Full Summary: A beautiful, bipolar art student has slipped beneath the blanket of abuse. Miles away, a gifted clinical depressive with a Botticelli face is battling his own demons. One night, they are both rushed to Seattle Hospital's emergency room. By some dark miracle, they end up in the same ICU room, broken and shattered at the spokes. Can these two strangers piece each other back together or continue to live in silence? ExB, AH. Dark.
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight
"If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well." – Rainer Marie Rilke
I smile to myself, invigorated by my atmosphere. The Seattle wind nips at my cheeks, planting freezing kisses all over. When I giddily sprint up the steps to the apartment, a euphoric sensation envelops me. Giggling incessantly, I wrap my coat tighter around my body and allow the hypomania to spread. I'm coming off a hypomanic episode, the rush of my surroundings elevating me to a new type of high. Maybe I'll paint tonight, set up a new canvas, inspired by my night. Rose's shrill giggle continues to erupt in my mind as I jiggle the front door and skip into the elevator. I punch button number five, and to my unnecessary delight, it glows a low orange. The elevator music elevates both my mood and myself as I brainstorm possible themes to paint. The ding of my arrival sends me flying toward my door, but on my side is lightness, on the other side, darkness. The problem with hypomania is the absence of remembrance.
"Where the fuck have you been?" He yanks my scarf, sending me reeling into the darkness. The door is slammed behind us, all light escaping - my episode of hypomania with it. He jerks me forward and all bets are off. His breath pools with smoke, its heat enveloping my face. It's thick, reeking with an edge of sweet, oozing alcohol. The Brandy and Marlboros creep up my nose, my pores and my eyes. They water.
"I was with Rosalie." I whimper, the miniscule sound dropping between us, dropping as if it had never existed, leaving no trace. Jacob curls his fingers around the back of my neck, the tips pressing hard against a mark the size of my thumb. As his forefinger digs into my bruise, I cringe.
"What?" He spits, his eyes pools of black fury. No longer a shade of brown, they swim with apathy, anger and non-sobriety – the shade I've come to frequently see. I stare, caked in fear, into those coal eyes. I jumped in long ago, and now I'm drowning. Drowning without a savior in these black pools. "Talk to me." His smoky breath stings the rims of my eyes, instigating a filmy layer of tears.
"It was… a girls night…" I begin to sob and he yanks my right arm, gripping it until those fingers bore into bone and my spirit.
"Stop fucking crying. You always cry. Take your goddamn medication." He barks, and grips me harder. The pressure against my arm instigates slight pain, resurrecting the topography of bruises trailing my arm. Old battle wounds come to rise on another battlefield of drunken fury.
"I did." My tears and emotions spill down my cheeks, my psychologically tainted brain nearing the peak of hysteria.
"I told you to stop crying." He roars and retracts his hand to strike me across the face. My neck snaps back, my head recoiling from the blow as my skull cracks against the white wall. The force causes the walls to shiver, maybe from what it has witnessed this past year. A picture frame trembles before falling from the nail and shattering into a hundred, glittering pieces. I stare, vision blurred, hot tears streaming down my cheeks, at the broken pile of beauty. I feel pity for the broken frame, pity that the glass lies on the floor, shattered. Pity that the damage is beyond repairing. Pity that we are exactly the same.
"Look what you did." Jacob rages and slams me against the wall. It shivers once more. I squeeze my eyes shut and escape. Another smack - sing an internal song, Bella. Another punch - think of sunshine, Bella. Another blow - think of happiness, Bella. Outside these walls, nobody knows. Think of anything, Bella. Anything.
"Bella," Rosalie snaps her fingers in my face. "Wake up." Her sparkling blue eyes crackle in front of me, so alive in comparison to Jacob's deadened pools of rage.
"I am awake." I pull my jacket tighter against my chest.
"No, you're not." She gazes at me solemnly. I stare hard at my best friend, daring her to place her finger on it. Daring her to unravel my dark cryptology. She blinks once and slowly reaches into her purse to fish out her pack of cigarettes.
"I'm fine." The lie slips easily through my teeth, just as it repeatedly has over the past year. She narrows her eyes at me before gently placing a cigarette between her perfect lips. It pokes out the side of her mouth, the September breeze nipping at our faces.
"Is it your medication?" She finally issues as her thumb strikes the wheel of the green lighter. There's a click but no flame.
"Yes," I lie once more. She attempts the lighter again, and this time, the end of her cigarette burns. "It's been giving me headaches." She exhales smoke lazily, but it's blown away by the biting wind. I cross my arms to brace the cold, but wince as I inadvertently press against the moderately sized bruise on my chest.
"Get a new prescription." Rose suggests and blows a small stream of smoke up into the bleak sky.
"Maybe I will." I murmur, but the words float away with the wind. Beyond our park bench, there are two young girls playing in a red sandbox. One, a rosy-cheeked girl with blonde pigtails waves her plastic shovel in the air. The other, her comrade, peals in giggles as her brunette ponytail bobs up and down.
"That was like us." My best friend says softly. I can feel her concerned gaze on me as the marks on my body throb. What have I become? My body, a canvas, has been painted black and blue by an artist of rage. I close my eyes.
"It was." I sift through the memories of my childhood, my innocence. I can't recall the last time I wore anything revealing my limbs. I watch in envy as the carefree brunette in the sandbox rolls up her checkered sleeves to receive a bucket of sand from her friend.
"Bella…" Rose flicks the end of her cigarette. ""You can tell me anything. You know that." I turn to stare at my best friend and dare her to decode me once more. The bruise underneath my jaw line is beginning to fade, but I feel her sparkling eyes bore into it. I'm clumsy. She buys this excuse every time. Dread creeps up my body as there is silence, and I wonder if she's decoded my secret at long last.
"Today is your birthday." She finally whispers sadly and I am rammed. Enlightened, in fact. After swimming in a pool of darkness, you begin to lose notion of birthdays and petty things not pertaining to preventing a right hook or an uppercut. Today, courtesy of Rose's noting, is my twenty-first birthday. If I had turned 21 a year ago, I would go out with my girl friends. I would wear a pretty dress with pretty shoes. I would drink until I had to get my stomach pumped. My eyes would sparkle like Rosalie's and the girls in the sandbox.
"Oh." I feel tears well up in my eyes. Damn it.
"You forgot, didn't you? Oh, Bells, don't cry. Don't worry. Don't you worry one bit about forgetting, okay?" She stubs out her cigarette and wraps her slender arms around my neck. I sniffle and nod. She thinks it's my bipolar disorder, that I'm some psychologically imbalanced, artistic outcast. What she doesn't know, along with everyone else, is that it's because of him. Him.
"Let's go out tonight, okay? Just you and me, it'll be a girls night on the town. You're twenty-one!" She chippers into my ear, but Jacob's face of anger, his black eyes, flash through my mind and I tense.
"I don't… know…" I trail.
"Oh, come on. Just one night. I never see you anymore. You can see Jacob after – I won't bring Emmett… It'll just be us." I think of Emmett, the burly, teddybear boyfriend Rose has claimed. He sparks with life too, always cracking jokes and grinning that signature grin. He and Rose are healthy, both of them my best friends outside of Jacob's white walls.
"I really have to ask Jake." I bite my lip.
"Why? What's he going to do?" She scowls. Anything from a shove to a soccer punt, I think. "Please, Bella. I never see you anymore." Rosalie begs. I lightly curl my fingers around her slim arm and for a flash of time, I somehow think this will give me back my old life. Watching sappy films, stuffing our faces with popcorn and packing the occasional sixer was the extent of our weekends. Now? The only thing I have time for is drowning.
"I'll just leave him a message…" I squeeze my eyes shut and a wave of potential repercussions washes through my mind.
"That's the Bella I know."
"Look at me," Jacob clenches my jaw with his palm. I gaze into his black eyes, crying all the while. "And stop crying." His words sting caustically, causing my eyes to overflow even more.
"I can't." I squeeze them shut.
"Then tell me something." He growls and slams my head against the wall for a third time. I tremble from the impact, my eyes still closed. "Why are you so fucking worthless?" I inhale and exhale calmly, albeit the severity of my quivering.
"I'm not worthless." I finally whisper, exasperated.
"What'd you say?" He slurs and releases my jaw. I grasp it, my burning skin hot against my fingers. "Are you disrespecting me?"
"No," I open my eyes to find his lip curled back. "I –" But his hand strikes my face once more. My left eyebrow burns as the swelling instigates, my fingers instinctively trying to cover the hurt.
"Shut up, Bella. You're fucked up. I don't know why I'm with you." Something within me snaps and I'm enveloped in boiling fury. I'm suddenly so exhausted, so exhausted from equaling close to nothing in his dark apartment. I shove, hard, against his chest.
"Good, because I'm leaving you. And I mean it this time." I choke through my tears and slap at him. His fist reaches my eye the moment my palm falls. Packed with more force than the slaps, I reel backward and the majority of my left shoulder blade absorbs the brunt from the wall. I yelp.
"If you leave me, I will kill you." He threatens, the alcoholic breath heating my swollen eye even further. It crusts shut and I slink toward the eastern side of the room.
"You say that every time." I shriek through my tears and feel my way across the wall.
"And this time, I mean it." He roars and sloppily stumbles after me.
"I'm calling the police." I counter hysterically and push off the wall, running toward the center of room. Heightened by a sense of urgency, I cry to myself as I pray that I'll somehow find the portable phone.
"Get back here." He attempts to run but slams into the backside of the sofa. Jacob slips on the hardwood floors, crashing onto his side but scrambling up just as quickly. I sprint, my left hand clutching my face. I reach the side table and outstretch my right hand for the phone before I'm caught. He yanks my hair, pulling me backward and flinging me onto the floor.
"You crazy bitch," He roars and the bottom of his foot cracks against my ribs. I curl up instinctively and squeeze my eyes shut. "You're so unstable. Don't be irrational, Bella. We just know it's because you're mental." He grunts as his foot maintains a pattern. I cry silently, in the dark, as my eyes stay closed. Everything becomes blurred, and as I quasi-comatosely flutter my eyes open, my world is distorted and surreal as my entire body succumbs to Jacob's blows. I float in and out, catatonically, crying and trying to piece together if I'm dead or alive at this point. Maybe I really am drowning.
There is a window of time where I forget what happens. I don't remember when I started to cough up blood, nor do I remember when I forgot the rhythm of his blows against me. I don't remember when, who or how the police were called. I don't remember them cuffing a muttering Jacob, nor do I remember Rosalie holding me, crying. I don't remember the blue and red of the sirens, or them strapping me onto a gurney. I don't remember the crowds of people on the street, staring, their hands over their mouths. Nor do I remember the ambulance paramedic dabbing at her eyes as she stared at what he had done. During this window of time, I drift in and out of reality.
"Wake up, Bella." Rose said earlier today at the park.
"Shut up, Bella." Jacob roars in my head.
"Wake up, Bella." A disconnected voice floats through my head as my eyes struggle for consciousness. For a second, I witness hospital surroundings pass in a blur as I'm wheeled away on the gurney. Faces hover, all blurred, all unknown. And then I go under again. I float, wondering if I'm still on Earth or somewhere else.
"She needs surgery, Doctor." Another voice wafts through my disconnected atmosphere and I am suddenly surrounded by buzzing; the voices, the sounds of the hovering faces. I wouldn't call it darkness. Colors explode: cerulean, magenta, neon yellow and orange as I continue to float somewhere in the land of surrealism. My eyes crack open once more, for just enough time to see them place a respirator over my face.
"We'll fix you. " A middle-aged nurse promises softly as my half-opened eye meets her gaze. No, you can't, a voice from within sighs. I fall back under. There are so many moments where lucidity completely escapes me. In the land of surrealism, a plethora of thoughts ram me. Round one of my distorted thoughts is Jacob approaching me a year ago, his eyes brown and crinkled. Bella, don't be afraid. He smiles lovingly and holds his palm out. That autumn afternoon, at the sidewalk café, I took his hand. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, and as he squeezed my hand, he smiled, the September wind ruffling his dark locks. I don't know what you'd do if you left me, he assuages. And for a fraction of a second, I wonder if this is truly the man who hurt to my exhausted disappointment, his eyes flash to coal and those fingers curl up into a fist. I said, don't be afraid. He growls and makes contact with my nose. My one, un-swollen eye flies open to note the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling.
Round two is Rosalie from junior year of high school. She sits, cross-legged on her rug, a flask of peppermint-schnapps running down her throat. She giggles and gives me the finger. Let's see a movie tonight, Bells. She tipsily suggests and tilts her seventeen-year old head. Her two braids drape over her shoulders as she readjusts her blouse. My seventeen-year old self sits with her, giggling right along and throwing my head back, oblivious to life. Life at seventeen is nothing. Simple, pure, the only damage we were doing to ourselves was drinking Coors Light on a Friday or experimenting with Jessica Stanley's older brother's new bong. Hey, Bella, she smiles and tugs at her Trojan Varsity Soccer jacket. You're my best friend, She places Charlie's flask back at her lips. I would never let anyone hurt you, ever. I promise you. Nobody.
Round three is my parents' faces hovering over me. The crease in my father's forehead is deepened and under the buzzing of the lights, I can trace the lines on my mother's face. The kitchen light is overwhelmingly bright as they peer deep into my eyes. I then realize that my parents look younger – Charlie with his full head of dark hair and Renee with her less crinkled face. We're getting a divorce. Charlie touches my shoulder gently. His police badge depicts the irony of it all. Honey, it has nothing to do with you… You mean everything to us. Renee whispers and I flash forward, eleven years later – still the ten-year old girl sitting alone in that kitchen chair.
Round four is not surrealism, but in fact, reality. My eye cracks open, and I see a blonde doctor, his brow furrowed. He wears a white surgical mask as he tries so hard to fix me. The light above burns my eyes as I float atop the table. I feel nothing, but the colors explode in my vision once more as the blue-eyed surgeon fights a battle for a girl he doesn't know. An aura of light surrounds this savior whose finally come to save me from drowning. He works on my insides, myself open and exposed. His gloved hand is outstretched, awaiting the utensils which his nurses slap into his palm. Metallic prods and scissors enter and exit his hands at a furious rate, causing me to wonder how battered I am internally. I go under again and don't come back up until the colors fade into darkness.
My eye flutters and I choke slightly, emitting a cough which is numbed. My ragged breathing is thunderous against my ears, and I have to blink several times to intake my surroundings. I am in a hospital bed. The walls are white, the ceiling is white, the floors are white. A small, black wall television is mounted on the wall in the middle of the room. Another bed sits parallel to my own, mine being closer to the door, and my irregular breathing is the only noise. I feel nothing, my body numb, as I lightly finger the nasal oxygen tube protruding from my nostrils. My left eye remains somewhat swollen, yet the heat, the pain is gone. I vaguely remember hearing my ribs cracking before I went under, and I don't dare touch that vicinity. I silently thank anesthesiology. My white hospital bracelet catches my eye and it splays my full name and date of birth; today, twenty-one years ago. I should be in here for taking twenty-one shots. That should be the reason. However, my gaze trails, and to my mortification, my bruises are exposed. They erupt in a sickening glow against my pallid skin, the buzzing, fluorescent lights not aiding my situation. My hospital gown hardly covers anything, and my eyes begin to well at the physical and external evidence of my hurt. My head torpidly turns to its side and I can vaguely make out another person in the bed parallel to mine. Only several steps away from me, I want to call out to them, but they don't seem real. I let it drop, but gaze curiously at the silhouette of my roommate. Their blanket is pulled up to their neckline, and they face away from me, their mass of hair spilling onto the white pillow. I distractedly avert my gaze to my bruised arm and remember that I'm supposed to cry.
So I do.
I cry until I have nothing left. My chest aches, albeit my anesthesiology. I'm cracked from head to toe, broken into a million different pieces, just as the picture frame. I hiccup severely in accordance to my tears and wallow. Vacillating between normality and a major depressive episode, I do what any mental patient would: blame myself. Had I told Rose rather than dared her to decode me, I wouldn't be here. I would be in my bed, possibly with another man. A man who wouldn't dare touch me. I'd be strong like my mother, have the courage to look my father in the eye. My wardrobe would consist of t-shirts and shorts, not hoodies and sweats. I wouldn't have to hide in a glass case and I could proudly say that I was in love with a man who loved me back. But there's no room for love when you hide in a glass case – there are two things you can do with it. Admire it and then break it. Jacob did just that.
My IV bag fights to replenish my lost fluidity, and after time ticks by, it is finally empty. I gaze at it and exhale loudly.
"Press the button." A muffed voice permeates the atmosphere. I torpidly turn my head on my pillow and swallow. My throat is dry, sticky and parched.
"What?" I croak in a whisper.
"The red button to your right. Press it." The voice continues. I glance upward to my right and see a button on the wall. It's level to my intravenous bag and I sigh. It hurts my chest.
"It's too high." I respond to the voice. I don't bother asking who they are; I've accepted delirium long ago. There is a loud sigh and shuffling from the corner of the room. My gaze trails downward, slowly, as I am trapped in my broken body. When they finally reach a leveled center, I gasp lightly. My roommate, who was once facing away from me, now stares from across the room. His blanket is still draped up to his neckline, but a set of beautiful, emerald eyes peer at me. Those eyes are laden within a face. A perfect, flawless face. A tired, haunted face. He has a sloped nose, high cheekbones and a chiseled jaw line. But none of these hold my attention like his crop of hair. He has jutted bronze hair, sticking this way and that from beneath the bandage that winds around his head. It's thick and a shade I've never seen before, glorious and imperfectly perfect. His left cheek nestles against his pillow when he gazes at me, and for a moment, I forget my hurt. I instinctively want to brush my hair back or bite my lip, but this is when I remember. Fuck you, Jacob. I think to myself as I gaze at the man in the other bed. Fuck you for fucking me over. Twice. A swollen eye is attractive. So are bruises.
"Oh." He says simply and nestles his cheek even further so that one green eye peers out at me. His bronze locks sway slightly as he shifts into a more comfortable position.
"I can't… I can't really move." I whisper and wince. My pallid arm, caked with my evidential pain, involuntarily moves to my ribcage. My fingers brush lightly, slowly across my blanket.
"Well," His voice is fluid, yet there is an edge of sadness to it. "Who is your doctor?"
I close my eyes. "I don't know." I croak. My breathing is shallow and after a moment, I hear a loud beep. I crack my swollen eye open to find the red button on his side of the room glowing. He now stares at the ceiling vacuously. I gape at this miniscule act of geniality and the man in the other bed. After a moment, a nurse glides into the room. She strides and fluffs the back of her hair, placing a beaming grin onto her face.
"How may I help you?" She reaches the end of his bed but he continues to gaze at the ceiling. "Sir?" She interlaces her fingers and places her clasped hands at the base of her stomach. No response. He blinks once but continues to gaze at nothing.
"Miss…" I whisper and she turns toward me. "Could you… Fill this?" I point my finger toward the IV bag in all my frailty.
"Sure, honey. I'll get your doctor." She smiles, shining, a healthy smile. I can hardly form one of my own. The moment she shuts the door behind her, my roommate shifts from the corner of my eye.
"Jesus." I swallow dryly.
"You won't be as parched when you get a new bag." He says monotonously and I shut my eyes.
"Bella!" Rosalie bursts through the door, several nurses trailing to restrain her. She has tears running down her face, ruining her mascara and at the bang, my roommate stirs slightly.
"Miss –" The nurses struggle, but Rose fends them off.
"Bella," Her voice cracks and she begins to sob. "Oh my God, Bella. Bella…" She reaches me and I can see that her blue eyes are red, glazed and rimmed with her running makeup. She sniffles severely and tugs at her jacket collar, kneeling when she approaches my side.
"Excuse me-" A nurse quips and Rose snaps her head toward her.
"Please excuse yourself. Give me a moment." She hisses and turns her head toward me. I feel her gaze rake across my body and every centimeter her eyes trek, the quicker the tears run from her eyes. "Oh God…" She chokes and wipes an eye with the back of her hand.
"Don't worry about me." I whisper raggedly, struggling to speak.
"I'll kill him," Her eyes blaze. "I called a lawyer."
"Oh," I say inaudibly and attempt to smile weakly. "Thank you."
"Bella…" Her voice cracks as she brushes a lock of hair from my face.
"What time is it?" I ask lightly.
"6 AM." She whispers and sniffles. At this moment, the door flings open, and the blonde doctor from my distortion becomes reality. He tucks his clipboard underneath his arm and fiddles with a purple pen before gliding toward me.
"Hello, Isabella." My savior says softly. He clicks the pen and clears his throat lightly. Rose snaps her head up to gaze at this doctor, yet from the corner of my eye, I detect my roommate turning to face away from us.
"Bella." I croak inaudibly."
"Bella." Rose confirms for me.
"Bella, then," The doctor smiles warmly. "I'm Dr. Cullen." I struggle to smile but close my eyes in exhaustion. Not before seeing my roommate go rigid for unexplained reasons.
"Hello." I whisper.
"Bella, Emmett is outside." Rose brushes her fingers across my forehead.
"Bella," Dr. Cullen clears his throat. "How are you feeling?" I slowly open my eyes and inhale shakily.
"Dead."
"We'll fix you right up," He beams and I close my eyes once more. "Would you like to do know what happened?"
There is silence before Jacob's face flashes across my mind. I whimper and there is shuffling around the room. "I know what happened." I tense and Rosalie shushes me.
"You broke three ribs, Bella. You also needed surgery… You suffered a punctured lung and a chipped shoulder blade. Severe concussion, facial swelling and…" He clears his throat. "Contusions."
"No shit." Rosalie hisses and I slowly flutter my eyes open.
"Oh." The noise drops from the hair.
"I'm placing you on Orthoxycol and Vicodin for the pain, Bella. And of course, your Lamictal." Doctor Cullen scrawls on his clipboard.
"Lamictal?" Rose furrows her brow.
"My bipolar medication." I whisper and she nods vigorously.
"Oh, right, right." She strains a smile. The doctor drones on, and I want to listen, I really do. But I can't. My only focus is the hurt.
"I called Charlie." Rose impedes my thoughts. She averts her gaze downward and my heart rams against me. Charlie?
"No," I whisper and my heart rate monitor increases. Beep, beep, beep. The green line jags up and down and the nurses huff about. "Not Charlie." She hangs her head and continues to sniffle.
"I had to." Rose bites her lip and hastily tucks her platinum hair behind both ears. My roommate stirs more from the corner of my eye and I moan slightly.
"Charlie… Charlie will… Die." My voice cracks and my eyes well.
"Babe, he had to know." She wipes her eyes and lightly places a hand onto my blanketed bed. I gaze into the eyes of my best friend, the one person who gives a damn. Tears spill down, silently, as she bunches my blanket into a fist. The nurses stare, wordlessly, but I know they're staring at the bruises. The doctor stares, that forlorn clipboard in his hands. And finally, I turn my head to the other side of the room. But he doesn't stare. He stares at the ceiling, no life in those beautiful eyes. He stares, drifting away, floating off into his own world of hurt.
Don't flame for the sadness. Hope you all like it :)
Happy reading, guys!
kisses, JennyCullen44