Shattered Dreams [EDITING] - Chapter 71: Chapter 71

COREY'S POV:
A high pitched groan wakes me up and I bolt upright in a fit of shock. I am still half asleep so I need a second to become aware of my surroundings and once I have come to my senses I spot Nadia lying down on her window seat, crying to herself.
"What's the matter, baby?" I ask her quietly, not wanting to startle her.
She doesn't respond to me so I rush my way out of bed and make my way towards her, wanting to know what is wrong with her and what I can do to help. She stays looking down at the floor, unmoving her body even when I touch her on the shoulder in an effort to tell her I am here.
I don't know what's going on with her but it doesn't look like she is in there. Her body is here and her eyes are open but it looks as though there is nothing behind her eyes, as if her spirit is somewhere else entirely.
"Baby?" I repeat, still getting no answer back. I become worried, thinking that she is active sleeping like a newborn baby so I shake her gently in an attempt to get her out of this trance she seems to be in.
She gasps in shock at the action and only now I feel like I can breathe a little better as she is slightly less in a comatose state. "Nads, what's wrong?" I ask again, the worry still flowing freely within me.
She still doesn't answer me and I feel as though I have done something wrong just by being here. After speaking with Willem last night I left his room to come to Nadia's to check to see if she was okay. I wasn't going to stay any longer than a couple of minutes as I didn't weather dad to realise I was still here and bollock me even more for it but it looks like I ended up staying the night again.
That's the issue I have with this girl. The more time I spend with her, the more I want her. It genuinely feels like I am developing attachment issues for the girl as I want to be with her all the fucking time.
Once she has registered what is going on and that she is actually a person she begins to cry, wailing in pain. I shush her, not wanting her to wake anyone up and panic as they see me in here with her. I can handle this on my own, I don't want anyone to think that I have done something to her.
Shit, have I done something to her?
We were happy last night, talking about what happened at the museum and I said about how I think she is prettier than the starry nights painting, which she swiftly disagreed with, and we spoke about what Willem was saying downstairs. She said she knew that he didn't mean his words and that it didn't hurt her because he said them, what hurt her is that she thought they were true.
That is the biggest load of bollocks I think I have ever heard in my opinion. Regardless of whether Nadia is an Olympic figure skater or if she is a simple girl, who can't leave her bed a lot of the time then she is still worthy of receiving the same amount of love she pours into the world. I hate that she still has this notion in her head that she can't be loved, when she knows exactly how I feel about her. I haven't said the words out loud to her but they loom in the air around us like constant waves.
Her life is crazy. She was once able to exercise, clean and even eat freely but she has been robbed of all that and now the only time she really manages to get out of the house is if she is going to a hospital appointment, or if I drag her out. I will make it my mission to go with her to every appointment I can, even if I have to miss training because of it. My parents won't be best pleased but they don't understand how much this girl means to me so their opinion doesn't even count in the slightest. Her crazy life just makes her all the more interesting to me.
Her chaos made her even more beautiful to me.
"Baby, please talk to me," I beg her, trying to wrap my hands around her. "Why are you crying?"
I am still being left unanswered and I feel her breathing pick up within my grasp. She makes noises, sounding as if she is choking so I let go, trying to find water in a panicked state so that she doesn't hyperventilate anymore than she already is doing.
I pass her the water from her nightstand and she doesn't take it, she just pushes it away with her hand, causing me to drop the glass and for it to spill all over her carpet.
"Nadia, what the fuck?" I ask in shock, not meaning to sound harsh but of course it came out that way, causing her to flinch at the sound of my voice. "Shit, I'm sorry. You are just really scaring me."
She pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them, shrinking into herself as she cries and I am at a loss of what to do now. I shout for help but no one comes so Willem must be on his walk and god knows what her parents are doing. I notice the sleeve of tablets next to her and I grab them as soon as I see them, panicking that she has taken way more than what she should. I release a pained breath when I see that there are only two empty slots, confirming that my anxiety was just an overreaction.
"Nadia please." I beg as I am now at my wits' end and I don't know what to do in this situation. I understand that she might want to be alone but she is scaring me so much that I don't think she should be on her own.
She shakes her head, the only kind of response she has given me this morning and starts to cry. I make an effort to bend down in front of her so that she knows I am here and I'm not going anywhere. She won't scare me off by not communicating with me, it'll only make me try harder to figure out what is wrong with her.
Any attempt I had made to try and show her I care has been discarded as she pushes me away from her and stumbles her away to the otherside of her room by her door.
I puff out an exasperated breath to try and calm myself down as anger and anxiety are rising through me. Her stumbling away from me like that should register in my mind that she doesn't want to be near me but my body doesn't understand that as it rushes after her before I can think to stop it.
She is pacing backwards and forwards from one side of her room to the other, breathing in and out slow and heavy as if she is trying to calm herself down from something.
"Please, baby," I beg again, wanting to cry myself because I don't know what the fuck to do. "Talk to me."
This is all new to me as I have never been in a situation like this before. I have experienced a panic attack myself many times and I end up dealing with it by punching a hole in my wall but I can't exactly tell Nadia to go and punch something to calm herself down. I have been there when Nadia last had her panic attack but this feels different and I feel like those attempts to calm her down wouldn't work. I don't know what to or say here, or even how to act and it's stressing me out. Me stressing is not going to calm the situation down whatsoever, nor is it going to help Nadia with how she is feeling but I can't seem to leave.
Throughout my relationship with Nadia I have said that she cannot rely on me but here I am, relying on her as I can't leave her the fuck alone when she needs it.
"Please just leave me alone for one second." She pants through her words, trying desperately for oxygen but again for some reason I ignore her.
I don't know what is wrong with me, I never push her but right now it's like something is compelling me to stay by her side.
"I can't," I reply wearily, not wanting to startle her to make her more anxious. "I don't think you should be alone right now."
She nods, silently agreeing and I notice her wince in pain when she stops pacing.
She is clearly in pain and the day we had yesterday has taken it out of her so much that she can't emotionally handle the amount of pain she is in and I am surprised she is not screaming from how badly she must hurt right now.
Guilt floods through me as I watch over her as she squeezes her wrists trying to pour out the emotion within her in any way she can. I look at her and I think about how there's so much you don't know about the people around you.
You never know what someone could possibly be going through and even if they do tell you in great detail what they are feeling, you will never understand it because everyone feels things in different ways.
Nadia and my mum can talk about what they experience together with some more understanding than if they were to speak to me about it but they would still be experiencing it all differently.
To me, Nadia has always been the girl that everyone knows but no one knew, even myself. I feel like such an outsider in her life now that I am watching her on the sidelines. I can't even cheer her on as I am being pathetic.
I don't understand what is wrong with me. Why am I not doing more to help her? Why am I just watching as she is going through this much of a mental battle?
The guilt must be fucking with me because I feel like she is acting like this because of me. She is in pain because she has a condition but it is my fault because I know that she can't handle doing too much but I encouraged her to do it anyway.
I just can't even begin to imagine how much worse she would be feeling if she didn't accept the use of her crutches yesterday.
I snap out of it and stop making this about me and look at her again, trying to build up the courage to speak.
"Can you tell me what's going on up there, baby?" I question her, chewing on my bottom lip.
"Why are you even here, Corey? Why haven't you run for the fucking hills yet?" She shouts at me, causing me to flinch ever so slightly but I quickly recover myself, not wanting to show her that her words are affecting me.
"Where else would I be?" I retort back to her, keeping my voice calm even though I am currently anything but calm.
"You think I'm weak." She accuses, pointing her finger at me as she spews her venomous words at me.
"I do not." I simply reply, not wanting to entertain this self sabotage thing she seems to be doing.
"Okay, you make me feel weak," She rephrases her previous statement. "You are causing up a fuss because I have one bad reaction to something and you act like it's the end of the world. I am fine because I deal with this shit all the time but you make me feel like I won't be."
"How do I make you feel like that?" I ask her, trying not to show the affect her words are having on me. "What can I do to change the way my actions make you feel?"
"I want you to just leave me the fuck alone now, Corey, you've had your fun." She responds and I just raise my eyebrows up at her.
"My fun?"
"You only started with me because you were bored of hockey and wanted something else to keep you entertained because that wasn't cutting it for you anymore." She spits and this time I do visibly flinch because I told her how I felt about hockey in confidence and she has just thrown it all in my face.
I would like to think that I am mature enough to not let this affect me so I will try with everything in me to make it seem like I'm not but it's hard when everything this girl does hurts me. All she has to do is smile and my chest hurts and the world starts crumbling around me.
"I'm not a side project for you to do when you aren't training," She says, "Maybe focus on finding your s..." She stops herself from saying the rest of that sentence.
"No, no, carry on, I was beginning to like your little speech." I reply coldly, watching as she shrinks back into herself.
"No, I didn't mean it."
"So, I shouldn't focus on finding my sister?" I ask her and her tears make an appearance again.
She goes back to her previous state of mute and I walk over to her bed as she watches my every move. I pick up the bear I got her when we were kids and I hold it up in front of her. "You love this bear, right?" I wait to see her not before continuing. I use all my strength and pull the head off the bear, ripping out its insides and throwing it all on the floor in a fit of rage. "Now you know how you just made me feel."
She screams, like I have just shot her in the leg as she scrambles to pick up the broken pieces and it's only then that I realise it wasn't our bear. It is the completely wrong colour and I was too much in my fit of rage that I didn't notice that.
"Fuck, baby, I am so fucking sorry, I got the wrong bear." I crouch down next to her, trying to push the bear back together. All I can hear next to me is her pained cries as she calls out Archie's name.
I am such a fucking selfish dick. I should've just left her alone when she first asked me to leave but instead I had a saviour complex and wanted to help fix her. She is right about one thing on how I am trying to fix her because I would feel like that if I was in her situation too. In my mind I don't want to fix her, I just want her to not have to hurt so much ever again but how is she to know that.
I touch her cheek and she flinches, just as Willem walks in the room with Nathan next to him. "What the fuck has happened in here?" He asks, looking from the dismantled bear on the floor to Nadia and I.
Nadia looks up at her brother and our friend then looks back to me and her expression breaks my heart all over again. She doesn't speak, she doesn't move but instead her breathing picks up its previous rate of heavy and quick again. I try not to panic this time because I don't want to set her off even more than I have today.
"Hey," Willem crouches down in front of her but she simply screams, before she pushes past him and runs out the room crying.
We hear the bathroom door slam shut so we know she hasn't gone far. Nathan hasn't come out and said anything stupid like he usually does so I appreciate that.
"What happened?" Willem asks me, not sounding mad, just curious as he looks on the floor at the reminisce of the torn up bear. In tearing that bear, I tore Nadia's heart along with it.
"I didn't know what to do or how to react." I begin but I end up crying like a fucking baby. If my dad saw me now he would be grilling into me about how much of a wuss I am and that I need to man up instead of being a pansy.
"Corey, mate. Calm down, breathe and tell me what happened." Willem tells me and I not in reply before carrying on.
"I woke up to Nadia sitting over there," I pointed my head towards her window seat. "And she was just staring into nothing; it was sort of scary. I tried to move her but she wouldn't and she wouldn't move. I got scared and I panicked because I didn't know what to do."
"Sounds like she had another one of her sleep paralysis things." Willem suggests and I gape at him.
"Sleep paralysis?"
"Yeah, it's where her mind is awake but her body is asleep so she can't move and it's kind of terrifying. It's probably why she woke up in a panic, she was scared." Willem explains to me, causing me to feel even more guilty.
Sleep is the only break this girl gets and yet she still has to suffer during it.
"I think It's time for me to leave." Nathan announces and in all honesty I forgot he was even here.
"See you later, mate," Willem tells him and I just nod at him to say my goodbyes. "What happened to the bear?"
"I was a dick. I genuinely thought it was the one I got her, not Archie's bear." I tell him sincerely.
"It was Archie's bear?" He gasps at me. "Fucking hell man."
"I know." I agree, feeling like utter shit over this and I am severely surprised he is not killing me for it.
"Nadia!" Willem shouts after her, following to where she went down the corridor. Deep down I know that I should leave her alone so I follow behind Willem. I have a need to protect her and if I don't keep a close eye on her right now I feel like she will do something bad like end up sitting in the middle of a road again.
"Nadia?" Willem asks softly as he reaches the locked bathroom door.
"Leave me alone." Nadia replies, voice hoarse like she has been crying this whole time.
"Baby..." I speak after her, attempting to calm her down with my voice but also to warn her that I'm here as well. Willem looks at me with a raised eyebrow and he smirks at me for the use of the nickname and I know that he will give me shit for it later.
"You can go away too," She chokes out, voice pained from the suffering I have caused her.
"I'm really sorry, sweetheart, I really am." I also choke out, being overwhelmed by the amount of emotion I am feeling over a fucking bear.
"That was Archie's. That was Archie's. That was Archie's." She repeats over and over, her voice sounding more anxious the more she says the same phrase.
"Nadia!" Willem's voice picks up more as his concern grows for his sister on the other side of the door and he runs a stressed hand through his hair.
"Fuck." I mutter under my breath as I hear the cries the girl I love is letting out but not being able to do anything about it.
"What do I do?" Willem whispers to me, voice laced with concern.
"I don't fucking know, she won't open the door." I whisper back, just as concerned, maybe even more so as I am the one who caused this, from start to finish.
"Do your touchy feely hear thingy." Willem tells me, keeping his hushed tone.
"My touchy feely hear thingy?" I repeated back to him, baffled at his way to describe it.
"Yes." He gives me a warning look, silently telling me to pack it in.
I walk up to the door, taking Willem's place and I lean my head against it and I am now able to hear how much she is actually crying. My chest hurts for her and I want nothing more than to be able to climb inside her heart and pump it full of happiness and love.
"Baby, can you hear me?" I ask her gently, not wanting to startle her with my voice again.
She doesn't respond but I know she can hear me because her cries have stopped for a moment so I use this as my indication to speak further, "Can you tell me five things you can see for me?"
I receive nothing but silent treatment from her, only being able to hear her muffled sniffles coming from the other side. I sigh into the wood, feeling at a loss of what to do as Willem watches again. I hate that he has never seen the good parts of mine and Nadia's relationship, he has only seen the parts where I have to calm her down from a panic attack.
"You don't have to tell me but can you at least think of them for me?" I ask her, also not hearing a reply but her cries are still calmer than what they were so I carry on. "Can you think of four things you can touch now?"
I wait a little for her to think, keeping my ears focused on her breathing and I carefully go through the three other ones.
"Good girl, now can you unlock this door for me? I want to see your pretty face." I hear Willem scoff at my last comment and I turn around to give him a glare. When I finally meet this girl Willem is seeing I cannot wait to bully the fuck out of him for how he goes soft for only her. I don't think he would appreciate it when it's him on the receiving end of the mockery.
A few seconds pass by and I hear the lock turn. I open the door, revealing Nadia curled up on the bathroom floor with the torn teddy in her arms. Her cheeks are rosy and tearstained and her eyes are bloodshot red, proving the amount of pain that I have caused her.
Willem rushes to her and I just stand back, maintaining eye contact with her. I want to be able to rush over to her like Willem did but my feet can't seem to move, I am frozen in place.
It's only when Willem glares at me that my feet decide to not have a mind of their own and I am lying down in front of Nadia as soon as I can. "Hey."
"Hi." She copies me, speaking softly but sounding sad at the same time.
"What are you doing down here?" I ask the obvious but I want her to communicate with me.
"Thinking." Is all she responds with.
"Thinking about what sweetheart?" I tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear and keep my hand resting on the side of her head, feeling the warmth from her body heat.
"Archie."
"Yeah?" I ask, feeling proud that she has calmed down enough to be able to speak about her feelings. "What are you thinking about him exactly?"
"I miss him." She comments, tears pricking up in her eyes once more. I look at Willem the same time he looks at me and we both give each other a sad smile. Grief is supposed to get better with time but Nadia seems consumed more and more by it everyday.
Before, she had the ice to escape into and friends she could talk to but now she doesn't really have anyone. She has parents, a brother and a boyfriend but none of those are as good as the person she called her best friend for so many years.
Before I can ask her further, she carries on speaking and I don't interrupt as she needs to be able to speak about this sort of stuff freely. "It's like a scar that never heals. Once you look at the scar and think it is getting better it rips open again, bleeding until you can't think about anything else but the pain."
"When does it get the worst?" I query, wanting to know so I can do my best to stop the moments where her unhealed scar could be ripped open again.
"When moments happen in my life," She responds, her voice angelic as always.
"Things keep happening to me and I always find myself wishing I could tell him about them but I can't."
"But you can, and you do." I tell her, reminding her about the rooftop she has to share with herself and the stars.
"It's not the same." She mentions and both Willem and I are stumped on what to say.
"I'm sorry for breaking the bear," I finally said after a long bout of silence. "I got them mixed up."
She doesn't say anything, she just looks down towards the bear, sadness filled in her eyes. "I don't hate you." She confirms and I pull her closely into my chest, feeling her warm breath on my neck.
"I know, sweetheart," I murmur, tightening my arms around her. I look down at her and see her eyes burning with tears, "Shall we get you back to bed?"
"No," She is the one tightening her arms around me now. "I feel safe here."
"I'll leave you two to it." Willem announces and I forgot he was here. I'm glad he is giving us our moment and I am also glad he got to see how much I care for this girl. I wouldn't lie on a bathroom floor for just anybody, I don't even think I would do it for my siblings, although I probably would for Natalie if it meant I would be able to find her one day.
"Thank you, mate," I shout out to him, meaning it for much more than him helping me with Nadia just now. "For everything."
He looks at me for a moment and then looks down to his sister before replying, "Thank you too, baby."
"Fuck off will you." I tell him, joining in as he laughs.
He closes the door behind him and I go back to the place where I always feel safe too.