When Kurt opened his eyes, he was in a bed that did not belong to him. For a moment, he groaned and mentally cursed Truman for going out again (to Scandals or some other equally seedy bar, no doubt). But then he remembered that the last time he'd been awake, he'd been in the car on the way to Athens.

He froze, staring at the orange wall, and tried to absorb as much of his surroundings as he could without moving. There was an irrational fear creeping up his spine that if he moved, they would know he was awake and orderlies would suddenly swoop in and drug him back to sleep.

He shut his eyes and forced himself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He realized his arm was numb from sleeping on it, and the mattress was a little harder than his bed at home, but he still couldn't bring himself to move. At least the sheets weren't thin or scratchy like they'd been at the other (regular) hospital.

This place was meant for people to stay.

He could hear sounds from outside the room. Voices. Several of them. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but they didn't sound agitated and their speech was punctuated by an occasional laugh, so Kurt relaxed a little.

Swallowing and trying to flex the fingers on his numb hand, Kurt forced himself to accept the fact that he couldn't just stay where he was forever. He slowly rolled over, the rest of the room coming into view. There was another bed against the opposite wall, closer to the door, and there was a curtain that could be pulled across the room to divide it in half and give some semblance of privacy. A small three-drawer bureau was situated at the foot of each bed and the window was frosted over so that he couldn't see the view outside. Set into the wall close to the window was another door that probably went to a private bathroom.

Drawing a deep breath in an attempt to make the nerves in his fingertips stop crackling, Kurt pushed the covers back and sat up. Looking down for a moment, he saw he was wearing boxer shorts and a Guns N' Roses t-shirt – Robbie's clothes. He ran a hand over his too-short hair and stood up, stretching his stiff legs.

He was probably making a conscious decision not to the think about the fact that he hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to his dad or Finn or Carole, but at the moment he was a little preoccupied with getting his bearings.

It wasn't the first time he'd woken up in a strange place with people he didn't know.

He could handle this.

…Or not.

The door banged open suddenly, making him jump, and a short-ish chubby man a little older than Kurt came in, his shoulders hunched. "I've got to get my coffee," he muttered, making a beeline for the bureau set against the other bed and seeming not to notice Kurt at all. "Get my coffee," he said, pulling open the drawer and yanking out a small coffee tin labeled SCOTT'S COFFEE DO NOT TOUCH before tucking it under his arm and scurrying back out of the room. He left the door wide open.

"Hey, Robbie!" yelled someone from the other room. Kurt could see a bunch of men sitting around a card table. "Put some pants on, asshole, and get out here! We're having a Connect-Four tournament and we need you to come kick Bruce's ass before he gets carried away."

Kurt blinked. The man who had called to Robbie looked to be about his own age, Asian (probably Vietnamese or Cambodian judging by his skin tone), and a baggy black sweatshirt. His eyebrows shot up expectantly when Kurt didn't move.

"O-one second," Kurt stammered, shutting the door again.

He took a deep breath, then another one.

Relax, they don't look that crazy, came Truman's voice from the back of Kurt's head, making Kurt tense up momentarily. He'd heard the alters' voices before and it wasn't a new experience, but it wasn't a common one either. In any case, you're crazier than them so what the fuck have you got to be afraid of?

Real smooth, Truman, snapped Robbie. Do I have to kick you in the nads again?

I fucking hate boys, groaned Eleanor.

"Shut up, all of you," Kurt mumbled, pulling open one of the drawers to the bureau at the foot of his own bed.

Touchy, touchy, said Truman.

Good, his clothes were here. Well, Robbie's clothes. And Truman's and Craig's. Kurt sighed. He knew anything from his own personal wardrobe wouldn't have been practical here, but he still wished he could've had something to wear that actually belonged to him. Shaking his head, he grabbed a pair of Truman's sweatpants (vaguely remembering that the doctors didn't allow anything with zippers, so jeans were out of the question) and yanked them on over his boxers, then crossed the room and pushed through the door to the bathroom.

The bathroom was small but not tiny, with grey tiles and a shower stall (Kurt briefly noted that the shower door had no lock). After going to the toilet, Kurt washed his hands and glanced at himself in the mirror, trying not to pay too much attention to the circles under his eyes, his still-too-short hair, or how obvious it was that he'd lost weight.

How long had it been since he got here? The other people in the ward were clearly familiar with him, but his hair hadn't grown perceptively longer, so he couldn't have been gone for more than a few days. He let out a heavy breath. That was slightly reassuring.

Slightly.

He pushed back out of the bathroom and went to the bedroom door, pausing before pulling on the handle.

Go on, Truman sneered. They probably won't bite. Leap of faith and all that shit.

Kurt shook his head, as if it would rattle Truman into being quiet. Gripping the door handle, Kurt pushed it open and stepped out into the common area.

"Jesus, took you long enough," the Asian guy said, waving Kurt over to the table.

Kurt hesitated, glancing around the room and feeling very much like a fish out of water. There were three other men sitting with the Asian guy at the card table, and (Kurt took a moment to count) seven others scattered around the room who actually looked like patients. He saw another one who had to be an orderly sitting quietly in the corner, reading. Standing by a large blue door that had to be the exit out of the ward was the strange chubby man who had burst into Kurt's room to get his coffee, fidgeting nervously like he was waiting for something.

"Still not used to Scott?"

Kurt's attention was snapped back to the table. "What?"

The Asian guy quirked an eyebrow. "…Your roommate?" he said, giving Kurt a strange look. "It's fine; he takes a while to get used to."

Kurt had to physically repress a grimace. He didn't want to be roommates with someone who muttered and fidgeted and actuallyacted crazy.

"You missed breakfast, by the way," the Asian guy continued, dropping a red disc into the Connect-Four board. His opponent, a gruff and scruffy-looking man who had to be pushing forty, quickly followed it with a black disc and then pumped his fist in the air.

"Ha! I told you, I'm the king!"

The Asian guy rolled his eyes and moved himself to the only empty chair at the table, gesturing for Kurt to take his seat. "Come on, Robbie, please kick his ass so that we don't have to give him the bragging rights."

Kurt stayed where he was. "I'm not Robbie," he said.

The four men at the table glanced up at him simultaneously in confusion, and suddenly Kurt realized…

They don't know.

"Sorry, um…" He shook his head. "I thought—"

One of them, a black man in his twenties, cut him off. "Wait, are you one of those people who's got multiple personalities or some shit?"

Kurt blinked. "…That would be me, yeah."

The Asian guy's eyes widened. "Dude, that is so badass."

As it turned out, it was Tuesday, which meant that Kurt had only missed two nights and a day. The guys playing Connect-Four filled him in on how Robbie had passed the time (which really wasn't much other than being sullen and making snarky remarks whenever he kicked Bruce's ass at a game), and Kurt was startled by how unfazed they were in regards to the fact that the person they'd been hanging out with wasn't even a person.

"It doesn't bother you?" he asked at one point as Dustin, the Asian guy, reset the Connect-Four board. "My… my DID?"

Dustin only shook his head and laughed. "Dude, you're in a mental hospital. We've all got our crazy psycho problems, and now with you here we've finally got someone to beat Bruce's level of crazy."

Kurt glanced at Bruce, the oldest man at the table, who sent a lopsided toothy grin back at him. "I hear voices," he said softly.

"Well," Dustin continued. "No one'll ever beat Scott over there." He nodded towards where Scott was sitting on a couch by himself, muttering while he sipped a cup of coffee that the nurses had brought him (decaf, Dustin had said, since none of them were allowed to have caffeine). "That poor guy doesn't know up from down. Disorganized schizophrenic. But hey, you're the second craziest guy here, and that's nothing to be ashamed of."

It was strange and almost unsettling for Kurt to hear someone talking about his problem like it was a good thing.

"What about you?" Kurt asked. "Why are you here?"

Without hesitation, Dustin pulled down the neck of his hoodie to reveal a horrible scar of twisted skin encircling his neck. Kurt flinched.

"Tried to kill myself five times since the seventh grade," Dustin said, like it was no big deal. "Manic-depressive." He gestured to the black man sitting across from him. "Alex's got the same thing. Bruce is a paranoid schizo, and Robin—" He grabbed the young, mousy guy beside Kurt by the shoulder. "—tried to burn his own house down in a fit of rage."

Alex spoke up then, dropping a disc into the Connect-Four board. "Just so you know, Dustin's on an upward spiral right now, which makes him talk your fucking ear off. He'll shut up as soon as the nurse brings his happy pills."

Dustin rolled his eyes. "Those aren't happy pills, they're just normal pills. They maintain my delicate equilibrium, so fuck off and thank you very much."

Surprisingly, Kurt laughed. It wasn't much more than a light chuckle, but it still startled him in its lack of restraint.

It was nice to feel normal, even if the normal was slightly terrifying.

Burt was going insane.

He briefly wondered if this was how Kurt felt, to have information in his head, to know it was there, and yet not be able to access it even when he needed to.

Burt paced the kitchen floor with the phone held to his ear, waiting for the ringing on the other end to finally stop. He'd called three times already and was growing more and more agitated by the second.

"Hi, this is Ted McManus, please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as soon as possible."

Burt growled in frustration, almost throwing the phone across the room, but calmed himself before the beep. "This is Burt Hummel again," he said. "I need to talk to you right now; just… please call me back as soon as you get this." He huffed and dropped the phone next to the sink, bracing his hands against the counter and trying not to let himself turn around and punch the wall.

He knew who it was. And he couldn't do anything.

He was so goddamn close.

The phone rang, and Burt jerked around, fumbling to press the talk button. "Hello?"

"Hi, Mr. Hummel, this is—"

"Thank God," Burt breathed. "I've been calling you all morning."

"Yes, I just got your messages. I'm sorry, but I was with a few patients. What can I do for you? Is everything all right?"

Burt took off his baseball cap, running a hand over his scalp nervously. "I think I might have some information about what happened to Kurt," he rushed. "I know who hurt him."

There's a long pause on the other end. "Mr. Hummel, at this point, Kurt's still too unstable to handle that kind of potential trigger."

"No, that's… I still don't know who it is," Burt said. "I mean, I do, but—"

"Mr. Hummel?" the doctor cut him off. "Take it easy."

Burt forced himself to exhale. "When Kurt was four, his mom and I went on a second honeymoon and we left him with a college friend of my wife's while we were gone," he explained, his voice cracking.

"And you think that this college friend is Kurt's abuser?"

"He's the only person it could be," Burt said. "Kurt was with him for almost two weeks. He could've… He could've done anything."

"Okay," Dr. McManus said slowly. "I'm still a little unclear on what you're asking me to do."

"I can't remember the guy's name! I'm hoping that Kurt… that he might remember some detail that could help me find him."

Burt was one hundred percent certain that the Franklin guy Kurt had talked about was, in fact, Linda's old college friend, but inexplicably the name Franklin just… didn't ring true. It was the wrong name; it had to be something else.

"Doesn't your wife remember his name?"

Burt sighed. "No, Linda passed."

"Oh, gosh, right, the… the car accident. I'm sorry. Kurt's a new patient and I don't have his file with me at the moment, otherwise—"

"It's fine," Burt cut him off. He honestly couldn't care less about condolences at this point. "Is there any way you can talk to Kurt or the alters and try to find out the guy's name?"

Dr. McManus exhaled heavily on the other end, hesitant. "I… I could, yeah. But like I said, Kurt's still very unstable and it might be unwise to try to dig that up so soon after he got here."

"What do you mean?"

"Having those memories pulled to the surface is traumatizing, Mr. Hummel. There's no way of telling how he might react."

"But you have ways of handling that if you need to," Burt protested. "Kurt's doctors always said that if Kurt's going to get better then he needs to know exactly what happened to him. Why the hell are you saying he shouldn't?"

"It's not that simple. Of course he needs to face the experiences that made him split – that has to happen no matter what. But that sort of thing can't be forced too quickly, or else it's extremely dangerous for his brain. If you push it too much too fast, he might act out in ways that can't be anticipated or prepared for."

Burt took a deep breath, running a hand over his face. "We need to know who this guy is," he insisted.

Silence, and then a sigh. "I won't promise anything," Dr. McManus said. "I'll try to talk to him within the next couple days. But if he shows any signs of being unable to handle it, then you need to understand that this is on his terms, not ours."

Burt nodded, his heart thudding at a probably dangerous rate. Bu potential heart attacks were the last thing on his mind.

"Ask him about Franklin."