A/N: Let me start by saying THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE REVIEWS! I was on vacation and wanted to get started on the next chapter which is why I didn't get to respond to all the reviews, but please know that I have read and appreciate each and every one!
So it seems like everyone's a little bit worried about Renesmee...hows about we check in and see how she's doing?
Tapas at Twilight
Chapter 20: Unexpected Recipe
EPOV
Everything was moving in slow motion. I felt like I was floating over the boat and I could see my self standing there stupidly staring at Nessie. I tried to force my brain to think of the basics of saving a life, but all I could see was Chelsea; the images of her broken, lifeless body, flashed through my mind.
"Edward please," Bella sobbed, "help her. You have to help her."
Stabilize the head and neck. ABC's: airway, breathing, circulation. You can do this Cullen, you have to do this.
"Bella, put your hands under her shoulders and brace her head with your forearms. When I count to three we'll tilt her to the right to clear our her airway." She nodded resolutely with tears streaming down her face but positioned herself like I asked her to.
A small amount of water came trickling from her mouth, but she still wasn't breathing. I felt her wrist for a pulse but couldn't find one, there was no pulse at her carotid artery either. Her heart had stopped; she needed CPR. There is a cavalcade of chemical reactions that start to shut down the body once the heart stops and the more time the worse it becomes. I set my hands on her chest to start compressions.
More violent pictures of Chelsea's caved-in chest popped into my head. I had done that to her. I had pushed so hard I'd cracked her ribs and destroyed her sternum. I couldn't do that to Nessie. But she would die if I did nothing and broken ribs can heal. Chelsea's mother was completely destroyed when I gave her the news that we couldn't save her daughter, and I wouldn't do that do Bella.
In a fraction of a moment I felt the resolve settle into my bones. She will not die. Not if I have anything to do with it.
"Jake come quickly. Take the wheel and drive the boat back to the dock, just like a video game. This is the gas," I indicated the throttle, "not too fast okay?"
He wiped his eyes with his forearm, nodded solemnly and nudged the throttle forward. I returned to Nessie's side and quickly explained the procedure to Bella. "I do 30 compressions, you give two breaths, we both count out loud, okay?"
"Okay, I'm ready." She cradled her daughters head with trembling fingers, awaiting my signal.
I placed the heel of my hand over the correct spot on Nessie's chest and began the swift thrusts downward trying to help her heart pump the needed blood to her brain. As Bella gave her two breaths, I checked on Jake and saw that he's still steering us true.
Cycle after cycle we continued pumping her chest and breathing for her. I could feel the fatigue setting into my muscles but I pushed the sensation down and kept up the steady rhythm.
My mind was shattered into tiny fragments of comprehension. One of those little shards flitted through my thoughts, reminding me there was a radio just under the wheel of the boat.
"Jake can you reach the radio under the wheel?" I called out, splitting my already fractured attention between Bella's counts and my instructions to Jacob.
"Yeah, it's right here," he lifted up the mouth piece.
"Push the button on the side like a walkie talkie and say 'mayday'," he nodded and did as I instructed.
The reply came quickly and I coached Jake through explaining our situation and felt a little better that an ambulance would be waiting. I returned my full attention to Nessie faltering for just a moment when I caught the desperate and tear stained face of my Bella. I heard a dull crack and stopped the compressions, cursing loudly.
"What is it Edward? Why did you stop? You can't stop now!"
"I broke her rib, I'm going to kill her just like I did to Chelsea. I ca..."
"Don't you dare say it. Don't you dare. You can and you will."
I took a deep breath and resumed compressions paying careful attention to the depth at which I was thrusting. I was surprised when I felt the tears roll down my face, I was so overcome with emotions that I couldn't stop them.
As we neared the dock I had Bella take over compressions so I could guide the boat to the mooring post. I helped the paramedics who were waiting at the end of the dock to lift Ness onto the stretcher.
"She was in the water about 3 minutes, no pulse, no breathing, we've been doing CPR for about 10 minutes. We need to get her on a monitor right away."
"We'll take it from here sir," they nodded and wheeled her down the dock to the ambulance.
I pulled Jake up out of the boat and reached out for Bella. I wrapped my arm around her waist and supported most of her weight as we jogged down to the ambulance. The two men in navy blue were working feverishly to get Nessie hooked up to the proper equipment, they cut off her bathing suit and were sticking the defibrillator pads on her chest all the while providing the breaths she needed. As the sickening steady tone of her un-beating heart sounded through the monitor I could feel Bella's fingers dig into my arms while her legs gave way. I tightened my grip around her and pulled a shivering Jake to my side.
The paramedics delivered a surge of electricity from the defibrillator and almost immediately a steady beep signaled that her heart was beating again. I blew out a breath in relief, "that's a good thing Bella, they've got her heart started again."
"So she's gonna be okay right? She'll be fine?"
"I hope so Love, they're doing everything they can for her."
"Who's coming?" shouted one of the paramedics.
Bella rushed forward, "I am, I'm her mother."
"Where are you heading?" I called out.
"Childrens on Lincoln."
"We'll be right behind you, be strong Bella, I love you."
"I love you too Edward."
I squeezed Bella's hand one more time as she slid onto the bench in the ambulance. The door to the rig slammed shut and the sirens began blaring as the ambulance sped into traffic. I ran into the boating office and was met with the compassionate eyes of the man behind the counter.
"Go, take care of your family, I'll have your stuff when you're ready to come back and get it."
"Thank you," I breathed and hurried back out to my car.
We sped to the Children's Memorial Hospital, breaking more traffic rules than I could count and screeched into a parking space in front of the emergency room. I ran through the doors with Jake close behind and accosted the closest official looking person I could find.
"Renesmee Yorkie? She was just brought in a few minutes ago, where is she?"
"You are?" I wanted to rip the man's head off for being an idiot, but I knew that wouldn't get me any closer to her or to Bella. I was shocked though, when Jake stepped forward.
"I'm her boyfriend!" The man looked at him a little confused. I pulled back gently on Jacob's shoulder and looked back up to the man at the counter.
"I'm her mother's boyfriend, please, I just need to be with them right now," I begged changing my tone to a less confrontational plea for help.
"One moment sir," he said disappearing behind a curtain. After a few minutes the man reappeared and showed us back to where Bella was waiting.
She was crumpled in a chair holding her head in her hands sobbing. I rushed in front of her and gathered her into my arms.
"I'm here Bella, shhhh, it's okay, I'm here."
She latched onto me and continued to sob into my shoulder. After a few minutes her hands relaxed and she took a few shaky breaths.
"They wouldn't let me go with her," she sniffled.
"I know hon, they're doing all they can for her. Can you tell me anything about the ride over?" I needed to know if anything else happened while they were in the ambulance.
"She threw up, they said something about negative babinkies or something like that. She started to mumble something and she was breathing just fine on her own for a minute but when we got here she started having a seizure and they wouldn't let me follow them into the room, and her hair is soaking wet, and she was shivering and I just need to be with her." Her choking sobs continued to scrape away at any shred of composure I was hanging on to.
I sighed thinking about the statistics and everything I'd been taught.
"Well, a negative Babinski reflex is good, that means there's not much if any damage to her nervous system. And unfortunately, seizures are a possibility with near-drowning cases, but they have medicines to control it. Don't worry Bella, these doctors are the best at what they do."
She sniffed and whispered against my chest, "I know, I...I just...can't even think about if she doesn't..."
"Shhhhh, don't go there, we're not even going to consider that until we hear from the doctors." I rubbed heavy circles over her back trying to soothe us both.
I called Billy and had him come down to the hospital. The staff insisted that they check out Jake since he and Ness had banged their heads together. He kept insisting he was fine, that he had a hard head, and he just wanted to stay with me and wait for Ness. He was very stoic, and would not be persuaded. It took both me and his dad to get him out to the car. I promised as soon as we knew anything we'd call him.
When I returned, Bella was staring at a clipboard full of forms and papers she needed to fill out. She seemed to be looking through the stack of forms at some unknown thing beyond them. I sat down next to her on the couch in the family waiting room and took the papers from her loose grip.
"How about I take care of filling these out okay?" She nodded mutely and leaned on to my shoulder. Every now and then I could feel the silent sobs shaking her body, my heart was breaking for her and for Ness, if only I'd paid closer attention to the conditions on the water.
If only. That was a phrase that my counselor and I had been working on eradicating from my vocabulary, but it sank it's teeth into my psyche with a vengeance. Every doubt and fear that something like this would happen again had come true. Maybe I was wrong to think that I still had a place in medicine. Perhaps this was Fate's way of telling me, "don't touch, you only hurt people." Maybe I should shut my stupid thoughts up and fill out the blasted forms.
I busied myself filling out all of the required information; so much of it was repetitive. I would lean over and offer the pen to Bella when she needed to sign something, making sure to place reassuring kisses on her cheeks, forehead, lips, anywhere I could reach really.
I got to the medical history section of the forms and filled out the little I knew about Bella. I asked her about Charlie and Renee's illnesses and genetic conditions, her own illnesses, all of the formalities. I was pleased to know how healthy she was, though her dad dying of a heart attack at a relatively young age was worrisome. Granted he had been a smoker which clogs up arteries faster than anything else. Just to be safe though she shouldn't cook with so much butter.
"Bella, I need your help with Eric's history."
"Do you still have my wallet on you?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah, it's right here," I reached into the pocket of my shorts and handed her the leather wallet. I was wondering what she was looking for when she pulled out what looked like a laminated half-sheet of paper folded once. "What's that?"
"This is her bio-dad's medical history," she handed me the folded paper but I didn't reach for it. Her phrasing sent up warning flags in my mind. What in the world does she mean by bio-dad?
"Bio-dad?" I asked.
"Well, yeah. Nessie wasn't Eric's biological child."
My mind began reeling at this revelation. I had always assumed, but then our previous conversations about Eric came slamming back into me.
"What kind of cancer did Eric have Bella?"
She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath before settling into the corner of the couch with her knees curled up against her chest.
"He was diagnosed with testicular cancer when he was a teenager. They removed one testicle and did radiation and chemo. When he relapsed after we got married, they removed his other testicle thus wiping out any chance for a child, not that it would've been likely before because of the radiation. Why do you ask?"
"I..I just didn't know. I guess I took it for granted that Eric was Nessie's biological father. So she was conceived in vitro?" I could see that Bella was emotionally spent and I should leave these questions for later but I couldn't seem to stop myself.
Bella nodded softly, "The egg was mine, the sperm was an anonymous donor."
I was about to ask more questions but was interrupted by the ER doctor entering the waiting room. She pushed the folded card into my hand and turned expectantly toward the door. We both straightened up immediately and waited impatiently for news. With each passing second I was getting more and more annoyed with this doctor, even though I knew exactly what he was going through. Those minutes you take, attempting to regain composure before delivering bad news to a family, were the worst of your life.
"Ms. Swan?" he finally called out. I hadn't even realized there were other's in the room with us.
"Please," Bella sobbed out, her control completely broken, "how is she?"
"She's heavily sedated right now, she had a second seizure while we were trying to get her stabilized. We'll keep her here over night for observation, but everything seems to be fine now." Note to self: always start with the good news. What is this doctor thinking? Had I ever done that to anyone? Why did I think I might have to do this again in the future?
"Are there any complications? Neural involvement? Any speech or motor deficiencies?" I was firing off questions rapidly trying to satisfy my own need for information.
"Slow down," he raised his hands trying to rein me back in, "we won't know much about her mental or physical condition until she wakes up more. She is currently breathing on her own, which is a good thing. The water in her lungs washed out a great deal of the surfactant, that's the substance that helps keep her lungs inflated properly, so we'll have to keep a close look out for signs of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. If allowed to progress it could lead to hypoxia and ischemia, two things we very much want to avoid."
"When can I see my baby?" I had been paying close attention to what the doctor had been saying when I should've been paying attention to Bella. She just needed to be with her daughter, and I was being an idiot academic encouraging the doctor to keep on talking.
"Right now, just follow me." He gestured toward the door and waited patiently for us to gather our things together.
We were led to a small curtained off area in a quiet corner of the emergency room. The doctor pulled the curtain aside for us to enter and I wrapped my arm around Bella's waist. She nearly collapsed at the sight of Renesmee; I had to hold her up and try to hold myself up. I could hear all the commotion and shouts from the day Chelsea died when I saw all of the machines and the generic exam room. I wanted to grab Nessie out of that bed and run, like being out of the hospital would save her, save me. Keep it together Cullen.
Nessie was hooked up to a heart monitor, a blood pressure monitor, she had an oxygen cannula under her nose, and a bag of fluids dripping down the tube into the IV port on her wrist. She looked so small and fragile, not anything like the wild and ebullient little girl she usually was.
As the doctor had warned us, she was soundly asleep. Bella moved quickly to her side and began stroking her face and pulling her fingers gently through her matted curls. She leaned her head over Nessie's chest and closed her eyes affirming with her own ears what the steady beep of the heart monitor indicated. I pulled up a chair right next to Bella and guided her into it. She sat closely to the bedside and held Ness's small hand in her own.
Bella was singularly focused on Ness and my mind was spiraling back down to a place I hadn't been in more than 6 years. I returned to filling out forms in a weak attempt to occupy my thoughts until Ness woke up.
I started copying down the basic information in the section designated for the father. Blood Type: AB-, childhood illnesses/operations: Chicken Pox, tonsillectomy, appendectomy. The information needed for the hospital form wasn't extensive, and I quickly finished all the paperwork, setting it on the table in our corner of the ER. I couldn't help reading through the rest of the information on the sheet Bella had given me.
It looked like she had retyped the information in a way that was quick and easy for her to read. As I scanned down the list, I felt a strange sense of familiarity, almost like I was on an episode of "This is Your Life". I was putting mental check marks next to each thing that was similar in my own life. When I finished the list my hand was shaking as I realized that every single point of medical history was identical to my own.
"Bella?" I whispered. She had laid her head down on the bed and Nessie's hand was limp in her grasp. I hated to wake her, but we had things that needed to be discussed.
I stood up shakily and started slowly rubbing her back. She stirred a bit and looked up at me through puffy sad eyes.
"Hey Love, can we talk for a minute?"
"Sure Edward what is it?" She stretched her arm over her head and turned to me.
"Maybe somewhere a little more private? We could go get something from the cafeteria?"
"Edward, I can't leave her, not until I know she's going to be okay." Of course she was right, we couldn't go anywhere right now.
I looked over at Nessie's monitors and saw that she was definitely asleep. "You're right, we can stay, I just...I don't know...well it could be just a crazy coincidence."
"What are you talking about hon?" She looked genuinely confused and more than a bit concerned at my strange shift in behavior.
"Okay, I know this is going to come out of left field, but bear with me okay?" She nodded her agreement and I continued, "Where did you have the in vitro procedure done?"
Her eyebrows wrinkled together and I could see her fighting the desire to ask what that had to do with anything, but she shook it off and answered. "It was the Family Connections Fertility Center, Carlisle was actually the one who referred us there. He said his friend Marcus was the best in the field for our circumstances." I stiffened at the mention of the clinic and Marcus.
"Why Edward? Why are you asking about this?"
"When did you make your donor selection?"
"Edward..."
"Please, just think back to when." She furrowed her brow and began silently counting on her fingers.
"It was November the year before Ness was born. They said the donor we'd selected was from a new batch that had just been screened and approved. Please tell me what this is about Edward?"
This was impossible. This was literally impossible, unless you count one in a bazillion a possibility. I never thought something like this would ever happen. My head was spinning with the effort I was exerting to keep myself calm.
"Bella, when I was in med school we weren't allowed to hold jobs, and my trust fund hadn't been turned over to me yet. I wanted to have more spending money than my stipend allowed. So I was talking to some buddies who said that there were high end clinics that recruited and paid young men with certain attributes, qualifications, high test scores, etc. to be sperm donors."
Her eyebrow quirked up and she shook her head a little, "Edward, your gear shifts are giving me whiplash, what does this have to do with Ness?"
"Let's just say that I made a deposit to the Family Connections Clinic in Seattle while I was home for fall break in November, the year before Renesmee was born."
"Not...Possible..."
"And this," I held up the folded laminated card she'd given me earlier, "I would write down the very same answers."
A/N: So be honest...who was expecting that? I know a few of you had postulated, so here's the proof. Now what will be the aftermath of this little bombshell??? Reviews are my favorite thing in the whole wide world!!! I'll try and do better about responding this time!
Chicken Pillows with a Little Extra
2 Chicken Breast. Cooked and shredded
1 package of puff pastry in sheets, thawed
8 oz cream cheese
3-4 Tblsp milk
1 Tlbsp lemon juice
1 ½ tsp lemon pepper
2 jalapenos sliced very thin
Directions:
Using a large biscuit cutter, cut as many circles out of the pastry dough as possible. In a bowl beat the cream cheese, lemon juice and lemon pepper. Add one tablespoon of milk at a time until the cream is smooth and not too thick. Add the chicken and coat well. Place a small spoonful of the chicken mixture onto one side of the pastry circle. Top with one slice of jalapeno. Make an egg wash, with 1 egg lightly beaten and 1 Tblsp water. Moisten one half of the pastry circle with the egg wash and fold the dough in half. Seal the edges by pressing down with a fork. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Once they're all filled, brush the tops with egg wash and bake according to the directions on the package for the puff pastry dough.