Author Note: Excuse my lack of medical knowledge, so if it's not quite right then I apologize and claim ignorance for this chapter.

I really wanted to respond to all of your nice reviews and excitement that I'm back, but I've had a crazy couple of weeks so I'm sorry it's coming two weeks later and I didn't have time to respond. My goal is to post once a week and answer all of your reviews, but we'll see what happens.

Chapter 2

"Dr. Swan, you have a patient arriving in five minutes with extensive head injuries," the nurse said as she took the files out of Bella's hand when she immerged from her last patient's room.

"Vitals?"

The nurse rattled off the reading of his vital signs recorded from their last contact with the paramedics and shoved through the emergency doors. Bella followed and met with Dr. Jessica Stanley as she was coming out of a trauma room. They walked down the hall together until they reached the ambulance bay.

"Did you hear we're going to have a celebrity?" Jessica asked.

Bella wrinkled her brow and shook her head. "No, who?"

"Edward Cullen from ABC7 news." There was a little too much excitement in her voice.

"The weather guy?"

Jessica nodded. "Yeah, he should be on the next rig."

"He's my brain trauma patient?"

"Sure is."

Bella turned to the nurse. "Can you please call the Chief of Surgery at Stanford and let him know that Dr. Cullen's son will be arriving?" The nurse looked wide eyed, but nodded and scurried away.

"Do you know him?" Jessica asked.

"I interned with Dr. Carlisle Cullen for a few months when he was teaching a special technique on insulating brain cells to treat ALS. It took me a few months to realize that the weather guy was his son."

"Are you okay with treating him?"

"Of course. I never met the man and Dr. Cullen had thirty other students besides me. We weren't close. He probably doesn't even remember me."

"Just checking. I know how much you adhere to the ethics guidelines," Jessica said with a roll of her eyes.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It just means you need to not worry so much about the rules and actually go out on a date when a hot fireman asks you out."

It was Bella's turn to roll her eyes. "That hot fireman was having seizures and I had to put him on medical leave, which by the way, he hates me now. I don't date patients. It just leads to problems later."

"But he wasn't a patient when he asked you out."

Bella shrugged and then dismissed their conversation. She'd been out a few times with Jessica when they were interns and the girl liked to party. She only pushed Bella on the fireman because she thought if her friend dated one then it would be easier for her hook-up with the rest of the department.

The scream of the ambulance echoed through the city streets and Bella, Jessica and the rest of the trauma team jumped to work when it came to a stop. As they pulled the patient out of the rig, Bella shook her head at how bad he looked. His face was covered in blood from two large gashes. One was down the center of his right cheek and the other was in his hairline, which seemed to be the cause of most of the blood.

Once he was wheeled into a trauma bay, Jessica began to rattle off his symptoms. Bella leaned in and hovered over his abrasion. She could tell by how the bleeding had slowed down that his brain was swelling.

"Am I dead?"

Bella's eyes shot to her patient's and they were open for a moment before he went unconscious again. She peeled back his eye and flashed a light across his pupils. No response.

She turned to the paramedic. "Has he regained consciousness before this moment?"

"No ma'am."

"Jessica, we need to get him into surgery. His brain is swelling and the faster we can open him up to relieve the pressure, the less damage he'll have. Waking up for a moment was a good sign, but we don't have time to waste. He needs a CT scan stat."

Jessica nodded and started barking orders to the nurses. Bella walked into the adjoining OR and began to scrub in. She respected Dr. Cullen, and prayed she wasn't going to have to give him bad news that day.

A nurse slipped on her gloves and she walked into the OR as they were wheeling him in. The nurse held up the CT results for her to read and Bella sighed. Just as she had thought. He had several hematomas and his brain was almost at capacity in his skull. It wouldn't be long before there would be permanent brain damage. She walked over to the table where they were getting Mr. Cullen prepped for surgery and looked down on his ashen hue. Her goal was to make him just as good as he was before he landed in her OR.

"Let's get this party started," a deep voice came from the doorway.

Bella looked up and glared at the man she had at one time thought was "the one." She'd been mistaken about many things when she was young, naïve and impressed by the interest of the older resident.

"What are you doing here, Dr. Newton? I don't have the patience or time for your shenanigans."

He clutched his chest. "I'm hurt, Bella. You know I'm the best in San Francisco. Who else would they call to stitch up the celebrities?"

"Well, you're going to have to wait until I'm done. Please leave until they page you."

Undeterred by her hostility, Mike scooted up behind her and looked over her shoulder down at Mr. Cullen. "Wow, he's more good-looking up close. This could really make or break my career."

Bella elbowed him in the ribs. "Get. Out. Of. My. OR."

"All right. All right. No need to get hostile." He backed out of the OR and Bella caught a glimpse of him winking at Jessica when she came in to look through the window. Bella gritted her teeth and looked around at her team, trying to ignore the repulsion she felt toward him.

She nodded at the anesthesiologist and then looked down at her patient. "Sleep and I'll be here when you wake up."

~O~

Bella stood at the nurse's station and watched the evening news while she sipped her cup of coffee. They hadn't mentioned anything about Mr. Cullen's accident since the day after it happened. Bella shook her head and changed the channel. She couldn't stomach listening to the perky news anchor, Tanya Denali, one moment longer.

"I'm sorry. You're not on the list as a family member so you can't see him."

Bella looked over as another woman, claiming to be family, tried to get information about Edward Cullen. She shook her head and picked up her charts as the nurse explained hospital procedures to her.

"I know I'm not family, but I feel terrible," the woman said. "He was coming to meet me and never made it."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. Until the patient has woken up, only immediate family can see him."

"When will that be?"

"I'll take this, Susan," Bella said and stepped around the desk.

"I'm Dr. Bella Swan, Mr. Cullen's doctor."

The woman looked up at her with dark brown eyes that held a tear she seemed to be fighting back. She didn't seem like one of the other groupies who had flocked to the hospital when Mr. Cullen's accident was reported on the news. She wasn't overly done up with cleavage to her chin. Instead, she wore modest career type clothes, her dark hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and she wore little to no make-up. She definitely didn't fit the mold of the other women she'd seen trying to visit.

"Angela. I'm … I-I guess you can say I'm a friend of Edward's."

Her hesitation to put a name on their relationship, lead Bella to believe that she wasn't so sure herself. He probably led her to believe she might be something more, but with the trail of women parading through the corridors, Bella doubted he thought past his own penis.

"I'm not allowed to give you any more information than what the family has allowed us to talk about with the media, but I'll try to answer any questions you may have, okay?"

Angela nodded just as a tear slipped down her cheek.

"Mr. Cullen had a traumatic brain injury from a motor vehicle collision and I had to do surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain and to repair several epidural hematomas."

"What's an epidural hematoma?"

"It's a bleed. Thankfully, they were just blood vessels and not an artery that was damaged. He's in stable condition, but we put him in a medically induced coma to let his brain heal. We don't expect him to come out of it for a few days."

"So he's lucky to be alive?" Angela's bottom lipped quivered and Bella felt sorry for her.

"Yes. He regained consciousness before he went into surgery so that's a good sign. All we can do is wait for him to wake up and hope for the best."

Angela nodded again and wiped at her eye as another tear fell. "I'm sorry, I just wanted to see him and make sure he was okay. I've been trying to call his sister all week and she hasn't returned my calls. The evening news barely reported anything about his accident so I just…" She shrugged and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I know there are rules. I just hoped…"

"I'm sorry," Bella said with a sympathetic smile.

Angela shook off the apology. "I'll just keep trying his sister. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me."

Bella patted her on the shoulder and watched as she walked, slump-shouldered, down the hall and entered one of the elevators.

"That's the fifth one today," Leah said with a sigh. "See what happens when I go on vacation? Nobody knows what to do with all these little hussies."

Bella rolled her eyes. Leah was one of those people that thought nobody could do her job better than she could, but she was really just as bad as the interns she complained about. "I don't think that one was part of the admirers from earlier."

Bella went back to her charts and almost dropped them when Leah jumped up and yelled. "You can't go in there!"

Bella looked up just as a little petite pixie looking girl whirled around in front of Mr. Cullen's room.

"I most certainly can go in there. I'm his sister."

"Sure you are and I'm the queen of England," Leah huffed.

Bella started to laugh because Leah was about to get her ass handed to her. She'd dealt with the little fireball named Alice when the last head nurse tried to stop her from seeing her brother. Bella ducked behind a pillar, but peered around the side and watched Leah meet her match.

Alice raised one eyebrow and then dropped down into a perfect curtsy. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness." She turned around and pushed open Mr. Cullen's door. "Now leave me the fuck alone," she said politely over her shoulder.

Bella giggled and then jumped out as Leah started to charge the door. "That's Alice Cullen, Mr. Cullen's sister. I wouldn't get in her way. The last nurse that tried to detain her was in tears in less than a minute and then Alice had the chief of surgery eating out of her hand when he came in to check on things. She knows her way around a hospital and how to get what she wants, so I would just leave things alone if I were you."

Leah's face was red, but she growled a string of curses under her breath and went back to the desk. Bella tried to hide her smile as she followed Alice into the room. Alice looked up with a scowl that would've made a linebacker cower, but when she took note it was Bella, she relaxed. Worry etched her brow as she smoothed the covers along the side of Mr. Cullen.

"How is he doing today?"

"He's coming along as expected."

"Do you think they'll be much damage? You know, like with talking or his motor skills?"

Bella came up to the bed and looked down at Mr. Cullen. He was a handsome man, even with the bandages and scar down his right cheek. "I'm sorry, we won't know until he wakes up, but I'm optimistic that he'll be fine."

Alice nodded. "My father will be here later. He had a surgery an hour ago." Alice smoothed the covers again and Bella realized it was probably something she did when she was upset. "My dad said you were the best intern when you were his student."

Bella was taken aback by the compliment. "I didn't even think he noticed me."

"He notices everything. He just doesn't say anything unless it warrants being said. He wouldn't have let you do the surgery if he didn't think you were the best."

"I'm far from being the—"

"Trust me," Alice said, cutting her off. "If he said you're the best then you're the best. He respects other neurosurgeons in UCSF, but he said you had the steadiest hands he'd ever seen."

Bella didn't know what to say with the compliment because it made her a little giddy to think that Dr. Cullen knew who she was and respected her as a surgeon. "Well, thank you. It means a lot to know he trusted me with his own child."

Alice nodded then looked at her brother. "You know we're twins?"

"No, I had no idea. You both are so different."

Alice laughed and then became somber again. "I knew the minute he had his accident. Something just broke inside me and I knew something was wrong."

Bella nodded. She'd read about unusual connections that twins had with each other. Unexplainable connections. However, Bella was a woman of science so she didn't put too much thought into the idea.

"There was a woman who came in earlier trying to see him."

Alice shook her head. "He has a string of admirers but all of them are superficial. He doesn't seem to stay with one woman for long. Once they show their own agenda, he tends to dump them."

Well, that wasn't what she expected to hear. She had assumed he was just a playboy like the rest of the TV personalities she'd met over the years. "This one was different," Bella said. "She had dark hair and didn't fit in the same mold as the others. Angela, I think."

Alice's eyes got big and then she pulled out her phone. "Oh my goodness! Thank you. I totally forgot to call her back."

Bella nodded and went for the door. "If you have any questions, I'll be at the nurse's station."

~O~

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