Title: The Trick Is To Keep Breathing
Author: takeanotherturn
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2500
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: Major ones for On My Way.
Summary: It feels kind of like fate when Sue Sylvester's phone starts ringing at the exact moment the JP asks if there are any objections.

ON MY WAY

Rachel looks up from her phone and smiles in relief at her soon to be husband. "Quinn says that she's on her way, can we just wait another few minutes? Please?"

Finn's eyes cut to the clock, the minute hand ticks over another notch. "I don't get why it's so important to you that she's here." He takes Rachel's fidgety hands in his. "I'm here, you're here, that should be all that matters."

Rachel stares up at him, struggling to find the words to explain it when she doesn't quite understand it herself. "Quinn's making a big effort to get here and support us, it'd be rude if we started without her."

"It'd be even ruder if you guys lose your spot and made her rush here for nothing," Puck points out.

Finn chuckles. "He's got a point." He watches the clock tick over again. Quinn's time is up. "I'm sure she'll understand, Rach. We really need to get in there now..." he trails off, his eyebrows creasing together in concern. "Unless you don't want to get married today."

The room holds it's collective breath, awaiting Rachel's answer.

"I..." She hesitates. Her parents clutch at each other in anticipation. "Finn, of course, I do."

Finn's relieved smile lets her know that she's made the right decision.

"Alright then, let's get this show on the road!" he says loudly, taking his bride by the arm to guide her along.

"Wait!" Rachel suddenly cries, pulling out of his grip. Again their friends and family are filled with hope that she's come to her senses. "Let me just text Quinn to let her know that we're starting so she'll know where to find us when she gets here." Again they are disappointed.

Finn lets out a huff of annoyance but to his credit doesn't protest. "Okay, but can you just do it on the way?" he asks, trying to shepherd his distracted fiancee out of the waiting room. He's getting anxious now, there's less than two minutes left and there was no way he was getting his twenty dollars back if they missed their appointment.

#

As the Justice of the Peace begins the ceremony, Rachel's eyes start darting from her groom's face to the closed doors of the court room and back again. Eventually she's spending more time watching the door than looking at the man she's in the process of marrying. Quinn really should have been there by now. Had she gotten lost? Had she changed her mind?

It feels kind of like fate when Sue Sylvester's phone starts ringing at the exact moment the JP asks if there are any objections.

She goes to silence the call when she sees the screen reading 'Lima General' and swallows hard. All her Cheerios have her listed as their emergency contact and she has a horrible feeling that she already knows which one of her girls needs her.

All eyes are on Sue was she speaks in hushed, worried tones to whoever is on the other end of the line. Rachel's pulled her hands from Finn's and is already taking steps towards Sue when tears start falling from the tough as nails cheerleading coach's eyes.

Sue ends the call and looks straight ahead into Rachel's worried brown eyes. "There's been an accident. It's Quinn."

#

The doors to the court house are flung open and Rachel Berry emerges looking the very picture of a runaway bride. She loses her vale halfway to the parking lot as she sprints towards her father's car.

She reaches the silver Volvo and starts tugging frantically at the handle of the driver's side door. She doesn't understand why it doesn't open.

"Rachel, bubbeleh." She barely registers her father's voice cooing soothingly in her ear as he gently takes her by the shoulders and pulls her back so her other father -the one that can drive- can unlock the car and slip into the drivers seat.

Hiram carefully guides his distraught daughter into the backseat and clambers in beside her. He pulls Rachel's seatbelt across her violently trembling body and clicks it in, making sure his baby will be safe. The fact that his long legs are painfully cramped barely registers to him as he meets his husbands saddened eyes reflected in the rear view mirror. Patti LuPone herself couldn't of stopped this wedding but Quinn Fabray had.

"Take the back roads," he instructs his husband as Leroy starts the car. "It'll be faster."

It was a bad call, they realize, when the see the flashing blue and red lights ahead at the upcoming intersection.

They're forced to slow down to a crawl as they pass the site of the accident. Rachel lets out a terrified whimper at the sight of Quinn's car, mangled almost beyond recognition and laying on it's roof at least twenty feet off the side of the road. It must have flipped several times to get that far.

"How could anyone survive that?" Rachel whispers, not taking her eyes of the twisted wreckage. The driver's side of the car is just...gone; smashed in so far it looked like it didn't exist anymore.

Neither of her fathers can answer her. They don't know either.

#

The shortcut through the back roads turns out not to be much of a shortcut at all and the Berry family ends up arriving at the hospital at the same time as everyone else.

Rachel and Sue lead the charge up to the nurses' desk and demand information on Quinn Fabray.

The nurse is supremely unhelpful. She tells them that Quinn has been taken away for emergency surgery and directs them to the waiting area before handing Sue a bunch of forms that needed to be filled out; Quinn's mother was still incommunicado and they need Quinn's details as soon as possible.

The solemn group moves as one towards the room the nurse had directed them to, where they can do nothing but sit and wait.

Judy Fabray shows up, two hours later, smelling like a distillery.

#

Rachel's been pacing for hours. She has to keep moving. She's tried sitting down but couldn't keep still, her body won't stop shaking but it's not as noticeable when she's moving. So she paces and vibrates like an bow string pulled too taut. Nobody complains about it anymore. Mostly because the majority of them are exhausted and lightly dozing in their uncomfortable plastic seats; Santana is the exception, she's curled up in Brittany's lap.

It's past three in the morning. Quinn has been in surgery for eight hours now. The adults tell try to tell the kids that this is a good sign. The kids don't believe them.

An hour ago, Sam, Mercedes and, surprisingly, Kurt had absconded to the hospital's chapel to pray. They return with Joe Hart in tow. The new voice rouses the others from their uneasy slumber.

The doors separating the waiting area from the emergency room swing open and a man in scrubs emerges. He looks like he should be playing a doctor on television, rather than working in a real life ER.

Blaine hops up, suddenly feeling wide awake. "Cooper?"

The handsome doctor frowns in confusion. "Blaine?"

He takes in the motley crew assembled in front of him that includes more than a dozen teenagers dressed for a wedding; all the girls, save the bride, wearing bright pink dresses identical to the one he'd had to cut his patient out of.

Cooper remembers how his little brother's been complaining all week about how unfair it was that he may never be allowed to legally marry in his home state but it was perfectly legal for two of his friends to idiotically ruin their lives by getting married in their teens. The girl he'd been working so frantically on to save had been one of his brother's friends. He's glad that he hadn't known that before.

Cooper focuses on the older blonde woman who's clutching her pearls. "Mrs. Fabray? I'm Dr. Anderson-"

"How is my Quinnie? Is she okay?"

God, he hates this part of his job. "Why don't we all sit down first-"

"Oh God!" Judy wails. "She's dead, isn't she? My baby is dead!"

This sets Santana and Tina off and they dissolve into fits of hysterical sobbing.

"She's not dead," Cooper assures them. "Please, you'll all be more comfortable sitting down."

They all return to their seats. Everyone except Rachel who remains standing, leaning against the wall.

"Now, as you know, Quinn was in a very serious car accident and her condition is critical. Because of the way she was hit, most of the damage is confined to the left side of her body but her injuries are...extensive."

"How extensive?" Mr. Schue asks.

Cooper hesitates.

"Just give it to us straight, Coop," says Blaine, squeezing Kurt's hand. "We can take it."

Cooper clears his throat and starts listing off Quinn's injuries. "Quinn suffered a broken nose, fractured cheek bone, dislocated shoulder, broken wrist and several broken ribs, one of which pierced her lung. Her spleen ruptured but the good news is that we only had to remove a small part of it. Her left tibia was shattered and we've managed to stabilize the break for now but she'll need another surgery once her condition stabilizes."

"But she'll be okay, right?" Finn presses. "I mean, you fixed her."

Cooper grimaces and looks down. He really did hate this part of his job. "Quinn also suffered massive head trauma. We had to drill a hole in her skull to try and relieve the pressure on her brain. She'll be kept in a medically induced coma until the swelling in her brain goes down. The next seventy two hours will be critical."

"What are her chances?" Sue asks and Cooper knows better than to try and placate this woman with false hope.

"I'll be honest with you, they're not good."

He doesn't want to have to tell them this next bit of information, not when they were reeling from the bomb that had just been dropped on them, but he knew how important full disclosure was. They needed to be prepared. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, that had become his motto since he'd started working in the ER and this was a situation where it definitely applied. "Quinn may also have a possible spinal chord injury but we won't be able to fully assess that until she's awake and the swelling has gone down."

"Hold up," Santana says. "Are you saying that even if she manages to survive, she might have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair?"

"It's a possibility, yes."

Santana slumps back against Brittany, burying her face in her girlfriend's neck and swearing under her breath in Spanish.

"When can we see her?" Kurt inquires.

"You can't. She's in the ICU, only family members are allowed. I'm sorry."

They want to protest, they are family. All of them. Some of them more distantly related than others but still a family in every way except the one that counted. Only person in that room was related was related to Quinn by blood.

Cooper's pager goes off and they all tense. Is it Quinn that needs his attention?

He checks it briefly and then offers them a reassuring smile. Under any other circumstances, the girls would be swooning. Blaine's brother has an even cuter smile than Mr. Martinez. "It appears that I'm needed in the ER. Mrs. Fabray, you can see your daughter now. The ICU is on the second floor, just take the elevator over there up and talk to the nurse at the desk, she'll take you to see Quinn."

He stands and reattaches his pager to the waistband of his scrubs.

"The rest of you should go home and try to get some sleep, you're going to need it. Just keep in mind that Quinn's recovery is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. You don't want to burn yourselves out before it's even begun," he advises before walking away.

Judy speaks briefly to Sue and Mr. Schue, promising to keep them informed about Quinn's condition and thanking them for their support, before making a beeline for the elevator.

Finn sees that Rachel is still trembling and goes to wrap her up in a comforting hug. That's when she finally snaps.

"Don't touch me!" she screams at him, slapping his hands away.

"Rachel, what's wrong?" he asks, trying to embrace her again but she backs away.

She looks down at her white dress. It's wrong, it's all wrong, she shouldn't be wearing it. It's too tight. She can't breathe. She needs to take it off.

"Rachel!" Hiram says in alarm as his daughter begins clawing at the collar of her dress, trying to rip it off. He catches her hands in his and forces her to look up at him.

"I want to go home. Daddy, I want to go home," she pleads, clutching at his lapels. She looks so scared and lost that Hiram's heart breaks. She's so young. Too young to be getting married. Too young to have to face losing a friend like this. She's just a little girl.

Leroy lays a comforting hand on her trembling back. "Alright, sweetheart. We can go now."

Mercedes glares at Rachel's display of hysteria and mumbles "Of course she's making this all about her" to Sam.

The Berry men get Mr. Schue to promise to call them if there's any news before leading Rachel away.

Finn turns to his family, looking at them with sad puppy eyes. "I don't get it. Why won't she let me touch her?" Why did she look at him like she hated him?

"She probably blames you for Q's accident," Santana remarks angrily.

"But that's not my fault," he protests.

"Sure, it is," Santana snarls at him. "It was both your faults. If you two weren't brainde-" She catches herself. "Stupid enough to think that getting married today was a good idea then Quinn wouldn't have been rushing to get to your farce of a wedding. She never would've been on that road and she never would've into that accident. This is completely your fault, you moron!"

Finn goes all red, his face scrunches up and he starts huffing indignantly. His eyes dart around the room, waiting for someone to come to his defence. Usually this would be the time when Mr. Schue would stand up and tell Santana that she's not being fair.

But nobody speaks up, not even his own mother, because deep down they're all thinking the same thing.