To Protect Each Other ~ A Haleb Story

Can't Lose Her

"Caleb?" Aria, Emily and Spencer ran into the waiting room where Caleb sat, head in his hands.

"Oh, totally forgot I called." He sighed, looking up at them.

"What happened to Hanna? Is it serious?" Spencer rushed.

"Is she going to be okay?" Aria sat down next to him.

"Guys calm down. I'm sure this is hard enough already and Caleb doesn't need us hounding him with questions. We'll start again, okay? Caleb, what happened?" Emily asked, surprisingly calmly. Emily wasn't usually the one to calm everyone down but this time she was.

"She... She um... She tried to kill herself." He said. He knew how hard it was going to be for them to hear that.

"What?"

"Hanna wouldn't do that, though." Spencer said, immediately remembering how self-conscious Hanna was and especially after Alison came back, it had all come back to her. Alison constantly used to tell Hanna how imperfect she was and pretty much handed an eating disorder to her. After the dollhouse though, the nightmares that all the girls were having were enough to send anyone over the top.

"Yeah, well I thought that too but she did." He sobbed. Caleb never expressed his emotions to anyone except Hanna. She was the first and only person he had ever told about his childhood and what happened to him. If he was going to cry, (which he rarely did anyway) he'd do it in front of Hanna.

Emily sat down and placed a hand on his back. "Where is she now?" She feared to ask.

"Surgury. The wounds were really deep so they have to reform them if they're going to function properly again." Caleb said.

"I'm gonna go talk to the nurse." Spencer walked over to a lady in blue and started to ask questions.

"I can't lose her." He mumbled.

"Sir? Excuse me?" A doctor stood over Caleb who had fallen asleep in the waiting room.

Caleb coughed. "Sorry, I've been here for hours waiting for news."

"You're the man who brought Hanna Marin in, right?" The doctor asked.

"Yeah I am."

"We just brought her out of surgury. We had to put Hanna into a coma due to the amount of blood that she lost. We gave her a blood transplant and she should wake up within the next two days." He said, sophisticatedly, yet with a weak smile.

"Can I see her?" Caleb asked.

"Of course. But we need to ask you to not touch her hands as the blood flow needs to be restored." He stated

"Thank you." Caleb ran into Hanna's room and started crying at the sight of the only thing he had, laying on a hospital bed, in a coma. She had huge, thick bandages wrapped around her wrists with a long IV line running from her arm to the stand above her.

"Hanna." He pressed a soft kiss on her forehead. "I'm here now. I'm not going anywhere." He couldn't hold her hand so he held her upper arm and rubbed it to comfort her. At that moment, Ashley, Hanna's mother came bursting through the door.

"Emily called me... She said Hanna hurt herself. Is she okay?" Ashley was distraught.

"I think so. I'm sorry I didn't call. I wanted to make sure everything was okay before I worried you." Caleb wanted to clear the air before anything else.

"Don't worry about it. I'm here now and that's all that matters." She sat on the other side of Hanna's bed and looked at Caleb.