Chapter 3: A Caged Bird

AN: Here’s the next chapter. Thank you to everyone who reviewed. You guys are so sweet and it’s really encouraging to see the love this story is getting. I aim to please, so it’ll be nice if you tell me what you think of the story. If you guys have any ideas to how the story should continue, feel free to tell me and I’ll see if I can put it in. So, without further ado, the third chapter.

Kurt Hummel had been in the hospital for four entire days and two of them went without a single sight of a certain mister Blaine Anderson. As a solution to the maddening boredom he was faced with, Kurt drew to keep himself from going insane. As a pleasant change in environment, he had also met with nervous breakdowns, more withdrawal and even worse, his step-brother Finn.

Finn came on the third day of his stay. He brought flowers with him and awkwardly sat on the edge of Kurt’s bed. Kurt watched him with guarded eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. He braced himself for the verbal slashing, but it never came. Instead, the saw a broken Finn who stared nervously at his thumbs.

“Kurt..”, Finn started.

Kurt looked at Finn in disbelief. He hadn’t seen his step-brother like this in a while. Normally Finn yelled at him, or didn’t bother to see him at all. But this, this was different.

“I haven’t really been there for you, have I?”, Finn asked, his eyes still glued to his thumbs. The question caught Kurt off guard. He didn’t want to answer it. Hell, he didn’t want to have this conversation with Finn. He didn’t want Finn to blame this on himself. Kurt’s life was a mess and he knew it. The least he could do was to keep it away from the rest of his family. He tried to see them as little as possible, spending Christmas and other holidays alone. He knew it broke his step-mother’s heart, but it was for the best.

“What do you want from me, Finn?”, Kurt asked in a resigned voice. He didn’t want Finn to throw himself a pity party, at least not on his hospital bed. He was the one in the hospital, for fucks sake.

Finn’s thumbs obviously went up on its popularity rating.
“I haven’t been there for you as I should have been”, Finn whispered. His voice was lined with regret. If Kurt cared, he didn’t show it.

“I don’t want you here, remember?”, Kurt mumbled, his discomfort increasing by the second.

It didn’t seem like Finn had registered Kurt’s words as he continued berating himself.

“What kind of brother am I? And look at you, you almost died!”, Finn exclaimed, looking up at Kurt for the first time. Kurt stared at him with newfound calmness.

“Like you even care..”, he stated without any emotion.

Kurt could practically hear Finn’s heart break when he said that. He didn’t mean it. He didn’t want to say it. But how was he supposed to think right when the withdrawal was so bad it hurt his body and mind. His head felt like lead and every thought he had screamed back at him. Kurt wanted to scream along with it, but controlled himself. He couldn’t sleep at night because of the shaking. It was so bad that the nurses had to give him sleeping pills to get him to sleep. He wondered if it was safe to give a drug addict more pills.

Finn opened his mouth to say something, but Kurt interrupted him.

“I didn’t mean that”, he sighed.

“It’s the fucking drugs. I can’t function without… I just… I need”, Kurt struggled with the words, but he couldn’t express just how much he needed and wanted a hit of cocaine.

“Can’t you see that this shit is taking over your life, man!”, Finn exclaimed. He had to fix this. Even though they were the same age, Finn had always seen himself as the responsible one. He was the one who should have taken care of Kurt when he saw him slipping away from society’s grasp. Hell, he should have taken care of him when he was bullied at school. But, it was too late for that now and the result was the broken kid on the bed.

Kurt stared pointedly away from Finn. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that his drug problem was out of control. He knew that. But, he couldn’t find the strength in himself to do something about it.

Finn clasped his hands around Kurt’s.
“We’ll figure it out, bro”, he said before hurrying to his feet.

“I’ve gotta go to work now”, he apologized and Kurt just nodded in reply. He had something to think about that day. Did he want to figure it out? Was he strong enough to fight that match?

Later on that day, when Kurt was scheduled a check up by the doctor, he was disappointed to not see Blaine there. Did he have the weekend off, or was he taking care of another patient? Maybe he didn’t want to see to Kurt anymore after the whole withdrawal incident in front of the hospital. Kurt bit down his lower lip in regret. The unfamiliar doctor checked his back thoroughly. She was a decent doctor, but she was no Blaine. She didn’t smile the same reassuring way that he did. She pulled his hospital robe to cover his back and informed Kurt that he’d be free to go tomorrow.

Kurt smiled broadly at the thought of going back to his own apartment, to his paint and drugs. Life was the way it was supposed to be again. He could forget that the last four days happened at all and just go back to pretending that he had the life he had always wanted. Still, the tug at the corner of his heart was hard to ignore. Kurt spent the rest of the night drawing. The last sketch he drew that day was by far the best drawing he had produced with so little equipment.

He was inspired by some of the little children in the hospital. Seeing that his back was almost healed, he was allowed to walked around hospital grounds. To Kurt’s relief, that meant that he could go out for a cigarette break without having a nurse tag along with him. On his way back to his ward he got lost and somehow found himself in the paediatric cancer ward. There was a small playroom with stuffed animals, really big lego, a television set and a table with blank paper and crayons. Around the table there were three kids drawing and colouring. Two of the kids were wearing sunhats to cover their obvious baldness while the last kid didn’t bother wearing his hat. He was around seven years old and looked weaker than the rest. Kurt wanted to go in the playroom to get a better look, but he was afraid he’d disrupt the peace. From where he stood, he could see that the kid was drawing abstract picture of what Kurt thought resembled a dragon. Underneath the picture, the kid had spelled out “To the bestest doctor”.

When Kurt went back to his bed, he thought about the little kid and started to draw. When he was done, he signed the picture and addressed it to Doctor Anderson. To make sure the doctor got it, he asked a nurse to put it on his desk.

The next day Kurt was finally allowed to see the bright smile of Doctor Anderson again. Blaine grinned when he saw Kurt and scribbled down a few sentences on a clipboard.

“You are a free bird, Kurt”, he greeted friendly.

Kurt looked at him with wide eyes that Blaine instantly felt captivated by. They stared at each other for a small second before Blaine looked away. Kurt wondered if that would be the last time he’d see those hazel eyes that spoke of kindness. Not that he cared, anyways. He just wanted to go home, and now that his back was fully healed, there was nothing stopping him.

Blaine discharged him and prescribed a few painkillers for him, in case he experienced any pain at night.

“You take care of yourself, okay?”, Doctor Anderson whispered softly. He wondered what would happen to Kurt. Would he be ok? He felt protective of the skinny boy in front of him. He wanted to make sure that he would be fine, even though Blaine wouldn’t be able to see him.

Kurt was surprised to find out that he had warmed up to the doctor over the past few days.
“I always do, doc. I always do”, he offered with the tiniest of smiles, but it was enough to let Blaine’s heart soar. Before he realized that he didn’t want Kurt to go.

In a moment of desperation, Blaine pressed a white stiff card in Kurt’s hand.

“Here’s my card. Call me if you need anything… or something”, he mumbled feebly.

Kurt held the card gingerly between his fingers without looking at Blaine.
“Yeah.. sure”, he replied, unsure of what Blaine had meant by giving him his card.

There was an awkward silence between them while Blaine mentally hit himself for being so irrational. His cheeks burned while he ushered Kurt out of the hospital. The faster he got out, the faster Blaine could go back to his normal, controlled self. He reminded himself that it was normal for doctors to give patients their visit cards, and Kurt probably had dozens of them at home.

When Blaine went back to his office to get his things before leaving work that day, he found a piece of paper with his name on it. When he turned the paper, he gasped. On the white surface, there was a sketch of the most beautiful kind. It portrayed a bird in a cage looking longingly out of an open window beside it. The cage was open, but the bird was far too weak to fly to freedom.

--

Kurt hurried out and got a cab back to his apartment. The tiny flat was just the way Kurt had left it. There were frames, paint and canvases everywhere on the floor. The apartment was barely big enough for Kurt himself and he had crammed everything he had in this small one room apartment. It was all he could afford. Being a relatively unknown painter was not the most lucrative of jobs. The walls of his apartment were covered with paintings. They were the paintings that Kurt would never sell. The first painting showed a women, fairly young, in a hospital bed. Her head hung weakly, but there was an encouraging smile on her lips as she opened her arms to hug a young boy. The boy couldn’t have been more than 8 years old, and the look he gave the lady was a look of love, adoration and concern. The boy was afraid that his mama would be taken away from him. Only a week later did he realize that his biggest fear would come true. The second painting showed a man in a scruffy suit kneeling in front of a headstone. His head was shaved and he held a red rose in his hand. A single tear was to be seen on his cheek. The grief of his dead wife was present in his eyes, the burden of taking care of a 8 year old son alone in his shoulders. The rest of the paintings were other memories of Kurt’s life. The memories that mattered the most. The first time he found out he was gay, the day his father died, and so on.

Kurt kneeled in front of a small bookshelf and rummaged behind some thick books before puling out a black leather bag. He hurriedly emptied the bag’s content on the floor, the desperation within him increasing now that he knew that he was so close to getting what he had yearned for four long days.

There it was. The small plastic bag with white powder. Kurt felt his hands start quivering. He wanted it so bad. He forced himself to steady his breath and control himself. He emptied the white powder on the small table and divided the cocaine in two lines before he placed one of the lines back into the plastic bag for safe-keeping. He had to be careful. Seeing how he hadn’t had a hit in four days, he had to take it slow and decrease the dose to be safe. After all, Kurt didn’t want to wind up in the hospital again, or worse.

He made a perfect line out of the cocaine and held the unused tampon applicator in his hands. He threw the tampon away and looked at the hollow cardboard cylinder, mentally preparing himself.

Kurt leaned down and snorted the coke in one go. He leaned back on the sofa, waiting for the high to come and capture him. Meanwhile, he stared at the ceiling. He should probably get rid of some of the cobwebs. In case he ever got a visitor. Not that it was likel-… Oh sweet mother of Jesus. Kurt rolled his head backwards and closed his eyes. It had almost felt like a whiplash. But The Feeling was home. It had finally found Kurt and it fended of the The Craving. The Feeling belonged to Kurt. Kurt owned it. It was Kurt’s to keep for as long as he wanted. Kurt owned it. Kurt belonged to The Feeling.

Kurt could almost hear the blood pumping faster in his veins, and he felt so alive. He was on the top of the world. Kurt wanted to do something, anything. Maybe paint a picture. Or run a marathon. Maybe he should go out and have a drink. He checked his pockets and found Doctor Anderson’s visit card. Maybe he should give him a call. Kurt giggled and laid down on the couch, so that he could see the plastic glow in the dark stars he had on the ceiling. They shined so brightly, and even though he felt a little dizzy, he was on the top of the world. The conqueror of the stars. It seemed like a good career path, gathering stars. Kurt would gather the stars, one by one and hang them on his ceiling. He would start with Orion, the brightest star, because it would be the easiest to find. He had forgotten about Doctor Anderson already.

Kurt spent the next two weeks doing what he did best, painting and sniffing coke. His back didn’t bother him anymore, and if it did, he’d just have another hit. Why use painkillers when you could use your own personal heaven. One of Kurt’s friends called to ask if he wanted to come to her party, but Kurt declined. He wanted to be alone, doing what he liked the most in the world. He was certain that he could live without friends, especially those he had now whom didn’t even know him that well. They met, they got high together and that was that.

That was what Kurt was thinking about when he snorted a new dose on a Friday evening. It took entire five minutes before he felt anything, but from there he let his conscience go.

When Kurt came back from his high, he was still on the couch but it felt as though he had ran through the entire city. His shirt stuck to him with sweat and he was dead tired. Ripping the shirt off, the boy threw it towards the laundry pile on the floor.

Kurt checked his appearance in the mirror. He looked like hell. And he was really, really, really hungry. A normal side effect after coming down from the cocaine. He contemplated just going to the grocery store like this, but his vanity stood in the way for the atrocity. He showered, shaved and put on a fresh set of clothes. He settled for skin-tight jeans and a purple fitted shirt. Despite the life style, Kurt always wanted to look and feel like a rock star. The Kurt in the mirror had bruises that subtly crept over his back to his shoulder showing slightly at the collar of his shirt, undoubtedly from when he hit his back. He also had dark circles under his eyes, making him resemble a zombie. Kurt quickly covered the bruises and the dark circles up with a concealer.

He made his way to the grocery store. There was a kid there, not more than five years, who was screaming on the top of his lungs for chocolate. The kid’s parent wore a bored expression and gave the kid the chocolate he wanted. Kurt threw the kid a dirty, annoyed look, causing the kid to cry again. He rolled his eyes and hurried past the noisy scene.

Kurt was looking examining a cauliflower closely when a vaguely familiar voice spoke to him from behind.
“Oh, hi Kurt! How have you been?”

Kurt turned his head slowly and personally felt as though he was in a mystery movie.

“Oh, Doctor Anderson..”