CHAPTER TWO
I opened my eyes slowly in a haze of pain and realised immediately that we were no longer alone. Charlotte was pinning my upper body to the ground while Emmett's large hands gripped my right thigh a few inches above the knee. I could see Carlisle too, his hands around my ankle and I didn't want to see what they were doing, but I found I couldn't look away. The bottom half of my pants leg had been ripped off and the hideous wound was visible, blood still oozing thickly around the protruding bone. I felt sick and I shifted my gaze to Carlisle's face as he spoke.
"Jacob, you're going to be alright, try to stay calm."
"Where's Edward?" I asked. He was no longer beside me and my fear for his condition outweighed my anxiety over what they were about to do to my leg. "He's badly hurt."
"He's alright, don't worry."
"Where is he?"
My demand ended with a scream as the pain in my leg increased and I looked down just in time to see the bone disappearing back into the torn flesh as the two vampires pulled in opposite directions. At that point I must have lost consciousness again as I was unaware of being moved or anything else that was happening to me. I woke again to find my leg suspended in some kind of contraption while I lay on my back in Carlisle's surgery. My head was spinning as if I'd been drinking and I was numb, the pain in my leg gone. At least the limb was still there; I could see the toes sticking out at the end of the thick layer of bandages covering me from knee to ankle. I groaned and licked my dry lips, squinting around the room until Esme's face appeared out of the fog.
"Jacob, try not to move. Carlisle operated on your leg, you're going to be fine, but it'll be some time before you can move around. The wound needs to start healing before he can put you in plaster."
"Where's Edward?" I asked. Suddenly I didn't care about my leg. I wouldn't have cared if they'd cut it off if only they would tell me Edward was alive and that he wasn't paralysed.
"He's upstairs," Esme said.
"He's alive?"
My heart began to race and I ignored her instruction not to move, struggling to push myself up onto my elbows, causing the leg cradle to sway and my head to spin. I sank back against the pillows and squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing hard and hoping I wouldn't vomit.
"He'll be alright, Jacob."
"But...he was so badly injured; he couldn't feel anything. I thought his back or his neck must have been broken," I whispered. It was becoming an effort to speak with my mouth so dry.
"Carlisle is a very good doctor," Esme replied.
Her statement didn't seem to actually answer my question and I wondered why she didn't go into any more detail. In my fuzzy-headed state, no doubt a result of the morphine I'd been given for my leg and possibly the blow to the head as well, I couldn't think of another question to ask about his injuries.
"Can I see him?" I mumbled instead.
"Not for a while. He can't be moved right now and nor can you. Carlisle will talk to you when you're feeling better."
"May I have some water?"
I couldn't talk any more without at least wetting my lips and a moment later Esme's arm was under my shoulders, raising me enough to sip from a glass she had brought. After she had lowered me back onto the pillows, I fought to get my head straight.
"Esme, how is Edward not paralysed?"
When she didn't answer I opened my eyes again and discovered she had left the room. I tried to think, but it was too much effort and I felt myself slipping back into sleep. After a brief struggle I gave up and let myself sink into unconsciousness once more.
I didn't know how long I slept, but when I stirred again, I was in agony. My head throbbed and my leg felt much as it had when I first broke it. A scream burst from my lips before I could think about trying to swallow it. Zara sprang from the chair that she had been sitting in beside the bed and grasped my hand.
"It's ok, Jacob, Carlisle will be back in a second."
"Where's Edward?" I hissed through my teeth. Despite my pain, he was immediately on my mind again. Why hadn't Esme given me a straight answer?
"He's in your old room; he'll be alright, I promise," Zara said.
"He couldn't feel anything!" I exclaimed and then groaned, fighting desperately against the blackness which was trying to take me again.
"Sshh, take deep breaths..." Zara said soothingly, placing her cool hand on my forehead. Then I head footsteps and Carlisle's voice.
"The morphine's worn off, I think we need another shot."
"No!" I protested weakly.
The damned drug was making it impossible to think, but before I managed to say anything else, I felt the shot in my upper arm and I began to slip away. The next time I came to, I was alone and the pain was a dull, throbbing ache. My head still hurt, but felt clearer and I guessed the morphine must be wearing off. My leg was still in the cradle, but now sporting a plaster cast on which someone had already written a message in red. I raised myself slowly on my arms and leaned forward, squinting at the writing.
'Get back on your feet, lazy mutt! E.'
"Emmett," I murmured.
As if he had heard me, the door swung open and the big vampire strode in.
"Hey, buddy, how are you feeling?"
"Hungry," I said. It had been the last thing on my mind, but my stomach rumbled loudly and prompted the answer.
Emmett laughed. "Esme will fix you something. You in pain at all?"
"Not really. Kind of a dull ache. Emmett, tell me how Edward is. No one will tell me anything. Is he alright, really? I thought he might have...died." I gulped and held my breath as I waited for an answer. I hadn't wanted to acknowledge the thought that Edward may not have made it, but it was a possibility. And yet both Esme and Zara had said he was alright.
"He's alright," Emmett said, his golden eyes shifting away from my face.
"That's what everyone keeps telling me, buthow is he?Can he move? Can he feel anything? Is he conscious?" I demanded.
Emmett opened his mouth to speak and then froze as a scream echoed down from the upper part of the house – a blood-curdling, agonised scream that chilled me to the bone and almost stopped my heart. It was Edward.
"Uh...yeah, he can feel," Emmett said awkwardly.
"What are they doing to him?"
A faint prickle of something began to come to me...something I hadn't been able to think about before because of the morphine and my determination not to acknowledge it. Edward had been horribly injured, unable to move anything except for his head. I'd known he was dying and even if we'd been found in time, was it likely that even the best surgeon could have fixed him, just like that, within a few days, to the extent where he was now screaming in apparent pain? We were in a house full of vampires...
"What did Carlisle do to him?" I shouted at Emmett.
"Jake..."
The doctor blurred into the room at that moment and pulled the covers off of me, revealing that I wore only shorts and had a catheter fitted, which he now swiftly removed, making me flinch.
"Emmett, get upstairs, now," Carlisle said urgently. "Esme! Charlotte!"
Emmett vanished in the blink of an eye and the two female vampires appeared at the side of the bed.
"Get Jacob out of the house," Carlisle instructed. "Take him to his parents. I'll give him another small shot for the journey."
"No! What's happening?" I cried, struggling as the doctor lowered my leg from the cradle and leaned towards me with a syringe in his hand. "What did you do to Edward?"
"Jacob..." He stopped as another ear-splitting scream came from upstairs, followed by a volley of bangs and crashes.
"Carlisle!" Emmett bellowed.
"Go!" Carlisle's order was aimed at Esme and I felt the brief scratch in my arm before he vanished at speed, causing a slight breeze to drift over me.
Charlotte wrapped a sheet around me and slid her arms under me suddenly, scooping me up as if she were lifting a child, sidling smoothly out of the door which Esme held wide. Despite her strength, she was tiny and I felt extremely precarious. I clutched firmly at her neck.
"Don't take me away, please," I begged. "I need to see Edward. Carlisle changed him, didn't he?"
"Jacob, we'll talk about this later," Esme said as we glided down the hallway.
"No!" My heart had begun to race in panic, my stomach knotted and I could already feel the morphine working, trying to pull me under again. "I have to see him. Please!" I licked my lips and summoned up as much strength as I could muster before I yelled at the top of my voice. "Edward!"
I couldn't let them take me away from him and I clung desperately onto consciousness as Charlotte and Esme paused in the lobby and turned around to face the staircase. I didn't even see him come down the stairs; suddenly he was there, just feet away from me.
I thought I had gotten used to them by now, practically living in their house the way we had been, but I wasn't prepared to see him this way again. He was impossibly pale, his skin almost translucent, eyes ringed with faint purple, the pupils a dark red, the expression in them one of anguish and fear. His dark grey shirt only enhanced his paleness and my breath caught in my throat as I stared at my husband - myvampire- and felt...shock, fear, pity. My mind raced with a jumble of thoughts and I felt all of the worst things I could have felt in that second. Edward's face immediately showed that he could read minds the same as he had before and his eyes darkened further in agony, his jaw clenching. He blurred suddenly towards the door and the wood splintered, glass shattered and flew in all directions and then he was gone, leaving the remains of the door in a heap on the porch.
"Fuck!" Emmett hissed and it was only then that I realised he, Jasper, Carlisle and Zara had all followed Edward downstairs. Now the four of them shot out of the house together in pursuit of Edward and I gave up the fight against the drug that was determinedly trying to suck me down. My heart was stuttering as if it meant to give up and I felt tears raining down my face even as I succumbed and slipped back into oblivion.
When I opened my eyes I was lying on the couch in my parents' house, Esme sitting close by in an armchair. I blinked rapidly, trying to focus and she got up immediately and brought me a glass of water.
"H-how did I get here? Where's...Mom?" I mumbled.
"Jasper brought your truck down from the mountains a few days ago when we found you. I drove you here with Charlotte. She left a little while ago. Your house key was in your pocket," Esme explained. "I assume your parents are at work."
"What day is it?" I asked.
"Friday."
"Edward!" I gasped suddenly. Everything came flooding back and I lurched upwards, bracing my arms on the cushions to bring myself into a sitting position, my head spinning annoyingly as I did so.
"Carlisle called me a little while ago; they found him and took him back home."
"Esme...he read my mind," I groaned. "I was...shocked...scared...you should have prepared me. He must think...God, he must think I won't want him any more. I have to talk to him!"
My eyes filled with tears as I tried to imagine how Edward must be feeling. When we had first met in college and discovered we had known each other before, the idea that he had previously been a vampire had horrified him. He had gotten used to it eventually, but how must he have felt to wake up after the accident and find that again, he was immortal; dependent on blood; suspended at twenty-two years forever, with a human husband? He must be in agony.
I tried to think about how I felt. I was still struggling to shake off the effects of the morphine, but my head was clear enough to know that for me, nothing would change. He was my life, whichever form he was in, but what would the future hold for us? I would age away from him, we would constantly have to uproot ourselves and move along with the rest of the Cullens, I would have to leave my family to be with him and then eventually I would die anyway and leave him alone. My mind became a blur of what might or might not happen, but through it all, I kept on remembering the first thoughts in my mind when I had seen him and I cursed myself for how I made him feel. I dropped my face into my hands and sobbed and the cool hand of Esme rubbing circles on my back did nothing to comfort me.
"Edward will understand," she was saying. "He had much the same reaction himself when he woke. When he accepts what's happened, he'll understand your feelings."
"But I don't feel like that! It was just...an instant. The drugs and the worry and everything and all of you refusing to tell me anything and then suddenly he was there and I just...he must think I hate him," I sniffed. "I can't stay here, Esme, I have to see him...let him know it's alright."
"You can't be there right now, Jacob, it's too dangerous for you," Esme said firmly. "Until we get his thirst under control, you'll have to stay here."
"Edward wouldn't hurt me," I protested.
"He wouldn't want to, but you have to remember he's a newborn. He'll find it very difficult to be around humans for..."
"When Jasper changed Alexa you took them to Alaska for...months!"I remembered in alarm.
"Yes..."
"Was there really no other way?"
Esme shook her head sadly. "His spinal cord was badly damaged, high up, near the base of his neck. Even if he had lived he would have been paralysed from the neck down, but it was too late for Carlisle to save him as he was. His organs had begun to shut down from shock and hypothermia and his heart stopped a few minutes after we found you."
I squeezed my eyes shut. "Go on."
"It was an easy decision. We had to give him another chance after everything you two have been through."
I nodded slowly. "I guess...if I'd been awake I would have said the same. I don't think he would have wanted it, but I wouldn't have been able to let him go."
"Edward will be alright," Esme said gently. "It'll take some time for him to get used to this and for him to get himself under control, so you're going to have to be patient."
"But...somehow I have to let him know it's ok. I have to talk to him."
"Why don't you write him a letter?"
"A letter?" I glanced at her with a frown.
"It'll be the easiest way. He may not want to talk on the phone..."
"Fu...sorry...um...is there no way I can see him?" I sighed.
"I'm sorry, Jacob. It's not safe for you and it would put him in a very difficult position. If he lost control, he'd never forgive himself."
"Ok. There's some paper in the drawer over there," I said, pointing.
Esme fetched paper and pen and found me a shirt and cut-offs to put on, since I was still wrapped in the sheet. She helped me dress and then left me alone, heading into the kitchen to make me something to eat, despite my protest that my appetite had deserted me. I felt that even a mouthful of anything at that moment wouldn't stay down, but I hadn't eaten in days and she insisted that I try. As I heard her opening cupboards and drawers, slicing and chopping, I picked up the pen and began to write.
'My Edward,
'I hate that I have to write to you; that I can't stand in front of you and say this. I know they're right when they tell me being near you will only make things harder for you right now, but it doesn't mean I like it and I know that putting my words on paper won't sound the way I want it to. I want to be able to look in your eyes and let you into my mind so you can see what I'm thinking and what I feel.
'I know my thoughts hurt you and I want you to know that I'm sorry and that it didn't mean anything. They didn't tell me they changed you. I was out of my mind on morphine since the accident and when I saw you, yes, it was a shock and I was scared, but it was a split-second. I knew you would have wokenup and been horrified, maybe hated that you found yourself a vampire again and I was more afraid for you than for myself. But what's important is that you're still here. We still have each other.
'I love you, Edward, whatever form you're in and I want you to remember that when I first fell in love with you, you were the same way you are now. Maybe we were meant to return to that all along. I don't know what fate or whatever it is meant for us, but you're my husband, the love of my life, and nothing is going to change the way I feel about you, or keep me away from you.
'Call me, please, at my parents' house. Let me tell you this properly. Again, I love you, with all my heart and soul.
'Jacob.'
I folded the sheet of paper twice and wrote his name on it, not bothering with an envelope. Somehow an envelope seemed too formal and perhaps he wouldn't even open it. Perhaps he would think it held something bad; a note from me to say that we couldn't be together any more.
"God, what if he doesn't read it?" I groaned as Esme came back into the room. "Will you tell him?"
"Of course I'll tell him." She took the note and passed me a plate piled high with chicken salad sandwiches. "Edward will understand; he just needs some time. Now eat. I don't want to see a crumb left on that plate. You need your strength."
I nodded and began to eat numbly, forcing each bite down and not even noticing what I was putting into my mouth. It seemed dry like sawdust and I gulped water in between mouthfuls to help myself swallow. My stomach was a knot of fear and my heart ached in my chest. Each minute that passed was another minute of Edward thinking of my shock at his appearance and I wanted to ask Esme to leave and go to him, to make him read the letter, but I knew she wouldn't go anywhere and leave me alone in the house.
I glanced at the clock and realised with relief that Mom had finished work and just then the sound of her car pulling up outside drew Esme to her feet to look out of the window.
"Do you want me to stay and talk to your mother?" she asked.
"No. Please, go and see Edward. Make him read the letter. Tell him...tell him I love him and it doesn't make any difference," I said miserably.
Esme stayed just long enough to speak to Mom and explain that Edward and I had an accident in the mountains and that I had broken my leg. Then she left and Mom came into the room, her face shocked and worried.
"What on earth happened? Why didn't you call me? Your poor leg!"
"My leg's ok. Carlisle fixed it up," I said. "I've been on morphine up to now. I guess the Cullens didn't call because they didn't want to worry you unnecessarily."
"Well, I'm surprised at Esme," Mom frowned. "She's a mother; I would have thought letting us know would have been the first thing...!"
"Mom!" I interrupted. "Don't blame her, please, she probably wasn't thinking straight. Edward..." I stopped.
"Is he alright? Esme didn't seem to want to talk about him."
What should I tell her? We had never told my parents the part about the Cullens being vampires, thinking it would have been one step too far. They had easily accepted the fact that I had lived before and that I had once been capable of changing into a wolf and at a push they had accepted that Edward too had lived before, with me, and that we had been brought together once again in this life. To tell them that the Cullens were vampires, some of them hundreds of years old, and that Edward had been the same and had been changed again to save him, was too much. I couldn't expect them to swallow that and I doubted Edward would want me to tell them.
"Is Edward badly hurt?" Mom was saying.
"He's...um...he broke his back," I said. "He might be...paralysed. I begged them to let me stay, but they need to...um...focus on him and they figured...I'd be better off here with you to help me."
"Oh, sweetheart...I'm so sorry. Have you been able to talk to him?"
"No, he was...unconscious until today." I wanted to beg her to drive me back to the Cullens' right away, but I knew they wouldn't let us in and as much as I didn't think Edward would hurt me, regardless of what Esme had said, I couldn't put my own mother in potential danger.
"I'm surprised at Carlisle keeping you apart," Mom frowned. "But I suppose if they need to concentrate on caring for him...maybe we can take you to visit in a few days."
"Yeah...maybe," I said despondently.
"How did the accident happen?"
It was the first time I had thought about it properly, I realised. During the brief periods I had been conscious since, all I had been able to think about was Edward.
"It was my fault!" I blurted in despair. "We hiked up Swallow Peak and I decided to take a short cut back to the camp. Usually it's fine; I've come down that way a dozen times; Dad showed me it when I was a kid. But there's been so much rain, the rocks were loose, the ground started sliding out from under us. We fell maybe...twenty, thirty feet. Oh, God...Edward would be ok if I hadn't been so keen to get back before it rained!"
I burst into tears again and Mom dropped to her knees beside the couch, wrapping her arms around me and rocking me the way she had when I was a child and I had been upset over something. I clung onto her and wept for Edward...my poor beautiful vampire, whom I couldn't be with; whom I couldn't reassure that nothing had changed and that I still loved him with everything I had in me.
