When the Truth Hurts (Chapter 4)
FOUR DAYS LATER
Haley woke up and looked around her room in the three-bedroom apartment that she shared with Peyton, Lucas, Brooke and Sam. She looked at her clock and groaned when she realized that it was six in the afternoon. When Haley had first started working at Raleigh University Hospital, she had chosen the morning shift. She had quickly grown to hate it. It wasn't that there were more patients during the day or that when people were waiting in the waiting room, they seemed to get very impatient because since it was still day time, they obviously had more important things to do than wait six hours in the ER to see a doctor. She realized that she just preferred working the night to early morning shift. Lucas, Brooke and Peyton all thought she was crazy for working nights instead of going out to clubs with them. The fact that she didn't have to go out with them was just an added bonus of working the night shift. She loved all of them, but whenever they went out, Lucas and Peyton had each other, and Brooke had Sam.
Haley always felt like a fifth wheel and she had grown tired of it. So she got up every week day at around five or six in the afternoon and got dressed in her nursing scrubs and would either call a cab or Lucas to drive her to work. Sometimes she even walked and it was about a forty-minute walk to the hospital from their apartment, but she enjoyed walking. She never walked on her way home though. In the morning, it was always coldest in the morning so she took a cab home. She had a shower, got dressed and ready and about twenty minutes later; she walked into the living room and noticed that the answering machine light was flashing. She walked over to it and pressed the button.
There was a beep and then an electronic voice that said: "You have one new message." She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a Coke from the fridge and then came back just as another beep and the message started to play.
"Hey, Hales. It's about six thirty right now and we're all at the hospital visiting Nathan. Maybe we'll see you there. By the way, there's rice in the cabinet for you since we know you like to make some and bring it to work to eat on your break. I finally had a taste of the hospital's cafeteria food and you're right: It's absolutely disgusting," Peyton was saying. Haley smirked to herself. She made a mental note to thank them for getting rice and put a pot on the stove with water and rice. She set it to cook and ten minutes later, it was ready to be drained and put into a container. She could always get a fork and Soya sauce from the cafeteria. She threw on a jacket and walked out the door.
An hour later, Haley walked into the hospital. Marie smiled at her. "Wow! You're earlier than usual," she said. Haley shrugged.
"Funny, considering I walked here," Haley said, laughing as she went to the room for the staff to put their jackets and other things away in their lockers. She walked back out and threw her stethoscope around her neck. She went to the waiting area and looked at the chart in her hand and said, "Olivia Wallace?"
A skinny, brown-haired woman stood up and walked over to her. She had a baby with her. The baby was crying uncontrollably and it its face was red. "Hi, I'm not here for an appointment for myself. It's for my son," she said, looking down at her son. Haley smiled. When she was a student doing field work, she had been assigned to the NICU. She was no stranger to babies. She came over and tried to take the baby.
"What are you doing?" she asked, stepping back and tightening her grasp around her son protectively.
"I'm going to take your son to the examination room," Haley said simply.
"Well, I'll follow you," she said.
"The doctor needs to be able to examine your son," Haley said carefully. The woman scoffed.
"Why you do you think I'm here, Miss? I just want to come while the doctor examines my baby," she said.
"I know and I understand that, but like I said, the doctor needs to be able to examine your son and he won't be able to do that with you hovering over him," Haley said.
"I'm his mother! I have a right to be there," Olivia exclaimed. Haley looked around at the other patients who were now glaring at her. She could practically hear some of their thoughts. They obviously thought she was being very insensitive. Haley didn't want to get into a big argument at the start of her shift.
"Of course you're coming! I just meant that the baby needs to be put onto the bed and probably might need an IV and it just makes my job easier if I'm holding him. I meant no disrespect. If you want to hold him, then all right," Haley said, as she led the way. "What's open?" Haley asked.
"Curtain Two," the admitting clerk replied. Haley smiled appreciatively and led the way to curtain two. She walked by the curtain drawn around Nathan's bed. She could hear Lucas, Brooke, Peyton and Sam all chattering with him. She walked to the bed that was beside his and pulled his curtain open. They all looked at her in shock.
"Sorry, just need a few things," she said as she walked over to the shelves and cupboards. She grabbed IV tubes and various bottles of medications. She grabbed a new thermometer as well. She put the new ear piece onto the part. It was the same thing she did with every patient- grabbed a new ear piece for the thermometer because it was a rule and just plain gross to stick the same ear piece into other people's ears. The woman gently put her baby down and walked over to Nathan's bedside because there was no room to get to where Haley was.
"Nurse, where is the doctor?" she asked.
"She'll be here in a few minutes, Ma'am. In the meantime, I'm just going to take your baby's temperature and blood pressure, etc," Haley replied.
"Blood pressure? You think something's wrong with my son?" she asked. Haley turned around and shrugged.
"It's just a precaution. We do it with every patient," she replied.
"Then, I think I want a doctor to do it," Olivia said. Nathan saw Haley tense up.
"I understand that, but it isn't a doctor's job," Haley said. Haley walked past her and back to the screaming baby that was left in an incubator-like bed that you see babies in on shows where parents are looking in at their new-born babies. Haley gently lifted the baby's arm and wrapped the Velcro around his small arm. "It's ok. I know; it's annoying," she said soothingly to the baby. She looked at the machine that told the baby's blood pressure. She gave absolutely no indication as to whether it was good or bad, which surprised Nathan.
Haley had always been so open with her feelings. It was almost as if she didn't realize that everything she was feeling was written on her face. Either she had been trained to hide her emotions when dealing with patients or she had hardened herself. She wrote something down on the chart and held it under her arm. She took the thermometer and put it in the baby's ear. The baby let out a loud wale when the cold part of the thermometer went into its ear. "Sorry, but I need to do this in order to find out what's wrong," Haley said in the same soothing tone. She took the thermometer out of the baby's ear and held it up to her face. Again, there was no reaction. She just wrote something down and then put the chart back under her arm.
She told the mother that the doctor would be there in a few minutes to examine her son and that she would be checking on other patients in the area. "If you need anything, just yell for me," Haley said.
"What's your name?" the woman asked.
"Nurse Scott," Haley replied and left.
"Thank you," the woman called after her.
"You're welcome," Haley said as she headed towards Nathan. She walked to his bed side and checked the monitor. He studied her face. Haley showed no emotion while she was reading the monitor, but when she looked back to him, she smiled.
"Your vitals are up," she said.
"That's good news, right?" Peyton asked worriedly. Nathan smiled at Peyton. He knew she was going through hell right now to be back here since her mother had died in a car accident when she was younger, so it was probably hard for her to be here when a friend was in a car accident and Nathan valued how much of a friend she still was to him.
"Yeah, it is," Haley said, smiling. "How are you feeling?" she asked him.
"I feel fine. I'm ready to bust out of here," he said. Haley laughed.
"That's not up to me. It's up to your doctor. Has he been by to see you?" Haley asked. Nathan nodded.
"He said that they needed to run more tests and that they're going to keep me here a little longer," he replied. Haley nodded. She made a face of confusion but it quickly disappeared. That bothered him. She had been so reserved for the woman and when she was reading his monitor, but this information had made her lose her composure for a second. "Is something wrong?" he asked, looking at her. Haley smiled.
"No," she said quickly. Too quickly. He would've asked her what was wrong, but she left quickly and the others were around.
Haley rushed to the front desk. "Where's Dr. Shane?" she asked.
"I'm over here, Haley," he said from the other side of the hall.
"I need to talk to you," she said. He nodded and led her to the staff room which was vacant. "It's about a patient," she said. He nodded.
"Shoot," he said.
"The MVA in two- you ordered more tests for him. Why?" she asked.
"I'm a doctor, Haley, and he's my patient. It's not unheard of for a doctor to order tests for one of his patients, is it?" he asked, laughing in amusement.
"He seems like he should be going home, not getting more tests," Haley said. He hesitated for a minute and right away, Haley knew what that meant.
"He has an underlying condition, Haley," he said.
"That was caused by the accident?" she asked. He nodded.
"His liver is failing," he said.
"He needs a transplant, doesn't he?" Haley asked. Dr. Shane nodded.
"And there's not one in the donor bin. I checked," he said.
"Well, a family member could donate their liver," she said.
"It may not help. He's got an infection, so it's very likely that his body would reject the transplant if he has one," Dr. Shane said.
"Have you told him?" Haley asked.
"No. I'm not going to tell him until the results of the latest tests come back. I want to be sure. I think you want me to be too," he said. Haley looked at him in confusion.
"Haley, I'm not blind or deaf. I heard from one of the other nurses that you used to be married to him," he said. Haley rolled her eyes. "Do you want to be there when I tell him?" he asked. Haley shook her head. She had decided to bury the hatchet and be nice to Nathan while he was in the hospital. She couldn't deny that she didn't love him anymore because she did. That was obvious to anyone. But the fact that she still cared about him and the fact that she and he were sort of friends now while he was there didn't change their past. It didn't erase all of the pain he had put her through when he left her and threw away their marriage. Haley made a decision right then and there. She would remember exactly who she was to Nathan and who she wasn't. She was his nurse. She was not his wife anymore.
"I think it might be good for him to hear the news from someone he knows. Or at least have a familiar face around when he hears the news," Dr. Shane said. Haley laughed.
"He has his parents, his brother, plus three old friends from high school to be there for him," Haley said.
"But none of those people are his wife," he said.
"Neither am I," she reminded him.
"You're a hard one to figure out, you know that? One minute you're acting all concerned about your ex-husband and the next minute, you're acting like you hate him," he said. Haley laughed.
"I don't hate him. Look, you don't know the whole story. You don't know what happened back then, so, just drop it. Don't try to understand because you can't," Haley said. Noah shrugged.
"Hey, I'm just looking out for my patient's best interests," he said. Haley glared at him. He laughed and put his hands up in surrender. "I get the message," he said. Haley nodded.
A DAY LATER
Nathan sighed as he looked around. "Nate, are you all right?" Brooke asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he said. Brooke looked at him and nodded.
"I don't buy it; what's up?" Lucas asked.
"Something about Haley's bothering me," he said. They all looked up at him.
"Well, you guys saw her yesterday, right?" he asked. They looked at him in confusion. "She was being nice," he reminded them. They nodded in understanding.
"What's so bad about that?" Peyton asked.
"Nothing. It's just that when I saw her today, she was different," he said.
"How do you mean?" Lucas asked.
"Well, she was distant. She talked to me and all, but her tone was indifferent, like she wanted to get away from me," he said. Lucas smiled.
"Um, Nathan, it's kind of understandable that Haley would be that way around you," Peyton said. He looked at her.
"You did leave her," Brooke added. He sighed.
"But she was being nice before. Like we had some sort of…" he started to say, but he couldn't find the right words to describe what he and Haley had right now.
"An understanding?" Peyton asked. Nathan shrugged.
"I don't know. Maybe it was her just being a nurse," he said.
"No," Peyton said, "If that were true, she would've been nice to you when she first saw you here, but as I recall, she wasn't." Nathan nodded. That was true.
"I can't figure her out. It bothers me," he said.
"Nathan, I think maybe you should just let it go," Peyton said.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because we know what you're trying to do," Lucas said.
"And that is?" he asked.
"You're trying to reconnect with Haley to ease your guilty conscience over leaving her," Brooke said. He shook his head.
"Yeah, you are, Nate. And, please, just don't," Lucas said. Nathan looked at him in confusion. "When you left Haley, she fell apart. It took her a long time to pick up the pieces and rebuild her life without you in it. It was hard for her to adjust to a life without you and it's not fair for you to do this to her especially since you're going to be leaving again once you're better," Lucas said.
"Did I really hurt her that much?" he asked. All four of them, including Sam, nodded.
(FLASHBACK)
Peyton Sawyer walked up to her friends' Nathan and Haley Scott's apartment. She was worried when they didn't buzz her in, so she used her key they had given her to get into the building. She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked three more times and waited patiently. There was still no answer. Then she took out the key for their apartment and put into the lock. The lock made a clicking sound and Peyton turned the doorknob and opened the door. The apartment was dark, but she could hear something. "Nathan?" she called. She walked through the living room.
"Haley?" she called. Then she went past the kitchen and bathroom and to their bedroom. She knocked lightly on the door. Now she had found the sound. Someone was crying. She opened the door and was surprised to see Haley dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, sitting on hers and Nathan's bed. She had her knees up and her head was resting on them, but she was shaking so much that it looked like she was having convulsions. She walked into the room and looked around the room. It was strangely bare. She remembered there being a lot more things.
"Haley," she said. Haley didn't seem to notice that Peyton was there, let alone hear her call her name. Peyton had seen Haley upset before as she thought back to the time when Lucas had been in a car accident and Haley had been racked with guilt over the fight that they had that she couldn't face going to see him, but she had never seen Haley like this. She crawled onto the bed and sat beside Haley. "Haley, are you alright? What's wrong?" Peyton asked. Haley didn't answer. Peyton put her arm around her to try to comfort her somehow.
"He's gone," Haley choked out between sobs. Peyton was confused.
"Who?" she asked. A few minutes passed.
"Nathan," Haley said in a devastated whisper.
"What do you mean?" Peyton asked. She knew that Nathan and Haley were having a few problems and that they were fighting, but she didn't understand what Haley meant. She made it sound like she had lost Nathan.
"Everything's gone. His clothes, his CDs, his cologne, him- it's all… he's just gone," she said in misery.
"Are you sure?" she asked. Haley let out a sound that sounded like a laugh.
"Look around. His stuff is all gone. He left me," she said. Her voice shook over each word. It was almost as if she were still processing the full meaning of her words.
(END OF FLASHBACK)
Nathan felt his heart sink after Peyton finished telling him about how she had found Haley the morning he had left. "And it got worse after that, Nathan," Lucas said. They told him how Haley had just been getting over it when Dan had shown up to their apartment and handed her the notice that he had filed for divorce.
"When I got home, she was sitting on the couch crying, and she kept reading the papers over and over again," Brooke said.
"That had been the final nail in her coffin. It pushed her over the edge, Nathan," Lucas said. He looked at him in confusion.
"She tried to commit suicide, Nathan," Peyton explained. He felt like he had the wind knocked out of him and was gasping for air.
"I found her on the floor of the kitchen with about six bottles of pills open and some were scattered on the floor but she had ingested at least twenty," he said. Nathan looked at him in shock.
"How did she survive?" he asked.
"Thankfully, we found her before the pills could do any serious damage. We brought her to the hospital and they pumped her stomach," Peyton said. Nathan had trouble believing that Haley had tried to commit suicide, but he knew that they were telling him the truth. He nodded.
"I'll leave her alone," he said. Brooke looked at him.
"We're not saying that you need to leave her alone. If you guys are talking, then that's up to her. But, don't force her to have a conversation," Peyton said. Nathan nodded.
TWO HOURS LATER
"Haley, I need you to come with me," Noah Shane said. Haley looked at him in confusion. "I want you to be there when I deliver the news to Nathan," he said. Haley looked at him in anger.
"We've been over this. Nathan has a lot of people with him already. I don't need to be there for him," she said.
"His friends and parents aren't here right now. Now, I know that something happened between the two of you, but I can also see how much each of you still care about the other and I don't even know him that well. But I see the way he looks at you when you're around," he said.
"I don't…" Haley started.
"Look, if it were you, would you want to be all alone when you found out? Or would you want someone there with you, even if he was the only person there?" Noah asked. Haley sighed.
"I'd want him to be there," she said. They walked over to Nathan's bed. He was asleep.
"Mr. Scott," Noah said loudly. Nathan didn't budge. Haley smiled. She knew that wouldn't be enough to wake Nathan up. Dr. Shane tapped Nathan and called his name again. Nathan opened his eyes slowly and looked at him. His eyes slowly fell on her and she nodded at him. "We have the test results," he said. Nathan nodded in understanding. His bed moved to an upright position and Nathan looked as if he were sitting. He looked at them expectantly.
"Now, normally, this would be a doctor's job, but since you and Haley know each other, I think it would be better coming from her," he said. Haley looked at him in shock. "I'll give you some privacy," he said. Haley glared at him.
"What are you doing?" Haley demanded. Noah ignored her and pulled the curtains around and left. Haley was about to go after him when she remembered that Nathan was sitting there. She turned around and faced him. He looked worried. She came over and sat down beside his bed. She took a deep breath.
"Is the news really this bad?" he asked. Haley nodded.
"Your liver was damaged in the car accident," she said. He looked at her in confusion.
"It needs to be removed," she said.
"But a liver's a vital organ isn't it?" he asked. Haley nodded. "So if you remove it, I die, but if you don't, I die?" he asked. Haley shook her head.
"You could have a transplant, but… there are no livers that match your blood type in the donor bin," she said.
"And a family member can't donate a liver since there's only one," he said. Haley shook her head.
"The liver is pretty resilient. A family member can donate their liver without dying. What they do is cut the liver in half and in a few weeks, it will grow back to its normal size," Haley said. He nodded.
"Well, I've got a few family members, Haley. I don't understand what the big problem is," he said.
"It's more than likely that your body would reject the liver," she said. He looked at her.
"You've developed an infection, Nathan," she said. He sighed heavily.
"So, either I have the transplant and I could die or I don't have it and I will die," he said to himself.
"It's your decision," she said.
"There's no decision, Haley. I'm going to have the transplant," he said.
"I didn't think you would have a problem making the decision," she said.
"How likely is it that I could reject it?" he asked.
"I can't give you an exact percentage," she said.
"An estimate would do," he said.
"65, maybe 70," she replied.
"Thanks," he said. She looked at him questioningly.
"For telling me yourself. It's better to hear this coming from you than from the doctor," he said. Haley nodded.
"No problem," she said, starting to leave.
"I mean, it's pretty big of you, especially considering everything I put you through," he said. Haley looked at him.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"I know that I hurt you when I left. I never wanted to, but I know that I did. I thought I was doing what was best for us. I thought you deserved more than me and I didn't think you'd take it so hard," he said. Haley narrowed her eyes.
"Take it so hard?" she repeated, clearly not understanding what he meant. He looked at her.
"I know what you did after my dad came to see you," he said. Haley laughed.
"And what did I do?" she asked in amusement. She didn't think he knew.
"You tried to kill yourself," he said. Haley recoiled as if his words had burned her. "Look, Haley, I…" he said. Haley stood up and shook her head at him.
"We're not talking about this, Nathan," she said firmly.
"I think we should," he said.
"No. I'm not going to stand here and listen to another lecture. I've had plenty of them," she said.
"I'm not going to lecture you. I just want to talk about it… I want to try to understand," he said.
"Well, don't. I don't need your understanding or your sympathy," she said, getting up and leaving the room.