A/N: can I start this with a big sorry? Sorry I haven't updated, sorry its taking me so long, sorry for leaving you on cruel cliffhangers and sorry for all my other stories that I haven't updated in years (that literally). However, it's not a reason to not thank you guys for being just amazing and leaving the great reviews I am honored to read! Thank you so much for bearing with me and this is the new update. I hope you will enjoy it.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything at all and not making any profit with it. Well I am making some but its more about my ego than my wallet :-)
DARKALLEYSANDBLINDINGLIGHTS
"Any idea of what it could be?" Karen dared to ask.
"I have two major choices then we gotta find the specific thing" he said.
"Stop insinuating! Tell us already!" Nathan said, getting somewhat angry with the doctor for being so prude and careful.
He looked at them with a sad look. This was the hard part. Swallowing and breathing he announced, "This could be Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder…"
These few words, so small were they, yet they hit so hard. A disorder. Lucas was having some kind of crisis. Mental crisis. And all of that came along with a disorder. All this time Nathan thought his brother was on drugs. The thought of it was still a little more reassuring than the fact that his brother was ill. Right there, he would've preferred if it were only drugs. He could've accepted that because the effects weren't permanent. Yes, they screwed you over for a couple of days but after that it was all over. No need to worry about it for the rest of your life, it wouldn't come back, but a disease…that was a whole lot harder to take. Karen's throat was dry. She couldn't swallow.
"Bipolar? Schizophrenia? What is that all about?" she asked with her weakest voice. Dr. Suarez sighed and put his glasses down to rob his eyes. This was definitely the hard part of his job: reassuring the family…or telling the bad news.
"Well," he started, "Those are common mental disorders that would explain what happened with Lucas today", he added.
"How does it explain it exactly?" Haley asked. The doctor turned his eyes on her and then looked at the others.
"Of course, we'll have to test him to be totally sure but the symptoms of those disorders are pretty similar to what we say in Mr. Scott" he explained.
"What do you mean" Nathan spat, finally getting out of his own thoughts.
"In the case of a manic episode, the person gets some kind of sudden unexplainable joy that leads her to think she's indestructible. She likes to start fights and play with trouble, which already sounds like something you told me from today. Though, I need to consider some other facts that I studied myself in Lucas's attitude. Something like the paranoia he experienced when he came here. He actually thought we were going to kill him. That could also explain why he thought everyone was against him and that everyone hated him…" he told.
Everyone was speechless. Those informations were indeed true and with the addition of it possibly being some disease, it made everything come into perspective now.
"So what do you say happened?" Brooke asked.
The professional sighed. "Like I said, I can't tell you for sure. He has the symptoms of both a manic episode and a psychotic break. We will definitely need to run a lot of tests and introduce Lucas to a therapist," he admitted. Brooke nodded with the tears in the corner of her eyes. She did not want to let anyone see them so instead, she dropped her head down and stared at her thumbs some undetermined time.
"Where is he now?" Karen asked after a long and painful silence. Her voice was raspy and low as if she had a bad cold. In fact, it was only the shock of learning all of this at this right moment.
"On the psychiatric floor" the man said sadly.
"When can we see him?" Nathan asked. He knew the answer would be painful if it turned negative.
"Not quite yet, I'm afraid. I actually need your permission to bring him in for a MRI" he confessed.
"MRI?" Karen asked now being concerned.
"Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Basically, we are taking pictures of your son's brain. The way it works is that the imaging technology will tell us the amount of blood that goes into different parts of the brain. With only that, we can know if there is something that is affecting his mood." He explained.
Karen nodded without being too sure if she was agreeing for something good or not. She did not know what she was getting into when she signed the papers. And with that, the doctor left them with a smile.
DARKALLEYSANDBLINDINGLIGHTS
Lucas stirred. It was the second time now that he was waking up in this hellhole with a growing headache and the gripping fear of misunderstanding of the situation. When his vision adjusted, he started wondering where he was, thinking he was dead but then when he saw the wires and the four hospital walls, he understood that this was far from being heaven. This was hell.
"Hello Lucas" the man he saw earlier called after coming into the room in a hurry. The man quickly peaked at all the stuff surrounding Lucas's bed before he laid eyes on the kid. He then started folding the bed bars to put them under and stomped on something that must have been on the wheel because Lucas felt himself roll.
"How are you feeling?", that same man asked. Lucas robed his forehead.
"Where am I?" he asked confused.
"Don't you remember?" the man in white lab coat asked. Then it hit him. Lucas recalled on everything that happened before he last fell asleep, an unnatural sleep.
"You're the man that tried to kill me!" he spat. The man smiled.
"So is that what you think? You aren't dead, are you?" he asked with a grin.
"HELP! HELP!" Lucas shouted. The doctor did not move. He just stayed there and smiled.
"I'm taking you out again," he said as if Lucas never started screaming.
"Where?" Lucas asked anxious. The fear was now obvious in his voice but also in his eyes. He tensed up in his bed.
"Don't worry. It is nowhere for you to worry about. Besides, if you start kicking and screaming I might as well tie you up to your bed, is that what you want?"
Lucas remained silent. "That's what I thought" the man said with a smirk. He then made a sign over the door and two nurses came in and started to roll the gurney down the hospital corridors. The doctor stayed next to Lucas all along, asking him some questions and shining a light into his eyes. The kid did not respond to the questions. He only flinched when the light appeared into his eyes. During the way, the doctor explained that they were going to do an MRI and that Lucas didn't have to worry. The only wanted to know if there was something in his brain.
"So you too think I'm crazy?" he finally said.
"I don't think you are crazy. I only think that you lived through a lot of things in your life and I want to make sure they didn't affect you" the doctor assured.
"Do you think it didn't affect me?" the kid snapped coldly.
"I didn't mean that kind of affecting", the doctor gave him a nod, which Lucas thought was pretty odd from a man he barely knew. They finally got to the room and the people there started to prepare Lucas for what was to come. As soon as they laid him down and tried to tie him up, Lucas started to panic.
"It's too tight! I can't breathe!" he panicked.
"I haven't even tied it yet" a beautiful nurse said. Her smile was obvious even though she bit into her cheeks to hide it. However, it did not change anything in Lucas's condition. He was debating to get off the bed.
"I can't be here! There is nothing wrong with me! And I'm claustrophobic! I'm gonna die in there!" he shouted.
"The more there is something wrong with you, the more you think you are fine. Get on the bed now!" Dr. Suarez ordered, tired of Lucas's childish behavior. Lucas stopped moving. He got like a dog that you just lectured and who is now walking with its tail between his legs. The doctor smiled.
"See that wasn't so hard," he said to Lucas. "Now tie him up" he ordered to the beautiful nurse. She started pulling the straps over Lucas who fought with himself to not shove her away. The nurse got closer to his ear. Like that she looked barely older than himself. Maybe she was 25 or 26. However, she really was pretty.
"Now I'm going to get you in there. It won't be long, I promise. Now, there is a microphone in the scanner. We will be able to talk to you, you will be able to talk to us, and we will hear you. If anything is wrong, just say it, ok?" she winked. Under her charm, Lucas nodded softly. She smiled.
They put his IV bag on a pole on the huge machine. They put tons of wires on him. Some were stuck on his chest, some on his wrists, and then there was the one on his finger. The doctors went to the other side of the glass window, leaving Lucas and the hot nurse alone in the other room.
"Ok, Lucas. Can you hear us?", they called from the microphone.
"Yeah…" Lucas breathed. His heart rate was slightly higher than normal and his palms were getting sweaty.
"Ok. Now listen. We are going to get you in there, all right. Just breathe and everything will be fine," the doctor reassured.
Lucas nodded. He was too nervous to formulate any answer. Then he felt himself starting to move. He closed his eyes, tight shut, and clenched his fists. Slowly, the big machine engulfed him. With a slight clicking, Lucas realized he wasn't moving anymore. That's when he had the bad idea to open his eyes. The small, round shaped space seem to close over him. His breathings became erratic, his heart rate racing too fast for him.
"Lucas, calm down!" the doctor shouted after seeing the monitors.
"It's closing on me! I'm trapped! I can't breathe!" Lucas shouted whilst debating. The straps held him down, increasing the feeling of being trapped.
"CALM DOWN!"
"I CAN'T BREATHE!", Lucas started coughing. The heart line made a huge peek down that back up.
"I can't breathe!" he repeated so much softer now that his heart rate was getting unstable and he really was starting to lack oxygen.
"Ali, raise the oxygen level! And give him a sedative if he can't calm down!" Dr Suarez shouted. Right away, the nurse turned the oxygen button. Lucas felt the increased level of oxygen but he couldn't breathe it in.
"Lucas! Calm down! Just relax" Ali said. Even though he tried, there was nothing he could do, the panic just washed over him.
"Doctor, he's having a panic attack," another doctor said.
"He's not calming down", a nurse said.
"Fine, GIVE HIM SOME ATIVAN SO WE CAN FINALLY DO OUR JOB!", Dr Suarez shouted. Ali immediately gave a shot of the treatment into Lucas' s IV.
"You're gonna feel I little sting then it all will be ok," she told him. Lucas did feel a little sting into his arm. Then it vanished. All his muscles softened and soon enough his heart rate came back to normal. He could finally breathe the artificial air pumped into his lungs. It now felt so peaceful that he thought he could sleep there. After that, the doctors had no problem taking pictures of Lucas's brain. After that was done, they rolled him back into his room. The teenager was so drugged up that he didn't feel a single thing. There was only this huge numbness into his whole body. The fear was gone, the panic died away. He was just fine.
DARKALLEYSANDBLINDINGLIGHTS
The doctor rushed into the room to place some pictures on a board. He then lit the light and checked the picture for what seemed to be the hundredth time now. Karen was sitting there along with Brooke, Nathan and Haley. They all waited for the verdict to fall.
"So? What can you tell us?" Nathan quickly asked, not letting any time for the other to start rambling on.
"Well, we did find something interesting. After we did the scanner and took a good look at it, we did find that there was something up with Lucas's cingulated cortex. We could clearly see that there was an abnormal rate of activity in this section of the brain. What does that mean in English is that this kind of hyperactivity is observed with people who have mood disorders. That confirms what we thought at the beginning doesn't it?!" he said with a smile.
How could he smile, Karen thought. How could he, when he just told her that her baby boy has some kind of mental illness. He says it and then BANG! He is laughing. How dare he? The man was the only one smiling now. After a long awkward silence, Brooke stood up in fury.
"I can't do this…" she simply said before running away.
DARKALLEYSANDBLINDINGLIGHTS
Dun Dun Dun cliffie ending ! Sorry, cannot help it. I have to admit though i did not plan it to end like this. I had no idea then at last in popped into my head like a goddamn internet pop-up. I had that idea when it came to the last line but it gives a good start for what's to come next and maybe I'm going to make a super funny chapter with like the doctors testing meds and Lucas gets all weird and some make him do weird things…anyway I'm not gonna give it all away now, am I? I really hope this made it up for the waiting and if not, well I'm sorry if you thought I suck. Tell me what you thought and thanks again to my faithful reviewers.