Drugs or Me

Author's Note: Thanks for all your reviews, I'm still trying to do these quicker. I hope you're all still enjoying, here you go:

Chapter 10: Just Another Bad Day

- '(Take me) You promise, you promise that you're done, (Out from me), (So far away) But I Can't tell you from the drugs (Out from me)' -

Sometimes I do wonder how we got here…and I often ponder the what ifs that plague my mind most days. Why couldn't it have just stayed the way it was? Me and Haley against the world, things were a lot simpler, life was so much easier then. I had thought for so long that Haley and I would end up together, even thought I was never really able to make myself see her that way. I guess it always seemed like a given to me, I was comfortable with her, I always have been.

But then Peyton Sawyer entered my life sophomore year…well I'd always known who she was, but she had always been someone I watched from my sort of outcasted position in the social scene. Always someone I would never be able to have, but here we are. Here we are.

"Move it Lucas," Nathan shouted in my fourteen year old face, either grade had just ended, it was my birthday. We were all ready to be freshman, and Nathan, as expected, thought he was a big shot, Mr. Freshman, already on the basketball team before we had even graduated. He was too good for try-outs I guess.

"This isn't your street, Nathan. It's a free country," I quickly shot back, I had always hated his arrogance but for him to be so downright mean to me on my birthday made me angry. He didn't really care though, just smirked as his basketball friends and a lonely blonde tagged along; Peyton, the girl who was just automatically expected to hate my guts.

"Happy Birthday…I'm sorry about him…" she gave me a grin before she followed after his little posse.

It hadn't been then that I fell for her…but it had flipped my little kid world, that someone in the crowd did have a heart.

Again, my cell phone rings – scares the hell out of me every time. She sounds upset, like she was crying and I can feel my blood beginning to boil.

"What happened?" I'm quick to jump down her throat, to make sure he did nothing to hurt her.

"I just…I can't believe I did that to him, and I can't stop shaking, Luke, I can't stop shaking," her cries continue to tear me apart just as much as the first time I heard them a little over a week ago.

"Hey, just hold on, I'll be over, calm down…" I quickly hang the phone up and run through the kitchen again. My mom quickly steps in my way this time, and I'm feeling the overwhelming need to push her out of my way.

"Lucas…" she has a stern look on her face but pulls a bag from the counter, "take this with you…I've been reading up on what she's going through. Just make sure you stay with her at all times so she doesn't get anymore from anyone. Call me if you need anything…please take care of her, you know I love her as if she was my own," she smiles at me then pulls me into her arms for a hug. I can't even explain how much I love her for this.

I arrive to hear her music blaring through the house. It worries me when she does this. The scene scares me again when I walk in, to see her shaking on top of her bed. She's sweating like crazy and I know there's nothing I can do to help that part.

"Hey," she looks up at me with terrified eyes, I can see her foot bleeding all over her sheets. I can feel the sickening feeling rising up through my stomach.

"I…I broke my last vile…"

"I dumped your last vile days ago," I move closer to where she's sitting to try to see how badly she's injured.

"I had an extra," she suddenly confesses to me, "I didn't mean it, but the look on his face when I told him that he couldn't handle me, that he needed to spend more time with Jenny. I've never seen him look like that, Lucas, and I couldn't handle having his sadness on my shoulders. I needed it," the want for the drugs was in her eyes, it was still as alive as it was days ago.

"Peyton," I manage to heave a sigh in there. I really don't know how to help her when she won't even try. "I can't help you if you won't try," I echo my exact thoughts to her, but she looks so lost when she hears them.

"Please, don't go, Lucas," she shakes even more, sweat dripping from her forehead, blood seeping through her sheets…I know I'm not going anywhere but I felt like she needed to know I'm not sitting around to watch her kill herself.

"C'mon, let's get you cleaned up so I can see how deep this thing is," I lift her from the bed to feel her shaking in my arms. She's losing a lot of blood from her foot, but I'm doing my best to keep myself calm this time, forcing myself to know that she'll be fine.

"I stepped on the glass," she tells me as I carry her to the bathroom, I see the tears forming in her eyes.

"Don't cry…"

"I can't stop myself from shaking, I can't make my muscles stop. I wish I could explain this feeling to you," she tells me through her sobs. She makes a point, I have no idea what she's

going through, I can't even begin to comprehend the feelings she has inside.

"You're gonna be fine, we're going to get through this," I slowly sit her in the bathtub and turn the water on low to wash her foot. She lets me take care of her this time, she doesn't fight me. The blood falls away from her foot and dissipates throughout the clear water. I manage to get a glimpse at her cut before more blood seeps out…I didn't realize how deep it was.

"Is it bad?" she winces in pain again as I lift her foot from the water to the air.

"This is really deep…we gotta get you to a hospital, you need stitches," I take her out of the tub, letting the water drip all over me. I can feel her struggling against me, she's whimpering in pain and because she doesn't want to go, that's obvious.

"I can't go there, Lucas. I don't do hospitals, and I can't have them knowing I'm on drugs…Lucas, please," her voice breaks as she begs me, but I can't fall for that anymore, I need to do what's best for her this time.

"Look…I have to do this, I know you don't wanna go, but you'll lose too much blood if I don't do this. I told you I'd be here through the whole thing, and I will be, but you're going to that hospital."

She fights me the whole way in, but I guess that's expected. She hates hospitals, she's hated them since her mother died, and I guess I can't really blame her for it. I'd be a little impartial to these buildings too if I was in her shoes.

"I'm sorry."

She's being stubborn with me now, she won't even let herself look at me, but still huddles against me as she sweats and shakes. I walk through the hallways, telling the nurses at the front desk that she simply has a bad case of the flu but she's being taken care of already. She just needs the stitches.

"C'mon, Peyton. I'm sorry, but I couldn't leave you at the house like this, you would lose too much blood for me to just patch up with a band-aid," she's growing paler by the minute as the blood overtakes the wad of paper towels I had wrapped around her foot. I can see her fading just slightly as she begins to shake again.

"I NEED HELP!" I'm screaming through the hospital but no one seems to notice, they knew she was there but the situation was suddenly growing more desperate as the blood is coming so much faster than before.

"Sir?" the nurse approaches me and I'm shoving Peyton in her face.

"She needs help, NOW…she stepped on a piece of glass, it was in there pretty deep and I can't stop the bleeding," the nurse quickly runs to retrieve a doctor. They set her on a gurney and wheel her away into the emergency room. All I can do now is wait for her to be okay.

It's been about an hour and a half since she went in, and finally I see a nurse appear. She walks over to me, looking a bit concerned.

"Lucas Scott?"

"Yeah, that's me…" I stand to meet her, realizing she's about a foot below my height.

"She's gonna be alright, you're lucky you got her in when you did, she lost a lot of blood, and the cut was very severe. She refused to tell us what happened, do you know where the cut surfaced from?"

"She stepped on a piece of glass outside near where her recycling bin is," I quickly pull a lie from the top of my head, knowing it's acceptable enough for now.

"Okay, thank you. She's going to need a lot of rest, she's a little lightheaded and she blacked out once while she was getting the stitches. Also, it's probably going to be helpful if she stays off that foot for the day, if that's possible."

"Yeah, no problem. Can I take her home now?"

"You just have to go to the front desk to sign some release forms, and then she's free to go."

"Thanks," I make my way back to her room, to see her laying looking very determined to keep her body steady. She looks up at me, and she looks like she wants to be angry, but she can't seem to stay that way.

"Can we leave?"

"Mmhmm, I just have to sign some papers to get you out."

"Can you do that now?" she shoos me with her hand, I know she wants to leave. So I do as I'm told, and I sign her out. I lift her from the bed slowly, noticing she had dozed off while I was gone. She shivers and fidgets in my arms, opening her eyes to look at me once. She smiles as much as she can before laying her head against my chest to close her eyes again. I'm able to lay a kiss on her forehead and then we head back to her house, back to getting her life back together.

She wakes about forty-five minutes later while I'm sitting on her computer chair, watching her toss and turn. She looks pretty emotionless to me until she winces in pain at her foot.

"That wasn't a dream?" she refers to her foot, I just shake my head tersely. "Are you mad at me for something?" she manages to crawl to the foot of the bed to face me where she lets her injured foot dangle over the side.

"No…I just think it was unfair of you…"

"Unfair of me for what?" she scrunches her eyebrows together, something she did when she was completely confused, something I loved to watch.

"To make me choose between your life and making you happy…Peyton, you probably would've died if I had let you sit here and not go to the hospital. It was a really bad cut on the bottom of your foot, and you lost a lot of blood. It was something I had to do, don't you get that?"

"I'm sorry, Luke," she averts her eyes down to her foot, unable to look back up at me. "I was just in a state of mind, I just lost Jake, my whole body was craving something I know I'm not supposed to have and the pain in my foot was becoming unbearable. And on top of all that I had to go back to a hospital…sometimes it's just a little too much, you know? Sometimes it's all just a little unbearable," she lets a few tears fall but still refuses to look up.

"I'm sorry," she finally looks up, confused again. "I guess I just don't take into consideration what you're going through sometimes. I guess I just don't really understand the magnitude of how much it hurts you sometimes. How about we just forget today, and work on it all tomorrow, Christmas is coming up too," I smile at her, trying to lift her spirits.

"Do you still want me to spend Christmas with you?" she sounds like a five year old girl who knows she's done something wrong, so I stand and sit next to her.

"Definitely, you don't have to ask that. I mean…so, we had a bad day, right? We'll get past it…"

"I hope so…" she tucks herself into me, shaking again more violently than before. I hate when it's this bad, but the most I can do is just hold her for now. I kiss her forehead again as she cries, knowing I'm stepping into dangerous territory with this move. I make a move to kiss her cheek, but she lifts her head instead, she knows exactly what she's doing. She moves up to look at me with a gaze so intense I can't turn away, her eyes are pleading with me to take away the pain, to kiss it all away. And I promised myself that I had to figure everything out before we went any farther…but the look in her eyes is pulling me closer. I let my lips brush hers very gently, but she wraps her arms around my neck tightly before I allow myself to pull away again.