Blaine Anderson-Button always knew he was different. It happened gradually, the knowing. He didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Oh look, I’m different!” It was more of a slow build, the realization that he wasn’t like the other little boys he sometimes saw running up and down the streets while he gazed longingly from his wheelchair, the knowing that he was more similar to the elderlies who lived with him than he was to those children. While they could run and jump and whoop and fall only to leap back up with nothing more than a skinned knee and a flashing smile, Blaine couldn’t even walk. His body was strange, more limited, as if he were a puppet whose strings had gotten tangled.

            Blaine would ask his mama why he was so young but looked so much older, why he was so different, in his croaking, scratchy voice that did nothing but remind him that he could spend as many hours as he wanted locked in his room, imagining that he could just rise from his chair and dart out to join the boys playing baseball just beyond his back porch. He could imagine, but it wouldn’t make it real. He was just too different.

            Mama Quinn always tried to tell him that he was wrong (no, baby, you’re not different, you’re special), comfort him and rub the aches and cramps out of his bones and he cried, begging for her to tell him what was wrong with him, why he’d ended up so strange, but she never had the answers Blaine wanted. She could never explain why his body was a prison to his young mind, could only stroke his cheek with her gentle, work-worn hands and say that only time and God would tell.

            Mama Quinn talked a whole lot about time and God. She said God had plans for Blaine, that He’d had a purpose in mind when He brought Blaine to Quinn’s doorstep, and Blaine would listen quietly and nod his head and fidget with the arms of his wheelchair, but he wouldn’t really take it in. He knew his mama believed in God, but Blaine just wasn’t so sure about the whole idea. God seemed like a funny thing to him, the way He would give back in peculiar ways that never seemed to make up for the things that He decided to take.

            Why would God take away Mama’s ability to have a baby? Blaine didn’t know exactly what that meant, and he hadn’t meant to listen through Quinn and Noah’s closed door, but it was Quinn’s crying that had caught his attention.

            “My whole life I’ve just wanted to raise a family, Noah,” Quinn whispered, voice choked with tears, and Blaine heard the low rumble of Noah’s deep voice, murmuring something Blaine couldn’t make out.

            “You know I love Blaine,” she replied, and Blaine froze, brittle fingers poised over the wheels of his chair. “But how long does he have, Noah? He wasn’t even supposed to live this long – he’s a miracle, and I love him like my own, but what’s going to happen when he goes and we have no way…?”

            Unable to listen any longer, Blaine wheeled slowly away from the door, heart twisting in the most uncomfortable way.

            He rolled into the parlor and sat quietly, parading his toy soldiers across the coffee table. So he was dying? Was that what was wrong with him? Was that why Mama never answered his questions – because she didn’t want to scare him? Blaine wasn’t scared, exactly. He was actually just numb, wondering if this was just another one of his funny dreams.

            Blaine scraped one of his solders across the wood towards the others, spluttering out gunshot sounds and throwing the soldiers down on the table as an imaginary grenade exploded, scattering them. One of the soldiers skidded across the table and thumped to the carpet and Blaine huffed out a sigh and leaned towards the floor, groping for the toy with a withered, aching hand. His reach fell just short and he made a small noise of distress, scooting his chair closer to the fallen solider. The elderlies in the room were oblivious to his plight, too absorbed in their gossip and jigsaw puzzles to notice Blaine. He stretched out, grunting a little as his body creaked in protest. He still couldn’t reach. He wanted to scream.

            Blaine didn’t get it. Why did he have to be so challenged, so useless? He couldn’t even pick up his toys because he couldn’t stand, couldn’t get out of his wheelchair because he’d fall and break his delicate bones. Blaine always tried not to hate things, because Mama Quinn always said that hate was too strong for one person to hold onto, but Blaine decided that he really, really hated his chair and his bones and his sickness and that stupid soldier.

            He let out a strangled cry of frustration and slammed his fists down on the arms of his wheelchair, succeeding only in bruising his hands. He snuffled pitifully, glaring at the soldier, lying so innocently on the floor just out of his reach.

            The hem of a familiar dress entered Blaine’s blurred vision, accompanying a soft coo of comfort, and Quinn bent to pick up the soldier, pressing it into Blaine’s throbbing hand.

            “Don’t cry, baby, it’s alright,” she murmured, gently removing Blaine’s glasses to swipe away his tears with her thumb.

            “Why am I so different, Mama?” he sniffed, grinding his palms into his eyes. He’d asked the same question so, so many times before he’d lost count, and he already knew what her answer would be, because it was always the same.

            “Blaine, what makes you different makes you special,” she said soothingly, kneeling beside his wheelchair, but Blaine didn’t believe her, not after hearing what she had told Noah. Blaine wasn’t special; he was sick, he was dying. He’d heard Quinn – he wasn’t even supposed to be alive. He was just a strange boy who couldn’t run and play, limited by his so easily-broken bones, and he was dying. Blaine was usually a happy boy and did his best to face everything with a smile, but dying? Blaine didn’t want to die. He wanted so many things; he wanted to grow up, fall in love, have a happily ever after like those stories Quinn read him before bed each night.

            “I want to walk, Mama,” he mumbled, looking down at his knobby, useless knees because if he had to pick the one thing he wanted the most right now, it would be walking, throwing the chair away and never having to see it again.

            Quinn nodded, kissing his forehead and tilting his chin up so she could look at him straight on. Her green eyes were so warm and loving that Blaine forgot for a moment that he was dying.

            “Okay, baby. We’ll get you to walk.”

            Blaine just half-smiled down at his lap, nodding as she got to her feet to assist one of the elderlies.

            He didn’t ask her if he really was supposed to die.

            Healers scared Blaine. He’d been to several over the first few years of his life (before he knew he was expected to die), and they were always so loud, loud enough that they hurt even Blaine’s ears. They always gripped his forehead, too, and shouted a lot about Jesus and the grace of God and Blaine never felt any different after he returned home, though Quinn swore up and down that he had more life in his eyes than before.

            So Blaine wasn’t exactly thrilled when, two days after Blaine had eavesdropped at her door, Quinn announced that they were going to a healing service.

            “It’s always worth trying, Blaine,” Quinn said softly, smiling ever-so-slightly at the less-than-pleased expression on Blaine’s face.

            Mama Quinn was always unyielding in her faith, and Blaine wanted to believe, he really did, but he just couldn’t shake the doubt that hovered over him like a raincloud.

            If one person understood him, it was Noah. Noah always understood.

            “Getting tired of having people yell about God in your face, huh, buddy?” he said lowly, crouching beside Blaine’s chair after Quinn had left the room and smiling ruefully. Blaine sighed slightly and nodded, watching his toes wiggle in his thick socks.

            “Well, it’s what keeps her believing. She wants the best for you, she always has.” Noah clapped Blaine gently on the knee. “Who knows – maybe this time it works.”

            Blaine bit his lip, forcing a smile and hesitating before asking, “Do you believe in God, Noah?” Noah hesitated, twisting his tongue between his teeth as he considered.

            “I believe,” he began slowly, pushing himself to his feet with a slight groan, “that religions are an acquired taste.” He smiled crookedly, and this time Blaine’s return grin was genuine.

            Blaine was right. The new healer shouted a lot and touched Blaine’s face every opportunity he got and praised God so loudly Blaine almost believed that God could hear it. He touched Quinn a lot too, while Noah watched anxiously from the side of the stage, pressing his hands against her stomach and talking a whole bunch about the miracle and blessing of life as the crowd cheered and shouted things like “praise” and “amen!”

            Blaine watched the healer pace around the stage as the tall, stocky man waved his arms purposefully and clapped his hand to his chest. He was younger than most of the other healers Blaine had visited, though Blaine wasn’t sure if that made him more or less wary of the situation. This one sure was a lot louder than the others.

            Finally, the noise died down slightly and the healer knelt before Blaine, eyes ablaze and sweat gathering on his dark brow. Blaine shifted uncomfortably, already sweating through his thin button-up and corduroys. The healer looked very determined, very confident, and more than a little terrifying.

            “How old are you, son?” he asked, and Blaine relaxed a little at the kindness in the man’s rumbling voice.

            “Seven,” he replied roughly. The crowd tittered and he glanced around, confused. “But I look a lot older,” he added, and the healer pressed a hand to his heart and rose, calling out, “He’s seven!” to the great entertainment of the service. Blaine cast a nervous glance over at Quinn, who now stood at Noah’s side, one hand clutching his broad arm and the other at her throat. She nodded reassuringly at Blaine, smiling her most beautiful smile, and Blaine felt a little better. He might not believe in God, but he believed in Mama Quinn.

            Suddenly the healer grasped Blaine’s elbow in powerful hand, pulling him forward out of his chair. Blaine yelped and balked, trying to yank his arm free, but the healer was too strong.

            “Rise up, boy!” he commanded, and Blaine’s heart pounded in his chest, fear gathering around him in a suffocating cloud, but after catching a nod from Quinn out of the corner of his eye, Blaine sucked in a deep breath and pushed himself upright, obeying the healer’s words. His frail arms trembled with the effort and, startled as the crowd sucked in a collective, gasping breath, Blaine faltered, teetering forward and crashing to the hardwood floor of the stage in a tangle of pointy elbows and knobby knees.

He heard everyone cry out and couldn’t help a whimper of his own at the pain that slammed into every edge of him like an automobile. He laid face down, gasping through tears and fumbling for the glasses that dangled off one ear, fragmenting his vision. The noise of all the people was a dull roar in his head, waves crashing against his ears, and Blaine choked back a pitiful cry.

“Rise!” the healer bellowed, and Blaine wanted to shout at him that he couldn’t because he was too weak and too broken and too sick, but he still couldn’t catch his breath and he wondered if his ribcage had collapsed in on itself. The healer kept yelling and stomping his feet and the service wouldn’t stop shrieking and Blaine almost started crying, but if he just continued to lay there like a stranded fish then they wouldn’t stop. So he gritted his teeth, arranging his arms underneath him, and pushed up as hard as he could, onto knees that wobbled and screamed in protest.

“Rise up, young man, shake the devil from your back!” the healer bawled, and Blaine honestly just wanted him to shut up. Up and up Blaine struggled, finally balancing dangerously on his own two feet, gasping for breath and hardly daring to believe that this was really happening.

The crowd gathered in the sweltering tent screamed and cheered, and Blaine shuffled one foot forward, gasping with the effort, feeling his unused muscles uncoil and tighten for the first time, propelling him forward, walking. He was stepping and moving and walking, one foot in front of the other, shaky and tottering, but he could do it – he was doing it!

Familiar voices cried out his name from the midst of the cacophony around him, and Blaine looked up to see Quinn and Noah’s arms outstretched for him, their faces split apart and lit by overjoyed smiles, and Blaine moved forward, one small, gnarled foot at a time, until he fell into his family’s waiting arms. They were both crying and pressing kisses to his scruffy head, clutching him close and unbearably warm to their chests while the crowd rejoiced and the healer had to sit down heavily and have someone run to fetch him water.

Blaine had never felt more normal. 

Just as he had wanted, Blaine never saw the chair again.

Well, that was not exactly true – it had been gifted to one of the more fragile elderlies boarding with them, but to Blaine, it was entirely different, seeing it with her, because it wasn’t his. Not anymore.

Noah fashioned him a pair of crutches that attached to Blaine’s wrists and supported the weight of his upper body, and Blaine hobbled around the house every second the sun still shone, unwilling to sit any longer than he had to, after being confined to the wheelchair for so many years.

Ultimately, it left him with sore, bruised wrists and swollen ankles that radiated down into his feet that Quinn had to help him soak and rub each night, but Blaine never once complained. For the first time in his life, he could reply on just himself, could do something without the aid of a grown-up. Freedom tasted so sweet, and Blaine had never felt happier.

It was a myriad of sensations, really, all ones that Blaine had never experienced; pride, joy, confidence. For the first time in his young (but also old, in the switch of things) life, Blaine did not resent the body and card he had been dealt. Blaine Anderson-Button was, for all intents and purposes, content.

Content, but also curious. Content was the home around him, Quinn’s soft smile, his toy soldiers in a line across his shelf. Content was steps all by himself down the hallway when he needed a drink from the bathroom in the middle of the night, the warmth of his blanket around his sensitive skin.

Curious was something else entirely. It blew in with the breeze from the harbor that tasted so strongly of salt,  rumbled with the automobiles a few streets over, driving someplace new, someplace other than the bustling town of New Orleans that was home to Blaine. He was content, yes, but curiosity took hold of him in the weeks after his healing, and he desired to explore outside of the safe box he had grown up in. Blaine, though he was not sure exactly what the word mean, wanted adventure.

So yes, Blaine was curious. And adventure came in the form of a middle-aged man named William Schuster, who burst into the house like a thunderclap following the death of Mrs. Pond, his great-aunt or some similar relation. Mr. Schuster whirled in with more bags than Benjamin could count and a charming smile that accentuated the dimple in his chin. Quinn murmured to Noah over Blaine’s head that the loud-spoken man was not their usual kind of boarder, and Blaine could clearly see why.

Mr. Schuster’s curly hair was all auburn, not a touch of gray, his posture straight and his gait strong. He laughed too loudly and spoke in big words that Blaine learned after a few days often strung together to make rambling monologues that seemed to go nowhere. All the same, Blaine shyly admired the man’s energy and watched him from across the parlor as he astonished the elderlies with stories about his travels around the world that Blaine could scarcely believe. Mr. Schuster definitely had adventures, and Blaine was dying to know more.

Blaine edged into the dining room, where Mrs. Schuster regaled the elderlies with tales of his Broadway days (April Rhodes, have you heard of her? I performed alongside her, I really did, she’s a delight to work with, such a sweet girl) and hobbled over to where Quinn was unloading plates and silverware from the ornate cabinet against the wall.

“What’s he like?” Blaine asked quietly, helping Quinn gather a fistful of cutlery. Quinn glanced over at Mr. Schuster, who was currently giving the elderlies an impromptu musical number from his Broadway show. Quinn laughed a little, twirling a lock of her hair back into her bun.

“Oh him? He – Noah, are those sandwiches ready?” She waited until Noah had affirmed that yes, the sandwiches are ready, don’t strain yourself Lady Fabray and rolled her eyes fondly before continuing. “He seems interesting, to say the least.”

Blaine watched Mr. Schuster throw his head back in a high note that rang in his ears for good seconds afterwards and the elderlies applauded, making sounds of delight and admiration. Quinn glanced down at him and back at Mr. Schuster, humming knowingly.

“Go ahead and talk to him, I know you’re just bursting to hear all of his stories. But, listen –” she grabbed Blaine’s shoulder and tilted his chin up so she could meet his eyes, hazel-green and warm just like they always were. “You be careful now, alright? You never know if all those stories of his are true of if he’s just out of his mind.”

Blaine didn’t think Mr. Schuster was out of his mind. It seemed to him like the man just had a lot of stories to tell.           

Finally, after lunch had been served and Quinn and Noah bustled the elderlies into the parlor for their card games, Blaine plucked up the courage and limped onto the porch, where Mr. Schuster was staring out into the yard, smoking a cigar with glazed, pensive eyes. He turned abruptly when Blaine’s crutches knocked against the wood floor and flashed him a bright smile.

“Ah, hello!” he said brightly, smoke curling off his lips. “It’s Blaine, right?”

Blaine nodded shyly. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Schuster strode briskly across the room, extending a strong hand for Blaine to shake. “I’m William Schuster, but you can call me Mr. Schue. Everyone does.”

Blaine nodded, smiling and shifting his weight to one of his crutches so he could shake Mr. Schue’s hand.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Mr. Schue sprawled himself comfortably onto the flowered couch, arm draped over the length of it, while Blaine moved forward to perch on the edge of the cushion.

“I was wondering… if you could tell me more of your stories?” Blaine asked shyly. Mr. Schue looked delighted.

“Of course! But first – tell me yours. Everyone’s told me so much about you but no one bothered to ask you if you’d like to explain it for yourself.”

Blaine came up short, startled. Did he have a story? He’d never really considered it. He was always just the boy who grew up in the wrong direction; not much by way of a fairytale.

“I don’t… I don’t really have one,” he mumbled, busying himself with balancing his crutches between his knees. Mr. Schue made an indignant noise in the back of his throat.

“Everybody has a story, Blaine. Everyone’s got a beginning and an end, and the rest is a whole lot of middle – that’s what your story is.”

Blaine blinked. He’d never thought about it like that, but Mr. Schue’s words made sense.

“I’ve only just sort of begun,” he admitted, making the metal on his crutches clink together in the pause between his words. “I don’t have a lot to put in the middle yet.”

Mr. Schue grinned. “Well, how about we fix that?” Blaine looked up, confused, and Mr. Schue looked right back, seeming to consider. “Come on. I’ll show you around. You can’t hope to write your story if all you see are the walls of this house.”

Mr. Schue got to his feet and offered Blaine his hand. Blaine hesitated, adjusting his crutches. “I’m not really supposed to…”

Mr. Schue waited. Blaine took a deep breath and pulled himself up. “I guess it would be okay.”

Mr. Schue grinned at him, all white teeth and crinkled eyes. “That’s the spirit.”

Neither Quinn nor Noah had any idea that Blaine had left the house, which gave him a strange mix of guilt and exhilaration that thrummed all the way down to his toes. The warm air wafted against his cheeks, humidity heavy in his lungs, and Blaine felt alive, so alive and thriving and living, and he had only just set foot out of the house. He stared around him, wishing his head could swivel in all directions so he could take in all the sights, the oddities of New Orleans that he was just now seeing for the first time. Women with bright lipstick smiled politely at him, hips sashaying as they strode down the street, arms linked with tall, handsome men whose eyes skirted right over Blaine’s head, and street vendors announced their wares in loud, musical voices. The air was riding with scents Blaine couldn’t even begin to name; a sweet, heavy smell wafted from the double-story building to his right (ba-ker-y Blaine sounded out in his head) and a scent with a bitter tang that settled on the back of his tongue poured with smoke from the backs of automobiles as they trundled down the road, horns blaring at the occasional wandering pedestrian.

Blaine was overwhelmed and aching for more at the same time, caught breathless and bursting with the newness of it all. After the familiar patterns in the wallpaper that he’d traced brittle fingers over time and again, the cracks in the ceiling he’d memorized on nights when Noah slept in Quinn’s room and Blaine had to sleep by the fireplace, the sighs and hums that filled the house to the brim as the elderlies slept, this, outdoors, the sights and smells – for Blaine, it was like being born again.

“Keep up, son!” Mr. Schue laughed over his shoulder, and Blaine hastened to catch up to him, nearly falling flat over his crutches in his excitement.

They walked for what felt like hours, and Mr. Schue bought Blaine a bubbly drink that he called Coca Cola and that burned up the back of Blaine’s throat. As promised, after asking Blaine a few questions about his “condition” that Blaine answered as best he could (I was born different, backwards, I guess. I’m supposed to die soon – Well you shouldn’t have that kind of outlook on it, Blaine, negativity doesn’t get you anywhere), Mr. Schue told Blaine his stories. Oh, did he ever.

“…and I thought I was going to be a father,” Mr. Schue said pensively, nursing his drink and re-crossing his legs. They sat at a bench overlooking a duck pond swimming with algae, and Blaine was attentive, hanging into Mr. Schue’s every word, his Coca Cola long forgotten.

            “What happened?” Blaine asked eagerly, and Mr. Schue smiled wanly.

            “She faked it. The whole damn thing.” He shook his head, eyes lifting to gaze at the cloudless sky. “There was never a pregnancy, or a baby. She pretended there was so I wouldn’t leave her. Needless to say, that was the final straw.” He laughed, almost casually, and finished off his Cola. Suddenly aware his own bottle was still clutched warm in his hand, Blaine took another sip, still not used to the burn of carbonation in his nose.

            “That was a while ago, though. We had many good years together, but I guess things never last, huh?” Mr. Schue leaned back against the bench and skipped his bottlecap across the pond, upsetting a couple crass-looking ducks. “I moved out, went off to Broadway and never looked back. Until now, that is,” he amended, and Blaine jumped at the pause.

            “How come?” Mr. Schue shrugged, a small smile curling his lips.

            “Death,” he said, and Blaine frowned a little. “I was living so fast I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my aunt, and I realized I haven’t gotten many chances to do anything for anyone but myself the past few years. I thought it was time I slow down a little.”

            Blaine pondered that as he sipped the warm remnants of his Cola. It seemed funny, that he was in such a hurry to speed up while Mr. Schue just wanted to slow down. Blaine just wanted to see everything and learn new things and live as much as he could in the indeterminable amount of time he had left, and it was so strange to him that a person would get tired of that, of exploring and having adventures out there in the world. Was there a point where the things you saw and experienced stopped being new? When all you had left to do was wait to die? Perhaps that was why all the elderlies in the house treated the sunrise like a miracle, rejoiced at all these small things that Blaine found utterly inconsequential, because that was all they had left to do.

            Huh. Maybe he should try to enjoy the little things more often.

            They sat in companionable silence for a while longer, and Blaine did his best to notice all the small things that he could consider miracles, but he kept getting distracted by the ducks quaking and pecking at each-other, and how the sun reflected right off Mr. Schue’s head of curly hair. Finally, after the carbonation had long since fizzled out of their Colas and the sun was beginning to slant towards the horizon, light fading to a warm yellow, Mr. Schue got to his feet and stretched, joints popping audibly.

            “It’s getting late – we should probably head back. Don’t want to upset your mama.” Blaine nodded, reluctant to end what had become the most interesting day of his life, but he followed behind Mr. Schue, a little slower now that his feet and wrists had started to ache from all the walking.

            Mr. Schue was telling Blaine about this beautiful girl he’d seen boarding the street car the other day, when he’d first arrived in New Orleans, and Blaine was listening avidly, wondering what Mr. Schue meant by “I think she’s a little crazy” when Mr. Schue suddenly stopped short, nearly getting clipped by an automobile.

            “That’s her,” he said softly, staring across the street. Blaine shuffled to the side to peer around Mr. Schue’s elbow and saw a slender, red-headed woman standing stiffly outside the market, elbows hugged tight to her chest. She was beautiful, Blaine supposed, but he didn’t really have anything to compare with, so he didn’t say anything. Mr. Schue shifted his weight, glancing around a couple times before he whirled back to Blaine.

            “I’ve got to introduce myself,” he said desperately, eyes a little crazed. “I keep seeing her around, this can’t just be coincidence.” He hesitated again, drumming his fingers against his thigh, and the red-haired lady began to walk briskly down the street, avoiding contact with the people milling the opposite way. “You can find your own way home, right?”

            Blaine looked around at the unfamiliar streets, uncertain, but he didn’t want to disappoint this man who had finally showed him what it meant to experience living, and so Blaine nodded, said “Of course, sir,” and watched Mr. Schue take off across the street in pursuit of the lady, calling a relieved, “I’ll see you later, Blaine!” over his shoulder, and Blaine had nothing else to do but walk.

            So Blaine walked. He walked until his wrists bled and the blood made his crutches slippery, until he thought his feet would give out and he’d have to sleep right there on the dirty sidewalk. The sun had set, spilling orange onto the hem of the navy blue sky, and Blaine was scared. He’d never been out at night before, and he’d never been left to fend for himself like this. The streets all looked the same to him, every porch light identical to the one burning at Mama Quinn’s door, and the people that passed him on the sidewalk seemed to get more and more menacing as the night grew darker.

            But Blaine refused to let himself cry. If he was big enough to drink Coca Colas with Mr. Schue and hear Mr. Schue’s grown-up stories, then he was too big to cry. He would find his way home, he would. It was part of the adventure, of his adventure. He’d wanted one for so long, he wasn’t going to ruin it with crying.

            All the same, his feet were so swollen he could barely put weight on them when his house loomed out of the darkness, and Blaine all-but staggered with relief as he drug himself up to the porch steps. He rattled the locked doorknob with a shaky hand and the door whipped open, startling him, to reveal a livid Quinn.

            “Where in God’s name have you been?” she hissed, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and yanking him into the house. “Have you any idea how worried I’ve been? I sent Noah out to look for you, I thought you’d gotten hit and were lying maimed in the road somewhere –” Her angry words cut off with a choked huff, and Blaine immediately felt awful. He hated when Mama Quinn cried.

            “I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered, and Quinn put a hand to her forehead, guiding him down the hall and into her bathroom, murmuring angry words under her breath that Blaine couldn’t quite catch.

            “…out of my mind, Blaine…” She tutted over the bloody state of his hands and ran hot water in the sink, wiping her teary eyes on her apron before rubbing Blaine’s wrists under the soothing water.

            “Don’t you dare do that again, you hear?” she said sharply, and Blaine nodded immediately, edging closer to tuck his head under her chin. She let out a sigh, pressing a forceful kiss to the top of his bald head and rolling her shoulders. “Alright, let’s get you sorted out.”

            Swollen feet, bloody wrists, and a furious mama aside, it had been the best day of Blaine’s life.