Flash Back
Part 1
1915
"Hello." The man at the door said pleasantly. "Is your mother home?"
"Yes." I replied. "Are you the doctor?"
"Yes, I am." He replied. "How is your father doing?"
"The same." I said and looked at the floor. I was only fourteen and my father was sick, again. He seemed to always be sick. My mother had called for a doctor as soon as his health had plummeted to an alarming level. This time though, they had sent a new doctor. He was very young, probably not more that fifteen years older than me.
I led him in and took him down the hall toward my father's room. "Mother." I announced the arrival of the doctor to her.
"Edward. Haven't I told you before not to answer the door? You should let one of the maids do that, its' their job."
"Yes mother." I replied and left the room. The doctor would be here for hours before he thought of something to give my father that would make him tired enough to sleep the sickness off and then claim that it was his knowledge in medicine that had cured him. He would be like all the others.
Bored, I went outside to play with the puppy my father had given me on my fourteenth birthday. It was a cute brown and white spaniel. I threw a ball a couple times and the puppy ran after it and brought it back. Then, the doctor came to the door.
"Edward." He said. "Would you please come inside? I have something to tell you and your mother."
"Yes sir." I said and headed for the door, the puppy completely leavening my mind.
I came in my father's room to find my mother crying in the chair next to him. He wasn't moving. I looked up at the doctor and asked, "Is he dead?"
"Oh no!" he replied. "He's still alive, but I don't know for how much longer. He is very sick and I don't think he is going to get better." His made my mother's sobs intensify.
"Isn't there something you can give him? Some foreign medicine or something?" I asked, looking into his eyes for the first time. He had the strangest golden eyes that looked like they should have belonged on the face of a young girl, not a man in his twenties.
"I'm afraid not." I said glumly. "Nothing that I know of."
"How long does he have, doctor?" my mother was able to get out between her sobbing.
"Maybe a couple years at the most." He replied. I suppose we had known this when he had gotten sick for the second or even third time, but we hadn't wanted to admit it, not like this doctor did. Did he not know who we were, to be so straight with us? No, this physician was different.
"Can he stay here, or does he have to go to the hospital?" was the next thing my mother was able to ask.
"He may stay here for know." He confirmed. "But will eventually have to be moved, when the pain intensifies, but that shouldn't be for a while still."
"Who are you?" I finally blurted out. I had been thinking this question since he walked in the door. I had never seen him before and had only heard that he was new to town.
"Edward." My mother scolded. "Don't be so rude."
"No." the doctor said to her "It's quite alright." He turned to me. "My name is Carlisle. Carlisle Cullen. I just recently graduated from medical school and moved here about two months ago."
I nodded, satisfied, and then looked to my mother. "I'm going to go for a walk." I told her. "I'll be back before dinner."
"Don't get lost." She cautioned. "Or hurt. One person dieing-" she choked on the word. "in this family is enough."
I didn't respond to her caution, but turned on my heel and left the room. When I got to the front door, the started running. I wanted to leave it all behind. My parents, the sickness, the doctor, all of it and I didn't know why. I loved my parents and the doctor had never done anything to me, I had only met him about an hour ago. But I had a funny feeling about him, like he wasn't what he seemed.
After I had run to the point where I was wheezing for breath, I stopped and started walking. There was a stream near by, so I went to go and sit on one of the huge rocks that sat by it. I often like to come here; it was peaceful and, as far as I knew, no one knew about it. It was my own secret hiding place, where I could go and let my worries wash away with the current of the stream.
"Are you alright?" It was a voice behinds me. I turned around and found the doctor standing a few feet away.
"Why did you follow me?" I asked him, throwing him the meanest glare I could muster up. "Don't you think I might want to be alone?"
"Yes, I could see why you wouldn't want to be disturbed." He replied and came to sit down next to me. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't try to do anything drastic."
"Like what? Throw my self in the stream and attempt to drown myself in three inches of water?"
"Something like that." He replied and gave me a knowing smile. "I did the same thing you are doing when I was your age." He continued and stared at the stream with his sparkling gold eyes.
"Why?" I asked. "Did your father die too?"
"Not exactly." He said. "Well, not then anyway. My mother died when I was still an infant, so my father was the only adult influence I ever had in my life."
"That doesn't sound so bad." I said. "At least he was healthy enough to raise you."
"You didn't know my father." He continued. "He was very strict and wanted me to be just like him; cruel and incapable of showing compassion."
"What did you do?" I questioned, now interested in what he had to say.
"I would run away to the forest, sit on the ground, in the middle of all the trees and pretend I was somewhere else. Somewhere were my mother was still alive and my father cared about me; the kind of family you have."
"But what good is a father who can't even get out of bed to do things with me?"
"Edward." He sighed. "Don't you get it? It doesn't matter that your father can't physically do things with you. You can still spend time with him and your mother, even if it's just sitting and talking with them." He smiled at me once more, ruffled my hair, and got up to leave.
"Wait." I called after him. He stopped and turned around. "How did your father die?"
"He died an old man." He said, and then disappeared.