DISCLAIMER: MANY OF THE CHARACTERS IN FIC ARE OWNED BY STEPHANIE MEYERS AND NOT MYSELF. I DO HOWEVER OWN ELIZABETH AND ANYONE ELSE YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE. ALSO i WOULD LIKE TO THANK Monkeypie982 FOR BETA-ING MY STORY...

Chapter 1 Prologue

My mom is dying. The one person in the whole world I depend on is dying. How could this be happening? She's not supposed to die, not yet anyway. I mean who's supposed to help me plan my wedding? Who am I supposed to talk to when a boy breaks my heart? Who will go on shopping sprees with me or help me if I have a problem with my friends? She can't die. My mom is everything to me; it's always been just the two of us for as long as I can remember. Mom says Dad walked out on us when I was two years old and I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since. Now my mom is dying of cancer and there is nothing I could do about it. There's nothing anybody can do about it. The doctors have tried; tried everything they could, but nothing is working- cancer just keeps coming back.

I remember when she was first diagnosed I was nine years old at the time and I didn't really understand. I knew cancer was an illness but I didn't really know what it was. All I really knew was that Mommy was sick. I remember her being tired all the time and I would have to help out with the dishes and cleaning up more that I normally do. At nine that seemed like the worst thing in the world. If only I knew then that this day would come in just six short years. She had an operation to remove her kidney after the chemo had failed to remove the cancer from it. It was a scary operation but we thought that was the end of it. That we could like a happy normal life and everything would go back to the way it was before. It did- for a very short but glorious period of time she was well again. Not six months later she had a PET scan and we found out the cancer had spread. Now it was in her blood and some of her bones. After that she was never really well again. She'd always be in and out of hospital trying different treatments but it just kept spreading. I remember being ten years old- that's the year I started to play hockey. She was sick and yet she would always be there in the stands cheering me on. She always took my team mates out to a movie and dinner to celebrate whenever we won a game. We are so close, my mom and me, even then- we are like best friends.

I take a deep breath and walk into the hospital room. It's just plain and depressing. I look at her and when I do, my heart breaks. She looks so week and fragile, I've always thought my mother as beautiful, even now when she looks so tired and thin. She looks just like my grandmother did when she was younger. My mum is still young, doesn't look older than 25, thin, has creel Asian skin, hazel brown eyes and looks like a regular Chinese, and Filipino she wears little make up because she doesn't need to look as nice for anyone, nobody is going to see her- except me and her doctors.
"Hey, Mom" she looked up at me with sad eyes "The doctor's needed to know if we have any next of kin we can contact, so I wouldn't end up in a foster home." I hated to ask my mom these kind of things because it just made it seem so much more real that she was in fact going to die- soon. Before I was even old enough to legally look after myself.
"That's right I forgot about that" Mom spoke with a wheeze. "Look in my bag, there's a...there's a diary." I walked over to her bag and grabbed it as I sat down on the uncomfortable chair that sat right next to her bed. I looked inside the bag until I found a little brown leather book.
"Is this it?" I ask holding it up to her so that she can see.
"Yes, it has everything you need to know inside of it." She told me, her eyelids dropping from exhaustion. "Elizabeth, "she cried out- her eyes snapping open again. She took a few shaky breaths before beginning to speak. "I will always love you and never forget who you are!" Her voice was weak and trailed off towards the end as
she look in the last shaky breath she ever would. She said those words because she knew- she knew she'd never get a chance to speak to me again.

Her heart monitor stopped.
"Mom! Mom, no" I screamed as I ran to the door "Somebody help!"
Doctor's ran in, "get her out of here" One instructed gesturing to me, as they all surrounded my mother. They began CPR but I knew it was too late, I knew she was gone.

A nurse pulled me out of the room, and I didn't resist just let her close the door. I couldn't watch. This was it my mom was dead, they weren't going to be able to save her this time. I paced the patch of the floor in front of her room back and forth. I wondered if maybe time would stop so nobody would ever have to come out of that door am tell me the news I already knew but couldn't bear to hear. When my legs started to shake and I could no longest pace; I sat. I counted the tiles on the floor. I watched the people who passed and didn't even glance at me. Everyone was always in such a rush a hospitals. I had just gotten up to 35 tiles when the doctor came out.

A nurse followed closely behind him. She handed me a cup of hot china tea to settle ME down. I was led to the waiting room where the nurse and I sat. I sipped the tea but it didn't taste right. She didn't speak. Eventually she took a deep breath, took my hands and spoke the world that bought my whole world crashing down.
"Elizabeth, we're sorry to say that your mother has passed away."

I slide from the chair where I sat; my knees hit the floor. I don't know why I'm so shocked, I knew this already but before they spoke the words there was hope- hope she might be alive. My tea splashes on the floor in front of me, the light brown color staining the shiny while tile. I knew this was going to happen, mom and I had planned for it. I guess I just never believed the day would actually come. I'd always thought in the back of my mind she'd make a miraculous recovery or a cure would be discovered just in time. Real life didn't work like that. People you loved died and no matter if you knew it was going to happen or not it still hurt, like your whole world had just gotten thrown of its axis.

The nurse was still speaking but I didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore. I heard something about next of kin. I handed her the diary, which I had clutched to my chest.
"Everything's in there" I sob out. I don't think I could bare to read it myself just yet.
"Alright sweetheart, we'll find it. Why don't you stay here for right now?" Her voice was calm.
Do you want something to eat?" A doctor asked, acting like he knew how I felt but really he knew nothing. I shook my head no and got up off the floor, my mom would want me to be strong right now. Need me to be strong. So that's what I have to do, be strong. But it was hard so I fell to the floor sobbing again. I could be strong tomorrow, I told myself, and I was allowed to be weak for one night. Except I wasn't just weak I was hysterical, so hysterical the doctor had to gesture for the nurse to sedate me. I felt a sharp pain in my arm and then I blacked out…

I woke up and looked around. I was still in the hospital only this time I was the patient, not my mother, oh god, my mom. Please tell me that was all just a bad dream! I glance down at my arm and see an IV sticking out of it. Ugh, I hate needles! I reach to pull it out but a hand stops me.
"Oh, no you don't the doctor said you have to keep that in" a voice to my left sadly spoken.
I look up and find myself staring into the eyes of an old man with dark leathery skin and long black hair. He was sitting in a wheelchair, beside my bed; his hand still resting on my arm.
I raise an eyebrow. "Who are you?" I ask. Maybe I'd died too and he was an angel to take me to my mother? "I'm your godfather, or as the doctors put it your next of kin." Oh. He seemed nice enough I guess. Why had my mother never mentioned this man before?
"Why are you here?" I demanded.
"I'm here to look after you as requested by your mother." He said simply.
"You're my godfather?" I repeated what he'd told me. I didn't even know I had a godfather!
"Yes, I was a good friend of your father's

"My father?" I ask.
Maybe I'd died too and he was an angel to take me to my mother? "I'm your godfather, or as the doctors put it your next of kin." Oh. He seemed nice enough I guess. Why had my mother never mentioned this man before?
"Why are you here?" I demanded.
"I'm here to look after you as requested by your mother." He said simply.
"You're my godfather?" I repeated what he'd told me. I didn't even know I had a godfather!
"Yes, I was a good friend of your father's." My father! The man who left my mother and me when I was younger. My mother hated him for not being there to see me grow up! Why would she want anyone who was associated with the man to be my guardian? This man looked kind, I hope he is nothing like my father.

"Oh, well what's your name?" There was no way I was leaving with this man if I didn't know his name. All I knew about him was that he was my godfather and my mother wanted him to be my guardian.
"My name is Billy. The doctors said you should only be here for a few more days."
"A few days! I can't stay here for a few days!" I couldn't sleep in the bed my mother died in! Everything in the hospital reminded me of her death of her hand clutching onto mine before going limp as she took her last breath.
"Sure you can," Billy told me besides, you don't really have a choice in the matter"
"Can't you convince them to let me out early?" I begged. "I can't be here. This is the place that is tainted with her death everywhere.
"No can do," Billy said but his eyes softened, with sympathy. "You have to stay here for a few more doctor's orders, I can't do anything about it."
I groaned and crossed my arms, I was stuck in this stupid hospital for a few more days. I wanted to get out of here, I didn't want to be at the place my mother died. Besides there was nothing wrong with me, I just had a small meltdown after my mom was pronounced dead. Anyone would have had the same reaction, I looked over at Billy again, if I had to be here I may as well get to know him a little better.
"How did you know my mother?" I asked him. Billy sat up straighter in his chair so that his eyes were on my level. "I knew your father first then I met your mother whilst they were together." He said simply.
My father! Billy knew my father! Which means he knows who he is and where he went all those years ago. I had so many questions to ask but as I opened my moth to speak I spotted, noticed the book my mom had left me, sat on the nightstand besides my bed.
I picked it up and started to read. Little did I know that reading that book was going to change my whole world...