Amelia's Life

This is a summary of Amelia's life, as seen through her eyes. There will be mentions of her abusive past, but I will never go into more detail than that which she told Carlisle after their big fight.

It starts off with her being three years old, then again at age five. The next few scenes are at age 10, 11, 13 and 15, when she sees Carlisle and Esme for the first time. I have kept her language and grammar use simple and made it more mature as she grows up. So Amelia's sentences at age 3 are simpler than at age 15.

POV – Amelia.

"Titch, I'm sorry angel. Daddy's gone to be with Mommy," Uncle Simon tried to be nice to me as he told me the news I had been waiting to hear. Papa was very sick. Uncle Simon told me that Papa and Maman were in our car when another car hit them. I thought cars only hit people walking across the road. Maman always made us run across the road, even when the light was green. She said that people in cars don't always like to stop at red lights. When we drove in the car, we always stopped at red lights – I checked every time. Maman and Papa promised me that they would always be there for me. Maman went to heaven the day before yesterday. I guess she needed Papa to stay with her, because he has gone too.

"Titch, sweetheart. They need to take Daddy to be with Mommy," spoke Uncle Simon. I frowned at him through my tears, could he not see that my heart was breaking? Papa's heart was not making any sounds anymore. His chest did not rise anymore. That meant someone was dead. I saw Maman yesterday. She was cold, but I wanted to say goodbye to her. Uncle Peter said that she could hear me from heaven when I said my goodbyes. I got stiff as one of the nurses tried to pick me up and take me out of Papa's room. I started to cry because I didn't want to leave him. He needed to come back. I needed him too. Maman was a big person. I was a little person. Maman always said that a little person needs a big person to help them grow up into a big person. Maman was in heaven, but why did Papa have to go too? Why did they both have to go?

"You're alright, my darling. Hush, little one. It's going to be alright," whispered Uncle Simon, taking me into his arms and carrying me back to my room in the children's section of the Eye See You. Papa said that it is not spelled the same way, and it is an abbrev- I forget what the word is, but it is short for Intensive Care Unit. It meant special care for special people. Papa said I was special, but I always came home from the Eye See You. He won't.

"What's gonna happen to me now? I'm a little person. Maman says I need to stay with a big person until I am a big person," I asked as Uncle Simon put me back on my bed. The sheets are pink. I don't like pink. Uncle Peter was now in my room too. He was crying. So was Uncle Simon. Papa must be very important to them too.

"You will come and stay with me until you are a big person," said Uncle Peter, as he tucked me into bed and gave my teddy bear.

"Promise?" I asked as a nurse put my drip back together and put a medicine into it with a syringe. I was now getting sleepy. That was weird. I had not even brushed my teeth yet. It could not be bedtime already.

"I promise, Mia," Uncle Peter promised. I don't remember anything else as I fall asleep. I just knew that I had a feeling that I won't be staying with Uncle Peter. In the morning, a lady came to see me. She said her name is Ms Colgan. She seemed nice. She asked me lots of questions but I just wanted her to go away. I wanted Maman and Papa. When I was finally allowed to go home, she took me away. Uncle Peter was yelling at her, and Uncle Simon was holding him back while she grabbed my arm and led me to a car. I didn't want to go with her. I wanted Uncle Peter. Uncle Peter made me a promise, and he didn't keep it.

"My name is Officer Potter. Are you Amelia?" asked a man with kind eyes. He was in a police uniform. I was scared, was I going to be locked away? Was this my punishment for hiding my face from the camera yesterday? He was hurting me. I still hurt, even now. I realised that he was speaking again, "It's alright. I am not going to hurt you. I am here to help you. Mr Warwick-James is going away for a long time."

I nodded my head and he took me by the hand, leading me out of the house. I started crying and tried to run back inside. My violin was in there. It was all I had of Maman and Papa. I didn't even remember what they look like. It scared me to realise that.

"My violin!" I screamed, coughing a lot. It hurt my tummy when I did. I'd been doing that a lot lately. He continued to walk away from the house and set me down, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. It was cold. There was snow. Was it already December? It was so dark and cold outside, and I shivered. There was a lot of noise, and I saw Mr James coming outside. He was yelling. There was a police officer pushing him along the pathway. I shrank back against Officer Potter, but he still saw me and grinned that horrible smile that gave me the heebie jeebies. I felt something warm trickle down my legs. I started to cry when I saw that I had wet myself. I got wrapped up in another blanket and put in a different car to the one Mr James is in. I was not feeling very well. I think I had an infection again. Mr James had not been giving me my medicine like he should.

"We'll get you some clean pyjamas soon," promised Officer Potter. I didn't want clean pyjamas. I wanted my violin. I told him such. He promised me that he would find it. That made me sad. The last time someone promised me something, I got put in a house with people I didn't know. I don't even remember who that person was, but I know that he was nice. I believed him. I should not have. He was not my friend anymore.

"She's burning up," stated a lady police officer when we arrived at the station. She was touching my forehead but she was not a doctor. I didn't want her to touch me, but I felt too sick to care. She put a thermometer under my tongue and sounded scared when she read out my temperature. I started to feel sleepy. People started crowding around me. I just wanted my violin but I was too tired to cry anymore about it. More men in uniforms came, but theirs were different. They touched my wrist and put me on a bed. Then they put a mask on my face and put me in a van. I didn't want to go in the van but Officer Potter said that I had to go to hospital again. I didn't want to go there either.

I got my clean pyjamas. The Officer found my violin, and my teddy bear. He gave them to me the next day, which was Christmas Day. All the other children got presents from their Mommies and Daddies. I didn't know you got presents for Christmas. Most of them went home for the day. I had no one, except for Officer Potter giving me my violin and bear. I didn't want presents if it meant that I got those two things back. He didn't even yell at me for wetting myself. Ms Colgan asks me a lot of questions but I don't answer them. Mr James said that he would kill me if I told anyone. I told him I did not care. I wanted Maman and Papa. If he killed me, I would be with them in heaven. So he told me that he would hurt Ms Colgan. So I kept quiet. She was trying to help other kids like me, and if she died, who would help them?

"Amelia, this is Mrs Miller. She runs the group home," said Ms Colgan, introducing me to a lady with a plump face. I could say that she seemed to be nice, but I would not know. Most adults seemed to be decent until you get sick for the first time. I would not assume her to be nice until I've hurled on the floor or kept her up all night with my coughing and seen how she acts. I deliberately cough to see what she does. She keeps quiet but looks concerned. Perhaps she has potential to be decent. As long as she leaves me alone and doesn't hurt me like Mr James, we'd get along just great. I felt that usual pain whenever I think about him, it slices through my heart. I took a breath and count slowly to ten in my head. It helped, sometimes.

"Shall we go to your room?" she asked. I realised she was talking to me. I nod my head. She tried to take my violin from me, but I tightened my grip around the case. It's all I have of my mother. The case was battered and broken, but it served its purpose. On my back is my backpack with my clothes and my teddy bear. I do not have much, but I had enough.

When the social worker would come to take me to a new home, or take me to hospital, she'd give me a black garbage bag to put my things in to take with me. At one of my homes, my foster mom had cried when I arrived with just a black bag. She and her husband had brought me some lovely things, the backpack was one of them. I'd stayed with them for little over two months. We lived on a farm. It was the best foster experience. I'd been placed there shortly after Mr James, and it had helped me to recover from that incident. It had been a horrible day when they had died in a car accident. I really liked them. Their home was the longest that I had stayed at. I remember when they hugged me for the first time. I had cried for hours, until I found myself in my foster mother's arms again. She was crying too, I don't think she knew what else to do. But instead of feeling sad, I felt safe and protected in her arms. It was not something I was used to. It felt nice. After their deaths, I was given a garbage bag again. But this time, I refused. I had a backpack with my school things in it. It was the only thing that they had given me that I took with me. Everything else remained at the farmhouse. I wonder what happened to it. That couple was different to all the others.

"Well, here it is. You will have a roommate later on. She's also ten," spoke Mrs Miller. I smiled at her and thanked her, before walking inside and looking around. There were two single beds in the room, with a small table separating them. Beneath the table is a nebuliser with my meds in a box next to it, on top of the table is a bedside lamp. The table lies beneath the only window in the room. Two desks are on the other side of the room, opposite our beds. A small bookcase lies between them, with a few books on them.

"Which bed is mine?" I asked.

"You can pick either," she said, "Bree will take the other one. It doesn't matter, I'm sure she will not mind."

"How long will I be here for?" I asked. I may as well get to the truth. I'd hate to unpack what little I have and just have to pack it all up again.

"Amelia!" chastened Ms Colgan.

"It's alright," reassured Mrs Miller, "I've heard that you don't stay for very long in a home before you get sent somewhere else. I promise you, the next time you go into hospital, you will come home to this very room. You will not leave here until you choose to. I hope that you will stay here until you are 18, unless you get adopted."

"I'll never be adopted. No one wants a dying child."

"You're not dying, Amelia," Ms Colgan interrupted. She did not look too pleased with me.

"You never know, sweetheart. People adopt older kids all the time. There's a family waiting for you, they just don't know it yet," added Mrs Miller. I want to roll my eyes. Adults and their stupid promises. That man who knew my mom and dad promised me he'd take care of me. Mr James was supposed to look after me. Adults break their promises all the time.

"Amelia, this is Bree," introduced Mrs Miller. I saw Ms Colgan lurking in the background. I'd been here a few hours. A girl about my age stood hesitantly at the door of our bedroom. She was as afraid of me as I was of her. I guess she'd also been picked on by the other kids at her previous homes too. She held a sketch pad close to her. Her belongings were in a garbage bag. I realised how lucky I was to have a backpack to call my own.

"Hi," I offered. I'd been sitting on the floor, unsure which bed to take. Bree smiled back and the adults left us alone for a bit.

"Which bed?" asked Bree, unsure of herself.

"I don't know. Whichever one you want, I guess. I didn't want to choose without you," I shrugged.

"Really?" breathed Bree. She took a step towards the one closest to the closet and looked at me hesitantly. I smiled and put my violin on the bed closest to the door. Problem solved.

"Do you draw?" I asked, pointing at the sketch pad.

"Yes, do you play?" she motioned towards the violin. I nodded. "Will you play for me?"

"Only if you show me your drawings."

"Deal."

That was the start of our unlikely friendship.

"Keep still, Mia!" exclaimed Bree. She was lying on her stomach on her bed, legs bent at the knees and ankles crossed in the air. She was sketching away in the sketch pad that Mrs Rollins from the senior home next door gave her just last week. I was trying to practice my violin, but it was hard when your best friend keeps telling you to stand still.

"Take a picture, it will last longer," I retorted, but maintained the pose as best I could, "what is this for, anyway?"

"There's an art exhibition coming up soon at school and I'm thinking of putting some of my things on display. Mrs Conrad thinks that I have potential to go far with my so-called talent," said Bree.

"You are so good at art, Bree. You doubt yourself."

"So you do you," she countered, "you're easily the best violin player at school."

"Nuh uh, Sally Walters is way better than me."

"That's only because she is 12. We're still eleven."

"Can you believe that we have been here for a year?" Amelia spoke quietly.

"It's the longest I have ever stayed in one place," commented Bree.

"Same."

"Mia, open up the window!" I heard tapping at the window of my hospital room. I could see Bree tapping at the window, so I got out of bed and opened up the window. I turned on the light, taking her in. She had been reported missing yesterday, the police naturally assumed that she had run away. She had been gone for five days, but a report was only filed now. Typical.

"Bree, where have you been? Everyone thinks you have run away!" I hiss, not wanting to alert the night nurses to Bree's presence.

"I got attacked," she explained, turning to look at me in the light. I stifled a gasp at what I saw. Her skin was like porcelain, her hair was darker and thicker than before, even her voice sounded different. But her eyes, they were the most different. They were an alarming shade of crimson. At first, I thought she could be an albino, but her eyes had always been brown, and albinism was obvious from birth.

"What happened, Bree?" was all I could manage.

"I'm a vampire," she stated. I stiffened in shock. I thought vampires were the things of movies, total fantasy. To prove it to me, she darted across the room and back in less than a second. I knew then that she was telling the truth. I held out my hand and she took it. She was like ice. I shivered.

"What happens now?"

"I sparkle in sunlight, I am extremely fast and extremely strong. My diet has changed as well. I don't eat food anymore."

"Blood?"

"Yes. I am afraid so. It tastes so good. I hate it. I hate knowing that I have to kill a human to feed."

"I'm sorry. Are you hungry right now?"

"Yes," she stated truthfully, "the nurses smell delicious. You don't. I'm sorry, Mia, but you really don't smell good."

"Oh, I suppose that is a good thing though?"

"It means I will not hurt you. You smell salty, but too salty for my liking. Mia, I'm going to Forks for a while."

"Where is that?"

"About 3 hours' drive away, on the Olympic peninsula. I am part of some sort of army and apparently we have to attack a group of vampires who feed off animal blood."

"Bree, please don't be part of that!" I begged.

"I have no choice. I will be killed otherwise. I will go, and surrender immediately. I'd like to learn their ways, feed off animals instead. I will come back for you, Mia, I promise."

"Alright. Please be careful, Bree. I'd hate to lose you," I replied. Bree was my best friend, she'd never let me down. We were a team, a force to be reckoned with. She would be back for me, but I was still worried.

"I'm basically indestructible. I will come back as soon as it is safe. I love you, Mia."

"I love you too, Bree. Be safe."

"Take care of yourself."

We hugged each other one last time and Bree disappeared out of the window just as one of the nurses came in.

"Everything alright, sweetheart?" she asked. She wasn't too bad.

"Nightmare. I opened my window to get some fresh air," I replied, not moving from my spot from the window. I saw Bree streaking away.

"Perhaps we ought to get you back to bed," suggested the nurse, shutting the window. I allowed her to lead me back to bed. Bree was alive, and it was enough for me. She'd never broken a promise to me yet. She would be back, I was sure of it. But that niggling part at the back of my mind had that sliver of doubt. Only time would tell.

"Welcome back, Amelia. My name is Dr Joanne Anderson. Do you know where you are?" a cheerful voice interrupted my stare-a-thon with the wall that I had been partaking in since waking up a few hours ago. I groaned internally, before turning to face the very tall woman standing at the foot of my bed. Be nice, Amelia. She's just doing her job.

"ICU?" I guessed. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Too much machinery, heavy glass windows and total silence aside from medical equipment? If this was not ICU, then I was a Jackass Penguin and Bree was still alive. She'd never returned from that fight. I knew in my heart that she was gone, but part of my always hoped that she would return.

"Correct. Do you know which city you are in?"

I stare at her stupidly. Enough already. I might be sick, but I am not dense. "Seattle."

"Not actually. You were airlifted to Central Rochester Hospital ten days ago," she replied. Huh.

"Rochester, as in Washington?" I was surprised. It was a small town, less than 2000 people.

"No, in New York."

"Oh," was all I managed. It clicked, it was home to one of the best experts in CF. I guessed this enthusiastic giant of a woman was said expert.

"Welcome. You've been out of it for the past few days. Your lungs are not too happy right now," she trilled.

"I know. I feel like I've been hit by the Titanic. Or a Boeing at the very least," I muttered sarcastically.

"You're going to be here for a while I'm afraid. Your old doctor in Washington didn't know what else to do with you."

"Where's my violin?" I asked. I hated leaving it at the home when I was in hospital. Dr Anderson paused from her paperwork and looked up at me, confusion clouding her features.

"I'll phone your social worker and ask her," she stated, "do you play?"

"Yes I do. My mother was a violinist."

"That is so cool. Have you ever been to Carnegie Hall?" she queried, having stopped looking through the paperwork that I assumed was my hospital file.

"No," I replied quietly, before looking out of the window. I hated discussing my parents. She must have sensed this, and quickly moved on. She promised to have me out of ICU within the next five weeks. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Promises, shmomises. She was the first adult, after Mrs Miller, to have kept her word. I was out three and a half weeks later, having spent a total of five weeks in that place. I developed ICU psychosis, which probably spurred things on a bit.

"I just want to go outside for a few minutes. Five minutes tops. I need some fresh air. I'm going crazy in here," I pleaded. I was desperate to get out for a bit. Cabin fever was starting to beat me. Dr Anderson looked at me pityingly, before denying me the only thing I have every asked for. I'd been here for four months, why was it so difficult to let me go?

"Amelia, you are too sick to go outside. You will get worse. You're one cough away from landing up in ICU," replied Dr Anderson, as gently as she could. I wanted to scream, but sadly she was actually right. I was sick again. I hated this stupid disease. I tried again for extra benefit.

"Dr Anderson, I have not left this ward in nearly four months. It's visiting hours now, no one will notice that I'm gone. I've had my physio for today. All I am asking is to go on the balcony for a little while. I'm not asking to go to the shop down the road, although I desperately need to get some things, I'm not even asking to sit in the hospital garden, I'm just asking for you to give me my balcony key so that I can open the door and breathe some fresh air, not stale hospital air," I was nearly in tears by now. Do not break down in tears, Amelia. Tears are for the weak. Don't you dare let anyone see you cry.

"It is out of the question, Amelia. Your lungs are unhappy," the good doctor states with finality. There was no point in arguing further. I sighed and coughed loudly, turning my head away so that no one would see me cry. Dammit Amelia, pull yourself together! You are not a wimp!

Someone knocked on my door and a whole group of people accompanied Dr Sanders into my room after Dr Anderson told them that no one will visit me. Gee thanks Dr A, way to make a girl feel great about herself. This stupid conference meant that people would be barging in and out of my room for the rest of the week, asking questions about me, about which gene mutation I had, asking about my family history. I knew nothing. My parents were dead. My best friend was dead. I was soon to be dead. What did it matter?

An extremely gorgeous couple caught my eye. He was obviously the doctor, she was his wife because it was clear that she didn't know what was potting, if the confused expression on her face was anything to go by. She was trying to be subtle about staring around my room, and failing miserably. They were pale, but I didn't want to stare too long. I stifled a grin as I recalled last seeing that kind of paleness on Bree. A vampire working in health care? Please. What a ridiculous notion. The people eventually left my room. Thank heavens. I needed my space. I also needed a bath. I just wished that Dr Anderson would come clean and tell me when I could expect to die, this was starting to get very annoying.