Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or the characters. Thanks a million to my beta, CrystalRaindrop!
: - Dedication - :
I'd like to dedicate this chapter to everyone out there who has had/does have a relative with cancer. It's a very hard, emotional time, and I want you all to know that I'm praying for you.
A Child of the Night — Chapter Twenty-One
Previously ...
I helped her stand ...
And then she collapsed.
Her eyes fluttered as she fought to keep them open, and her breathing was ragged. I dropped down by her side, my eyes wide with fear. My fingers brushed across her forehead, and I pulled them quickly away, feeling as though I'd been burned.
"Bella!" I cried, and she reached out to me, grasping my hand tightly in hers.
"So tired," she breathed, and I gathered her so gently into my arms. I held her close, my heart beating fast and hard as I ran from the room.
"Stay awake, my beautiful Bella," I whispered. "Please stay awake."
And then she began to shiver in my arms, and I knew something was desperately wrong. How was this happening so fast?
Please, Bella, I begged her silently. Please be all right.
April 20th, Sunday - 11:32 PM — Edward POV
She looked so small, so vulnerable, in the large, white bed. I wanted so badly to reach out and touch her, to take her into my arms, to protect and comfort her.
But I couldn't.
I sighed deeply, and curled my legs up to my chest before wrapping my arms around them.
I could only watch on as she struggled for each breath, as her tiny body shivered beneath the blankets. I could only watch. I couldn't help her, or even hold her. And it hurt.
"How are you?" a soft voice asked, and I looked up to see my mother smiling very sadly as she watched first Bella and then turned her eyes to me. I shrugged, and didn't answer. I didn't know how to answer. How was I? I was dying inside.
I turned back to Bella, and blinked away the tears that I was unwilling to let fall.
"She's very sick, Edward. Very sick," my father had whispered, pain shining in his eyes as he'd placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Even if she can fight this off, it's going to set her months back in her treatment. I won't lie, Edward ... her body is weak, and her immune system is even weaker. She ... might not make it."
I choked back a sob, and buried my head in my hands as I tried desperately to force my father's words away. I didn't want to believe him. I couldn't believe him. Bella would make it through this. She would fight this infection off, and she would win this never-ending battle against her cancer. She had to ... or I wouldn't be able to continue living. She was my life, my reason for living. If she didn't ... if she died, then ... I wanted to die, too.
"Bella," I whimpered, and I let my fingers dance across the thin sheet of plastic that separated us. I couldn't touch her. I couldn't hold her. Because if I moved past the quarantine field, I could kill her. If I so much as had a cold and passed it on to her, I could kill her.
But, I supposed, I had already done that. It was my fault that she was here in the first place. My fault that she had cancer. My fault that she was so sick, so weak. It was my fault that she was dying.
"She's strong," my mom said, and I realized then that she was still holding my hand. She was still here, comforting me. Couldn't she see that this was my fault? That I was a monster? But she continued, "She's so strong, Edward. She'll pull through."
"If she doesn't live," I whispered, and my voice was so hoarse that my words were barely recognizable. "Then I don't want to either."
My mother sucked in a deep, startled breath, but didn't say a word. Instead, she held me tighter, and rocked me back and forth as I finally let my tears fall. Men shouldn't cry. So what? The love of my life was lying before me, dying, because of me. I didn't care anymore, about what the world around me thought. I cared only for the one that loved me despite everything that I'd done to her. The girl that had changed me in so many ways. The beautiful, perfect, blind, loving, amazing woman that I'd fallen so desperately, so hopelessly, so completely in love with.
Bella.
Please live.
April 22nd, Tuesday
"When will she wake up?" Alice asked, and she smiled, so innocent, as she bounced up and down beside me. "I want to play go fish with her again. And tell her that, yesterday, Jazzy held my hand! He kissed my cheek, too."
She blushed then, realizing what she'd revealed. I barely noticed. I just nodded, wrapping my arms tighter around my chest. It was almost as if I was trying to hold myself together.
"When will she wake up, Edward?" Alice asked, and she grabbed my hand, swinging it in hers as she bounced circles around me. "She's been sleeping for a long, long time."
"She might never wake up," I whispered, and Alice frowned, then smiled.
"Like Sleeping Beauty? Maybe you should kiss her. I bet that would wake her up!"
"She's not going to wake up, Ali," I said, and I could see the tears shining in the innocent eyes of my baby sister. I could barely register her pain, though, because the pain running through my body was far too much.
"But she — "
"She's not waking up! Damn it! She's not waking up!" I yelled, and I stood so quickly from the chair that I had been sitting in that it clattered loudly to the floor. Alice began to wail loudly, but I didn't notice. I didn't care.
Because the truth of my own words washed over me like the current of the sea, breaking me, surrounding me, encasing me.
She wasn't waking up.
"Edward," my mother whispered softly as she took Alice into her arms. "Edward, we don't know that. Bella might wake up tomorrow," she said, and I knew she barely even believed her own words. Bella's temperature had rocketed to 104.5 and there was nothing anyone could do to get it to come down. Her whole body was shutting down, my father said, in attempt to ward off the fever.
We all knew she wasn't waking up.
We just weren't ready to face the truth.
April 24th, Thursday
Minutes passed. Hours, then, and days. Nothing changed. Bella didn't wake up. If anything, she got even weaker. I still couldn't see her, or hold her, or sit beside her. Instead, I sat on the hard, cold chair that was positioned right outside of the quarantined chamber that she lay in, day after day. I didn't move, or speak. I didn't eat, or sleep.
I was simply a statue, carved from stone, waiting to break.
"Edward," a soft voice said, and I knew it belonged to my mother. I didn't see her, though. My eyes were closed, and I didn't want to open them. Because I knew that, if I did, I would only see her.
"Edward, sweetie, you need to eat."
I wasn't hungry. I shook my head. But even moving the smallest bit hurt. My head pounded, and I became dizzy. I stiffened, and became a lifeless statue once again.
April 26th, Saturday
Six days after Bella fell sick, I collapsed. I fainted, and when I woke up, I was in a bed next to Bella's, still outside of the quarantine field but closer than I'd ever been. An IV was in my arm, and the world around me was hazy. My mother stood beside me, crying, and I realized then that I should feel horrible for making my family worry so much. Even little Alice was there, sobbing as she held my hand.
But I couldn't feel anything.
I was numb.
The only thing I could feel was the pain, the deep, raw pain that shot through my heart every time I turned to the side and saw her.
She was paler than ever now, and so thin. Her breathing was hard and ragged, and the nurse that watched over her, dressed in sanitized gowns, smiled sadly as she brushed the sweaty hair from Bella's eyes.
"Her fever's gone up," she told Dr. James, and I closed my eyes, desperate to hold everything in.
I couldn't, however, stop the tears that slowly, sluggishly, made their way down my ashen cheeks.
April 28th, Monday
It was so hard to speak. It was so hard to force the words out past the sobs I was just barely holding back. It was hard to force them from my dry, aching throat. But I did. Because I had to know.
"How is she?" I asked, and I still didn't open my eyes. I could hear my father as he moved around my hospital bed, checking the various machines that were beeping so softly, so rhythmically. His hand brushed across my forehead and came to rest on my shoulder.
"She's alive," he said, and I choked back a scream. He hadn't said she's doing better, or she's going to make it, or even she's fine.
"Please," I begged. "Tell me the truth."
Silence fell for several moments, and it was all I could do not to hang onto the hope within me.
"She's dying, Edward. Even if she makes it through this, she'll need a kidney transplant, and she probably wouldn't be strong enough for Chemo. The cancer would take over her body very quickly then."
And as my world fell to pieces, the hope that I'd just barely managed to grasp onto slipped through my fingers.
April 29th, Tuesday
"Edward," she breathed in her sleep, a pained look lighting her beautiful face. I tried my very best not to break down again. I couldn't help it. I couldn't hold it in. I began to cry, and then scream. I stormed from the room, kicking the chair beside her bed over as I went. I stopped right outside her door, however, and leaned against the wall heavily as I let my head fall into my hands.
I sobbed loudly, and I didn't care that the people that passed me, so slowly, in the halls, were whispering about me. I didn't care. I couldn't care.
She was dying.
I slid down the wall, and bit hard on my hand to keep the scream of pain inside. I couldn't stop the tears, though, and they fell fast and hot down my cheeks.
"What's wrong, Edward?"
I recognized the voice of Charlie, but I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move. He bent down beside me, and placed a hand on my shoulder.
The words tumbled out then, and I couldn't stop them.
"She's dying. She's dying, Charlie, and it's all my fault," I sobbed, and I finally opened my eyes long enough to stare into his confused expression. "It's all my fault."
"You can't think like that, Edward," he whispered, but I could hear the pain, barely disguised, in his voice. "It's not your fault. You couldn't have — "
"It is my fault! It's my fault! I left her alone. Oh, God, I left her alone! I left her alone. I left her alone."
I couldn't stop chanting those four, simple words. I said them over and over and over, my voice growing louder each time I repeated them. Eventually, I was screaming them, crying desperately, painfully. My words were no longer recognizable. They were merely anguished cries.
"I left her alone," I said one final time, and my whole body began to shake then.
Charlie just watched me, understanding shining in his eyes. Pain, too, and anger and anguish and sorrow and hatred.
"I'm so sorry," I breathed, and I gripped the material of my jeans as I buried my head between my knees and squeezed my knees tightly around my head, blocking out all sound. "I'm sorry. Sorry. So sorry … "
Charlie didn't say anything after that, but the broken look in his eyes was worse than if he'd screamed at me.
"Sorry won't fix this," he finally whispered, and then he left me alone to drown in the pain that was slowly taking over my entire existence.
April 30th, Wednesday
She's not going to make it.
I held the piece of glass tightly in my hand, not caring as it tore so easily through the soft skin of my palm. The warm blood that slid down my wrists made me smile.
She's not going to make it. Nothing's working.
It barely stung as I sliced through the skin of my wrist.
She's not going to make it. Nothing's working. She ... she's not going to make it through the night. She'll be gone before morning.
Words I wasn't meant to hear. Pain barely hidden beneath the professional mask.
I choked back tears, my hands shaking not because I was afraid of what I was doing, but because of the emotion running through me. Pain. Sorrow. Horror.
I had done this. I had killed the one I loved. Despite what she said, I was the one who had caused her death. I had left her, and she had gone out in the sun for such a brief time. Because of me. But those brief moments were enough to hurt her so badly. Enough to give her skin cancer, to weaken her immune system, to give her an infection that she couldn't fight off.
I pressed myself harder into the cold, porcelain wall, and, with shaking hands, desperately ran the glass over my wrist again and again and again ...
The blood flowed fast, and I began to feel tired. Weak. I smiled.
This was the end.
Well. Sad, huh? I am so getting flamed for this chapter. Just don't be too mean, OK? I have the whole story planned out, and this had to happen.
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NEXT CHAPTER:
"Edward," I gasped, my eyes shooting open for one brief second. "Help him! Help him! Edward!"