. He reached over to gently wake Kurt, feeling troubled that Kurt was so sleepy that he hadn't woken up on his own when the SUV stopped. Blaine leaned over and kissed his husband on the cheek, softly calling his name.

Kurt sat up straight, blinking his eyes and finally focusing on Blaine.

“Oh, we're here. Are you sure Dr. Wallace wanted us to come so early? The sun is barely up...” Kurt started to say. He was interrupted when another car drove up beside them and Dr. Wallace smiled over at the two men. She looked almost as tired as Kurt as she got out of her car.

Blaine got out and opened the back door to lift out the portable oxygen and then unstrapped Katura from her carseat. He struggled a bit with trying to balance the tank, the diaper bag, and Katura with her bunny blanket wrapped around her. Kurt rushed over to take part of the burden and they followed the doctor into the clinic.

“Hospital?” Kurt asked, looking worried. “Are you sure?”

Dr. Wallace gave him an exasperated stare.

“Oh, sorry –“ Kurt said, “of course you know if she needs to be in the hospital. I didn't mean to say you didn't know your business...” Kurt stumbled over an apology.

“Don't worry, I understand. Kurt, you look so tired, are you feeling okay?” Iris Wallace asked the new father. “We've talked before about getting enough rest and with a sick little one it can be hard to juggle everything, and that is without the added burden of her being sick with RSV. It is a difficult thing to do and nobody would blame you if you needed some help.”

Blaine gave Kurt a pat on his arm that was curled around their sleeping daughter. Kurt closed his eyes and tried to stem the tears that were threatening. He managed to stop them and gave Blaine a grateful smile.

Dr. Wallace diagnosed Katura with pneumonia and a severe ear infection. Both Blaine and Kurt wanted to know if it was something they had done or not done, but Dr. Wallace assured them that she could see what good care they were taking of their daughter and that babies were very susceptible to getting ear infections and children with RSV were at a much greater risk of developing pneumonia than average.

“I want you to take Katura over to the hospital and check her in. I'll call ahead and have a bed ready for her. I want to start an IV right away to give her a bit more fluid and get an antibiotic on board. That should take care of the pain in her ear the quickest way. You are welcome to stay with her and the night nurse will be able to set one of you up with a cot so you can stay with her tonight. The other one needs to get some sleep.” She glared at Kurt who looked sheepish.

“Thank you so much, Dr Wallace, for coming to meet us so early and for everything you've done for Katura,” Kurt said, holding out a hand to shake hers.

“It's my job, and I have kind of a soft spot for this little girl,” Dr. Wallace said, smiling at the two fathers as they bundled their daughter back up for the ride to the hospital.

Kurt and Blaine's second house, a three story Victorian style, was less than ten minutes from the hospital in Philomath. So when they came to take a nap in the bedroom they maintained in the house – which at the present time was rented to Puck and his grandmother – they just went to the back door to let themselves in. They'd had to knock when they realized there was a chain lock set from inside the house and their key wouldn't open the door.

“Who's there?” a voice from inside the house asked. He sounded sleepy and a bit grumpy.

“Kurt and Blaine – what's with the chain lock on the door?” Blaine asked as Puck undid the lock and opened the kitchen door for his friends and landlords.

“Oh, Grandma was worried about someone breaking in when I work late, so I installed these to make her feel more secure,” Puck said, walking back towards the hallway. He was in his pajamas and wanted to get dressed. “What are you guys doing here – and where's Katura?”

“She is in the hospital. The nurses sent us home so they could get her settled in and put in the IVs,” Kurt said, his face pale and his expression full of anxiety.

“IVs? What's going on with her?” Grandma Sophie said from the hall doorway. Puck's grandmother was dressed in her usual floral patterned house-dress and accompanying apron, her hair in a bun pinned on the back of her head and her wire-framed glasses on her nose.

“She has pneumonia and an ear infection,” Blaine explained, his arms coming around Kurt's waist to try and calm him. Kurt looked relieved as Blaine rested his chin on Kurt's shoulder and gave him a small kiss on the neck.

Sophie smiled to see the token of affection between the boys. It came so naturally to them that they didn't even notice they were doing it in front of other people. Sophie wished her grandson and his girlfriend, Lenore, would be so relaxed in front of her.

Puck left just as Sophie offered them all some tea and freshly-baked cinnamon rolls.

By the time Blaine was on his second roll, Puck returned dressed and ready for the day. It was Wednesday, his day off from managing the auto repair shop owned by Kurt's dad. Burt had the opportunity to buy a shop in Philomath and he had hired Puck last year after six months of training him how to do the books for his auto shop in Washington, where he lived now. He and Carole had moved from Ohio to be closer to their boys when all of them decided to go to Oregon University.

Kurt and Blaine had purchased this refurbished Victorian house in Philomath when they were in college in Corvalis and rented it out when they moved back to Warner Lumber Camp the year they graduated.

Kurt had started out taking music and voice classes but changed his major to architecture after the first semester. He fell in love with the process and design of it all and was hired right out of college by a prestigious firm here in Philomath. He worked from their house in Warner Camp, but Kurt also maintained an office here in their Philomath residence. Puck and his grandmother rented the large part of the house while Kurt and Blaine kept their rooms on the third floor for when they were in town.

Blaine had taken his degree in Forestry Conservation from the university the same year and went to work for Brayden Warner, the owner of Warner Lumber Company. Blaine had grown up in the camp with his father and brother and had been cared for by Cooper and the Warner family when his father died in a fire saving Brayden's small daughter, Lenore. Part of his father's legacy and as part of a gift from Brayden Warner, Blaine owned a share of the company and some land in the home compound along with a large stretch of land on the next mountain over, Mt. Russell. It was only right, in his mind, that he give back to the Warners and participate in the welfare of the business by getting his degree and helping to shape the future of Warner Lumber.

“If you are done with breakfast, let's go sit in the back yard and you can tell me all about Katura,” Sophie said, smiling at the two boys she thought of as her own.

Out in the backyard, Kurt looked at the gardens that now covered the land in back of the house. There were a rainbow of bright flowers, the scents thick in the air as they sat under the large linden tree. There were large sections of wildflowers: cosmos, day lilies, flax, poppies and closer to the house were beds of snapdragons, petunias, creeping jenny, sweet williams, dianthus, pansies, and many more whose names were unfamiliar to Kurt. There were trellises all along the house and also the fence that sported clematis, trumpet vines, and Kurt's favorite dark blue morning glories. In planter boxes on the house were dark red geraniums and white baby's breath. He especially loved the rose garden, which reminded him of his mother, and the Stargazer lilies that he had planted with Blaine the year they bought the house. These lilies were special to the two of them for many reasons, the most important of which was that when they had first met they spent many nights gazing at the stars as they fell in love.

With this on his mind, Kurt sat down on the porch swing and pulled Blaine down beside him. His arms went around Blaine and his head rested on his husband's strong shoulder. Kurt closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of Blaine – a scent that reminded Kurt of the smells of spring. He smiled.

Blaine snaked his arm through the clinging limbs of his husband, finding comfort in Kurt's closeness. He knew how much Kurt relied on him in times of stress and although Kurt appeared to be fine, Blaine could feel the tenseness and slight tremors that went through his muscles. He hadn't wanted to leave Katura alone in the hospital, but a quiet word from one of the nurses they trusted let Kurt know that the baby needed to be left alone to rest for a while. Her fathers' nervousness about her health were conveyed to the tiny girl and could make her rest less beneficial. Against his better judgment, Blaine took Kurt's arm and led him out to the SUV and drove them to their house. He knew Grandma Sophie was what they needed right now and he convinced Kurt to go with him for a rest.

“The garden looks so beautiful!” Kurt exclaimed, looking now at Grandma Sophie and smiling. It was the first really genuine smile Blaine had seen from him all day and that felt good.

“Noah has done a lot of it. I only have to ask and he's out here with his shovel, turning over soil and adding compost for a new garden,” Sophie bragged, leaning over a bit to put a hand on her great grandson's knee in appreciation. Puck blushed.

“Well, it shows, everything is so bright and cheerful,” Blaine added. He had a healthy love for anything growing and although this manifested in his love of trees and forests, he could extend it to a garden of flowers or vegetables. He and Kurt had a kale garden in back of their own house with many of the fresh vegetables they ate every day. They had a flower garden, too, but it was mostly Stargazer lilies. A lot of the flowers Kurt loved wouldn't grow at that altitude and so the gardens at their Victorian house meant a lot to Kurt.

“Now, tell us about Katura and if we can go see her when she is feeling a bit better,” Sophie asked. She knew talking about their fears would help to get all the anxiety out in the open and thus start the healing she knew the new fathers' needed. She had been a young mother once and so had her daughter and her granddaughter, so she was well versed in trying to comfort the parents of a sick baby.

“She has pneumonia. This morning her alarm went off and we rushed in to her, but she was doing fine. We both thought it was a false alarm, but kept one eye open in case it went off again. Blaine got up with her the next time and she had a high fever and he called the doctor. Dr. Wallace met us at her office at 6 this morning and sent us right to the hospital,” Kurt relayed. His voice shook as he mentioned the fever and again at the word 'hospital', and Blaine hugged him tighter, dropping a kiss in his hair.

“She was so brave! In spite of the pain she must be having with the ear infection, she didn't cry much and she kept trying to smile when we talked to her,” Blaine said, tears threatening as he told them.

“What does the doctor say?” Puck asked. In spite of his tough facade, Noah Puckerman was head-over-heels in love with the tiny baby girl. The first time he held her – with lots of coaxing – he looked into her bright eyes and that was it. Katura had stolen his heart and he'd been up to the mountain cabin to visit three times so far, each with an excuse such as taking his girlfriend, Lenore, home to visit with her parents. The look of worry on his face shook Blaine a bit as he relayed the latest from the health care team.

“She was resting comfortably, according to Nurse Kelly, when we got here. Kelly said she thought giving her a few hours to sleep as the medications start to work would be best for her and she wanted us to catch up a little on sleep before we go back this afternoon. Dr. Wallace promised to call us as soon as she saw Katura for rounds about eleven,” Blaine told him.

“She has pneumonia in both lungs, but it isn't too bad so far. We could hear the congestion, it sounds so painful with each breath but they are giving her antibiotics and something to help with the pain in her ear. The ear drum hasn't burst, thank God, but that is a possibility,” Kurt added, his eyes swollen and red from trying to keep his tears from falling. Puck leaned forward and put a comforting hand on Kurt's shoulder and gave him a smile. Kurt blinked and tried to smile back, but it wasn't going to happen.

“The good Lord will take care of her, I have faith,” Sophie said. She was well aware of Kurt's aversion to organized religion but she also knew that in times of stress Kurt often used the Lord's name in his pleas. She suspected that he did have a type of belief system – it just wasn't one that most would recognize as 'Christian'. She understood that all of the masked homophobia connected with some of the more vocal church leaders made Kurt disapprove of them, and she couldn't blame him, but she was convinced that Kurt did believe in a higher power. He just didn't wear his spiritual beliefs on his sleeve and she could respect that. Kurt smiled at the old woman.

“Thank you, Grandma. You don't know how much your prayers mean to me,” he smiled at her. He got up to come over and lean near to the woman, kissing her soft pink cheek and giving her a warm hug. “I love you,” he whispered in her ear and blushed as she took his hand and pulled him close to kiss his cheek in return.

Kurt walked back to Blaine's side and prepared to sit back down, but Sophie interrupted him.

“The two of you need to get some rest. Go on upstairs and get into bed. The drapes are closed up there and it will be quiet here today. I'm going to take a bit of a rest myself and then I'll bake some brownies for you to take to the nurses when you go visit your daughter this afternoon,” Sophie decided. “Don't worry, I will wake you up in time to go see Little Katura before her afternoon nap.”

“Okay, Grandma. Thank you, and also thank you for breakfast,” Blaine said, standing and taking Kurt's hand to lead his tired husband up the stairs.