Sorry it's been awhile for the update...life's been busy. Enjoy

The low and constant hum of the MRI receded until Bella no longer heard it. Only the telltale throb in her head gave her any indication of what was happening. Gone were the intermittent flashes of lights, the cold slab beneath her skin and the antiseptic smell of the room. The sense of something so unfamiliar yet so comforting wrapped itself around her. She could almost taste the gentle scents of sunshine and hibiscus as she retreated into her own mind.

Mystic Falls, VA 1860

She was running through the grassy field as fast as her slippered feet would carry her, giggles stringing behind her thoroughly annoying her pursuer.

"Isabella, you little imp. Get back here." The voice boomed from a good distance away.

She laughed harder clutching the paper she held tighter in her hand as if one wisp of the gentle wind would steal it away, sending it back to it's rightful owner. She ran towards the outcropping of trees, glancing behind her, surprised her follower hadn't caught up to her yet. In fact, she couldn't even see him. Did he not realize what direction she was headed?

Scrambling up the nearest tree where the limbs could hold her out of sight, she sat and waited. It wasn't long before Isabella heard the footsteps in the tufts of grass near her. She saw the top of his dark head swivel back and forth in search of her.

"Isabella Maria Salvatore, just because I adore you does not mean I will let you get away with this."

"Darling, How I miss the feeling of your lips on mine" She began to read the letter in her hand dramatizing each word for maximum effect. "Your tongue does such delicious things to my…"

"Stop that!" His head turned up to look at her but the sun's afternoon glare shined directly in his face obscuring her view of him. "That's private."

"If it was so private, you shouldn't leave it laying about where anyone could see it." She retorted, waving the crumpled letter at him.

"You know very well it was in my room…in the garbage no less. Now give it back." He demanded outstretching his hand.

"If you threw it away, why do you want it back?" She arched her eyebrow at him, smiling at his discomfort.

"I just do…" He said not willing to go into detail.

"Are you going to marry her?"

He coughed to cover up a nervous laugh. "No, gattina. I am not going to marry her."

"So she's one of those girls then." She wagged her eyebrows at him in a perfect imitation of his own habit.

"And what do you know of those girls, hmm?" His eyebrows wagged right back.

She sighed in exasperation and rolled her eyes at him. "I do read you know. Besides Miss Emily said if a girl lets a boy touch her privates, he has to marry her or else she is just a strumpet who will end up alone with lots of babies."

He let out a bark of laughter. "And Miss Emily is absolutely right and you must remember that if any boy wants to ah…" he broke off obviously uncomfortable.

"Touch my privates" She supplied coquettishly when he was too embarrassed to finish the sentence.

"That's right, then you come to me so I can set them straight on how to treat a young lady."

Isabella laughed then. "I'm only 12." She said like it should be the most obvious thing in the world.

"No one is interested in me like that."

"They will be soon enough." he grumbled. "Now jump down from your perch, little bird. I'll catch you."

And so she jumped and just as promised, he caught her. He always caught her. She looked up at him with a teasing smile…her brother Damon always caught her.

Forks WA Present Day

Carlisle, ignorant to the hallucinations going on in Bella's head, called out instructions to the radiologists.

"Take a quick succession of images of the medial temporal lobe concentrating on the hippocampus. Now magnify by twenty. There...do you see that?" Carlisle pointed at the monitors with a mixture of wonder and fear. "What is happening there?" Isabella Swan, what is going on in your brain? He questioned silently to himself.

"Switch to the PET Scan. I need images on the same areas." He called to the head technician who nodded as he pushed some buttons altering the machine to allow for the higher sensitivity scan.

Thanks to his anonymously made generous donations, Forks Hospital had one of the most advanced MRI machines in existence. It actually was the most effective hybrid MRI/PET scanner prototype in the country but even this modern piece of technology failed him in giving him any clues. Carlisle hated guesswork and he couldn't even provide that. He supposed he should be grateful it wasn't the tumor he had predicted but he didn't know if what he was seeing in front of him was worse.

An alarming beeping broke into his thoughts and he looked up swiftly following an uncharacteristic curse.

"BP's rising!" One of the tech's called out.

"Get her out of there!" Carlisle responded. Her blood pressure already rose to a dangerously high level. If they didn't get it down quickly she could have a stroke. This wasn't supposed to happen.

"Bella?" He called into the microphone as the mechanical bed started to move. "Bella?" he said again louder when there was no response.

Unwilling to wait any longer, he ran out of the control room to where Bella lay totally oblivious to the chaos that went on around her.

Damnit, Bella. Don't do this! My son needs you, he pleaded inside his mind when he caught full sight of Bella unconscious, her nose seeping blood.

As her blood pressure slowly descended to normal, Bella started to open her eyes carefully, mindful of the demon pounding away at her skull. Carlisle held her cheeks in his hand.

"Bella? Can you hear me?" he asked.

"Carlisle?" Bella caught sight of him leaning over her. She grabbed at her head to stem the pressure. "Ow."

Carlisle breathed a sigh of relief that the danger had passed. He quickly switched roles from panicked father to capable doctor pulling out his pen light and examining her eyes. She pulled away from the light and swiped at her nose. Realizing it was blood on her hands, she gasped and quickly withdrew her hand from Carlisle's sight.

"It's okay, Bella." He assured her as he handed her a tissue. "Can you tell me what happened in there?"

Her brows creased as she tried to remember. "I'm..I'm not sure. I fell asleep I think. I was running from someone...my brother?" she questioned aloud as she questioned internally. No, that couldn't be right. She didn't have a brother. But it was so real...it could have been a memory. Only it wasn't. Was she imagining it or did she have a dream that her brother was Damon Salvatore?

"Bella, you don't have a brother, Bella." Carlisle said.

Bella threw her hands up in frustration before burying her face in them. "I know." She didn't know if she were going to laugh or cry or maybe a little bit of both. Maybe I'm just going nuts, she thought. Maybe I have finally dived off the deep end. "Crazy." She muttered out loud.

"You're not crazy." He said sympathetically wishing he could find the right words in his extensive vocabulary to soothe her. He couldn't even fathom what she was going through right now. The confusion, the fear, the pain. He could see it was all getting to her and unfortunately at the moment, he had no easy answers. "I'm going to have the nurse escort you to your room now. Once I have the test results, I'll come get you."

"Thank you Carlisle…for everything." She whispered sincerely grasping hold of his hand.

His face softened. "You are part of our family. There is nothing I wouldn't do for you."

XXXXX

For Edward, all the sounds in the room were amplified even more than he thought possible. The passage of time punctuated with the incessant ticking of the clock on the wall and the rhythmic jingle of the keys in Charlie's pocket as he sat in the generic plastic chair nervously shaking his leg up and down. He could hear the steady beat of Bella's heart and was comforted by the sound. How many of those, he wondered, did she have left? How many breaths was she given to take?

Edward shook himself of the remorse that was quickly grabbing hold of him. He was long past denying them the future they both wanted. Alice had been right from the start. Bella's change was inevitable. Even if the situation turned out to be not as desperate as they all thought, it would still come to pass. Bella was his anchor to this earth, to his humanity. Even if she was no longer human, she would always be his Bella, his tether that kept him grounded. Without her, there would be nothing. He couldn't imagine, given the purity of her soul that she would ever turn into the monster he always accused himself of being.

He had one caveat though, to which Bella hadn't yet been privy to. He wanted to make her officially his; in the eyes of man, in the eyes of the God he believed had forsaken him. If anyone deserved to retain their soul once the transformation was complete, it was Bella. He would do everything he could, no matter how futile the effort to ensure that. She would be his wife, his beloved bride, his mate in every sense of the word.

Edward was resolved to the thought. The images of Bella in a gown of ivory and lace filtered into his thoughts, momentarily difusing the anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him. It might take some convincing for her to agree. After all, her own parent's short lived marriage couldn't have set a very good precedent for him to plead his case and no doubt Charlie and Renee would have their own thoughts on the matter. He would have to consult with Alice.

Not able to stand the physical separation as she sat on the bed and he sat on the chair next to her father, he got up and sat behind her, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her to him.

"Any one mind if I turn the game on?" Charlie asked already moving to the television console on the wall.

"Go ahead Dad." Bella replied. She was relieved actually that the Mariners game would provide him with a welcome distraction. She had decided not to keep Charlie in the dark after all but instead explained to him what Carlisle suspected, leaving out the details of how dire that situation could be.

As Bella settled against Edward's hard yet comforting frame, she was still reeling from the dream. Or was it a hallucination? At this point she couldn't be sure what it was only that Damon Salvatore, her new history teacher was in it. Was it possible her mind was just filling in his face because he had been with her earlier when she collapsed? But the voice. It was the same voice that was in her other visions and it was his voice. It carried the same cadence, the same undercurrent of sarcastic amusement with a slight tinge of southern charm as the Damon of the present. And that was before he ever came to Forks.

Bella rubbed her temples trying to make sense of it all.

"Are you in pain love?" Edward asked anxiously.

"No." She answered honestly. "I'm just thinking."

"We'll deal with it. Whatever comes." He whispered kissing the top of her head and holding her more snugly against him.

She withheld a sigh. Yes, she knew exactly how they would deal with it, she thought with a bit of melancholy. Bella's decision to finally be like Edward and his family never wavered. Her sad thoughts were all for Charlie. She worried about him. He would survive, of course, but he would never be the same. She was grateful that Renee had Phil. He was a good man and would take care of her as she needed to be. Bella's mind turned to Jake briefly. Oh how he would hate her for the decision she was making if he ever found out. They would have to leave…go far away from Forks. The pack could never know the treaty had been broken. She would not risk her new family.

Bella felt Edward stiffen behind her. He must hear Carlisle. He was finally going to give them answers.

XXXXX

The four of them were sequestered in Carlisle's large office, the door locked barring all interruptions. Charlie had balked at first over Edward's necessity to be in the room of what was clearly to him a private family matter but Bella interceded, claiming that Edward was family and she needed him there. He was quiet after that and they all sat with bated breath.

Bella clung to Edward's hand like a lifeline. She heard him growl low in his throat as he watched Carlisle turn on the lighted board behind him. She turned to look at him and he made a barely perceptible shake of his head. Either he knew what was going on and didn't like it or Carlisle was still blocking him. Bella assumed the later judging by the look of frustration on Edward's face.

Carlisle looked at the three of them and wished he had better news. "Well, it's not a brain tumor." He started with a troubled sigh. At least he could lead with the "good" news.

"Thank God." Charlie said slapping his hand on his leg as he smiled. When he noticed the still unhappy expression on Carlisle's face and the lack of relief on Edward's and Bella's expressions, he looked back at the doctor, confused. "That's good news…isn't it?" Now he didn't sound so sure.

Carlisle offered a tight lipped smile that conveyed it wasn't. "Under other circumstances it would be."

He proceeded to rifle through the scans on his desk until he found what he was looking for. The atmosphere in the room morphed into an even tenser mood than it was to begin with. Bella worried her bottom lip with her teeth, conscious of Edward's cold hand in hers.

Carlisle placed a scan on the lighted board behind him.

"Is that my brain?" Bella asked familiar with images.

"Unfortunately no. I have placed it here as a means of comparison. This is the image of the brain of a normal, healthy eighteen year old female." He placed another scan on the board right next to the first. "This is your brain, Bella."

She saw Edward inhale sharply suddenly beside her, the grasp on her hand became a grip. Bella knew he had studied medicine and wondered what he saw that she didn't.

"So what exactly are we looking at Doc?" Charlie asked.

"This" Carlisle circled a small area on the other scan. "is the hippocampus portion of the brain. It's located in the medial temporal lobe. This." He said pointing to Bella's scan "is the same area in Bella's brain. If you notice, it's significantly larger"

Carlisle pulled off the two scans and replaced it with a series of others. "Now" he continued fighting to remain as detached as possible. "Here is a series of scans we took magnifying on that one area."

"What are those?" Bella asked pointing at the dots and trails of lights on the images. She didn't know much about this but it looked wrong.

Carlisle's shoulders slumped in defeat. His effort to be professional and clinical deteriorated rapidly.

"We don't know. Not exactly."

"You don't know?" Edward asked incredulously. His patience which had been fraying steadily finally snapped. How could Carlisle not know? But even with his own years of medical education with two degrees to show for it, he didn't even understand what he was looking for.

"Edward it's not that simple." Carlisle said patiently for he recognized his son's anger for what it really was…fear. "You see, Bella" he turned to her. "What these trails of light represent are misfiring neurons in your brain, specifically in the part of your brain that is mainly used to store and encode long term memory. Normally misfiring neurons are a sign of epilepsy but taking into consideration your symptoms, that is clearly not what it is. There is also a very faint line here…" he pointed to a almost invisible boundary line on the area he magnified. "From this line up is where the hippocampus should be. Below it is the extraneous portion. The neurons or synapses that are misfiring are originating here and are being distributed to other portions of the brain…specifically the entorhinal cortex, the perirhinal cortex which stores easily accessible or explicit memory as well as the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex which stores emotional memory. I feel these neurons are attacking these portions of the brain almost mimicking an autoimmune disease. I think the hallucinations or visions you are having are a direct result of that. To be honest, I have never seen anything even close to this before." Carlisle looked defeated when he finished.

"This may be obvious Doc, but what about just removing the extra part." Charlie said shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He didn't understand half of what Carlisle said but one word did register and that was "extraneous". If there was a part that didn't belong…remove it, he thought.

Carlisle let out a breath wishing he could do as Bella's father suggested. "It's too risky Charlie. The brain, even for many of us doctors, is still a lot of unchartered territory. There is no telling what other vital functions that part of Bella's brain controls."

With stiff, slow movements Bella sought the chair she had just left and numbly sat back down. Edward was at her side in an instant holding her close to him trying to soothe her.

"It's not as we feared." He whispered urgently into her ear words he didn't know if he believed. "Just because Carlisle doesn't know what it is doesn't mean it's bad."

"It's okay, Edward. I'm okay. I was just caught off guard for a moment." She assured him before her gaze flickered to Carlisle. "What do we do now?" She asked him.

"I took the liberty of overnighting your scans and the list of your symptoms to the Neuroscience Department at Johns Hopkins in Maryland. An esteemed colleague of mine has a top position there and has made many advances in the field. Hopefully, he can add something that I am unable to. In the meantime, I want to arrange for an EEG tomorrow for you. This will record your brain's spontaneous electrical activity. Considering what happened when we did the MRI, I want to get as much information as possible on these bursts of neurons with certain stimuli."

"What happened when you did the MRI?" Edward quickly asked. Already his mind was conjuring images he'd rather not see. He had to remind himself that Bella was here, beside him.

Bella saw his momentary panic and cast a pleading glance at Carlisle, a silent communication to not go into detail about her near catastrophe.

"Nothing, it was nothing Edward." She sought to reassure him. "I just had another hallucination when I took the MRI."

Edward looked to Carlisle to confirm. "It's true Edward. These hallucinations or what can be called an awakened dream state are triggered by the neurons. I also believe they are what's causing the headaches."

"So are we just supposed to wait while this thing is doing God knows what to my daughter." Charlie spoke out. He started to pace and shoved his hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated."

"I understand, Charlie. Were I in your place I'd feel the same way." Carlisle told him placing a hand on his shoulder. "But unfortunately that is all we can do for the moment. In the meantime, Bella, I am going to prescribe you a higher dosage of painkillers than the ones you are currently taking. Hopefully, that will help alleviate some of the pressure in your head."

XXXXX

Damon waited until Stefan was locked away in his room to leave. He didn't want or need his own personal Jimminy Cricket trying to talk him out of going to see Bella Swan. Granted, she wouldn't see him...not in his crow form anyway. He hated being out of the loop and right now there was too much going on for him to be content to sit and wait. Damon Salvatore was not a patient man and even less so now that he was a vampire regardless of the time he had at his disposal.

He took to the skies with only one goal in mind...to be with the sister he had thought he lost and to find out what the hell was going on.