So, remember how I was thinking of making Carlisle and Esme teens in this story? Well, a character came up and he fit the Carlisle description so, sorry to say, that this time around Carlisle is an older, father figure type person. But maybe in my next story he won't be?

I'm really proud of myself. I wrote all of this tonight. Yay :)

Anyway, I'm going to be hiking the Grand Canyon for the next ten days. I'm really sorry. That's kinda why I updated so fast this time. I promise I will be thinking of new twists and turns while I'm hiking around. The first hike is going to be a bitch :/ Fifteen miles, haha. So, anyway, I hope you like this next chapter :)))

Bella POV

The drive to the hospital was a complete blur of red and green lights, cutting around slow cars, stop signs, trees, crazy turns, complete silence, and blood, lots and lots of blood. When I finally pulled into the emergency room entry, time finally started to slow down.

Before I could say a word, Edward leaped out of the truck and into the hospital. He was running back with two men and a wheelchair trailing behind him; the two men pulled Jasper out of the truck and hoisted him by his armpits into the wheelchair.

As the they ran into the hospital with Jasper, I felt my phone vibrating against the seat cushion. Without looking, I picked it up, glancing at the screen before answering, and held the phone up to my ear as I pressed the green button.

"Hi, Mom." I sighed as I balanced the phone between my shoulder and ear. I turned the key in the ignition, causing the truck's engine to roar loudly to life, and drove out of the emergency entry in search of a parking space.

"Bella, where are you?" Renee demanded, her voice sounded worried. She had always been the worrier in the family.

"Mom, I'm alright," I reassured her as I eased into a parking space. "Don't worry; I'll be home soon."

"You're coming home right now, Isabella Marie Swan. It's 2:30 in the morning. You should be sleeping in your bed right now."

My brow furrowed. It couldn't be 2:30 in the morning. It just couldn't be. My eyes shifted instantly to the clock beneath the dashboard to see that the green digital numbers read 2:32. I clapped my hand to my forehead; I had clearly underestimated Renee. She obviously wasn't as overprotective, paranoid, and worrying as I had thought she was.

"Mom, don't freak out, okay?" I started, slowly, testing out the water. One little piece of information at a time. I didn't want to overwhelm her.

"Then, don't give me a reason to freak out, Bella." Her voice was unwavering.

I stalled a little, trying to find the right words. "Well, at Alice's party, a guy was…hurt. I took him to the hospital."

There was a slight pause. "Oh, Bella, is he okay?"

I sighed with relief. The hard part was over. She was right where I wanted her. "I'm not sure, Mom. I was going to check on him when you called."

She was hesitating. She was definitely about to crack. "Okay, well, come home as soon as you can. Be safe. Love you."

"I will. Love you, too." As I disconnected the call, I caught a glimpse of twenty-three missed calls from Renee. So, maybe, I had been right about her and her worrying.

I slipped my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and opened the car door, careful not to hit the car next to me. After locking the doors and placing my keys knowingly in my jacket pocket, I began to trudge back to the emergency room entrance.

"Can I help you, Miss?" a woman asked me, politely, when I entered and looked around the numerous hallways and doorways, nervously.

"Yes." I walked closer to the woman, who was sitting behind a desk with a computer in front of her. "Can you tell me what room Jasper Whitlock is in?"

"Sure." The woman began to type on the computer and looked up at me when she had an answer. She gestured as she spoke. "His room is the first on the left."

"Okay, thank you." I smiled as pleasantly as I could and followed her directions under her watchful eye. Before entering the room, I unsubtly glanced inside of the room through the small, rectangular window placed conveniently on the white door. Only when I saw Edward and his all too familiar grimace did I cautiously enter the room.

When I tiptoed in, Edward's intense eyes were suddenly focused on me. I tried my best not to shudder and shrink back into the doorway under his disdainful gaze as I walked towards Jasper's bed and took a seat beside it.

"Is he…alright?" I finally asked, breaking the chilling silence between us.

"Does he look alright?" Edward snarled. After a moment, his face softened; he sighed, running his hand through his messy hair. "He has a broken nose and several concussions."

"Oh." I sighed, unable to think of anything else to say. Jasper looked so calm and serene under the yellow tinted hospital lighting and overbearingly white surroundings. I wondered where in the world his parents could possibly be.

"You can go home now." Edward's gaze was focused on me. He didn't sound as if he were making a suggestion. He sounded as if he were making a demand.

"No."

Edward leaned closer to me across Jasper's hospital bed. "Bella, you should go home now."

My eyes narrowed. "I don't want to go home."

"Well, you should."

Stubbornly, I crossed my arms across my chest. "But I don't want to."

"Why are you being so difficult?" Edward groaned, placing his hands over his face.

"Fine, I'll leave," I declared, standing up. As I moved towards the door, I turned around and asked, innocently, "But how are you going to get home?"

He thought for a moment, probably going through all of the contacts on his phone in his head and the probability of whether or not they would help him, and then finally, sighed, the look of defeat on his face. "Can you…please stay here?"

I suppressed a smile and walked back into the room. "What did you say? I couldn't hear you."

Edward's eyes narrowed. He huffed. "Can you…please stay here?"

"Sure." I smiled, wickedly, and sunk back down in my chair.

At the sound of the door swishing open, I swiveled my head around to see a doctor enter the room, a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other. He was tall, blonde, and incredibly attractive for being a doctor if I did say so myself. He smiled at me kindly upon entering and introduced himself to me as Carlisle Cullen (it seems that he and Edward already have a relationship of some sort). He stood at the foot of the bed, reading the information on the clipboard to himself.

"Has he stirred?" he asked, looking to Edward for a response. I couldn't help but feel incredibly useless and unwanted.

Edward shook his head, unhappily; his infamous grimace set on his face once again.

"No movements? No sounds? Nothing?" Carlisle still looked to Edward for an answer. I wasn't completely inept to answering such questions or, at least, that's what I thought. The two were having their own Q & A session over on the other side of Jasper's bed and I was completely excluded.

"No…nothing." Edward's voice sounded hollow and empty.

"It seems he will be out for the night," Carlisle concluded to himself, writing something rapidly onto the clipboard. He tapped his pen on it, thinking to himself. "Has Jasper's parents been contacted?"

Edward nodded. "They're visiting some friends in Europe. They can't make it back."

Carlisle bent over, leaning closer to Edward. His voice was a whisper. "How has he been since the accident?"

"Great." Edward's voice sounded hoarse, almost as if it pained him to speak. He closed his eyes, swallowing. When he opened them, all I could see was extreme guilt. All of his anger had seemed to vanish.

I blinked, rubbing my eyes. Sure, I had only known Edward for twenty hours or so, but in all of the hours that I had known him, he had only expressed one emotion to me: anger. I had almost started to believe that he was incapable of any other emotion and now, here he is, demonstrating he actually has a heart, a rather deformed one, but a heart nonetheless.

Carlisle's voice lowered, barely audible. "Have all of the burns healed?"

Edward nodded, glumly. If I wasn't so deathly afraid of him, I might have hugged him. And maybe with his newly grown heart pumping in his chest, he would have hugged me back.

Carlisle, meanwhile, patted Edward on the back, and told him before leaving, "I'll come back in an hour or two and check his progress."

"Bella," a voice called in the doorway.

I turned around to see Charlie, still in his police uniform, standing next to the door with his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking rather uncomfortable. I raised an eyebrow at him, asking him in our own silent language why he had come.

"Your mom called me." Charlie shrugged as he inched closer to Edward and me. "She wanted me to see what happened to the boy."

"Emmett McCarty happened," Edward murmured under his breath, angrily. Well, there's the angry, sullen Edward that I knew and feared.

Charlie focused on Edward, observing him. "What did you say?"

"Nothing." Edward thrust his chin onto his clenched fist.

"Did you say Emmett McCarty?" The look on Charlie's face was suspicious; he seemed to know something that he was holding back.

Edward sighed, looking Charlie straight in the eyes when he finally nodded his head. Both of them seemed to know a lot more than they were saying.

"Interesting," Charlie muttered to himself as he paced the room, back and forth, back and forth.

"Dad," I hissed, causing him to stop in his tracks and look at me. "What is it?"

"Well, I don't know if I should be telling you this, Bells."

"Dad, come on." I glanced at Edward and gestured to the two of us as I asked, "Who would we tell?"

"Okay, okay." Charlie paused a moment, playing with the tips of his mustache. "Sometime last year, Emmett McCarty committed a…a crime against the Whitlocks."

"A...a crime?" I repeated, slowly. Although I didn't know the guy too well, I honestly didn't think Emmett was capable of hurting a fly. He was the goofy and dumb, yet lovable jock in the stereotypical high school movie. Not the deranged, psycho murderer that kills anything at will in the overly gory horror movies. I stopped for a moment. "Wait...Dad, how do you know this?"

Charlie shrugged, not willing to give his answer.

"Dad," I persisted. Charlie and I had always been the stubborn ones out of our small, three person family. But I had been known to hold out longer.

"I heard Alice was dating him...so I checked up on him."

I raised my eyebrows. Alice would be a little peeved, yet flattered when she heard. "What did he do?"

Charlie shook his head. "I can't say, Bells. I have already said too much. But I can tell you one thing; he can kiss his Duke scholarship goodbye."

I looked from Charlie to Edward, back again. Charlie was pacing the length of the room, again, while Edward concentrated on the tiles of the floor. Both of them knew something they weren't saying. And I was going to figure out what they were hiding if it was the last thing I did.