We are isolated by flood waters and internet connection is intermittent, so who knows when updates can occur. So jealous of RP right now, he went to Big Day Out and met The Killers backstage, my fav band! He's off to the Flinders Ranges this week, and yes, Victoria, that is the outback.

Safe

Chapter 12

There was no way I could eat breakfast but for Edward, I tried. I nibbled a little dry toast and forced myself to smile at him across the table.

"Are you okay?" he asks again, for the tenth time.

I know he doesn't mean the morning sickness, but his fear he may have hurt me somehow last night.

That would be impossible.

He was so tender and gentle I knew how much he was holding back. I had a feeling I would not be on the receiving end of anything more physical until he could assure himself he would not hurt the baby by making love to me.

"I'm fine, Edward. Last night was perfect. Thank you."

Last night was necessary; it was our wedding night and anyway, he wanted to reclaim me in case I had been with Jake since the last time we had been together this way.

I honestly could not remember but that is the very best thing about being married and promising to keep myself only unto him.

No other man will ever get to touch me.

My brain no longer has to struggle with the issue of me loving two men, because one is now my dearly beloved husband and the other is married himself.

Not that being married is likely to keep Jacob restricted to the one bed, unless of course, Rosanna is as rich as her Daddy was. That fact alone would stand a chance of keeping him faithful.

Faithful is new for me, too.

Much as I loved Jake, I always wanted Edward as well.

I know that's selfish and things could have ended way more badly than they did, but still I don't regret any of the times Edward and I were together. Looking back, I can now see we were always headed here, it's just annoying I had blinders on and idolized Jacob Black at the same time.

It wasn't even as if it was the real, actual Jake I loved. It was some childish expectation of how he would be when we grew up.

Weirdly, the Jake I wanted was an amalgamation of Edward and Jacob mixed together. Had I only known that, this marriage would have been a given from the start.

I had tried to instill Edward's qualities into Jake and that never works. If you can't love someone exactly as they already are, then give up and walk away.

If only we had always had Jasper at my side, giving me my daily guidance.

I finish the half slice of toast and sip cold water to numb my gag reflex.

"We should go," Edward announces, looking at the time.

A sense of doom hovers above me as my father-in-law watches the monitor that is turned away so Edward and I can't see it yet. He runs the transducer back and forth, and frowns.

"Well?" Edward says impatiently.

"It's good news and bad news," Carlisle replies.

Edward grips my hand and kisses me softly on the cheek.

His father turns the screen towards us and says the words I have always dreaded hearing.

"It's twins. One looks fine, the other is in trouble. Bella is going to have to be admitted for long term bedrest if we are to have any chance of saving the girl. I'm sorry, but we are going to lose the boy."

It feels like the worst day of my life.

Firstly, twins abound in Jake's family, so I guess we know who the father is now.

And he swore he would have one twin terminated if I ever conceived them.

Now his words cut like a knife.

I guess he is getting his wish.

He is reaching out, still hurting me like he always has.

"Look at our daughter, Bella," Edward says, trying desperately to salvage something from this disaster.

She's small but three times the size of the baby beside her.

She's active, kicking firmly, waving an arm about above her head while sucking on a thumb on the other hand.

He is still. Tiny. Undersized. He looks like a small doll.

"Why is he dying?" I ask Carlisle.

"His placenta is in a poor position, and is too small to sustain life. The cord is abnormal. Normally he probably would have miscarried early but the other twin has kept the hormones flowing so he's slowly letting go. They are far too early to deliver and if we tried, we'd lose them both. With luck, we can keep you pregnant long enough to give your little girl a fighting chance."

"But there's no hope for him?"

"None. I'm so sorry, Bella."

Edward is crying silent tears, even though I swore to never make him cry ever again. I should have trusted my instincts. I knew I was not good for him yet I let him marry me and have hope that me being in his life would improve it somehow.

It's worse for him because he is a glass half full type and I am always a glass half empty. If you have no expectations, you cannot ever be let down and disappointed.

He touches the image of the babies on the screen and I swear I hear his heart break. His finger caresses the image of our son, then he gently taps the glass screen and moves on to the larger baby.

"She's beautiful. She looks just like you," I tell him, wondering all the time how I am ever going to make up for this. She has to make it. No matter what they have to do to keep her alive, I will agree. I have to give Edward his daughter.

Carlisle orders someone to take me to a private room and as soon as I'm in bed, he slides a needle into a vein in my hand and starts the liquid feeding that will keep her nourished. Now my non eating is not an issue.

A nurse puts a strap attached to a monitor around my abdomen and we can hear her heartbeat. It's fast and loud and strong. And hopeful.

Then she eases a second strap on beside it.

His heartbeat is quiet , uneven, weak.

Now we have to hear it stop at some point. I sob out loud and turn my head to face the wall.

Edward stands by the bed and undoes the second belt and tosses it away. His father says nothing.

xxxx

EPOV

Our lives are reduced to one day at a time.

Bella is completely compliant and never objects to whatever test is inflicted on her each day.

The only bright spots are hearing our baby daughters strong steady heartbeat and seeing her grow a little each day on the scans. The portable machine is situated permanently beside Bella's bed.

Dad stopped checking the other baby a week after she was admitted, so we knew his struggle was over.

All the same, he has to remain inside her until his sister is born.

I kind of expected Bella to break down and insist he was removed but she just nodded when Carlisle explained this way was the safer option.

Now I think she is glad to have him with her longer, even though he is gone.

Somedays she hardly speaks, but others she makes a real effort and tries hard to look on the bright side.

"Would he have known she was there, with him? That he wasn't alone?" she asks one night when neither of us can sleep. I'm laying behind her, spooning my body around her and her precious cargo, in the hospital bed. It's too narrow really for two, but we have to touch. We have to be together through this time.

It truly is the best of times and the worst of times, and that's hard to live through.

We have lost our son, but we still have our daughter to look forward to. We bounce from joy to sorrow, from hope to despair, a dozen times a day.

Nights are harder.

At least in the daytime there is noise and people coming and going, and visitors.

Night is when we think of him and feel cheated.

"Of course he would have known. He shared the little bubble with his sister, they must have been aware of one another."

"I think I felt him kick once. The day of the wedding. She kicked me then I felt another kick but over the other side and I wondered how come I didn't feel her move all the way over there. Maybe he just wanted me to know he was in there as well. Maybe he was saying goodbye."

"He loved you already. He would have heard your voice and known you were his Mother. I'm sure he knew you loved him," I assure her. I have no idea if what I am saying is true. He was so small, maybe he never had any conscious thoughts at all. Maybe that would be better, for him.

If he never knew he existed.

She asks me if it would be alright to name him.

I want to agree but it will make him more real, but she needs to do this.

"That would be nice," I manage to mutter.

Because the baby girl grew a lot those first weeks that Bella was drip fed, she started thinking it was her fault the boy had died. If only she had forced herself to eat more.

I had to bring her medical journals and show her that he was doomed from conception and only the fact that he had a twin let him grow and survive as long as he did.

Some days pretending they are Jake's actually feels less painful than acknowledging they are mine. I want the girl to be mine but it would be easier to bear the death of the boy if he wasn't. I can't have it both ways and in reality, this type of thinking is just a desperate attempt to grab on to anything that would lessen the pain.

She woke screaming one night, when she remembered an incident that happened with Jake around the appropriate time.

"Edward, they are his," she cried, clinging to me.

"How do you know? It was just a dream, Bella."

"No, it was a memory. He was being rough with me because he was angry about something. The usual thing, probably. I remember actually feeling afraid of him, and when I got up the next morning, I was covered in bruises, on my hips, and my breasts. He'd held me too hard and bitten my skin in places and his entire hand print circled the top of my arms where he had held me down. And when he withdrew, the condom was gone.

It was still inside me and he had to fish it out. That must be the night the babies were started."

I was shocked, because I truly did not believe Jake would ever physically hurt her. It must have happened just after we had been together because I didn't see her for many weeks following, so I never saw the marks he inflicted on her. Only the scar of a bite on her wrist.

She'd refused to tell me how she got it.

Just shrugged and frowned as if trying to come up with a reasonable explanation, then gave up and distracted me instead.

I should have pushed her to tell me.

It's too late now.

The babies are mine.

We will raise our daughter together, and remember our son.

They are not his, were never his.

Neither of us care any more. That whole paternity issue is overshadowed now, and all we care about is getting this little girl safely into the world.

There never was any hope for our little boy, but it's still hard to understand and accept that these things happen. Not for any reason. Not because Bella did anything wrong. Not because we made love after the wedding.

It's strange because we never suspected his presence anyway, yet his loss is still acutely painful. All we know about him is his gender and that he will never know how much we love him.

He will never know what an amazing mother Bella will be. He will never feel her lips on his forehead, or lay against her chest as he takes his first breath and cry to have been taken from inside her, where he felt safe.

This is all my fault.

She thinks she doesn't deserve me when all the time it's still probably me who did this to her. I don't deserve her. I knew I would have to pay but not like this, never like this.

She is being punished for my crime.

Bella can barely stand it when any nurse, new to her case, reads the words on her chart and inevitably looks at us with pity.

The truth is, no matter what we did wrong, none of us deserved this punishment.

Charlie pretends to cope with knowing he lost a grandson by asking about his granddaughter instead and pretending the boy never existed.

I don't blame him at all. Whatever gets him through the day as he watches his own daughter lay here, pale and wan, fighting for her own life as well as that of her child.

I know Bella has told Carlisle if it comes down to it, if he has to put the welfare of one of them before the other, he is to save the baby and let her go.

She is his patient and he is supposed to listen and agree with what she asks but there is no way I am letting this child kill her.

How could I hold our daughter and look into her brown eyes, so like Bella's eyes, and love her, if her life cost me Bella?

xxxx

I go home to shower and eat and sit down at my Mom's table.

She's left me a meal and gone to sit with my wife while I'm gone. I shall only stay a short while, because already, I can feel the pull to return to Bella's side.

Alice looks into the kitchen and sees me.

"Edward, I'm pregnant," she announces.

"There's a lot of that going around," I reply.

"But I shouldn't be."

"Jasper is not happy?"

"Jasper is ecstatic. He says he always knew this would happen and he is already buying little blue clothes and things. It's a boy, apparently."

"Why are you surprised to be pregnant? The two of you rarely ever come up for air. You seem to spend most of your lives bonking. It was bound to happen. Don't tell me neither of you has ever heard of contraception? You have a father and a brother who are doctors,and we did get a lot of information about the birds and the bees growing up."

"That's the thing, Edward. Gold Medal Extra Strength condoms. What they cost should guarantee that they will work, right?"

I shrug.

"Bella's pregnant and that's the brand she and I used. Nothing is one hundred percent reliable."

"But two for two? Honestly?"

"That's a coincidence, surely. Just think, there are nine hundred and ninety eight other couples out there who use them as often as we did, and they are not pregnant. I guess we are the 'failure rate' victims."

"I'm finding that hard to believe."

"Where did you buy them? Do you know they were stored properly, out of sunlight?"

"I got them from the drawer beside your bed."

I frown and try to not react.

"Jasper is hardly able to pay those sort of prices and you had so many box fulls in your bedroom, and I only took a couple each day, from the open box. I didn't even know they came in boxes of one hundred. That seems kind of optimistic. You never noticed any were gone."

"Okay," I reply, my mind in turmoil. In a strange and twisted way, I am responsible for my sister being pregnant, as gross as that sounds.

"You did something to them, didn't you?" she asks. "We have never had one tear, so it wasn't an accident that caused this pregnancy and Bella's."

"That's just it, Alice. They never tear. Guaranteed. Not even if you stick them with a needle three times through the foil."

"You took away her options, Edward. What were you thinking? That Jake would kick her out once she found out? That one day he would be in Delivery and they'd hand him a pale skinned newborn with coppery hair and green eyes and he'd send them both to you? Did it never occur to you that he would carry her himself to an abortion clinic and get it fixed?"

"He didn't, though, did he?"

"Only because Jasper stepped in and stopped him. He wanted to take her the very day she left. And anyway, all those months when she should have been taking prenatal vitamins...did that even occur to you? I mean, folic acid is vital in the early days."

"The boy did not die from lack of folic acid. Bella has been taking prenatal vitamins for over a year."

"Why?"

"Because I told her she looked too pale and tired, even back then, and I repackaged the vitamins into a Women's Everyday Vitamin container. She has taken them faithfully. I checked every night on the phone and if she had forgotten, she took them while I waited."

"So you planned a long time ago. And you sabotaged the entire box of condoms."

"I never knew when she would be here, or I'd be there. I could hardly keep her waiting while I slipped into my bathroom with a silver packet and a needle."

"Edward, how could you do that to her?"

"How could I not?" I raged. "She was wasting her life; our lives. He is not worthy of looking at her, let alone anything else. She is mine, Alice, and she always has been. I had to do something. She told me he gave her an engagement ring briefly and in time, he intended putting it back on her finger for real.

We had agreed once that happened, we were done.

Do you have any idea of what my life would have been like? I'd be sitting around on the outskirts of her life, watching her marry him, have his kids, have our happy ever after. What about me, Alice? Was I supposed to end up in a retirement home, having not even held her in my arms for decades? Being the 109 year old virgin? If I'd never touched her, that's what I would have ended up being. No other woman has ever, ever, attracted me. I feared maybe I was gay, but then, no man ever appealed to me either.

I look at Rosalie and can logically see why Emmett loves her, but she does nothing for me . I've seen her naked more times that I have ever wanted to, and one would think, with me being a sex deprived college student, seeing our brother doing various things to a naked Rose would have at least sent me running to watch some internet porn, or seeking out a Jessica to use, but no.

Bella is the only one, Alice.

She drives me insane with passion and I want her all the time but when she isn't here or I wasn't there, nothing.

All the Tanya Denali movies in the world did not ever get me hard, unless Bella was at my side. Then it wasn't the sexkitten on the screen doing it, it was the girl beside me. She got me hard when we watched Bambi, for God's sake. You have no concept of what it was like sharing an apartment with her for four years, Alice. I'm sure my hand has callouses. I can't believe I didn't get RSI in my right wrist."

"TMI," my sister growled. "Okay, I see your point. She was made for you, you were getting old waiting to claim her properly, yet she slept with you and kept giving you false hope. I kind of understand why you did it. You could have hidden the condoms so no innocent parties ended up pregnant."

"And you could have bought your own."

"Point taken. What do you think Mom and Dad will say when I tell them about the baby?"

"Mom will let out one of those weddings dresses you bought in bulk and Dad will march you down the same aisle Emmett and I waited at,and you two will have your happy ever after. I'm going back to my Bella now. I'd rather you didn't tell anyone about this conversation. There's an even chance Bella is carrying Jake's children, anyway. I just evened up the playing field, it seems."

"I'm glad you are in with a chance."

xxxx

Bella rallied for a while then her blood pressure went sky high and I knew Dad was battling to prevent her having a stroke. She was drowsy from the meds and I checked her frequently.

There was no denying it.

This had to end, now.

I told the midwife to call Dad in and took Bella on a gurney into the OR myself and did all the prep.

I had just opened her belly with a scalpel when Carlisle rushed in.

"What happened? Another crisis?" he asked, hurrying to my side.

"Sure, if that's what it takes to force you to get this baby out of her now."

"Edward, you know she wanted to hold on as long as she could. It doesn't seem critical to me that we deliver her tonight. Her blood pressure is down a bit and stable."

"Too late," I replied, opening her uterus.

He sighed and retracted the muscle so I could reach in and extract the baby.

She came out still and silent, and I lay her on the tray and cleared her airways. She was smaller than we had expected, and didn't respond at all at first. I was ready to give up when she suddenly sneezed and then let out a thin wail.

The midwife lifted out the other sac and took it from the room while we worked.

Dad listened to the baby's heart and lungs and we handed her to the critical care nurse, and turned our attention back to Bella. Dad had packed her uterus to try and stop the bleeding but I knew the chances were, even if she survived this, there would never be another child.

I'd probably taken away her only chance of motherhood in my panic to save her life.

xxxx