When Edward left the first time, a hole developed in Bella's chest. Like a cancer, it grew with the weight of her despair. It was her body's physical reaction to her emotional loss – Bella's entire being was grieving.
But this…this time it was entirely different. After all, how can you mourn for something you never truly had, that was never yours to loose?
In death there was usually comfort, taken from the knowledge that the person lost had lived a full life, taken from the memories shared, the memories retained. Bella had no memories, just cruel parodies, carved into damaged gray matter. Film strips and movies she could watch, but had never actually participated in.
There weren't words to express that kind of deception, that kind of loss.
That kind of pain.
It was beyond describing, beyond actually feeling. Like the universe had turned in on itself, and been swallowed up by the blackest of holes, the change was only noticeable in the absence of self, the absence of existence. Not its discontinuation, but its failure to be altogether.
Bella Swan, the girl she had thought she was, hadn't just ceased to be. She'd never been real at all.
She didn't know who she was anymore.
She was never alone. Awake, asleep, someone was always present at her bedside. It was a devotion from her parents she'd never wanted nor received before, and some bitter part of her felt that it paled in comparison to the doting she'd once been subjected to by another.
Even worse, now that she was no longer dead to the world, Bella no longer trusted herself. Sleep seemed to overtake her so frequently now – a natural reaction, the doctor assured her – and when she slept, she spoke.
Rather, when she slept, she screamed.
The first time it happened, Renee shook her awake, terrified that Bella was in pain. And she was, but not the kind of pain you could put words to. In her sleep-addled haze, Bella pleaded with her mother to remember the bronze-haired boy she'd brought to visit her in Jacksonville, thinking that if only she could convince her to remember than she might wake up from this, the real dream. That if Renee could remember too, the spell might then be broken, and the handsome prince could return.
But Renee only smoothed back the hair from her sweaty forehead, and tried to control her own ragged breathing. "It was only a dream, sweetie. Phil and I live in Phoenix at the old house, remember? The blue one?" Then she squeezed her daughter's hand, and ran off in pursuit of a nurse who could tell her what must be physically ailing her daughter.
In her own twisted way, Renee was actually right.
Her life…had only been a dream.
And Bella lay awake in bed, suffocating under the weight of the realization that now she was awake for the nightmare.
It was strange. Her family, her few visitors, even the staff seemed to have adapted to the idea of Bella being in a coma so well that the moment she closed her eyes, they assumed she could no longer hear them.
They were wrong.
Bella discovered more by lying still and pretending to sleep than either her parents or the doctors had openly disclosed to her.
She learned that for two months she'd been here Renee had barely left her side. She only took sporadic bathroom breaks, which ironically was when Bella had decided to wake up, and had to be dragged away to the motel down the street to shower and change clothes. And even then, she'd only go if Bella was safely in the hands of Charlie or another trusted friend.
She also learned that Forks only needed its Sheriff when he was otherwise occupied. The usually quiet town had called Charlie away from her bedside to deal with a break in and robbery at the convenience store by the highway, two acts of vandalism related to Spring Fling dance revelries, and the usual two or three hikers who managed to get lost for more than 48 hours at a time.
Bella learned that Phil was pursuing a contract with Pittsburg, that Charlie's friend Harry Clearwater had been her neighbor for a week after he suffered a heart attack caused by high blood pressure, and that one of the nurses named Bonnie was having an affair with a married surgical resident.
But most importantly, Bella learned that despite their brave faces and confident fronts, neither of her parents seemed to think she was okay.
"It doesn't make any sense, Doctor," Charlie admitted one afternoon, while Bella appeared to be napping. "I don't know what to do. She's stopped talking about it now but…the minute she falls asleep she starts to yell. She keeps calling for people who aren't there…this Edward…and I don't know what to do anymore." She'd never heard her father sound so exasperated, so defeated.
"Disorientation is perfectly normal under these circumstances," Dr. Collins assured him in a confident, professional tone. "Just because--"
"But for two weeks?" Renee interrupted.
Dr. Collins cleared her throat, a subtle cue that Bella had learned indicated her mounting irritation. "Just because Bella is awake doesn't mean that her body has fully adjusted yet. Comatose experiences can be very traumatic. It's going to take time, and patience for her to make a--"
"But she will recover, won't she?" Renee interrupted again. "I mean, right now she's like a little kid – she can't tell the difference between what's fake and what's real. But you said her last X-Rays didn't indicate anything abnormal after the surgery…so she should be fine then?"
"Physically, she's making a full recovery," Dr. Collins said, the irritation now evident in her tone. She didn't appreciate having her diagnoses called into question. "The inter-cranial swelling has gone down, and the bone appears to be setting well. But psychologically these things can take--"
"Well then maybe there's something she's not telling us. Maybe something happened before the accident. Did you know this boy? His family?" Renee demanded, cutting off the doctor yet again.
"Town this size?" Charlie murmured. "Sure Renee, not many people I don't know. Good kid, good family. His father was a doctor here, but they moved about a week before Bella's accident. I honestly had no idea his son and Bella had been so close. She never talked about her school friends really, other than Newton and the Weber girl. She never brought anyone home either."
"Carlisle, the boy's father, said he'd been looking to get into teaching for a while," Collins interjected, eager to add her two cents to the conversation. "Talked about it all the time, actually. One of his old colleagues at UCLA medical school went on emergency bed rest in her second trimester, and Carlisle jumped at the chance to fill in for her. Gave his notice first week of April and moved down there right away. Pretty big loss for the hospital, we were scrambling to find a replacement."
"But I still don't understand, Bella talks like she lost years with this boy--"
"And in my dreams I can fly, Ms. Dwyer, but that doesn't make it true," Dr. Collins interrupted sharply, turning the tables on Renee. "Bella just needs time to let both her body and mind heal." Renee must have looked like she was ready to protest again, because Dr. Collins quickly added, "But if you're that concerned I can schedule a consultation with the hospital psychologist, just to verify that everything's progressing normally, okay?"
"Thank you, Doctor…"
Bella stopping listening then, too scared, too defeated, too empty to want to hear anything else. She just shut down, and waited until a wave of real sleep washed over her and took her away into that blessed nothingness.
That night, Bella dreamed she could fly.
Charlie appeared in the morning, relieving Renee and sending her to get some rest. He didn't mention the conversation from the previous evening – not his concerns, nor the impending visit from the hospital shrink.
He had aged years in a matter of months, Bella noticed, as he sat down at her bedside. She'd never seen the prominent lines beside his eyes before. She didn't know how someone who so infrequently laughed could get laugh lines, but her Dad had managed that as well. Still, his demeanor seemed much improved. He never let on how worried he was about his daughter's state of mind.
And Bella never let on that she knew he was.
A weak smile was all she could muster when he brightly asked how she was feeling.
"Fine." A single word, a single syllable. And still it felt as if it was too much for Bella's tongue to handle.
The dark look reappeared to haunt Charlie's features. It wasn't that Bella wasn't getting any better, it's that she wasn't even trying anymore, and he knew it.
"Look, Bells, we need to talk--" he started to say, but stopped when Bonnie burst through the door.
"Morning!" she announced with all the enthusiasm of someone who just received a quickie in the supply closet. Bella and Charlie scowled in unison, but Charlie conceded and stepped back to give the nurse room to change Bella's IV. He was sulking against the wall when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
"Chief," Bonnie chided with more brevity than Bella appreciated in someone pulling a needle out of the back of her hand. "You know the rules – no phones."
"I know, I know, I know," he muttered, checking the caller ID. "I'm just gonna step out and grab this, Bells. I'll be right back." Bella waved him off with her free hand, eager to delay the conversation she knew was coming. Charlie was going to want answers, and Bella didn't think she was ready to handle the look of disappointment on his face when he got them.
After a while, Bonnie slid the needle back into her vein. Bella didn't even flinch – she'd built a wall around herself since the conversation between her parents and Dr. Collins. It was the final nail in the coffin she'd willingly laid in. She was crazy, she was alone, and once she spoke to the psychologist, she'd be that way forever. The will to fight the inevitable had been drained from her. Now Bella was content to sit behind her invisible walls, numb to the world.
At least, she would've been content to do so, had a sound, tinged with familiarity, not reached her ears just then. It tore through her self imposed exile like a nuclear blast. Bella bolted upright in bed.
"Stop squirming Bella," Bonnie ordered, trying to restrain the girl with one hand, and take her blood pressure with the other. "I can't get a good reading if you're moving all over the place."
But the voice, there it was again.
"Old man, I swear if you run over my foot one more time you're hitchhiking home…" A chorus of laughter followed.
Bella knew that voice, something deep in the recesses of her mind screamed for it. More voices joined in: Charlie, and someone else she recognized. But none of it mattered. It was all trivial, useless detail save for that one. That one that ignited all the memories in her head that she tried to bury, tried to convince herself weren't real. Motor oil and grass and heat.
Her world lately had been consumed by so much nothing. In her head, in her past, in this room.
She needed something solid. Something real. Something to hold her here, to tell her that it hadn't all been in her mind, that it hadn't all been a dream.
"Jacob." She murmured his name under her breath, feeling the weight of it on her tongue. She heard footsteps stop outside the door, a murmur of voices and muffled laughter, but they didn't come inside. "Jake," she said louder.
"Bella, what are you going about?" Bonnie demanded to know, her patience waning Bella ignored her, willing the visitors to step through her door, because any second now Jacob would come crashing in, all smiles and warmth. He'd pull her to his chest and crush the air out of her lungs and tell her that she wasn't crazy. He'd make it all better, he'd put her back together. Just like he always did.
"Jacob." No response. Well, if they weren't going to come inside, then Bella would just go to them. She started to peel the tape off the back of her IV, which was still hanging on the bed post. She'd only been allowed to walk to the bathroom and back since waking up, and then only with the help of her mom or a nurse, but the door was only a few feet away. She could make it
She was sure of it.
Bella had the needle halfway out of her wrist when Bonnie turned around. "Bella, what the hell are you doing?" She grabbed both the girl's hands and attempted to stop her from getting the IV all the way out. But Bonnie wasn't much bigger than Bella, and Bella was feeling particularly compelled, so she resisted, trying to bring her hands back together.
That was it for Bonnie, whose post-coital pleasantness had all but disappeared. She let go one of Bella's hands just long enough to hit the intercom on the wall and demand that someone page Dr. Collins.
Bella seized the opportunity for escape and wrenched the last of the needle from her arm, releasing a faint trickle of blood that oozed down the back of her hand. In another lifetime that would've been enough to set the room spinning, but Bella had bigger things to worry about now. She slipped from Bonnie grip and scooted off the edge of the bed.
But her feet shook beneath her as they hit the cold tile, and the door suddenly seemed so much farther away then before. She made it two steps before Bonnie regrouped and latched onto her forearm.
"Help!" the nurse shouted, trying desperately to keep Bella from further injuring herself while avoiding a lawsuit.
Bella tried to jerk herself free, but it didn't matter because the door flew open and Jacob ran in, and…
…and he looked like the average fifteen year old boy. No rippling muscles, no tightly controlled face, no monster buried beneath his lanky frame. He was just a surprised kid, holding what appeared to be a bunch of flowers, and gaping at her strangely.
"Um…Bella?"
That was the final straw. The room began to spin as Bella lost her tenuous grip on reality. With nothing left to hold on to, to hope for, there was nothing to keep her from spiraling off into oblivion.
"You're not him…he, I…you're not…where's Jake?" Her heart was beating desperately, trying to lunge out of her chest. Bella's vision slipped and spun, she was hearing everything too fast, too loud. Her knees went out from under her, and she felt someone catch her a moment before she collapsed into a heap on the floor.
Arms, voices, hands pulled her back into the bed, pinned down her wrists.
"Bella?" Charlie was at her side now. Someone shoved him away. A new pain bit into the crook of her arm. A sedative?
The world began to get fuzzy. "Jake…"
A set of fingers intertwined with her own, soft and cool and completely, utterly human. "I'm right here."
Yelling, there was so much yelling. Charlie was yelling at the doctor. The nurse was yelling at Charlie. And all the while the world was becoming darker and smaller and darker and so much smaller.
"Please stay…" a voice pleaded. Her own? "I don't…don't leave me just…stay. Please stay?"
Bella felt a hand squeeze hers in response before it all went dark.