Hi everyone! Remember me? Probably not. =) It's my own fault - my life has been insane for months now. But I'm working, slowly and steadily, and I'm going to see this story through to the end, come hell or high water.

See the end of the chapter for a special note, meant specially for anyone nerdy enough to follow me down my crazy little nerdy garden path.

Everything belongs to SMeyer. Mllebojangles, when that day arrives, we'll live on Ocean Drive.

13

Bella's feet felt as heavy as lead as she walked down the hallway of the Cullens' house. The last time I came down this hallway, Jasper had to carry me, she thought distantly. Now she moved on her own power, but her footsteps were agonizingly slow and hesitant.

Minutes after Bella's short conversation with Carlisle, Alice had pulled up to the Swans' house in a screech of tires. As she drove at breakneck speed down the forest roads, she had clarified Carlisle's words: a change, not the change. Not yet. He was lethargic and barely responsive, Alice said. Also there were physical changes that she wouldn't describe. Bella had swallowed hard and gripped the armrests.

Alice opened the door at the end of the hallway, and Bella barely recognized the room inside. It had been transformed into a hospital room, with beeping monitors and charts and what seemed like miles of cords and tubing and wires. At the center of it was a hospital bed, which Carlisle was bending over, shining his tiny pen-light into the eyes of –

The eyes of the figure on the bed. Bella steeled herself, and looked.

It was Edward, and not-Edward, and the same, and changed. It wasn't that he looked smaller; in fact, the bed almost seemed too narrow for his broad shoulders, too short for his long limbs. It was his utter stillness that took the breath from her body. His large hands were loose and empty and open, hanging limply from the wrists where they were fastened to the bars on the bed with thick straps of leather – don't look at the restraints, don't look at the restraints. She looked instead for a rise and fall in his chest, before remembering numbly that he wouldn't be breathing.

He looked like he was dead.

She was dimly aware that the low conversations in the room died away as she crept closer to the bed. She finally made herself look at his face, and then her eyes were riveted and she didn't know how she had been able to look anywhere else. He was beautiful – he had always been beautiful – but it was a beauty that terrified, a marble bust of an angel as carved by a nightmare demon. Her senses of alien-ness and familiarity were again at war with each other.

With a sudden convulsive movement Edward inhaled, and Bella jumped as if someone had shouted in her ear. His eyes snapped open. "Bella," he whispered, and his body twisted as he lunged against the restraints.

In an instant there was someone in front of her; she reeled back, but it was only Jasper, interposing himself protectively between her and the bed. The thrashing on the bed had stopped, and she reached out and put Jasper gently aside, moving forward to Edward's side.

He was lying back, panting weakly. "Bella," he said in shallow breaths, "I'm… I'm sorry…"

"Edward," she whispered, and touched his face. The skin was cool and dry. He looked up into her eyes.

Her vision blurred and her heart seemed to be having trouble keeping up. She found herself pulling at the leather straps around his wrists. Blinded by tears, she was having trouble working the buckles.

There was a gentle hand on her shoulder. Carlisle. "Bella," he said softly.

"Get them off," she said huskily, unlatching the first one. Edward's hand dropped to the bed. He watched her warily.

"Bella, that may not be the best idea," said Carlisle.

"Look at him," she insisted, her voice cracking. "He won't. He can't. And you could stop him if he did."

Carlisle exchanged a look with Esme, who silently released the restraint on his other wrist.

"Edward," Bella whispered again, taking his hand, which hung heavy in her grip, unsupported. He seemed to have spent the last of his energy, and he lay quietly, eyes on her face, drinking in the sight of her. She found that all her words were gone.

His lips curved in the ghost of a smile. "You're beautiful," he whispered, his voice like dry leaves. She gave an incredulous half-laugh, imagining blotchy skin and a red nose, but her tear-bright eyes shone.

"You are too," she said unabashedly. "You always are."

He closed his eyes and exhaled a little puff, almost a grunt. "I must look like a monster."

She shook her head fiercely. "Not that. Never that."

His eyes stayed closed – he seemed to be gathering his strength – and she studied him. What about his face was different? Was it his nose, or the shape of his mouth? She couldn't decide. His lips were almost as colorless as his skin, and his hair looked dark against the stark white pillow, perhaps less metallically bright than usual. His hand was cold, but felt somehow pliable, less like yielding stone and more like clay. More like human flesh, she thought unbidden, then shivered and forced her mind away.

He struggled to get his eyes open again. "Bella," he said, searching for her face, as if he were having difficulty focusing. She leaned in closer, perching on the edge of the bed.

"I'm here," she said.

His eyes found her face. "You graduated from high school," he whispered, and his face broke into a sweet, true smile that made her heart stutter in her chest. "Congratulations."

She sniffled inelegantly. "And you've already done that, what, a hundred times?"

He shook his head minutely back and forth on the pillow. "But you only get to do it once. And I'm happy for you." There was another long pause. His stillness was terrifying. "Bella?"

"I'm still here."

"I want…"

His voice was painfully soft. She leaned over him, curling her two hands around his, holding it to her heart. "What is it?"

"I want…" He licked his lips, but his voice was dry as dust, dry as bones. "I want you to go to college," he whispered.

That startled an incredulous half-laugh out of her, though the tears threatened to well up again. "This is hardly the time to be thinking about that, is it?"

"No, it's exactly the time," he insisted. "If this doesn't… If I don't wake up. You have to go to college. You have to go on with life."

"Don't say that," she said, low and urgent. "Of course we'll get you through this. We'll go to college together. Next year – we will."

"But if I don't…" By the barest fraction, his fingers tightened their grip.

"No, Edward! Don't say it." She struggled unsuccessfully to suppress the panic in her voice.

He subsided, breathing shallowly. There was such pain on his face that her heart twisted. She had hurt him, on top of everything else.

She took a slow breath and let it out. He had been so strong for so long, and now it was her turn to be strong for him. With that a window opened in her mind, just a little, enough to let some light into a dark corner. What am I afraid of? she asked herself. Is it the idea of a future without him beside me, or just the future itself? She suddenly saw herself as if from far away, stammering tongue-tied at the guidance counselor, sobbing frantically in the face of Charlie's questions. I cannot be afraid of my life. I cannot. She squared her shoulders and felt an old, old knot of tension loosen and lift away.

"I'm sorry, Edward," she said softly, and her voice was steady and calm. She lifted his hand and kissed the parchment-dry skin over his knuckles. "I will. I'll go to college and I'll grow up and have a wonderful life. But you're going to be beside me." His eyes drifted closed, and there was the faintest smile on his face. "And we're going to walk in the sunlight, and travel the world, and learn everything there is to know," she said, "and we'll do it together. We'll grow old together."

His body was relaxing, his hand drooping in hers. The tension went out of his face and his frame. He whispered something too low for her to hear, and she leaned forward.

"What is it, Edward?"

"I love you," he whispered.

Her heart was overflowing. "I love you," she repeated back to him.

He managed to raise his voice a trifle. "Carlisle?"

"Yes?" came Carlisle's voice from behind Bella's shoulder. She had forgotten he was there; she'd forgotten that anyone else existed.

"Is everyone here?" Edward asked, looking vaguely around. Bella had the unnerving sense that his eyes had difficulty focusing on anything more than a few inches away from his face.

Carlisle's voice was soothing and gentle; the consummate doctor's voice. "We're all here, son."

"Everyone?"

Unexpectedly, from the other side of the room, Emmett's rumble: "We're all here, Edward."

"Good," Edward murmured, subsiding. "I'd like to rest now." Esme was immediately busy rearranging pillows and coverlets. Bella reluctantly released his hand and laid it on his chest.

"Bella?" His eyes would only open halfway.

"I'm still here," she said.

"Don't leave me," he said, like a child.

She stroked his hair. "I'm not going anywhere," she said.

"Good," he repeated, eyes drifting.

He was going; she could feel it. He was sliding out on the tide and leaving her behind on the shore. Fear gripped her heart.

"Edward," she called, as if he were already far away, and despite her best efforts, her voice trembled. "You have to come back to me," she said, fighting hard. "You must come back."

"I always come back," he whispered. Then his eyes closed, and a breath puffed inaudibly out between his lips. He didn't inhale again.

She stayed by his side for hours, oblivious to the hushed whirr of activity around them. She sat perched on the edge of the bed until her legs grew numb from the precarious position, then she moved to the chair which someone had placed by the bed for her. Occasionally one of Edward's hands might twitch, or his head jerk infinitesimally to one side in response to a sound, but he didn't open his eyes again.

Esme brought her a sandwich as afternoon faded into evening. She took a few bites without tasting it, then realized abruptly that she had left home without telling Charlie where she was. She looked around to see Alice coming in, carrying Bella's overnight bag. "Don't worry," Alice said. "I brought you some things from home. Your dad knows you're here."

Bella thanked her automatically and settled uneasily back into her chair. She wondered if Alice had told Charlie that Edward's health had reached some kind of crisis, or if she'd fed him the usual story of a sleep-over. It didn't ultimately matter. Nothing really mattered, at the moment.

She set the plate with the half-eaten sandwich aside impatiently. She suddenly felt that if she didn't occupy her mind somehow, she would go crazy. She looked around and her eyes lit on a pile of books on a table at the side of the room, a relic of their days of reading and note-taking. Perhaps it was useless now, but it was something she could do, and she was desperate.

On top of the pile was a microbiology textbook. She had mostly been reading Carlisle's medical texts before, but the thought of reading yet more about blood was too agonizing at the moment, so she took the microbiology book.

At first she flipped through pages without absorbing any information, mind drifting, looking up whenever Edward made the slightest movement. But as she went along, she found herself reading more and more carefully. There was more information here than she'd gotten in her tepid, indifferently-taught biology class – and besides, she thought, I spent more of that class mooning over Edward than actually paying attention to the teacher. She smiled at the bittersweet memory, and looked up. Edward lay perfectly still and silent.

She turned the page to a chapter with the heading "Microbial Parasites." Yeecch, she thought, but read on, at first in horrified fascination, then in slightly less horrified interest, then genuine amazement. Parasites, it turned out, were incredible. She read about parasitic life forms whose entire life cycles were entwined with those of their host creatures. There were microbes that could alter the courses of life in order to find their preferred food source or necessary environment for reproduction. There were parasites that caused insects and birds and fish to act in ways completely counter to their own nature, and all in service of the parasite's needs.

Then she read about Toxoplasma gondii. It was a single-cell microbe, a protozoan, that could only reproduce in the intestines of cats, common housecats. It could then scatter itself through the cat's droppings – ew, thought Bella, but I guess that makes sense – where it could be picked up by rodents. Then came the amazing part. Once the microbe was inside a rodent – say, a rat – it needed to find a way to get back to the only place where it could reproduce itself: a cat's gut. So somehow the microbe, the tiny single-celled organism, managed to completely alter the brain chemistry of the rat. It suppressed the rat's natural fear of the cat, and made it attracted to the cat's smell rather than afraid of it. It made it more likely that the rat would run out into an open space in daylight, rather than hiding safely away. Because of this tiny little parasite, the rat was much more likely to be caught and eaten by a cat, therefore sending the rat into the cat's digestive system, and putting T. gondii exactly where it wanted to be.

Incredible, thought Bella, equal parts aghast and delighted. A tiny microorganism that could so completely change the workings of a brain? True, only a rat brain, but still a mammal, still a complex and highly evolved creature. And who knew what else was out there? What if similar things could happen in humans?

In humans.

Bella dropped the book into her lap and clapped her hands to either side of her head. A single idea had flashed through her brain like lightning, just as fast and just as destructive.

Vampire venom. What if it were a parasite? What if it weren't just some magical inexplicable substance, but actually a life form all on its own? What if it could so drastically alter the minds and bodies of its carriers that it turned them from humans to what they called vampires?

Of course, thought Bella. It fed on human blood. So once it got into a human body, it slowly consumed all the blood there, taking the place of the blood in the veins and halting all the body's normal processes. Then once its initial food source was gone, it needed a way to keep feeding itself. So it made its human host into a perfect machine for acquiring more human blood – creating the necessary speed and strength, of course, but also the beauty, the otherworldly magnetic attraction by which a vampire could pull in its human prey. It also gave itself a means of reproduction in the process, for while most of the vampire's victims served only as a food source, a small percentage of them became new carriers for the parasite and became vampires themselves.

It would have to be an incredibly powerful parasite, Bella thought in wonder. It fundamentally changed the functions of the body, and completely re-animated the human host. Heart, skin, digestive organs, all transformed, re-purposed.

And what about the brain?

The blood drained from Bella's face.

The parasite certainly took over the human host's brain, changing its behavior, altering its sensory powers. Did this change in brain function go all the way through? Did the parasite suppress, re-purpose and transform the mind as well?

Oh my God, thought Bella. What if it's intelligent?

What if the parasite took over the brain of the host, stealing the body for conveyance but halting and discarding the human mind that had inhabited it? Perhaps it kept the identity and memories (faint and fuzzy though they might be) of the human brain, but became its own entity?

And what Edward is doing to himself – he's starving out the parasite, she thought suddenly. He was depriving it of its food source and choking the life out of it. When it was gone – when it died – they would attempt to restart the human body that had carried it for so long: heart, lungs, skin and stomach and muscles and all the rest of it. And the brain as well.

But when the brain awoke, with the parasite dead, would he still remember his life from his time as a carrier of the venom? Would those memories and experiences be written somewhere on his human brain, or would they be gone along with the parasite?

She looked up at Edward. He lay silent and still, eyes closed.

Who was waiting there behind the closed eyes, waiting to wake up? Was it her own beloved Edward, or was it a boy who had nearly died of influenza ninety years before?

The thought froze her in her chair, the book forgotten in her lap. She suddenly wished she could un-read the chapter about parasites, un-think her realization, as if not knowing the truth might make it less than true. The others had no idea. Should she tell them? Should she plant the possibility in their minds that they were being controlled by microscopic organisms and not their own free will at all? What a horrible thing, to doubt the integrity of your own mind.

As she stared unseeing at the still form on the bed, she realized suddenly that he hadn't moved in a long time. She couldn't remember the last time he had moved, in fact. She had lost track of time while she'd been reading, but it must have been at least an hour. Most unusually of all, there was no one else in the room with them, and hadn't been for a while.

Propelled by a sudden panic, she lunged forward out of her chair. The textbook dropped from her lap to the floor with a thump. She seized Edward's arm, shaking him.

"Edward? Edward?"

Nothing. He didn't stir, didn't breathe, gave no sign of life at all.

He was gone.

Bella pelted to the door and yanked it open. "Carlisle! Carlisle!"

The next few minutes were a confused flurry. Esme drew Bella gently away from Edward's bed, despite her protests. Carlisle bent silently over Edward, examining him, and after a few minutes announced that Bella's suspicions were correct: Edward had gone completely under. His words set off a cascade of activity, as though an electric current had run through the room. Everyone moved quietly and calmly, though Bella felt that she wanted to scream at them to save Edward from what they had let him do to himself.

Instead, she controlled herself, and at the first possible moment she asked Carlisle if she could speak to him in his office. Something in her face made him agree, and they slipped away from everyone. Standing nervously before Carlisle's desk and twisting her fingers together, she told him of what she'd read and her parasite hypothesis. It was farfetched, she knew, and she was no scientific expert. As she spoke she heard the ridiculousness of what she was saying, and fought to keep a note of defensiveness out of her voice. She ended almost apologetically.

Carlisle listened soberly, and when she finished, he stared for a few moments into the middle distance. "It's an interesting theory," he said at last, focusing again on her face. "I've never considered that the venom could be a kind of life form. But knowing what we do about its behavior and effects, I have to admit that it's possible."

Bella, shocked that he hadn't dismissed her idea out of hand, made no reply. Carlisle stood and went to the window. "I will have to think further on this," he said gravely. "This could completely change my understanding of vampire kind." He paused, looking out at the darkness. "And now you fear that Edward will be different when he wakes – that the venom leaving his body will take his memory and personality."

"Yes," said Bella anxiously.

The silence hung heavy in the room. At last Carlisle turned away from the dark window and looked at her. "I do not feel that my mind has been supplanted by another entity," he said. "I know only that I am myself, and can feel the continuity of that self stretching back through my whole lifetime. What precisely it is that thinks my thoughts, or says my words, I cannot say, any more than you or anyone could. But I do not think that you should worry about Edward. He is strong. He will come back to us, if he possibly can."

Bella nodded slowly. She felt comforted by the quiet confidence of his words, the self-assuredness that helped make him such a good doctor. She also heard the gentle dismissal in his voice, and turned to go.

"Bella?" he added as she neared the door. She turned around. He smiled at her. "It was cleverly thought. More than clever – it was a brilliant leap of logic. You showed the combination of intuition and imagination when faced with seemingly disparate facts that characterizes the best scientific minds. Very cleverly done."

Blushing furiously at his praise, Bella nodded again, and slipped out the door.

When the girl had left, Carlisle turned back to the window, the smile fading from his face. Someone watching him might have seen him examine his reflection in the dark glass, staring deeply into his own eyes, as if he were looking for someone there: either a self, or a stranger.

For three days Edward lay as if dead. For three days Bella waited numbly beside him, eating indifferently when food was brought to her, sleeping when she could no longer keep her eyes open, waking on the cot that someone had set up for her in a corner of the room and dragging herself up to sit by the bed once more. Occasionally she spoke to Charlie on the phone, and by the awkwardly hesitant concern in his voice, she gathered that someone had told him of the seriousness of Edward's condition. He didn't ask for more information, though, and she didn't offer any.

She watched and listened as the final preparations were made. The temperature of the room was gradually raised, to bring Edward's body closer to the temperature of human flesh. They set up the heart monitor, and when it was switched on, the flat line and steady tone made Bella's blood run cold; she had seen too many medical shows, where that sound meant death. Rosalie quickly silenced the monitor, but the flat glowing line remained.

As Carlisle worked, he explained everything that he did to Bella, who watched over his shoulder. He intubated Edward, placing a tube in his windpipe and preparing an airway for them to help him to breathe. He minutely examined Edward's hands and feet, muttering more to himself than to anyone else: "No sign of mortification of the extremities. The venom seems to hold the body in stasis even after it has withdrawn. Good – very good."

Finally, she watched as Carlisle readied the transfusion sites. Working with the precision of a jewel-cutter, he found the long-empty veins, inserted intravenous lines, and slowly and carefully opened the arteries with a saline solution to make them more receptive to the blood they would need to pour into his body. We are helping him, Bella insisted to herself, fighting her squeamish reaction as Carlisle manipulated the disconcertingly large needles. This is what will make him live.

For three days she watched, breathless. For three days, the house hung in limbo, in the gap between the inhale and exhale, the abyss between one footfall and the next.

For three days she waited. On the third day, something happened.

A/N: Hi there! Me again! So, I totally geeked out on this chapter. But the amazing thing? All the stuff about T. gondii is TRUE! Isn't that incredible? If you're even minutely interested, you should go check out my profile, where I have a link to a radio show called Radiolab, which is an NPR show that combines incredible storytelling with really fascinating science. They did a whole show on parasites that completely blew my mind, and they tell the T. gondii story better than I ever could. You can choose to listen just to the segment about cats and rats, but I urge you to listen to the whole thing, and other Radiolab shows too. They're amazing. Make my little nerd heart go pitter-pat.