Endless love to everyone who is reading. The characters belong to Stephenie Meyer, but my words are mine. I wish my heart were as cold as the morning dew, Mllebojangles, but it's warm as saxophones and honey in the sun for you.
14
"Soon," murmured Alice. "Soon."
Alice stood at the foot of the operating table, her vision gone so far inward that she stared, unblinking and unseeing, through Edward's still form. Jasper stood just behind her, his hands on her shoulders, supporting and anchoring her.
Carlisle was a blur of activity, checking monitors and IV lines. Esme was a half-step behind him, attuned to his every move, always ready with an instrument or a steadying hand on a piece of tubing before he had to ask.
Rosalie stood at the head of the table, impatiently flexing the hand-operated breathing valve bag that would soon be attached to the tube emerging from Edward's mouth. She stared down at Edward, her expression unreadable. From the other side of the room, Emmett watched Rosalie, glowering.
Bella hovered uncertainly. The heat of the room, now nearly ninety degrees, was making her dizzy. Her heart pounded so hard that she was sure the others heard it.
No one had called them all in; no one had signaled that the moment of crisis had come. But throughout the day they drifted in and out, singly or in pairs, joining Bella in her vigil by Edward's side, and as the day wore on they all found themselves less and less likely to leave. It was as if they all knew the timing of the venom's decay, as if they could feel it calling to their own.
"Soon," whispered Alice.
Bella plucked weakly at the front of her shirt, trying to move the air. She felt sure that there wasn't enough oxygen in the room. No one else seemed to be bothered by the heat. Hold it together, Bella, she told herself. You won't help anyone if you pass out. She took deep breaths, steadying herself.
Gradually she became aware of the utter stillness of the room. The others had completely stopped moving; five sets of eyes were trained laser-like on the still shape on the table. Her heartbeat accelerated as she looked from one face to another. Long seconds passed. Her hands were shaking. Oh please, oh please, she repeated in her mind, unable even to finish the thought. Please, oh please.
Alice raised her head slowly. "It's happening," she said, her voice suffused with awe. "Now."
Edward jerked on the table. His mouth gaped open, and there was a horrible rattle as his lungs dragged at the air. The flat line on the heart monitor trembled, then bent into jagged peaks: one, two. Two loud beeps into the silence, then the line went flat. His body collapsed on the table.
And still everyone was motionless, staring, locked in some kind of existential fascination. Bella looked at their faces, panic rising. Surely this wasn't part of the plan. At last the cry broke free from her: "Carlisle! He's dying!"
He jumped, jolted from his paralysis, looking first at her then at Edward, horrified. He roared, "Move!"
At this, everyone crashed into motion. Immediately the IV bags were opened, and blood coursed down through the plastic tubing into the lines that Carlisle had inserted into Edward's arms and legs, and the two thick tubes that went in under his collarbones. Rosalie swiftly attached the bag to his breathing tube and began to squeeze it in a slow steady rhythm. Machines and monitors whirred; the blood poured into Edward's body. After what felt like an eternity but was actually only a few seconds, Carlisle called, "Now, Bella!"
Emmett's voice said in her ear, "Just like we practiced," and then two strong hands at her waist hoisted her up onto the table. Bella straddled Edward's torso, kneeling above him. She locked her elbows, laced the fingers of one hand into the other, pressed her palm to his chest just left of center, and became his heartbeat.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. She pushed down on his chest, neither too fast nor too slow, just as she had practiced over and over on the CPR dummy. She felt the thud and shift of his body with each impact, but still she went on. Be strong, she told herself, as strong as Edward. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. Force the new blood through his veins. Send it to his lungs, to pick up the air that Rosalie was giving him. Send it all around his body, to wake up everything that was sleeping. Be his heartbeat, until his heart might beat on its own.
Let me be your heart, she thought between strokes. Let me bring you back to life.
Around her there was shouting and frantic movement; she barely registered it. She stared down at his face, at the milk-white skin beneath her hands. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. The heat pressed in around her. This was the job that only she could do, Carlisle had told her. If one of the others tried it, they might break his ribs. She in her human frailty was the only one strong enough to restart his heart.
Something near her hands snapped; her left arm and the side of her face were spattered thickly with warm liquid. Blood poured out onto Edward's chest, startlingly dark and vivid against his skin. She heard a cry, sharply bitten off, and a hiss. "Control yourself," Esme's voice snarled. Hands came into her field of vision, reattaching the IV line that had come undone, swiping at the blood.
Still she continued. Sweat ran in runnels down her neck, between her breasts; sticky tendrils of hair stuck to her face, but she couldn't stop to push them away. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
At last: "Enough, Bella."
She pushed herself off Edward's body and half-fell off the operating table; someone caught her and righted her. She leaned against the edge of the table, breathing hard. There was a high-pitched whine, almost above her range of hearing. "Clear!" cried Carlisle harshly. Someone dragged her away from the table. Alice brought two paddles down onto Edward's chest; there was a dull explosion, and Edward's body jerked heavily. Still a flat line on the monitor. "Again!" Another jolt; another flat line.
"Damn it! He needs more blood." New bags were being attached to some of the IV stands.
"Oxygen and red cell counts still dangerously low," said Rosalie.
"Chest compressions, Bella," barked Carlisle, and she found herself heaved up onto the table once more.
And it began again, the rhythm jarring her brain and rattling her bones, the heat like a choke-hold around her throat. Her sweat-slick hands slipped against the clammy skin of his chest. Again, and again, and again, and she could never stop, because it was Edward and he was hovering somewhere between life and death. She lost herself in the heat and the rhythm, pounding with her arms, her shoulder joints grating in their sockets. She would never stop.
Was it possible that the skin under hands was less wax-doll white than it had been? Was there the faintest blush creeping under the pallor?
It might have been minutes, or it might have been hours. Somewhere voices were speaking; someone took her around the waist and pulled her off the table again. She struggled, crying out. "It's ok, Bella – it's enough," said Jasper's voice in her ear, and she belatedly realized what was happening. She sagged in Jasper's arms, half-fainting, on legs that would barely support her.
"Clear!" cried Carlisle again.
Alice brought the paddles down. Edward jerked, and Bella winced. "Again!" The line lay flat. "Again!" Carlisle bellowed.
Thud, and jerk.
This time, the line bent into peaks. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The tiny sound filled the room as they all stared, motionless. Jasper exhaled all at once. Bella gaped uncomprehending at the monitor, at Edward, barely understanding what she was seeing.
The rhythm held. It was slow, but it didn't falter.
It's beating, she thought. His heart is beating.
"It worked," said Esme softly, wonder in her voice.
Emmett gave a great whoop of delight, breaking the spell. Alice screeched and launched herself at Jasper, who caught her and whirled her around. Someone – Emmett – caught Bella up in a crushing hug, planted a bruising kiss near the corner of her mouth, and dropped her back to the floor. She staggered against the edge of the table, but he didn't notice – he rushed off to Esme, seizing her hands and dancing her around in a circle until she laughed helplessly and begged him to stop.
Bella stood silent at the center of their jubilation, as silent as Edward. She didn't feel happy; she didn't feel anything, only numbness. Slowly she looked up at Carlisle, across the table from her. His arms were braced and trembling against the table and his head hung down between his shoulders, his eyes closed. He looked the way Bella felt – exhausted, battered, utterly drained. He looked ancient.
He raised his head and looked straight at Bella. In the still core of silence around them, his eyes said to her, You don't know how close we came.
Out loud, he said softly, "Go clean yourself up, Bella." Then, looking around wearily, he said, "Enough, everyone. There is more to be done."
Bella obeyed without even thinking, slipping away unnoticed. The hallway outside felt blessedly cool after the tropical heat of their makeshift operating room, but she soon began to shiver. The hallway was dark; she realized that she had absolutely no idea what time it was. Time had seemed to stop in the operating room. She stumbled toward the bathroom on legs that were perilously close to cramping, and fumbled for the light switch. When the light snapped on, she gasped at the apparition in the mirror. Her skin was ashen pale, her eyes dark and staring, but the left side of her face and body were spattered with blood. She looked like a victim in a slasher movie. Belatedly she remembered the IV tube that had broken while she worked on Edward – it had snapped up and sprayed her with blood, which had been on her ever since.
Shuddering, she dampened a washcloth.
As she wiped at the rusty red spots, she willed her heart to stop racing. The energy that she had gotten from the adrenaline pounding through her body was waning, and now she felt shaky and sick. But it worked, she said, staring into her own huge dark eyes in the mirror. His heart is beating. His body still works, and the venom is gone. She should have been ecstatic. So why did she feel so apprehensive?
We don't know yet if he's going to wake up, said a little voice inside her. Her body tensed painfully at the thought, but her inner eye presented her with the image of the rest of the Cullens, motionless and staring as Edward's heart began to beat and then stopped. Why had they done that? Why hadn't they moved right away? Had their inaction caused a crucial delay? What if Edward's brain was irreparably damaged?
She put down the washcloth. Carlisle would know what to do. Edward would wake up – he had promised he'd come back. She had to trust him. She splashed her face with water and fixed her ponytail, a vast and inexorable exhaustion slowing and dulling her movements. Weaving on unsteady legs, she made her way back to join the others.
Stepping through the door felt like walking into a wall. The heat was choking and oppressive and nearly made her stagger. Around Edward's table was a gyre of activity, in which there was no room for Bella. She dropped into a chair at the side of the room.
All of Edward's IV lines and breathing tubes had been connected to a machine by the side of his bed, a great box on wheels that whirred and hummed and clicked. Cardiopulmonary bypass, something prompted in Bella's memory. The heart-lung machine. It would take over the function of Edward's heart and lungs, cycling and warming and aerating his blood, simultaneously ensuring continued circulation and raising his body temperature until he was no longer in danger from hypothermia.
All of these were good things, Bella told herself. All of these were necessary. Still, the sight of him hooked up to machines made her skin crawl. She couldn't shake the feeling of dread.
The others raced around the table, calling out to each other about blood pressure and epi injections and absorption levels. What they were doing was far beyond her ability to help. Bella let her head fall back against the wall. She felt simultaneously twitchy and lethargic, wishing she could do something, afraid to go near him for fear that something might go wrong.
In flashes between the movements around the room, she caught sight of him, still and cold and corpse-like on the table. Hold on, she thought fiercely at him. Hold on.
Minutes ticked infinitesimally by and Bella began to drift in and out of consciousness. In the bizarre haze of nightmare logic, she began to feel that the whole room was throbbing with terrible heat, pulsating like a heart itself, and she somehow knew that if she let herself fall asleep, the heart – Edward's heart – would stop beating. Over and over she jolted herself blearily awake, only to drift again.
Minutes became hours, and Bella thought the night would never end.
Edward had two seizures during the night. Twice she awoke to panicked shouting and a terrible rattling sound, as his body arched and shook on the table. The first time it happened, she leapt terrified out of her chair. He subsided after frantic scrambling and injections of medication. Bella stood staring and confused, watching uncertainly. Esme came to her side and helped her back to her chair.
"It's ok, Bella," she said, putting her arm around Bella's shoulders. "Edward is ok."
Bella seized Esme's hand in a moment of clarity. "Is he rejecting the blood transfusion?" she asked in a low voice.
Esme's forehead creased with worry, but her voice stayed calm. "Carlisle can keep the seizures under control," she said soothingly, and Bella slumped back into her chair, sick and exhausted. It was only later as she was drifting into a half-conscious daze that she realized that Esme hadn't actually answered her question, which of course jolted her out of sleep once more.
Carlisle, she thought wearily. Carlisle will save him.
And then it was back to sleeping and waking or something in between, and her mind wove the sights and sounds around her into feverish dreams until she didn't know what was real and what was delirium. Once she woke cradled in someone's arms as he carried her to the cot in the corner; Emmett's voice rumbled softly, "Go back to sleep," as he laid her down. She propped her head on her arm so that she could still see what was going on at the center of the room, and then it began again, the heat and the pressure and the beating of a great heart where she and Edward stood on precipices with a great abyss between them.
It was a very long night.
The silence woke her close to dawn. Someone had opened the curtains; the light was softly gray and the room was still. There was a blanket over her but she was cold and clammy where the sweat had cooled on her skin. The room is back to normal temperature, she thought. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? She raised her head infinitesimally, and even that slight movement made her body ache. The whirring and clicking was gone; the heart-lung machine had been pushed aside, its monitors still and its yards of tubing looped up and put away. The room was empty but for Esme, who sat hunched over a laptop on the other side of the room, and the table and its occupant. Bella's heart swooped sickeningly in her chest at the sight of his utter stillness.
She was about to throw off the blanket when Carlisle came into the room. Something kept her where she was.
"Is there any change?"
Esme looked up, and her face was weary. "No," she answered. "The readings are the same. No better, but no worse, and that's good news, at least."
Carlisle unhooked a stethoscope from around his neck and listened to Edward's chest. "The brain scans?"
"Inconclusive," Esme said. "As you predicted." Carlisle put down his stethoscope. "His brain…" she began tentatively. "The oxygen…"
"There's no way to know," he said shortly, scrubbing a hand through his hair in frustration. "Damn me and my arrogance. I thought it would be so easy. It took so much longer than I thought it would to get his heart started again." His head bowed, and the room was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler. "The hypothermia should have helped to protect his brain while it was deprived of oxygen. That was part of the plan all along. Now we must wait to see whether it was enough."
"Carlisle." Esme's voice was quiet but insistent. "There is an alternative, of course. If he doesn't wake up." Carlisle shook his head dismissively, but she continued. "I know you don't want to hear it, but it's a very real possibility. His brain could be damaged beyond its capability to heal itself. You know that we can change him back – one bite and the venom will heal him. We know from Alice's case that it can repair brain damage."
No! thought Bella in horror. Not after all we've done.
Carlisle sighed heavily. "It would break his heart, and Bella's," he said, his voice thick with sorrow. "Imagine Edward on waking not as a human but as a newborn vampire. Would you want to be the one to tell him that we'd had to change him back? I would be afraid of his rage."
"Still," persisted Esme. "If it meant life over death."
Carlisle was silent. At last, he nodded. "If we must. And only if we must."
Bella could hear Esme's quiet footsteps as she walked around the table. She leaned over Edward, feeling his forehead, stroking his hair. "What a beautiful boy," she murmured. "He has always been striking, of course, but I never saw him like this." She smiled. "He makes a beautiful human. You chose the loveliest children, Carlisle."
Carlisle came to her side, and his arm found its way around her waist. "And the loveliest wife," he said quietly. His face was soft as he looked down on his son, his first and dearest. "He looks now just the way I remember him from all those years ago."
"Human beauty," Esme said wonderingly. "Perhaps it is so dear because it is so fleeting." She leaned over Edward and kissed his forehead.
Carlisle braced himself against the table. "I envy him, in a way," he said. "I wish I could sleep. I haven't slept in three hundred years."
Bella shivered under her blanket.
"You should rest," said Esme. "I'll stay with him."
"There's no rest for me," said Carlisle wearily. "Rosalie and Emmett are waiting for me. They're both ready to re-launch their arguments, no doubt." He sighed. "Call me at once if there is any change."
"I will."
He kissed her and left.
Bella waited until the room had been quiet for a few minutes, then she threw off her blanket and sat up. Esme was back at her laptop, and Edward lay on the table, silent and still. Bella climbed out of her cot and crept toward the table, her heart in her throat. As she approached, a tiny sound grew louder: beep, beep, beep, low and steady. The heart monitor.
It was true, then. His heart was still beating. He was alive.
Something rushed through her then, something too painful to be joy, too sharp to be relief. She let out a sound like a whimper. At the noise, Esme looked up, but Bella's eyes were riveted on Edward, on the faint color in his cheeks, the slight rise and fall of his chest under the blanket.
"Bella." There was the lightest touch on her shoulder; Esme's hand.
"He's sleeping," Bella whispered.
Esme sighed softly. "He's in a coma, my love," she said. "He needs some time to finish healing. But his body temperature is back up to normal, and his heart is strong."
"He's breathing," Bella said. "He's breathing on his own."
"For the last hour or so," said Esme, agreeing. "Carlisle disconnected him from the ventilator and his lungs took over. These are all good signs."
One narrow tube was left, snaking out of his nostril and taped in place against his cheek. "What's that tube?" Bella asked, hating the sight of it. She had twisted her fingers into the sheet, and she untangled them, willing her hands to be still.
"It's a feeding tube that goes down to his stomach. We don't know how long he will be in a coma, and his body needs nourishment now."
"When will he wake up?"
"We must be patient, dearest."
Her hands had knotted themselves together again; she realized that she was repressing a tremendous urge to touch his skin, to stroke her fingers through his hair. "Can I…" she faltered. "Can I touch him?"
She could hear the smile in Esme's voice, though her eyes never left Edward. "Of course, Bella. You won't hurt him."
Edward's hand lay on top of the sheet. Hesitantly, as if for the first time, she touched the back of his hand, then curled her fingers underneath to his palm. The not-quite-joy, not-quite-pain rushed through her again. His skin was smooth and pliable, cool but not colder than anyone's hand might be. She squeezed his hand. In the pressure of her grip, she could feel her own pulse in her fingers, and there, slower but undeniable, she felt his as well.
Esme moved softly away, but Bella didn't notice her going. With her free hand she wiped impatiently at the tears that fell through her lashes. She touched his cheek, as gently as if he might bruise at the brush of her fingertips.
For the first time, she studied Edward's human face.
He was different – there were a hundred tiny differences. His nose was different, perhaps a bit longer, a bit more narrow, with a hint of a bump at the bridge. His hair had lost its metallic sheen, but still rioted in unruly whorls of copper and gold. His eyelashes lay dark against his cheek. His lips were less red, less full, but soft in repose. She tried to imagine this mouth smiling, speaking, mobile and expressive. The line of his jaw was softer, less chiseled, and his skin though pale was no longer marble-white.
It was a handsome face, beautiful in a way that was fathomable and imperfect and wholly human. There was nothing alien, nothing frightening in it. For the first time, she could glimpse the child that he had been, and she could imagine the man that he would become.
Her brain felt bleary and blurred, but there was one clear thought like a beam of light arrowing to the surface of her mind. This is the crux of it, she thought. This is the key. Here was the great difference between vampire and human: not venom, not blood, not strength or beauty or the need for sleep, but change. Vampires never changed, while humans did nothing but change. For all their stubborn insistence on their own continuity, every human was a perpetual motion machine, a constantly-shifting composite of thoughts and emotions and motivations ever at odds with itself, and the consciousness, the "I am" floating above it, was the veil of mist over an ever-changing river. A vampire, however, was a fixed point, unchanging and immutable. Edward had stood outside of time, and she had never been able to imagine him changing, because change had been lost to him forever.
Until we tore down the walls. Outside, dawn was just touching the trees, and it broke over her like a great epiphany. By luck and strength of will (and both great courage and great foolhardiness) Edward had put himself back on the path where Bella walked.
We've done it, she thought deliriously. And now that we've done this, oh, what couldn't we do? For an instant, a shining instant, she felt that all the moments of her life and his, all possible permutations of their ever-shifting selves, were simultaneously present. The curtains between past and present and future shivered and grew thin as gossamer, and she trembled with power.
And then the light dimmed, and the present grew solid while the past and future receded. She struggled to hold onto the sweet clarity that had filled her mind, but it too slipped away before she knew how to stop it, and she was once more just a girl holding the hand of a sleeping boy.
She looked down at his face, feeling drained and somehow lessened. He's not going to remember me, she thought with a sudden dreadful certainty. When we restarted his heart, we gave life back to the boy who died ninety years ago. My own Edward was only a collection of thoughts and memories, and those are gone, as surely as yesterday will never come again. A great weariness and sorrow settled heavily over her shoulders.
So when he woke surrounded by strangers, what then? Maybe he would recognize Carlisle, his doctor from his sickness. Maybe he would believe their story. Maybe he might come to know her, if she stayed by his side and cared for him through his convalescence.
Maybe he might come to love her.
But how would he feel, learning that he had been taken a century forward from his own time? How would he react, finding that his family and everyone he'd known was gone? How could he love the person who was the cause of the utter devastation of his life? He would go away, she thought. He would leave, looking for answers, and never come back – he would leave the monsters behind, and the girl who had fallen in love with a boy who didn't exist anymore.
Bella's imagination was spinning out of control. She scrubbed at her eyes. She was exhausted, and she wasn't making any sense, not even to herself.
Sleep, she thought. I need to sleep.
She stumbled back to the cot, burrowed under the blanket, and slept, and waited.
In the end, they waited a week.
There had been so much waiting already, so much anticipation and anxiousness and days of stress and nights of worry. Bella found herself curiously serene as she waited beside her sleeping beloved. Time seemed to have stopped, and she felt that she could wait forever.
Not always, of course. She had moments of terror when she woke gasping, moments in the long stretched-out evenings when she could almost feel her mind cracking under the strain. But it was always temporary; always she sighed, and shook herself slightly, and felt the distress drift out like a tide. It was always near, but always manageable, and she didn't have to fear it.
Jasper was often nearby, and his quiet calm presence steadied her.
She watched the rest of the family as they orbited Edward's silent bed. Rosalie watched Edward and Emmett watched Rosalie, and the daggers in his eyes spoke volumes. Carlisle and Esme monitored Edward tirelessly, and all the while they seemed to speak in eloquent glances traded over the tops of everyone else's heads.
Will he wake?
Give him time.
Dare we wait?
We must. A bit longer.
We cannot wait forever.
Bella silently willed them to wait yet longer.
As for Alice, she had taken up a post opposite Bella at the other side of the bed. She rarely spoke, but focused on Edward with an otherworldly single-mindedness. Her vision was still jumbled and cloudy, but she reported flashes of foresight that kept her riveted, desperate for more. She would know when he would wake, she insisted, but she might not know until just before it happened.
What a crowd we are, Bella thought. Healers and dreamers, crazy in our faith. Seven who cannot sleep waiting for one to wake.
She felt a presence by her side, and she looked up and saw Carlisle. As if he had been listening to her thoughts, he gave her a weary smile and squeezed her shoulder.
She slept, and woke, and slept again. She ate the food that was brought to her, and sometimes when they forgot to bring her food she went foraging in the Cullens' sterile kitchen. She spoke occasionally to Charlie on the phone, and once to her mother. They knew Edward was in a coma and wanted to speak words of sympathy and comfort, but Bella always extricated herself from their conversations as quickly as she could. Their fear and ignorance reached in long grasping tendrils down the phone lines and Bella fled, trying to stay out of their grip.
Seven days, seven nights, and her thoughts played on a distant loop like far-off music.
Will he know me when he wakes?
Will he know me when he wakes?
Will he know me when he wakes?
On the eighth morning, Alice told Carlisle to remove Edward's feeding tube.
"Bella," said Alice suddenly, jolting her out of a drifting reverie.
Bella looked at Alice, who was looking down. Edward's fingers were twitching, the movement slight but undeniable. As they watched, frozen in place, his lips parted ever so slightly, and he breathed a deeper breath. His chest rose and fell, and the tiniest of sighs escaped him.
Alice leapt up, knocking her chair over backward, and bolted toward the door. "Carlisle!" she called as she dashed away through the house. "Esme! Come quick!"
Bella was suddenly hot and cold all over. Trembling, she took Edward's hand, careful of the IV taped there.
"Edward," she said softly. "Edward, I'm here."
His head turned infinitesimally toward the sound of her voice. She stroked the hair away from his forehead, caressed his cheek so that he would feel her touch. "Please wake up," she begged. "Please come back to me." You promised.
He made a sound, so soft that she thought she imagined it, but then it came again, louder. "Mmm… muh… muh…"
Oh no, she thought. Oh please, no.
His hand moved in hers, and he turned his head again, pressing his cheek into her palm. He was silent for a long moment, then breathed more deeply, as if gathering himself. Bella was barely breathing.
"Mother?" he whispered, and his voice sounded younger than she had ever heard it. Bella bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. "Mother, I dreamed…"
Then he opened his eyes, and Bella was lost.
His eyes were green, green as high summer, green as the promise of spring. Green a million miles deep: ancient forests and hidden glens, sunlight flashing through leaves and the shadows of clouds on a hillside. Green as a continent untouched; green as life pushing toward the sun.
For an instant – for just an instant – his eyes, fixed on hers, were as wide and innocent as a child's, as clear of grief and fear and regret as if he'd spent every day of his life in the sunlight.
Then something shifted. Something awoke, impossibly far down in the depths of that matchless green; something that struggled limping toward the surface. He blinked slowly, and the eyes that opened again were no less shocking, no less beautiful, but somehow simultaneously cleared and clouded. For just a fraction of a second, pain shot through Bella as if for some inexplicable loss, some lovely thing shattered. Then he blinked again, as if truly waking for the first time. His breath came in a whisper.
"Bella?"
Her heart gave a great leap. "Yes," she cried softly, holding his hand tightly between hers and pressing it to her chest. Tears sprang to her eyes, and the green wavered and blurred as she blinked them furiously away. "Yes, Edward," she repeated, "it's me."
If she had looked behind her, she would have seen Alice in the doorway, eyes shining like stars, the family ranged around her. But nothing could have torn her attention from Edward.
"It's you," he said softly. "It… it wasn't a dream."
The windchimes were gone from his voice, the beautiful and terrible resonance like far-away horns, and the tears spilled from her eyes for the loss of them, as well as for the pure and vulnerable boyish beauty of his human voice. "No, it wasn't a dream," she said, her voice throbbing with an overflow of joy and grief. "We brought you back. You came back to me."
"I told you I would," he said, and his mouth turned up at one corner into a shadow of the crooked smile that she knew so well, the one that never failed to stop her breathless. And suddenly, after everything, there he was looking back at her: her own Edward, awake, alive, breathing, with the entire future in his eyes.
"It worked," she whispered. "It really worked. Your heart is beating. You're alive – you're as human as I am."
His face was as naked as an open window, and she saw the emotions flash there one after the other: awe, disbelief, relief, and deep in the shadows, fear and sorrow. They washed over him in a moment, and then he sighed, his eyes drifting closed.
"Human," he whispered.
Bella held tight to his hand, and felt rather than saw the rest of the family gather around the bed. Edward opened his eyes with an effort, returning their joyful, gentle greetings with a smile, submitting to Carlisle's stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, his eyes flickering from face to face. Bella found herself instead watching his chest rise and fall with breath, the involuntary blinking of his eyes, the tremble of a pulse at the hollow of his neck. She hardly heard the words being said, until Carlisle asked Edward how he felt.
Edward paused, and the room stilled. "Tired?" he said at last, hesitantly. "And pretty weak. And…" He looked confused for a moment, brows drawing together, his free hand sliding to his stomach. "Hungry?"
He looked up with such consternation and surprise on his face that everyone burst into laughter, and Esme bustled off to the kitchen with promises of extravagant delicacies as soon as she figured out how to cook them. The others crowded around, giddy and exuberant, gleeful in their heady success. Rosalie teased him with uncharacteristic gentleness, and Jasper joined in. Alice bounced around like a five-year-old hopped up on candy, and Emmett clowned for Edward's benefit like an oversized puppy. Edward smiled at their gibes, responded occasionally, but the words and the laughter washed over Bella. The others didn't matter, ultimately. She clung tightly to Edward's hand.
When Carlisle finally shooed them away and there was quiet around the bed again, Bella asked this new impossible person, "How do you feel, really?"
He lay breathing softly for a moment, his face still. "I couldn't hear any of them," he said at last, and she realized belatedly that he was talking about hearing their thoughts. "It's a bit as if I have cotton balls in my ears – it's quiet. It's wonderful. And you –" He smiled at her, that same sweet beautiful smile. "I can't smell your blood. I can't even remember what it smelled like. It's gone, Bella. The torment and the constant battling. It's all over."
She was speechless, so she raised his hand and kissed it, the smooth yielding skin, the knuckles one by one. His hand hung heavy in hers, unsupported.
He noticed. "I think I must be very weak," he admitted. "It feels like my body is made of stone."
"That will get better once you eat something and get moving." Bella smiled. "Maybe I should go make sure that Esme isn't burning down the kitchen."
He smiled his softest, weariest smile, then let out a low sigh, eyes heavy. "Bella, can you open the window? Or turn on the light? It's so dark in here."
Bella looked around, a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was mid-morning, the curtains were open, and the soft gray daylight was flooding the room as much as it ever did. "Edward – it's the middle of the day," she said. "The curtains are already open." When he twisted around to look toward the wide windows, brow creased in confusion, she added hesitantly, "Are your eyes ok?"
"Strange," he whispered, blinking fast. "Everything… everything looks a little darker. It's just strange."
His eyes met hers again, and even as she melted involuntarily into that astonishing green regard, the guilt gripped her stomach. He gave it up for me…
To cover her worry, she said, "Is there anything you want? Is there anything I can get you?"
He drew breath to speak, but winced hard, his hand going to his chest. He laboriously unbuttoned the top button of his pajama shirt, and then Bella helped him with the rest, her anxiety mounting as his shirt opened.
There on the pale skin of his chest bloomed a huge bruise, mottled purple and black at the center, sickly greenish yellow around the edges. High on his chest, just left of his breastbone, over his heart.
"Oh God," Bella heard herself saying as she touched his skin. "Oh God, the CPR. I did this to you. Oh Edward, I'm so sorry."
"No!" He grabbed her hands. "Don't be sorry, Bella. Don't you dare be sorry," he said fiercely, although his voice was quickly subsiding. "You brought me back to life," he whispered. "You brought me back."
Shocked by his outburst, she could only nod, and he fell back on the pillows, breathing hard. With the last of his strength, he pulled her down to lie beside him. His eyes were drooping.
"Stay with me?" he whispered as he nestled into her arms.
"Of course," she said. "Always." And she bent her head and kissed him. The feel of his mouth, the taste of his breath, all the newness barely registered – there was time enough for all of that later, for he was already asleep.
She laid her dark head beside his riotous bronze one, and watched him sleep.