Judging by the less than stellar reception to the first chapter of this story I thought I would include the argument, or preface, or whatever you want to call it. As you can see from the first chapter, the story starts right before Bella takes a header into the Pacific. Only, what if, instead of Edward telling her not to jump, he tells her too jump. And, what if, it isn't Jacob who pulls her from the sea.
The Other Side?
She was cold, inside and out.
She'd been cold since those arms circled around her.
Two smooth fingers found their way to her neck, gently feeling for a pulse.
It was faint.
Too faint to hear.
But it was there.
Just barely.
Bella wasn't moving, her chest ceased it's rhythmic up and down. Quickly she laid her head against the soaked girl's chest. Nothing, but the weakening thud of the heart.
The water.
She had to get the water out.
Now.
Tilting her head gently to the side she placed one milky white hand just below Bella's diaphragm and pushed. Nothing happened.
She pushed again. Still nothing.
On the third, water came up in a low gurgle and spilled from her mouth onto the course beach sand. Bella still wasn't breathing.
Again, she moved her hand, to the diaphragm and pushed. More water came out, but still she didn't breathe.
She didn't have much time to get the poor girl to breathe again. Three minutes, the brain can go three minutes without damage; after five the brain starts to die. Carefully she tilted her head back to where it was. Then with infinite care, she pushed her head back, opening her wind pipe. She brushed the stringy hair away from Bella's face, once again checking her pulse.
Thank god it was still there.
She opened the mouth ringed with blue lips. Taking a big breath, she placed her lips on Bella's and blew.
Immediately the soggy girl's chest began to rise, swelled with good clean air. Then it fell.
She waited for it to rise again. But it didn't.
Leaning down again, she breathed into gaping mouth.
Bella's chest rose again, and then fell, and after a tense moment it rose again on its own. Her savior breathed a slow sight of relief, but didn't move. The brunette convulsed once, rolling over to her side and throwing up the rest of the water that was still inside her. When she finished she stayed on her side, inches away from the water she'd just coughed up. Her mind was nothing but a whirl of thoughts. She figured she was dead, but the dead weren't supposed to feel pain, right?
She did, every inch of her ached with the cold; her throat was on fire, the same with her stomach. Her lungs rasped with every breath she took; she started coughing, a violently hacking cough, until bits of fresh blood landed on the sand. "Edward," she moaned, her voice deep with rasp, "Edward, I made it." She trailed off with another fresh bout of coughing.
"No, Edward's not here." She said softly, brushing Bella's hair away. Her back was covered in sand that couldn't be brushed away so easily.
"A-A-Alice," She said, her teeth beginning to chatter from the cold, "What are you doing here?"
"Shh, shh, Bella, everything's all right, just rest. We can talk later." Alice said disappearing off the beach for a handful of seconds, when she came back she brought with her two heavy grey wool blankets. She knelt down beside the shivering girl and pulled a small silver package out of her back pocket. With no real effort she tore the plastic packaging off and started unfolding the space blanket. Tenderly she slipped the silver sheet around Bella as tightly as she could. She repeated the process with the other two blankets as well until she'd mummified the freezing human.
The shivering started again, this time much worse; but this, Alice knew, was a good sign; her body was beginning to fight to keep itself warm. She knew Bella would be in hypothermia once she managed to get the water out of her lungs, but she had no way of knowing that her friend would regain consciousness again so quickly. She expected a few worrisome days of wondering if she would ever completely recover. She picked up the cocoon, gently cradling it in her arms, and started towards the parked car near the edge of the Border. She had to get out of their quickly before the wolves decided to come and poke their wet noses where they didn't belong.
She got back to black Mercedes and carefully laid her bundle in the passenger seat, turning on the seat warmer as she went. Sliding into the driver seat the vampire started the car, slid it easily into drive, and drove off as fast as she could. There was only one place she'd even considered taking her in her weakened state, and that was back to her family's home; abandoned though it was. As she drove she turned up the heater as high as it would go, and Bella's shivering got worse. The driver reached out with one hand and gently pushed back the hair covering her passenger's forehead.
Bella's skin felt as cool as cool as Alice's, and that too was a problem. All of her efforts may have been too little too late, she silently cursed herself for not getting there faster after she saw Bella jump off that cliff, she should have had time. But maybe the decision was made too late, or maybe it was one of those things that were meant to happen.
"No," she said under her breath, "nothing is written in stone." She drove faster, until the engine topped out. It wasn't long until they were pulling into the driveway. She left the car running with the heater still at full blast; Alice darted into the house to get things ready for her guest. There wasn't a bed in the house for her to sleep in but there were more than a few large couches. First she ripped the sheet off of the largest one in the family room, tossing the pillows carelessly on the ground; not standing the thought of leaving Bella alone any longer than she had to. Again she darted out of the house, going to a covered bin in the corner of the garage, pulling out three large, and dry, logs; racing inside she tossed them in the fire place. Cranking up the gas she lit a match and the dozen gas jets erupted into a bright yellow flame, gently licking the dry wood until it two began to burn.
Leaving the fire burning, Alice went and retrieved Bella from the front seat of the car turning it off while she was there. The human's teeth continued to chatter and every muscle continued to spasm uncontrollably. Quickly she brought Bella to the bed she'd created and laid her down, careful not to disturb the carefully wrapped blankets. The room was only starting to get warm; Alice suddenly regretted bringing her patient in so soon, she should have waited until the fire had had more time to burn. But the room soon started to warm up under the warm glow of the fire. She turned off the gas, letting the logs burn without the gas. It was the only light in the room; the sun had been hidden behind a massive black thunderhead, which threatened to burst at any moment.
Leaving her friend once again, she went back out to the garage and pulled the car into the empty garage, before picking a few more logs from the bin. Alice stopped moving for the first time since she'd pulled her friend from the ocean; she took a seat beside the blanketed lump on the couch and gingerly felt her forehead again. It was warmer than it had been in the car, but it still felt too cool to be normal. The shivering begun to subside again, this time for the right reason; her body was getting warmer, and not shutting down. What she needed was a hot shower, but that would be in short supply here, along with the power, the water and gas had both been shut off when they left.
She smiled a little, as she sat next to Bella, wondering if she somehow knew of Edward's death and jumped off the cliff to be with him. It was a sick notion to be sure, but not one that was entirely without foundation. The smile soon erased itself off of her lips, when she thought again just how close she'd come to death, another minute and she'd be looking at a corpse and not at her friend.
Bella's eyes turned up, locking her reddened eyes with Alice's golden ones; her jaw still trembled with the cold, but it was easily managed. "Wh-wh-why did you come back?" Her voice was still raw, it sounded so foreign to them both.
"Bella," Alice said pulling up a piece of the blanket that dislodged itself from around her face, "I never left."
"B-b-b-but you l-l-left." She stammered her voice cracked again with each syllable.
"No, I didn't. I stayed here with you. Making sure you were alright, and it broke my heart that you weren't. I wanted so much to come to you, to comfort you. To tell you that everything would be alright. But I couldn't."
"You couldn't? You couldn't! What kind of crap is that?" Bella said, raising her head and voice as loud as she could; it wasn't even close to a shout, but the anger clearly showed through. Dropping back onto the couch she closed her eyes, her breathing clearly labored.
"Bella, you need to rest. I'll tell you everything tomorrow, but please sleep." Alice said, keeping her voice level and soothing. For the last time that night, Alice brushed the hair out of Bella's face and let her sleep. She heaped the rest of the wood she brought it on the fire and went into the kitchen, fishing her cell phone out of her hip pocket as she went. She had to get the utilities turned back on, preferably before morning.
Bella felt wave after wave of exhaustion come over her, and while she wanted nothing more than to sleep, the dream she'd had under the water played over and over in her mind when her eyes were shut. She shuddered at the thought of Edward, of her Edward, of her perfect and statuesque Edward rotting with flesh eating spiders coming from every opening. Her stomach clenched a few times, threatening to empty itself once again. Why wasn't he there with her? Why was Alice? Tears swelled up in her eyes, she wanted so badly to cry, but the tears hurt her eyes worse than the salt water.
She'd finally seen him as more than a fleeting image, and he convinces her to jump off the cliff, to be with him. That still didn't make sense, every other time she'd heard his voice, it was warning her, trying to keep her safe. She heard it when she started walking in that bar, and again with the motorcycle. It was the reverse of what happened today. Was the dream even a dream; she'd seen specials on the discovery channel about near death experiences. Those people had been so positive that what they'd seen, what they'd been through was real. Some even mentioned the need to die again, in that experience to cross over. But she hadn't died in the vision or in life. She was alive.
Bella wanted so much to be with Edward, even if it was only in a dream.
She settled back into the couch, closing her eyes and enduring the horror that waited for her, burned into your eye lids.
"You were so close, Bella." He said in the softest voice possible, "So close." Edward reached out and stroked her cheek gently through the mess of blankets around her. "You can make it if you try again."
"Try," Bella whispered, worried about Alice overhearing her, "How can I do that with Alice in the next room." She wiggled against the blankets, feeling the space blanket crinkle with each movement.
"Yes, you can make it my love. Once you get out of the blankets go to the fire. Then we can be together again." He said placing his lips over hers. There wasn't really any feeling, because for now he was just an apparition and any contact was purely imagined.
Bella did everything she could to escape the cocoon around her; slowly but surely if came unraveled, first freeing her arms, then her legs, and finally letting her go. She moved slowly out of the foil blanket, still worried that Alice might come in and stop her before she could cross over. She stood up, wincing as her legs filled with hot stabs of pain, and made her way to the fire place. She took hold of the gas key and started turning. The tell tale hiss of the gas was replaced immediately by the bright flickers of blue flame that slowly tapered into a yellow tail. "How do I do it?" She asked her phantom boyfriend.
"Just fall in." He said, wrapping a phantom arm around her shoulder.
"But it will hurt." She rasped.
"Only for a moment and then it will all be over with, trust me." He said, gently nudging her forward, closer to the fire.
She took a tentative step forward leaning down over the hot coals, wondering if this was the right way to go, surely there had to be quicker and less painful ways to die. Maybe she could wait until the fire died out and inhale the gas…No; it had to be done now. She shut her eye's readying herself for the fire below her.
"You're doing well."
Bella felt her knees begin to buckle and she fell forward, ready.
But it didn't come; she'd barely registered the smell of burnt hair she was stopped by a pair of gentle arms. "Bella, what are you doing?" Alice asked dragging her friend away from the fire.
"Alice it was him," She started, her raspy voice threatening to finally give out. "It was Edward, he told me to trust him, that if I died we could be together!" She flailed against Alice's grip trying to get back to the fire.
"Bella, Bella. You can't listen to him, Edward's not here, he's gone." Alice said pulling Bella hard against her chest as Bella started to sob against it.
"I know he's there Alice, I can feel him, I can see him. I know he's here." Tears started streaming down the girl's face. "Let me go, let me be with him."
"No, I won't let you throw your life away because of a figment of your imagination." Alice said, trying to calm the brunette down as best she could.
"But he's real, Alice, I know it." Bella pleaded, finally giving up the fight. Alice was far too strong to actually win against, even if she was at full strength.
"No, Bella he's not. Trust me, I know; you're just tired. You need to sleep." The pixie said, dragging her back over to the couch. "If you sleep tonight, I'll tell you everything in the morning."
"You're not going to leave again?"
"Bella" Alice said laying her back down on the couch, bringing the blankets back up around her, "I was the only one who didn't abandon you. Now go to sleep"
Alice sat by Bella, on the couch until she was fast asleep, before lying down beside her, pulling her close. "I didn't abandon you…because I love you."
