Author's Notes: BLAINE’S POV
This was Kurt’s fifth day in the ICU. I rushed over to the hospital just as soon as classes were let out in the afternoon. It’s become a habit really, but today was the day the dialysis machine would go.
“Hey, Blaine. How was school?” Carole greeted me softly. I set my bag down by the windowsill seating.
“It was busy,” I replied, matching her tone. Kurt was asleep underneath a mountain of blankets, no dialysis machine in sight. They must have taken it out in the morning. “How was the night?” I asked with bated breath.
“It seems like he’s actually getting better,” she gave a tired smile.
“Not to be pessimistic,” I looked over at my pale boyfriend, “but he doesn’t look like it.” Kurt’s hair stuck out at odd angles on his pillow. I ran my fingers through it very gently, cognizant of the time I did the same thing and his hair fell out.
“Well, they say his kidneys are much better, nearly recovered. I think he’s just been in here too long.
“Mmm,” Kurt shifted. “I think so, too.”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I retracted my hand. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
He coughed a bit and groaned as he pushed himself up with shaky arms.
“I’m glad you did,” he smiled lazily. “I wanted to see you.” He held his thin arms out for me.
“Oh, Blaine!” Carole interrupted just as I tucked my face into Kurt’s neck for a hug. “Kurt’s being moved from the ICU.”
“Really?” I pulled back to look at her. “That’s amazing, baby,” I kissed his hair. He gave another lazy smile.
“A step closer to getting out of here.”


“Here’s what we’re gonna do, Kurt,” the nurse chatted happily when the move rolled around a bit later. Burt had arrived just minutes earlier.
“The only thing being taken out is your catheter, but you get to stand up for a few seconds,” Kurt’s eyes brightened at this, “Unfortunately, we have to kill two birds with one stone and weigh you, too.”
Then Kurt’s face fell so far down that it was all I could do to not step in and cuddle him, take his pain away.
“We won’t allow you to see the numbers,” she added timidly, afraid of Kurt’s quick change of emotion. The heart monitor gave a short beep as Kurt’s heart quite literally skipped a beat.
“We’re here for you, kiddo,” his dad stepped in and gently patted his shoulder. Kurt was silent for a long time. Was he trying to find a way out of it? But he gave a shuddery sigh and looked at me. One word, and I knew that our relationship wasn’t breaking because of this whole ordeal. To be welded to someone else in a loving relationship means there must be a little fire applied. Or a lot of fire, in our case.
“Help.”
Me being quite the romantic, if I might say, stepped closer to his bed and kissed his hand three times. Knowing I was pushing it in front of his parents and the nurse, I leaned in to kiss him lightly.
“I love you.”
The edges of his chapped lips pulled up a bit as he nodded to the nurse. She pulled the privacy curtain to remove the catheter, which earned a quiet hiss from Kurt.
Finally, she put the bed rails down on one side and got the wheelchair ready. After making quick work of attaching his IVs to a pole, she went to get the scale. Kurt managed to swing his legs around off the side.
“Alright, Kurt,” the nurse came back in. “Ready to stretch your legs?” She stood on one side while Burt stood on the other.
“I’m ready,” Kurt squeaked. As they helped him up, a couple of cracks could be heard from his back.
“Oww,” he laughed nervously but tried to straighten up more.
“Dizzy?” the nurse checked.
“If I say ‘yes’, would that be bad?”
“It’s only natural that you would be dizzy, sweetie,” Carole assured. “You’ve been lying down for so long.”
“We’ll just hold you a little more,” Burt cleared his throat. I noticed his fingers nearly wrapped around Kurt’s bicep completely.
Kurt was staring at me standing right in front of him. Well, he was staring at my chest. Suddenly, I realized he was trying to match my breathing.
“Think you can get on the scale?”
With a big breath that didn’t come from me, Kurt nodded. They helped him onto the digital scale. He looked up at me.
Wow.
If I needed to fake an emotion before, it was nothing compared to having to keep a perfectly supportive face.
He stepped on, and the room became silent. Perhaps the whole hospital did, too.
After a millennium, the scale beeped. Kurt jumped a little but didn’t break eye contact.
“You can look if you want,” he nearly mouthed.
And, God, I was itching to. How bad was it? Had the feeding tube helped? How much farther did he have to go?
“Your weight,” I tried to go for a commanding tone to hide any shakiness, “means nothing to me, Kurt.”
“Wheelchair time!” the nurse cut in. Good thing, too, because Kurt was swaying ever so slightly.

“That was the perfect answer, kid,” Burt commented as soon as Kurt was wheeled out to his new room.




KURT’S POV
There’s not really a feeling I could identify as the one you feel when you’re being admitted to the psych ward of a hospital.
“Here we are,” the nurse stopped in a vacant room on said ward. The room was a million times nicer than the ICU room. The walls were light green, and it could’ve passed for a Dalton dorm with the dresser in the corner and sofa chair by the window. The bed was unfortunately still a hospital bed.
“You’ll get a real bed as you get better,” the nurse must’ve read my thoughts as she parked the chair next to the Hill-Rom bed. “You’re still going to be on some IV fluids, so we keep this bed.
“Ready to stand up again?”
My breath hitched. I didn’t want to tell anyone that standing up to get weighed had nearly knocked me out. It was all I could do to remember to breathe and wait it out.
“Kurt?” Blaine’s gentle face appeared right in front of me. I must’ve kept the silence stretching on too long.
“I, uh,” I picked at my god-awful cuticles. “I might need some help.”
“Oh, buddy,” my dad jumped in. “We weren’t going to let you do it alone anyway.”
The nurse and my dad basically lifted me into the bed. Blaine, who had been carrying the humungous bear, tucked it right into my side before pulling the blankets over me. When all of my shit was put back in place, the nurse left with the promise of a great day tomorrow. Whatever the hell that meant. I reeled on my dad when she left, burning with the emotions I had pent up.
“A psych ward?” I hissed. He widened his eyes and put his hands up in defeat. “I’m not crazy!”
“Baby,” Blaine began tentatively. “Psych wards aren’t for crazy people. Sometimes people just need a little help.”
“Psych. Ward. This is going to be a prison,” I spat, secretly memorizing what he had said to write in my notebook later. Sometimes people just need a little help.
“Once you’re cleared from the medicines, you’ll be out of here,” Carole patted my hand.
“Wait, really? No more hospitals?” I was shocked. A couple of days ago, I had honestly resigned myself to a fate or sterilized sheets and fluorescent lighting.
“Well, it depends on how you do here,” my dad stepped in. “If you can’t start eating again, there are outpatient programs that can help.”
Again with the ultimatums. If you don’t eat this, if you can’t keep this down, if you keep refusing, etc. I’ve backed myself into a corner, haven’t I?

“Good morning, Kurt!” The fucking shrink just pranced into my room the next day. “Nice to see you on the floor.”
“Morning,” I huffed. It wasn’t a greeting. It was really just an acknowledgement of the time of day. Dr. Williams rolled a stool up to my bedside.
“You don’t seem too excited to be out of the ICU,” she observed me picking at the scratchy blanket.
“Oh, I am. Just not a morning person.”
“I see,” she nodded. “Now how do you feel about being on the psychiatric unit?”
I clamped my mouth shut. It would prevent the snarky comments from escaping.
“I heard that you’re not too pleased,” she looked at her notes. I must’ve shot her a confused look because she just said, “Your dad.” I rolled my eyes. Go figure.
“I once had a patient who was 5 years old on this unit,” Dr. Williams began. 5 years old? That’s way too young to have any mental problems.
“She refused to eat because she absolutely hated the texture of lots of food,” she continued. “After a couple of months here, she learned to find foods that she could tolerate and made a full recovery.”
“Months?” I repeated. Summer would be almost gone, senior year would start. Would I still be in the hospital? In a psych ward?
“I don’t think you’ll be here for months, Kurt,” she glanced at her notes again. “Actually, we have a goal for you. We expect you’ll be out of here in two weeks depending on how you do with treatments and with some restrictions,” she crossed her legs. “But I told you that story because I want to assure you that you’re far from insane. You must’ve been in a terrible place to want to inflict pain upon yourself, am I right?”
Just the simple act of someone validating my worries and fears and frustrations… That familiar warmth behind my eyes warned me of tears, the lump in my throat too prominent to speak. I nodded and tried desperately to blink the watery feeling in my eyes away.
“That’s not insanity, Kurt. Someone once said, ‘You’re not a bad person for the ways you try to drown your sadness.’”
We were silent as she offered me a few tissues. Tears were definitely leaking now. I couldn’t help it.
“Tell me something. What does starving do for you? Does it make you happy or fulfill you in any way?” she picked up her pen again. I gave a shuddery breath.
“It makes me feel disciplined,” I replied. Brutal honesty. I’m not sure how the shrink managed to swindle it out of me, but here we are. “Whenever I do something stupid or fail at something, I just don’t eat.”
“It’s like a punishment,” Dr. Williams clarified. “Well, Kurt, I think it’s time you learn to forgive yourself,” she smiled gently. She pushed the stool away and stood when some machine began beeping.
“Tomorrow we’re going to reintroduce you to food,” she fiddled with my IV bag. My hand immediately shot up to my mouth to chew on my nails.
“Would you like your family to be here?”
“Blaine,” I blurted. He needed to be here. Only he could calm me. And Lord knows my mind was already whirring with anxiety.
“Not your dad or stepmom?” Dr. Williams pushed further.
“Not yet,” I mumbled. They hadn’t been there for most of the time I starved. Hell, they weren’t the ones standing by as I threw up food into a park trash bin.
“That’s fine. One day, we’ll get there. I’ll contact your parents and Blaine about it. Don’t worry about the food that will be served. We get to choose,” she winked. Like this was some kind of game. Unfortunately for me, my nerves were getting the best of me. Shallow breaths. Fuzzy vision.
Gasp.
Gasp.
Gasp.
“You’re panicking,” she so astutely commented.
“No shit,” I bit, grabbing at my hair to stop the chaos. Dr. Williams quickly vacated the room, but I knew she would come back. Probably with those fucking restraints. Not those again.
No.
I couldn’t handle it.
I couldn’t-
I-
Gasp.
Hiccup.
Gasp.
“Take this,” Dr. Williams suddenly appeared in front of me with a cup contained a bar-shaped pill. “It’s Xanax. You really need to calm down if we want that heart to get better and you to discharge.”
I narrowed my eyes but took it anyway. Dr. Williams sat on the stool again and took some notes.
“I see here that you relax well when you copy another person’s breathing. Why don’t you watch mine for a while? No talking, just breathing.”
And so I did. I wish I could say that I was relaxing for my health, but the idea of discharge was so… tempting.
The room was so silent. I could hear the clock ticking on the wall. The monotony of its sound and the motion of rhythmic breathing lulled me.
“Oh, God,” I garbled. “What is this?”
Dr. Williams laughed. “Feeling calm yet?”
I nodded.
And nodded off to sleep.