Chapter 43
Edward took me home to his apartment, and immediately walked to the master bathroom. "I'm running you a bath," he called back to me.
I was never really a bath person, but I was cold and uncomfortable from the rain so a warm bath actually sounded like heaven.
"Where's Bree?" I asked as I began peeling off my damp layers of clothes.
"She's going to stay with Alice tonight. In fact, I better text Jasper to let him know I found you so he can stop looking."
"Jasper is looking for me too?" I asked surprised and embarrassed.
"Uh yeah…and Emmett."
"Emmett? He didn't seem too enthusiastic about us when we saw him at Carlisle's."
"Well, that's because he didn't know that I was clueless about that memorial reception thingy. He just thought I screwed up and bailed. Once I told him what really happened, he apologized for being a fucktard."
"Oh…that's good," I said, unsure how else to respond. When I was undressed and waiting for the bath to finish filling, I happened to catch a glimpse of my naked torso, and was shocked that I did in fact have a little pooch there.
Edward turned off the water, and when he looked at me through the mirror his face fell the teeniest amount, but he tried to play it off. "I'm going to go make something to eat," he said quickly.
"You're not going to come in with me?" I asked disappointed.
"You need to eat just as much as you need to warm up," he said with one foot already out of the door. "I'll have something waiting for you whenever you're ready."
So I sat in the bath alone, and tried to come up with some sort of plan on how to convince him of the truth. I knew Edward loved me, and even if the baby wasn't his, eventually he'd grow to love the baby as well, but the awkward look he had just given me was heartbreaking, and I had a feeling it was only going to get worse the bigger my stomach got. I needed to find a way to convince him of the truth, and I needed to do it soon. Edward deserved the right to bond with his unborn baby, and it wasn't going to happen in the right way unless he knew.
But then I was suddenly struck with a horrifying thought that made me so anxious that it couldn't wait, so I immediately jumped out of the bath and wrapped myself in a towel so I could go find my cell phone.
"Hey…that was quick," Edward said as I rushed past him.
"I need to make a call," I explained without stopping. Once I found my phone I took it to Edward's bedroom and locked the door so he couldn't come in, and then I called the one person who might have an answer for my conundrum.
"Well if it isn't Julia Roberts," Alice said the moment she came on the line.
"Huh?" I asked bewildered.
"Julia Roberts…Runaway Bride…you ran away…Just, never mind. How are you? You had us all worried. Edward didn't tell us what happened, he just said you took off somewhere on foot and he couldn't find you."
"Yeah, I had some thinking to do," I said vaguely. "Listen, I really need to talk to you about something."
"Alright, shoot."
"Okay." I took a deep breath. "Have you ever heard of a ghost…getting someone pregnant?"
There was silence, and then laughter.
"Really, you've never heard of it?" I asked disheartened.
"Of course I've heard of it, but it's not real," she said through her giggles. "How could a ghost ever get someone pregnant?"
"Oh…right, but…what if they could?" I pressed. "I mean, if they could…you know…If they could have sex with a person, then why couldn't they get them pregnant?"
"Uh...How about the fact that they don't have a body," she said like a smartass. "Bella, remember when I told you to ask Spirit Edward about his tattoos?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Even though you could see Edward, feel him even, you couldn't see the tattoos because they were part of his physical body. You may have had sex with him as a ghost, but really, the fact that you could feel him at all was solely derived from your mind. You believed you could feel him, so you could…But people certainly can't conjure up living sperm…Why are you asking anyway?"
"I'm just curious," I said dismissively, and then I remembered something. "Didn't you say that the reason I was able to see and feel Edward was because he was my soul mate?…You said certain things could overcome the boundaries of life and death, and that was what Edward and I had. That is what you said, right?"
"Yeah…something like that. It's not an exact science since no one has done any definitive studies on the subject. Why, what's going on?"
"I'm pregnant," I blurted out.
"Yeah, I know, I read your aura, remember?" she said slowly.
"Well we found out today that I'm twelve weeks."
"Oh…Oh. So that means Edward was in a coma when it was conceived."
"Exactly, and I'm ninety nine point nine nine nine percent positive that it's still his baby." Before she could respond I needed to ask my real question, so I took another deep breath and then just ran with it. "Alice, I guess what I'm asking is that since this baby is still his, regardless of him not actually being able to physically conceive it, what does that mean for the baby's DNA. Like if we were to do a test, would it even have his DNA if DNA is a physical thing? Do you understand what I mean? I just don't quite understand how it all works, and I need help."
There was another bout of silence from her part, which was a pretty big deal since Alice was rarely speechless about anything. Thankfully it didn't take too long for her to find her voice again.
"Uh...So...you…and him…and you think…Wow."
Okay so it wasn't the exact response I was looking for, but it was better than her being mute.
"Alice, you have to believe me on this," I said desperately. "You're the only one who would, and I have no idea who to turn to if you don't."
"Okay. I believe you. I don't know how I believe it, but I do….And you're sure that you weren't with anyone else around that time?"
"Of course I'm sure. Like I said, I'm ninety nine point nine…"
"So what's the point zero zero one percent possibility that it's someone else's?" she cut me off.
"I don't know, that I was drugged by someone and remember nothing."
"Okay, maybe you should go with that."
"Alice!" I said frustrated. "You just said you believed me."
"I do believe you, but it just…I never heard of anything like it before. I mean, I can believe in some pretty unbelievable things, but…how could he have created life, when he didn't have one himself? Apart from you going to the hospital, and somehow getting his sperm from his comatose body, I just don't see how it could be possibly his if you're twelve weeks along."
I sighed in defeat. My personal belief on the matter didn't falter, but if I couldn't even convince Alice, then how the hell would I ever convince a skeptic like Edward? At least with her support perhaps he would have been slightly willing to listen, but without her it was hopeless.
"Hey look, I'll do some research and ask around about this, okay?" Alice said gently.
"Thanks," I replied somberly, before saying goodbye and hanging up the phone. Without leaving Edward's room, I spotted his laptop and decided to take a little time to do some research of my own. I looked up anything and everything I could about spirits and human relations, and sadly didn't come up with much. There were legends of incubuses, but every single bit of information I found referred to them more as evil demons than spiritual soul mates. It was maddening, and it only made me feel that much more befuddled.
My conscience kept calling out to me to have Edward just take a paternity test, but my fear was that since his body didn't actually create the baby, what if it didn't share his DNA? Then again, if a test couldn't prove Edward was the father, then we wouldn't be any worse off than we were currently.
My mind was in such a state of chaos as I tried to reason everything out, that I began to question my sanity again. Strangely enough however, the further I got down the rabbit hole, so to speak, the more everything started to feel right. I had no idea how I was going to work it all out, but I truly felt like I was taking the early steps onto the correct path I needed to take. I had to trust that somehow, someway, Edward would believe me, and everything would be set right. If the paternity test turned out to be inconclusive, then I'd just have to make him see the truth some other way.
"So…I was just doing some research on the internet, and there's a new non-invasive paternity test that that can be performed prior to the baby being born," I told Edward shortly after hanging up with Alice. "It's just a blood test for me, so it's perfectly safe for the baby even at this stage."
He nodded absently. "I think it's a good idea."
"You do?" I asked surprised.
"Yeah…I think the sooner he knows everything, the better."
"He?"
"Mike, your ex," he clarified, but then he abruptly became anxious. "But I mean, there's no rush. We have the funeral in a couple days, and I'm sure it'll take a while to get an appointment anyway."
On the grand scale of things, we hadn't really spent much time together, but it was enough for me to feel like I knew him better than anyone, and in that moment, it was clear to me that he was on the verge of a freak out.
"Edward, everything is going to be fine," I told him soothingly. All of his previous anxiety attacks had been a result of his fear of losing me, so I wasn't quite sure what was causing it right then, but I felt the need to, once again, reassure him that I would never willingly leave him. "We're going to take care of the funeral, and then get married, and we'll just worry about everything else later. Okay"
He took a heavy sigh of relief, and then nodded. "That's a good plan." The tension that was radiating off of him broke almost immediately, so perhaps the stress was just caused by everything compiling at once. Laying it all out like that made it simpler, and having a course of action was always a good thing for anyone with an obsessive anxiety disorder.
"Hey…You and me, right?" I said to him, just to reaffirm my feelings and how serious I was.
"Always," he replied.
"Then why are you questioning it again?"
"I'm not," he said with a heavy breath. "It's just…I don't know. Mike deserves to know, but at the same time…I hate the thought of it."
"The thought of Mike taking the test?" I questioned.
"The thought of sharing you. You're going to have all these…bonding experiences with him and the baby, and where the hell does that leave me? You made a baby with him; it's a big deal, and once you realize it, you're going to feel all kinds of things that you can't even imagine right now."
I really was shocked by his comment. On one hand I was beyond impressed that he seemed to open up about his feelings so easily, but the fact that he believed I was pregnant with someone else's baby, and yet he still feared I'd leave him was gut-wrenching.
"Okay, first of all, I know I keep saying this, but I'll continue to say it for the rest of my life if I have to. I love you. I've always loved just you, and that will never change. And second of all, when I said I wanted to get a paternity test, it wasn't Mike I wanted to test."
"So…you remembered someone else it could possibly be?"
"I am one hundred percent positive Mike's not the father. We were never alone when he was in town, and the only time we were together, he was falling in love with the waitress."
"So who?"
"You," I said boldly. "I want to get you tested because I'm sure this baby is yours."
"Bella…you're twelve weeks," he said slowly.
"And twelve weeks ago we were pretty heavy into a physical-spiritual relationship."
"I was in a coma," he said evenly. "And before that I hadn't seen you in a decade."
"We met in an elevator."
"We met when our parents introduced us and said we were all going to be a family," he corrected me.
"Yes, but we met again after a decade apart in an elevator at the hospital. I was there delivering Carlisle lunch from the diner, and you appeared to be just leaving. You didn't remember me at first, but I understand now that it was because you didn't really remember much at that moment. Once you realized who I was, you were very persistent. It was like you immediately knew we belonged together, and despite my hesitations, you wouldn't stop until I admitted just how much I always loved you. I didn't find out about your coma until awhile afterwards."
He stared at me dumbfounded for a minute, and then he blinked a few times. "I...I don't understand…So, you're saying that while I was in a coma…." He let his sentence trail off because he obviously wasn't sure what he was even trying to say.
"We were together…while you were in a coma, yes."
"Okay, Bella, that's not possible. Carlisle was at the hospital every day. He would have known if I regained consciousness and left the room."
"Your body never left…but your spirit did."
"My spirit?" he asked incredulously. "Okay, you know what, I think we've both had a really long day. We should get to bed, and we can talk more about this in the morning when we're thinking clearer."
"Edward, I know it sounds crazy, impossible even, but it did happen. Bree saw you, Alice talked to you; the three of us all experienced your time out of body, and if you just try to have an open mind about it…"
"Ok, just stop," he snapped at me. "Bree is a little girl with serious emotional problems, Alice is just as unstable, and somehow they've convinced you that this is real. I mean, come on Bella, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You're talking Immaculate Conception here. It's preposterous."
"I know it seems that way, and trust me, I thought I was going crazy for a while too, but…"
"Yeah, well maybe you are going crazy," he said harshly. "We've all been so focused on my mental issues, but you experienced the same thing I did, so maybe you're just as fucked up as I am but it's just surfacing in this absurd way."
"That's not what his is," I said quietly.
"No? How do you know? The truth is, the crazy never think they're crazy at first. It takes time to own up to something like that."
"I'm not crazy. I don't know how, but I will find a way to convince you," I told him with as much conviction as I could muster. "If you'd just take a paternity test."
"I'm not taking a fucking test!" he shouted at me.
"Why?" I asked exasperated. "It could prove…"
"All it would prove is that we're both so much more insane than anyone ever imagined." He took a moment to calm himself, and then he looked intensely into my eyes. "Having a DNA test done on your baby is your choice, but leave me out of it."
And with that, he turned off the lights and walked back to the bedroom, leaving me standing there alone in the dark. My entire body was tense with anger, but Edward's pigheadedness was not unexpected and it would not detour me. Ethereal Edward didn't give up on me, and I'd never give up on him. I would find a way, I had to keep believing that.
