Edward and I didn't talk much on the car ride to the hospital. Of course there was the basic "how is your wrist" and him asking me if I liked classical or piano music so that he could turn his radio on without objection from me, however there wasn't even one coherent full sentence.
Well, there wasn't one until I noticed the speedometer. "Holy crap, slow down! You're going over a hundred miles an hour!" He smiled.
"I always drive this fast. I've never received a ticket, not even parking and I've never been in a car accident, not even a tiny fender bender. It's okay, your mother wouldn't have forced you to go in the same car as me if she didn't trust my driving, would she?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen her in 16 years, 11 months, and 3 days. For all I know she could be a demon worshipping cereal killer who just wants to get me in her house so that I would be in a position to be her next victim." Edward laughed.
"Or, she could just be some gold digging idiotic airhead who wants something; possibly child support." I said cynically, totally contradicting what I just thought minutes before.
"Why would you think that?! Your mother loves you; she just messed up. No parent doesn't love their child, ever. Parenthood is what makes children into adults. It's what makes adults fierce, what gives them the animalistic tendencies when their child is in trouble. It's what makes mothers kill people who hurt their children. Even parents who beat their children love them, they just don't know how to express it. Bill Cosby once said 'Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.' Your mother loves you, whether you know it or not."
I was speechless for a little while. While pondering what Edward had said though, I came up with a question that I didn't have an answer for. "What is love exactly? Define in for me, because I've never felt it, and if I have, I didn't know that that was what it was."
"What type of love?" He answered like it was a question that he had answered many times and he knew the answer to it.
"Every type. I've never felt any of them."
"Quit being such a cynic! I need specifics." He said with his beautiful voice.
" I don't care, romantic love."
"I've never felt it either. I can't give you an exact answer for that one but I can give you a guess. Romantic love," He said like he was tasting the words, feeling them roll of off his tongue. "When you hear the person's name you smile uncontrollably, you get wiggly and excited just from seeing that person; you stop breathing when they kiss you. You want to be held by them constantly; you don't know what's up and what's down. You go weak in the knees when you see their eyes." He said the words like they were the greatest words on the planet. "The person who you're with takes you to new heights that you didn't even know existed. Every fiber of your being revolves around that person. You love them."
"Sounds nice." I said like an old grouch. He looked at me like he wanted to help me. It wasn't a look of pity, which I liked. It was more of a look that said that he wanted to help me, and that he cared about me. I wasn't used to the feeling of being wanted, but it felt nice. I pretended to not notice him looking at me.
"We're here." He said as he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. By the time I was trying to get my seatbelt undone he was already at my door, opening it for me.
"Thank you." I mumbled to him, hoping it was loud enough so that I wouldn't come off as impolite, but soft enough so that he wouldn't actually hear the words that were being said.
Edward walked me to a part of the hospital that people in the emergency room didn't have to go to or people who were being admitted. It seemed like a back route to me. He clearly came to this hospital a lot. "Edward," I heard someone call. He took me over to a good looking blonde doctor who was clearly his father. "Who do we have here?" Carlisle asked, looking at me. Edward answered for me.
"It's Bella. She slipped at the airport and fell on her wrist. I think it's broken." He said like he was the person in charge of me. Like the father who takes his daughter to the hospital, and who's really worried about them. Carlisle gently took my hand. He poked the skin where it was broken. I hissed; the spot was tender.
"It's broken alright. I'll need an x-ray though. Follow me." We complied.
We took the x-ray and he put my arm into a cast. I was glad though, because it wasn't a huge cast that went over my elbow, it went right below it.
"Edward, Sally wanted to see you. She made too many muffins again." Carlisle told Edward, laughing. He said after Edward had left the room that he was referring to a receptionist who was in her sixties and apparently adored Edward after. When he reached the door he looked back. I couldn't tell though if he was looking at Carlisle or me because we were right next to each other.
When Edward left the room Carlisle pounced.
"My son is in love with you. " He said matter-of-factly as he turned away to dip the gauze in plaster. I looked at him, startled when he turned his head back to look at me.
"He doesn't normally take such care of people. " He told me.
"What do you mean?" I said, trying to pretend that I wasn't about to freak out from being so flabbergasted at the fact that he loved me.
"In this situation he would have taken Jane Doe here and stayed until the cast was put on and what not. There would be no special glances, no special treatment. But with you, he's very protective. He keeps glancing under the pretense that he is just making sure that you're okay. I doubt that if a nuclear bomb hit right now that you would die."
I realized at that moment that I shouldn't want Edward to love me. I had only met him three hours before. It was improper for me to want someone who I had just met to love me. It went against the rule of nature.
I also realized that I was the cynical teenage girl who didn't believe in love. I did before a certain person entered my life.
I purposely didn't talk to Edward when he was driving me to my new house. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get clear sentences out of my mouth because of my newly discovered discovery.
I didn't talk to any of my new family that day. I shut myself up in my room with the excuse that I had to unpack.
I knew that I was trying to prolong something. However, night couldn't be put off.
As I pulled the comforter up I could already feel the nightmare coming on.
I was at mixer for Fortune 500 companies when He approached me. "Hi, I'm Jacob Black. My father is the CEO of Amtrak." He was certainly up front.
"I'm Isabella." I told him, feeling strangely in superior to him.
After that I actually fell asleep. It was a restless sleep, but it was better than the nightmares.
