Blood
JPOVShe doubled up, screaming again as the blood continued to spread. Mike was as white as a sheet and Eric looked sick.
"Bella, I'm so sorry!"
"Fuck off, Newton!" I'd have decked him myself if Bella hadn't chosen that instant to grab my shirt front and shake me.
"It HURTS!" She screamed, and I saw her eyes become huge and deep. I didn't know what to do, but Rosalie pushed me briskly to one side and knelt down in front of Bella.
"Get her on the floor, quickly. And clear this room!" By now there were teachers on the scene, and they helped get people out. Jacob refused to leave and had to be forcibly removed by Edward and Emmett. Bella wouldn't let go of the front of my shirt and Rosalie let me stay. She'd taken her advanced first aid course, and was currently the only person in the room qualified or capable to deal with this.
"Rose, it's too soon!"
"Bella, there's nothing I can do." She saw the blood, she knew long before Bella had accepted it that there was no way the baby would survive.
She had to deliver a dead child. I never let her go once. But one thing happened during her labour.
"Bella, we need to alert the father!" Carlisle had begged her, hoping that now, in the face of the inevitable, she would tell him a name, somebody he could call.
"You can't tell the father!"
"Bella, please!"
"The fathers dead!" She'd screamed, wild eyed and crying with pain. "There's nobody to tell!"
She'd refused to hold her son at first. She'd asked whether it was a boy or girl, and they told her. She asked if he was alive. And when they'd said no, she'd turned her head to the wall and asked them to take him away. Carlisle had refused. He'd laid the baby in my arms, and I'd given him to Bella.
"Bella, hold him. Just this once. You'll regret it if you don't."
"And I'd regret it if I did."
"Bella! Hold him." She looked up at me. I'd held the bundle in my arms out to her, and she'd made an awkward cradle with hers.
"Leave me." I withdrew, respecting her wishes.
BPOVHe was so tiny, so perfect. But dead. I couldn't escape that. I didn't want to hold him, not at first. But I agreed, and I don't know why.
"Hello, little one. I'm mummy. You don't know me. I'd secretly hoped that one day you would know me. And I would maybe one day, tell you about daddy, but then again, perhaps not. I was going to call you David, if you were a boy. You were going to be my little Davy. You were going to have so much to look forward to. All the love and the care you could ever want, a family, a home, somewhere you could be safe. I wouldn't have ever let you get hurt, little one. You would have gone to school. Passed exams, become a great success somewhere. You could have been anything, and I would have made sure you could follow your dreams. The things you should have seen, little one. All the big cities in the world. I would have given you the world, my little one. I would have loved you." I kept him cradled in my arms, staring at his face. And then I saw the blanket move an infinitesimal bit, just a tiny movement. I thought I'd imagined it at first. But then I would swear he screwed up his little face.
"CARLISLE!!!" He came running in, followed closely by Jasper and Charlie. I didn't know he was here. How long had he been here. But that didn't matter now. "He moved, Carlisle, I'm sure of it!" Carlisle looked doubtfully at me.
"Bella, perhaps, sometimes, when a mother is very determined that her baby is alive, they can imagine -"
"NO, Carlisle, when I say he moved, I mean he moved his face!"
JPOVShe looked so determined. She glared up at Carlisle, as if challenging him to doubt her. He took the baby, and laid it on the bottom of Bella's bed. He unwrapped the blanket. He laid his stethoscope on the baby's chest. And then a quiet whimper filled the room.
"Get Paediatrics down here now!"
"He's alive! I told you, I said I saw him move!"
"Carlisle, how is that even possible?" I asked him, full of bewilderment.
"I don't know, Jasper, I don't know."
"Jasper, he's alive!" I put my arms around her and kissed her hair without thinking. But she didn't shy away, she just stared at the bundle on the foot of her bed, crying and laughing, somehow at the same time.
"I know, Bella, I know."
He had to spend a long time in ICU, but he was allowed home eventually. She refused point blank to put him down, except when he slept. And then he was in her room, and she'd slip in and out occasionally, just to "check he's OK". Carlisle said she was just a first time mum who was going to be inclined to worry, especially after his birth. But the birth and subsequent survival of little Davy changed Bella somehow. She became vivacious and bright, and bustling. She was much more open, and easy. Less…less tense somehow. And admittedly, he was outrageously beautiful.
BPOVHe's adorable. Big brown eyes and a tuft of dark hair. It's good that he looks like me, not Phil. I don't think I could love him if he'd looked like Phil. I talk to him every day, telling about everything. About Phil, about what he did, about how he came to be. It helps to talk to somebody, even if that somebody is a baby.
The day it all goes wrong, he's in my arms. I start to shake, and then I drift.
I came home from school on my fourteenth birthday, and Phil was waiting. He said that Renee was at work, but he was taking me to the cinema to celebrate. I dumped my bag and got in the car with him. He asked all the usual questions: what did I want to see, did I want popcorn, a drink, maybe some ice cream? There was nothing unusual about it, nothing at all.
But when the lights went down, and the movie started playing, I felt his hand on my leg, running up under my skirt. I opened my mouth to tell him to get the hell off me, but he grabbed my leg tightly, and told me not to say anything. He ran his hand up and down my leg a few more times, and then he stopped. I couldn't move, I was somehow frozen in my seat. He didn't talk to me on the way home, but then he pulled into an abandoned car-park. I asked him what the hell he thought he was playing at. He smiled coldly, the cold smile which is all he ever gives me now, and told me I was his now. I asked him what he meant, and he just smiled more, and said "Let me show you."
He'd pulled me across to sit on his lap. He told me Renee couldn't satisfy him, so I had to do it. Then his hands started fumbling with my knickers, pushing them to the side and he shoved two fingers inside me. I screamed. I couldn't help it, it had hurt so much, so hard and fast. He slapped me with his free hand and told me to shut up. When I didn't, when I screamed at him to stop, he'd smashed my head back on the steering wheel.
When I came round, I was in the backseat, and he was on top of me. He'd pushed my skirt up around my waist, and he'd taken my knickers off. I'd tried to scream again, but he clapped his hand over my mouth and told me if I didn't keep quiet, he'd hurt me more. Then he'd plunged himself inside me, and I couldn't help the scream around his hand as he took my virginity. He'd just laughed when I started crying, and used his free hand to squeeze my breast through my shirt. That had hurt too, and I'd screamed more. He just kept going, and then he'd pulled himself out, and finished off on my face. He'd handed me some tissues, and told me to clean myself up. I'd done so, with shaking hands. Then he'd pulled me back into the front, and we rode home in silence. When he stopped the car, he grabbed my face and kissed me, forcing his tongue into my mouth. I sat there, rigid and unmoving.
"If you tell, I'll kill you." I didn't answer, just getting out of the car and running upstairs.
JPOV
"Bella! Bella!" Her son was screaming in my arms, and she was shaking violently. I'd seen her start to shake, and then I'd snatched the baby from her arms. She didn't even move, jut stared into space. Then she seemed to come back. "Bella, look at me!" She did, turning her head impossibly slowly to stare at me uncomprehendingly, like she didn't know who I was. And then she'd focused on the screaming baby in my arms.
"Give him to me," she said, tonelessly. She fed him, still staring into space. It was almost mechanical. Everybody watched her. She had the far-away, painful, sad look in her eyes she'd had when she first came to Forks. It wrenched my heart to see her like this. I wanted to gather her and the baby in my arms, to vow I'd keep her safe from whatever haunted her. But I knew she wouldn't let me.
A/N: Wow, I finished this earlier than I thought. So, here you go, the cliff-hanger to end all cliff hangers is undone. And leaving you with another. Sorry.
So, the birth of Bella's baby has triggered her flashbacks. What will happen to her now?
