A/N: I wrote this because I was home sick, and miserable, and wondered what would happen if a similar situation happened to Bella. Of course, the answer is that nothing that happened to Bella would be similar to anything in my life, because she is fictional and has a vampire boyfriend, whereas I am real, and have no boyfriend at all (enthusiastically single! That's the appropriate definition!). So, without further ado, here is my oneshot about... The Day Bella Got A Cold
P.S. I did real googling research when i wrote this, so all facts are based off of that. If there are any questions about the facts, I'd look there. I don't own Twilight... Or Google... Or a neti pot... but I do have a cold and a lot of organic garlic!
BPOV
I woke up early in the morning in my bed room shivering a little bit, but this wasn't unusual. You see, most nights, like last night, my wonderful, amazing, all-too good-to-be-true boyfriend Edward Cullen stayed over and spent the night with me. Now, before you get any ideas, let me clear one big thing up for you:
Edward Cullen is no ordinary, god-like, gorgeous teenage boy. He's a vampire. That's right, you're not hallucinating, I said VAMPIRE. The immortal, blood-drinking kind. YEAH. But being a vampire comes with a few special qualities you may not know about. One: They don't sleep. At all. No coffins, or any of that business. Two: Their skin is ice cold, which is why the shivering didn't surprise me. And one final, special thing about Edward Cullen: He's extremely moralistic for a vampire, or any for conscious being for that matter. Definition: I wasn't getting any, much to my chagrin.
Anyway, this particular morning, as soon as I stirred, trying to spread some warmth to my limbs, Edward squeezed his way out of my grasping hands, kissing me lightly on the top of my head.
"I will see you soon, love," He whispered in his knee-melting, beautiful voice. I groaned, not wanting him to leave, but when I had turned around, he had already hopped out of the window where the cloudy sun was rising. Another rainy day in Forks, Washington. Wonderful.
Now that Edward was gone, I realized it wasn't just him that was making me cold. My whole body was shivering slightly. I blamed the open window and grabbed my shower bag, hurrying down to the bathroom. I waited for the warm water of the shower to heat up my toes, but instead I just felt clammy, and the steam of the shower hit my head like a thick, impermeable cloud. I couldn't breathe. I started coughing. Ouch, my throat was sore! Well, it figured, I suppose. Karma, for groaning when Edward left. I really needed to get used to standing on my own two feet, huh?
I got dressed, opting for some thick sweatpants and a long sleeved t-shirt rather than taking the effort to pick out something that looked nice. Alice would kill me, but she'd forgive me eventually, right? I mean, I was going to end up spending forever with her, best-case scenario. Somewhere in that eternity, she'd forgive me for wearing sweat pants on one, single solitary day.
I was stumbling my way around the kitchen, putting together a bowl of cereal for breakfast, when I started sneezing. A lot. Even Charlie looked a little startled. I don't exactly have the quietest sneeze in the world. If Chief Swan wasn't awake before I sneezed, he was now.
"That's quite the honker you've got there, Bells, you feeling all right?"
"Yeah, I suppose the rain's finally getting to me. Maybe I have a secret allergy to mildew that's decided to show up now," I mumbled. My voice was cracky and my throat hurt again when I spoke.
"Hmm, you don't sound too good either. Sounds like you have a cold."
"Yeah, sure Dad. I'll see you later!" I called as I saw the silver Volvo pulling into the driveway. I wasn't too worried, but I grabbed a box of Kleenex just to be safe. Edward looked fresh and clean in a new set of designer clothes that Alice no doubt picked out for him. He opened the passenger side door for me then whisked around to his side in a matter of seconds, smoothly pulling out onto the road. Much to my embarrassment, the allergy show wasn't stopping.
After about my fifth sneeze, Edward sounded concerned. "Are you feeling alright, love? You're sneezing an awful lot."
"Oh, it's just allergies. Don't worry about it," I assured him in my scratchy voice.
"You don't sound so good, either," he commented.
"Why does everyone keep saying that? I mean, I know I'm no Kelly Clarkson, but I think my voice is okay!"
"No, I just meant you sound sick," he said quickly.
"Yeah, Charlie said I might have a cold," I answered, my voice very monotone. The school was coming into view. "No biggie."
"Hey, you never know," Edward said casually. "With your luck, you've contracted some fatal case of the flu. I should probably be keeping a good eye on you."
"Oh please!" I laughed. "I may be accident prone, but I'm not that bad!"
We were getting out of the car now, shielded from the rain by coats, and me with a protective box of tissues at my side. Sure, I had the sniffles, but everything was going to be fine. Leave it to the Cullens to blow everything out of proportion.
EPOV
My angel kept sneezing all through the morning, and her tissue usage kept increasing as the day continued. By lunch time I was officially worried.
Bella sat at the lunch table with her head in her hands, moaning a little while Jasper looked repulsed. Emmett was laughing boisterously as he chased Rosalie around with some of Bella's used tissues. It would have been entirely nauseating if I wasn't so worried about my Bella. I pulled Alice aside and whispered to her my concerns.
"I'm worried about Bella," I admitted. "She was sneezing all morning, saying it was allergies."
"So what?" Alice asked. "Don't humans have allergies all the time?"
"Yes, but my car is hypoallergenic."
Alice rolled her eyes. "Really, Edward! You had to send the car back for vetting just so your girlfriend wouldn't sneeze on her way to school? That's pretty sad."
"Can you blame me? Look at her now! I hate to see her like this! And it's probably all my fault. Staying next to her all night long while my body temperature is that of a refrigerator. I knew she should have moved to Florida with her mom!"
"Edward?" Alice asked waving a hand in front of my face. "Stop blaming yourself. She's sick, she's not dying. Everyone gets sick once in a while."
"Did you say dying?"
"EDWARD!" Alice practically screamed at me. "THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH BELLA!"
"Hey, Alice?" Jasper called from his seat at the lunch table. "I think there's something wrong with Bella."
"What do you mean?" She asked as we both crowded closer to him.
"Her mood is getting exponentially worse," Jasper said matter-of-factly. "She's gone from unhappy, to unpleasant, to downright miserable in a matter of minutes!"
"What do you expect?" Bella said sharply in a croaky voice that was a mere echo of her usually beautiful, sweet serenade. "I'm sick! Of course I'm miserable!"
"No, actually," Jasper said nervously, "You're not miserable anymore. Now you're angry!"
Bella groaned and thumped her head on the table. "Bella," I said softly, rubbing my hand across her back. "Do you want to go to see Carlisle to make sure everything is okay?"
"No!" she snapped, turning her weary red eyes that matched her flaming red nose towards me. "I'm fine! It's just a cold!"
Emmett and Rosalie looked at each other then said simultaneously, "Denial. Send her to Carlisle."
Moments later I was driving pedal to the metal to Forks hospital while Alice and Rosalie were holding Bella with force in the back seat to keep her still while they pressed a hot water bottle to her forehead and held tissues under her nose.
We must have looked like a bunch of crazy people bursting through the hospital doors, Alice demanding a wheelchair for Bella while Emmett and Rosalie booked it to the cafeteria to get her a large cup of tea, and Jasper holding an ice cold hand to her forehead yelling out degrees like bingo numbers.
"She's at ninety-nine point two now, no! Ninety-nine point eight! Ninety-nine point eight!"
"Can I help you?" the confused lady at the front desk asked me, but as soon as her gaze drifted across my face her thoughts changed. Oh man, this one's a cutie! When's my next break? Would he meet me for a cup of coffee, maybe? Oh meet me for something else, perhaps…? With looks like that, I wouldn't be picky…
"Yes," I said quickly. "My girlfriend is sick, we need to see Dr. Cullen right away, please." Damn, of course he has a girlfriend. Figures.
"Dr. Cullen is in surgery right now…" she said hesitantly. "I could recommend you another doctor-"
"Tell him surgery can wait, this is important!"
"Umm, I'm not sure I can do that-" But we were already wheeling down the hall.
"Edward!" Bella's scratchy voice called to me quietly. "What on earth are you doing? You are not pulling Carlisle out of surgery for me!"
"I'm just making sure you're alright love! His surgery isn't that pressing, I'm sure," I said calmly looking in her sweet, chocolaty eyes-
She was glaring at me like there was no tomorrow. "Edward Anthony Cullen," she said quietly, the effort obviously causing her pain, "if it were physically possible for me to raise my voice right now, I would be screaming at you."
BPOV
We arrived at Carlisle's office where he was already waiting for us. "What's the emergency? Gail at the front desk said you needed to see me right away, that 'surgery could wait'?"
"Bella's sick!" All the Cullen siblings said hurriedly.
I waited for Carlisle to start flipping out that they had pulled him out of a surgical procedure for something so trivial, but instead he said in complete seriousness, "Well, let's see what's wrong, then."
Ten minutes later after every possible test relating to colds, infections, allergies, strep throat, the flu, and meningitis, I was allowed to leave the hospital. However, despite my objections, Edward and Alice wouldn't let me return home.
"Our house is much safer for someone in your condition," Alice said soothingly, but her sweetness only made me angrier."
"What condition? I'm sick! I'm not mental! It's just a cold!"
"And colds can be highly contagious," Rosalie pointed out. "We can't have you infecting the entire population of Forks, which wouldn't take long. About a day, really," she added, counting imaginary numbers on her fingers as she calculated the infection rate in the small town.
"Exactly," Alice said firmly. "You would infect everyone within hours and the entire population of Forks would cease to exist as we know it. Bye-bye Charlie, nice knowing you Angela, good riddance Mike-"
"I find this exceedingly hard to believe," I said. Alice raised her eyebrows.
"Are you really going to bet against Alice?" Emmett asked suspiciously. I sighed and decided it would be better for my health and sanity if I stayed quiet for the rest of the trip.
We arrived at the Cullen house and Edward whisked me inside and up into a spare bedroom that I had never seen before, fitted to look a lot like a hospital room with an inclining bed, bleach white sheets, and even the boring mass-market artwork, framed and hung on the wall.
"Don't worry," Alice said, like I had been worrying. "Everything in this room has been sterilized." Yippee.
Beautiful Esme danced into the room. "What's going on? Why is everyone in the hospital room, and why is Bella's face all red?"
"Bella's sick," all the teenagers said again. I sighed and collapsed back onto the pile of pillows on the bed.
"Oh no! Really? Well, I'll get some soup going! And some tea! And some other home remedies, I can think of a few…" And she hurried out of the room. Seconds later, pots and pans from the kitchen alerted me that Esme was on a cooking spree. I knew that whatever she made would probably have too much salt, or just a tad too much sugar, but it was the thought that counted. Hopefully Esme would be stable minded enough not to go overboard on the whole "Bella's sick" thing, right?
A few minutes later, Esme and Emmett, whom she had recruited for help, walked into the room with two trays full of soup, tea, hot chocolate, something in a mug that smelled like grapefruit, and entire jar of honey, what looked like cloves of raw garlic, a jug of orange juice, a bottle of ginger ale, and a thing of hydrogen peroxide next to an ear dropper.
"Oh God, not you too," I whimpered as they set the trays onto the bed and Esme started force feeding me boiling hot soup that was, in fact, too salty. Then, Emmett took great pride in yelling, "Chug! Chug! Chug!" While I downed what I could of the orange juice. By then, I couldn't feel my tongue and my throat was burning from the orange juice's acid.
"Alright, now, this is a home remedy from a guy in Baltimore," Rosalie read off a piece of paper she pulled from the printer of a laptop computer Alice had set up in the room. "He says that when he has a cold, he chews on a raw piece of garlic and tries to suck the maximum amount of juice out before spitting out the rinds. Sure to cure any cold in four to twelve hours."
"Garlic? Are you crazy?" Jasper exclaimed, backing away from the cloves Rosalie was holding as she walked ominously towards me.
"I thought vampires hated garlic," I said unsure of the scary looking vegetable myself. When my mother taught me how to cook she had one rule about garlic: always cook it in butter. That was it, the main part of the phrase being, of course, COOK IT.
"We do!" Jasper exclaimed, just as Rosalie said, "Only the sissy ones do." Jasper crawled into the corner of the room and glared at Rosalie and she continued waving the bulbs of garlic by their stems like a pendulum.
"Garlic doesn't harm vampires, it just makes human blood smell really bad, which yours already does, so no problem there!" Rosalie said cheerfully, sure to get her snide remark for the day in somewhere.
Edward growled. "How can we trust this 'guy from Baltimore'? What if he's trying to poison Bella?"
"Seeing as he doesn't know her from Adam, I highly doubt he wants to poison her!" Rosalie laughed.
"Okay, rephrasing the question; How do I know you aren't trying to poison her?" Edward asked again.
"Oh please, Mr. Mind Reader! You're gonna doubt me now?" Rosalie cried out, accidentally flinging the bulbs of garlic out the open window. Jasper and Alice watched them fall to the ground below.
"Well, looks like that plan went out the window," Emmett laughed.
"Next!" Jasper said cheerfully.
"We're going to have organic garlic growing next year!" Alice chirped.
In the meantime, Esme had given me a never-ending supply of throat lozenges and made me stick out my tongue every two minutes to see if I was ready for the next one. It was all manically boring and embarrassing.
Alice was back on the laptop, browsing one of her favorite online-shopping pages. After I failed to pronounce a mumbled question, Alice gave me a confused look.
"Bella, I speak many languages, but mumble-mumble-groan-groan is not one of them. Please enunciate."
I spit out my cough drop. "Alice, do not tell me you're shopping for, I don't know, 'what to wear when you feel crappy,' clothes."
"No, believe me, you already have that covered," she said snippily, glaring at my sweats and t-shirt. "I'm looking for a neti pot."
"A WHAT?"
"A neti pot! It's a tool to help clear the nasal passages! It originated in India, but it's commercial uses have greatly increased in the past couple years-"
"Oh yes! I saw it on Oprah!" Jasper added animatedly. Everyone in the room turned to stare at him. "What? I like watching Oprah… and Dr. Phil…"
"Emo," Rosalie and Emmett said simultaneously, causing Jasper to huff in exasperation and walk out of the room.
"Have we even thought to take her temperature?" Emmett asked. "What if she has a fever?"
Just then, a loud commotion downstairs caught everyone's attention. All the vampires were suddenly at alert and most of them were wrinkling their noses. I strained my mere human hearing to try and decipher the voices downstairs.
"What do you mean I can't see her? Like hell I can't! If Bella's sick I'm gonna be there! How do I know you leeches aren't preparing her on a spit for the second she stop breathing, huh? If she wants to see me-"
The door to the room burst open and Jacob Black and Jasper fell onto the floor wrestling while Jacob tried desperately to stand up.
"-then I'm gonna be there for her!" With a final groan, my werewolf best friend shoved Jasper off of him and stood up, dusting on his cut-off jeans. "After all, I did promise her." He smiled my favorite wolfy grin and waltzed over to sit on the end of the bed. "How's it going Bells?"
My face lit up as I smiled back at him. "Fine-" I wheezed a cough. "It's just a cold. They're all overreacting."
"Overreacting? How so?" He asked sarcastically, looking around at the shelves of medicine that surrounded me, the heart monitor, and the boxes of tissues, not to mention the crate that was full to the brim with throat lozenges that Esme was still feeding to me continuously.
"Oh, gee, I don't know…"
"Bella, love," Edward sang to me, staring at me with his warm, amber eyes, making my heart melt into a pool, "Can you hardly blame me for worrying about you?"
"Cool it Romeo," Jacob said briskly. "She's not dead yet."
"That's quite the comment coming from you, dog. What's your temp running these days, huh? One-oh-eight? One-oh-nine?"
"One-fifteen, actually," Jake said proudly. "Thanks for asking. What if she was feeling on the cool side, did you think of that, iceman?"
"We have plenty of electric blankets, thanks to my shopaholic sister, that would have done the job sufficiently," Edward replied sharply through gritted teeth.
"But none so attractive and loveable as me!" Jacob smiled. I giggled and Edward continued to frown. "So how are ya, Bells? Feeling a little chilly? Want me to heat things up for ya?"
"She's fine!" Edward barked just as I wheezed, "Yes!"
Edward blinked. "What? Are you serious?"
"Hey, if you're going to force me into this ridiculous set up then I have the right to be as a big a prima dona as I want! Get over here, Jake. How have you been?"
While Jake and I cuddled up and caught up with each other, I swore I could hear the snide remarks from the girls.
Alice rolled her eyes and turned back towards the laptop. "Worst dressed werewolf in La Push…"
Rosalie "humped!" and walked out of the room with Jasper. "Come on, Jazz, I tivoed The View this morning…" I distinctly heard her as she walked down the hall, "So selfish! The whole world has to revolve around her…"
Umm, ouch.
Jake helped himself to one of the grapefruits that Esme had brought up on my invalid tray and chugged down half the bottle of ginger ale. "La Push has been pretty quiet lately. You know the drill: eat, sleep, wake up ten minutes later to do patrols, go to school, fall asleep in school, come home, kick Paul and Embry out of my house, eat, go the Embry's to eat more, ride my bike… it's pretty standard."
"Yeah life here's been… pretty much the same too," I said in my breathless voice. Not breathless from excitement or amour, but from the excessive amount of phlegm in my chest. Yeah, cute.
Edward groaned. "Alice, how much longer do we have to put up with this?"
Alice turned away from the laptop screen, staring hazily into the future. Suddenly, she gasped and looked at me with complete fear.
APOV
I saw Carlisle's hand running over a piece of paper he pulled out of the printer in his office, and two words stood out to me.
Suddenly I was back in our house, staring at Bella and Jake sitting on the hospital bed, and Edward looking at me with a worried expression.
"She has Dengue Fever!" I exclaimed.
"What?" Bella gasped.
"I can't even pronounce that!" Jake cried.
"That's… not possible," Edward said slowly, his brows furrowed.
"You saw the vision just as well as I did! The paper Carlisle held said Dengue Fever!"
"I do not have dengue fever," Bella said, shaking her head.
Emmett was already at the laptop, Googling it. "Do you have severe head aches? Muscle and joint pain?"
"No," Bella said sharply.
"Fever?"
"No, she's cool," Jake said, putting the back of his hand against her forehead.
"Abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting?"
"Nope!" Bella said cheerfully.
"Diarrhea?"
"God no!" Bella exclaimed, her cheeks red with embarrassment. Esme leaned over Emmett's shoulder and read off the screen.
"Emmett, it says that the most obvious symptom of the fever is the dengue rash, silly! Bella, have you found a rash anywhere on your lower limbs or your chest?"
She glared at the three of us and Edward cough quietly. "I don't have to be able to read her mind to know that expression means 'no'."
"It's too bad, Bella," Emmett said, looking back at the laptop and scrolling down the screen. "It says that dengue fever only lasts for six to seven days."
"Wait," Esme said with concern in her voice as she browsed farther down the page. "It says that dengue fever is often confused for… influenza."
Everyone held their breath and whipped around to stare at Edward, who, if it was possible, looked paler.
"No! She can't!"
"What?" Jacob asked, looking between all of us with clear confusion. "What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing at all really," I said, "Except that the Spanish influenza is what KILLED Edward!"
"It didn't kill me!" Edward yelled.
"And killed his whole family as well," Esme added.
"I said it didn't kill me!"
"It was an epidemic that killed millions of people between 1918 and 1920," Emmett continued.
"For the last time, it didn't KILL ME!" Edward screamed, jumping out of his corner, startling all of us. "It just nearly killed me," he continued with calmer composure. "I didn't die, and neither will Bella!"
A vision flashed into my mind, one that I had been familiar with for the past few months. Bella, but a different Bella. Bella with pale skin, icy cold, and hard as diamond, and blood red eyes that were fading to amber with time… time that was exceedingly abundant, because Bella was no longer aging…
"You're going to change her to save her?" I asked, surprised even, that my stubborn brother would finally see reason.
"If it's the only way I could save her," he said calmly, "And if it's what she wants-"
"Yes!" Bella squealed, pushing herself away from Jacob and leaping into Edward's arms. "Yes yes yes!"
"I think that means yes," Emmett whispered in my ear, but he was interrupted by Jacob who had stood up, his whole body trembling.
"Are you serious?" He yelled, his eyes livid as he tried to control the fury. "You'll take away her life, just like that? You people are sick!"
"Umm, key word, Jacob? Save her, not kill her!" I called out, waving my hand in front of his stressed eyes. Of course, my hand couldn't reach up to even his shoulder, but that was besides the point.
"Completely disregard the treaty, start a war-" he continued, still trembling.
"Do you want her to die?" Edward yelled, putting Bella down and shielding her from the danger that was just in front of her. "Believe me, this is the last thing I want to do, but I would walk to the end of the earth and back if I thought there was another way to save her! If we knew there was no other way-"
Jacob and Edward were melting into some kind of sympathy hug as they both trembled for the girl they both loved, fearing her ultimate demise.
"No," Jacob finally agreed. "She can't die." He wiped a few tears from his dark cheeks. "As Ephraim Black's heir, I give you permission to break the treaty, to save Bella." He and Edward looked at each other one last time, then finally shared a manly hug of compassion.
"What is going on up here?" Jasper said, poking his head through the door. "The emotions are crazy-" He saw Edward and Jake in their awkward embrace and said, "Nevermind… I'll just go back downstairs…"
"Umm, can I say something?" Bella asked tentatively. Edward and Jake were too busy making preparations.
"Should we give her some morphine first?" Edward asked, racking through the drawers of medical supplies.
"Won't she want to say goodbye to Charlie first?" Jake asked, clearly still a little emotional.
"Can I please say something?" Bella said again, a little louder this time, but still quiet, due to her shortened breathing.
Jacob was breaking down in the middle of the room. Edward placed a supportive hand on his shoulder.
"I just love her so much-" Jacob sobbed.
"We both do," Edward said with great strain, barely above a whisper.
Bella jumped up on top of the bed and said at the top of her voice. "CAN I PLEASE SAY SOMETHING?"
Just then, the door flew open and Carlisle walked in. "Honey, I'm home! Emse? Jacob? Son, what are you doing here? Edward? Why are you crying? And Bella, why are you standing on top of the bed?"
I took a deep breath to explain all that was occurring to my very confused adopted-father. "Jacob is here because he heard Bella was sick, so he beat up Jasper to cuddle with Bella, Edward is crying because Jacob finally agreed to let him change Bella to save her life, and Bella's standing on the bed because she's trying to tell all of us that she doesn't think she has the Spanish Influenza."
"Well of course she doesn't have influenza," Carlisle said matter-of-factly, setting his briefcase down and taking off his coat. "She has a cold, just like I thought this morning."
"Just a cold?" Edward repeated, his hand falling away from Jacob's shoulder.
"Just a cold?" Jacob asked, his trembling at a complete standstill.
Emmett was laughing too hard to speak.
Esme was breathing a sigh of relief.
"Well, I told you it was just a cold," Bella said, lying back down on the bed and flipping on the television in annoyance, "But no one ever listens to me! Freakin' know-it-all vampires…"
"What about the Dengue Fever?" I asked, confused. "I saw you reading about the Dengue Fever!"
"Yes, we had a patient who was diagnosed with dengue fever today. She had a rash on her chest, it was a fairly obvious diagnosis… However, Bella, here, just has a case of the common cold. Get some sleep, drink some fluids, and you'll be fine by tomorrow. I can give you some medication that should help clear your throat and nasal passages."
His calm attitude did nothing to cool the tension that had arisen in the room. Bella looked like she was about to attack me, Emmett was ready to jump on top of Edward, who was moving closer and closer to Jacob with an evil glint in his eye, and Jake looked ready to kill us all.
"You said dengue fever-" Bella was saying slowly and deliberately while edging herself off the bed.
"I'm getting out of this leech nest," Jacob said quickly, fear creeping into his voice. "By the way, previous statements made about the treaty today are null and void! Don't go starting any wars! Peace out!" Jake raced out of the room as fast as his werewolf speed could take him, with Emmett and Edward fast on his heels. From the sounds of it, Jasper joined the race when it hit the living room, and the front door slammed seconds later as the parade made its way outside.
"Boys," Esme said, shaking her head. She coaxed Bella into lying back down on the bed and spoke to her in a soothing voice until she fell asleep. I was much too worked up to anything but shop, so I sat down at the laptop and did what I did best.
BPOV
I woke up the next morning in my own bed. My breathing was clear again and I wasn't any colder than usual. Edward kissed my head before he left via the window. I took a deep breath of the cool, damp, morning air. Everything felt completely normal. Like I said, leave it to the Cullens to throw something totally out of proportion.
Moral of the story is... aren't we glad that we aren't Bella so that crazy stuff like this doesn't happen to us when we get a cold? Honk if you love Twilight and hate colds! Or just review, it gets the same effect :)