SM owns the Twilight empire. I own some spiffy new shoes.
This piece is based on real events that occurred to a dear friend of mine. It's not going to be pleasant - you've been warned.
'Cause I can't always write fluff...
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Esme Cullen stood outside the door of the squalid hotel room waiting for the manager to find his master key. Hugging herself tightly despite the late spring warmth of the Spokane Valley morning, all she could think about was whether her husband had any recollection of how he'd ended up here. She concluded he probably didn't.
It wouldn't have been the first time Carlisle had driven across Washington in an alcohol-induced haze, only to find himself in Wenatchee or Liberty Lake by the side of the road. He'd awaken sprawled across the front seat of his Mercedes confused, hung over and ashamed of how he'd allowed his demons to lead him astray once again.
"Doctor Cullen?" The manager rapped on the flimsy, scarred door with his right hand, the faded blue pen-and-ink tattooed "WWJD?" on the knuckles before nudging open the door with the tip of his index finger.
The only sound from the darkened room was from the pay-per-view images emanating from the television within. Porn? Carlisle is watching porn? Esme wondered. He was usually so straight-laced and uptight regarding anything to do with sex.
The stench wafting towards them was overwhelming, causing the manager to cough and bury his nose and mouth in his hand as he gagged and resisted the urge to vomit.
The EMT crew and the pair of Spokane Valley police officers pushed their way past the manager and into the room. Esme watched as they poured their blue and black uniformed bodies into the shabby, orange shag carpeted space. She leaned against the filthy wall across from the door, willing herself to follow them into the hell that surely awaited.
Please, Carlisle, please be alive, please be alive. She repeated to herself. It was the same mantra she'd practiced over the past twenty-three years whenever he'd relapse.
Why do I do this? Why do I keep taking him back and propping him up only to be disappointed again and again and again? It hasn't been fair to the kids and it certainly hasn't been fair to me...
Carlisle lay face down on the soiled carpeting, dressed only in a pair of dingy gray boxers and a pair of black socks Esme didn't recognize. Empty bottles of Zima and some bottom-shelf vodka lay scattered across the grimy bed and the dresser of the room. A pizza box lay abandoned on the floor next to the bathroom, its contents still intact save for the few flies buzzing and landing on it, gorging them selves.
She glanced into the small bathroom and gagged. Carilsle had been so far gone he'd forgotten how to flush the toilet and had resorted to using the tub and even the floor to relieve himself. My God, he'd be appalled at this degradation if it was someone else who was laying there completely obliterated, not him. She thought to herself.
"There's barely a pulse." The tech's words filtered back to her from the main room. She watched as the pair of EMTs frantically worked on saving her husband. Carlisle was so inebriated that he'd nearly drunk himself to death this time, and his breathing was shallow and labored.
Zima. Who in the hell still drinks Zima? Esme pondered. This is like one of those awful movies of the week on Lifetime, except its real. Jesus, why him? Why us?
By the time the EMTs had Carlisle stabilized enough to transport him to Sacred Heart, Esme knew what she had to do. She took one last look at the shell of the man who had brought so much joy and yet so much heartache to her life. Who had been blessed with incredible potential yet was unable to shake the demons of his childhood, causing him to wallow and suffer in his pain.
"Goodbye, Carlisle."
Esme had already turned and left the room, stoically trudging down the hallway to her rental fighting back the tears welling over her eyelashes. Otherwise she would have seen Carlisle's glazed eyes frantically following her retreating form, begging her to stay.
She would have seen his lips as he mouthed "I'm sorry, Essie" behind the oxygen mask while trying to raise his right hand from where it had been strapped to the gurney, reaching out to her one last time.
Esme Cullen never saw her husband again.
##
The call came at six thirty in the morning eight months later.
Emmett Cullen rolled over and groaned when he saw the number on the digital readout.
"Your mom?" Rosalie mumbled into her pillow.
"Yeah."
"This can't be good."
"Not at four thirty in the morning Seattle time."
By the time Emmett had calmed his sobbing mother and clicked shut his phone, Rosalie knew they were finally headed back to Seattle for Carlisle's funeral. It was an event that she'd been expecting ever since the day three years ago when Emmett had first introduced her to his parents.
Carlisle had been drunk that afternoon, and Esme had acted as if everything was fine; that there was nothing amiss about her spouse's behavior. Even when he tripped on the dock at the Coeur d'Alene Resort after their afternoon boat ride across the lake and back, nearly falling into the warm summer water. She just smiled at Rosalie, slipping her left arm through hers, telling her how happy she was that Emmett had finally met a woman who "could keep him in line" and laughing that wonderful, rich laugh of hers, while completely ignoring her husband's clumsy attempts at standing up, until Emmett came to his father's rescue, once again.
Rosalie never understood why her mother-in-law had stuck with Carlisle as long as she had; there had to have been something there that kept her with him, and it sure as hell wasn't his zig-zagging back and forth between sobriety and inebriation. But whatever held Esme fast to her wreck of a husband, Rosalie was never able to determine. She just smiled and kept her mouth shut and practiced the manners that her parents drilled into her over the years, whenever she and Emmett were around her in-laws.
At least at their wedding, Carlisle was sober. That was a blessing. She'd been dreading the thought of him showing up at the church in Bellevue completely wrecked and embarrassing her husband at their reception. Esme told her later that she'd threatened to leave Carlisle if he "ruined his son and daugher-in-law's biggest day". Apparently her words worked. Carlisle stuck to Diet Pepsi or seltzer water for the entire weekend's festivities.
Three months later, on a trip to Las Vegas for an ER physician's conference, he fell off the wagon.
Starting in the tequila bar next to his gate at Sea-Tac at 9:30 in the morning.
##
Rosalie rubbed her husband's heaving back as the tidal wave of years of disappointment and anger flooded his body, his choking tears and cries of sorrow taking up where his mother's had left off. She folded him into her arms, still caressing his back until his sobs died down to muffled gasps. "Why Dad, why?" Emmett kept crying over and over into the notch between his wife's neck and shoulder.
As Rosalie wondered yet again if her father-in-law's sins would ever visit his son.
##
Carlisle had been found dead on the bottle green tiled floor of his rented room in Bellingham. His drinking partner and ersatz girlfriend, Kate, became alarmed after Carlisle had ignored her repeated phone calls over the prior five days. She begged the building manager to check on him, finally threatening to call the police if he didn't.
After decades of heavy drinking the abused cells of Carlisle's esophagus had finally had enough, and the varices that had developed exploded as he guzzled down a bottle of mint-flavored Listerine, the only source of alcohol he had available to him.
Carlisle Cullen died choking on his own blood on the stained floor of his bathroom.
Alone.
##