Chapter Ten: Going under
AN: Okay I just realized that my storyline has a huge slip up! This is what you get for haphazardly writing stories when you know you have the worst memory ever. Lol. Anyways, I realized that at the beginning I said Lucas and Peyton were dating, but then in a flashback chapter I said it was Brucas. So to settle things I meant Chase for the Brooke flashback, not Lucas. So it's Leyton not Brucas. Okay this chapter starts with a flashback about what Haley's talking about when she keeps yelling at Brooke "You don't know what happened to me" because obviously more than the abortion happened to her because Brooke knew about it. Okay, I know that this chapter will probably upset some people. It's a sensitive issue, but it's serious and so many people go through it that writing about it is something that should happen more. Mature content.
This time I'll save myself…
With a bottle in her hand, Haley stumbled up the winding stairs. How she wound up at this party, she had no clue. But if she was telling herself the truth, she didn't give a damn. It was all the same, every day. Get up, go to the beach, meet up with people, swim, start drinking and find a party to crash.
Something wasn't right tonight, though. She's definitely drunk way more than she has tonight but for some reason she's about ten times more inhibited. She was stumbling up the stairs. Needing to lay down, Haley searched for a bedroom. Dizziness was warping her brain. She couldn't see the next step in front of her and she clutched the railing as she fell to her knees on the stairs. God, what's wrong with me? Just get up. Just get up. Find a room. Sleep. Bed. Dizzy. Tir….
Her thoughts became less and less profound before she finally passed out on the stairs. Haley never noticed that there was a senior that has been trailing her the whole night. He asked her to dance once while offering her a drink. She accepted the drink but then rejected his dance offer claiming she doesn't dance with losers. That sent him quickly seething away.
She didn't notice the way he eyeing her as she danced with other boys, the way he had a sick smirk gracing his lips, like he had a secret to tell. She didn't notice that he was watching her every single move over the hours. She didn't notice, but Nathan did. Because that's what he always spent his time doing: watching Haley drinks her self in to stupors night after night, party after party. He wished so much that he could help her. That's all he wanted to do. Help her. Save her. Love her. But Haley wouldn't let him back in and he really couldn't blame her. So he watched from the sidelines as the only girl he's ever loved slowly slipped away from life.
Nathan was plopped on a couch watching Haley dance when all of a sudden she stumbled. He was about to jump up and steady her when he remembered that he wasn't that person for her anymore. So he sat back down and watched as she continued to stumble out of the room, never fully regaining her balance, and hating himself every second for not having the balls to help her.
A few minutes later when Haley hadn't returned he started to get worried. Usually she would stumble into a bathroom, vomit all of the drink she consumed and then stumble back out to the dance floor and start the whole process all over again, but this time she wasn't coming back. He also noticed that the corner of the room was vacant of the leering senior. His stomach instantly knotted. Something isn't right. Something isn't right. He kept replaying the thought over and over as he started his search for Haley. After looking in the kitchen and the other rooms of the first floor with no sign of Haley or the burly senior, he started up the stairs. He checked the bathroom first and it was occupied by a very pissed off girl crying in the tub.
"My bad." Nathan closed the door before he was hit with a bottle of shampoo the girl sent his way.
He started checking other rooms and had many more items thrown at him by horny, sex-driven teens he interrupted. There were only a couple rooms left to check and he was praying to God that it wouldn't be anymore people having sex. He turned the knob and entered slowly. When he saw that it was yet another couple he turned around. He was about to shut the door when he saw Haley's jacket lying on the ground. He turned around and looked closer and saw that the guy on top was the creepy senior and that Haley was lying under him, unconscious. Her dress was pulled up high and the ass had no pants on.
Oh, God. Oh, God. That motherfucker! Nathan ran up to them and ripped the guy off Haley.
"Dude, what the fuck?!" The senior screamed at him. "Get your own girl!"
"I have one and you are currently trying to fucking rape her!" Nathan yelled clutching up his hands. He walked over to Haley and put her head on his lap. "Come on wake up, Hales. Hales. Hales. Come on, please wake up!" He was shaking her lightly and slapping her face a little.
"What the hell did you do to her!?" Nathan screamed at the guy that was putting his pants back on.
The guy finished buttoning his pants and turned to Nathan with a smirk on his face. "Dude, it's a party. Shit happens. Calm the fuck down. She got what she fucking deserved."
"What she deserved? What she deserved?" Nathan screamed in anger as he ran up to the guy and slammed his body against the wall. "Well now you're going to get what you fucking deserve!"
He wrapped his hand around his neck. Then he took his hand back, made a fist and rammed it straight into the guy's nose. He was about to do it again when the guy shoved Nathan off. Nathan stumbled backwards and fell over some junk. The guy took it as an opportunity to kick him swiftly in the gut and sending a punch flying across his face. As Nathan lay their clutching his face, the senior ran off.
Nathan coughed up a little blood and groaned as he turned onto his back. Fuck. He attempted to sit up. A shooting pain moved through his stomach. Coughing a few more times, he attempted to sit up again. He finally got into a standing position and walked over to Haley. He looked down at her limp body. Her chest was moving up and down slowly so at least he knew that she was still breathing.
Tears were prickling his eyes as he just held her body tightly against his.
"This is all my fault." Nathan started blaming himself. "I didn't want this to happen. None of this was supposed to happen. We should be raising a baby boy or girl right now."
Nathan's heart was so broken right now that he couldn't control the tears once they started flowing. He didn't care, though. He was holding the broken and battered body of the love of his life. He smoothed down Haley's hair over and over again. "It's going to be all right, I promise."
He wasn't so much making this promise to Haley as much as he was trying to convince himself to believe it.
A few minutes later, he wiped away the tears and got out of the bed. Walking across the room, he grabbed Haley's jacket and walked back to where she was still lying unconscious. He pulled her dress as far back down as it would allow and slipped on her leather jacket. Tightening her arms around his neck, Nathan placed his hand under her knees and behind her back and picked her up. She was tightly clutched against his chest as they made their way downstairs.
Luckily, the party was simmering down and there were minimal people around. He thought he could just quickly slip right out the front door without attracting attention.
He was so close. As he reached his last foot off the last stair, Brooke popped out of nowhere.
"What are you doing?" Brooke hissed.
"She's drunk. I'm taking her home." Nathan told her flatly.
Brooke noticed that Nathan appeared to have been crying. "Are you okay?"
"No." He whispered looking away.
"Nate.." Brooke started looking sadly at the broken boy in front of her carrying the even more broken girl.
He shook his head, trying to fight away the tears that were threatening to once again fall. "I need to get her home."
"Okay." Brooke hesitantly stepped out of the way. "Do you need my help?"
"Why would you help her?" Nathan asked her as he walked passed to the door.
"I would be helping you not her." Brooke told him stiffly.
"Well, I'm not the one in the need of the help right now. She needs you more than you will ever know." Nathan spoke tragically.
"Well, she doesn't seem to think she needs me." Brooke pointed out.
"She's scared. Can't you see that?" Nathan asked. "She's just as scared as the rest of us. She cares just as much as the rest of us and she's hurting more than the rest of us."
Nathan walked away at that point, leaving Brooke with tears in her eyes. Brooke looked around at the few people left at the party and how none of them were here for her. She was leaving alone again because the only true friend she had left is trying to save her other best friend, something she should have been trying to do for the past year.
Nathan took Haley to his house and set her gently down on his bed. He covered her with a blanket and took a seat next to her on the bed, legs crisscrossed. Nathan did not fall asleep; he did not so much as move an inch. Fear was overtaking him as every second passed that Haley was not waking up. What if I didn't do the right thing? Should I have taken her to the hospital?
Tears were sprinkling from his eyes and he was powerless to stop it. He grabbed Haley's hand and started rubbing smooth circles on the back of it.
"Please, wake up." He pleaded again and again, hoping just one time she would hear him and wake up.
His eyes were growing tired from the crying and lack of sleep, but he refused to move from his watchful position. Haley was breathing evenly and that was giving Nathan hope that she was okay, that her body was trying to overcome the drug, that she would wake up soon.
At about five in the morning, Haley started stirring. Nathan instantly grabbed her arm, shaking her gently. "Haley. Haley. Wake up."
Haley groaned and turned over so she was facing him.
"Come on, Hales. Wake up for me. Please." Nathan was pleading once again.
All of a sudden, Haley was having a coughing attack. He sat her up and patted her back as the cough started to subside. Haley slowly opened her eyes, but the light was blinding and she closed them again, trying to lie back down.
"No, Hales. Stay up." Nathan told her, trying to lift her back into a sitting position.
"Nathan?" Haley peeked out from under her eyelashes.
"Yea, it's Nathan." He reached across to the nightstand and grabbed a glass of water. "Here, sit up and drink this."
She weakly and slowly pushed her body into a sitting position. Her throat was insanely dry, begging for the tiniest drop of liquid. She gladly accepted the water and chugged it.
When she was done, she handed back the glass. "What am I doing here?"
"Do you remember anything from last night?" Nathan asked her carefully.
"A little. I remember going to a party. I remember drinking and dancing. The rest is all pretty fuzzy." Haley eyed him wryly. His sad look that he was sending her way was starting to freak her out. "Why?"
"Well, do you remember some senior asking you to dance?"
"Yea, I think so. I sent the loser away pouting." Haley slightly smiled as she remembered.
"Do you also remember him giving you a drink first?" Nathan asked, trying to stimulate her memory, at least some of it. The graphic parts would be best if she didn't remember.
"I think so." Haley looked at him, really looked, for the first time since waking up. His eyes were all red, as if he was crying, and his hair was mess. She started having this sick feeling in the gut of her stomach. She could kind of remember to last night when she started feeling really dizzy early into the night. Suddenly, the parts starting turning in her brain and she was putting two and two together. "God. Please, please, please tell me that he didn't slip me something?"
When Nathan's eyes darted down to the bed she had her answer. Tears were welling up in her eyes. "Oh, God. What happened!?"
Nathan looked up and into the chocolate brown eyes that were purely terrified.
"What the hell happened!?!" She screamed when he wouldn't answer.
"I went to find you and I walked into a room." Nathan stopped. He didn't really want to tell her all the details, but she needed to know the truth. How am I going to tell her this?
"Just tell me right now. Was I raped?" She vulnerably pleaded for him to answer her. She needed to know.
Tears welled up in his eyes. His voice came out rasped and torn. "Yes."
"Oh, God." Haley sobbed. Tears were flowing out. She couldn't breathe; her lungs weren't filling up with the adequate amount of air. Flashes of the senior were coming back to her. The senior pulling her up off the stairs, the senior leading her to a bedroom, the senior throwing her down on the bed…
She tried to wipe away the tears, like they were the images themselves. It wasn't working. She still could breathe. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest. She was trying to suck in some oxygen, but it wasn't working. Her body didn't seem to be working right. What's happening? Oh, God.
"Haley, come on breathe! In and out. In and out!" Nathan screamed grabbing her by the shoulders.
"What's…"
She tried sucking in some more air.
"happening to me?" Haley cried, chocking on the air that her body was rejecting and the phlegm her crying was producing.
"You need to calm down. You're having a panic attack." Nathan guided her to breathe in and out again. She was doing as she was told but her body was working right. Her lungs weren't filling with air. She collapsed on the ground in a coughing fit. She coughed up some mucus and started trying to breathe again. Please. She pled with God or whatever higher being is up there just watching as she felt like she was just dying.
She was trying to take deep breathes. In and out. In and out. Suddenly, just for a second her lungs filled with some air.
"Here, drink some water." Nathan handed her a glass of water. She managed not to choke it back up. She took another big gulp. It was working. Her lungs were filling up. It was working! As she finished off the glass, her breathing started to regulate. Finally, her lungs didn't feel like they were on fire and were about to burst.
She collapsed into Nathan, sobbing. Nathan wrapped his arms as tight around her as he could. He held onto her for dear life while she cried out the pain.
Nathan snapped out of his memory as Brooke continued. "…so she ran off crying."
The last time Nathan saw Haley cry was that night of their sophomore year Christmas break. That was actually the last time she talked to him, before she was sent away.
"Why did you have to bring that up and shove it in her face?" Nathan defended Haley, for what reason he had no clue.
"What do you mean? Why do you care? I actually thought you would think it was funny." Brooke told him a bit surprised that he was reacting this way.
"You thought that making Haley cry would be funny to me?" Nathan scoffed.
"No, that's not what I meant!" Brooke quickly tried to take back her words.
"Then what exactly do you mean because to me this seems like you're just trying to find the best way to hurt Haley." Nathan accused of her.
"Well, yea kind of." Brooke admitted. "I mean, don't you want to do the same thing? Hurt her the way she's hurt us?"
"I think you forgot that I was the one that hurt her first. She had all the right to do what she did. Plus, she's been through so much and it only gives her more reason to be angry and act out." Nathan argued.
"No. Having an abortion does not give you the right to become a total bitch. It does not give her the right to just abandon her best friend and treat her like shit!" Brooke yelled at him. "Would you just take her off that freakin' pedestal you put her on already!"
"Brooke! She's been through way more than you think and you're the one that never fought for your friendship either!" Nathan scolded Brooke's actions. He didn't know that she truly felt this much hatred for Haley.
"I tried! I did and I had enough when she wouldn't let me back in. There was nothing else I could do! And just so you know I did more than you think. I helped her the best way I could when I, personally, couldn't help her anymore." Brooke tried to convince herself of this fact as she said it out loud.
"I know that you don't think that's true. You didn't have to give up. You shouldn't have given up because when she pushed you farther and farther away was when she actually needed you the most."
Brooke knew he was right. She knew at that exact moment she gave up completely on Haley she was making a mistake, but she couldn't handle what Haley was dragging her through. Sometimes you have to look out for yourselves first.
"Did you ever think that maybe I was scared, too?" Brooke asked Nathan, brokenly.
"Scared of what?" Nathan didn't really see what she could possibly have been scared of.
"Of Haley. Losing her, not losing her, no being able to save her, giving up on her! Everything about her! I had no clue why she changed so drastically, but one thing I knew was that I didn't want to be the next one to be spinning out of control. So, yes, I admit it. I shouldn't have given up on Haley, but I was selfish and scared. I needed to look out for myself before anything. I was sixteen and just plain tired."
"I understand. Truly, I do, but I never could have just left her." Nathan shook his head at the thought of it.
"But you did, didn't you." Brooke glared at him. She was tired of him making her look like a complete, selfish bitch. She didn't do this to Haley and it's not her fault she couldn't get through to her.
The hurt that appeared in Nathan's eyes instantly made Brooke wish she could take it all back. He looked up at her and his eyes were glossed over with watery liquid. Suddenly, though, his eyes lost all emotion and his stare became soulless. "You're right. I did this to her and there's not a single second that I wish I could take back everything."
Nathan turned around and walked out of Brooke's room. He ran down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. The tears were prickly his eyes but he didn't want them to come so he started running. He kept running away the anger that was filling his body. He managed to get to the back of the school where all of the sports fields and courts are located. He was getting out a basketball he hid between a tree and the cement wall when he heard two voices arguing. Nathan looked up and saw that it was Haley and DJ.
Subconsciously, Nathan hides behind the tree and listens to their conversation.
"No, Haley!" DJ yelled. "I'm tired of all this crap."
"What crap? It was a dream! It didn't mean anything!" Haley pleaded with him.
"No, I know it meant something. You said you fucking loved him! Not me, him!" DJ turned and slammed the basketball he was holding against the backboard.
Haley flinched, tears sprouting to her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she sniffed.
"That's not enough anymore. I can't be a replacement for him. I won't be." DJ stressed. "I know there's something between you and it never ended properly. I know you have feelings for him."
Haley cried harder, "I don't! I swear."
"Stop lying." DJ told her tiredly. "I'm tired of all the lies. You don't want me the same way you want him and I'm not okay with that. I'm done. Not angry just done."
"No!" Haley balled, running up to him and grabbing on his forearm. "You are the one I want, not him! Please, don't do this."
"I'm sorry." That's all he had left in him to say. He couldn't be a part of this relationship anymore; it was too hard.
DJ walked away leaving Haley crying and alone. She went and sat on a picnic table next to the court. With her head in her hands, she sat and sobbed.
Nathan was still behind the tree, only a few feet away. He didn't know what to do. Should he go and talk to her?
He decided he couldn't leave her like that, so he stepped out of his shadow and made his way to the table. He sat down next to her, "Hey."
Haley turned at gazed at him. She scoffed, "I'm guessing you just loved seeing that."
"You know that's not true, Haley."
"Whatever." Haley wiped away at her tear-streaked face.
"Are you okay?" Nathan was concerned about her. She couldn't deal with much more before she finally snapped again.
She looked at him and his eyes were piercing with genuine concern. "No."
Nathan shook his head in understanding. After a couple minutes of silence he spoke, "I was hoping that you going away would do some good for you, you know. But I was scared because then I wouldn't be able to watch over you anymore."
Haley laughed softly. "Watching over me? What are you some kind of stalker?"
Nathan chuckled, "No, I was a worried best friend."
She stopped laughing and looked at him from under her bangs. "Well, I'm glad you did watch over me or else I know I wouldn't have made it after that night."
Nathan knew what night she was talking about. She didn't have to go in any further descriptions. "Well, I wish I was a little earlier on that night."
"Better late than never, right?" She nudged him with her elbow. "But honestly, I never got to say how much I am grateful to you that day."
"Yea, what exactly happened after you ran off?" Nathan always wanted to know.
"Well, I went home and showered in scolding water and then sat on my bed and drank a bottle of vodka." Haley started. "Then I stumbled around to the beach and drank some more. Then I came home to find my bags packed and the next thing I knew I was on a plane coming here."
"Wow, that must have been a shock."
"Actually, not really. I knew something was coming sooner or later. I was just really glad they didn't send me to rehab, but then I got here and met Peyton and Rachel and I actually started becoming my old self. I was starting to be happy again." Haley smiled brightly.
"That's great, honestly. I'm so happy that this place had such an impact on you." Nathan emphasized just how happy he was that Haley was getting better.
"Me too." Haley stood up and turned to walk away. "I think I should go."
"Are you sure? Do you need any help with anything?" Nathan stood up too.
"No, you've saved me enough. I think this time I'll save myself." Haley smiled at him and walked away.
Haley didn't admit it but what truly made the first impact on her was Nathan the night she was raped. Throughout the day, after she left his house, she started getting flashes of things that happened; flashes of everything Nathan was telling her throughout the night. How Nathan stood up for her to Brooke and how dead right his words were. He first made her realize what she's turned into and what she's turned her life into.
AN: Phew. So there is chapter ten. How did you like it? I know it was pretty sensitive issues so I'm sorry if I upset anyone. Please review and tell me your thought (good or bad) on this chapter.
