*Obviously we are not the owners of Twilight ... it clearly owns us. =)

*oh and the chapter titles are inspired by amazing songs. this one is Where Dreams Go To Die by The Downtown Fiction

What else was I supposed to do? What else could I do besides stare deep into those eyes? Those beautiful emeralds that haunted his face like a ghost clinging onto its last chance at life, because that was exactly what he was doing.

I watched him struggle and scream. "No! Please! No!" his angelic voice shouted again and again. I wanted to help him, to cry out "please" with him, but I couldn't do that. He had been brought here to lose whatever sanity he had, despite all the efforts of doctors, just like all the others I had seen. We just wanted the best for them, and we pretend like we know what that is, but we never do. Now that he was here, there was no escape. But as much as I wanted to believe that there was something more in those green gems, I knew that he was just another patient and I was just another nurse.

"Isabella!" I tore my gaze away to look at the men holding the new patient. "Get Dr. Cullen; the patient needs to be sedated," Tyler, a burly man who was at the moment restraining the patient's left arm while another man was holding the right, said frustrated. I nodded curtly, pressing a button on the pager hanging on my hip. Waiting for Dr. Cullen, I watched Mike and Tyler attempt to lay this patient onto the white couch.

What was his name? I couldn't help but let the question creep upon me. We referred to him as "the patient." He wasn't just a patient, he was a person, he had a name.

Dr. Cullen strode into the room calmly. He was holding a clipboard and was followed by a nurse. The nurse, Angela, who was wearing the same white scrubs as me, held a large syringe. I cringed seeing the needle, I always did even when it was me who was holding it. "Hello, Edward." Dr. Cullen had read it off the clipboard with a soothing smile on his face. Edward. It suited him. It was elegant and proper. I could imagine him in a collared shirt, hair combed, features colored with concentration as he wrote with a pen. Even with his forced on grey shirt, bronze locks tousled, face distorted with screams as he kicked and yelled, he could be an Edward.

"Please! No!" I had heard Edward say it so many times now. How could I get used to that? His words felt like a matchbox, I was the match. With each strike, with each word, I felt as though someone had set me on fire. I had no idea why, but his pained cries tore me up inside. Angela was pressing the needle into Edward's arm by now, plunging the medicine into him. I waited for him to stop thrashing under the men's grasp; eventually he did. His eyes glazed over and Dr. Cullen let out a sigh of relief along with a weary smile.

"May I see?" I asked, reaching out for the clipboard. Dr. Cullen chuckled at my curiosity, but handed it to me. It was a very common ailment he had: Schizophrenia. He was Edward Anthony Masen, born in Chicago, age twenty-two. I frowned as I read on. He had been accepted to a medical school in California, he was going to be a doctor just like Dr. Cullen. It was a constant enigma to me why anyone would strive to be around people who constantly called out to the dead, heard hidden voices, and... couldn't grasp reality. The confusion I felt towards the desire to help the deranged included me as well. I just got so tired of the sadness and the hopelessness I wondered why I continued on here.

I tried to blink back the tears, harshly handing the clipboard back to Carlisle.

I rushed through the halls, seeing nothing, like usual, but open doors and blank faces in white rooms. There was sometimes the occasional yell or cry, but nothing too loud. It seemed like this is how it always had been, lost people, lonely corridors, and silent everything. It had been exactly the same for two years. Why did this destination always seem so far away? Though I could finally see the door near the end of the hall. "Emmett?" I called lightly, peering into the room.

My brother sat on the single bed in his room, the sheets another shade of grey. It seemed everything here at Volturi Mental Institution was grey and lifeless; including my poor big brother. It felt like I had lost him a lifetime ago. When he lost Rosalie, he had lost everything. Emmett smiled at me. "Bella, my angel's here again." His voice was filled with genuine happiness.

About three years ago, Emmett unfortunately witnessed his fiancée and childhood sweetheart Rosalie Hale mercilessly beaten by a man named Royce King. Royce saw Rosalie first when she began working in the same law office as him. At once, he knew he wanted her, but Rosalie was in love with Emmett. Royce, knowing he couldn't have Rosalie, wanted to make sure no one else would either. Wondering why Rosalie was taking so long at work, a worried Emmett went to her office to see her bloody on the floor. Royce stood over her. Emmett stared at her unmoving body, it could have been years to him before he heard sirens, footsteps and voices. The last thing he heard was a stranger's voice, most likely the paramedic, "I can't find a pulse!" That was when Emmett blacked out.

Hours later, I took him to see Rosalie. As he peered into the hospital bed, he said quietly, "My angel." Instead of the sight of Rosalie's broken limbs, bruised face, and heavy machinery all around her, he saw his angel in perfect condition. He didn't hear my worried words or the constant beeping of her monitored heartbeat, he heard his angel speaking in a beautiful voice, just as she always had and always would.

Rosalie had survived the excruciating pain Royce had caused, but Emmett had not. He continued to believe that his love was dead and appeared to him as his angel. I desperately tried to explain to him that Rosalie hadn't died. Even Rosalie, after awakening from her comma couldn't persuade her fiancée that she was alive. After months of psychiatric visits and pointless words trying to convince him of Rosalie's existence, he was diagnosed with a case of posttraumatic stress disorder and was admitted to Volturi Mental Institution. He had been there, in room 216, for the past nineteen months.

In desperate need to help my brother, I dropped my life. I walked away from school, work, and friends. I had originally planned to be an English teacher. I was just starting out at the University of Washington when Emmett was in need of serious professional help. More than what I could ever provide. The only family I had was Emmett and after him caring for me and protecting me for twenty years, it was my turn. I owed it to him. So there I was, working a job that literally had me crying myself to sleep most nights, just so that I could be there for my brother like he had been there for me my entire life. It wasn't just Emmett that affected me there at VMI it was mostly how it seemed as though happiness was unobtainable. I only saw two people "recover" during my past year working here. Both Tanya and Alice didn't leave with smiles on their faces, but at least they left. They were "cured" of their delusions and could function in society…or so was the assumption. I never really found out if they succeeded in life after VMI. I only hoped that they did. For their success could be Emmett's as well.

"Hi, Bella," I heard Rosalie say, her words shaking me back to reality. I smiled at her.

"Hi, Rose. I didn't see you there." She was so beautiful. I could see how Emmett mistook her for an angel, with her blonde locks, violet-blue eyes, and perfectly tanned skin. Even when Emmett thought she was dead, she was his everything.

"Do I have to leave now?" she asked and I could hear the trembling sadness in her voice. I shook my head.

"Not yet." She looked at Emmett with watery eyes and a small smile. He gave her his trademark grin and she laughed quietly, reaching out to hold his large hand. He hadn't heard her talking to me, he only heard some of what she said. She looked so fragile next to him. Emmett was tall and muscular with a shock of curly black hair and soft hazel brown eyes. Everyone seemed to look like a breakable glass doll near him. I stood there feeling so out of place as Emmett reached across his bed to tenderly grab Rose by the waist and slide her directly next to him because apparently where she was sitting next to his feet was too far. She was now pressed against Emmett's side, his arm still around her slender waist. I saw the tears freely falling down her face as she rested her head against his broad shoulder. It hurt her so much to see Emmett like this, but she loved him too much to stay away. Emmett never noticed it when she cried, he always saw his smiling angel.

When I first joined the staff at VMI, I thought I could help. I would smile at patients, denying the fact that they would never smile back. I would talk to them, not caring that my words seemed to go right past them. I did everything that I thought would help. But that all changed.

A year ago, I was assigned to a patient with multiple personaliaty disorder. There was no forgetting Jessica… or Lauren… or all the others she thought she was. I had talked to her everyday for three months; I had begun to think of her as a friend, for she actually spoke to me unlike so many others. Our smiles, our words, our friendship, I thought it was all helping her. I thought she would finally leave VMI. One night, after the doctors and nurses had gone home, and the patients were asleep, she left her room. All patients were forbidden to ever leave their room alone, but Jessica didn't care. She had slipped through the quiet halls, avoiding men like Tyler and Mike lurking about.

The next morning, Jessica Stanley was dead on the white tile floor of the kitchen, a bloody knife in her hand. I had found her. Our smiles, our words, our friendship: it was nothing to her. Everything we did for our patients, every act of kindness, and all the days we thought we had spent helping were nothing to any of them. No one understood what we tried to do for them.

I spent my first year at the Volturi Mental Institution with hope that I could cure. The second year, I did what I was told, but knew that it didn't matter, and it never would. I had given up; and maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was good that the hope I had wasn't attacked by lack of success in patients. I tried to convince myself that I didn't care, and if I didn't care it wouldn't hurt, but I could never fool myself. I saw Emmett in all of their lifeless faces, even though Emmett was anything but lifeless. Emmett was the only reason I pushed my self to stay. I couldn't abandon him, not even if I tried.

I shut the door with a timid click and continued down the hall. Every once in a while I would stick my head into a room, just to see another blank expression that I would answer with a forced smile and an even more forced perky greeting involving the weather or how good they looked today, though usually both were dismal and gray looking.

"Nurse Swan to room 218. Nurse Swan room 218." The voice called through the speaker system throughout the hospital. Thankfully I was close by and the walk to the room was short. The door was wide open and I could hear a calm, soothing voice emanating from within before I stepped inside.

"So Edward I think that's everything. I will see you tomorrow for our first session. If you have any questions you can ask Isabella. She is usually on this floor so she will be around if the need arises." I never could fathom how Dr. Cullen continued to speak to these patients as if they understood every word he said. He never lost hope that they would recover. Dr. Cullen turned around and gave me a warm smile which I returned with a little less enthusiasm than he offered then he left the room.

"Hi Edward. I'm Isabella." I started to say but as he looked at me with those perfectly green eyes I stopped midthought. His eyes drew me in, but I could'nt help but notice his strong jawline and soft lips. Paired with his odd colored hair, he really was a beautiful man. I could feel the blush color my face as I realized I had been staring. He smirked as if he knew I was totally ogling him.

"Hey." He responded cooly, smirk still in place.

"I uh-" professionalism took hold and I snapped out of my gorgeous man induced trance. "I'm here if you need anything. Actually my brother's room is right across from yours so if you can't find me I'm usually there. If not just use the phone over there and page me." I pointed to the simple phone mounted on the wall that allowed patients to call the nurses or the doctors. "it will connect you to the front desk and just ask for me. She will connect you. If it's an emergency-"

"Yeah I know, press the red button. Dr. Cullen already went over this with me. I'll be fine. You can leave. But if you ever want to check me out again I'll be here." And with that he snickered and went to lay down on his bed with his hands placed behind his head.

With no better retaliation coming to mind I just huffed – yes huffed like a spoiled little girl- and turned on my heel and left. I went to sit at my station at the end of the hall, my encounter with Edward still replaying in my head. If it was any other patient I would've written off his snarky comment as part of his disease, but something in his face threw me off. It was filled with life, and a sense of awareness that I have not seen on anyone inside this building, other than the other nurses and doctors of course. I shook my head and decided to let it go. Maybe Edward just hadn't lived in his own personal hell long enough. Soon, I told myself, he will be just like everybody else here: diluted by medications and devoid of vitality or personality.

AN:

so this is a story written by MrsMartinJohnson and her amazing older sister, schmerinmarie (i'm on twilighted).

schmerin: so sister what you gotta say bout our ... emo baby?

MMJ: i think its depressing man. why are we so emo?

schmerin: i dont know. but its not gonna be emo forever tho. remember that.

MMJ: true that.

schmerin: hopefully people will read this... the world needs more angst anyway.

MMJ: they will. oh they will. and they will REVIEW! lol =)