When Kurt wakes up the next morning, he’s nervous. His father knows something is up, Kurt’s just not sure how much he knows.
He rolls over and stretches, the fabric of his sleeve rubbing on the exposed skin of his wrist where the bandage has twisted around.
He hisses slightly as the rough drag of the fibers irritates the raw flesh. The cuts are lightly scarred, but the surrounding skin is bright pink, each line puffy from the drag of the blade.
He huffs in frustration as he flips his legs over the side of the bed.
The light coming in through the crack in his curtains is bright – much brighter than it should be for seven am. He turns to look at his clock and nearly falls on the floor as he realizes the time. It’s three hours after he’s supposed to be at school. He overslept. Why didn’t his father wake him up?
He scrambles out of bed and into his bathroom. One glance in the mirror shows just how awful he looks. His skin is pale and there are dark circles beneath his eyes. He flings open his cupboard doors and begins to frantically get ready. In his haste, several containers of product fall out and clatter noisily in the sink. He groans frustratedly, the sound coming to an abrupt gurgle as a silver glint in the back of the cabinet catches his eye. There lays his pocket knife, the silver finish gleaming in the artificial light.
That’s when he gives up on getting ready and decides it’s too late, he’ll just have to forget about it. He’ll see if his dad will call it in later.
He walks back into his room and grabs his phone off the charger, the heads downstairs to grab some food; his stomach growling in anticipation.
In no way, shape, or form was Kurt prepared for the sight that awaited him at the bottom of the stairs as he rounded the corner and took the first step : his father, seeming somewhat lifeless, laying there at the foot of the stairs. Kurt let out a gasp and flew the rest of the way down. Once he reached his father, he dropped to his knees and immediately began to search for a pulse. It was there, flickering shallowly, but there.
“Dad, please. Dad, answer me. Dad!”
He stood up, realizing he had dropped his phone somewhere in his hurry, and ran to the kitchen to grab the wall phone. He quickly dialed 9-1-1 and pressed the receiver to his ear.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” A female receptionist answered.
“Please, my father. Something happened, he’s not responding.” His voice was shaking with nerves and fear.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down. Can you please tell me your father’s name, as well as your own?”
“Burt Hummel, that’s my father. I’m Kurt, Kurt Hummel,” he replies. “Please hurry.”
He proceeds to relay his address and other information to the kind receptionist, and then hangs up the phone.
He half-runs, half-walks back over to where his father lay motionless, and kneels at his side, holding one of his hands in his own.
“Dad,” he whispers, the sound strangled, “Please dad, you’ve got to wake up. Talk to me, please.” By now the tears are flowing freely and uncontrollably as Kurt continues to stroke his father’s hand and eagerly await the paramedics.
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Two hours later and Kurt is sitting alone in the waiting room of the Lima Memorial Hospital.
After the ambulance arrived, the house had been a chaotic mess of paramedics, flinging him questions and carefully loading his father onto a stretcher and into the back of the awaiting ambulance.
The entire ride to hospital, Kurt was stiff; the tears had dried, and his usual guarded demeanor firmly in place. Only answering questions when necessary and refusing to feel.
Once they arrived at the hospital, his father was rushed to the OR for emergency surgery, the nurses on the ambulance having already come to conclusion of a heart attack. Kurt feels nothing; he’s shutting down.
Hours pass, and finally a doctor he hasn’t yet seen approaches.
“Kurt Hummel?” The man asks.
Kurt turns his head the doctor’s direction. “Yes?”
“Mr. Hummel, your father had a major heart attack early this morning. We’ve done as much as we possibly can. The surgery went well and he is now resting the ICU where he’ll need to stay for a while. But, there is one thing you should know.”
“That is?” Kurt asks, beginning to feel anxious, the weight of the news finally resting on him.
“Kurt, your father is in a coma.”
His father’s in a coma. Kurt’s strong, tough, independent father is in a coma.
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After the doctor’s announcement, Kurt followed him to the ICU where he was allowed to peer through the glass. The doctor left to allow him some privacy and to attend to another patient, and Kurt couldn’t bring himself to be saddened that he hadn’t learned the doctor’s name. He stayed there silently for hours, until one of the nurses kindly informed him that visiting hours were nearly over.
Realizing that it’s after four in the afternoon, Kurt calls Mercedes to come drive him home, only giving her snippets of information, leaving out as much as he possibly can and brushing off her sympathy as kind as he possibly can.
Once he’s inside, he carefully locks the door and walks as slowly as he possibly can to the stairs. When he reaches them, he looks at the kitchen and remembers he hasn’t eaten all day. After a few moments of silent internal discussion, he decides and against getting something and continues his way to his room.
He heads up the stairs to his room slowly; one stair at a time. Once he’s there, he heads straight for his bathroom and to the cabinet over the sink.
He knows he shouldn’t do it; knows it’s bad, so bad, and what would his father think?
But he’s upset and the tears are coming back and he’s starting to feel what he’s been blocking out all day and reality is finally catching up to him, hitting him full force like a freight train.
So he locks the bathroom door and slumps to the floor against it, the knife clutched firmly in his right hand. He roughly pushes up his left sleeve, ignoring the way it rubs on his previous marks, and flicks out the blade.
His hand is shaky but he forces it to hold still. He moves the knife to his wrist and presses down, dragging the blade over a strip of porcelain skin, and laughing out loud at the joyous feeling as tears continue to stream down his face.