Disclaimer: Twilight Saga doesn't belong to me, but this crazy VampWard is all mine. ;)

A/N: All your reviews have made me smile like crazy. I would like to thank every one of you, who has reviewed, favorited, put on alert or simply... read RoALS. You guys make it worth my time to put my crazy thoughts in writing. Thank you.

Big smooches for DataByteDL-FangirlinGranma for loving me so much. Your support means the world to me, Granma.

Shall we see what's going on in Bella's mind now?

Chapter-9: Not A Magical World

BPOV

"Isabella, I'm sorry for acting like a fucked-up weasel. I shouldn't have asked you to lift the bike," Jacob said to me in one breath, and then walked away.

I watched open-mouthed as he almost ran out of the ER, leaving me alone. I didn't mind taking care of myself since that's how I had grown up, but it still weirded me out seeing him run away like that.

I knew he wasn't chivalrous or anything after he asked me to help him lift his bike. However, this was a real low.

The nurse attending to me took my arm with soft hands. "I'm just going to take your pulse and measure your blood pressure before the doctor comes in. It's just routine work," she told me reassuringly.

I frowned at the door once more before turning my eyes back on her. "Is this going to take long?" I asked, not feeling too comfortable in a hospital.

She raised her eyes from her hands and gave me a searching look, making me smile sheepishly at her. "I'm not a big fan of hospitals," I explained.

Her nod was filled with understanding as she pulled the blood-pressure cuff around my arm. "That's not too uncommon, dear," she said. "Dr. Cullen will be here shortly, I'm sure. He already sent Edward, his son, over here to check up on you."

"His son?" I was confused. "He's a doctor as well?"

A soft, motherly smile lit up her face as she shook her head. "No, Edward is taking a year off before going to college. So he's working here as a trainee to learn as much as he can before going off. He's gonna be a great doctor one day."

"Oh! Cool," I responded, not sure what to do with that information.

She blushed a little at my less than enthusiastic response. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm babbling. I'm just trying to prepare you for him."

"Prepare me?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "Why? Is he like royalty?"

She laughed at that. "No. He just rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but deep inside, he's a good kid."

I nodded with a non-committal look.

"It's strange though …" she started again. "He was here just now, talking to your friend. Where did he go?"

"He talked to Jacob?" I asked sharply. "About what?"

"Nothing to worry about, dear. It's not uncommon to take patient history from the attendants as well as the patient herself. I'm sure he was trying to find out how you got hurt."

I chewed on my lip as I muttered in an embarrassed tone, "I was lifting a bike and lost my grip. There was just a little blood, nothing to worry about."

"I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, but we still need to take a look." The sound of a new voice made me look up from my hands, and I saw a kind-faced man standing next to my bed.

His name-tag read, "Dr. Carlisle Cullen."

He was blonde with blue eyes, and looked way too young to have a son waiting to get into college. He smiled at me when he saw me looking up at him. "Hello, Ms. Swan," he greeted me while looking at the chart the nurse handed to him. "I'm Dr. Cullen. I see your vitals look good."

"Great! So I can go home now," I said with a smile as I tried to sit up.

Dr. Cullen quickly pushed me back on the bed and shook his head in a silent vexation. "Not quite yet. We'll need to x-ray your head just to check if you have any injuries before I can discharge you."

I slumped back on the bed, hoping to get this over with.

I really didn't like hospitals.

~*~*~*RoALS*~*~*~

Fifty minutes later, Dr. Cullen appeared back at my bedside. "Alright, Ms. Swan, I have good news and I have bad news."

"It's Isabella," I corrected him before gesturing him to continue.

"Well, Isabella, the good news is that you don't have any internal bleeding so you should consider yourself lucky."

"Thank you …"

"However," he said, cutting me off. "You do have a mild concussion. Resting up and Tylenol should take care of it."

I sat up on the bed and nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Cullen. I can go home now, can't I?"

He looked up from the papers he had in his hands and asked me, "Do you have someone to take care of you there?"

"No, I live alone. My house isn't that far away. I can walk back there just fine."

He started shaking his head at that. "Then no, you can't go home now."

"Why?"

"I wouldn't advise you to walk home tonight, and you might experience some nausea or dizziness from the concussion. So I think you should stay here where there will be someone to look after you in case you feel ill during the night."

For a moment, I debated calling up Rachel or Leah and asking them to come take me home so he'd see I have someone to look after me, but then thought better of it.

Even though I'd grown up in a group home, I was never alone when I got sick as a child. Angela or Father Webber would be with me the whole time.

With a sigh, I gave up. "Fine, but I'll be discharged tomorrow morning?" I asked, needing the clarification.

"Of course. After I check up on you in the morning, you can go," he said with a smile.

I watched with dismay as the doctor walked out of the ER, leaving me to lie down and try to sleep off the exhaustion.

Sounds fun, right? NOT!

EPOV

"Edward, will you calm down?" Alice's voice sounded exasperated over the phone. "You're freaking out for nothing."

"Tell me the truth, Alice. Will that fucktard ever hurt her again?" I repeated my question, making my sister huff.

"You don't even know her name yet, and there might be hundreds of Jacobs on the West Coast. I don't know what he looks like. How am I supposed to know if he'll even come near her again?"

"Because you're the psychic," I spat at her. "I can easily pick up her name from her patient file." I thought for a second before adding, "Jacob looks like an asshole with long hair."

There was a snort from the other end of the phone. "Great mental image, brother. Now I'm thinking of him as a hairy asshole … the kind which one finds at the rear end of one's body."

Her words made me chuckle because that pretty much summed up that fucker for me. "You're close, Alice. Can you please try at least?"

She was silent for a long while before saying, "I can't see her with any long-haired guy in the near future."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks, little sister."

She giggled at my name-calling and bade me goodbye. Just before hanging up, she said, "Edward?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't find out her name from a file, big brother. Ask her."

Then she hung up, leaving me wondering if I could do that. Talking to her without scaring her?

~*~*~*RoALS*~*~*~

About an hour later, I looked up from the journal I was reading when I heard a knock on the door.

Carlisle stood there with a frown on his face. "I thought you had left already."

I held up the journal for him to see and said, "I was reading." Then just to piss him off, I lifted my feet from the floor and rested them on his desk, leaning back to get more comfy in his seat. "You have a very cozy office."

With satisfaction, I noticed his frown deepen for a moment as his eyes flick toward my feet before he straightened his face. "Which issue is it?"

I checked the front of Science Domain and replied, "Last month's. There's an article about lyophilized injectables for anticancer treatment. It's good."

He sounded satisfied with my answer when he spoke. "Yeah, that's a good one. I'm heading home now. Do you want to come with me?"

I shook my head and patted the journal in my hands. "I wanna finish this tonight. Besides, your office is quieter than home at night."

"Emmett and Rosalie?" he asked, sounding embarrassed on behalf of them.

"Yep," I answered. "They're not very subtle at night."

He grinned at me. "No, I guess they're not." Walking inside the room, he took his coat from the rack and gave me one last look. "You'll be okay here alone?"

In his mind, I could hear the doubts. I hope you don't lose your grasp on yourself tonight, son. I don't want you to regret your actions.

"Yeah, I'll be fine … as will your patients," I answered.

Fuck! I really do hope I don't regret what I'm going to do tonight.

BPOV

Raising my head from the pillow, I looked around my curtained bed.

Nope, there isn't anyone here.

Flopping my head back down, I willed sleep to come. But a nagging feeling in the back of my mind kept me up. Something didn't feel right. It felt like I was being watched.

What the hell is wrong with this place?

I pulled my phone out from underneath my pillow and looked at the time.

12:10 A.M.

It was past midnight and sleep was still a no-show. Yeah, I'm gonna look like a zombie on my official first day at work.

I closed my eyes once more and started counting backwards—the way Angela swore she could fall asleep any time of the day.

100 … 99 … 98 .… 97 … 96 … 95 … 94 … 93 … 92 …

Before I could get to 91, I heard a sound from behind me.

My situation reminded me of another one where someone was lying awake in a hospital bed at night and got a night-visitor. Whoa! Maybe a house-elf is gonna pop in here to tell me that I'm in Harry Potter world, I thought with a giggle.

I guessed the pain-meds Nurse Jackie gave me before leaving were making me a little loopy. I let my mind wander to what Dobby would say to me if it was a magical world like Harry Potter's.

And then I heard the sound again.

A sound of a sigh … a sound of a breath passing though lips.

With a gasp, I turned around, and found my eyes locked on a pair of green eyes, the most vibrant shade of green I'd ever seen—the eyes of my Handsome Stranger.

He looked startled when he saw me looking at him and then started to move away from my bed. I had no idea what possessed me to do it, but I reached out to clasp his hand in mine before he could run away again.

His hand was still cold tonight. Maybe he's one of those people whose hands get cold when they're nervous, I thought to myself.

"You're not Dobby!"

My sudden remark made him scrunch up his eyebrows in a very cute way as he asked, "Dobby?"

A giggle left me as I nodded. "Yes, like in Harry Potter. Although you do seem to appear magically in front of me at times."

He didn't speak. Instead, he turned to go away from me.

I tightened my grip on his wrist and asked, "Why are you always running away from me?"

His head snapped back to look at me with wide eyes. He was silent for a moment before murmuring, "I'm not running away from you, I'm running away from my own idiocy. Believe me, there's nothing magical about me."

"Why, aren't you a glass half full?" I remarked and sat up, tugging on his hand to make him sit beside me.

When he didn't move an inch, I gave him a stern look. "You sneak around and watch me sleep in a very uncomfortable hospital bed, but now you don't want to sit with me?"

He closed his eyes, looking defeated. "It's not a question of want, believe me."

"I think I do," I replied honestly. "I mean you're clearly not Dobby, and maybe there's nothing magical about our world, but I think I do believe you."

Intense eyes locked on mine, looking … searching for something. "You're different from anyone I've ever met."

"That's because I'm unique, silly!" I said, bumping my shoulder with his. "I'm Isabella, by the way. We didn't get to talk the last time we met."

"You're more unique than you can imagine," he whispered softly. "I'm Edward."

I recognized his name and said with a smile, "So you're the great future Dr. Cullen?"

He chuckled. "You could say that," he told me with a teasing glint in his eyes.

Keeping the smile firmly in place, I asked the question I had been itching to ask him since the moment I saw him tonight. "Wanna tell me what you were doing beside my bed now?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it once more.

This had better be good!

A/N: Any guesses on what he might say?

Share your thoughts with me and leave a review.

The "Dobby" bit was a nod to all my Twi-hard friends who are Potterheads as well, just like moi. ;)

Song rec for this chapter: Fireflies by Owl City.

DreamWeaver will update shortly. Check it out if you want?

Thank you for reading.

See you next week.

Take care.

Ann