X.

I waited in Carlisle's office, lightly keeping tabs on his mind as he moved through the hospital. Tyler, it seemed, had fractured one of the bones in his forearm, and so Isobel was forced to wait as his injury was discussed and examined by the medical staff. It all made perfect sense - she had shown no alarming symptoms - but I was edgy and anxious anyway.

Carlisle was pleased with me. I had watched his eyes light with pride as I told him the story. I had saved our family from exposure and, at the same time, saved a life. I hadn't quite had the courage to tell him the real reason I had done it.

Not to save the family. Not to save a life.

I had done it to save Isobel - not as an abstract or a moral imperative, but as a person whom I -

Whom I can't seem to stop thinking about, I acknowledged. There were other ways I might finish the sentence, but it was hard to say whether they were accurate or not. Leave it at "I can't stop thinking about her." It was damning enough.

Isobel was at last taken, as a preliminary to being x-rayed, to the room where Tyler was being kept. They had a short and largely meaningless conversation, though I found myself gritting my teeth in irritation when she forgave him for nearly killing her. He would not receive such an easy pardon from me.

Man, screw Mike, he thought. After this I owe it to Isobel to take her out.

I was out of the chair I had been sitting in before I knew what I was doing, but I managed to stop myself at the door. Even if I kept Tyler from asking Isobel on a date now, he would just find time to do it later. She might not say yes to him. Even if she did, a single date was nothing. He would not manage to retain her attention for long - that I believed completely. Between what I had seen of her in the minds of others and what I had observed myself, I was certain that she was too discerning not to realize that a boy like Tyler was far below her on every conceivable measure of intelligence and maturity.

Besides, the only thing I could do to keep her from dating others would be to ask her out myself, and that was an utterly ridiculous proposition.

My concern turned out to be needless anyway. The nurse returned and took Isobel away for her x-ray before Tyler could work up the nerve to ask her out, and I reverted to Carlisle as my mental anchor. He was not her attending physician - as the best doctor on staff, he was generally given patients from the ER only if their situations were dire, and Isobel's situation appeared well under control - but her attending was glad to get his opinion when he offered it. I could see the x-ray through his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. It appeared that I really hadn't hurt her.

Isobel was left alone for a while, meaning I couldn't keep watch over her. There had been several more car accidents in the area due to the ice during the forty minutes since our arrival, and Carlisle was called away to see to some of the patients. I was pacing his office, debating whether I should go to her physically, when she was finally taken back to Tyler's room. She ought to have been released, but everyone was understandably busy.

She and Tyler had another brief exchange, still largely meaningless. I didn't know what he thought they would talk about on the date he intended to ask her on. If he chose to do something utterly cliche and see a movie with her, I supposed that might save them from having to converse for a significant amount of time. Dinner, though, would be excruciating.

Isobel, claiming a headache, ended their limp exchange, but Tyler's attention - thankfully? - remained centered on her. He watched her thoughtful expression, wondering what apparently occupied her thoughts so completely. I desperately seconded his interest. Why did her mind, so intriguing to me, have to be the one I couldn't read? Then, abruptly, she blushed. The pooling of blood beneath her skin made me feel strangely hungry. Not thirsty - it had nothing to do with the thirst - but hungry for...something.

Her thoughts - I knew that much. I wanted her thoughts.

Had she noticed Tyler's interest? Was she thinking of him? Of some other boy at school? Was she...was she thinking of me?

Her blush faded, but now her brow was furrowed, a small frown touching her lips. Was she in pain? I had seen the nurse give her a few pills for her head, but I hadn't watched her take them. Did she really have a headache? I felt a stab of anxiety. Perfectly normal x-ray or not, a lingering headache - especially one that wasn't affected by over-the-counter painkillers - could mean something was wrong.

Then, as though she was actually trying to drive me crazy, she turned her face away from Tyler so that I couldn't see her expression at all.

This time I didn't check the impulse that carried me out the door with a growl.

Remaining at a respectable speed as I traversed the halls was maddening, but I managed somehow - even when Tyler finally grew bored of watching the back of Isobel's head and turned his attention to something else. A fresh jolt of anxiety hurried my steps, however, as I noticed, just before his mind began to wander, that her breathing had sped up. If she was having some sort of unlooked-for problem, a hospital was a good place to be under normal circumstances. Right now, however, none of the personnel were in a position to remember that she existed. She wasn't even hooked up to a heart monitor.

Even so - I stopped outside the door of their room to compose myself. If there was nothing wrong, I did not want to alarm them - or, rather, her. Tyler could have dropped off the face of the world for all I cared about him. I also had to brace myself for the scent that I knew would fill the room. It hadn't been such a problem when we were under the truck together, and I didn't want it to be a problem now - but, unfortunately, I had no guarantees. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs before I went in so that I could put off breathing for a little while.

I entered the room in a relaxed saunter, my hands in the pockets of my coat - retrieved while Isobel was being loaded into the ambulance before we were brought here - trying not to make obvious the way my eyes immediately sought and fastened on Isobel's face. Her cheeks were a little pink and they reddened further when she saw me.

That was...good? Bad? I had no way of knowing.

"Hey," I greeted them, forcing myself to glance at Tyler in order to make the greeting encompass him, too.

"Hey," Isobel echoed, her voice soft.

"Edward - " Tyler began. I knew he was going to apologize and didn't care in the least, but I tore my gaze away from Isobel and looked at him anyway. "I'm really sorry about earlier."

What was I supposed to say to that? I didn't care that he had almost hit me with his car - he couldn't have harmed me anyway, though of course he didn't know that. Could I tell him that I was only concerned about Isobel? No - that would reveal too much. I decided to mimic her tactic. "Just be more careful next time," I told him.

"Of course," he agreed quickly.

I was careful not to tell him that I had forgiven him. I hadn't.

There was still a little air left from my breath outside. I settled myself at the foot of Tyler's bed so that I wouldn't have to look at him. "How are you feeling?" I asked Isobel. "Head still hurt?"

"No," she answered, not quite meeting my eyes. "They gave me something for it, so it's okay now. I'm guessing that I'm fine, seeing as they've just left me here, but no one has come in to let me know."

Moment of truth - I had to breathe in order to continue the conversation. I sucked in a little air through my mouth. Yes, I could certainly taste her and, yes, it still hurt, but my desire to leap across the space between us and bury my teeth in her throat was well in check. "There were a couple of other accidents," I told her. "One was on the highway and was rather bad. Everyone is busy."

"Oh. That makes sense." She sighed and scrunched her nose up adorably. "I wish they would just let me go, though. My dad is probably freaking out."

I cast my mind toward the waiting room, but there were a number of people there, some from school and some waiting for news of people involved in the other collisions. I couldn't pick Charlie Swan out. His mental voice was typically very low-key - very few words involved. Even in the parking lot earlier I hadn't gotten much more than panic from him. He hadn't reacted to seeing me either way, but I couldn't tell if it meant Isobel hadn't said anything to him or whether he had simply been overwhelmingly concerned with her injury.

I realized suddenly that there might be something in his relative opacity, but I could pursue it later. For now…

"I can go look for Carlisle - my father - for you, if you'd like," I offered, searching the hospital for him and finding him just finished with dealing the worst-off of the victims. "I'm certain he would be happy to let you know what your x-ray results were and get the release process started."

"Really?" Her face lit up. "If you could do that, Edward - I would appreciate it a lot."

My cold, dead chest felt strangely and unexpectedly warm. It was just a favor - it was only luck that I could even do it for her - but knowing her smile was for me made me happier than -

Than I could ever remember being before.

The thought was a shock, and it was an even greater shock to realize that it was true.

I kept my own smile fixed in place. "I'll be right back," I promised, and got out of the room as fast as I could while still looking human and casual.

Finding Carlisle was no difficulty; I just followed the direction of his thoughts. "Do you have a minute?" I asked him when I reached him in the nurses' station where he was looking over a chart. "I need to talk to you."

"Is anything wrong?" he asked, his thoughts immediately going to all the exposed blood in the hospital.

I shook my head. "Maybe, but nothing like that."

"Come back to my office," he replied.

The hospital was small, as befitted a town the size of Forks, so it wasn't a terribly long walk to the office. I began pacing as he closed the door, trying to decide how to approach the issue. He waited patiently, leaning against his desk. It was funny, I noted distantly, how good at blending in we had become. Our muscles - if something so alien could even accurately be called that anymore - never tired, and so there was no reason to sit on or lean against anything. Yet even here, in private, Carlisle perched nonchalantly on the edge of his desk. I had taken a chair earlier while waiting for him. Someone could come in of course -

I was avoiding the issue. "Carlisle," I began, "how did you feel - when Esme - when you first saw her - what I'm asking is, what was it that made you - choose her?" I didn't want to remind him of the first time he had seen Esme, lying at the bottom of a cliff with a broken neck. It was painful for him to remember. I needed to know, though.

He frowned at me thoughtfully. "I simply knew that she could not die. It wasn't so very different from choosing you, or Rosalie." His eyes flickered away from mine. "Just perhaps…more urgent." He leveled his gaze at me again. "Why are you asking this, Edward? Does it have something to do with the Swan girl?"

It had everything to do with the Swan girl. I nodded miserably. "The thought of her - " No, I couldn't finish that. I raked my hand through my hair. "Carlisle - I don't know if there is anything I wouldn't do to protect her."

There was a long moment of silence as he thought that over. "Even from yourself?" he asked at last, gently.

"I don't...know," I whispered.

We were silent again, both thinking of my plan to leave Forks - both considering how impossible Carlisle would find it to leave Esme behind. Or Emmett to leave Rosalie, for that matter, or Jasper to leave Alice. Carlisle was no fool. He now understood the reluctance I had displayed while we were hunting together. I thought, in truth, that he understood it better than I did. "Perhaps you ought to talk to Alice," he advised me after a long moment.

"Alice?" I asked.

"If you love her, Edward, and you kill her, what will that do to you?"

I shuddered.

Carlisle went on: "I know your - views - but it may be best to consider turning - "

"No!" I cut him off harshly. "Do you think protecting her doesn't mean protecting her from this," I indicated the two of us, "as well?"

He sighed and shrugged. "As little as you may like it, and as much as you may struggle not to believe it, you may not be able to protect her from...everything." He mentally ticked off a few of the most obvious dangers of a human finding herself pulled even halfway into our world - she was only human, and so very breakable. Even if our family managed not to harm her, others of our kind occasionally visited or stumbled across us, and it was hardly safe to bring any human to their notice. And then, of course, there were the Volturi... "If there are hard choices to be made, Alice's visions will offer you better advice than any of the rest of us - me included."

Yes - I saw his logic and found myself nodding. I wouldn't turn her - not ever - but Alice might be able to tell me how much of a danger I posed to her - either as a blood-sucking monster or as a means of bringing her to the attention of other blood-sucking monsters. If I had to leave - I would. To hell with every other vampire couple I had ever known. I would do what was best for Isobel if it killed me.

"Was there anything else?" Carlisle asked, interrupting my deliberation on the matter.

"Yes," I replied, remembering that I had promised to get Isobel released. "Everyone has forgotten about Isobel - understandably - but no one has given her the results of the x-ray, and she should be released." I grunted. "Likely no one has told Charlie Swan, either, and he is very probably worried."

Carlisle's face softened. "Going out of your way to see to the comfort of a human isn't like you. I think I approve of the change."

I shrugged, suddenly as embarrassed as if I really were a teenager caught out by his father in some foolishly maudlin gesture. Carlisle smiled at me kindly and smoothed his hair. "Let's go take a look at my patient," he told me.