Disclaimer: the characters and Twilight Universe belong to Stephanie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.

Important author's note: I will try not to have any major book or movie spoilers in this story but some of the vampire characteristics do need to be revealed and explained. Some later character's names will be used in passing but they will not detract from reading the books.

Chapter 1

The Impulsive Decision

Carlisle's POV

The Hospital was quiet, because the morgue was the place where the dead rested and where I paced back and forth on my hours off. One of the irritatingly observant but kind hearted nurses figured out that I had worked a full 24 hours straight and she had practically ordered me to go home and rest. Little did she, or anyone at Ohio Presbyterian, know that my very nature prohibited me from following her orders. By my count, it had been close to 281 years since I slept in a bed. I have been denied that pleasure ever since I became a vampire in 1640 and I worked at Ohio Presbyterian in the year of 1921. My lack of weariness was not the only factor keeping me from going home. As it so often seemed to happen, when my adopted son Edward was away hunting I focused solely on my patients and had lost track of the time. When the nurses forced me from the operating room, the sun. sat high in the sky. Its rays imprisoning me much better than any prison bars could have done. If the good people around me saw my skin glitter in that sunlight, then my otherness would have been revealed and the exposure of my kind's secret would have meant my death. So, like so many times before, I visited with the corpses. Their lifeless bodies shared my lack of a heartbeat and in my idle mind; they also seemed to share my loneliness.

In my morose mood, my quick hearing still picked up the distant sound of the coroners carrying a fresh body down to my refuge. I had plenty of time to spring into the shadows before the two heavyset men would lumber into the room. My hesitance came from a sound so faint that even I was not sure if my ears were playing tricks on me. Either way, I would have to wait until the men were gone before investigating. I hid securely in the shadows cast by the empty vaults on the right hand of the room reserved for the dead. Moments later, as I had predicted, the men carried a bloody bundle between them, the body barely concealed by a hospital sheet.

"I tell you, Buddy, suicides are the worst. And from what I can tell, she was a pretty cute doll, too."

The other man shook his head sadly in silence. And they both exited the room, wrinkling their noses at the smell of death. That smell did not bother me, nor did the blood excite any of the madness that my kind is so well known for. Out of necessity for my profession, I had denied myself the satiation of human blood for so long that it carried little appeal. At any rate, the bloody sheet did not impede me from my private investigation of the sound that I had heard moments before.

The heart beat was even fainter than earlier, and I could not blame the men for assuming her completely expired when they brought her to the morgue. When the faint sound filled my straining vampire ears, an achy loneliness washed over the rest of me. Like the split second decision I made to bring over Edward, I let my impulses guide my actions. As I gazed briefly at her smashed face, I noted that her matted caramel hair was the only indication that she was a beauty. And then, after collecting all of my self control from my core, I bit down on the soft, peachy skin of her neck. The transformation was by no means easy for me to complete, but it was less maddening than Edward's had been.

At the time of his transformation, it was true Edward was sick with the Spanish influenza, but a fever does not deplete a human of blood, so there was more temptation in his veins than in the body of the woman on the metal slab before me. Her head wound had nearly deprived her of all her blood, so taking the little required for the transformation was made that much more possible. When her body began to writhe in the inevitable agony caused by my venom, I knew I had been successful.

Quickly before her inevitable screams of pain could excite the curiosity of the hospital staff, I picked up her limp form and gently placed her in one of the vaults and shut it. The metal box was thick enough so that it blocked any sound inside it from being heard by a human ear. But my enhanced hearing forced me to endure the torture of listening to those pitiful limbs writhe in that unquenchable hell-fire that vampires are forced to endure as the price for immortality.

Esme's POV

God's judgment was quick. Within what seemed like seconds after jumping off that sandy cliff, I felt hell's fire consuming my being. Like anyone, I do not as a rule welcome excruciating pain, but I do welcome the ability to feel. For months the sickness that had taken my darling boy had also deprived me of any feeling. The weeping had not come. I had sat by his coffin surrounded by flowers in the church, not shedding a single tear. While I, the horrible mother, sat on that platform with the body of my precious babe, the reverend had assured the black-clothed mourners that Peter Platt, the only being I had ever loved, was sure to be embraced by God in heaven. Flowers and the tears of strangers had covered the lid of that horrid wooden box as they lowered my heart into that earthy resting place. Yet the tears of his mother would not fall. I was too numb, too appalled by my own failing to do anything but stare and pray to wake up.

Weeks passed and I could tell that this nightmare would not end. It was God's punishment for my momentary thoughtlessness. I had only had him home for a week before a storm had raged around our house and I forgot to shut his bedroom window. Within hours, he had a chest cold. And within days, a deathly fever had erupted on his innocent and perfect brow. This punishment was not going to be ended by my insufferably pitying neighbors or my husband's quiet engulfing sadness. So I took matters into my own hands, and I jumped off one of the cliffs that surrounded the beach where my husband had proposed to me just three years before. And my reward was this fire.

Carlisle's POV

I waited until the main night shift of the nurses was about to begin before I lifted the twitching, screaming woman into my arms. Using one of the hospital sheets that lay around the morgue, I quickly fashioned a gag for her mouth. In normal circumstances when I had to resort to restraints, I at the very least gave my patients and apologetic look and an explanation. But I knew she would not understand me through her pain so I did not bother. Fortunately, I had enough prestige in the hospital that no one questioned my actions. As long as I moved quickly and determinedly with my writhing bundle, no hospital staff would be impertinent enough to hinder me.

My son, on the other hand, knew me better and when I approached the two-story Victorian house that we shared, he met me on the steps. His butterscotch colored eyes glared at me, expressing the much deserved rebuke I had earned by condemning another to our lifestyle.

"Carlisle, what were you thinking? We do not have the strength between us to restrain and teach a newborn."

Like me, Edward knew that newborn vampires had uncontrolled strength and tempers. If they were not restrained, their need for human blood would drive them to commit massacres of enormous proportions in order to satiate their thirst.

"I took care of you, didn't I?" I managed, defensively.

"Only with the help of Sepharina, who you dragged from the Amazon… We couldn't possibly ask her to leave her sisters again on such short notice."

"We can handle it," I said, my optimism sounding forced even to my own ears. "Please, Edward, you need a mother and it was too great a chance to pass up. She was so close to death, I had to make a split second decision. There's no going back now."

Edward could not argue with the truth of the last part of my speech. So with a resigned sigh he opened the door while I walked in and placed the still-thrashing woman on the living room couch. Taking inspiration from the nurse who had rebuked me earlier that day, I sent a message to the hospital saying that I would need an extended vacation to recover from my reckless over exertion. I spent the remaining two days of the transformation holding the woman's hand, trying to explain and beg forgiveness for the rash decision I made that would forever determine the rest of her existence. The time passed. The warmth in her hand began to change more to the temperature of my own and Edward and I watched warily as a goddess gingerly rose from the white plush couch. Her blood red eyes expressed confusion, thirst, and a painful tidal wave of sorrow.

Please review if you have the time. I really want to know what people think and whether I should go on. Constructive criticism is welcome as long as you explain yourself.

Disclaimer: the characters and Twilight Universe belong to Stephanie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.