A/N: Just a quick note on this chapter. I am not a doctor. Writers get to take liberties and I'm pretty sure I took a few here. I have done some research, but lets face it, I am an English student that still can't seem to put the comma in the right place. So don't ask me to know the ins and outs of the human heart. Feel free to PM me if you are a heart expert and you just can't help yourself.

Thanks again, so much to everyone who has taken the time to leave a review.

"Lucas Scott," Nathan cried, as he exploded into the emergency room of Tree Hill Hospital. The harried-looking nurse slowly raised her head and gestured towards the waiting area. The man didn't even turn his panicked blue-eyes. "He was just brought in, in cardiac arrest," he went on. "I'm his brother!"

The nurses eyes softened when the man's voice cracked. "I'm sorry sir, but I don't have any information for you here. If you'll have a seat-"

"Nathan."

Nathan spun hearing his voice, strangled and weak as though from the bottom of a deep dark well and found his wife standing before him pale and trembling. His shoulders sank and he felt his own lip tremble a bit.

"Is he-"

"They're still working on him," she whispered so quietly that he had to strain to hear her. "He…he had a heart attack. He was yelling…and he was crying Nathan and he just…he-he fell apart right in front of me Nathan and this all my fault!"

He caught her as she collapsed into body-wracking sobs in his arms.

"Don't-Don't do this to yourself."

"He looked dead, Nathan! When they put him on the ambulance he looked dead and they had to shock him an-"

"Shhh," Nathan soothed, as much for himself as for her. He needed to be strong for both of them, even though he wanted to fall into a mess of sobs himself. He wanted to cry and scream and put his fist through the wall. But Karen was one her way and so was Brooke. Someone needed to keep it together, in case his brother didn't make it.

And how could he, Nathan thought. They'd all been so worried about his drinking that they'd forgotten about his HCM. He tried to remember the last time he was at Lucas's collecting alcohol bottles, whether or not he'd seen his medication anywhere. He found the perfect way to kill himself, he thought. "Dammit Lucas," Nathan whispered. "Damn you."

"Haley! Nathan!" Karen ran into the ER with Brooke hot on heels. "Where is he?"

"What happened?" Brooke cried.

"We don't anything yet," Nathan murmured, rubbing Haley's hiccupping back soothingly.

"But he had a heart attack?" Karen warbled on the brink of tears, having never seen Haley this upset before.

The petite brunette looked up at them finally with red-rimmed eyes. "He went into cardiac arrest. His heart stopped," Haley's voice cracked.

"Oh my God," Karen whimpered, sinking into a chair with her head in her hands.

"Haley," Brooke whispered in silent tears. She had been driving to Nathan and Haley's to inquire about Peyton's whereabouts when she'd gotten the call. Now, it seemed she might be too late. "What happened?"

"I-He was upset, Brooke. He ran from our house to the River Court. By the time I caught up with him, he was practically hyperventilating."

"Why was he upset?" Karen asked, raising her head from her hands to look at Haley.

"There's a whole list these days Karen," Nathan couldn't help saying, with a tone that fully conveyed to the older woman what his feelings about her role in all of this were.

"I'm sure you can imagine what some of those things are."

"Nathan-" Haley warned.

The older woman looked up at him sadly. "You're blaming me? That's fine, Nathan. I blame myself every damn day for what has happened to that boy."

"That's not what he meant," Haley pleaded standing between the two, pinning Nathan with a hard stare when he opened his mouth to let her know that was exactly what he meant.

"Nathan please. We all saw him falling apart!" Haley growled, angrily, tears making their way silently down her cheek. "All of us. I know none of us forced that alcohol down his throat, but we didn't do enough to help him. As far as I'm concerned everyone of us here is to blame for him lying in there."

The four stood and sat, each silently condemning themselves for the life somewhere behind the doors of the ER hanging in the balance. Every time, the doors opened four sets of eyes would look up expectantly. The wait wasn't as long as it seemed, but for the four people still clinging to the last of Lucas Scott, the wait seemed like forever. An hour later a man in scrubs approached the waiting room.

"Who is here for Lucas Scott?"

The four surged upon the doctor, who raised his hands in a calming motion and asked them to sit down.

"Is my son okay, doctor?"

"Mr. Scott went into full cardiac arrest and was resuscitated on the scene by the EMTs. His heart crashed once more when he got to us. We were able to get his heart beating again and we currently have him stabilized, but he has fallen into coma."

He waited only a second for the news to sink in. Karen looked like she was about to be sick and Brooke took her trembling hand in her own, as tears came unbidden. Haley sat beside a stoic Nathan, one hand holding on tightly to his, the other pressed over her mouth to keep from sobbing out loud.

"According to his medical charts on file Mr. Scott is currently taking medication for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I don't need to tell you what a tremendous strain a heart attack is upon a strong heart. And Lucas's heart is very, very weak."

"How," Karen whispered, weakly. "How did this happen?"

"It is most likely a combination of things," the doctor replied. "We did a chest x-ray and ECG and both show severe thickening of the muscles in his heart. I'm sure you know this is what HCM does. It is unlikely that the medication he has been prescribed simply stopped its effectiveness, in fact blood work shows hardly any traces of the drug in his system at all."

"He stopped taking his pills." Nathan spoke, voicing what everyone had suddenly realized. Brooke sucked her lip into her mouth and bit down on it hard. How could she have missed it? She lived with him and shared a bed with him, how could she have missed it?

The doctor took in the devastated faces and realized he was right in thinking there was far more to this situation than a few carelessly missed dosages. " His blood work also shows his alcohol level much higher than it should be."

"He-he drinks a lot," Brooke murmured, shame-facedly. "He won't get help."

"For how long?" the doctor asked, jotting down notes.

"Um….on and off for about two years," Brooke replied. "It's only gotten really bad in the last couple of months-but-"

"He's got bottles all over the room," Nathan finished, glaring at Brooke.

"How much would you say he drinks? About how much."

"I-don't know…" Brooke stumbled, turning pink under their gazes.

"You live with him," Nathan exclaimed.

"Nathan, you aren't helping," Haley cried, pulling him to sit back in his chair.

"He usually drink out of that flask-" Brooke whimpered, breaking down into tears. "I don't know what's in it or how many times he fills it up. He doesn't talk to me, Nathan! He barely knows I'm there half the time! Where were you huh? You're his brother!"

"Stop it! BOTH of you," Karen cried, shooting out of her seat.

"It is a small miracle," the doctor began, trying to diffuse the tension somewhat, "that at this point we didn't need to operate. It is never easy when a loved one is struggling with substance abuse."

"At this point?" Karen finally turned around to pin the doctor with a wet-eyed stare. "You're going to have to operate?"

"His condition is very critical and we will continue to monitor him, closely. Although, he is stable now, there is a chance the strain on his heart will prove too great and he may crash again. In that case, we will need to operate, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I would rather not discuss heart surgery with his heart as weak as it is now. It's a last resort and something we'll need to talk about when he's stronger. But, a coma is the body's way of regenerating itself. This may be the best thing for him now. Right now all we can do is wait and see what Lucas's body decides to do."

"Can we see him?" Karen asked.

"Of course. The nurse should have him settled in room 112. You can go on up. There is some paperwork that needs to be taken care of…"

"I'll take care of it," Brooke said, as they all stood. "Thank you."

The doctor nodded and gave them a reassuring smile before walking back through the double doors.

"You guys go ahead," Brooke said somberly. "I'll fill this stuff out."

"Thanks, Brooke," Haley said, squeezing the other woman's hand. She watched them walk to the elevator, before turning towards the nurses station. The truth was she needed a moment to get it together. She needed a moment to reconcile her guilt, because years of her own anger and hurt had brought them here. That night at the party had changed everything and all of their paths had diverged from where they should have been. She wished she had known then, what she knew now. That the road she'd turned them upon was headed for this.

Sitting down with Lucas's paperwork, she began filling the blanks in. Birthday, social security number, insurance information, personal things that a loving live-in girlfriend would know. Strange, considering they hadn't had a real conversation in months, hadn't made love in twice as long. She couldn't tell you when their relationship began unraveling and she knew it was because it was never really together to begin with. But she knew his social security number.

And she knew in the back of her mind that he'd wanted to die. Still, the call from Haley had been a shock and she knew she had been living deep in the heart of denial for far longer than she'd thought.

A drop of wetness landed on the page before her, raising and darkening the surface. When it was rapidly joined by a second and third, she numbly realized she was crying….and their was no end in sight.

"I hate this place," Haley sighed, hollowly as they stepped off the elevator.

"Not a whole lot of good memories here," Nathan said. They shuffled down the stark white hallway, falling back into their own heads, all of them beating themselves up for different reasons. Time it seemed, had slowed and cast a spotlight upon them all, forcing them to look back upon the countless moments and missed opportunities to somehow make it right.

"Room 112," Nathan read unnecessarily. They could already see him lying there amidst countless monitors and wires.

Karen walked in first, slowly as though he was only asleep and she was afraid to wake him. Haley and Nathan watched her smooth a trembling hand over his pale brow, before breaking down once again into tears.

"I can't do this," Haley whispered when Nathan went to move forward.

"What do you mean you can't do this?"

"I can't see him like this, knowing that we could have prevented it," her voice trembled as she stared at her best friend. "I let him down."

"We let him down," Nathan amended. "It's not easy for me to see him in there either, Haley. To know that he purposely did this to himself. But he is going to wake up-"

"You don't know that," Haley cried, her haunted eyes turning towards his. "You didn't see him Nate. He was in pieces. He wouldn't hear me. He let the darkness take him and if you saw him, Nathan you'd know that he doesn't want to come back."

"Then we give him a reason to fight like hell," Nathan replied with conviction, pulling his crying wife into his arms.

"How, Nate?" Haley had never felt more hopeless. "How can we bring him back from this?"

"We have to call Peyton."

I got an A on that French quiz, but enough about that, how'd I do with the chapter?