Can't Do it By Myself, part 1
Title: Can't Do it By Myself
Author: cowboyhat
Pairing(s) or Character(s): Puck, Artie, Blaine
Word Count: ~15,860
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nothing beyond what grade they're in. This was written before 3x14, any spoilers for future episodes are completely coincidental.
Summary: Puck has never been very good at accepting help, but after a horrible accident in a winter snowstorm, both of his legs are amputed above the knee. Besides months of rehab and dealing with the fact that he can't freaking walk, Puck must redo senior year and face an uncertain future. But with the support of his friends Blaine and Artie, Puck discovers that he has people he can depend on, no matter what. Based on this prompt over at g_a_m.
Link to Art: ART by thelastpen
Link to Fanmix: FANMIX by cowboyhat
1. Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger
2. To Wish Impossible Things - The Cure
3. Try Not to Breathe - R.E.M.
4. Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
5. Don't Dwell - 311
6. Reinventing The Wheel To Run Myself Over - Fall Out Boy
7. Don't Let's Start - They Might Be Giants
8. Leda Atomica - Year Long Disaster
9. Lost Track - Gomez
10. Don't Talk - 10,000 Maniacs
11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
12. Outside - Staind
13. Creep - Radiohead
14. Don't Carry it All - The Decemberists
15. Can't Keep Johnny Down - They Might Be Giants
16. You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - Bachman Turner Overdrive
Puck knew it was a horrible idea to go out that night. The snow was almost blinding. Even as he made the short walk from his house to his truck, he had to squint and pull his jacket collar closer to his face. He was totally under-dressed and not because he hadn't known the storm was coming. It was one of those storms that made local news with ominous warnings to stay home, but they happened every few years. People always seemed to forgot that there was such a thing as weather in Ohio.
He was under-dressed because his mom was stressing him out again and he just had to escape. He'd pulled on the first jacket he'd seen and gone out into the blizzard. His mom was well-meaning, he guessed, but there was only so much pressure he could take. It was like she wanted him to be freaking perfect or something. He was far from it.
It felt good to just sit in the cab of his truck for a few minutes, the engine running loudly. The truck was his territory, the one place where he could be himself. He felt like he was in some kind of fort, with a wall of white surrounding his windows and windshield. He grasped the steering wheel tightly and flicked on the windshield wipers. The heavy snow wasn't making his tension disappear, but he watched it for another minute, trying to decide where he should go.
After a moment, he decided he didn't care. Anywhere was better than just sitting here, going nowhere, doing nothing. He eased off the brake and started down the driveway.
The roads were deserted, for good reason. Puck leaned towards the windshield, but couldn't see much beyond his own headlights. Lima was dark to begin with. The streetlights seemed like mere shadows through the heavy storm. Every time a car would appear from the opposite direction, Puck would curse and do his best to avoid it.
He thought about going home, but even the overheated, slightly smelly interior of his truck was better than his house right now. His mom expected so much from him. He guessed that was a good thing, but it wasn't realistic. Sure, he wanted to get out of this cow town and become famous just like the next guy, but was he really expected to get good grades and behave in the meantime?
That's what this whole fight had been about. Puck had set up a terrific prank in the teacher's lounge, but unfortunately he'd been caught in the act. He couldn't help it... it always seemed to just happen.
Puck wondered how he could stop acting like a jerk, because he'd really been working on that lately. He didn't really like being a bad guy; he'd learned the hard way that it didn't help much. He drove absent-mindedly through the storm, not paying attention to where he was going. He was just driving, just going somewhere.
It wasn't long until he found himself in the huge local park. The park wasn't very well designed and all the roads seemed to loop back on themselves. Even though the roads were darker - no streetlights here - there wasn't much chance of hitting traffic. Puck sped up a bit, enjoying driving through the swirling snowflakes. At that moment, he almost felt like he was the only person in the world.
He thought he heard something, a loud, low noise he couldn't quite make out through the haze. He heard it again - and suddenly, he saw the headlights bearing down on him. He was going way too fast for the narrow road. He slammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid the car, but that turned out to be the worst decision. His truck slid on the icy road and kept going, flying over the road into a ditch.
And as his huge vehicle flipped through the air, Puck could almost feel the silence and all he could think was, this is the end... it's all over.
Noah awoke in a different world. Oh, he knew exactly who he was supposed to be, but he didn't feel any of that right now. He didn't feel like a success or a failure, a hero or a bully. He felt numb and overwhelmingly alone. In the brief moment while his vision came into focus and the white was sorting into furniture, he realized he was in a hospital room. If he laid perfectly still, he could almost pretend like there was nothing wrong, but that was a lie. There was a lot of fog and confusion and nothing was quite clear but there were a few undeniable facts.
He'd been in a bad car crash - even now he remembered flashes of bright lights and lots of noise and commotion. He'd been sleeping for some time - he felt stiff and groggy. There was a lot of pain - and a lot of medicine to try to mask that pain. And he was very much alone - he wondered where all those people who were supposed to support him in times like these were. Not here, obviously.
He didn't want to move; he knew it would hurt, somewhere, everywhere. Puck needed to know how bad it was. Slowly, he reached for the call button and paged a nurse.
He didn't want to look down at his own body. Puck could almost feel how ugly he must be; injured, broken, scarred. He'd always valued his good looks as a gift and didn't know what he'd do without it. So instead of looking, he let the nurse's reaction be the judge. She was no help... she was a middle aged sweet lady who just smiled at the sight of him. A real professional. "And how are you feeling today, Mr. Puckerman?"
"What day is it?" He muttered, his mouth dry and sour.
"Wednesday morning, about 10:30. That means you just slept for 3 days, if you're curious."
Right, the storm had been on Sunday night. Knowing Ohio weather, it had probably all melted by now. "What happened?" He felt how asinine the question was, even as he asked it, but that wasn't exactly what he wanted to know. He was curious, what had changed and what would never be the same.
"I'll go get the doctor," she trailed off. She probably got the question all the time and knew exactly what he really wanted to know. To her, he was just another number.
He noticed his phone, still plugged into the charger, resting on the bedside table. Puck turned it on; someone had already gone through his text messages and email. He never got much besides junk, but not having anything at all was a little strange. Even his texts were all a little too harmless; he wouldn't be surprised if the majority had been deleted.
Suddenly, Puck felt like someone was watching him. It was a weird feeling because he would have heard the doctor or another visitor. He slowly lowered the phone and glanced around nervously. Sure enough, the room was empty, but that was he finally noticed the fact that he'd been missing. Half his bed was empty, too.
There weren't blankets or a privacy sheet or anything, just a thin night gown covering his body. Puck wondered why he couldn't quite feel the cold, but his whole body seemed to be numb from the morphine that surely raced through his blood. He would need a whole lot of it not to feel that he'd been fucking cut apart and didn't even know it. He stared at where his legs and feet should be, but there was nothing. Whatever left was hidden by thick bandages; it was hard to tell where things ended exactly. Fuck if he could feel the difference right now.
He looked up as he heard the doctor enter the room. The guy looked like some young intern who'd barely slept since Obama had been elected. "What the fuck is going on?"
The doctor shook his head. "You suffered major trauma in the car crash. There was a lot of bleeding; your legs were pinned underneath the truck's engine. There was no way we could save them."
After a long moment, Puck nodded and turned back to his body. That engine was massive; it must have weighed almost 700 pounds. He would stare at it for hours, equally impressed and overwhelmed. Puck knew enough about weightlifting to know that you'd be in trouble if 50 pounds fell on you. And he knew that engine must have been about 220 degrees, running full steam against the cold weather. That must have hurt. He studied the thick bandages, now noticing thin trails of blood stains. He should have felt lucky, glad to be alive. He traced the bandages with his eye, his eyes staying on the neatly taped ends. He didn't feel anything. "So that's it? That's all you can do for me?"
He didn't need to hear the doctor's negative reaction to know the answer.
The young doctor seemed to trip over his complex descriptions of what was going on. Puck wanted to ask for a real doctor, maybe one with more experience, but he wasn't the kind of person who'd discount someone's age as a negative. After all, hadn't he thought he'd known everything just a few days ago? He listened to the doctor a while, not wanting to interrupt what was obviously hours of memorization. But his curiosity was too strong... "what about the medicine?"
The doctor seemed to instantly lose his train of thought and forget everything he'd learned. "What about it?"
"I don't want it... I want to be able to feel whatever is wrong with me."
"It will be intense. Your body is still recovering."
"I don't care. I don't want to be numb."
"I'll discuss it with the lead surgeon on your case. There will be a lot of pain at this point."
"I'm sure there will always be pain," Puck spat back at the young doctor, if only to prove he wasn't an idiot. Artie had pain and he couldn't even feel half his body. His mother had pain from her long shifts at work. The whole glee club had pain after long rehearsals. It was a way of life. If there was going to be more of it, he wanted to know now. The pain he could deal with.
The rest of it, he wasn't so sure.
Towards the end of the conversation with the doctor, a different nurse came in, this one young and beautiful. Puck knew he should have been attracted to her, but he just felt empty. He stared up into her brown eyes and long beautiful hair and wondered where his manhood had gone. Hopefully not the way of his poor legs... (where were the legs, anyway? Suddenly he had a lot of troubling questions.)
"Oh, you're awake just in time, Mr. Puckerman. I'm going to change your bandages now." She sounded so damn excited about it. Puck almost asked for a new nurse to go along with a replacement doctor, but where did he get off being so entitled? Maybe this was the highlight of her day. He would hate to ruin that for her.
The doctor tried to retreat quickly, but Puck stopped him and asked his burning questions. He didn't care about how embarrassing they sounded, not anymore. Not when he knew the answers could change everything. Yes, he still had his manhood and probably just wasn't feeling anything because of the pain killers and general exhaustion. His legs had been buried in some tiny plot in Westerville (the closest Jewish cemetery). Puck was silenced by that thought, so the doctor quietly stepped out, even though Puck wasn't finished with him. The nurse carefully closed the door and pulled out some supplies from a cabinet next to his monitors. Puck glanced at his own heartbeat and other vital signs for a long moment. At least they all seemed regulated and normal.
Puck wasn't sure if he should watch the nurse or not. She was so proficient and didn't seem to be bothered one way or the other by Puck's injuries or otherwise good looks. That thought crossed his mind again, if he would be attractive to anyone ever again. He glanced up at the ceiling, wondering if it really mattered. He should be worried about how he'd get places, how he'd function. He looked back at the nurse as she stoically undid his bandages. All he could think about was how ugly he felt.
Puck looked away at the first sight of blood. It was kind of funny, actually. He wasn't the type to shy away from gore, his own or anyone's. As a kid, he used to think he'd be a good paramedic. There had been some truly heroic moments when he was the only one to be able to stomach what was going on. When Finn had gotten hit in head with a baseball bat a couple years ago (long story), Puck was the only one who had been able to take care of the messy results.
But now it was different. There were stitches where parts of his body should be... He hadn't even been able to make out where things ended, but somehow seeing his skin made it more real. The nurse took a long time about her business and as she finished, he asked, "Can't I get a blanket or something?"
He felt so freaking exposed. The nurse shook her head slowly, "we need access. We'll see about something in the next few days."
Puck felt kind of violated that he had no say in the process.
The hours passed slowly while the others must have been going mindlessly through school or work or where ever their lives took them. But for Puck, there was nothing to do. He would glance down at his legs, back at his phone, at the ceiling and he knew he was in for many long days of the same. Of nothing.
And maybe that would be forever.
He wasn't interested in the TV and didn't even bother to turn it on. Sometime around 3, when school was just letting out, Puck picked up his phone and started playing around with it. He scrolled through his contacts, wondering if he should text someone... and maybe more importantly, who. He was sure they all knew, but he didn't really want visitors. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
But anyone would be better than the endless silence. Puck couldn't get quite comfortable in the unfamiliar bed. The times between someone came to check on him - and there always seemed to be someone attending to him - seemed to last forever. Puck's contacts were organized by last name, just because it seemed more practical. One of the first names stood out to him. Anderson, Blaine.
What could Blaine possibly have to offer that someone else couldn't? They weren't really even very friendly... and maybe that was the key. Puck didn't want a friend here, but maybe a friendly face would be enough. As far as he knew, Blaine didn't care one way or the other about Puck and the feeling was kind of mutual. So there was some kind of camaraderie because they had friends in common, but not any kind of bond. It was exactly what Puck wanted right now.
He composed a quick text, "hey, can you come visit? Don't tell anyone." He assumed it was enough information, even though he wasn't sure Blaine had his number.
"OK," was the reply and Blaine was there within the half hour.
He stood in the door frame, smiling softly, but Puck couldn't talk what he was thinking. "What's up?" Blaine asked softly.
"Not too freaking much," Puck shook his head. "Come in."
Blaine followed directions and sat in one of the chairs casually. He met Puck's eyes and asked bluntly, "Why'd you want me to come, out of everyone?"
Puck shrugged, "I don't know. You were the least likely to walk in here and either be overly concerned or disgusted."
"What if I'm both?"
"But you're not. We're not even friends."
"Doesn't mean I don't care about you," Blaine shrugged, like he wasn't sure if he did care, if he should care.
"Well, thanks," Puck smiled, despite himself.
"I didn't tell anyone," Blaine spoke softly now. "You know they all know though, right?"
"Yeah, wasn't expecting much different, honestly. At first I was kind of annoyed no one was here, but I know how they are... I don't want their sympathy. I don't want anyone to come in and freaking pray for me or anything like that."
Blaine nodded softly. "They want to see you, see that you're OK."
"You can just tell them that," Puck shrugged. "I'm OK."
"Are you?"
He stared at Blaine for a moment. "I don't know. I just found out half my body was chopped off and I really have no say about that or anything else right now. How am I supposed to feel about that?"
Blaine was actually quiet for a long moment, thinking about this. Finally, he shrugged, "however you want to feel."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I never told anyone this, not even Kurt, but after I got beat up, I was in pretty bad shape. I couldn't get out of bed for months. I hated myself, I hated life and I hated those punks who'd hated me for something I couldn't control. That's when I decided I needed to learn how to defend myself."
Puck nodded slowly, "It's too late for those lessons now... but yeah, I pretty much hate everything about this. And most of all, I hate how I must look. I don't want anyone to see me like this."
"They're gonna want to see you eventually."
Puck swallowed hard at the possibility. "Not right now, dude. Not now."
Puck learned several things over the next few days that he'd never thought he would want to know. 1. Lying in bed was really terrible and annoying. They didn't want him getting up until all the stitches came out and until than, he did everything in that bed. He had to eat, piss and pass the time being tended to. He hated it. 2. Speaking of being taken care of, that might be for a while. Prostheses were an option, but only once his legs were fully healed, which could take years. Apparently they hurt and were really expensive and insurance rarely paid for them. The options didn't look good. 3. As much as Puck hated the long quiet hours, he never wanted anyone to see him.
Despite that fact, he developed a routine of texting Blaine every day at 3, telling him to come visit. Blaine was the one person who there would no long term relationship with. Blaine was safe.
"You don't have to text me, I would come anyway," Blaine remarked on the third day.
Puck shrugged, "I guess." The only other visitors he had were his mom, sister and nana, if only because that was expected. They would stare at the floor and mumble and leave as quickly as possible. It wasn't like that with Blaine. He would look at Puck in his eyes and stay as long as Puck wanted. They would talk about music and football and there was no danger of future conflict. There were no strings attached.
"Everyone else wants to come," Blaine ventured, just like he did every day.
"You can tell them to shove it."
"It would be nice if you could at least text someone. They're starting to think I might be crazy," he chuckled lightly.
So Puck sent Sam a text on the fourth day, if only for Blaine's sake. Sam was probably the second least threatening friend. Even though they had once been close, Sam could go back to Kentucky at any time. Sam was chill, even though he cared about his friends. Sam wouldn't make a big deal out of things like some of his friends would.
He got a reply almost as soon as he'd sent it. He kind of wondered exactly how many people had seen the text. Puck almost didn't send a reply, but he rationalized that it was only words. He could say almost nothing and they would be happy. So he left it simple. He was doing fine. Thanks for the cards, but please no more flowers. The whole thing was ridiculous. That was the day they finally gave him a blanket for privacy though, so that was nice.
On the seventh day, they finally agreed to wean him off the morphine. It'd taken a week of practically begging before the doctors were convinced that he'd be OK. He was sick of being numb. He wasn't a baby, he could tolerate a little pain.
He'd obviously underestimated how much it hurt to saw off your legs.
Almost as soon as the last dose stopped, he felt feeling return. It was nice at first, but all too soon, he became aware of every single part of his body. He recovered feeling in strange places he hadn't even thought about since biology class. As the medicine wore off, the pain grew worse. His whole body ached. But his legs were by far the worst.
He had never quite figured out where his legs had been amputated, but now he knew down to the millimeter. That was where the pain ended. Puck didn't know a whole lot about anatomy, but he could feel every muscle, nerve and bone until mid thigh, where it suddenly stopped. The pain was different in each part. The muscles felt like they'd been pulled tight, twisted in impossible directions and forgotten about. The nerves sent shooting pain from their raw ends. And the bones felt like they'd been crushed with a hammer. Together, it was almost a cacophony of pain, an orchestra of feeling.
But it was better than lying there numb.
Puck spent hours laying on his side, facing away from the door. He could never get quite comfortable, but now it was ten times worse. He wished he could get up just to get some fresh air and move around a little, but that bed had become like a prison for him. He could not leave.
At about 3, he picked up his phone and started to text Blaine and tell him not to come. He didn't think he could bare to sit through a conversation right now. He gave up after drafting the message a few times because he knew it was pointless. He did want Blaine to come. Blaine was the only thing normal anymore, the only thing he could depend on.
But as he set his phone down in resignation, he heard voices from down the hall. They sounded so happy and loud, and Puck instantly hated them. It was pretty rude to have a party outside a hospital room and Puck had to wonder if he would ever be that happy again. But as the group approached his room, Puck thought he recognized their voices. There was the strong baritone that never wavered, even though he had the tendency to err. And here was the higher counter-tenor that wasn't quite as confident, but had definitely been getting stronger lately. And finally, a light laughter that he would recognize anywhere.
No. What were they doing here now? How many times had he told them he didn't want visitors? Puck panicked and threw his blanket over himself, facing the wall. Hopefully they'd think he was sleeping and leave.
Someone pushed open the door and after a long moment, Kurt said, "Oh, he's sleeping."
"I knew this wasn't a good idea," Rachel said softly.
"No wait, guys," Finn declared, "I think he should know."
"Come on, he's sleeping. He'll find out some other time." Rachel sounded frustrated and in a hurry to be anywhere but there. Puck almost felt bad for her, but he was sure it had more to do her level of discomfort than anything to do with her schedule.
Finn sighed, "I just think he'd want to know you guys made it." Puck could almost hear that cutesy grin Finn got around Rachel. And suddenly it was painfully obvious where Kurt and Rachel had made it.
Puck sucked in a breath and tried not to make any noise. Great, now they had a guaranteed future, the one thing that had always been iffy in his life. And now... now he was lying in bed, pretending to be sleeping.
Not that he was jealous of them exactly. He didn't want to go to any drama school, that was for damn sure. He just wanted a future... he just wanted them to get the hell out of his room.
And that was the thing, they were just standing there. None of them seemed to know what to do, not even Puck who was quietly staring at the wall. After several moments too long, Puck finally rolled over. It hurt. "What the hell are you guys still doing here?"
"Oh Puck, you're awake," Rachel cried and rushed to his bedside. He saw her hesitate. God he felt so ugly... she wouldn't even look at him.
"Of course I am. Now what's this I hear about you guys getting in NYADA?"
Now Rachel straightened up with a smile, becoming a different person. "Oh, we got in after all. Isn't it great, Noah?"
He smiled weakly, not quite meeting her eyes. "Sure, great."
"We just wanted you to know..." Finn explained awkwardly.
"Great, now I know." Puck looked at each of them in turn. No surprise, their eyes were on the walls, ceiling or beeping machines. Anywhere but him. Strangely, he didn't feel angry. Maybe there was too much pain to be angry. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. "Now get the hell out of my room and don't come back."
"Oh Puck." To his surprise, Kurt approached him now. "Blaine told us how you feel."
"Fuck, he did?" Puck raised an eyebrow and studied the smaller boy. Kurt just nodded sadly. "Well, you can tell him not to come back either. I can take care of myself."
Lie number one.
Puck was in the hospital for three more useless days before they finally removed the stitches. Kurt seemed to explain everything to Blaine, so he didn't come back and neither did anyone else. Puck kind of liked it that way.
Puck had way too much risk for infection and other gore while the stitches were in, but once they were gone, he seemed OK. The stitches bled a little at each needle hole and the scars were still fresh and raw, but now at least he was free of thick layers of bandages. And that was liberating and terrifying. Now he could see his legs in all their terrible glory. Deformed and twisted and just horrible. He had to look away. Instead he watched the nurse disconnect the last of the monitoring equipment and he was officially discharged from the hospital.
His mom handed him a pair of jeans stoically, staring at the dying flowers next to his bed. How was Puck even expected to wear these? "Do you have scissors?"
"What?" His mom's gaze fell on him for a split second. "What do you want them for?"
"So I can cut these damn jeans so they fit."
His mom nodded and went on a search for scissors. When she came back, Puck quickly trimmed the pants. He pulled them on over his painful stubs, noticing how ragged and uneven they were. It seemed kind of fitting.
Puck sat up slowly and took a long look around the room. He had no idea what he was supposed to do next. "I can't go home," he muttered.
His mom just nodded. "We found a great place. The rehab program is only a few months long. We just hoped you'd be willing."
Puck shrugged, trying to fill the empty holes. "Don't really have much choice, do I?"
Transport was fucking awkward. Puck was basically pushed, maneuvered and man-handled for several hours until he was half way across the state in an identical room. At least now his friends couldn't make a surprise visit.
He woke up at 2 am when some attendant pushed a wheelchair into his room. He stared long and hard at the big, boxy chair, obviously a rental. There was no way he was going in that thing.
He woke up the next morning when the door opened and was greeted by a tall physical therapist standing behind that chair. "Ready?" The young man wore the worst smile Puck had ever seen.
"No." Puck muttered, his eyes trained again on that ugly hunk of metal, plastic and fabric.
To his surprise, the therapist just shrugged. "Up to you, I have all day."
Puck stared hard at him, but the guy didn't seem intimidated at all. He probably saw worse things on a daily basis - kids who couldn't move or breathe, guys who endured constant shaking or seizures. Puck knew he wasn't that bad off in the grand scheme of things, but it didn't matter right now. He felt selfish and foolish and he just kept glaring at the therapist from his bed.
"Don't you have better things to do, like taking care of some dying kid?"
"Nope." The guy just barely shot him a smile. "You're my charge til you finish or go home, whichever comes first. My name's Justin, by the way." He approached Puck and gave him a firm hand shake.
Puck looked up at him, crossing his arms. "What if I don't want to do either? I'm not a quitter and well, I'm here, aren't I? I can't go home."
"You and everyone else here."
"Gee, thanks for the compassion."
He shrugged, "That's not what I'm here for. We have shrinks if you wanna talk. I'm sure you've got family or friends if you want sympathy."
"I don't want it."
"You just said..." Justin shook his head and backed off. He seemed to know this was a battle he shouldn't be fighting. "Whatever. Let me know when you're ready." And he actually sighed and took a seat near the door.
Puck couldn't believe it. Maybe it made sense that Justin couldn't make him do the work, but what exactly was he here for if Puck wouldn't even move?
Because he couldn't, didn't want to move.
He didn't want to rage or cry like he was supposed to. He didn't want sympathy - because honestly, he didn't think people really cared either way. It was just that he wanted nothing to do with this.
From his hospital bed, covered in bandages and away from sight, It'd been easy for Puck to pretend this wasn't real. It was almost just a bad dream when there was no pain and no visitors. Even once he was off the medicine, the pain was just an injury... a really bad injury. Puck wasn't stupid enough to think his legs might grow back or he'd get hi-tech prostheses any time soon, but he just hadn't really thought that far ahead.
Now as he stared at the rented chair and the therapist waiting to help him, Puck felt the first stirrings of panic. There was no escape... and as his eyes shifted restlessly from the bed, he thought how he'd rather be anywhere else. Who ever said he could do this? Did he really have to?
"Why did you come here?" Justin asked, basically reading his mind.
"I told you already," he muttered. "I couldn't exactly go home... or go anywhere. I don't even know where to start."
"Well, that's what this is for," he ushered to the chair next to him. Seeing Puck's hesitation, he quickly added, "don't you want to be able to go to school... do what you want... travel the world?"
Puck shrugged again. "I thought that's what I wanted." He shifted his focus to a painting on the wall of a group of children dancing in a field. It seemed really insensitive. "I think I'm done with school though. And all that stuff about doing what you want is crap. I have a friend in a chair who actually believes that shit, but I see how hard it is for him, how people are always judging him... and you know what? I used to judge him too."
"I think it's pretty normal to assume that people with handicaps are limited."
Puck just rolled his eyes and sat there like a stone. "Whatever. I'm not handicapped."
The young man just sighed, obviously not surprised. "OK, I'd like to see you make it out of this room."
Finally someone dared to challenge him. Puck looked toward the door. The room wasn't even that big, but it seemed impossible to cross the distance. He supposed he could try to crawl, but how would he get down from the bed? Besides, his legs were still raw and healing. It would probably hurt a lot. There was always the wheelchair, but from the times he'd seen Artie transfer, it took a whole lot of strength and skill that Puck didn't think he had right now. Besides, the chair was parked out of his reach.
"I can't... I fucking can't." His breath was ragged... he could feel tears just outside his fear and rage.
Justin nodded, stood and pushed the chair closer. "I'm here to show you how."
Rehab was humiliating, but it gave Puck something to concentrate on. He was used to working out and taking care of his body, but he must have lost tons of strength during his recovery. Everything was so hard and took ten times as much effort as before. But somehow it felt good to focus on his arms, on strength training, on things he could still do. During the sessions, he'd wear shorts and a tank top, the shorts dangling a few inches below his legs. He tried to avoid looking at them, but every once in a while, he would catch a glimpse of the raw, ugly flesh.
And for the most part, he tried to avoid his phone, but Blaine texted him every day, asking if he should visit on the way home. Even though the rehab center was across town from Westerville, Puck had no doubt Blaine would come if Puck wanted him to. He didn't want that.
Puck would however open a text to Artie and draft a joke about finally understanding him, but it always came off offensive and conceited. Of course Puck didn't understand Artie...
He didn't understand how Artie lived with himself.
All the people at the rehab center seemed pretty OK with things, with themselves. The center was full of every type of person, each with a different story. There were a few other amputees, mostly due to diabetes, cancer or some other illness. Puck couldn't relate to any of them. Three times a week, he had to attend group therapy with his peers - guys aged 18-32. Some of them had been in car crashes or done other reckless things, but Puck couldn't talk to them either. Sure, some of them were angry and lacked confidence, but Puck seemed to be the only one crazy enough to care what he looked like.
After a couple weeks, the routine got really boring and Puck almost wished for company. Instead, he just pushed himself harder, tried to become stronger. His therapist Justin and the others all thought it was a good sign - his way of finally moving on and accepting things. How could he explain that it was the only way of coping at all? That the only way to avoid the outside world - and his own thoughts - was to work even harder? And so he did, until he was bench pressing twice his usual weight. On one rep, he felt something tear in his shoulder. Suddenly, he was being wheeled back to bed and treated for a torn rotator cuff.
Justin walked in a few minutes after the doctor left, looking disappointed. "Well, you did a pretty good job there. The doctor said you'll have to wear that sling for a few weeks," he ushered toward Puck's newest accessory. "That means you can't do rehab and insurance won't pay for you to be here while you recover. It's probably best just to go home and rest for a while."
"No way," Puck shook his head, defensive. "My house has tons of stairs and shit. I couldn't get around there even if I wanted to."
"Oh, that's another thing," Justin said carefully. "The chair you've been using belongs to the rehab center. You can't take it."
All Puck could think to say was, "Well, shit."
He asked if there was a pay phone, because he never wanted a record of this conversation anywhere.
"Geek Boutique."
"Artie?" Puck just turned to stare at the key pad of the center's pay phone a few minutes later.
"Who may I say is calling?"
"Artie, it's Puck."
"Oh, sorry," he dropped the formal tone. "Oh, Puck, I didn't realize it was you."
"What's Geek Boutique?"
He just chuckled. "A business I started. Never mind that. What's up?"
"So, weird question... do you have like an extra wheelchair or something I could borrow... and an extra bedroom?"
"The bedroom I can definitely do..." Artie trailed off. "I don't know about the wheelchair though. You really can't just borrow one; it'd never fit you right. What's going on?"
"It's a long story," Puck sighed, glancing again at his sore arm. Only he could manage to screw up things this badly. "Do you think you could help me get one and come pick me up or something? Oh, Artie, I don't even know what to do..."
"Don't worry, I'll take care of everything," he said quickly. "I suppose we'll need another guy to help you?"
Puck swallowed hard and nodded. Finally, remembering Artie couldn't see him, he said, "Yeah. I can't do it by myself."
link to part two
Author: cowboyhat
Pairing(s) or Character(s): Puck, Artie, Blaine
Word Count: ~15,860
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nothing beyond what grade they're in. This was written before 3x14, any spoilers for future episodes are completely coincidental.
Summary: Puck has never been very good at accepting help, but after a horrible accident in a winter snowstorm, both of his legs are amputed above the knee. Besides months of rehab and dealing with the fact that he can't freaking walk, Puck must redo senior year and face an uncertain future. But with the support of his friends Blaine and Artie, Puck discovers that he has people he can depend on, no matter what. Based on this prompt over at g_a_m.
Link to Art: ART by thelastpen
Link to Fanmix: FANMIX by cowboyhat
1. Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger
2. To Wish Impossible Things - The Cure
3. Try Not to Breathe - R.E.M.
4. Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
5. Don't Dwell - 311
6. Reinventing The Wheel To Run Myself Over - Fall Out Boy
7. Don't Let's Start - They Might Be Giants
8. Leda Atomica - Year Long Disaster
9. Lost Track - Gomez
10. Don't Talk - 10,000 Maniacs
11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
12. Outside - Staind
13. Creep - Radiohead
14. Don't Carry it All - The Decemberists
15. Can't Keep Johnny Down - They Might Be Giants
16. You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - Bachman Turner Overdrive
Puck knew it was a horrible idea to go out that night. The snow was almost blinding. Even as he made the short walk from his house to his truck, he had to squint and pull his jacket collar closer to his face. He was totally under-dressed and not because he hadn't known the storm was coming. It was one of those storms that made local news with ominous warnings to stay home, but they happened every few years. People always seemed to forgot that there was such a thing as weather in Ohio.
He was under-dressed because his mom was stressing him out again and he just had to escape. He'd pulled on the first jacket he'd seen and gone out into the blizzard. His mom was well-meaning, he guessed, but there was only so much pressure he could take. It was like she wanted him to be freaking perfect or something. He was far from it.
It felt good to just sit in the cab of his truck for a few minutes, the engine running loudly. The truck was his territory, the one place where he could be himself. He felt like he was in some kind of fort, with a wall of white surrounding his windows and windshield. He grasped the steering wheel tightly and flicked on the windshield wipers. The heavy snow wasn't making his tension disappear, but he watched it for another minute, trying to decide where he should go.
After a moment, he decided he didn't care. Anywhere was better than just sitting here, going nowhere, doing nothing. He eased off the brake and started down the driveway.
The roads were deserted, for good reason. Puck leaned towards the windshield, but couldn't see much beyond his own headlights. Lima was dark to begin with. The streetlights seemed like mere shadows through the heavy storm. Every time a car would appear from the opposite direction, Puck would curse and do his best to avoid it.
He thought about going home, but even the overheated, slightly smelly interior of his truck was better than his house right now. His mom expected so much from him. He guessed that was a good thing, but it wasn't realistic. Sure, he wanted to get out of this cow town and become famous just like the next guy, but was he really expected to get good grades and behave in the meantime?
That's what this whole fight had been about. Puck had set up a terrific prank in the teacher's lounge, but unfortunately he'd been caught in the act. He couldn't help it... it always seemed to just happen.
Puck wondered how he could stop acting like a jerk, because he'd really been working on that lately. He didn't really like being a bad guy; he'd learned the hard way that it didn't help much. He drove absent-mindedly through the storm, not paying attention to where he was going. He was just driving, just going somewhere.
It wasn't long until he found himself in the huge local park. The park wasn't very well designed and all the roads seemed to loop back on themselves. Even though the roads were darker - no streetlights here - there wasn't much chance of hitting traffic. Puck sped up a bit, enjoying driving through the swirling snowflakes. At that moment, he almost felt like he was the only person in the world.
He thought he heard something, a loud, low noise he couldn't quite make out through the haze. He heard it again - and suddenly, he saw the headlights bearing down on him. He was going way too fast for the narrow road. He slammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid the car, but that turned out to be the worst decision. His truck slid on the icy road and kept going, flying over the road into a ditch.
And as his huge vehicle flipped through the air, Puck could almost feel the silence and all he could think was, this is the end... it's all over.
Noah awoke in a different world. Oh, he knew exactly who he was supposed to be, but he didn't feel any of that right now. He didn't feel like a success or a failure, a hero or a bully. He felt numb and overwhelmingly alone. In the brief moment while his vision came into focus and the white was sorting into furniture, he realized he was in a hospital room. If he laid perfectly still, he could almost pretend like there was nothing wrong, but that was a lie. There was a lot of fog and confusion and nothing was quite clear but there were a few undeniable facts.
He'd been in a bad car crash - even now he remembered flashes of bright lights and lots of noise and commotion. He'd been sleeping for some time - he felt stiff and groggy. There was a lot of pain - and a lot of medicine to try to mask that pain. And he was very much alone - he wondered where all those people who were supposed to support him in times like these were. Not here, obviously.
He didn't want to move; he knew it would hurt, somewhere, everywhere. Puck needed to know how bad it was. Slowly, he reached for the call button and paged a nurse.
He didn't want to look down at his own body. Puck could almost feel how ugly he must be; injured, broken, scarred. He'd always valued his good looks as a gift and didn't know what he'd do without it. So instead of looking, he let the nurse's reaction be the judge. She was no help... she was a middle aged sweet lady who just smiled at the sight of him. A real professional. "And how are you feeling today, Mr. Puckerman?"
"What day is it?" He muttered, his mouth dry and sour.
"Wednesday morning, about 10:30. That means you just slept for 3 days, if you're curious."
Right, the storm had been on Sunday night. Knowing Ohio weather, it had probably all melted by now. "What happened?" He felt how asinine the question was, even as he asked it, but that wasn't exactly what he wanted to know. He was curious, what had changed and what would never be the same.
"I'll go get the doctor," she trailed off. She probably got the question all the time and knew exactly what he really wanted to know. To her, he was just another number.
He noticed his phone, still plugged into the charger, resting on the bedside table. Puck turned it on; someone had already gone through his text messages and email. He never got much besides junk, but not having anything at all was a little strange. Even his texts were all a little too harmless; he wouldn't be surprised if the majority had been deleted.
Suddenly, Puck felt like someone was watching him. It was a weird feeling because he would have heard the doctor or another visitor. He slowly lowered the phone and glanced around nervously. Sure enough, the room was empty, but that was he finally noticed the fact that he'd been missing. Half his bed was empty, too.
There weren't blankets or a privacy sheet or anything, just a thin night gown covering his body. Puck wondered why he couldn't quite feel the cold, but his whole body seemed to be numb from the morphine that surely raced through his blood. He would need a whole lot of it not to feel that he'd been fucking cut apart and didn't even know it. He stared at where his legs and feet should be, but there was nothing. Whatever left was hidden by thick bandages; it was hard to tell where things ended exactly. Fuck if he could feel the difference right now.
He looked up as he heard the doctor enter the room. The guy looked like some young intern who'd barely slept since Obama had been elected. "What the fuck is going on?"
The doctor shook his head. "You suffered major trauma in the car crash. There was a lot of bleeding; your legs were pinned underneath the truck's engine. There was no way we could save them."
After a long moment, Puck nodded and turned back to his body. That engine was massive; it must have weighed almost 700 pounds. He would stare at it for hours, equally impressed and overwhelmed. Puck knew enough about weightlifting to know that you'd be in trouble if 50 pounds fell on you. And he knew that engine must have been about 220 degrees, running full steam against the cold weather. That must have hurt. He studied the thick bandages, now noticing thin trails of blood stains. He should have felt lucky, glad to be alive. He traced the bandages with his eye, his eyes staying on the neatly taped ends. He didn't feel anything. "So that's it? That's all you can do for me?"
He didn't need to hear the doctor's negative reaction to know the answer.
The young doctor seemed to trip over his complex descriptions of what was going on. Puck wanted to ask for a real doctor, maybe one with more experience, but he wasn't the kind of person who'd discount someone's age as a negative. After all, hadn't he thought he'd known everything just a few days ago? He listened to the doctor a while, not wanting to interrupt what was obviously hours of memorization. But his curiosity was too strong... "what about the medicine?"
The doctor seemed to instantly lose his train of thought and forget everything he'd learned. "What about it?"
"I don't want it... I want to be able to feel whatever is wrong with me."
"It will be intense. Your body is still recovering."
"I don't care. I don't want to be numb."
"I'll discuss it with the lead surgeon on your case. There will be a lot of pain at this point."
"I'm sure there will always be pain," Puck spat back at the young doctor, if only to prove he wasn't an idiot. Artie had pain and he couldn't even feel half his body. His mother had pain from her long shifts at work. The whole glee club had pain after long rehearsals. It was a way of life. If there was going to be more of it, he wanted to know now. The pain he could deal with.
The rest of it, he wasn't so sure.
Towards the end of the conversation with the doctor, a different nurse came in, this one young and beautiful. Puck knew he should have been attracted to her, but he just felt empty. He stared up into her brown eyes and long beautiful hair and wondered where his manhood had gone. Hopefully not the way of his poor legs... (where were the legs, anyway? Suddenly he had a lot of troubling questions.)
"Oh, you're awake just in time, Mr. Puckerman. I'm going to change your bandages now." She sounded so damn excited about it. Puck almost asked for a new nurse to go along with a replacement doctor, but where did he get off being so entitled? Maybe this was the highlight of her day. He would hate to ruin that for her.
The doctor tried to retreat quickly, but Puck stopped him and asked his burning questions. He didn't care about how embarrassing they sounded, not anymore. Not when he knew the answers could change everything. Yes, he still had his manhood and probably just wasn't feeling anything because of the pain killers and general exhaustion. His legs had been buried in some tiny plot in Westerville (the closest Jewish cemetery). Puck was silenced by that thought, so the doctor quietly stepped out, even though Puck wasn't finished with him. The nurse carefully closed the door and pulled out some supplies from a cabinet next to his monitors. Puck glanced at his own heartbeat and other vital signs for a long moment. At least they all seemed regulated and normal.
Puck wasn't sure if he should watch the nurse or not. She was so proficient and didn't seem to be bothered one way or the other by Puck's injuries or otherwise good looks. That thought crossed his mind again, if he would be attractive to anyone ever again. He glanced up at the ceiling, wondering if it really mattered. He should be worried about how he'd get places, how he'd function. He looked back at the nurse as she stoically undid his bandages. All he could think about was how ugly he felt.
Puck looked away at the first sight of blood. It was kind of funny, actually. He wasn't the type to shy away from gore, his own or anyone's. As a kid, he used to think he'd be a good paramedic. There had been some truly heroic moments when he was the only one to be able to stomach what was going on. When Finn had gotten hit in head with a baseball bat a couple years ago (long story), Puck was the only one who had been able to take care of the messy results.
But now it was different. There were stitches where parts of his body should be... He hadn't even been able to make out where things ended, but somehow seeing his skin made it more real. The nurse took a long time about her business and as she finished, he asked, "Can't I get a blanket or something?"
He felt so freaking exposed. The nurse shook her head slowly, "we need access. We'll see about something in the next few days."
Puck felt kind of violated that he had no say in the process.
The hours passed slowly while the others must have been going mindlessly through school or work or where ever their lives took them. But for Puck, there was nothing to do. He would glance down at his legs, back at his phone, at the ceiling and he knew he was in for many long days of the same. Of nothing.
And maybe that would be forever.
He wasn't interested in the TV and didn't even bother to turn it on. Sometime around 3, when school was just letting out, Puck picked up his phone and started playing around with it. He scrolled through his contacts, wondering if he should text someone... and maybe more importantly, who. He was sure they all knew, but he didn't really want visitors. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
But anyone would be better than the endless silence. Puck couldn't get quite comfortable in the unfamiliar bed. The times between someone came to check on him - and there always seemed to be someone attending to him - seemed to last forever. Puck's contacts were organized by last name, just because it seemed more practical. One of the first names stood out to him. Anderson, Blaine.
What could Blaine possibly have to offer that someone else couldn't? They weren't really even very friendly... and maybe that was the key. Puck didn't want a friend here, but maybe a friendly face would be enough. As far as he knew, Blaine didn't care one way or the other about Puck and the feeling was kind of mutual. So there was some kind of camaraderie because they had friends in common, but not any kind of bond. It was exactly what Puck wanted right now.
He composed a quick text, "hey, can you come visit? Don't tell anyone." He assumed it was enough information, even though he wasn't sure Blaine had his number.
"OK," was the reply and Blaine was there within the half hour.
He stood in the door frame, smiling softly, but Puck couldn't talk what he was thinking. "What's up?" Blaine asked softly.
"Not too freaking much," Puck shook his head. "Come in."
Blaine followed directions and sat in one of the chairs casually. He met Puck's eyes and asked bluntly, "Why'd you want me to come, out of everyone?"
Puck shrugged, "I don't know. You were the least likely to walk in here and either be overly concerned or disgusted."
"What if I'm both?"
"But you're not. We're not even friends."
"Doesn't mean I don't care about you," Blaine shrugged, like he wasn't sure if he did care, if he should care.
"Well, thanks," Puck smiled, despite himself.
"I didn't tell anyone," Blaine spoke softly now. "You know they all know though, right?"
"Yeah, wasn't expecting much different, honestly. At first I was kind of annoyed no one was here, but I know how they are... I don't want their sympathy. I don't want anyone to come in and freaking pray for me or anything like that."
Blaine nodded softly. "They want to see you, see that you're OK."
"You can just tell them that," Puck shrugged. "I'm OK."
"Are you?"
He stared at Blaine for a moment. "I don't know. I just found out half my body was chopped off and I really have no say about that or anything else right now. How am I supposed to feel about that?"
Blaine was actually quiet for a long moment, thinking about this. Finally, he shrugged, "however you want to feel."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I never told anyone this, not even Kurt, but after I got beat up, I was in pretty bad shape. I couldn't get out of bed for months. I hated myself, I hated life and I hated those punks who'd hated me for something I couldn't control. That's when I decided I needed to learn how to defend myself."
Puck nodded slowly, "It's too late for those lessons now... but yeah, I pretty much hate everything about this. And most of all, I hate how I must look. I don't want anyone to see me like this."
"They're gonna want to see you eventually."
Puck swallowed hard at the possibility. "Not right now, dude. Not now."
Puck learned several things over the next few days that he'd never thought he would want to know. 1. Lying in bed was really terrible and annoying. They didn't want him getting up until all the stitches came out and until than, he did everything in that bed. He had to eat, piss and pass the time being tended to. He hated it. 2. Speaking of being taken care of, that might be for a while. Prostheses were an option, but only once his legs were fully healed, which could take years. Apparently they hurt and were really expensive and insurance rarely paid for them. The options didn't look good. 3. As much as Puck hated the long quiet hours, he never wanted anyone to see him.
Despite that fact, he developed a routine of texting Blaine every day at 3, telling him to come visit. Blaine was the one person who there would no long term relationship with. Blaine was safe.
"You don't have to text me, I would come anyway," Blaine remarked on the third day.
Puck shrugged, "I guess." The only other visitors he had were his mom, sister and nana, if only because that was expected. They would stare at the floor and mumble and leave as quickly as possible. It wasn't like that with Blaine. He would look at Puck in his eyes and stay as long as Puck wanted. They would talk about music and football and there was no danger of future conflict. There were no strings attached.
"Everyone else wants to come," Blaine ventured, just like he did every day.
"You can tell them to shove it."
"It would be nice if you could at least text someone. They're starting to think I might be crazy," he chuckled lightly.
So Puck sent Sam a text on the fourth day, if only for Blaine's sake. Sam was probably the second least threatening friend. Even though they had once been close, Sam could go back to Kentucky at any time. Sam was chill, even though he cared about his friends. Sam wouldn't make a big deal out of things like some of his friends would.
He got a reply almost as soon as he'd sent it. He kind of wondered exactly how many people had seen the text. Puck almost didn't send a reply, but he rationalized that it was only words. He could say almost nothing and they would be happy. So he left it simple. He was doing fine. Thanks for the cards, but please no more flowers. The whole thing was ridiculous. That was the day they finally gave him a blanket for privacy though, so that was nice.
On the seventh day, they finally agreed to wean him off the morphine. It'd taken a week of practically begging before the doctors were convinced that he'd be OK. He was sick of being numb. He wasn't a baby, he could tolerate a little pain.
He'd obviously underestimated how much it hurt to saw off your legs.
Almost as soon as the last dose stopped, he felt feeling return. It was nice at first, but all too soon, he became aware of every single part of his body. He recovered feeling in strange places he hadn't even thought about since biology class. As the medicine wore off, the pain grew worse. His whole body ached. But his legs were by far the worst.
He had never quite figured out where his legs had been amputated, but now he knew down to the millimeter. That was where the pain ended. Puck didn't know a whole lot about anatomy, but he could feel every muscle, nerve and bone until mid thigh, where it suddenly stopped. The pain was different in each part. The muscles felt like they'd been pulled tight, twisted in impossible directions and forgotten about. The nerves sent shooting pain from their raw ends. And the bones felt like they'd been crushed with a hammer. Together, it was almost a cacophony of pain, an orchestra of feeling.
But it was better than lying there numb.
Puck spent hours laying on his side, facing away from the door. He could never get quite comfortable, but now it was ten times worse. He wished he could get up just to get some fresh air and move around a little, but that bed had become like a prison for him. He could not leave.
At about 3, he picked up his phone and started to text Blaine and tell him not to come. He didn't think he could bare to sit through a conversation right now. He gave up after drafting the message a few times because he knew it was pointless. He did want Blaine to come. Blaine was the only thing normal anymore, the only thing he could depend on.
But as he set his phone down in resignation, he heard voices from down the hall. They sounded so happy and loud, and Puck instantly hated them. It was pretty rude to have a party outside a hospital room and Puck had to wonder if he would ever be that happy again. But as the group approached his room, Puck thought he recognized their voices. There was the strong baritone that never wavered, even though he had the tendency to err. And here was the higher counter-tenor that wasn't quite as confident, but had definitely been getting stronger lately. And finally, a light laughter that he would recognize anywhere.
No. What were they doing here now? How many times had he told them he didn't want visitors? Puck panicked and threw his blanket over himself, facing the wall. Hopefully they'd think he was sleeping and leave.
Someone pushed open the door and after a long moment, Kurt said, "Oh, he's sleeping."
"I knew this wasn't a good idea," Rachel said softly.
"No wait, guys," Finn declared, "I think he should know."
"Come on, he's sleeping. He'll find out some other time." Rachel sounded frustrated and in a hurry to be anywhere but there. Puck almost felt bad for her, but he was sure it had more to do her level of discomfort than anything to do with her schedule.
Finn sighed, "I just think he'd want to know you guys made it." Puck could almost hear that cutesy grin Finn got around Rachel. And suddenly it was painfully obvious where Kurt and Rachel had made it.
Puck sucked in a breath and tried not to make any noise. Great, now they had a guaranteed future, the one thing that had always been iffy in his life. And now... now he was lying in bed, pretending to be sleeping.
Not that he was jealous of them exactly. He didn't want to go to any drama school, that was for damn sure. He just wanted a future... he just wanted them to get the hell out of his room.
And that was the thing, they were just standing there. None of them seemed to know what to do, not even Puck who was quietly staring at the wall. After several moments too long, Puck finally rolled over. It hurt. "What the hell are you guys still doing here?"
"Oh Puck, you're awake," Rachel cried and rushed to his bedside. He saw her hesitate. God he felt so ugly... she wouldn't even look at him.
"Of course I am. Now what's this I hear about you guys getting in NYADA?"
Now Rachel straightened up with a smile, becoming a different person. "Oh, we got in after all. Isn't it great, Noah?"
He smiled weakly, not quite meeting her eyes. "Sure, great."
"We just wanted you to know..." Finn explained awkwardly.
"Great, now I know." Puck looked at each of them in turn. No surprise, their eyes were on the walls, ceiling or beeping machines. Anywhere but him. Strangely, he didn't feel angry. Maybe there was too much pain to be angry. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. "Now get the hell out of my room and don't come back."
"Oh Puck." To his surprise, Kurt approached him now. "Blaine told us how you feel."
"Fuck, he did?" Puck raised an eyebrow and studied the smaller boy. Kurt just nodded sadly. "Well, you can tell him not to come back either. I can take care of myself."
Lie number one.
Puck was in the hospital for three more useless days before they finally removed the stitches. Kurt seemed to explain everything to Blaine, so he didn't come back and neither did anyone else. Puck kind of liked it that way.
Puck had way too much risk for infection and other gore while the stitches were in, but once they were gone, he seemed OK. The stitches bled a little at each needle hole and the scars were still fresh and raw, but now at least he was free of thick layers of bandages. And that was liberating and terrifying. Now he could see his legs in all their terrible glory. Deformed and twisted and just horrible. He had to look away. Instead he watched the nurse disconnect the last of the monitoring equipment and he was officially discharged from the hospital.
His mom handed him a pair of jeans stoically, staring at the dying flowers next to his bed. How was Puck even expected to wear these? "Do you have scissors?"
"What?" His mom's gaze fell on him for a split second. "What do you want them for?"
"So I can cut these damn jeans so they fit."
His mom nodded and went on a search for scissors. When she came back, Puck quickly trimmed the pants. He pulled them on over his painful stubs, noticing how ragged and uneven they were. It seemed kind of fitting.
Puck sat up slowly and took a long look around the room. He had no idea what he was supposed to do next. "I can't go home," he muttered.
His mom just nodded. "We found a great place. The rehab program is only a few months long. We just hoped you'd be willing."
Puck shrugged, trying to fill the empty holes. "Don't really have much choice, do I?"
Transport was fucking awkward. Puck was basically pushed, maneuvered and man-handled for several hours until he was half way across the state in an identical room. At least now his friends couldn't make a surprise visit.
He woke up at 2 am when some attendant pushed a wheelchair into his room. He stared long and hard at the big, boxy chair, obviously a rental. There was no way he was going in that thing.
He woke up the next morning when the door opened and was greeted by a tall physical therapist standing behind that chair. "Ready?" The young man wore the worst smile Puck had ever seen.
"No." Puck muttered, his eyes trained again on that ugly hunk of metal, plastic and fabric.
To his surprise, the therapist just shrugged. "Up to you, I have all day."
Puck stared hard at him, but the guy didn't seem intimidated at all. He probably saw worse things on a daily basis - kids who couldn't move or breathe, guys who endured constant shaking or seizures. Puck knew he wasn't that bad off in the grand scheme of things, but it didn't matter right now. He felt selfish and foolish and he just kept glaring at the therapist from his bed.
"Don't you have better things to do, like taking care of some dying kid?"
"Nope." The guy just barely shot him a smile. "You're my charge til you finish or go home, whichever comes first. My name's Justin, by the way." He approached Puck and gave him a firm hand shake.
Puck looked up at him, crossing his arms. "What if I don't want to do either? I'm not a quitter and well, I'm here, aren't I? I can't go home."
"You and everyone else here."
"Gee, thanks for the compassion."
He shrugged, "That's not what I'm here for. We have shrinks if you wanna talk. I'm sure you've got family or friends if you want sympathy."
"I don't want it."
"You just said..." Justin shook his head and backed off. He seemed to know this was a battle he shouldn't be fighting. "Whatever. Let me know when you're ready." And he actually sighed and took a seat near the door.
Puck couldn't believe it. Maybe it made sense that Justin couldn't make him do the work, but what exactly was he here for if Puck wouldn't even move?
Because he couldn't, didn't want to move.
He didn't want to rage or cry like he was supposed to. He didn't want sympathy - because honestly, he didn't think people really cared either way. It was just that he wanted nothing to do with this.
From his hospital bed, covered in bandages and away from sight, It'd been easy for Puck to pretend this wasn't real. It was almost just a bad dream when there was no pain and no visitors. Even once he was off the medicine, the pain was just an injury... a really bad injury. Puck wasn't stupid enough to think his legs might grow back or he'd get hi-tech prostheses any time soon, but he just hadn't really thought that far ahead.
Now as he stared at the rented chair and the therapist waiting to help him, Puck felt the first stirrings of panic. There was no escape... and as his eyes shifted restlessly from the bed, he thought how he'd rather be anywhere else. Who ever said he could do this? Did he really have to?
"Why did you come here?" Justin asked, basically reading his mind.
"I told you already," he muttered. "I couldn't exactly go home... or go anywhere. I don't even know where to start."
"Well, that's what this is for," he ushered to the chair next to him. Seeing Puck's hesitation, he quickly added, "don't you want to be able to go to school... do what you want... travel the world?"
Puck shrugged again. "I thought that's what I wanted." He shifted his focus to a painting on the wall of a group of children dancing in a field. It seemed really insensitive. "I think I'm done with school though. And all that stuff about doing what you want is crap. I have a friend in a chair who actually believes that shit, but I see how hard it is for him, how people are always judging him... and you know what? I used to judge him too."
"I think it's pretty normal to assume that people with handicaps are limited."
Puck just rolled his eyes and sat there like a stone. "Whatever. I'm not handicapped."
The young man just sighed, obviously not surprised. "OK, I'd like to see you make it out of this room."
Finally someone dared to challenge him. Puck looked toward the door. The room wasn't even that big, but it seemed impossible to cross the distance. He supposed he could try to crawl, but how would he get down from the bed? Besides, his legs were still raw and healing. It would probably hurt a lot. There was always the wheelchair, but from the times he'd seen Artie transfer, it took a whole lot of strength and skill that Puck didn't think he had right now. Besides, the chair was parked out of his reach.
"I can't... I fucking can't." His breath was ragged... he could feel tears just outside his fear and rage.
Justin nodded, stood and pushed the chair closer. "I'm here to show you how."
Rehab was humiliating, but it gave Puck something to concentrate on. He was used to working out and taking care of his body, but he must have lost tons of strength during his recovery. Everything was so hard and took ten times as much effort as before. But somehow it felt good to focus on his arms, on strength training, on things he could still do. During the sessions, he'd wear shorts and a tank top, the shorts dangling a few inches below his legs. He tried to avoid looking at them, but every once in a while, he would catch a glimpse of the raw, ugly flesh.
And for the most part, he tried to avoid his phone, but Blaine texted him every day, asking if he should visit on the way home. Even though the rehab center was across town from Westerville, Puck had no doubt Blaine would come if Puck wanted him to. He didn't want that.
Puck would however open a text to Artie and draft a joke about finally understanding him, but it always came off offensive and conceited. Of course Puck didn't understand Artie...
He didn't understand how Artie lived with himself.
All the people at the rehab center seemed pretty OK with things, with themselves. The center was full of every type of person, each with a different story. There were a few other amputees, mostly due to diabetes, cancer or some other illness. Puck couldn't relate to any of them. Three times a week, he had to attend group therapy with his peers - guys aged 18-32. Some of them had been in car crashes or done other reckless things, but Puck couldn't talk to them either. Sure, some of them were angry and lacked confidence, but Puck seemed to be the only one crazy enough to care what he looked like.
After a couple weeks, the routine got really boring and Puck almost wished for company. Instead, he just pushed himself harder, tried to become stronger. His therapist Justin and the others all thought it was a good sign - his way of finally moving on and accepting things. How could he explain that it was the only way of coping at all? That the only way to avoid the outside world - and his own thoughts - was to work even harder? And so he did, until he was bench pressing twice his usual weight. On one rep, he felt something tear in his shoulder. Suddenly, he was being wheeled back to bed and treated for a torn rotator cuff.
Justin walked in a few minutes after the doctor left, looking disappointed. "Well, you did a pretty good job there. The doctor said you'll have to wear that sling for a few weeks," he ushered toward Puck's newest accessory. "That means you can't do rehab and insurance won't pay for you to be here while you recover. It's probably best just to go home and rest for a while."
"No way," Puck shook his head, defensive. "My house has tons of stairs and shit. I couldn't get around there even if I wanted to."
"Oh, that's another thing," Justin said carefully. "The chair you've been using belongs to the rehab center. You can't take it."
All Puck could think to say was, "Well, shit."
He asked if there was a pay phone, because he never wanted a record of this conversation anywhere.
"Geek Boutique."
"Artie?" Puck just turned to stare at the key pad of the center's pay phone a few minutes later.
"Who may I say is calling?"
"Artie, it's Puck."
"Oh, sorry," he dropped the formal tone. "Oh, Puck, I didn't realize it was you."
"What's Geek Boutique?"
He just chuckled. "A business I started. Never mind that. What's up?"
"So, weird question... do you have like an extra wheelchair or something I could borrow... and an extra bedroom?"
"The bedroom I can definitely do..." Artie trailed off. "I don't know about the wheelchair though. You really can't just borrow one; it'd never fit you right. What's going on?"
"It's a long story," Puck sighed, glancing again at his sore arm. Only he could manage to screw up things this badly. "Do you think you could help me get one and come pick me up or something? Oh, Artie, I don't even know what to do..."
"Don't worry, I'll take care of everything," he said quickly. "I suppose we'll need another guy to help you?"
Puck swallowed hard and nodded. Finally, remembering Artie couldn't see him, he said, "Yeah. I can't do it by myself."
link to part two