AN: So Alice has seen some interesting things hmm? Let's see how the future pans out for Bella. ;)
Oh and thank you for all your lovely reviews! I very much look forward to reading them. They're very inspiring. :D
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Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death.
-Modern Version of the Hippocratic Oath
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CHAPTER THREE: GIFTS AND BETRAYALS
After Carlisle had laid down the law that no one would do anything at all to my baby unless I permitted them to, a number of surprising things happened in rapid succession that next morning.
The first was that Alice and Jasper had disappeared before I awoke.
They took all of their possessions with them, which was surprising, since no one had seen them leave and they had a lot of stuff. And the only clue they'd left was a cryptic note addressed to me resting innocently on the coffee table. It had been written on the back of the title page of the Merchant of Venice, which I thought was a bit odd, (why deface a book when there was plenty of good paper to be found). Her letters were scrawled sloppily in black ink like she'd been in a hurry, so it was almost impossible to decipher. But from her absence, I gathered the gist of what it must say, so I didn't bother exerting the strain it took to read it just yet. Instead, I tucked the torn page away in between the leafs of a pregnancy book I was struggling to get through, to be examined at a later date.
The second surprising event was that Charlie had called to know when I was coming home from my honeymoon. This forced Carlisle to invent the not-entirely-false lie that I had contracted a strange disease in South America and was currently quarantined somewhere in Switzerland in an international "wellness facility" until further notice.
I didn't like that we were stringing him along like this. But until my fate was a little more secure I couldn't accept anything else.
Eventually we would have to come up with a more concrete excuse for my absence that would give him the closure he needed. Or else he would hunt vigilantly to find me until he unwittingly stumbled upon some fact that lead him to his death. But there was no need to fake a funeral for myself right away if I ended up dying for real in a few weeks, as Edward kept suggesting I would. And if I stayed alive and human, (or even if I became immortal), I kind of wanted to keep in touch.
And the third strange happening was that an unexpected present arrived, addressed to me.
The gift came in a small, ornately carved wooden box with an all-too-familiar golden crest adhered to the top. The box was inlaid on every surface with tasteful gold and ruby accents. And the inside was swathed in a rich red velvet that was soft to the touch, despite its apparent age.
I was already impressed when Esme, having a fair amount of experience working with antiquities, confirmed my suspicions that the box itself was a priceless treasure which would have outshone just about any piece of jewelry.
That is, any piece of jewelry besides the one inside it.
The necklace I found within, in of itself, was rather simple. It consisted of a thick, rope of a chain, and only one jewel hung suspended from that rope. What made it extravagant enough to outdo its container, though, was the fact that the rope was made of woven gold. And said jewel was an enormous white diamond about the size of a golf ball.
I marveled that the Volturi, whose crest was boldly centered on the front of the package, would send me such a ludicrously expensive gift completely out of the blue. And honestly I was a little frightened by their unexpectedly intense interest.
Esme too seemed to echo my fear, until Carlisle explained. He said that Alice had sent them a wedding announcement as a way of showing that I was complying with their desire to see me transformed. An announcement which had stalled them from coming to check on me. This gift, Carlisle further clarified, was their way of communicating that they accepted that I planned to be immortalized soon. In fact, he said that because vampires and humans didn't typically have sex, they probably believed I already had been changed on my "honeymoon." Though they would want concrete proof of that eventually.
I swallowed as recalled that the fact that I hadn't been transformed yet was precisely why I was in the predicament that I was in right now—pregnant and struggling to convince Edward and Emmett that it was okay for me to be as such. For a fleeting second I almost wished that we had done things as we were "supposed to." That Edward had bitten me on Isle Esme instead of made love to me that night.
But as soon as that errant thought crossed my mind I extinguished it. Though we were currently going through an extremely rough patch in our marriage, (glowering at each other and refusing to speak, except to argue), I wouldn't trade our two nights as man and wife for anything. What we had shared then was beautiful, more priceless to me than any ginormous diamond or fancy-shmancy box.
The jewelry box and its contents were not the only items sent, however. They were accompanied by a short note, which Carlisle said was "handwritten by none other than Aro himself".
The entire family (minus its two missing members) seemed to regard the fact that Aro had deigned to pen it, rather than ordered one of his secretaries to do it, as an incredible honor. To my disappointment and bewilderment however, most of the words scribed on the thick, luxurious parchment were meaningless pleasantries regarding my recent nuptials.
Why would Aro bother to personally write me something so... empty? I mean his words were almost as generic as those you'd find on a Hallmark card.
It was a little strange that his words referred exclusively to me, though. Edward's name was completely missing from the message, despite the fact that the subject matter made that rather difficult to pull off...
But as I read to the end of the congratulatory note, the parting line caught my attention.
I very much look forward to meeting the new Mrs. Cullen in person.
It was flawlessly polite on the surface, as all of Aro's words had always been. But to me it sounded like there was an underlying threat in them. I felt clearly warned that if I wasn't the vampire he was expecting the next time we met, the ancient vampire monarch was not going to be generous enough to let me go in peace.
At least that was the only interpretation I could envision which was consistent with Jane's threat in June, when she'd seen me human after our battle with the newborn army. And the only interpretation that was consistent with what Alice had revealed so far of the Volturi's other decisions regarding us.
Carlisle, however, seemed to read something entirely different from those words (he wouldn't say why). Though he did sound quite confident when he stated his belief that if we decided to contact his old friend, he could persuade Aro to overlook my mortality in favor of helping us out. He said that my unchanged intention to be transformed, and the fact that I had only delayed because there had been an unexpected… detour… shall we say, would likely be enough to sway Aro's choice.
But he was still uncertain.
And I was extremely skeptical.
"The Volturi don't give second chances" wasn't a particularly yielding decree. And I wasn't terribly keen on the idea of risking my baby's life when I didn't yet see anything significant to gain from interacting with them yet.
Certainly my pregnancy was progressing quickly. I was growing ten times as fast as I should be, with no sign of slowing down. (Carlisle took my measurements twice daily, once at sunup and once at sundown). And of course it would be ideal to have a better idea of what to expect further down the line. Especially if there were great dangers looming ahead, as everyone seemed to believe there would be.
But on that first day after my return to Forks, I didn't seen any reason to make a risky call for assistance when nothing was really seriously wrong with me. I was very tired from staying up past dawn, which severely disrupted my normal sleep patterns. And my baby's intermittent kicks had started to pinch a bit more than they had in the garage the night before. But none of these symptoms were unusual for a human pregnancy.
It was a little weird that I couldn't hold down any of the gourmet breakfast, lunch or dinner the Cullen's had so graciously provided. Especially since Carlisle said my morning sickness ought to have passed by now, if I was following a normal development pattern, only accelerated.
But I assumed that as a doctor, Carlisle would be perfectly equipped to handle something as mundane as extra queasiness. So I was adamant that we didn't need Aro's help.
On the second day, however, I still wasn't digesting anything properly, despite the slew of anti-nausea meds Carlisle had encouraged me to try. My stomach burned with sharp hunger pangs when it wasn't heaving up its contents. And the lack of nutrition made me feel horribly dizzy.
At the same time, my rapidly maturing son also became strong enough to leave his first mark, an angry purplish bruise on my belly. But still I resisted the idea of imploring for outside aid.
Instead, I insisted that we ought not to worry about it. My clumsy body had proved time and time again that it could certainly handle a few measly bruises. And I still had some body fat left, if all other attempts to nourish my baby failed.
But the incriminating dark spot interrupting my pale flesh was enough to spur another angry lecture from Edward about the foolishness of my choice. And my incurably upset stomach was enough to garner cautionary words about the hazards of the unknown from Carlisle.
When the third day came, Carlisle had suggested an IV to help transmit the nutrients more effectively into my bloodstream. But with my strong compunctions against needles, I'd initially refused to try it.
What eventually made me change my mind however was the horrifying discovery that, according to Carlisle's calculations, in order to sustain my baby's ridiculous growth rate, I needed almost three times as many calories as I would normally would. And in absence of gaining this nutrition from food, the infant had already taken ten pounds off my already slender frame.
After looking at my thinner thighs and slightly sunken cheeks, I realized that an IV might be the only way to get enough energy back into my body to survive. So I agreed to have the doc set it up later that evening.
Unfortunately, though, even the IV didn't work.
At first Carlisle had thought I'd developed gestational diabetes, from the raised unprocessed sugar levels turning up in my bloodwork. But he quickly determined that my insulin levels were normal. And it wasn't just sugar that my body wasn't reacting to properly. Proteins, carbohydrates, fats…. Until they were expelled from my system, all of that just sat there uselessly, not absorbing into my tissues at all, like Carlisle had injected dirt into my veins.
Perplexed by this development, Carlisle had tried to encourage me to look at pictures of food on Rosalie's computer. He figured that my cravings would be the best indicator of what my body needed.
But although the tomato juice I'd seen and the juicy red velvet cake had looked the most delicious among all the other unappealing foods, neither of those things digested properly either. They just weren't quite there taste wise—too sweet. And somehow I knew the texture was all wrong.
During this time, Edward and Emmett continued to research legends day in and day out. They express-shipped all sorts of costly ancient texts to their home and rifled through them with astounding thoroughness to see if they could find any solutions to my worsening health. And while they continued to draw up dead ends… literally, as far as I was concerned, I remained hopeful for the next few days that they would eventually find something useful there.
Without getting the calories I needed from food or the IV, though, I suffered. By the fifth day, I'd lost fifteen pounds. My arms and legs got scarily thin, and my cheekbones had started jutting out of my face. The only part of me that wasn't withering away was my progressively swelling belly, which I could practically feel stretching beneath my fingers.
In addition, my internal temperature dropped two degrees from losing the body fat that typically kept me warm. I felt groggy and fatigued all the time. And consequently spent most of the time passed out on the couch, curled up in hundreds of blankets next to Rosalie.
...At least that is what I did every moment Carlisle and Esme weren't trying to force feed me their new miracle concoction which they insisted I would be able to digest this time. Or when Edward wasn't desperately begging me to reconsider my choice. Or when I wasn't violently puking into the metal bowl provided for me.
Okay so maybe I didn't sleep as well as I would have liked. I strove to get as much rest as I could to conserve on energy for my baby. But many nights, the increasingly panic-stricken immortal family seemed to forget that I required slumber altogether. They would argue in the other room all through the night and well into the morning, completely unaware that their passionate tirades were making it very difficult to get some much needed shut-eye.
My lethargy didn't seem to pass on to my baby, however. He only moved inside me with more frequency, swiftness, and force as time went on. Which Edward took as evidence that he was a monstrous, greedy leech. And despite how exhausted and malnourished I was, my baby continued to grow at the same astonishingly rapid rate he'd started at. He was now almost in the third trimester, and showed no signs of slowing down.
As I trembled in my simultaneously shrinking and enlarging skin, I understood that my infant was probably surviving off of my residual fat stores up to this point. But what was I going to do when they were entirely spent up, I had no idea. If I wasn't able to obtain some reliable source of nourishment, my baby was going to have nothing to live on.
If I starved, he would starve too.
On the sixth day, I was finally in full-blown panic-mode. Every time I ate something, (intravenously or by the mouth, it didn't matter), my baby kicked me hard in the stomach as if to say, "No! Don't feed me that!" It terrified me that nothing was working. It also didn't help that his kicks were much stronger now. They left dark purple bruises all over my belly and filled my whole abdomen with a persistent, festering ache.
Of course Edward misused every one of these injuries as an excuse to try renegotiating my anti-abortion stance. His emotions cycled wildly between every attempt. It was as if he believed that me seeing a different aspect of his grief over watching me sacrifice my health for our child would change my mind.
But with each additional mark my tumultuous angel left me with, I only felt more pity for my baby's condition. He was trapped in a body that was rapidly running out of energy to keep him alive. And at this rate, he was destined to starve long before he would be viable outside the womb.
The blackish stains against my stomach and my ghastly gauntness only made Edward more convinced that the child I was carrying was a monster. But I didn't believe it for a second. And neither did Rosalie. Surely my darling little miracle didn't want to hurt me, his nature simply made it so that he couldn't help it.
And regardless, I loved my son more than anything in the world. So I was still adamant that I was going to keep him as long as I possibly could, even it was the last thing I did.
Though I desperately hoped that it wouldn't come to that.
...
The next day, which marked a week since I had first felt my baby move, Edward confronted Carlisle once gain.
"You do realize that if she dies… I do too, right?!" Edward hissed at his surrogate father, who was currently administering my daily IV, despite the fact that it was useless.
"I am, unfortunately, quite aware, Edward," Carlisle admitted with an astonishing degree of resignation as he adjusted the tubing flowing into my arm. "But it isn't my choice," he said with a devastated expression, before he finished with the IV.
I tried to place myself in the doctor's shoes. As I thought about it, I realized that both of his options were awful.
If he followed through with Edward's wishes, I would live. But he would loose his grandchild. And I would hate both of them forever with a fury that knew no bounds.
But if he followed through with my wishes, the baby and I would probably die—unless we found a way to get food to stay in my system. And my death, (since Edward refused to live without me) would cause Carlisle to lose two people he loved in one fell swoop of misery.
Either way, though, Carlisle would loose relationships that were dear to him.
My heart burned for him, like a poisonous knife had been twisted inside it.
The only way there could ever be a happy ending, it seemed, was if I somehow miraculously survived this supernatural pregnancy. And in order to do that, we needed more to go on than a few murky ancient legends scrounged up on the internet. Edward and Emmett (and Jasper, before he vanished) might have tried their hardest to research what was happening to me, but they were limited in their scope.
Compared to the vast and terrifying world around them, they were young. And because Emmett and Edward weren't willing to leave the house, they were confined to knowledge that could be found on the Internet, or in books that could be shipped to the North American continent. Crippled in this way, they would need decades to hunt the earth for answers.
But I didn't have decades.
If my baby continued to grow at the breakneck pace it had established—gobbling up my body's calories very fast—and my stomach continued to reject everything I offered it, Carlisle predicted my heart would fail by next Wednesday. He'd tried everything he knew to do to treat starvation. He'd even experimented with a few new practices recommended by the world's leading specialists in treating hunger. But it was all to no avail.
Without further direction, I would perish almost exactly two weeks after my return from Isle Esme. So if my baby and I were going to live, we were going to need someone with experience dealing with this sort of thing to guide us to appropriate solutions. Someone to show us what would help me gain back my energy and stay viable through the later stages.
They would obviously need to be a vampire, given the peculiar origins of my child. But that alone, given the Cullens' reaction, was not enough. They would probably also need to be well versed in modern science and physiology. But most importantly they needed to be extremely old—the oldest person we could possibly find—and have traveled to every single corner of the world a hundred times over, so that they had ample opportunity to come across this phenomena somewhere else.
And I only knew one such person who might be willing to help.
Carlisle was right. Aro was our only chance.
His access to Carlisle's thoughts would give him all the medical expertise he needed. And if he knew anything about hybrid pregnancies like this and agreed to offer his aid, I might be able to mend my relationship with Edward and get to keep my baby.
At least that was my optimistic dream.
But if contacting him ended up spelling my death instead of my survival, then it wasn't really a loss. It appeared I was going to die anyway, one way or the other. Either I would wither away, straining to keep my heart beating as long as possible but ultimately failing. Or Aro would have me destroyed because I was a threat. The option Edward continually pressed upon me—that of living on as a human without my child was completely unacceptable to me. Either we both lived or we both died, there would be no separation.
That was my decision and I was sticking with it.
I loved my son too much to give him anything short of the best opportunity.
But because I knew that my primary caretaker would not be thrilled with the idea of the Volturi stopping in for a house call, I waited until later that night, when Rosalie had left the house with Esme to hunt, to explain my thoughts to Carlisle.
"Carlisle?" I croaked as he sat beside me on the couch.
For the last hour he had been trying to avoid inadvertently touching the huge mound of blankets I was smothered in, for fear of accidentally sapping away some of the much needed heat I was trying to keep in there. And now he was absently flicking through the channels on his enormous flat screen television, searching for something appropriately stimulating, but not too stressful to put on.
"Do you need anything Bella?" the doctor asked. He suddenly straightened in his seat and set the remote carefully atop the glass coffee table in front of us, to let me know that I had his undivided attention. Ignoring the blurry characters babbling incoherently to one another on the screen, he looked me directly in the eyes.
I gnawed on my lower lip for a minute before I finally worked up the courage to ask him the question that had burning on the tip of my tongue almost all day. "Could you… contact Aro? See if he knows anything about this?"
I ran my hands nervously through my limp, lackluster hair. I felt abashed that I was reversing my decision to avoid confronting him when I'd been so obstinate about it earlier.
"We're running out of time…" I added with a small cough, to help illustrate why I had changed my mind.
If we didn't do something soon, all of my worries about confronting the daunting, aristocratic figure while I was still human would be moot anyway. Because I would already be dead.
In a flash, Carlisle had shut off the TV, his expression suddenly gravely serious. "Are you sure that is what you want, Bella? Once he knows… we can't take that back…"
Carlisle didn't bother to specify what might happen as a result. But I knew perfectly well the risks he was alluding to.
And I was prepared to face them.
"I know," I said simply.
But those words carried a lot of weight, causing Carlisle's solemn face to contort into one which was was torn with indecision. He wasn't sure if he should try to dissuade me or encourage me.
I decided to help him out.
"If we don't contact Aro, my baby won't have anything to eat, Carlisle," I offered in favor of the idea. Tears streamed abundantly down my chin as I thought of my poor baby, suffering in the place that ought to be the safest, warmest, most wonderful place in the world. "He must be so hungry…"
The emotion in my voice as I described feeling just how famished my child was, finally wore Carlisle down.
"Very well," he sighed at length, running a nervous hand through his immaculate wavy blonde hair.
Somehow he managed to muss it in a way that looked even more perfect than it had before when it was all slicked and straight. Now it was gently tousled in a way that was slightly wild, and very sexy. I certainly understood why the doctor never wore it like that at work—the weak-hearted nurses could hardly take it as it was.
"I will call him," Carlisle confirmed, jarring me from my wacky, hormonal thoughts. "Would you prefer me to do that now?"
Immediately I nodded. Though the motion was stiff, and my pencil-thin neck strained to perform the action. "Yes… if that's alright," I specified, just in case the Volturi had certain times of the day they didn't want to be disturbed.
Then the implications of his words sunk in and conflicted with the picture of I'd conjured in my head of Carlisle greeting the man in person. "Wait… call?" I asked.
I struggled to imagine Aro sitting in his elaborate wooden throne, holding one of those old rotary phones with the long spirally chords and talking into it while he knitted cat sweaters like every other old person I knew. But the image just wasn't right—even without the knitting. Despite his actual age, the regal, imposing vampire I had met for the first time this March, was nothing like the elderly folks at Forks' local rest home. I almost laughed for even attempting to compare the two.
And yet, at the same time, I couldn't imagine him like the other twenty-somethings who shared his apparent age. The idea of him operating modern technology with extreme ease just didn't fit. The tunnels of sewers Jane had led Edward and I through during our last visit to the Volturi headquarters didn't even have electricity, except for in the receptionist's office. Let alone anything as technologically advanced as a phone.
"Aro may be ancient, but he knows how to operate a telephone," Carlisle explained upon seeing my bewildered look. "Instantaneous communication comes in handy when you're running an international organization," he added, emphasizing that although his friend was eccentric, Aro was pragmatic enough to use every available tool to his advantage. "Caius despises anything electrical. But Aro is nothing if not willing to adapt when better instruments present themselves."
I nodded numbly, not really wanting to dwell on what "better instruments" Carlisle might be referring to. Because I knew from the way that he had said it, that he meant people as well as things—people like Alice and Edward whose gifts would be of great use to him.
But I was spared from commenting on that uncomfortable truth as a loud bang sounded upstairs—the angry slam of a door we soon discovered. Then, Edward, who seemed to have heard our conversation from upstairs came storming down at once.
I was not exactly grateful for this fact. My husband, (or his fiendish doppelganger, whichever this was), was positively livid. He raced down the steps and bolted into the living room with a lethal energy that made fear rocket through my veins, and made my baby squirm.
When Edward finally lurched to a stop, his eyes burned with a fierce light. And he looked like he wanted to chew Carlisle's head off.
Mercifully, he did nothing of the sort. Instead he merely leveled a murderous glare in the elder vampire's direction for a few tense moments before he acidly demanded, "You're going to call Aro?"
I was surprised that Carlisle didn't even flinch any more when he was addressed this way. He'd become accustomed to Edward's caustic treatment lately, as everyone else had.
Everyone else, that is, except me. I still shuddered every single time.
"Bella is hopeful that he can assist us," Carlisle began in a soft, cool voice, trying to lull Edward into losing the savage, frenzied air about him. "Edward, it's our only chance—you see that her health is deteriorating…"
"Not our only chance," Edward said bitterly.
I automatically stiffened and wrapped my arms protectively over the basketball-sized bump protruding from my stomach. Then I shook my head vigorously back and forth. I didn't care that the action made me extremely dizzy—Edward need to know that I wasn't going to budge on this.
"That's not an option," I boldly declared. "Either we both live or we both die. I won't live without him."
"You're throwing your life away… No… you're throwing us away for this… this… parasite?" He bit out incredulously. Then his face twisted into an expression of deep pain. "Whatever happened to our wedding vows?"
What indeed, I wondered myself. Did "for better or for worse" not ring a bell?
"Edward, I will still love you as long as we both shall live," I reminded him. Though for some reason the words felt sour on my tongue, wrong somehow. "...Until the very end—until I cease existing—I will love you with all of my heart," I promised him.
But again I couldn't completely expel the rotten feeling in my stomach that told me I was lying to him.
It was probably just gas, I tried to reason with myself.
And thankfully Edward took my words at face value. Though he wasn't all that impressed regardless.
"No, Bella. That's not love," came his dismissive reply, ground out between clenched teeth. "If you really loved me, you wouldn't be prizing the existence of that monster inside you as worth more than our marriage!"
He snarled out the word "monster" with such acidity that I worried the baby would melt under his verbal assault. I hugged my stomach tighter in defense, even as the ambient stress caused my baby to begin kicking injuriously against my hands.
"Obviously you've made your choice."
My eyes widened to the size of saucers at his last words.
Horrifically, it seemed that in Edward's mind, there was only room for one supernatural love in my heart.
Suddenly I felt very relieved that Jacob was nowhere to be found at this moment. Although I knew a romantic relationship between us would never work out as long as Edward was in the equation, he still held a piece of me. And it would utterly destroy me if anyone were to cause his death prematurely.
Edward knew this, and so even though the wolf greatly frustrated him, he did't murder the hypotenuse of our wacky love triangle. Because it would upset me beyond the capacity to function properly. And although during these last six days I had tried to make a case that our son was exactly the same—that I needed him to survive like I needed air to breathe—Edward could never believe it. Not when our little miracle baby was also steadily sucking the life out of me.
Nor could he understand that I could be an equally passionate martyr for two causes at once. He believed that one had to take precedence over the other. So of course he moved to the only alternative he could imagine. That somehow my willing-to-die-for-him love had been transferred to the infant, leaving Edward subordinated into an awkward position of lesser love like my confusing feelings for Jacob.
As I comprehended this I shouted, affronted by his misperception. "It's not like that at all!"
Edward had it all wrong. I loved him and the baby both the same.
At least... I had when our little miracle first been introduced into my life.
Though maybe he was partially right. I was finding it harder and harder to honestly say that I loved Edward when he was behaving like an animal...
"Then what is it?" Edward demanded, cutting through my train of thought before it was fully formed. "Tell me how this… this aberration fits into our happily ever after, hmm?" He spit out the fairytale words I'd once ascribed to us during our honeymoon with a scornful sneer. "Are you expecting me to raise it like my own kin after it uses its teeth to carve its way out of your uterus and leaves you to die?" he said chillingly in reference to one of the more gruesome legends he and Emmett had come across. A legend that vividly described what might happen to me at the end of this hybrid pregnancy.
"Or am I to sit back and feel all stuffy with fatherly pride as it wreaks havoc on the city of Forks?" he demanded, scoffing at the horrifying idea—one that was never mine to begin with. "What about when it kills your father...?"
I gasped in terror and disbelief. My little boy would never do such a thing! I inwardly screamed, indignant that it had even been suggested.
"…which it would do on accident of course, just out of curiosity." Edward continued. "Babies stick everything in their mouths after all…"
I didn't want to hear this. "Shut up! He won't be anything like that!"
Why did Edward have to fill my head with all these appalling descriptions of some miniature killing machine? Sure my son was already supernaturally strong, and gave me a decently hard kick every so often. But I always imagined the beautiful green-eyed boy as a much more docile being than Edward did. Couldn't Edward think the same way, just for once?
"Carlisle will train him to be good. We'll be careful. And we will move if we have to," I quickly assured him. I glanced fleetingly over at Carlisle for support, earning a clipped nod from the distraught man. "It's inevitable that we're going to do that anyway."
"Before or after it murders someone I care about?"
"Edward!"
"What? I'm just saying out loud what everyone around here is too chicken to tell you. You have two options," he declared, holding up two stony white fingers in front of my face. "Take that thing out of you and live like a sensible woman," he said, pointing to the first of his digits with what almost counted as a smile on his face. His features rapidly darkened as he moved to the second finger. "Or keep holding on to it and die pointlessly and alone."
I blinked in stupefaction. "Alone?"
Surely he would be with me, wouldn't he? He'd be waiting to strangle Carlisle when I breathed my last, right?
"If you don't agree to have an abortion tonight, I'm leaving," Edward suddenly announced.
He delivered the statement with a firmness I'd only heard one other time in my life—when Edward had said "I do". So I knew he was being completely serious despite how preposterous his words were.
"I'm not going to stick around for another week just to watch you die."
"But Edward…" I faltered, trying and failing to come up with suitable reason for him to say.
I twisted the heavy diamond ring that hung loosely on my bony finger anxiously in the silence that followed. This couldn't be happening. He promised never to leave me again until I ordered him away! He can't rescind that promise now!
But the determinate and dead look I saw in his darkening eyes told me that he could. That right now, he was doing precisely that.
I tried to speak. To say anything that might remind him of how adamant he had been before that he would never abandon me again, even if it was for my own good. But my throat was too tight, constricted with betrayal to say a single word.
After a palpable silence, Edward unexpectedly rotated his head towards the man still sitting protectively at my side with an inquisitive expression. "Carlisle?"
I gulped as I registered the meaning behind the look Edward was giving his surrogate father. He was trying to assess whether the man would budge on his no-unwilling-abortions edict now that it was all-but-proven that this baby would kill me.
Again I struggled to squeak out a protest of some sort, especially as I saw something dark flicker in Carlisle's eyes that terrified me. But my lips were completely frozen in shock. I was paralyzed by the pain of being rejected by one of the people I had loved more than life itself.
"My decision remains firm. I will not force her, nor will I allow you to do so," Carlisle told him after a while.
I audibly sighed with relief as I heard his words.
Carlisle slipped off of the couch and moved to stand as a living (well, sort of, anyway) shield between Edward and me. "You're not licensed to perform that kind of delicate procedure," the doctor coldly reminded his son. "Not to mention that I fear that much blood may prove too much for you to handle. If you tried, you would probably end up killing her, one way or another,"
I cringed as I imagined the scene Carlisle had illustrated for me. In my mind's eyes I saw Edward hacking through my flesh viciously with crude imprecision, stabbing more than slicing. In the vision he mutilated my body until my intoxicating scent overwhelmed him and he lunged to mortally bite into my throat. Or until he accidentally cut into a vital organ in his sloppiness.
Was Edward's hatred of the tiny life growing inside me really that extreme that he would take such desperate measures? I pondered, absolutely petrified by the thought. If I died under his brutal hands, would he feel any shred of remorse for instigating my passing? Or would he justify it in the name of "doing all that he could to save me"?
I shivered when I realized that I couldn't definitively say no to the latter.
"And you?" Edward snarled distastefully at me.
The sound jolted me from the violent imagery before my eyes—the imagery that had made my skin go whiter than a sheet, and honestly made me want to faint. So much blood… I thought woozily. Too much.
"He stays right here." I pointing to my blanket-shrouded belly, before I steadfastly crossed my arms over my chest to punctuate my statement. "At least until he grows big enough to safely be delivered."
Edward scoffed, then muttered chillily under his breath, "Delivered, my ass," jarring me with his uncharacteristically profane speech, before he addressed me directly. "Well if that is your choice, then I'm leaving and I won't be coming back."
Carlisle caught his son by the shoulder just as he was storming off towards one of the large, exterior windows. "Edward, please at least take your phone with you…" he kindly requested.
The doctor held out a small silver flip phone in his palm for Edward to take. The seething russet-haired vampire simply stared down at it like it was a particularly stinky gym sock.
"…So I can keep you updated on any developments?" Carlisle encouraged, pressing the device into his son's reluctant hands. "If Bella does survive, thanks to Aro's assistance, certainly you will want to return?"
My face brightened at Carlisle's insinuation that I might live past this taxing ordeal. The doctor's optimism, even in paltry measure like this, was definitely a good sign.
But Edward had the opposite reaction. As soon as Carlisle had drawn languidly back from the tiny machine he'd pushed into Edward's possession, Edward furiously crushed it in his fist. The plastic, wires and motherboard cracked noisily and fell from Edward's fingers to the floor in powdery bits.
Carlisle's eyebrows shot into his hairline at the destructive display, but otherwise he remained frozen in place. His whole form was statuesque in shock at Edward's violent denial to stay in touch—as well as his violent denial of the idea that I might live.
"She won't," Edward said soullessly, like my death was already a one-hundred-percent given.
He cast his eyes in my direction to take one last shrewd assessment of my sickly person. He sneered in distaste as he watched me shiver—having only skin and bones to keep me warm—for a moment. And then he resumed his single-minded progress towards the window on the other side of the room.
Neither Carlisle nor I moved an inch as he stomped over to it. Nor when he threw it hastily open. Nor when he leaped up onto the sill. We were still immobilized in uncomprehending shock.
So we were completely unprepared to respond when he frostily delivered his farewell speech.
"Goodbye Bella," he said, as if he was already talking to my corpse, dressed in white and lying motionless in my casket. "I wish our time together had not been so brief…" he went on, sickening me with the way the words sounded all-together too much like a eulogy. "But alas, even true love must cease it seems. I thought we would have many decades together. But it seems I was mistaken," he added, his voice dripping with tangible anger and… was that sarcasm?
"I hope you enjoy heaven without me," Edward finished, suddenly speaking to me directly again.
And then, Edward jumped off the thick wooden window sill into the bleak, moonless night beyond.
As his stony form disappeared from sight, I desperately called after him, "Edward wait!"
But he was already gone.
…
I cried for hours after he left, just like I had the first time when he'd abandoned me in the forest last fall. But this time, once Rosalie and Esme returned from their hunt, I had at least three of the Cullens to help comfort me through the loss, whereas last time I hadn't had anyone.
Rosalie was the most helpful, offering me her soft embrace and an immaculate shoulder to cry on. But Carlisle and Esme were also surprisingly supportive, despite the fact that my only tie to them was through their son. Both of them clearly articulated that regardless of what Edward decided to do next, that they would continue to care for and love me like their own daughter—my husband's sudden disappearance wouldn't change that.
Emmett tried to follow Edward's movements for a few hours, so that he could at least get an idea of where my husband was planning to go. But at the end of the night he came back empty handed—he'd lost Edward at the Canadian border.
Knowing of only one friendly coven in that direction, Carlisle wondered if Edward might have ran to stay with the Denali clan as he had after we had first met in biology. Though a quick phone call revealed that their residence wasn't his ultimate destination.
Just like Alice and Jasper, we had no idea where he had went.
And while that meant that all the Cullens who possessed supernatural powers were hidden somewhere in the world which Aro couldn't glean from any of our minds, keeping them safe from his acquisitive tendencies, it wasn't very comforting that my decision to keep the baby was slowly clearing the family out of the house one by one. Because it made me worry that Edward's words would come true. That after a few more days the others would abandon me too and I would die pointlessly and alone.
Why, baby? I asked the kicker resting in my protruding belly, as if he knew the secret reason why everything this last week had gone horribly, terribly wrong. Why is everyone leaving me? Alice was my friend and… he is my husband… I felt like that, at least, should have meant something. You're family too—but why is your introduction into my life ripping this family apart?
But my adorable little boy didn't answer. He just kicked me in the stomach again—hard—causing me to double over in pain and cry out in agony.
Watching me crumple under the pile blankets I now lived in and scream, Esme immediately darted over to where I lay, resting a cool hand on my freezing forehead for a moment before she drew back, "Bella! Bella are you okay?!"
"OW! Nnnngh!" I moaned as a little foot stabbed into my middle. Another, angry dark blue bruise was added to my burgeoning collection right bellow my belly button. I hissed as the pain subsided into a throbbing ache.
Carlisle, who was just returning from his office with a clip board and measuring tape to take my second measurement of the day, dropped everything as soon as he saw me bent over on the couch. He dashed in beside his wife.
"Bella is there anything that I can…" Carlisle started to ask before I sharply cut him off.
"Call Aro! Call Aro now!"
