Rachel never sees it coming.

One moment, Finn is driving down the road toward their future, and the next everything just changes. Rachel isn't even positive what happens. All she knows is first, they are fine, and then, they are spinning. Finn is doing his best to control the car, but it careens into a nearby fence. The next thing Rachel knows, the windshield shatters. The next thing Rachel knows, she is pinned in her seat.

Finn is somehow unhurt, but frantic, as he calls her name. He reaches for her, and she instinctively keeps him away.

"Don't…touch…it…" she manages. Her voice is audible, but she can only manage one word at a time. Each one is spoken in a careful, breathy staccato.

"Oh, my God…I'm gonna be sick… Rachel, I'm so sorry. We've gotta get you out of here, okay? Just hold on. I'll call for help, he says and he finds his phone. The voice on the other end is loud enough for Rachel to overhear.

"Allen County 911. Do you have an emergency?"

"Yes!" Finn exclaims. "My girlfriend and I were in an accident!"

"Okay. Where are you, sir?"

"Lima!" Finn says, sounding desperate.

"Okay. Where, in Lima?"

Rachel gasps out the last street names she can recall before everything started spinning. She whispers the obvious landmarks around them, and Finn can't hear her through his panic. He's telling the operator they are by a fence, and some trees.

Slowly, it dawns on Rachel. They're not just by a fence. This is bad. It's bad, but she needs to stay calm, because someone needs to stay calm right now. Since she can't rely on Finn, Rachel has to rely on herself. She tries to imagine herself as just an actress playing a part, like Blaine's brother suggested, but this is not the same at all. This is very real.

It takes forever for help to arrive, and when it does, the sirens make Rachel even more anxious. It occurs to her for the first time that she will have to be moved. She doesn't feel pain. She feels urgency. Rachel needs to establish a perimeter around herself. She needs to protect herself. Finn is already out. And people are around her. Talking to her. Encroaching on her. She does her best, keeping them back with a hand, and with firm glances.

"Okay, Rachel?" one rescue worker says, and she thinks absently that Finn must have told him her name.

"Yes," she murmurs. Her voice is so soft it might only be a sigh. Fear, she hopes, not damage.

"I'm here to help you. We're going to get you out of here. Can you breathe all right?" he asks, just a disembodied voice to her right.

"Yes…but…it's…hard…to…speak…" she murmurs. It's agonizingly slow.

"I understand. Yes or no questions from now on," he promises. "Does anything else hurt?" he asks, and she can imagine him trying to survey her in the mess twisted metal, glass and wood.

"Hip," she winces, because my God, it does.

If he says anything, his words are lost on Rachel. This nameless rescue worker who's job it is to save her when she is so thoroughly unsavable.

While they work, it is this man's job simply to keep her distracted. To keep her conscious. To be certain she has an airway. So many responsibilities. So many things he could say, and yet he chooses, "Is that your boyfriend over there? Were you going on a date?" she hears a gentle smile in his voice as he monitors her vitals.

"Married…" she corrects.

"Ah, well congratulations. We're gonna have you out of here in no time."

It isn't no time. It's nearly an hour before Rachel is lifted free from the car - the piece of wooden fence protruding from her neck immobilized as best as possible with obscene amounts of cloth, gauze and tape. When they lay her on the stretcher, her eyes go wide. There is fear in her heart that cannot make it's way out of her mouth.

She's in an ambulance and Finn is absolutely horrified.

Vaguely, Rachel is aware of sharp at the back of her right hand. In moments, her eyes are falling closed.

Her last conscious thought is not profound or elusive. It's not one last I love you to Finn or a message for her dads. It's not terrifying or painful. It's simply:

Wait…

Then, she drifts into a paralyzing blackness.

In the blink of an eye, or so it seems, Rachel feels consciousness pulling at her again. She is somewhere else this time. Not the side of the road with a fence through the windshield, or an ambulance, but a hospital room. Her dads are here, holding hands. Watching her.

Rachel opens her eyes and they feel heavy. She hurts in places she cannot remember hurting in the accident. Belatedly, Rachel realizes who is not here.

Finn.

Right now, she doesn't have the energy to worry. She tries to call out but nothing comes. There is fire in her throat and in her leg. It takes all her strength to stare down her fathers. To get them to notice her.

By the time they do, Rachel's eyes are falling closed again. Distantly, she hears them.

"Don't try to talk."

"It's okay. We're here."

And where, she thinks remotely, am I?

Time melts. People visit and don't visit. Finn is scarce, where Quinn is an unexpected source of comfort. She stays close and keeps Rachel supplied with paper, pens, a whiteboard, markers, and even her phone, to text, when Quinn thinks no nurses are looking.

It takes concentration and patience but Rachel realizes she will likely have to get used to these forms of communication. The piece of fence that impaled her, amazingly, did not damage her carotid artery. It did, however, do catastrophic damage to her voice. It's too soon to tell how severe it is. Judging by the looks on the doctor's faces it's like Rachel thought on the side of the road.

It's bad.

Finn breaks up with her and Rachel isn't surprised. She is shocked.

His voice sounds so normal. So strong. So smooth. Rachel is so jealous. When he admits that, in fact, he wasn't on the way to the courthouse to be married, but to the train station, she is livid.

Rachel glares at him. Why? she mouths but doesn't voice.

"I was setting you free!" he protests, his voice climbing higher, and each note of desperation makes her ache for those she has lost. "I couldn't let you hold yourself back for me! So I was gonna break up with you and tell you that I'm…that I'm joining the army."

She narrows her eyes and writes with her favorite red whiteboard marker in defiant all capital letters:

WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE NOW?

"What? What do you mean?" Finn wonders like she is hurting him and not the other way around.

I'M NOT HOLDING YOU BACK ANYMORE, AM I? SO WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

"Rachel, I… You know what? Fine. Make me say it."

(She wants to slap him. If only someone, somewhere could make her say something. Anything.)

"This is just too intense for me. Every time I see you, I see that thing sticking out of your neck. I see you not letting me help. Not letting me near you. God, Rachel. Do you have any idea how that made me feel?"

She has no words. Spoken or written for the incredible insensitivity Finn is showing. So, she does what Cooper would suggest. She points to the door, raises an eyebrow, and waits.

When Finn leaves, she is a wreck.

A wreck no one can hear.

She has hope for a while. That this thing with her voice is only temporary.

But that hope makes the next blow, when it comes, that much more cruel. She has started talking again, and her speaking voice - which she assumed would be left intact - is far from it. She is left with a high-pitched, soft, hoarse whisper.

There is talk of specialists. Of speech therapy. But when Rachel presses, asking in a hurried scrawl how much recovery she can expect no one will meet her eyes.

"I want to go home," she rasps, and she does not say what she is thinking. If her speaking voice is this destroyed, then singing is out of the question.

Denial is a powerful thing. For weeks, she rests at home, watching soap operas and whiling her life away. She sleeps more than she should and wakes, each morning, hoping that the afternoon of May twenty-second was a dream, and everything is, in fact, the way it's supposed to be.

Each morning, her wildest hopes are dashed, when she tries to call for her dad or her daddy and cannot project enough to be heard. Not unless they are right beside her.

Put her in a crowded room, a bustling hallway or a New York street, and this Rachel will have no chance. She won't make it.

So, she sleeps. For hours. For days. She lashes out when her parents come to close or insist she get ready to go to physical therapy on her leg, which she hates. And for her voice, which she hates even more deeply. She thought they'd discussed this, she insists, in her new voice that breaks and squeaks whenever she tries to project.

It is the very thing therapists are trying to correct, and God, it's embarrassing.

In the end, she goes. For the leg, it's physically painful and for the voice, it just feels futile. It's taken a while, but reality has finally set in.

She is no longer Rachel Berry, future star, defined by her voice. She is just Rachel, an ordinary girl, searching for a way to be heard.

God, it hurts to be so common, and so uncommon all at once.

The phone call to NYADA is a special form of torture. Texting in this circumstance would be unprofessional. She has to call. Call, or withdraw in person, which she cannot do. Her leg is still healing. Her fractured femur held together with a plate and screws is a more pressing cause of anguish than the fact that she cannot sing. More intensely physically painful than her lack of a voice. Her leg is taking ridiculously long to heal. Rehabilitation is hell. Needless to say, she is not ready to make the trip to New York to disappoint Madame Tibideaux for the second time in two months. Still, she has to be smart about this. She has to think about someone other than herself.

She has to think of Kurt - who visited almost as frequently as Quinn - bearing the latest celebrity gossip from E! or British tabloid rumor. He had been a blessed bit of normalcy when her life felt anything but. She has to think of Kurt, who she knows, is next in line behind her on NYADA's waiting list.

Rachel takes a deep breath, and dials. She listens to the familiar voice mail message and waits for the beep. She is not expecting her dad to take the phone from her hand and nod at her. Because she has nothing else to lose, she passes her own message along through him. His voice is as heavy with regret as her own would have been, if it wouldn't buckle under the pressure.

"Madame Tibideaux. Rachel Berry regrets to inform you that she will have to withdraw from your program due to unforeseen circumstances. She was involved in a car accident a few months ago, that resulted in a penetrating neck trauma. This has unfortunately affected Rachel's speaking voice, as well as her singing voice, which is why you're listening to her father - not Rachel herself - leaving you this message. If you have any questions please call or email…."

By the end of the call, they are both crying. Her dad tries to hold her but Rachel pulls away.

She drinks cup after cup of water, but nothing fills her sadness.

To be continued…