Bella's Diary, 10th February 2010,
Everybody says that when you receive bad news, the world seems to stop turning. It didn't grind to a smashing halt, stop spinning on it's axis, as I imagined it should have done when they told me Emmett was hurt. No, the world didn't bother stopping. But I stopped. I stopped hearing, stopped seeing, stopped acknowledging that people around me carried on. All I could think was his name. He was alive. I was so relieved. I didn't care how bad it was - all I could think of was that he was alright, and he would stay that way.
When Esme took me aside at the airport the next morning, and told me how bad it was, I took that on board. I meant every word. All I could do was be relieved he was OK. He was missing limbs, and maybe his sight. But I knew my Emmett, and I knew he'd be OK. He was my soldier-hero. First and foremost, he was a fighter. I stroked my tummy on the flight, and the man next to me asked if I was expecting. I told him I was, and he congratulated me, and asked where I was going. I told him about my husband. Very calmly, he told me that men like Emmett deserved knighthoods, and even then that wouldn't be enough. He added that he was sorry, and then that he hoped he would be alright.
"He'll be OK. He's a fighter." And he is, he is my fighter.
I leapt at the first nurse I saw at the hospital. It didn't matter that I felt like hell, I hadn't slept in God knows how long, I was jet-lagged, that I didn't have a clue where I was. I wanted to see my husband.
"Please, my name is Bella, Bella McCarty - I'm looking for my husband, they said he would be here, before they moved him to Headley Court, can I see him, please, I need to see him." God, I sounded drunk that day.
"Slow down, Miss, please,"
"Sorry, I'm so tired. I need to find Emmett McCarty, he's an American soldier, come in from Iraq -"
"You aren't Bella-Boo, are you?"
"Oh, Christ, is that what he's been calling me? I'll kill him, I hate that name," I say, smiling for the first time in days. She smiles back.
"Come on, we'll take you to him." She takes a deep breath.
"I know about his legs and his arm, his sight. They said he might lose his one remaining arm -"
"No, that's better than we expected it to be. We managed to save that arm. We had to pin his radius, and his shoulder, but he'll be fine. He's making terrible jokes."
"Oh, he'll be fine then, I have no need to be here," and I mime going home. She laughs.
"You're taking this remarkably well."
"I'm sure reaction will set in later on. It doesn't seem quite real, somehow."
So she showed me in. A little side room, containing a bed, a little cabinet, a pull-table type thing that went over the end of the bed, an IV line and a chair. Light snores came from the bed, and so I crept to the window. There was a garden beneath me, and the sun shone. It smelt like antiseptic - and like Emmett's aftershave. Of course it did, the vain fool. I sat down, and waited.
Emmett's diary, 10th February 2010
I remember nothing of the blast itself. I remember getting up that morning, and then going out with Jasper and Edward. Just a routine patrol. And then everything was black, and I was floating. No lights, no voices, none of all that. Just the darkness. And then, when I was getting cold, Bella's voice. A memory, of the day she pushed me down a ditch, and ran away laughing. We were fourteen. I ran after her, picked her up, and carried her home to Charlie, laughing every step of the way, whilst she kicked and screamed.
Then Carlisle was talking to me, and someone was screaming, terrible screams, somewhere near me. And then I realised I was the one screaming, and Carlisle was shouting, not at me, but at people who I couldn't see. Then I realised I couldn't see anything at all. God, I hurt everywhere. A hand was put in mine, and I squeezed as hard as I could. Anything to feel real. And then Carlisle's voice, cutting through the chaos, calling for silence. Everything around me stops, and silence descends. He asks me to do that again, and I do, and I say that it burns like fire.
I didn't know what had happened until the day I got to England. And I thought, at least I am still alive.
I woke up with a jolt. I was back in Iraq, under the blazing sun, in my desert fatigues. But I was in a hospital room, that smelt of disinfectant and - Bella? I can't see, why can't I see? I can smell her, I know she's here. But I can't see her.
She woke up when the nurse came in to take yet more blood, more blood pressure, and my temperature yet again.
"What, where?" She muttered groggily, and I imagined her blinking sleep out of her eyes. "Oh my God, who hit me with a hammer whilst I was sleeping?"
"Did I wake you?" The nurse asked, jabbing a needle into me.
"Ow."
"Emmett!" Bella shrieked, and threw herself at me, just as the nurse withdrew her needle. I caught her, just about, and stopped us both going off the bed and onto the floor. "Emmett, Emmett, Emmett…"
"Mrs McCarty, please, Emmett is in recovery!"
"Like hell," Bella murmurs, though kisses and tears. "You're alive," she breathes, snuggling into my side. I anchor my arm around her. The nurse finishes up as quietly as possible and leaves.
"Take more than that to kill me, gorgeous."
"You can't see me, can you?" she guesses.
"No, I can't," I say. "But I can feel you, and I can smell you." She is silent. "I'm going to get better, Bella."
"You'd better, because you'll be changing nappies too, mister."
"Guys with one arm get a pass -"
"Like hell you do. Learn, because you know how I get."
"Bella, do you mind that you've got about half of me back from Iraq?"
"I'd rather have you alive, than coming back to me whole in a coffin. We can get through this. We can get past this. You can get through this, because you're the strongest person I know."
"I can't be the man you knew." She wriggles upright, and I just know she's glaring at me.
"You will always be the man I married," she says, fiercely, and I can hear that now, now she's crying. "You will always be the man I love. I don't care how much of you is left! I don't care! I still see the man I married, the man I fell in love with - the man who is going to be the father of my child! Well great, you've got no legs. I am going to drag you through this, if I have to carry you by your hair! Emmett, if all that was left of you was your smile, and your laugh, I would still love you."
I found her with my hand, and stroked her face, feeling her tears on my palm.
"You don't cry. No tears now. You'll upset the baby."
"I bet you haven't cried."
"I don't think so," I say, and it's true. I don't remember crying. Hell, I just felt so lucky I was alive at all. That I was alive, and I was going back to Bella, as I'd promised I would. "You remember I promised I would come back alive?"
"Yes, and you kept it, didn't you?"
"Did you ever doubt me?"
"Part of me was always braced for the knock on the door. You always are, it goes with the territory of being an army wife. You're always waiting for something - be it a letter, a call, a knock on the door. Waiting for them to come home. But I believed you more this time than any other time."
"Then I am going to make you a second promise. I swear to you now, that I am going to walk again. And I will have done this by the time our baby's born."
So I still can't see, but hey. You don't have to see things to look at them.
