He finds her at the bottom of a cliff—broken—as broken as anyone can possibly be.
She's grey against the ground, twilight bending the shadows against her limbs, each one twisted, like the reaching roots of an evergreen.
And lifeless.
Not quite.
Not yet.
But soon.
He can hear it still, the faint hum of her heart as the blood backs up into her lungs. The heavy lub dub as her heart struggles to pump the blood that leaks in through severed arteries.
She's not dead yet.
But she's dying.
He can hear the scrape of bone on bone as her ribs rub against her sternum, dislodged, cracked.
There's a whistle and a wheeze as the last of her oxygen rattles around fluid filled chambers.
She gasps, short little breaths that barely even register a sound, even to his impeccable ears.
He can smell the iron as her blood seeps into the ground around her, the salt of the spinal fluid that fills the space beneath her skull. And he can smell her. The woods and sweet wildflowers and . . .
He knows her.
In an instant Carlisle is by her side, a hand stroking the matted hair from her ashen face. There's bruising, horrible blackness that is swelling, making her unrecognizable to anyone else, but he knows her . . . knew her . . . the young Esme Platt.
That free-spirited child who fell from a tree chasing birds. Who defied her parents and climbed anyway, breaking her leg. He remembers that day so vividly, like all his vampire memories, but this one with a special clarity.
He'd always wondered what became of her.
She'd intrigued him.
And though he'd met many interesting people during his centuries on earth, both human and vampire alike, he'd never met anyone quite like her. Never anyone who looked at the world with the same kind of awed beauty. Who reveled in the wonder of the simplest things. Who climbed a tree just to see what the birds saw.
He'd had trouble walking away from that sixteen year old girl.
But he had, envisioning the life she'd come to have. The family, the children and grandchildren. She would have made some man very happy.
But here she lies instead.
"What happened to you, Esme?" he whispers and there's a sharpness to her next strangled breath.
It's been a decade since they parted and in a moment of sheer panic he bites her, letting the venom seize her veins.
Because this isn't how it was supposed to be.
For some reason, one he simply can not fathom right now, he can't let her die. He can't watch the life drain from her. He's done it so many times. Watched patients find that final peace. But something in him refuses to let that happen on this night.
So he saves her. Or condemns her. Either way, with the venom filling her veins, she will live. That is the only ending that seems to fit. The only course of action he can stand to make. Despite what happens now, Carlisle has chosen to let her be reborn as a vampire.
He looks once more upon her pale, pale face, dropping his head to his hands. "I'm sorry," he whispers as her entire body seizes.
And with that, she opens her mouth and she screams.
"What have you done?" Edward says as Carlisle bursts through the front door of the sprawling Ashland home, draping Esme's body along the sofa in the sitting room with a gentle kind of reverence. Nothing will ease the pain that she will feel for the next three days, but still he moves gingerly, arranging her with the utmost care.
"I don't know," he says, clutching her hand as she wails, something long and gruesome. It pains him, the sound. I'm sorry, he wants to say. To breathe it into her ear. To whisper it along her skin. Until it sinks in. Until she understands.
"That's retched," Edward says, his hand reaching for his ears. "Perhaps it is good we live so deep in the woods. Otherwise people might think you spend your days murdering and your nights doctoring." His lips pull back over his teeth. "Is this how I was?"
"Worse," Carlisle says looking to his young companion. His son. "I suspect it will become worse with time. As the injuries in her spine heal and the nerve endings re-attach."
Edward nods. "Who is she exactly?"
"She was a patient once."
Edward looks at him steadily, though Carlisle has come to understand it as more of a listening. A reading of the mind. "You know her?" Edward says sharply.
"I knew the girl she once was." He recalls the memory and lets it play out in his mind. It's no use trying to shield it. "She's a woman now. And I've not seen her since."
"You were fond of her," Edward says and there's a question in his tone.
"I'm fond of you, too."
"Now. That you know me, yes. But as a human, you were fond of her."
"She was lively and kind. And . . ." He sighs and the image of the cliff forms in his mind. "I don't know what happened between then and now. But whatever it was, she didn't deserve that."
"Is this any better?"
Carlisle winces. "I was selfish," he admits. "But I couldn't watch her die."
Edward leans against the back of the sofa. "She thinks she is. Dying that is."
"You can read her?" Carlisle looks up in surprise, eager for this private access into her mind. To her thoughts.
"Yes. She thinks she's going to hell." Edward frowns and Carlisle turns to look at him, pleading. "She didn't fall, Carlisle."
Carlisle turns back, running his hand along Esme's cheek, down her jaw line; already the bruises are fading, though she writhes and cries out, healing as it hurts.
"I suspected as much," he says. "There are signs posted all along the trail. Everyone in town knows to stay away from the edge. Can you tell me why she jumped?"
Edward goes silent, listening, putting thoughts together. "There was a baby," he says eventually. "A son. She lost him to lung fever not long ago." He flinches then, dipping his head and his eyes snap shut.
Carlisle is by him in an instant, a sure hand pressed against his shoulder. "What is it, son?"
Edward looks towards the woman on the couch, his eyes narrowed, his gaze tense. "There's also a man. A violent man." He presses his fist to his jaw. "He was unkind in their marriage. She was hiding from him. I . . . I can't, it's not my place. I'm sorry, Carlisle. I can't listen anymore." He turns. "I'll return later."
"Where will you go?"
Edward pauses. "She has a record at the hospital. I think it's best that it disappears, along with anything else that might tie her to this town. People in Ashland will look for her, there's no doubt, and others may search in time—this man, her family—but the less there is to find . . ." He smiles gently. "I'll return before she wakes. Until then . . . well, she's in good hands anyhow."
"Thank you, son."
Edward hesitates at the door. "And Carlisle?"
"Yes?"
"She remembers you, too. Your voice." His brow furrows as he takes in the creased brow of the woman on the sofa once more, then his lip curls up and he laughs. "Keep talking to her. She thinks you're an angel."