Alright guys, so I'm continuing my writing streak so here's the next chapter. Just a quick note, a few people pointed out that I left Julian out of the last chapter and as it turns out, I'm a dumbass who just completely forgot about him (sorry about that) so I may rewrite it a little bit just to throw him in there and reupload the chapter. I guess that's what I get for writing at 3:00 in the morning. So sorry about that again, but I tried to make up for it by being fast about putting the next chapter up :)
Chapter 25: Take These Broken Wings and Learn to Fly
Sunday, November 20th, 2011
HALEY
One thing that you should definitely know about the drastic changes that partake in your life once you become a wife and a mother is that you suddenly realize that God created Sunday afternoons solely for the purpose of cleaning up your house.
It's something that you kind of just have to get done no matter what you do or how hard you try to avoid it. In fact, ever since the day I married Nathan… hang on, let me rephrase; ever since the day I started dating Nathan, on most days, not even just Sunday, I could be seen hustling and bustling around the house like a wild woman just trying to salvage it from a week's worth of filth that had been created by a messy son and an even messier husband.
But today stood out a little bit differently from the rest; today, I was in even more of a rush than I usually was mainly due to the fact that today, I had Brooke and Sam coming over for lunch… in about a half an hour mind you; a half an hour that I would spend scrubbing down the kitchen that I haven't even started to clean yet.
It's not that I'm particularly picky on how some of my closest friends viewed the state of my house. In fact, to be completely honest, I could care less if Brooke or Sam saw that I still had some dirty, leftover dishes in my sink from breakfast or if they saw the inch of dust that had been steadily building up underneath my coffee table… well, okay, so maybe I cared a little bit but that's not the point.
The point is, if the state of my house gave Sam even an inkling of sickness, and if I became the one whose fault it was if she got sent right back to the hospital trying to fight off an infection, well then I'd just never be able to forgive myself.
So here I was; dousing my entire house down to the very floorboards with buckets full of antiseptic, covering every visible, and even some invisible, surface with Lysol and harshly snapping at anybody who so much as considered walking through my house with even just a speck of mud on the bottom of their shoes which, when you're living with a five year old boy, happens a lot more than you may think.
"James Lucas Scott, what did I tell you about coming in here dirty?" I shouted at him, watching as his shoulders instantly fell and his chin drooped so low that it touched his chest, standing in the middle of the hallway, still doused in mud, but with his tail between his legs so that he instantly made me feel badly about being so harsh with him.
"Now come on, Sam and Aunt Brooke will be here any minute and you need to get yourself cleaned up… ugh, NATHAN!" I shouted across the house, recognizing my need for reinforcements as I finally realized that there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to finish cleaning the rest of this house while simultaneously trying to clean my son as well.
The good news is, Nathan must have noticed the fact that my nerves had somehow crept through into my voice, because not ten seconds after I had shouted to him, I found him running swiftly into the kitchen, eyes wide and observant as he tried to figure out what he'd done wrong before I told him.
"Yeah,"
"Can you please take Jamie up to get a bath?" Nathan nodded, instantly grabbing Jamie by the hand, recognizing that I was in a dangerous state and it was for the best that he got both himself, and Jamie out of my way as quickly as he could.
"And make sure you clean him up really, really well!" I shouted after them as they disappeared out of the kitchen.
I heaved a deep sigh, listening as the sound of their footsteps climbing the wooden stairs gradually faded into the distance, leaving only me alone with my mop as I dunked it into the soapy bucket I'd had at my side all morning and swiped vigorously across the spot on the floor where Jamie had just left a muddy Nike sneaker footprint.
It was nearly an hour later before I had finally convinced myself that my house was the closest thing to the inside of a giant plastic bubble that we were gonna get and I finally allowed myself to relax, sinking down onto the couch and sighing with relief as my sore muscles loosened up against the comfortable cushions and I closed my eyes, all together enjoying my very rare moment of peace when suddenly, just as quickly as it had started, it was gone again when, not five seconds after I'd closed my eyes, the doorbell rung, effectively interrupting me from all previous thoughts of rest that I had once been stupid enough to have.
Crap, was it 1:00 already?
"Coming, I'm coming!" I shot instantly upright from my seat, shouting loud enough so that Brooke and Sam would be able to hear me from outside, rushing down the hallway and ripping the door open to reveal Sam and Brooke standing shoulder to shoulder in the door frame, bundled up from head to toe and bouncing on the balls of their feet in an effort to keep warm against the chilly November air that surrounded them.
"Hey, come on in, don't wait around outside in the cold." I ushered the two into the foyer quickly, the feeling in mind that leaving Sam to stand outside in the 45° weather wasn't going to get her any healthier any time soon.
"Nathan! Jamie! Come down here, we have guests!" I shouted up the stairs, instantly flipping the switch in my brain that turned me into a crazed hostess.
"Jeez, what are you in a rush to get us out of here Haley?" Sam laughed with what I hoped was sarcasm laced in her voice at my desire to be hasty.
I stumbled over my response, stuttering out a feeble "Of course not," as Sam sunk into the spot in the couch that still had my butt print on it from my extremely brief moment of rest, staring graciously up at the television screen which had been automatically tuned into ESPN news and some sort of basketball story… story of my life, right?
"Relax Haley, I was only joking." Sam spared me the need to make a save out of that one, and I guess I was feeling lucky today or something, because at that very second, Jamie kept the rescue rolling, bounding into the room at exactly the right moment with his hair slicked back with dampness from the bath he'd just received, proudly sporting his favorite pair of dinosaur pajamas that he'd decided to put on to show off to his Aunt Brooke and Sam even though it was barely even the afternoon yet.
"Sam!" He bounced up and down through the living with both legs stuck together like some sort of human kangaroo, making his way straight to Sam without so much of a passing glance to anybody else as he planted his feet on the ground, springing into an impressive long jump that launched him right onto the couch next to Sam.
"Jamie, don't be rude," I scolded him, "Get up and say hi to your Aunt Brooke."
I glared at him with a stern discipline prominent in my eyes as he slowly slid himself off of the couch with a little less spring in his step than there had been ten seconds ago and dragged his feet across the room towards Brooke and I where he wrapped her into a polite hug around the waist, mumbling something that I couldn't exactly make out, but figured sounded as a good enough greeting to me, so I decided that at this point, I'd take it.
"Okay you guys, I've got lunch out on the table already and it's starting to get cold so come on," I clapped my hands together for dramatic effect, you know, just like how they always do it in all of those cooking shows I always watch. "Let's eat."
I would have been completely satisfied simply to end the day and be able to call our little get together descent. But as the afternoon progressed without so much as a hitch, I think it was safe to say that descent would have been an understatement.
The lightness in the air was a nice alternative to the normally thick covering of smog that seemed to be constantly hanging over our heads these days. The mood of the afternoon remained calmly paced over our home grilled barbeque laced with casual conversation, but honestly, what really stuck out to me the most was just how damned good if felt to see our little non-conventional family slowly starting to piece itself back together again.
The thing is Sam and Brooke's lives weren't the only ones that plummeted into a dramatic downward shift upon Sam's diagnosis. I mean, of course it had hit them the hardest, but I think that it was safe to say that we had all shattered underneath the burden of disease, so I also think it's even safer to say that it was a nice change of pace for all of us to feel something in our lives going in the right direction for a change.
My eyes subconsciously glanced up towards Sam as thoughts of the girl entered my mind. She was sitting at the opposite end of the table between Nathan and Brooke, picking slowly at my homemade macaroni salad, laughing at something that Nathan had just told her.
But I still managed to catch it, even through her laugh, that tiny, hidden gleam deep within the center of her eyes; that look that told me that she had something important that she wanted to announce, the look that let me know that today's little lunch date hadn't solely been for the purpose of coming to visit me… as much as I liked to tell myself it was.
Of course, I already knew exactly what the something was… but Sam didn't quite know that.
I had received the phone call from Brooke late Friday night.
I'd literally been about thirty seconds away from shutting of my phone for the night and heading up to bed when the call came in.
The second I'd answered it, I found myself getting trapped in a corner, forced to listen to Brooke as she delivered this painfully long shpeel all about how as Brooke had been driving Sam, Jamie, and Julian home from the mall the other day, they had gotten stuck behind this school bus pulling over to let a bunch of kids off.
Clad with their heavy backpacks and tired faces, Brooke continued to explain that she'd noticed Sam, who had apparently been watching them with a hidden admiration in her face from her position in the passenger's seat as these teenagers, who looked about her age, sulked and pouted, complaining about being forced to spend another long day within the confines of a classroom while poor Sam looked on practically green with the envy over what these kids took for granted every single day of their lives, what Sam could only dream about these days.
And that's about the time that wheels started churning in Brooke's mind, they ideas flooding in like they so often did with her.
You see, Brooke and Sam obviously had a lot on their plates these days. In all honesty, the thought that Sam still had her school work to consider probably hadn't even crossed their minds… it sure as hell hadn't crossed mine.
The thing was, now that Sam was spending a lot less time being stuck sick in a hospital all day, and a lot more time adjusting back to her normal home life routine, which, strangely enough just involved a lot of lazing around on the couch all day doing absolutely nothing, I think that Sam was starting to get overwhelmed with all this extra time on her hands, leaving her with nothing more to do than sit in deep thought all day, emphasizing her sudden insistence that she did not want to be left back an entire school year.
And that is exactly where I came into the picture.
Brooke, in her undying efforts to always keep Sam as happy as possible, alongside a budding fear that the poor girl was starting to get a little depressed being forced to sit at home all day long, had decided to place her phone call to me with the hopes that I would possibly be able to help her work out some sort of special arrangement for Sam so that she would be able to continue to keep up with her schooling throughout this entire ordeal.
And as our phone conversation grew steadily longer, passing the one hour, then the two hour, and finally the three hour mark in what seemed like a blink of an eye, we had managed to work out a suitable plan that involved me placing a visit over to Brooke's house three times a week for a few hours a day where I would basically home school Sam, watching her with admiration as she attempted to conquer both cancer and the 10th grade all at the same time.
And, just because we're us, Brooke and I also figured that this small little celebratory gathering at my place would be the best way to let her know what we were up to. And considering we'd spent the majority of yesterday at a funeral, we had set the date for Sunday, and that my friends, is exactly how we ended up in the exact place that we were all at right now.
"What's on your mind, Sam?" I had been the one to open the door for conversation, mainly because as time passed on slower and slower, I couldn't help but notice that poor Sam was practically turning blue in her efforts to keep her mouth shut and I was honestly afraid that if we made her wait any longer, her head would literally explode with the anticipation.
She looked up at me upon my addressing her and I watched as she took breath, her eyes narrowing with what looked like a little bit of nervousness at placing her request.
"Well, um…Haley… Broke and I have kinda been talking about it for the past few days… and, well we were thinking… well, I was thinking… I… I wanna try to go back to school." She stuttered over her own words so that the simple sentence took her a good minute or two to finally come out.
I raised my eyebrows in an uncontrollable reaction to this new development that had apparently found its way into the plan since the time that Brooke and I had spoken.
On Friday, this whole set up simply involved me going over Brooke's house to tutor Sam… maybe occasionally I would head over to the hospital on those days that Sam was stuck up there and she wasn't too sick to move; but now… actually going back to school? Well that was a horse of a different color if I'd ever seen one.
"Sam, that's great." I congratulated Sam despite the surprise, but then I caught a glimpse of Brooke's face, her expression telling me that apparently, Sam's desire to physically go back to attending school came as much a shock to her as it had for me indicating that Sam had waited until the very last possible second to spring this one on her.
I could see it in Brooke's eyes. She was trying her hardest to look happy for Sam, but I could tell by the way she was struggling to form a smile on her face that she was too busy biting her tongue so hard that it was practically bleeding.
"Uh… that is great, isn't it?" I directed the question towards Brooke, retracting my previous approval towards Sam's announcement, making sure to add a little bit more hesitancy to my voice this time around.
"Brooke's a little bit nervous about the prospect of letting me out of her sight for more than two minutes."
Sam spoke with an obvious hint of annoyance gleaming in her words, and I watched as the two of them began to stare each other down for a moment before their heads slowly turned towards me with the intention of using me as their own personal mediator between the two of them.
Here's the thing; I know that I'm everybody's go-to-guy for this type of thing but that's only because I'm really good at making myself look strong when the weight of the world isn't resting on my shoulders. But that all changes once it actually is… now what the hell am I supposed to do?
I couldn't side with Sam; my loyalty to Brooke was way too important to do that, and besides, I knew that you never, ever, under any circumstances challenge a mother's decision, but then again, how was I supposed to sit here and deny a sick child something that she wanted more than anything.
I glanced casually over towards Nathan desperate for some help here but when all he did in response was widen his eyes slightly and give the smallest shake of his head, I knew that he was going to be absolutely no help here.
As you can see, I have kind of found myself in a conundrum.
"I'm thinking about it." Brooke corrected Sam's previous statement, but I couldn't help but think that by the look on Brooke's face, her decision had already been made, and it wasn't one that Sam was gonna want to hear.
"Listen Sam," I started, "Brooke and I were talking the other day about maybe tutoring you on the days that you felt up to it…"
"But I want to try actually going back to school, Haley." She cut me off before I even had the chance to finish my sentence, and I could hear it in her voice; she was getting defensive and determined in her endeavor to get exactly what it was that she wanted.
"I think it's a good idea Sam, really I do. I think that it will do you well to get out of the house for a while and to get your mind on something other than being sick, but…" I automatically looked towards Brooke. Sam knew as well as I did that the decision didn't lie with me. I guess she just thought that if she could manage to convince me, it would automatically convince Brooke too… Sam was a lot smarter than most people ever gave her credit for.
"Yeah, did you hear that, Brooke? It will do me good to get out of the house for a while and to get my mind on something other than being sick." She repeated my argument with nearly a word-to-word accuracy, however, she'd cut out the most important part. I guess she had conveniently forgotten to put the 'but' I had ended my sentence with into her argument.
"But," I emphasized again just to make sure Sam heard me this time, "Sam, you're still under some pretty strict guidelines about what you can and can't do and I mean, you and Brooke know your limits more than I do so…"
All eyes turned to Brooke instantly. We sat with bated breath, staring up at her waiting as if we were watching a world championship basketball game with ten seconds left in the final quarter and a tie score…
I watched as what looked like genuine consideration passed across her features for a moment and she scrunched up her face and furrowed her eyebrows in thought.
"I don't know, Sam…" She drifted off, shaking her head slightly with skepticism.
"Haley will watch me!" Sam practically shouted, pushing her chair harshly away from the table so that the wood scraped painfully against the wood with a noise that made me cringe, but it didn't look like Sam had even noticed; she was too busy having a staring contest with Brooke, the idea in her mind that maybe, if she locked those large doe-eyes with Brooke a little bit longer, it would force her to ultimately concede and give Sam what she wanted.
Meanwhile, there was me, not totally sure that I wanted to pile on the weight that the task of watching over Sam for the day required, but I knew how much it meant to the girl, so I looked over towards Brooke, put a smile on my face that looked more like a grimace, and nodded.
"Brooke, you know how much I care about Sam. I would watch her like a hawk. Promise,"
There was an extra moment or two in which Brooke sat silent and in deep thought, adding up the benefits that sending Sam back to school would bring and trying to figure out whether or not they outweighed the potential severity of the consequences.
"We're setting something up with the school nurse." She said slowly after another very tense moment.
"Of course," Sam nodded in agreement, her face slowly beaming as the realization that she'd won this argument slowly sank in.
"And if you so-much as sneeze, you're coming home immediately."
"Even if I just feel like I'm going to sneeze." She promised Brooke, but I had the strangest thought that that wasn't exactly true; Sam was notorious for trying to cover up any ounce of weakness she was feeling and holding it off until the very last possible second, so I spoke up to make sure she knew that that wasn't going to work this time around.
"And I will be talking to every single one of your teachers just to make sure that they know that." I told her seriously. "You're not even going to be able to go to the bathroom by yourself do you hear me, Sam?"
"Jesus, you can come in the stall with me if you want." She was persuaded easily; now I was just trying to figure out whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
I watched Brooke's eyes carefully. She turned her head slowly over towards me, lingering for only a second before focusing back on Sam, and then back to me before finally, just for good measure she turned back to Sam again.
This pattern literally continued on for a solid two minutes but finally, maybe after Brooke's neck muscles started getting too tired to continue their rotations, she spoke up again.
"Fine," She stated firmly, trying to make it so her voice sounded more confident than I knew she felt; but I knew that the instant smile that had just broken out across Sam's face was all the confirmation that either of us needed to know that Brooke had made the right decision.
Brooke tried her hardest to keep that stern look on her face just to make sure that Sam knew just how serious she had been about everything she had said to her beforehand, but I noticed that she couldn't help but show the smallest of grins as Sam literally leapt out of her seat, jumping up onto the floor, literally pumping her fists in triumph.
"Wow, I never thought that I would ever be this excited to back to Tree Hill High."
"Yeah well, listen," Brooke stopped her before she got so excited that she made herself sick before she even had the opportunity to go back. "I think that maybe, when you're feeling up to it between your chemo rounds you can go to school for the day, or for a half day, or whatever, and then maybe when you are in the hospital or during your treatments, Haley can come to tutor you at home…"
Brooke halted Sam's celebrations, going back to serious mode as she laid the plan out on the table, trying to piece all of the confusion together before turning to me in search for a confirmation that throwing me into this mix would be alright.
I gave a short nod, one that Brooke returned to me appreciatively while meanwhile, Sam, who I'm not sure heard a word Brooke had just said, and who definitely wasn't even taking the time to process the lay out Brooke had just planned for her, simply agreed, shouting her approval to everybody around her.
"Sounds awesome,"
"And," Brooke added, holding a stern finger in the air so that it dangled right in front of Sam's face, "You are not taking that bus to school tomorrow. It's a freaking disease waiting to happen."
"I'll drive her." I spoke up immediately because I noticed the way that Sam scrunched up her face and opened her mouth in response to Brooke's statement, looking as if she was about to dish out the most sarcastic reply humanly possible so that I knew that I would have to intercept her comment before she had the opportunity to say something stupid that might cause Brooke to change her mind.
"Thanks Haley," Sam told me, throwing her arms so hard around my neck that she nearly knocked me straight off of my chair and onto the floor flat on my ass.
For a sick kid, Sam sure as hell still had a lot of strength left in her.
"Of course," I replied to her, quickly regaining my bearings, returning the hug lovingly as I patted Sam's narrow back gently.
I had a lot of faith in Sam, really I did, and the majority of my brain was telling me that I had made the right decision, helping me to believe that everything would work out tomorrow without so much as a hitch, but as I looked over Sam's shoulder, locking eyes with the less than confident ones Brooke as she stared at the two of us with concern running rampant in her face like wild fire, I couldn't help but listen to that minority portion of my mind that was screaming at me, telling me that I had just made one of the biggest mistakes that I had ever made in my entire life.
SAM
I'm pretty sure that it's been a while since I had allowed myself to get this excited. I'm pretty sure that it's been a while since I really had anything to be excited about.
I mean, let's face it, the last bit of excitement that I had in my life ended up with me being diagnosed with leukemia, but as we all know, that is a different type of excitement.
You see, to me, there were two types of excitements one could have in their life; the one that you embraced wide with open arms, and the one that you didn't.
"You look unusually happy tonight." My head snapped up at the sound of Brooke's voice as it lifted me suddenly from the daze that I had allowed myself to fall into.
"Huh?" I asked stupidly with my mouth hanging slightly open to give away the fact that I had just been daydreaming and seemed to have missed everything that Brooke had just said to me.
"I was just saying that you look happy tonight… it's nice."
I rolled my eyes because I never knew how else I was supposed to deal with compliments when Brooke delivered them to me and looked back down at my feet as I kicked them in midair as they dangled off of the side of the counter top that I was currently perched on t op of watching as Brooke prepared a bagged lunch for me that I was supposed to eat in the fortress of the school nurse's office tomorrow.
Yeah, that didn't excite me too much either, but considering that I was counting my blessings just by getting Brooke to allow me to go to school at all, I figured I would just leave this one be.
"I'm just glad I get to go back to school tomorrow is all." I told her.
"Wow, I never thought I would ever hear those words come out of your mouth." She laughed to herself as she slid an extra large steak knife through the center of the sandwich she'd been making for me, cutting it into perfect halves.
She laid the peanut butter and jelly sandwich carefully across a plastic-sealed Ziplock; I guess that somewhere in her thought process she had decided that she would make me the most normal sandwich that she could possibly think of, just so that she could balance it out against the completely abnormal bag full of pills that lay next to it that I would be swallowing as an after-lunch snack.
"God, I haven't done this in forever." Brooke ranted as she disappeared into the dining room for a moment only to come back out dragging one of the chairs from the dining room table along with her, positioning it directly below the cabinet above the sink before climbing carefully on top.
"I put all of the lunch bags up on top of here just to get them out of the way."
I watched with vague interest as she stood up on her tippy-toes and extended both of her arms as far above her head as she could reach, staring for only a moment before losing interest, looking away from her attempts, instead, choosing to focus my attention on a fly that had been buzzing around the window on the opposite wall of the kitchen, but I swear, I had only turned my head away for a split second, but I blinked, and suddenly, I heard it –
WHAM!
The crash was so loud that it shook the house, but the loud bang was immediately followed by an even louder scream of pain that had definitely originated from Brooke's mouth, causing me to instantly snap my neck so quickly back to where Brooke had just been standing that my neck cracked.
I blinked a couple of times at the scene that was currently in front of my very own eyes, just to make sure that this was real and I hadn't dozed off on top of the counter or anything to find myself having a very bizarre dream…
But no, there it was, real as it possibly could be; Brooke was laying across the floor, rolling back and forth on her back and clutching her shoulder into a vice grip as she scrunched up her face and gritted her teeth in pain, the chair that she had been standing on not ten seconds ago toppled over sideways at her feet.
For a moment I didn't do anything; the thing was, I still wasn't sure how real this was yet considering these days, it was difficult for me to distinguish between what was real and what was my imagination playing tricks on me, but after a couple of seconds that felt by hours passed and still, nothing changed, I realized that it had to be true, there was no other explanation… Brooke had just fallen off of the freaking chair.
"Shit Brooke, are you okay?" I hopped down off of the counter landing gracefully on both feet and rushing the last couple of steps towards her, squatting down to her side and watching as she attempted to roll over and respond to my inquiry only to grind her teeth harder and moan in pain even louder.
"Crap, my shoulder. I think I messed up my shoulder." She cried out after taking a couple steady, deep breaths to in an attempt to calm herself down.
I let my mouth drop open and my eyes widen. What the hell was it exactly that I was supposed to do in this situation?
"Should I call 911?" I asked her stupidly. I've never called 911 before… well, actually there was this one time when I was six years old at a birthday party. Some kid dared me to prank dial them as a joke… well, obviously I had done it, and it had ultimately lead to a false five alarm fire call and my permanent ban from all Chuck-E-Cheese establishments but that one didn't count.
"No, I don't want to make a big deal out of this." Brooke was a stubborn one alright, but I was pretty sure that making a big deal out of this was the least of her worries at the moment. Besides, considering how familiar I was with hospitals these days, I think I was more than qualified to make the decision of what warranted a visit to one, and I was pretty sure that this would definitely make the cut.
"Should I drive you to the hospital then?" I insisted, my voice laced with seriousness even though I knew, and I knew that Brooke knew, that I had never once driven a car before in my entire life.
But let's be completely honest, if you were the cop that pulled us over; an underage driver with cancer and an injured fashion superstar in the passenger's seat, would you do anything about it?
Actually, now that I thought about it, we'd probably get locked away in a freaking mental ward before we even had the opportunity to get arrested; so maybe that suggestion was out of the question.
"Samantha Walker you are not driving my car so don't even think about it."
Jeez, leave it up to Brooke to yell at me even while she was twitching on the kitchen floor in pain with a broken arm… I knew I would never be able to catch a break with her.
"Should I call Julian?" I continued to throw suggestions out of my hat, knowing that we couldn't just sit in the kitchen for the rest of our lives waiting for her to take herself to the hospital, and besides, I figured that would be the next best thing. I was sure that Julian, who was currently sitting in a Starbucks somewhere trying to get at least some work for that movie that I'd damned near forgotten he was working on done, would just love to receive this phone call:
'Uh yeah hi Julian, well, your retarded girlfriend was just trying to stand up on the wobbliest chair in the entire house and fell her ass off and hurt herself so now I don't know what to do so can you come home?'
That sounded good, right?
"Ugh… yes!" Brooke let out another loud moan of pain as she practically yelled at me. But I didn't take it personally.
I scrambled to get my hand into my jeans pocket, my brain, for some reason or another, choosing now to feel like not working properly. But I eventually managed to achieve my task, my fingers finding, and grasping around my cell phone that was buried deep within the confines of my jeans.
I looked down, watching as Brooke struggled to get herself back into an upright position as I dialed the familiar number into my phone, listening impatiently to the incessant ringing on the other line.
"Come on, Julian, come on, answer," I mumbled to myself as heard nothing more than the phone ringing right back into my very own ear once… twice… three times…
"Hello?"
"Julian, hey," I breathed out with relief, trying to sound as casual as humanly possible in my approach but obviously failing miserably judging by the quick shuffle I heard on the other side of the line followed immediately by Julian asking me –
"Sam, are you alright?"
Wow, I really need to work on that whole sounding inconspicuous thing.
"Yeah, yeah, um… funny story actually." I watched Brooke look up at me and give me a glare at my poor word choice. Okay, so maybe it really wasn't that funny… I guess Brooke agreed.
"Brooke, uh… she kind of um… fell." I spoke, choosing my words carefully as I did so.
"Fell? Like fell how?"
"Like old lady fell down the stairs and can't get back up fell." It was the only way I could choose to describe Brooke's unexpected tumble, but, as she had gone right back to glaring up at me, I guess she was dissatisfied with my account of the story.
"But really Julian, I think she really hurt her shoulder and she won't let me drive her car to take her to the ER or call 911, so…" I drifted off, allowing him to piece the rest of it together, which he did easily.
"Okay, I'll be right there." He assured me, "Make sure she doesn't move it and make her put some ice on it like, right now." Did Julian ever tell you about the time he made it all the way up to Eagle Scout in high school? Well I'll tell you now, I have definitely made fun of him for it a time or two but I was eating my own words now.
I hung up with Julian, pocketing my phone and looking back over towards Brooke who had somehow managed to get herself back onto her feet on her own, clutching onto the counter with her good arm for support while holding the injured one close to her chest in an effort to keep it as still as possible.
"Julian's on his way." I assured Brooke, walking over to her and picking the offending chair up from off of the ground, moving it out of the way before Brooke tripped over it or something and broke her other freaking arm.
"Do you think it's broken?" I hesitated to ask, afraid of what the answer would do to poor Brooke who shook her head and subconsciously held her arm closer to her body.
"I don't know," She answered through her clenched teeth.
"Here, let me see it at least." I reached an arm out, barely grazing her injured appendage with the tips of my fingers but still, she grunted with the sudden pain, tensing her muscles and involuntarily ripping her body from my painful touch.
"Sorry," I mumbled, ultimately deciding that it would be best for me to keep my hands to myself as I stood on the balls of my feet to get a better look of her shoulder which looked, well… gross.
Through the halter top that she had been wearing, I could see that her entire upper arm was already swollen to the point that it vaguely resembled the shoulder size of an NFL linebacker. A dark black and blue that was so intense it reminded me of the nice one I had had underneath my eye at the time of my diagnosis stood out starkly against her pale skin, and a disfiguring lump sat in the place that had once held a perfectly functional shoulder less than five minutes ago.
"How does it look?" She asked as I swallowed the lump of bile that was rising in my throat as a result of my squeamish disgust.
"Uh… it looks great." I made the pitiful lie right through my teeth.
"You know, you could have made that at least a little more convincing, Sam."
"Yeah well, at least I tried." I told her, collecting one of the extra Ziplock bags that remained out on the counter alongside my half finished lunch, walking to the freezer and filling it with ice, extending my very own makeshift ice pack towards Brooke so that she could put it on her arm herself so she wouldn't be able to blame me when the pressure against her battle wound made her head explode with pain.
"You don't have any peas." I told her, sitting down on a counter stool as Brooke let a small squeak escape her mouth as she rest the ice pack against her shoulder.
"What?" She managed, looking back up at me with tears of pain stinging at the corners of her eyes.
"You don't have any frozen peas." I repeated, and when she continued to look up at me like I had three heads, wondering why the hell I would ever want to eat peas at a time like this, I explained.
"When I was younger I hurt my knee this one time playing roller hockey and this lady that I was living with told me that frozen peas were the best to put on when you're hurt because they like, mold to your body or something… Maybe we can pick some up on the way to the hospital."
To my surprise, Brooke actually choked out a strangled laugh at my comment, even though I'm not really sure what was so funny about it.
"What do you mean we?" She asked looking up at me with a suspicious glint in her eyes. I matched her stare with confusion as I shrugged my shoulders because I honestly had no idea what she was trying to tell me.
"Sam, there is no way in hell that I'm letting you come to the ER with me."
"What?" My objection came out of my mouth as a yell before I had time to stop it, the absolute ludicrous of her statement infuriating me. As if she honestly thought that I wasn't going to help take care of her when she needed me most, especially when she'd spent the past month waiting on me hand and foot.
"Do you have any idea what you can catch in an emergency room?" There was a slight laugh hidden in her voice as she spoke but it wasn't one of those; 'hey, this is really funny' type of laughs, no, it was more along the lines of a; 'I can't believe you ever even thought I would let you do that, you're an idiot' kind of laugh.
"Brooke, there's no way in hell that I'm just gonna sit here and wait for a freaking phone call to see how you're doing. I'm coming with you!" I'm not sure when it was exactly that the tables got turned around and I became the concerned parent and Brooke the sick child in this situation but let me tell you, I was actually kind of liking this role reversal for a change… even though I'm pretty sure Brooke was not.
I watched Brooke as she opened her mouth, closed it again, and then opened it one more time, looking like she was about to say something, but no words ever came out of her mouth.
Instead, before she had the opportunity to find her words again, the door burst suddenly open, and I heard somebody, who was inevitably Julian, barge through the house, running towards us.
"Brooke! Sam!" His voice rang throughout the house with an unusually high pitch as he searched for us, not really sure what he would find behind the veil.
"Julian, we're in the kitchen!" Brooke responded as the two of us sat in a tense silence, listening to the sounds of Julian's slamming footsteps followed by a skid that told us he was sliding across the hallway's wooden floors as he came into view inside of the kitchen where he stopped, stared dramatically between me and Brooke for a few seconds, opened his mouth wide, and finally spluttered out -
"Are you okay?"
You would think that after all this time the three of us would be better at dealing with unexpected catastrophe. Well my friends, you have thought wrong, because in the past ten minutes or so, all three of had had the experience of feeling like a chicken with its head cut off, and now, it was Julian's turn to react.
He finally gathered up the courage to walk up to Brooke, approaching her with caution as if she was some kind of breakable china doll, reaching out to delicately graze his fingers across her collar bone without getting close enough to the swollen, puffy appendage to put her in any more pain than what she was already in.
"Yeah," Brooke tried to assure him but the lie was clearly visible underneath the pain in her voice. "Stupid chair, I've been meaning to tighten that back leg ever since the summer. It finally gave out." She gave her briefest account of the story as Julian continued to observe her injury with the attentiveness of a trained professional.
"Okay, come on; let's get you to the hospital." Julian said, delicately wrapping her uninjured shoulder around the back of his neck and placing a hand around her waist to guide her towards the door.
"Come on, Sam," He shouted after me, my face brightening with Julian's invite in hopes that Brooke had somehow forgotten the brief argument we'd had only a minute ago, but my hopes were dashed when Brooke stopped Julian in his tracks.
"Julian, we can't bring Sam to the ER."
"Brooke, we can't leave Sam here by herself, and we don't have time to sort out where she can and can't stay; we need to get you to the hospital." Julian argued, providing a rational, well-thought argument that I certainly never could have come up with for myself. "Listen, they'll know how to take care of Sam in the ER; they've taken good care of her before, they'll be able to do it again."
Julian finished his mini-speech, leaving Broke to look between me, him, and the front door, confused between her unknowing about what horrible things may happen to me in an emergency room and her desperate desire to get to the hospital as fast as possible to heal her ailing shoulder.
But Brooke knew that Julian had a good point; there really was no other option.
"Fine," Brooke finally conceded, ultimately deciding that the option involving getting some pain killers into her system as fast as possible definitely outweighed the slight possibility of me contracting some sort of unheard of, deadly nosocomial infection.
"But we have to let them know that you're just off chemo and you can't be sitting in the triage unit with… with those… dirty people."
I raised an eyebrow with surprise at her unique word choice and let out a small laugh that I managed to disguise as a cough as Julian and I lead Brooke out of the front door and towards the car.
"No problem Brooke," I assured her, pulling the front door shut behind me. "I'll be sure to make it a point to sit with the people that actually bathe."
I've never been to an Emergency Room before… well, okay, so we all knew that was I lie, I had actually been to an Emergency Room before, but considering the fact that I'd spent 99% of my last visit to the ER unconscious, I didn't count that one.
I watched from the safety of the back seat as Julian drove like a mad-man, but he was on autopilot; the route to Tree Hill Memorial so familiar to him that he could probably do it with his eyes closed.
I spent the majority of the brief car ride blocking out everything around me as I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that my first visit back to the place that had made my life a living hell these past few weeks wasn't that big of a deal, that it wouldn't affect me at all, that the second I stepped back into that god-forsaken building that I hadn't seen in nearly a week, I wouldn't be launched back into all of the memories of what had happened to me between those walls…
Of course, as the outline of the tall, gray building emerged from the hidden cover of the trees and Julian's car sped closer and closer towards the destination, I found it much harder to believe what my mind was telling me; that little flutter that was beginning to build up in the pit of my stomach letting me know that everything I'd spent the entire car ride telling myself was just complete bull shit all along.
I took a deep breath and just kept repeating to myself that at least this wasn't for me as the three of us crossed the double automatic doors that guided us through to the entrance way of the Emergency Room, slowly making our way up to the receptionist desk as I subconsciously pulled the brim of the hat I had been wearing down closer past my brow line, looking down at my feet as the barely out of college girl who had previously been picking at her fingernails behind the receptionist desk sighed, and spoke in an airy, monotone voice without even looking up.
"What can I help you with?" She asked before finally looking up, her eyes widening as they locked with my own in a reaction that I've so gotten used to these days before she waved down a male nurse walking past to come help me immediately, apparently not even noticing the giant deformity of Brooke's arm as a small group gathered around me.
"What happened?" The nurse asked me, getting as far as attempting to lift me up and onto a gurney that I swear just instantly freaking apparated out of mid-air; but that's where I put my foot down. There was no way in hell that I was getting back into one of those things before my time was up, so I put up my arms, forced him to back the hell off, and finally was given enough air to speak up.
"It's not me, it's her," I pointed my index finger over towards Brooke who had been standing feebly in the corner looking as if she was torn between being impressed with how quickly the staff had gotten to me and pissed that they had completely bypassed her in the process.
"Oh," He stepped back, hunching his shoulders high up to his face in an attempt to cover up the fact that his ears were glowing red with embarrassment. "What happened?"
He turned the question onto Brooke, who presented her arm to him in exasperation and sighed.
"I fell off a chair."
"Okay," He said, motioning with his hand for us to advance closer towards him. "Follow me,"
He lead us passed a straight line of curtained off cubicles and closed off trauma rooms before stopping us in front of a door labeled 'Orthopedics', leading us forward into the private room.
"Take a seat," The nurse instructed Brooke, extending his arm over towards the bed in the corner that I was grateful wasn't for me for a change.
Instead, I made myself comfortable over in the squashy arm chair in the corner, watching as Brooke sat down on the edge of the bed, legs dangling and eyes twitching in nervous anticipation as she watched the nurse snap a set of gloves on his hands and Julian take his ready position at her side just in case she needed a hand to hold… or squeeze to death.
"Okay," He started, bending low at the waist and putting his face right into Brooke's arm, reaching out to test its durability with one arm on her forearm and the other on the crook between her neck and her good shoulder so that from the angle that I was sitting at, it looked like he was trying to place some sort of awkward move on her.
Of course, he wasn't; not unless his pickup line of choice was, "So it looks like you probably dislocated your shoulder."
He spoke with a matter-of-fact tone in his voice as he straightened himself up and looked down at her with his hands on his hips and a serious look on his face.
"What does that mean?" Brooke asked him nervously, the quaver in her voice making it sound more like the man had just diagnosed her with some incurable disease rather than a simple dislocated shoulder.
"Well, I'm going to call an orthopedist in here to confirm, but he'll probably want to do an x-ray, maybe an MRI just to make sure none of the tendons have been damaged, and then he'll set your shoulder back into place, and you'll be able to go home."
Brooke wasn't looking to excited about anything she had just been told, but the nurse seemed to be oblivious to her reservations, because he pulled the gloves off of his hand, turned to Brooke, and said without so much as a second glance, "Okay, so I'm going to go get you something for the pain and then call in the orthopedist. He should be here soon."
He dismissed himself politely, leaving Brooke, Julian, and I to ourselves as our brains scrambled to wrap themselves around Brooke's rapid diagnosis and treatment.
"You see Brooke," I caught her attention, lounging backwards into my chair, "And you didn't want to bring me here, because I'm pretty sure that because of me, you just got a room and a diagnosis all in under fifteen minutes."
I only gloated because it was true; the fact that the ER staff had decided to completely skip over the normal triaging process and send Brooke straight into the back was strictly based on the fact that people naturally took pity on kids with cancer, and let's face it, we were good at weaseling our way into special treatment.
"What can I say, Sam, thanks for taking one for the team." She said, sighing heavily in exasperation towards the news she'd just been delivered, throwing herself carefully backwards against her bed as we began the long wait for this unexpected visit to be over.
I must say, despite my previous reservations about coming here, I have found that I liked hospital visits from the visiting side of the spectrum a lot more than from the patient's side of it all.
It was a nice change of pace, being able to sit back and relax as I got to watch Brooke scream while a team of nurses placed an IV of morphine into the back of her hand, and then watch Brooke scream and have to get held down by three giant male nurses and an orderly as she thrashed and writhed against the orthopedist setting her shoulder back into place, and finally, watching Brooke scream as Julian leaned in to comfort her, only to hit her arm and almost freaking knocking it right out of place all over again.
And as much as it sucked to watch Brooke in so much pain, I was just too glad to find that it wasn't me for a change to be too concerned for her.
I stretched and yawned. I was curled up in the same seat that I had been in for the past three hours or so, flipping through the same magazine that I'd had since I'd gotten here as I waited for Brooke to return from getting an x-ray of her arm while Julian sat silently in the corner filling out the paper work that we had conveniently bypassed at the time of our entrance.
It was a ridiculously old magazine, one that I'd read weeks ago, right after I'd found myself trapped in the hospital with nothing better to do other than read gossip magazines cover to cover. Of course, there was another reason why it was so intriguing, and I was reminded of that reason every time I found myself flipping back onto page 77 where I would look down only to see a bright, shining picture of my ugly mug staring right back at me.
It was awkward really; kind of like looking in a mirror, but with the knowledge that millions of other people were looking at this mirror at you too. In fact, now that I thought about it that way, it was actually kind of creepy knowing that somebody had just randomly taken a picture of me and Brooke out on the streets without me even realizing it and went ahead and stuck it in a magazine…
My eyes scanned the article for what must have been the thirtieth time that night. It had come out only a few days after my admittance into the Tree Hill Oncology unit, back when everybody was still busy speculating on what the hell was wrong with me; their predictions ranging from drug addiction, to schizophrenia… one person even went as far as to assume that I was an AIDS patient that Brooke had adopted for publicity…
I guess this was what it was like to be famous or something. Well, it's the damn hell closest that I'm ever gonna get to it, so I might as well embrace it, right?
My ears perked up with attention as the familiar sound of a wheelchair rolling down the hallway infiltrated my senses, and I looked up towards the door before Julian even had an idea as to what the hell was going on as Brooke was wheeled back into the room.
Poor Brooke; her left arm was bandaged up, wrapped within the confines of its new home; a dark blue sling. Her face was looking slightly dreamy from the copious amounts of morphine that her now-absent IV had been delivering to her in steady amounts all night, and she was now busy trying to climb out of her wheelchair before the orderly pushing her could even stop moving.
I looked up at Julian and his eyes matched mine, saying the exact same thing that I was thinking. The two of us were about to be in for a long night.
"Okay, Ms. Davis, you're all set to go." Her orthopedist, whose name I hadn't even managed to catch followed her into the room, scribbling a fast prescription down on his pad, making the move to hand it to Brooke before he caught a second glance at her dazed eyes and dopey grin, leading him to retract his arm, instead, leaving the responsibility of the prescription to Julian.
"I wrote her a prescription for Percocet that should last her for the next two weeks. I would like for her to remain in the sling for at least the entire two weeks, but I would prefer if she kept it on for three. Once she does take the sling off, just make sure she makes an appointment with her regular physician just to be sure that her shoulder has healed alright."
I listened to the instructions, nodding my head up and down alongside Julian, determined to take in every last detail so that I would be able to help him take care of her before I turned back to Brooke, watching as she struggled against falling asleep in her wheelchair as the drugs she'd been on throughout the course of her hospital visit began to hit her hard.
I couldn't help but laugh silently to myself. I knew that feeling she was going through alright, but damn, Brooke sure was a lightweight.
It took a couple more minutes, but finally, Julian handed in all of his signed and filled out paperwork, handing the forms into the doctor in exchange for Brooke, allowing us to finally be able to make our way back out into the parking lot, where we struggled to wrestle Brooke back into the backseat of the SUV without causing any further damage.
Brooke spent the majority of the car ride home sprawled across the entire backseat bench with me underneath her legs, jabbering about how much she enjoyed being chauffeured around town by Julian as she tested out the weight of her arm within her brand-new sling.
"Sam, how am I supposed to take care of you with only one arm?" She kept asking me over and over again, her voice slurred with the residual morphine still floating through her veins as she struggled to remain awake.
"It'll be okay Brooke." I kept assuring her every time she asked, holding onto the secret knowledge that I knew that the time has come for me to return all of the infinite favors, for me to stop my life and take care of her just as she had done for me, for me to let her know that whenever she couldn't carry me herself, it would indeed be okay, because I would be fine simply flying.
Julian and I helped her back into the house, leading her straight into her bedroom with only minimal difficulty, but by the time we lowered her carefully into her bed and pulled the sheets high above her shoulders, strategically avoiding her injured arm, she was already beyond passed out.
"Come on, you," Julian directed me to follow him out of Brooke's room after we were both absolutely positive that she would be comfortable enough.
I followed him into the doorway but couldn't help but pause briefly as my eyes lingered back towards Brooke, worry laced in my expression as I wondered if she would be alright sleeping by herself tonight.
I have to say, I wasn't particularly fond of this feeling that was slowly creeping up my spine. I was starting to feel bad; I guess this must be what I put Brooke through all the time.
"She'll be okay, Sam. Come on, let her sleep." Julian guided me out of the room and back into the hallway where I automatically turned for my bedroom as Julian went for the linen closet, reaching in to pull out some blankets and pillows.
"You're not sleeping with Brooke tonight?" I asked him suspiciously, stopping him in his tracks as he headed towards the living room with his load piled up in his arms.
"Nah, I'm just gonna crash on the futon tonight. I don't want to hit Brooke's arm or anything while I'm asleep." I guess that logic made sense. Julian was notorious for moving around a lot in his sleep. The hole in the drywall next to Brooke's bed could vouch for that one.
I nodded before turning my back with the intentions of heading back to my bedroom, but I was stopped suddenly as my eyes accidentally glanced across the hall into the kitchen where my lunch still lay forgotten across the marble counter top.
A sudden pang of guilt began to flood through my veins as the realization that it was kind of my fault that Brooke had gotten hurt began to hit me hard.
I mean, she didn't even want me going back to school tomorrow. If I hadn't pushed her into letting me go, she never would have had to make that lunch for me, she never would have fallen over, she never would have been hopped up on morphine with her shoulder in a splint and her arm recovering from just being torn apart.
"Hey, don't beat yourself up over this." I whipped my head around; Julian had suddenly reappeared next to me, apparently taking notice of the guilty look on my face.
"Brooke's gonna be just fine. The two of you are both built like tanks, it's gonna take a lot more than that to knock down Brooke Davis."
He pulled me close into his shoulder, trying to serve the dual purpose of providing me with some comfort while simultaneously forcing me away from the scene of the crime.
"Now come on," He told me, tugging on the back of my neck to pull me along with him, dropping me off in front of my bedroom door. "You need to get some sleep, you've got a busy day tomorrow."
I nodded in agreement with Julian's words, saying my goodnights to him before finally retreating into the cover of my bedroom, throwing myself harshly down onto my bed without even bothering to take off my shoes.
I sighed heavily as I stared up at the ceiling for a moment, the complex array of emotions I was currently feeling overwhelming my brain into exhaustion.
But Julian was right; I did have a busy day tomorrow. So with that being said, I finally allowed my eyes to close, desperately trying not to think about all of the what-if's that tomorrow had in store for me but unable to stop them as they danced across my very eyes on their own accord, following me everywhere that I went, straight to my very dreams as I fell into a fitful sleep.