Chapter Two: Bernice
"It's not denial. I'm just selective about that reality I accept." Bill Watterson
"Tristan!" She screamed at him, stalking down the hallway of her apartment and into the living room.
"Just stop, Rory, just stop," Tristan growled back, retrieving his shirt from where it landed on the sofa less than an hour ago.
"Damn it, Tristan! What's wrong with me? We've been dating for six weeks. I thought things were going well between us. And you're fine fooling around, but then when things start to get heavy…You act like I have the plague, you won't touch me anymore. Clothes on, fine, clothes off—'Oh, can't touch, Rory!' What the hell? " Rory yelled, failing at fighting back tears. What happened to the Tristan DuGrey she knew in high school—the one who wouldn't hesitate to get into bed with her. He hadn't hesitated that first night after they had had coffee, but now he could barely touch her before he ran away.
"Rory," he pleaded with her. "There's nothing wrong with you. I just—I can't do this. I can't do it, not right now." He tried to get closer to her, but she crossed her arms over her bra clad chest and stared down at the hem of her jeans that rested on the top of her foot.
"Then why? Was it that bad that first time? If the sex sucked why are you still with me?" She swiped a hand under her eyes to wipe away the hot tears and smudged her mascara along her cheek.
Tristan sighed. Because I can't get it up. I'm pathetic, I'm less than a man. I have this amazing, gorgeous girl and I can't perform, he thought. He got angry. He was angry with himself and embarrassed for being in this situation, and he was pissed off at her for bringing these feelings to light in him.
"I just can't," he said through clenched teeth. "Okay?"
Rory swallowed several times and blinked back fresh tears. No, that answer wasn't okay. It did nothing to quell her fears that she was inadequate. Here she was standing half naked in front of a man who had pursued her for half of her high school career, more than willing, and she wasn't good enough. And he wanted her to believe that he just couldn't. That didn't make the ache go away, it didn't warm the coldness that had wrapped itself around her, didn't fill the void in her that he should be filling. No, it wasn't okay at all. But instead she nodded curtly.
"Right. Okay, well, you should go. I have an early class tomorrow," she said, trying to sound firm and dismissive.
"You have class tomorrow? Of fucking course. But not early enough that you'd be bothered screwing me, but since I can't I guess I'll go. Whatever, Rory," he said, turning to leave. "I'm sure you can find someone at the bar down the street more able and willing to fulfill your needs," he sneered before opening the door.
"Screw you, Tristan!" Rory yelled, turning her back to him.
He stood in the open doorway staring at her. He shook his head and said, "Not tonight and there's the problem, right?" He turned and started walking down the hallway fuming.
Rory spun around and stared at the doorway he had just vacated. She couldn't believe him. What an ass! What an arrogant prick! What did she ever see in him? She stalked over to the door and slammed it so hard it shook the windows. She quickly engaged the locks and tuned her back to the door. She leaned against it heavily, feeling the cold wood against her almost bare back. To think, not six hours prior to this event she had been telling her mother that she may not be in love with Tristan yet, but she was well on her way to getting there. Oh, how wrong she had been.
"Ass," Rory whispered to the empty room.
She wrapped her arms around herself and sunk to the floor. She let the heart-wrenching sobs overtake her and just sat on the floor in front of her door and cried until there were no tears left.
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Tristan stormed into his apartment and slammed the door. The cab ride home had done nothing to relieve his fury. Who did she think she was? He had convinced himself that she had seen his weakness, his inadequacy and was throwing it in his face. He surveyed his surroundings and remembered why he had gone to Rory's that night to begin with. Empty beer cans littered the floor, open bottles of liquor sat half emptied on the island in the kitchen. His roommate lay passed out on the leather couch, and in front of him sixteen neat lines of cocaine lay cut and ready for consumption on the black marble coffee table. Powder and residue signified that there were many more than these sixteen lines lined up tonight.
Tristan shook his head. He went into his room absentmindedly pulling off his shoes and socks as soon as he passed through the entryway. Two steps in and a shard of glass cut through the skin on the bottom of his foot. Tristan cursed and reached down to pull the glass out of his foot. Straightening himself up, he took a moment to look at his room. His mattress had been pulled off the box springs, his desk drawers and dresser drawers were opened and items were hanging out of their depths. His closet doors were open and clothes had been torn off the hanger. He followed the trail of glass to find a silver picture frame turn face down. He gulped back the anger at his disheveled room and flipped the frame over, knowing what image it held. It was a candid shot of him and Rory his mother had taken at some DAR function Rory had drug him to. They were on the dance floor, held tight in each other's arms, smiling. He threw the frame to the floor and rushed out of his room to the kitchen.
He grabbed a bottle of tequila and quickly drank down its contents. He threw the empty bottle at his roommate, missing his target, the bottle collided with the wall behind the couch and glass fell from the wall like rain. Tristan eyed the contents of the coffee table before hastily making his way to it, dropping to his knees and grabbing a discarded neon green straw from the floor. He made quick work of four lines on the table, dipping his fingers in a glass of clear liquid and inhaling the fluid too. The familiar sting of cocaine in his nostrils was accompanied by the burn of vodka. He stood and grabbed another bottle of alcohol from the island and made his way through the apartment, finally leaning against a wall near the bathroom and sliding to the floor. He leant his head against the wall, drank straight from his bottle, and closed his eyes waiting for the drip.
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When Tristan opened his eyes next, he was in hell. He could hear the whirling of fan blades, trying to cool the unbearable heat of this wretched place. He was lying flat on his back on a rock hard cot, the smell of antiseptics, sickness, and death stinging his nose. There was a searing pain in his leg. He sat up and looked around. He was in a med tent somewhere in Iraq. He remembered that he had gotten cut on his leg and needed stitches. He fingered the still oozing wound, drawing his blood coated fingers away gingerly. He stared at his blood on his fingers, fixated for a long time until he heard shuffling next to him.
"Well, good morning, soldier," the person said, and Tristan's eyes snapped to her in recognition.
Rory Gilmore, dressed in an old fashioned white nurse's outfit, sat with him on the edge of his cot.
"Rory?" He asked, not believing his eyes. What the hell was she doing in Iraq? Didn't she know it wasn't safe for her here?
"I thought you were never going to wake up," she smiled at him. She reached for a tray and brought it to him. "Here this will fix you right up."
Tristan glanced at the tray expecting medicine of some sort. Instead he found a tumbler full of whiskey, two neat lines of cocaine and a rolled up single note, and Camel menthol cigarette and old fashioned silver lighter. He looked from the tray to Rory's eyes questioningly.
"Well, I thought this was what you wanted?" She asked sweetly. Just then she noticed someone else approaching them. "Oh, there you are sweetheart. I've been worried about you."
Tristan's gaze followed Rory's to see a young girl, five or six years old, approaching the cot. She had strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing thin pink cotton pants but a heavy white coat. He thought it was odd that she wore a coat in the middle of the desert. He looked between the girl and Rory trying to figure who she was and why they were there. Before he could ask the question that was plaguing his mind, the little girl smiled at him.
"Daddy, what have you done?" She asked, still smiling. "You've gone and ruined everything."
The little girl who called him daddy shook her head and opened her coat. Around her petite abdomen was a homemade bomb with a string-pull detonator. Rory sat frozen, smiling at the little girl like a statue, and Tristan was shocked and couldn't move his limbs. He sat frozen, struggling to move to stop what he knew was coming but unable to, as his daughter pulled the string and the bomb exploded. His vision was filled with bright white light and a roaring boom filled his ears.
The light faded and the dust settled. Tristan sat unharmed on his cot, but everything around was destroyed. Rory in her absurd little nurse's outfit was reduced to unrecognizable carnage. The little girl, his daughter, lay dead just feet from him.
Her last words rang through his mind.
"Daddy, what have you done?"
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Tristan came to covered in a cold sweat. The room was spinning and he felt as if he was suffocating. He tried standing, but lost his balance and fell to his knees. He braced himself with his arms as he retched onto the floor. After a couple minutes, the room seemed to slow its spinning and Tristan once again tried to stand. He took a shaky step forward, but his foot landed in warm, slippery vomit and he fell again. His eyes closed instinctively as he hit the floor and when opened them he was face-to-face with the bloody remnants of the Rory from his dream. He couldn't control himself and he retched again. Tristan crawled on his hands and knees through his own vomit into the living room determined to do whatever it took to get that image out of his head. He didn't care if it killed him.
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Several hours had passed before Cory, Tristan's roommate, woke up on the couch. He groaned slightly and wrinkled his nose at the smell. The apartment smelled of alcohol and vomit. Man, was Tristan going to be pissed. Good thing he was out with that girl tonight, maybe Cory could get the apartment cleaned before he got home. He sat up and shook his head trying to clear away the fuzz and the cobwebs. He blinked several times before he noticed the coffee table. He had distinctly remembered setting up lines of coke before he passed out. Twenty, he remembered twenty. It had only been April and himself left. There was no way April could have consumed eighteen lines of coke herself, but sure enough, he was down to two. And those were smeared on the table with blood. Blood?
Now that he looked around, Cory noticed there were shards of broken glass scattered throughout the apartment. Vomit and blood was ground into the carpet. This wasn't right at all. Something seriously bad was going on. Cory knew he had to find whoever had made this mess. He looked into the kitchen and noticed the bottles that had been lined on the island were either missing or empty and laying on their sides. It was then that he noticed it. A low, guttural almost constant scream was coming from the other side of the island in the kitchen. Cory slowly made his way into the kitchen to find out what was causing the sound.
What he found was Tristan DuGrey, his designer jeans and black sweater covered in blood and vomit, the skin on his hands and feet cut to ribbons with glass still protruding out of some of the wounds. His nose was red and swollen and there was white powder caked around the nostrils. But most disturbing of all, he was letting out the guttural scream, pounding his upper thigh which was visibly twitching and banging his head against the cabinet doors. He was drenched in sweat and if Cory's sense of smell was correct, blood and vomit were not the only bodily fluids present on him. Cory reached out to try to touch him.
"Tristan, man, what the hell happened? Are you okay? Can I get you help?" He asked, scared for his friend.
Tristan clenched his teeth but opened his eyes and looked at Cory. The look in his eyes was animalistic and nothing akin to anything Cory had ever seen in any human being. "Get away from me," Tristan growled, accenting each word with a bang of his head on the cabinets.
Cory got up and hurried into his room grabbing his cell phone. He scanned through his contact list for a number he had never dialed before. He only had this number in case of emergency, and if this wasn't an emergency, he didn't know what was. He hit call and listened to the phone ring four times before someone picked up.
"I hate you!" The person on the line declared.
Cory shook it off and instead asked, "Is this Rory Gilmore?"
Rory woke up a little more, concerned because she didn't recognize the voice on the other end of the line. "It is. Who are you?"
"This is Cory Mandlin, Tristan DuGrey's roommate. Listen, Rory, I'm sorry to call so late but I didn't know what else to do. Something is seriously wrong with Tristan and I think he might need some kind of help, but he won't let me near him," he explained.
Rory sighed, but was actually used to these kinds of phone calls having dealt with Logan, Colin, and Finn in college. "Where are you?"
"We're at our apartment."
"I'm on my way, just don't let him leave, okay?" Rory sighed, already pulling on a pair of jeans and digging for a sweater in her closet.
"Oh, I don't think that's going to be a problem," Cory said. "Just hurry, okay?"
Cory hung up the phone and went into the living room to wait for Rory. It was nearly twenty minutes later when she knocked on the door. He opened it and Rory stepped in. Her senses were immediately assaulted. The smells alone were enough to knock you down. But the place look like it had been broken into and ransacked. It was a warzone with broken glass everywhere. Then she heard it. Tristan was in the kitchen screaming, and there were bangs coming from where he was.
"What the hell happened in here?" She yelled as she hurried into the kitchen to find Tristan on the floor, banging his head against the cabinets, screaming. "Tristan!" No response. "Tristan, it's Rory, look at me!" She tried again.
He stopped screaming and banging his head, but instead got a look of panic. "Rory? No! No, no, no, no, no. You're dead. You're dead! I killed you and our daughter, I killed my family! Go away, you're not real, go away!" He chanted in a hurry and started rocking back and forth.
Rory looked wide eyed at Cory hoping for an explanation. Cory shrugged. "I was passed out. But I think he's had a lot of alcohol and even more cocaine. But I'm not sure."
Rory shook her head. "Call an ambulance, he's probably overdosed." As Cory was doing so, she got down on her knees to talk to Tristan. "Tristan, it's me Rory. Shh, don't freak out, I'm here, I'm real, you haven't hurt me. Help's on its way, but I need you to calm down okay?"
Tristan's eyes snapped to her, and he made a move like he was going to push her away, but she wouldn't budge. She should have, because a couple seconds later he projectile vomited right on her and then slumped against the cabinets, unconscious.
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Three hours later, the ambulance had arrived and taken an unconscious Tristan to the hospital. Rory had gotten cleaned up, changed into a pair of sweats and t-shirt she had borrowed from Tristan's closet, and caught a cab to the hospital with Cory. There was no word yet as he was still unconscious, so the two sat out in the waiting room talking.
"So, do you want to tell me what's going on? I didn't even know Tristan did cocaine," Rory said.
"Yeah, he doesn't advertise it. He's been hooked ever since he got back from Iraq. Most of us, it's recreational, but for Tristan it's like water. He needs it to cope, right?"
"He's an addict, then?" Rory said, sighing.
"Yeah, hardcore addict. But he won't admit it and he won't take help from anyone. He has these nightmares. You'll hear him yelling in his sleep, and the next time you see him he'll be floating somewhere in the atmosphere. It's been messing with him a lot too. Whole reason he and his last girlfriend broke up," Cory said shaking his head.
"She broke up with him because he's addicted to cocaine or because he has nightmares?" Rory questioned.
"Neither, it's because he can't put out. See, cocaine, it kills your sex drive. I heard her talking and in eight months, they were able to do the deed maybe twice. And it wasn't resistance on her end, let me tell you," Cory laughed.
Rory shook her head again and sat quietly in thought. Cocaine. It definitely explained a lot. She had gone through a lot with the Limo Boys, but never a hardcore drug addiction. She wasn't sure if it was something she wanted to deal with. If it was something she could deal with. She decided if Tristan admitted he needed help and got it, she'd try. But if he would continue this lifestyle, then she would have to cut her losses. About half an hour later, the doctor came out and told them Tristan was awake and they could go back and see him.
She walked into the room and sighed. He looked so weak and fragile, she just didn't know what to do. She wanted to hold him in her arms and tell him everything was going to be okay, but at the same time, she was furious with him.
"Hey Mary," he croaked, after he realized she came in.
Rory decided to skip a greeting and get straight the point.
"Cocaine, Tristan? Seriously?"
"Rory, I can explain," he started.
"No, Tristan, save it. You have a problem, and you need to get help. If you can't accept that and agree to get the help you need to kick the habit, then we're done," she said.
"I don't have a problem, Rory. Damn it, if you'd just listen to me," Tristan said, starting to get mad.
Rory nodded curtly, much like she had earlier in her apartment. "Goodbye, Tristan," she said and walked out the door, out of the hospital, and out of his life.
"Coulda been the champagne Coulda been the cocaine Coulda been the way you looked at me That told me we were through"
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Author's Note: There's chapter two. Sorry for the delay. School is crazy, and we are dealing with the fact that my son may be autistic. That and my husband just started a new job and that cut some of my downtime down drastically since I am the sole caregiver for my son during the day now. A lot of research on cocaine dependence and overdose has gone into these two chapters. It's not over, don't worry, there are still five more chapters to go. And again, remember, nothing is mine. I'll post a note in my LJ tomorrow sometime, so be sure to read it. It's in my profile. I won't hold a story hostage for reviews, but I sure do enjoy them. And please be patient, updates may not be timely, but I'll try to make it worth the wait.