Chapter 5
February 14th

KURT

Oh, this dreaded day. I don't want to get out of bed.
So I stay under my covers, curled up in a ball, The Professor next to me, purring.
I'm okay without Ben most days. Our anniversary, his birthday, my birthday.
Like I said to Rachel, some days are better than other days, and lately a lot of days have been pretty good. I haven’t been…hating myself so much lately. Not since…
But Blaine has nothing to do with it. He couldn’t possibly.
Most days, as of late, I can push all the negative thoughts out of my mind, tell myself that I’m better than what Ben told me I was, more than all of the things he said to me.
I don't know why Valentine's Day sucks so much. Maybe it’s because everyone has someone special to spend it with, but I don’t and I know it’s my fault.
I just have to sit there and wallow, that's the only thing that helps me. By tomorrow I'll be fine. I know I will, but today, February 14th, I will be completely useless and I'm okay with that.
One of my favorite things to do on this awful day is remember good times I had with Ben.
The day he proposed to me, the day we met, the first time we slept together. The beginning. Before he became bitter and angry.
I roll over slowly, pressing my face to the pillow.
"You're useless, Kurt.”
A few tears.
"You only care about your practice. Don't I matter? Don't you love me?"
More.
"You don't talk to me. And you don't listen when I talk to you. God, you’re so selfish."
More.
"I can't take this much longer, Kurt. I’m miserable and you’re worthless."
And more.
He drops a bundle of papers on the table in front of me. “We’re done.” He walks away.
And I'm sobbing. I'm used to this, of course. Sobbing. But it still hurts. It hurts to think that the reason my marriage crumbled was me. That I couldn't put my husband’s dreams over mine. That I ruined everything with my selfishness. He was so unhappy, right from the beginning. I could have done something. I could have put my life on hold, just for a little while. No matter how many times Rachel tells me “it wasn’t your fault, Kurt.” “He was an asshole, Kurt.” “You couldn’t have done anything, honey,” I can’t bring myself to believe her.
Because I know his words were true.
It's not even like I'm still in love with Ben. I haven't been in love with him in so long. He really was so awful to me.
Regardless, being left by someone you're...attached to because of your own idiocy hurts. It hurts a lot.
God, I don’t know how I let him get this far into my head. I used to be confident. I used to be able to ignore hateful comments, to brush them off with a sassy comeback. I don’t know why Ben’s words were the ones that stuck, but they did and I feel like half the person I was before I met him.
And then something strange happens. Blaine's face flashes through my mind. Nothing special about it. Just his face. He's just...Blaine. My patient. But that flash burns in my brain and I close my eyes. In the darkness behind my lids, I examine his face.
He's really handsome.
Of course, this isn't the first time I've noticed this, but it's the first time I've really thought about it. His dark curls are so cute, especially after he takes his hat off and they're all messy. He has such full lips, such high cheek bones. Such sweet eyes.
His speaking voice is so deep, so...nice to listen to. I wonder what he would sound like reciting a Shakespearean monologue. Singing an aria.
And then that little half-smile he gave me the other day just before he left...
I start to think about what Rachel said. Maybe...maybe there’s something there.
But no. That would be…catastrophic. I can’t.
No. I don't. No.
--
February 17th

BLAINE

Kurt's late. Not that late, but the receptionist said that he got stuck on the subway on his way back from his lunch break.
I don't know why, but that makes me nervous. Fidgety.
Maybe it's because I decided last night that I'm ready to talk about Andrew. I'm ready to tell someone the whole story. The baby, the truck. The fight. Everything.
I want that someone to be Kurt.
"Hi, Jeanette. Is he here yet?"
Kurt's voice, out in the lobby. I hear Jeanette, the receptionist, tell him yes, I'm here and in his office, then I hear Kurt's footsteps coming down the hall towards me.
Then, the creak of the door opening.
"Hi, Blaine. I'm so sorry I'm late. The subway got stuck, it was awful."
"Yeah, I know," I say as he takes his seat across from me, "Jeanette told me."
Kurt smiles.
"How was your Valentine's Day?" he asks. "Your first one without Andrew?"
I nod. "Yeah. My...first one without Andrew. I spent it with Lizzie."
"Your sister?"
"Uh-huh. She made me take her to the movies and out shopping in Ridgewood and then to dinner. She told me when we got home that she didn't want me to be lonely without Andrew all day."
"That was sweet of her. Did it work?"
I smile, shake my head. "Not really. But I appreciated the effort."
Kurt smiles again, then looks at me pointedly. "Blaine, you remember what we said we were going to talk about today at our last session, don't you?"
"Yeah. I remember."
Kurt nods encouragingly. "Okay. Now...at our first session, you told me you were here because you tried to commit suicide. And then at our last session you said that everything fell apart between you and Andrew. I know from your records that he died five months ago. Why don't we start there?"
Gulp. Blink. Bite the insides of my cheeks.
"Okay. Uhm...Andrew and I were going to start a family. We'd been married for five years. We were ready. I used to teach voice and piano privately through a music school and there was...this deli next to the school. This girl worked behind the counter and I got to know her pretty well. She was seventeen, really sweet. Her name was Angie. One day I came in and she was crying. She...she told me that she was pregnant and she didn't know what to do. So...I told her that my husband and I were looking to adopt a baby. She said she would be willing to let us adopt her baby and that day I went home and I told Andrew. We were...ecstatic. Euphoric. We called our lawyer, and a few weeks later, we had a contract for an open adoption drawn up. We spent months getting ready for the baby. We found out it was a girl and we were going to name her Violet Grace. Violet Grace Martinelli-Anderson. We decorated her room all purple and bought her all these toys."
I take a deep breath. "We were getting ready to throw Angie a baby shower when she went into labor. My mother called all the guests, told them the party was postponed and Andrew and I rushed to Columbia Presbyterian to...to meet our daughter. We got there and...and Angie's lawyer was waiting for us. That shouldn't have been weird at all, but I just...I saw that woman there and I knew something had gone wrong. She...she told us that Angie had decided to keep her baby. We weren't even...even allowed to see her. Violet or Angie. We both left the hospital in tears. That night...we didn't sleep. We cried until dawn, and then some more the next day. We didn't leave the house for days. Finally, after a week, I decided it was time for me to get back into my routine. I knew this wasn't our only shot at a family. We would get another chance."
"I sense a but," Kurt says, his tone soothing.
"But Andrew didn't. He called out of school for two weeks before the principal finally dropped by and told him that the substitute was yelling at the students. That's what finally got him out of bed, but just barely. Andrew...was a guy who took care in his appearance. He always dressed well, always combed his hair just so, always shaved. But...after that, he just...stopped. He wore jeans and t-shirts to work. He let his beard grow out. I was...slowly getting back to normal. I was looking into other options for us, adoption agencies, surrogacy. I told Andrew about it, told him we could still have a baby. But he just shook his head. He stopped speaking. Not just to me, to everyone. He assigned his students more and more essays, less of the...the creative stuff he used to give them. He didn't eat. I would cook him a full meal and find it in the garbage an hour later. He stopped being Andrew. He stopped being my husband."
I stop for a moment to let the tears pricking my eyes tumble out. "It's okay, Blaine," Kurt says, his voice gentle. "Keep going."
I sniff and look up at Kurt, tears still sliding down my cheeks. "After...maybe about four or five months, I couldn't take it anymore. I decided that I would take him to this restaurant he loves, outside Manhattan, on the river. I got dressed up. He didn't. We got all the way there, we were sitting out on the deck. It was beautiful. The Tappan-Zee Bridge was all lit up, reflecting on the river. I just wanted Andrew to be happy. I tried to talk to him, to tell him this was just a bump in the road, that we would have a family soon enough. But he wouldn't listen to me. And I got frustrated. We had a fight, we yelled. We left before our food even came."
Oh, God. The hard part. I know there will be no stopping the tears from here on in.
"On the...on the way home, Andrew was driving. We were...we were going down this dark road to get onto the parkway. It was just us for miles. I was...feeling pretty shitty about being such an asshole at the restaurant. I turned to him and..." I pause, let out a quiet sob, "I told him that...that I loved him, and that we were going to get through this. I asked him to try to get some help. And then...I saw these...these headlights in the distance. Andrew turned to me and...." Another sob. "And he had tears streaming down his face. And he just...just drove into the opposite lane. I...I asked him...I asked him what he was doing, did he know he was in the wrong lane and...and he just kept crying, kept driving. And those headlights kept coming closer and closer until I could see they belonged to a truck. I started shouting at Andrew, told him to turn, to get off the wrong side of the road, but he just...he just sobbed. He said 'I love you, Blaine. I'm so sorry.' And then..."
"And then?"
I look up at Kurt. His voice broke and he has tears in his eyes. I stare at him for a moment, notice how clear blue his eyes look right now, how his perfect skin is red and blotchy. I’m struck for the first time since I’ve started therapy by how beautiful he is. But I shake the thought away and continue.
"And then...and then the lights were right in my face. Blinding. I remember pain. And then after that I remember waking up in the hospital."
"Andrew's death was a suicide. He steered you into the truck on purpose." Kurt whispers, his hand fluttering to his heart. I nod and continue.
"My mom, my brother and his wife, my sister, they were all waiting there for me. I opened my eyes and Cooper's wife, Caroline, called for a nurse. The nurse called for a doctor. The doctor told me that I had been out for two whole days. He said that I had a broken collarbone, three shattered ribs, a fractured wrist, and a shattered ankle. I didn't care though. I just wanted to see Andrew. I wanted to tell him I was sorry again, tell him I loved him. But every time I asked about him, they just kept talking about my injuries, tests they'd need to run, everything but my husband. Finally, I started yelling. The whole room got quiet. Everyone was crying, even my brother and the nurse. That's when...I just knew. I knew what the doctor was going to tell me. He said it, out loud, 'Mr. Anderson, I'm sorry, but your husband didn't survive the crash.' I wasn't ready for it though. I didn't want it to be true. I just...screamed. I didn't even cry. I screamed. My sister-in-law took Lizzie out of the room and my mom and Coop stayed with me. They sat there with me while I screamed."
I stop again, this time to look at Kurt. He's quietly writing down something on his notepad, wiping his eyes and sniffling occasionally. He doesn't know I know he's crying. But I can't help but watch him. He’s mesmerizing. For whatever reason, I can’t take my eyes off of him.
He squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them, blinks a few more times, then looks up at me. "Let's talk about...when you tried to commit suicide."
I suck in a breath. "It had been...three and a half months since Andrew died. I was...I had started drinking a lot. I quit my job. I sat in our apartment and drank all day, then woke up the next day wherever I had passed out the night before. Sometimes it was the couch. Sometimes the bathroom floor. Once I fell asleep on a stool at the kitchen counter. I was just...so sad. And so lost. I couldn't...couldn't deal with the fact that Andrew was gone. One day...it all hit me at once. I just...couldn't take it anymore. I took out every pill bottle in the medicine cabinet. Ibuprofen, aspirin, sleeping pills, anti-histamines. I dumped them all out on the coffee table and mixed them up. I had a glass of Jameson next to me, and I was ready to just grab a handful of them and swallow it all, wash it down with the whiskey. Thank god...I hadn't locked the door. Thank god I told my doorman that my brother didn't need to be buzzed up. Thank god he hadn't knocked. Cooper found me sitting on the couch, ready to swallow all those pills. He ran right to me, knocked them all off the table, dumped the whiskey down the sink. I was silent the whole time. I just cried. He took me to my mom's house back in Jersey. She cried harder than I'd ever seen her cry before. She...she told Cooper to go back to the city and get my stuff, that I would move back into my old room so she could keep an eye on me. And...now I'm here. With you."
I look up and see that Kurt has regained his composure, that he's looking at me with those clear blue eyes, his lips pressed in a tight line.
"Thank you for sharing that with me, Blaine." he says.
"I...you're welcome." I say back. He sounds...not like himself. Cold. Guarded.
"I'll see you at this time next week, okay?"
I nod, confused. "Yeah. Yeah, next week."
"Have a good week, Blaine," Kurt says before ushering me to the door and closing it behind me.
--
KURT
The second the door is closed and I hear Blaine's footsteps disappear down the hall, I sit back down in my chair and let out a sob. I hadn't expected his story to do that to me, not at all. I've never, in my entire career, cried in front of a patient.
I'm sure he didn't see me, though. He was looking at his hands in his lap the whole time. He couldn't have known.
I sob and sob and sob, sure that Jeanette or the people in the building next door can hear me, but I don't care. I need this. I need to cry. I need to let out these tears, these sad, lonely, wrenching wails for Blaine. For Andrew. For the baby girl they never got to meet.
For myself.
And it hits me in the chest like a hammer.
Rachel was right. I'm developing feelings for Blaine. Slowly, but surely, I'm going to fall in love with this broken man.
This only causes me to sob harder, louder. I have feelings for a patient. I have feelings for a patient.
I have feelings for a patient.
I can't ever act on them, of course. Again, I sob harder and harder, until my throat is raw and I can't catch my breath.
Of course I would be this stupid. Of course I would be the one to fuck up and fall in love with someone I can never be with. It must be karma, for screwing things up with Ben the way I did.
I don’t even know where they came from, these feelings, so much more intense than I’ve ever felt for anyone. It seems like seconds ago, he was just another patient. Just another handsome man that walked into my office once a week, talked about his feelings, left. Just some guy I couldn’t seem to get off my mind.
I can't...I can't imagine not being Blaine's therapist, though. And that's what will have to happen, now that I have these...these stupid, awful, pointless feelings for him.
He needs me so much. I couldn't ever cast him off, refer him to another doctor.
But maybe in a way it's...good that I care about him like this. I'll work harder than anyone else would to get him to where he needs to be.
That's what I'll do. I'll get him to a healthy place. I'll help him gain some kind of closure about Andrew.
And then I'll let him go. I'll break off all contact with him. I'll never see him, never speak to him again.
This will end disastrously, like everything I’ve ever done, but it's the only thing I can think of.