"Brooke, Brooke," Haley called, "Peyton, do something, help her," Haley was worried, she knew that the weight of the world was going to crush Brooke one day, was it this day? Was it today?

"You have to stay here, Haley. You cannot move, okay? I am going to help Brooke, but you cannot move." When Peyton was sure that Haley was not going to move, she went over to Brooke, she was passed out. What was going on? How did this happen? "Brooke, Brooke," she said gently shaking her, "Brooke, wake up, c'mon, Brooke."

"Peyton, maybe you need to get a doctor, or get Lucas, or Karen. Someone. She cannot take this anymore. No she is not experiencing the physical pain her self, but she is feeling all the emotional pain. And that is a lot, a lot of pain."

"Are you going to be okay if I leave you?"

"I am going to be fine, please help her."

What was Peyton supposed to do? She had never been in a situation like this before, what was the right thing to do, what would be a fatal mistake? She rushed out of there, trying to decide whether to get a nurse or Lucas. What would Lucas do? Brooke even said that all he wanted to do was be the hero, and he really couldn't all the time. How was it fair to let one person be the hero all the time? Peyton found a nurse, "Excuse me, my friend, she fainted, I don't know why. She got up and she fell down."

"Where is she?"

"Haley James's room."

"Okay, let's go. Are you okay?"

"Yeah I am fine."

"I just remember treating you earlier."

"Oh I am fine, now I am here with another friend, it has just been one of those days, I guess."

They made it back into Haley's room, and they both found Haley on the ground, in the gown, with Brooke's head in her lap, "She won't wake up," Haley looked up into the eyes of the people staring at her, she was so desperate, so weak.

"Miss James, you have got to get back into bed, we will help your friend, but you have got to get back into your bed because you might collapse as well, your body is not strong enough to have you on the ground."

Peyton went over to Haley and held onto her waist, and boosted her back into her bed, "I told you to stay in your bed."

"She was all alone."

Within seconds there were more nurses in the room, a male nurse bent down and picked Brooke up, "What are you going to do with her?"

"We are just going to run some tests, we think she is just dehydrated, we are going to give her some fluids, but she is going to be just fine."

"Thank you, did you hear that Haley?"

"Yeah I heard that, but it doesn't mean anything to me right now," she said it as one of the nurses were hooking all of her wires back up.

"I am going to go get Karen, but Haley; you cannot leave this bed this time."

"I have no place to go."

Peyton rushed out of there, not trusting Haley's word at all, she was frantic trying to get past all of the orderlies and doctors, just trying to get to the lobby, Karen could sense Peyton's franticness, "Peyton, what is wrong?"

"Brooke fainted, and Haley is awake."

"Brooke fainted?" Lucas repeated.

"Yeah, she got really upset, got up to leave, and she fainted."

"Is she going to be okay?"

"The nurse thought that she was just dehydrated."

"Okay, I am going to go sit with Haley, one of you want to come with me and one of you want to go sit with Brooke?"

"I do not think that Brooke would want to see me when she wakes up," Lucas informed his mother.

"What did you say to her?"

"I insinuated that she was a hopeless case."

"Lucas, she has never been given any hope in her life, and for you to do that."

"I know Ma, I know."

"I will go sit with her, Karen. She is going to be okay, she is Brooke. You go talk to Haley; she needs some more guidance then just teenaged girls."

"I will be back in a little bit."

"Where are you going this time, Lucas?"

"I will come back, I always do."

Peyton gave Karen a look, in which she returned it, and then they both went their separate ways, good thing no one else was in need, because they were running out of people to play heroes.

"Hey sweetheart, I am glad to see that you are awake," Karen said as she walked into Haley's room.

"I don't know, Karen, I do not know how much better the world is when I am awake. More friends hurt, more pain. I thought that the world would have been better. But if you are not in pain then someone you care about is. That is life though; there is no way around it."

"You were forced to grow up a lot earlier then most people your age."

"I wasn't forced, Karen, it was my choice. This is what I wanted, this is what I chose. No body forced Nathan and I to get married, I thought I knew what love was and I was going to run with it. I must have run too far, too far away. Because there is no more love to go around."

"But it doesn't mean you have to give up on love. There is still a lot left to find, a lot left to feel. You are young, not a lot of people find love at your age. You are one of the lucky ones."

"How do you define luck, Karen? Because I do not feel very lucky to be in this hospital bed right now. I do not feel very lucky to follow my dreams, alone. And I am not very lucky to lose the love I thought I had forever."

"Then maybe wrong choice of words, Haley. Your love was not a lie. Any time that you two walked into a room, the world got a little bit brighter, there was more hope to go around. And maybe it did not last as long as we would have liked, but it happened, and you are never going to forget it, no one is."

"Can I fight anymore, Karen? Can I fight for this love anymore? Or do I just let it go, do I move on?"

"I cannot answer that question for you, Haley. I know two things: I have known you for a decade, and no one has made you as happy as Nathan and no one has caused you more pain then Nathan. It is up to you which one you can endure the most. What means the most to you?"

"I don't know the answer either. But the one thing that I know is I do not know how much love can erase the pain. I do not know where it ends that it doesn't cancel it out anymore. The only thing that I am afraid of is that as I am crossing out the emotions, the only thing that I am going to be left with is pain."

"Whatever you are left with Haley, I want you to take it and create an even better life for yourself. I want you to be happy, there has been enough pain and heartache in your 18 years; I want you to find true happiness that lasts more then a year."

"I think that is all that I want."

"Hey sleepy head," Peyton said to a groggy Brooke, they had put some meds in with her fluids, but she was up, and she was okay.

"Hi," she said rubbing her eyes, then touching her head where she fell. "What happened?"

"You fainted miss I am just fine. I really do not think that you were fine."

"Peyton, what's the deal, I need to get back to Haley. Where is the nurse or doctor or whoever the hell that is going to release me?"

"What do you not get about you fainted?"

"What do you not get about I am fine?"

"You are stubborn, the most stubborn that I have ever met. When you are not okay, you are not okay, enough said. You do not have to make excuses, especially when you are visibly not okay."

"When have I ever been visibly okay, Peyton?"

"I don't know, Brooke. But I was hoping that you could come to realize that there are limits, emotional limits and you have surpassed them over and over again."

"Then maybe I do not know my limits."

"I am pretty sure that you don't."

"So what do you want me to do then, Peyton, 'cause I have apparently not been learning anything along the way."

"You need to get better first; you have got to mend that broken heart that has been tearing you down for so long."

"I don't think that I know how to live another way. I guess I am just naïve though, if I am not in love then living with a broken heart it just comes in second place. Because you cannot get your heart broken if you have never been in love, and maybe just maybe a broken heart is just a reminder of what love is, and maybe I did not want to let go, not just yet, not just now. When you are in love then you are not alone, and I don't want to be alone, so a broken heart kept me alive."

"There are more ways Brooke."

"Well I don't know any other ways, Peyton. And I think that it is just too late for me to learn."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"What it means is that in a few months everyone that I care about is going to be somewhere else, and I am going to be all alone, I mean it is the only way I know, so no surprise there."

"Our future is far away, Brooke, you cannot be living in the future right now, live in the present, live right now. There is no way that you can make it to the future if you don't. So whatever it is that is keeping you back, you better fix it right now, no one is promised a future."

"I don't know how, Peyton, I have never cared like this before, I have never cared about my future, or my heart like this before. I have never felt anything before, not like this, not ever."

"That doesn't mean anything, which is why they are called beginners. You have got to start somewhere, and you know it is okay if it is right now. The sooner you start, the sooner you will find something real in your life, Brooke. That is what you need, something real, something worth living for."

"Well now cannot really start anytime soon if I am stuck in this hospital bed."

"Miss Davis?" Dr. Jenson said walking into the room, "hey, I was talking to you just a couple hours ago, what happened?"

"I think that is your job."

"She stood up and she fell right back down."

"Let me look at your chart here, exhaustion and dehydration Miss Davis. Been a long week?"

"Been a long last half of year."

"Well you just need to take it easy from now on, too much stress could end you up in here again, and as pretty as that face is of yours, I do not want to see you again."

Peyton extended her non-casted arm, "Thank you, doctor."

"She seems like a good cause."

"She is, don't you worry."

"What happened to you there?"

"Oh this thing," she said lifting up her cast.

"Umm Doctor Jenson, this is my friend Peyton, she is dating your son."

This surprised both of them, did Brooke really just tell the truth to them.

"I am sorry for what he did to you."

"I am okay though, don't worry about it."

"Oh I am not allowed to admit that I am okay, but you are."

"It is different, Brooke."

"How so?"

"Okay, I am sorry; I know that I know nothing about either of you other then the few minutes that I have spoken to you. But I lived this life a little longer, which means nothing, but there is something that I have learned along the way. We all lie to ourselves, and it is because we do not want to admit that we have been hurt or that we are wrong. We all just want life to be perfect, for happiness and for love to be real, and pain to be something that we never knew existed. But life is not the fairytale we envisioned it to be, it is a lie. But one thing that never seems to fail is that even if we do not know ourselves, our friends always seem to know what is right for us. No matter how much we do not want to admit that someone else knows us better then we know ourselves. Well I hope that everything works out for the two of you. You both need to take it easy for a little bit now. And you both need to realize how much the other really means to you. You never know how long that she is going to be around."

Without another word, Doctor Gavin Jenson left the two best friends. And yes they were best friends, time and pain doesn't change that. "I guess a doctor is all it takes to knock some sense in us."

"There has got to be some changes in our lives, no more broken hearts, and no more pain, let's try happiness. And no, it is not going to start today, but this world is ours for the taking, we cannot sit back and let someone else take over pilot."

"It is not going to be easy."

"Hey, have you never seen A League of Their Own? 'It is supposed to be hard; if it wasn't hard then everyone would be doing it.'"

"Yeah, I have seen it, Geena Davis hears that from Tom Hanks and then what does she do, she walks away, because 'it just got too hard.'"

"But she came back, she came back and faced it, she played the game."

"She lost Peyton, she lost the game."

"She might have lost the baseball game, Brooke, but she won something more, she got a chance to see her sister happy. We really do not know if she dropped the ball on purpose or not, I think that is what the writers wanted. We can write our own endings, Brooke, we are the authors of our lives from now on."

Brooke, we are the authors of our lives from now on."

"What the hell are you doing? It is two o'clock in the morning," Dan said stepping out of his house, "people are trying to sleep and you are banging on my door."

"I need to talk to Nathan."

"It couldn't have waited until tomorrow."

"I need to talk to him now."

"What is this about?"

"I am not going to stand here and talk to you; I need to talk to Nathan."

"What is this about Lucas, you tell me and I will get Nathan."

"Haley is in the hospital."

"Mental? Because that is where that whore belongs."

"You did not just say that about Haley."

"Oh I was just speaking the truth."

"You know nothing about Haley."

"She left her husband, which is all that I need to know."

"Well the reason that she is in the hospital right now is because of that husband. I just thought that I would come and tell him that."

"Haley is in the hospital?" Nathan asked from behind them.

"Oh yeah I forgot to tell you, Nathan isn't home," Dan had to laugh at himself.

"Yeah she is, Nathan. And are you going to do anything about it?"

"Well it looks like it is a little late if she is already there, don't you think?" Dan asked both boys.

"It is never too late," Lucas rebutted.

"Where are you going?" Nathan asked as Lucas walked away.

"I screwed up too, but I am going to fix it. What are you going to do about it?"

"She isn't worth it, Nate. Hello, basketball scholarship to any college in the country. What else could you ever want?"

"I wanted to be in love, I wanted to be with the person that I married forever. But that didn't happen, I lost forever. Now I have to let her go."

"You should have never had held on."

"Why because for one time in my life I had something that you could never have, Dad?" Dan looked at him quizzically, "Love."

"Ha, she could never have known what it is."

"How would you ever know?"

"You were 17, you did not know what love was, it was just some infatuation, it wasn't real, Son."

"How would you ever know what was real or not? The only time that I was ever happy was when I was with Haley, but you never wanted me to be happy, you just wanted me to be good at basketball. Well you got what you wanted Dad, because I lost Haley tonight, all that I have left is basketball."

"It is about time that some sense got knocked into you."

"We are still waiting for the same to happen to you," he said walking back from where he had come from.

"Where are you going?"

"I screwed up."