Chapter 31: Closure

After spending the night at the hospital for observation and getting the doctors to sign on their release forms, Kurt and Blaine found themselves back at the Hudson-Hummels’. Burt and Carole didn’t stop asking how they were feeling every fifteen minutes, and made them lie down for the rest of the day. Obeying that order wasn’t difficult to do, as they cuddled together on Kurt’s broad bed.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Blaine said after a spell o silence.

‘What about?’

‘Everything. You know, my father, Lindsey and what she told me. All that happened in the last few days.’

He paused, still wrapped up in his considerations. Just a couple of days earlier, he would have hardly even thought of making the decisions that he was now making. It was astonishing how a moment of dread and conviction that he had lost everything could change a person’s perspective.

‘Is there a conclusion to all that thinking or was it just thinking?,’ Kurt asked.

Blaine turned to him, propping himself on his elbows.

‘There is a conclusion. Two conclusions really. And I’m not sure you’re gonna like them.’

‘I’ve told you already that I’ll support you no matter what you choose to do. That’s what I’m here for.’

Gathering his courage, Blaine took a deep breath. The easier matter first.

‘I’m going to tell Lindsey that I agree. I’ll write music for other people. I only won’t let them use the song I wrote for you.’

‘Okay.’ Kurt nodded with understanding. ‘What changed your mind, though? I thought you didn’t want that.’

‘The accident. And Lady Gaga.’ He chuckled, making Kurt raise his eyebrows. ‘This is how she started out, writing for other people, and look where it got her. And though she might not have DID or anything, she is kinda crazy.’

‘That’s true,’ Kurt admitted with a laugh. ‘And I really believe you can be like her or better. Minus all the meat outfits and stuff.’

He leant in to place a tiny kiss on his boyfriend’s mouth.

‘What about the other thing?,’ he asked.

Blaine hesitated, biting his lip anxiously.

‘I want to go see him. My father.’

‘Oh. Is it because of the accident, too?’

Silence fell for a moment as Blaine assembled his thoughts; they were still a mess.

‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘And no. It just made me realise how fragile life is. Or realise that again. And that Burt was right. I should get stuff out, I should say everything that’s been on my mind all these years, when I still have the chance to do it. I need closure. I probably won’t ever be able to really move on, but maybe that’ll help. Even if just a little bit.’

‘Do you think you’re going to be alright?,’ Kurt asked gently.

Blaine shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

‘No idea. I hope so.’

‘Okay. We’ll go back there so you can see him. But I think you should call Dr. Peterson first, see what she thinks.’

‘I already did, this morning,’ Blaine said. ‘She agrees that it might help, but she’s worried it might go wrong.’

‘But you want to do it anyway?’

Blaine nodded without hesitation.

‘I just need to.’

‘Then we’re going back to Columbus tomorrow.’

***

Burt insisted on driving them to Columbus. He felt calmer not letting his son behind the wheel so soon after the accident, even though Kurt was entirely blameless. It did not make Blaine any less restless, as his mind was tormented not only by the perspective of being in a car again, but also by what he was going to say to his father and what he was going to hear in response.

The hallway of the dim-lit ward was as eerily quiet as they remembered. Nurses and doctors seemed to be the only people allowed out of the rooms. Or maybe it was simply that the in-patients were too weak, too consumed with illness to come out.

They stumbled upon Nurse Debbie on their way to her station in the end of the hallway. She didn’t manage to hide her surprise at seeing Blaine again.

‘Mr Anderson,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be visiting again.’

‘Neither did I,’ he admitted. His voice shook ever so slightly. ‘I came to see my father, could you tell me which room he’s in?’

She rearranged her features into a servile smile.

‘Of course, it’s 2611, this way, gentlemen.’ She waved at the corridor that started several feet to her left.

‘Oh, we’re just here for moral support,’ Kurt said dismissively, as his father nodded in agreement.

With a pat on the shoulder from Burt and a kiss on the cheek from his boyfriend, Blaine headed down the corridor in the flickering fluorescent light coming from the ceiling.

‘I couldn’t vouch for myself if I went in there,’ Burt said. ‘And I know only bits of the whole story.’

‘Aren’t you a little harsh on that poor man, Mr.-?’

‘Hummel,’ he supplemented her. ‘And believe me, I don’t think that’s harsh. Do you think I’m being harsh, Kurt?’

With a deep sigh, Kurt shook his head.

‘You’re not. I’d probably strangle him myself if I ever got the chance.’

‘I understand Mr Anderson is an alcoholic and life with him couldn’t have been easy, but- Now he’s just a sick, dying man who could use a little sympathy,’ the nurse said.

Kurt scoffed, folding his arms over his chest.

‘Do you know who is sick, too? His son. In a way that can’t be cured. He won’t die from it either, but ever since he was a little kid, he’s been stigmatised as a crazy person. He’s suffered more than ninety per cent of population put together could even imagine. And do you know who put his hand to that? His father. None of this would have happened, none of it, if only he had the little sympathy you’re not asking for him.’

‘Forgive me, I overstepped,’ Nurse Debbie muttered, backing away behind her desk.

‘Yes, you did,’ Kurt grumbled at her.

Burt thought he’d never been this proud of his son.

***

Blaine tapped on the door so lightly he was afraid nobody would hear. Now, after all the considerations and making tough decisions, having something stop him from doing this, or even delaying it, was unacceptable. But a couple of seconds later, a muffled husky voice sounded inside.

‘You know I won’t open the door for you, why the fuck do you bother, Hall?’

Shivers ran down Blaine’s spine. The voice was weaker than he’d remembered, but the hostility in it hadn’t waned. After all, Richard had probably never been as much as odds with his life than he was now.

Blaine inhaled deeply one more time and pushed the door open.

The man in the hospital bed, attached to machines and tubes, looked nothing like the tall, strongly-built, red-faced drunk Blaine had remembered from the last time they had met. He was thin, his yellowish skin seemed like it was made of blotched parchment, stretched over a science class fake skeleton.

Blaine stalled uncertainly no more than a few feet from the threshold.

‘It’s not Hall, it’s me,’ he said, forcing Richard to look from under his squinting eyelids.

‘You? I told them not to call you!’

The disgust in his voice was obvious, but Blaine realised he’d thought hearing it would sting more. All this suddenly seemed so much easier as he stood tall over the shrunken figure that once used to scare him you death.

‘They didn’t call me. I found out from a friend of yours. I didn’t even know you had any left anymore.’

Richard bared his teeth in anger.

‘What do you want? You got your grandmother’s money, she had much more than me, that bitch.’

Blaine’s hands curled up into fists at the words. All these years and nothing had changed. There was nothing that could ever make Richard comprehend how much damage he had caused. But at this point, it didn’t even matter. Now it was just about Blaine getting all of this hurt off his chest.

‘I don’t want anything from you. I definitely don’t want your money, if you still haven’t spent it all on booze.’ Now it was his turn to be hostile and it was the best he’d ever felt around his father. ‘I only want you to know- No, I want you to admit that you’re the one responsible for screwing up my life.’

Silence fell over the room, broken only by Richard’s ragged breath. He was fuming with rage and that made Blaine strangely calm. He could feel the alters somewhere close beneath the surface of his consciousness, but none of them tried to take control. It seemed like they were waiting, listening in on the conversation.

‘I might have not been a picture perfect father, but don’t you dare blame me for everything that happened,’ Richard said through his teeth. ‘You chose to pretend you’re crazy to have people pity you, I had nothing to do with it.’

Blaine chuckled mockingly.

‘Honestly, you’re still saying I would pretend to be sick all my life? Do you really need a liver or is that playing pretend, too?’

He could swear that if only his father had enough strength, he’d get a punch in the face.

‘I do need a liver,’ Richard muttered. ‘What, do you wanna share with your old man?’

A flicker of hope broke through the anger in his eyes. For a second his expression was almost pleading. Blaine didn’t answer right away, relishing in the power he now had, in how sweet his revenge of his tasted.

‘I thought about it,’ he admitted nonchalantly. ‘But then I found out I couldn’t do it, because of my made-up illness. It’s funny how life works, isn’t it? That’s karma, I guess. ‘Cause none of this would have ever happened if it wasn’t for you. If you didn’t step too hard on the gas. If you acted like a responsible parent should. Mom and Cooper would still be alive, and both of us would be healthy. Grandma wouldn’t have been the one to raise me. And now here you are, dying, because of the actions that you took.’

‘I didn’t kill your mother or your brother. It was your fault. We wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for you,’ Richard spat out for the millionth time in the last nineteen years.

‘I was four! I wasn’t the one behind the wheel, you were! Don’t try to pin this on me, ‘cause I won’t let it.’

‘Leave,’ Richard told him, seething. ‘Leave!’

Blaine stayed fixed on the spot and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Fine, I’ll go. But, just so you know, even if I could be the donor, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t want to be the one to save your life.’ He turned slowly to the door, feeling strangely light, almost giddy. ‘You better try praying for that liver. Though I don’t think any God would have mercy on you.’

‘Go to hell!,’ his father yelled after him in his weary voice, as Blaine crossed the threshold.’

‘You too, Dad.’

And with that, he shut the door behind him before dropping to the floor, exhausted.