Disclaimer: All characters belong to Stephenie Meyer.
I woke up to a loud beeping noise. The light was blinding but at least I didn't have a headache anymore. Although, I was all fuzzy and dizzy and I wasn't really sure where I was. My eyes finally opened and my dad was sitting on the side of my bed.
"Dad? What happened?" My dad looked up in shock that I was awake.
"Sweetie. I'm so sorry but I think you know what happened. There are some bad cells forming again." I knew exactly what those words meant. It meant the start of a very slippery slope. Dr. Gerandy and Dr. Cullen would probably start me on a round of chemo here and then after a week they'll send me to a better hospital in Seattle where my immune system will eventually crash. Then the hospital will put me in a room where if someone wants to visit they have to wear special protective clothing.
My bone marrow aspiration wasn't scheduled until a week from Friday but I guess they already did one. "Dad what day is it?"
"It's Sunday morning. You've been out for nearly a day and a half." He sat up and gave me a huge hug. "Dr. Cullen and Dr. Gerandy want to come and talk to you. They want to make sure you understand all the procedures for what's going to happen." Right on cue both doctors walked in with very severe looks. Dr. Gerandy stood at the foot of the bed and examined my chart while Carlisle came over to me to check my vitals.
"Bella," Carlisle greeted me. "There are some bad cells again which are weakening your immune system and that cut on your hand got an infection which is why you passed out. Dr. Gerandy and I are going to start you on a round of antibiotics for the infection."
"Bella I'm sure you know what's going to happen" said Carlisle. "Dr. Gerandy is going to start you on chemo and some radiation and then after a week or so we'll transfer you to Seattle Children's Memorial. We're going to have to put another catheter in and we're also thinking about more aggressive treatment." Carlisle looked very grave as he said this.
This time Dr. Gerandy spoke. "I don't really like to consider aggressive treatments for this type of leukemia because it can usually go into remission with just chemo but you seem to keep relapsing so I have no other choice. I would like to consider a bone marrow transplant. Now I know you don't have any brothers or sisters so I'm going to check both of your parents and if they're not a match then I will put you on a donor list." I could barely listen to what he was saying. All I could think about was what I was going to put Edward through. He didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve this.
Edward had probably been trying to call me. He was probably hanging out with his brothers playing video games or racing their cars. Edward was far happier right now that I was.
I was tuning Dr. Gerandy out at this point. I didn't really care what he was saying. Life was incredibly cruel and unfair. I thought that meeting Edward and feeling the way I do meant that something better was going to come along. I thought it mean that the best was yet to come.
Right now all I felt was tired. Not just tired from the infection but tired from life. I couldn't catch a break. All I really wanted was to float. I wanted to float above the clouds like a bird and not feel.
"What if I don't want to continue with the treatment?" I asked.
My dad, Carlisle, and Dr. Gerandy stopped what they were doing. "Bells, what do you mean you don't want the treatment. You'll die if you don't have it?" My dad looked so sad. He didn't understand.
"Dad, I know I will die but I'm too tired to keep fighting. It just keeps coming back." I took a deep breath and redirected my question at Carlisle. "What other options do I have besides aggressive treatment?"
Dr. Gerandy spoke up. "Um… well there are growth hormone injections. I usually only use them on kids who are in remission but they would keep your good cells growing and they will overpower the bad cells for awhile but that's only a temporary solution. It's only going to hold you over for a few months." My dad finally understood where I was going with this.
"Bella you can't give up. You have to keep fighting. Just a little while longer." He looked on the verge of tears and a complete mental break down.
I took a breath to steady myself and I stared him straight in the eyes. "Dad I'm tired okay. I don't want to keep fighting. I'm tired." Carlisle and Dr. Gerandy looked at each other.
"Bella is only 17 so her medical assessment still lies with you Charlie but she is almost 18. I think you two need to talk about this." Both he and Carlisle walked out of the room. Right as the door closed my dad started bawling.
"I can't lose you. You're so close sweetie. You can't leave me." My dad sobbed. I couldn't help but cry too.
"I'm sorry dad but it's not that close. I'm clearly not responding to treatments anymore. Is this really what my life should be like? Two years of awful treatment that makes me want to kill myself so I can have maybe a year and half of remission before I relapse again. All I'm doing is waiting for something else to come along that's going to kill me. Please understand." My dad looked at my red puffy face and got up and walked down the hall. He probably needed fresh air.
When he left the room I looked outside through the windows. It was a nice day outside; the sun was starting to break through the clouds. I turned my head and looked down at my arm. I was attached to two machines, the heart monitor, and the IV. I decided it was safe to stand up without some needle pulling at me.
My feet slowly draped themselves over the bed as I started to get up. I was still shaky as I grabbed the pole with the IV and slowly made my way to the window. It wasn't too hard to open but I was still weak from the infection. I looked at my hand where there was a bandage wrapped around the scar. I slowly unraveled it to look at the damage. It was bruised with puss drying in certain areas. I wasn't too shocked. I've gotten infections before. They looked no different.
The birds were chirping outside while they fluttered around their nest. I would give anything to be a bird. They had no cares, no worries, and no boundaries. They just flew in the open sky.
Just then the door opened and Carlisle walked in.
"Bella. You shouldn't be out of bed," he warned me.
"I know, but it's just so nice outside I wanted to open the window." I sat in the old chair with my elbow resting on the ledge with my chin on my good hand.
"I get what you're doing," he said. This brought me out of my stupor.
"No you don't," I said. I turned around to look at him. "You don't understand and you never will. Have you ever had to lie in a hospital bed for months while all you can do is throw up in a bucket? Have you ever had people stare at you with that look of pity? No I don't think you can. Why do you think I haven't told Edward?"
"Edward would understand. He's different." Carlisle tried to convince me of this.
"No he wouldn't. The second I tell him everything would be different." I turned back towards the window.
"He's been calling you but of course you haven't been answering. Do you want me to tell him anything?" I slowly got up and walked back to the bed leaving the window open.
"Sure. Tell him I died," I said with sarcasm. I looked up at Carlisle and sure enough he had the pity look.
"Sorry," I clarified. "It's easier to be nice to someone when they aren't looking at me the way you're looking at me."
"How should I look at you?" This was such a doctor response. Doctors never knew how to look at patients. The nurses were the better people. If I ever needed information it was the nurse I asked. Doctors could never explain anything without looking sorry for me.
"Like I'm a human being with feelings. Not to generalize but doctors don't really get it. They don't understand what it's like to be a patient and what it's like to not know what's going on. Nurses on the other hand get it."
"I never thought I would need to take notes from nurses," Carlisle laughed.
"Nurses know a lot of things doctors don't know. Like our first names for one. Tip one: call the patient by their first names. Second: know three things about the patient that they like in hospitals. Three: treat us like we are special. It will get you a lot farther with a patient that being just their doctor." Carlisle moved to sit on my bed.
"I don't really like to become close to my patients in case they were to…"
"Die," I finished for him. "Death is inevitable. I think that if I were to die on the table I would want my doctor to feel something. No just sorrow for the fact that I died but because then I wouldn't die alone. Dying should never be lonely."
"Is that what you want? To not die alone?"
I looked at him dubiously. "Do you want to die alone?" I asked him.
He laughed. "No I wouldn't." His face turned serious again. "But are you really ready to give up?"
"You make it sound so terrible. Like I'm choosing to die, as if I'm suicidal. Have you really looked at my file? Not just the treatments but the time periods of those treatments. I have never not been sick or in and out of hospitals. That is no life."
"I'm sorry if I'm offending you in any way." I could tell I was starting to become rude but it was just because I was tired.
"No I'm sorry I'm being rude. It's just that I make a decision I've given a lot of thought about this and you and Dr. Gerandy start to judge me without knowing me. I hardly think that's fair." Carlisle and I sat there in an uncomfortable silence.
"Are you going to tell Edward?" Carlisle asked breaking the tension.
"I don't know if I could bear telling him." It was the utmost honest answer I could give.
"But you're not going to break up with him." It wasn't a question. "I'm going to say this as his father and not your doctor. Don't string him along because he really cares for you. This will hurt him too." Carlisle was right.
"You should get some rest and think about this a little bit more." Carlisle squeezed my hand gently and walked out of the room. The silence made me even drowsier and soon enough I was asleep again.
By the time I woke up again the good weather had disappeared. There was a light tapping on the door. I looked up and Charlie slowly entered the room with my duffle bag in hand.
"I thought you might want to change into some of your clothes. It will make you more comfortable and I also brought you your cell phone."
I took the cell phone from his hand and flipped it open. It read 4 txt messages and 3 missed calls. I sighed. I would at least have to give him some reason for not returning his phone calls.
"Dad we need to talk." He knew this too. "I don't want to hurt you or mom in any way. I've watched you guys sit by my bedside through every treatment. So I know you know what it's like to go through this."
"I'm just asking you to give the bone marrow transplant a chance. It's not a huge request."
"But it is dad. What happens while I wait for the transplant? I know you and mom aren't matches. I'll tell you what will happen; I will sit here in this room or somewhere like it with skin too raw to touch, hair that falls out, and a skeletal looking face."
"Isn't it worth it?" Charlie asked me.
"I'm sorry but not anymore. Not at this price."
"Okay." I looked up at his face and he was actually going to concede.
"Thank you." I reached up and gave him a hug with tears brimming over my eyes.
My dad, Carlisle, and Dr. Gerandy all agreed to go through with growth hormone treatments. It would keep me going for a little while longer. Dr. Gerandy wasn't happy with my decision at all but he didn't have to be.
So, on Monday afternoon I was discharged from the hospital and Charlie took me home to rest. I begged him to let me go back to school tomorrow and he finally agreed. The tension between the two of us could be cut with a knife. I didn't know how much more of this I could take. At least school was going to be normal. As far as I was concerned nobody at school new, including Edward and it was going to stay that way.
There were only 4 days left of school, one regular day and then three for finals. Then it was summer and it would be just me and Edward. I pulled into the parking lot because Edward probably wasn't sure I was coming to school. He saw me the second I pulled in and walked straight over to me.
"Hi, where have you been? I tried calling but you didn't answer." He looked so hurt that I hadn't called him back.
"Oh…um…I got something flu like and I was too tired to answer my phone so I just turned it off." Hopefully that excuse was good enough. At least I wasn't lying about the sick part. "But I'm all better now, so are you ready to get to class." I grabbed his hand and started to walk towards the building but he stopped and I turned to look back at him.
"You could have told me you know, I would have understood." I reached up and hugged him with as much force as I could muster. I was still really weak after this weekend.
"Thank you for understanding." He smiled but when I said those words I was imagining that I was responding to my telling him the truth. For now, all I was going to do was pretend that everything is normal.
"So how was your weekend? Did you and Emmett hang out?" I looked up at him and he was laughing.
"Oh we had a good time alright."
"What happened?"
"Well Emmett decided that he, Jasper, and I should go out but we didn't know where. We were supposed to go with our dad to this restaurant but my dad had to go the hospital last minutes. So anyway, Emmett takes us to a bar with fake IDs and as we were there Emmett started to hit on one of the waitresses. Well it turns out that the waitress has a boyfriend, big beefy guy, who was sitting right next to us. He totally knocked out Emmett." By this point Edward was trying to breathe properly he was laughing so hard.
"Is he okay?" I wasn't exactly finding the humor in the story unless he was okay.
"He's fine. He's got a shiner thought but he's fine. We had to explain to Esme why he looked all beat up though."
"Did you tell her the truth?"
"Of course not. We told her he hit his head when he was working on his car."
"Well at least your weekend wasn't a wash." Edward wrapped his arm around my waist.
He leaned down to whisper in my ear, "It would have been better if I'd been with you." This conversation was getting uncomfortable.
"We better get to our classes or else we'll be late. I'll see you later." I reached up to give him a quick kiss and turned away but Edward caught my arm before I could leave.
"Bella? What's going on? Talk to me." I didn't want to look into his eyes but I made the mistake.
"It was just a weird weekend. Charlie and I got in a fight and I don't want to talk about it."
"You two got in a fight while you were sick?" Edward looked confused.
"I said I didn't want to talk about it. I'm sorry I'm being mean. I'm just tired. Can we just go to class?" Edward dropped the subject and walked me to class.
"I'll see you at lunch." He stalked down the hall to his next class. I didn't want to hurt him. That was the last thing I wanted but this wasn't fair to him. If I could just forget about this weekend then maybe I could go back to normal.
Thank you for all of the Reviews! I hope you guys like the chapter. I'm trying to get more chapters in before school starts on Monday but hopefully I won't be too slowed down.
I hope all of you will keep reading once school starts. Please Review. Thanks.