Because of You
Chapter 26
Edward's POV
True To her word, Bella didn't mention babies, getting pregnant or IVF for six months. And for those six months after the wedding she was the happiest and the most at ease I'd seen her in a long fucking time.
Her old man bought us a new truck as a wedding gift; a white Toyota Hilux 4x4. It was a good "family car" for where we lived, he'd explained, and he didn't think it was safe for me to be constantly driving along the interstate back and forth to work in my piece of shit two door. Not that he'd said those exact words, but it was implied. And I sure as hell wasn't going to knock the fact that he was worried about my safety as well as Bella's best interests.
I guess I had to marry his daughter for him to finally get it; I was important to her. She was important to me.
So, Bella and I packed up our new truck and went on a month long road trip for our honeymoon. We crossed twenty-three state lines, ate in horrible truck-stop diners, had even crappier gas station coffee, and slept everywhere from inside the cabin of the truck, to under the stars in the Arizona desert.
We had two near accidents. One was kind of my fault—not that I let Bella know that—one rattle snake-in-the-sleeping-bag incident, and a close encounter with a black widow spider. The latter had me leaping ten feet in the air, shrieking like a fucking pussy while I hid behind Bella as she calmly stomped on it with the heel of her boot. Of course, she only turned and arched that cynical eyebrow at me, fighting the obvious urge to smirk.
"I know, I know—shut up," I mumbled as a half-assed response, only for Bella to laugh.
We laughed a lot, even more than we had sex, and we had a lot of that. In fact, we laughed more than we talked, but then Bella and I were never what you'd call "chatty". We didn't need to constantly talk to be comfortable with each other; we never did. We spent hours in the car in near silence, with Bella leaning against me, her ankles crossed and resting up on the opened side window, and her hand against my leg as I drove.
We stopped at all the sights and did all the touristy things. We went to Disneyland, rollerbladed in Santa Monica; which typically, Bella was terrible at. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, toured Alcatraz, and rode down the Grand Canyon on donkeys; something I barely survived. It wasn't just the serious fucking bruising my balls were given, but the fact that in every direction I looked I was facing a thousand feet drop if the damn mule lost its footing. And it wasn't the only time I was faced with my fear of heights.
In New York Bella wanted to go up the Empire State Building. She was prepared to go alone, but I'd insisted on going with her. I'd be fine so long as I didn't look down, I reasoned with myself. Yeah, I'd talked myself into that bullshit once before; something Bella hadn't forgotten.
The panic hit me the moment we left the elevator, and I made it just long enough to have a photo with Bella before I hauled ass back to solid ground. I wasn't even sure the damn photo was worth it. Forty bucks while looking like I was about to have a fucking heart attack.
Bella came back down twenty minutes later and we went back to our hotel room where she calmed me down. She'd somehow got it into her head that sex was the only way to "de-stress" me. Hey, it's not that I was complaining, but I suspected it was also a way for her to distract herself whenever she was worried about me. Which was more than I really wanted to admit.
Afterward, Bella dragged my ass jogging through Central Park. She literally had to drag me behind her, and it reminded me once again how much endurance she had. While I was laying spread-eagled on the ground, hocking my lungs up, she had barely broken into a sweat. It still shocked the hell out of me, but then I remembered when and why Bella had decided to get herself into this kind of shape, and that was usually all it took to bring me back down.
It was always going to be a fucking killjoy, because I knew this Bella, my Bella, was a result of circumstances I had been removed from.
When we got back home to Forks we slept for three days. Who would have thought that driving could be so fucking exhausting? For the next week we were quite literally wiped out, but then Bella went back to the restaurant and I went back to work, and slowly we established a new routine. It basically revolved around work and sex and little else, but we were happy, and that's all I cared about.
Of course, fucking naturally, it was my pain in the ass sister who put a big fucking cork into everything.
It was the week I was back on day shift. I arrived home just after Bella, and as I fed the fleabag, she went to collect the mail. I found her ten minutes later standing in the living room staring down at the opened envelope she was gripping in her hand, with a half pained expression knotting her forehead.
"What's the matter, baby?" I asked, approaching her from behind and wrapping my palms over her shoulders to find out what appeared to be upsetting her.
She turned around a little too hastily, almost falling against me, and attempted to neutralize her expression. "Your-your sister sent us some photos of her babies," she explained stammering, before she broke my gaze.
I sighed stiffly through my nose, immediately on edge. I'd been waiting for the little rat to stick her fucking nose into our lives again. It had been probably eating her alive to stay quiet for so long.
"Give me a look," I muttered fucking resigned before holding out my hand.
After Bella placed the bundle of photographs in my palm, I inspected them only semi-curiously. There was two of them. One dressed in pink, the other in blue; the physical depiction of my sister and her ass-shit of a husband.
They looked like aliens.
"This kid looks ninety-seven years old," I commented at the single picture of the bald, bug-eyed, blue-dressed kid.
Bella scoffed softly and almost chuckled. "Honey...you can't say that."
"Why not?" I asked lightly, turning the photo over to read what was written on the back. "Edward Anthony Hale? You've got to be fucking kidding me! The kid looks exactly like his pissant of a father and Alice named him after me!?"
This time Bella did laugh, but it was humorless. "I didn't think you'd be too impressed by that."
"Jesus fucking Christ," I mumbled just barely beneath my breath, before I skimmed quickly through the rest of the photos of her weird looking spawn and getting to the adjoining letter. "Dear Edward and Bella," I read aloud, mocking the little ferret's high pitched voice, "we are proud to announce the birth of our twins, Edward and Esme—Esme? Well aint that just fucking peachy? One named after me and the other named after my dearest fucking mother?"
Was she rubbing it fucking in?
Bella only mumbled out a humming sound in agreement, sounding even less than impressed than I felt.
Not in the mood to entertain this shit for a moment longer, I tossed the photos against the sofa, turned around and headed back into the kitchen. "I'll get dinner started, baby. What do you feel like?"
"I brought home leftovers—Buddy, no!" she suddenly burst, just as the little shit of a furball ran past me and through his dog door with half a dozen of the photos in his mouth.
Shaking her head to herself, Bella came to a standstill beside me, leaned against my side and groaned.
Laughing lightly to myself, glad for the fucking ice breaker, I draped my arm over her shoulder and leaned down to her. "I guess he was still hungry."
She chuckled, curling herself further into me. "I guess he was."
"I'll get them off him later. You okay?"
"I'm fine," she mumbled.
But she wasn't, and as the weeks passed it became more and more evident. Naturally, Bella being Bella, she tried to hide it from me and keep up the charade that all was well, but I knew it was slowly eating away at her. That something so simple for most people was going to be so hard for her. Something she so desperately wanted, and something I wanted to give to her.
On top of everything, she spent way too much time with Angela, and every minute she spent with Lilly only fucked her more up. But what could I do? Keep her away from civilization? Because she was right; it seemed everyone in this damn fucking town was either knocked up or had a dozen of the little fuckers hanging from them!
I had to get us the hell away from Forks.
But it wasn't only her desire for a baby that bothered her. She had it in her head that she had to provide me with offspring or I would eventually leave her.
I found out this piece of the fucking puzzle roughly two months after being notified of the good news of mynewest niece and nephew. We were eating dinner, and I made the abject fucking mistake of asking Bella how her day went. She told me her new BFF, Jessica Stanley, was pregnant with spawn number two, putting the number of pregnant women on her list of regulars to four.
She smiled and pretended she was okay with it, when I knew inside her heart was breaking.
"We'll have babies too, Bella. I promise you we will," I repeated the same fucking mantra as I had hundreds of times over, before reaching over to grab her hand, but she was no longer buying it.
Hell, even I was doubting it by that stage, and all it did was frustrate her more.
"You can't keep promising me that, Edward!" she snapped, but she appeared more pissed at herself than she was at me.
"Baby, we haven't even tried IVF yet," I attempted to reason with her. "Why are you so sure it won't work?"
"I-I guess I'm scared to get my hopes up," she admitted after a moment, bunching up her forehead in an obvious attempt to prevent herself from succumbing to tears before she severed her eyes from mine to her plate of barely touched food.
Releasing my breath, I dropped my fork, and stared at her for a moment. It was becoming clear to me that we were going to have to sort out this business with her fertility earlier than we'd planned, because I couldn't sit back and watch as she reverted back to this person she was becoming before me.
"Honey..." I began delicately, when she rose her head and cut me off.
"Do you know how many men leave their wives because they can't give them children, Edward?" Her voice wavered, coming close to breaking. "I read about it every day."
"Okay, first of all I don't want you talking to those fucking women anymore!" I demanded, referring to the fucking Facebook group she was in for infertility or some shit. Every time she was on it, she became more and more fucking depressed and dejected. "And second, do you actually think I'd ever leave you over something like that?"
She shook her head, the tears she'd been trying so hard to prevent eventually spilling down her cheeks. "Right now? No..."
Jesus...
I got to my feet so suddenly the chair fell backwards, scaring the fleabag who mistook it as some kind of aggression against Bella. Leaping to her side, he had the audacity to fucking growl at me.
"Get outside, you little shit!" I ordered him. He cowered under the table instead while I grabbed Bella out of her chair and into my arms.
She clung to me, completely breaking apart. "I'm sorry, honey. I know you'd never do that, and I know I promised not to let this all get to me."
I only held her to me, having an internal fucking debate with myself, because I knew once we started IVF our lives would go off the rails for a while, with no guarantee of Bella getting pregnant at the end of it. But, at the same time, I just couldn't fucking stand her continually torturing herself like this. "Baby, look at me," I instructed, and when she did, I put it to her. "Talk to me, do you want to start IVF now?"
For a moment she stared at me, all wide-eyed and full of fucking turmoil, before she took an inevitable breath and released it. "Yes, no... I don't know..."
We were booked in for the following Thursday, and what a fucking dilemma it quickly turned out to be.
First came the paperwork, mountains of the stuff. Paperwork that had nothing but big fat fucking dollar signs all over it because they had to make sure Bella and I could afford it first and foremost. Of course, our insurance didn't cover any of it because in the State of Washington there was no law requiring any level of coverage for fertility treatments. Which was fucking typical, and the procedures were a mile long and just kept adding up. Embryo transfer cycle, embryo freezing; sperm freezing; injection of sperm... I was surprised they weren't going to charge us for the cup I had to whack off into.
All up we were looking at roughly thirty grand. The plus side was we got to pick a "package deal" or pay cycle by cycle. The package deal was for one cycle and three transfers, and if Bella got pregnant on the first transfer, we didn't get the money back for the other two.
We went with cycle by cycle.
Then came our first consultation, making sure we knew the shit we'd just signed up for. The good news was Bella's age; which gave her better than average odds of a "successful transfer". The doctor seemed pleased by this, as if it made his job easier. The procedure was then explained; to Bella mostly, because let's face it, I was just the sperm donor. The discussion was, for the most part, about "eggs" as ifl we were breeding fucking hens, before Bella was asked how many embryos she wanted transferred at a time.
"One," Bella replied. "Well, depending on how many healthy embryos I have, I guess."
I nodded along with her in agreement, grabbing her hand in mine, when in reality, I was well and truly fucking lost. All I was able to take away from it was the fact that I was going to have to inject Bella with a shit ton of hormones, daily. Eggs were then going to be pulled from her that I had to "fertilize".
Yeah, it sounded fucking simple.
After, came more tests for Bella; blood tests mainly. Half a fucking dozen of them at least, and at the end of it, Bella was sent home to wait for her next period.
Because Bella's "natural cycle" was so irregular, she only had to wait for one, and as luck would have it—hoping it was a fucking sign of things to come—it happened five days later.
First up came the "down regulation" injections to stop Bella's natural ovulation process and to "produce as many eggs as safely as possible".
Bella fucking hates needles, so I knew the first one was going to be the hardest. She was clammed up tighter than the night we'd first had sex.
I'd almost got it in her three times when she jumped out from in front of me.
"Don't make me hold you down, woman!" I joked with her; though, I was half serious.
"Stop pausing and just bloody do it!" she snapped.
"Okay, on three. You ready?" I asked, pulling up the material of her night shirt again.
"Yeah..." she replied full of so much uncertainty she was practically sobbing.
"One...two..." I barely pressed the tip of the needle against the skin of her butt cheek when she jumped away again.
"WAIT!"
"Jesus, Bella!"
"I'm sorry!" But she didn't sound too fucking sorry, and this was two seconds before she burst into tears
With a heavy fucking sigh, I paused, giving her some time to calm down, but it was beginning to feel like pulling fucking teeth.
"Okay, I'm ready," she eventually conceded, before leaning against the bathroom sink for the umpteenth fucking time that hour.
Bending closer to her I dropped my lips to her naked shoulder, holding them against her skin for a moment. I was over this shit already.
"Think of my sister's weird looking alien twins," I spoke against her ear, and just as she drew in her breath to laugh, I jabbed and injected her.
"Edward!" she protested, spinning around to stare at me in surprise. Surprise, because I knew it didn't hurt her nearly as much as she'd thought.
"It's done, you pain in the ass."
Letting go of her breath, she broke slowly into a small smile before snaking her arms around my neck and stretching up on her toes. "Thank god for that, but you might have to take my mind off it now..."
And just as she threw me that coy look, I threw her over my shoulder.
Hell, I needed to be distracted from it, as well.
This shit went on for three weeks, and by the end she wasn't as neurotic about it. Though, I still had to inject her by surprise for the majority of it.
At the beginning of week four we were back at the clinic to check Bella's uterus lining. If it was thin we could start the injections to stimulate her ovaries into producing eggs. It was, so it was a red light on the "Stimulation Phase", but now I had to fucking inject her twice a day.
It was hell, but for all intents and purposes it appeared to be going well. Bella was really beginning to let herself feel optimistic that it was going to work, but fucking typically, we were about to peak.
After getting our new drug, "Gonal-F", we were sent home to start the jabbing with an appointment in three days' time for an ultra-sound to see if Bella was producing enough "follicles".
Just before we left, the nurse pulled me aside and told me discreetly that the new medication might make Bella have "mood swings". It was a sign of things to fucking come.
Mood swings. That's a fucking laugh. If by "mood swings" she meant that my wife was going to turn into a bat shit crazy woman, maybe I would have been better prepared.
She yelled at me in the middle of the supermarket because I picked up the wrong milk, she burst into tears because the bath water was too hot; she threw the fucking spaghetti at the wall because two noodles were stuck together; and she looked at me like she could quite easily stab me to death in my sleep. Even the fleabag was cowering away from her, and there was nothing, fucking nothing, I could say or do to make her feel better.
The only consolation was that she was only going to be on it for no more than three weeks, but I was beginning to empathize with those fucking men who'd all left their wives. Not that I'd ever, in reality, leave Bella. At least, I'd never leave my Bella. The Bella that every part of my heart and soul cried out for during the six years we were apart. The Bella who was my fucking sunshine. This injected-up-to-her-eyeballs-with-hormones Bella, however...
That Bella I could take or leave. That Bella I could throw off a cliff.
Of course, it didn't help that after each appointment we had, to check how many follicles she was growing, we were told we were supposed to have increased the Gonal-F beforehand. Apparently a fucking nurse was meant to ring us to tell us to up the dosage, but naturally, it seemed to slip her fucking mind.
Three times this fucking happened, and by the end of the course—where if the fleabag didn't bury Bella, I would have—she only had seven follicles and time had run out. She couldn't be on the Gonal-F for too long or apparently she could end up with exploded fucking ovaries or something to that extent, and she couldn't stay on it anymore because if she didn't kill me, I would kill her.
She was booked for an egg collection two days later, and all the optimism we'd had at the beginning was starting to crumble. She was still holding on, though. By the barest fucking minimum, and I was fucking fearing the day when she cracked.
It was beginning to feel inevitable.
On the morning of the collection one of the nurses called to tell us the procedure was moved from the hospital to the clinic. We left before dawn, and Bella didn't speak a word the entire trip.
She was nervous, I told myself repeatedly, while trying to avoid eye contact with her at all cost. I couldn't say the right thing to her at all anymore, and lately even my expressions were irritating her. Plus, I didn't think it would be very fucking productive if she started beating me with her purse, causing me to drive off the fucking interstate.
When we arrived, Bella was ushered off to one room, while I was shoved in the opposite direction. I barely got the chance to kiss her goodbye; only she wouldn't let me. Instead, she planted her lips to the side of my neck and whispered in my ear, "I'm sorry for being such an evil witch, honey. I love you." Then she smiled at me, letting me know that she was still down there somewhere, through all this crazy shit.
Next was my part. I was given a little plastic cup with a yellow lid and sent to a room with pink walls and kitschy furniture that was full of sleazy magazines I hadn't looked at since I was fifteen. There was also a selection of porn on fucking VHS that I really didn't want to fucking touch let alone watch.
How the hell could I jack off to any of this? Hell, it'd been years since I'd even done it. I didn't need to. Bella kept me pretty well satisfied, and heaven help me if I'd whacked off over the last couple of weeks while she was full psycho. I had to make sure I had 'optimal sperm quantity'. I swear she would have ripped my dick off—with her teeth.
Jesus...
Usually, all I had to do to get in the mood was picture Bella full of all her newly acquired muscles wearing a pair of cowboy boots. As fucking corny as that was, but that Bella seemed long gone, and in her place, was off the charts crazy Bella, ready to hurl a tin of dog food at my head for buying the wrong brand.
I flipped through the magazines and paced back and forth trying to conjure something up that could get me going, but if truth be told, the last thing I felt like doing after the last couple of weeks was jacking off.
Eventually, I got my jeans halfway down, and sat on the couch, trying not to fucking picture how many men had done this very thing before me, when the fucking door opened and one of the nurses stuck her head around it.
"How you going in there?" she asked all fucking cheery, while I scrambled to hide my dick behind an old copy of "Juggs" circa fucking 1981!
"Jesus fucking Christ!" I burst, almost losing my fucking voice before she immediately caught on and closed the door a little too violently behind her.
But seriously, what the fuck did she expect me to say? "Please come and help me jerk off. I'm sure my psychotic wife won't mind."?
Fuck me...
By the time I was done with it, I was exhausted; not to mention fucking chafed. I'd never had to force it more in my entire life.
I took it to the nurse at the reception desk, as instructed, who naturally, yelled it out for the entire fucking building to hear. "IS THIS YOUR SEMEN SAMPLE?"
I knew we were in a fucking fertility clinic, but Jesus!
No, it's fucking super glue, you imbecile, I wanted to reply with. Instead, I gritted my fucking teeth and nodded, turning my head to rip the fucking skin of my forehead off. That's when I met the wearied eyes of a half a dozen guys in the room, and that's when I got it.
These guys were my people. These guys had lived my life the last couple of months for fuck knows how many "cycles". These guys had watched their wives go from a normal human being to a fucking vampire ready to suck the manhood clean out of them all in the quest to get her successfully pregnant.
These guys were me.
After giving me a form to fill in—to make sure my sperm didn't go to the wrong fucking woman—I filled it out and then sat in one of the plastic chairs next to these poor fucking bastards. That I was now one of. We all smiled awkwardly at each other, but with that same sense of affinity that we knew exactly what each other was going through. No one spoke. What was there to say, after all?
Please kill me?
Please kill my wife?
Please make this fucking work?
Ten minutes later, I was told Bella was in recovery and was escorted in to see her. I figured she'd be groggy or sleepy, but I sure as hell didn't expect her to be sitting up, covering her face with her hands, sobbing her fucking heart out. And I had no idea whether it had gone badly, or it was a normal reaction from the continued effect of the fucking hormones.
Sitting beside her on the bed, I pulled her against me. "What is it, baby?" I asked her softly, wiping her hair off her damp forehead.
For a good five minutes she couldn't utter a coherent word before it rushed out of her. "I woke up, E-Edward. I f-felt s-so v-violated."
I immediately tensed, and paused for a minute. "What do you mean 'you woke up'?"
She shook her head, attempting pitifully to dry her eyes and calm herself. "I w-woke up half w-way through. I w-was screaming at them t-to s-stop. It f-felt l-like th-they w-were ripping me ap-art."
On impulse I leaped off the bed, immediately fucking irate. "You woke up?" I fumed in fucking disbelief before looking around for someone's neck to fucking snap.
I knew the procedure Bella had just gone through, and I was assured she'd be unconscious under anesthetic. And one look at the guilty looking fucking nurse told me just how much of a fuck up it had been.
I pointed my finger at her, indicating I wanted to speak to her. She paled but followed me out of the room and into the corridor regardless.
"Take me to the fuc-doctor who performed my wife's surgery," I demanded through clenched teeth.
She nodded, and asked me to wait where I was before she disappeared around a corner. Five minutes later a weasel of a man approached me, looking as guilty as fucking sin while eyeing me cautiously; as if he were keenly aware I was about to rip his head off.
He looked no older than I was, and I couldn't recall ever seeing him during any of our consultations.
"You told me my wife would be unconscious and she wouldn't feel a thing!" I reminded him, pointing my finger an inch from his bulbous fucking head as I struggled to keep my voice low.
"Well, no, we don't use general anesthetic in the clinic," he explained nervously, without meeting my eyes. "We use conscious sedation."
"Conscious sedation," I echoed him sarcastically. "How strange that none of your incompetent fucking staff bothered to inform us of that," I lowered my voice further, taking a step toward him when he opened his mouth to protest.
"It's very unusual for patients to be conscious enough to feel pain," he tried explaining, but obviously knew it was futile. "I'm very sorry for your wife's discomfort."
"Discomfort?! Is that what you think it was?!" I snapped in fucking disbelief, glancing quickly away from him and running my hands back through my hair, if only to distract myself from strangling the little prick. "How many did you get!?"
"How many?" he repeated, fucking blinking.
"Eggs, you idiot!"
His eyes widened. He was offended but he had the fucking foresight not to mention it. "Five," he eventually admitted, having the decency to look ashamed.
"Five," I repeated, immediately pissed off. "Five..."
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Cullen. I—"
"Pray they fucking take!" I cut him off, making the idiot jump backwards against the wall as if I really was going to bury the little pissant. "Now sign my wife out of this place."
Fifteen minutes later I was driving Bella back home. She was supposed to stay for two hours in recovery, but there was no way in hell I was letting her stay in that fucking clinic for another second.
She was tender and sore, but more traumatized than anything else, and the look in her eyes was fucking shredding me. I knew what she was feeling without her needing to express it; that she'd failed. And I couldn't tell her that she hadn't, that she could never fail in my eyes, because I knew she'd never believe me.
And we still had to wait and see if any of the eggs fertilized, and then if any of those made it to the transfer stage. And by this point neither one of us was feeling fucking optimistic about it.
I tried to reassure her regardless, and she accepted it, but I knew she was losing hope.
I was over the entire fucking process. Surely a baby wasn't worth putting her—putting us—through this amount of fucking pain. Only I knew for her, it was. She wanted a baby no matter how much pain she had to go through, and I wanted to give her a baby. I just couldn't bear to see her go through much more than she already had.
It was like a bad fucking nightmare on continuous rerun.
For the next twenty-four hours Bella recovered from the butchering they'd done to her, while we waited. She barely spoke; in fact, you could hear a fucking pin drop, the silence was that deafening. She was holding her breath; holding onto the last hope, and fuck me, if we got any more bad luck it would break me as much as it would her.
Then we got the phone call; three had fertilized, and all three looked healthy enough to be transferred.
The embryo transfer was booked for two days later, and it was the first time Bella smiled, really smiled, in weeks.
The night before she lost it again, apologizing to me repeatedly for being so "crazy" the last few weeks, but I knew she was so on edge she needed to release it some way.
Pulling her against my chest, I buried my face against the top of her head. "I know, baby," I murmured. "Just promise me our kid won't come out looking as weird as my newest 'nephew' and I'll forgive you for all of it."
She laughed, whacking me in the chest for good measure. "Stop it!"
"Shut up and go to sleep, woman!" I teased her. "Big day tomorrow."
Big fucking day, indeed.
The transfer was booked for 10am, and by the time we arrived, we were told—by a different doctor this time, than 'Dr. Fuckup' from the retrieval—that one embryo had died, but the two remaining were still alive and healthy. We had one for a "fresh" transfer, and one spare that could be frozen.
I was allowed to stay with Bella this time, and it was relatively quick and painless. She held my hand like a vice, jumping at the first sign of pressure. The nurse talked her through it, though, while I tried to ignore the fact that the doctor was between my wife's legs, and the embryo was implanted.
Now, after the fucking rollercoaster of emotion that had been the last couple of months, all that was left to do was wait and see if the little shit stuck.
In two weeks Bella had to come in for a blood test to see if she was pregnant. The nurse made her promise not to do a home pregnancy test beforehand in case she got a false positive, and then we left to try and live normally for the next couple of weeks. Something I knew was going to be fucking agonizing.
Bella was on tenterhooks the entire time; she was almost afraid to sneeze, and she flatly refused to let me anywhere near her. It was as if she thought I might seduce her into sex and then miscarry the little bunch of cells that her entire life was now revolving around. If truth be told I wasn't about to risk this pregnancy as much as she was. For her sake, but for mine as well.
Hell, we'd gone through so much heartache and energy to achieve this that I found myself desperately hoping it worked out.
I wanted this kid. I really did.
The two weeks came and we went in for the blood test, and of course, just to fucking drag it out further, we had to wait another twenty-four hours for the results. Bella had to ring at 4pm the next day.
I was less than fucking impressed with this clinic, to say the least, but if Bella got a baby out of it, I was willing to let it all go.
Then I got the phone call.
I was at work, and so was Bella. I was expecting her call just after four, so when an "emergency" call got dispatched to me just before 1pm, I wasn't sure what to make of it.
"Edward, it's Angela," came her anxious sounding voice, before I could put my mouth to the receiver.
"Angela," I repeated blankly.
"It's Bella. Can you come home?"
"What happened? Is it negative?" I asked, feeling resigned all of a sudden, but of course it would be fucking negative.
"They rang her at the restaurant, and yes, it's negative," her voice softened, "but it's not only that..."
I paused, and for a moment I could barely take a fucking breath.
"What is it...?" I sighed inevitably, pushing my fingers rigidly against my scalp.
"Both were transferred. Bella asked when she could come in for another cycle to have the second embryo transferred, and they told her that there were no more embryos. They'd both had been transferred at the same time," she explained in a rush before my brain could catch up and process what she was saying. "Edward...?"
"Fuck," I muttered, turning to beat my head into the concrete wall of the hospital, before quickly stepping inside the utilities room; fearing I was about to fucking lose it. "Fuck!" I repeated, just as the anger kicked in. "Are you fucking kidding me!?" I almost fucking hollered, needing to suppress it on the eleventh hour.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, "but Bella's in...pieces. Can you come home early?"
"I'm leaving now."
How the fuck I made it home in one piece I'll never know. I spent the majority of the time screaming threats and expletives down the phone to the fucking running joke of an infertility clinic while I was so fucking irate I couldn't stop my hands from shaking.
"I WANT MY DAMN MONEY BACK!" I roared, before throwing my phone at the closed window, and almost veering off the road.
Angela had taken Bella home, and by the time I arrived I found them both on the sofa. Bella was curled up in the corner holding a mug of coffee that Angela had obviously made her, unable to disguise the fact that she was trembling all over, while the expression on her face was pure fucking heartbreak.
And it fucking broke me.
It took her a moment to even notice me standing before her. Angela gently nudged her, and when she turned to me, her entire face crumbled before she climbed off the sofa and into my arms.
"I'm sorry, honey," she uttered in this choked, fractured voice, which only tore my heart open further.
She always felt the need to apologize to me, as if it was somehow her fault.
"It's not your fault, baby," I promised her, trying to prize her off my chest so I could look at her, but she remained glued against me.
"It is," she insisted, her sobs increasing.
Angela squeezed my arm, distracting me for a moment and letting me know she was leaving, before throwing me a sympathetic smile.
"Thanks, Ang," I mouthed, before hoisting Bella into my arms and carrying her upstairs.
"I don't want to do it anymore, Edward," she cried, burying her face into her pillow, after I laid her down on the bed. "I can't keep losing them."
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her that they were just cells, not babies—somehow thinking that would fucking comfort her—when I stopped myself. She would have killed me because to her they were babies; just as much as Lilly was, and my sister's weird looking offspring.
"I know..." I offered her softly because it was all I could think to say, before I laid myself beside her and pulled her against my chest. "We'll get passed this, I promise you, honey."
"You'll eventually resent me," she reminded me of her fucking paranoia.
"I won't."
"You can't make promises that you don't know you can ever k-keep," she hiccupped, sounding pitifully broken.
"Bella, look at me." She refused. "Dammit, Bella, did you think I was fucking miserable in Seattle without you because I wanted babies? I could have fucking had them with anyone—with Kate!"
Oh, fuck...
She reacted immediately, turning to gaze up at me with an injured expression, like I'd mortally wounded her. I suspected I had.
"You still can. You can have babies with anyone, but I can't. And one day just having me around won't be enough—not when everyone around us has kids," she cried, her voice rising before it broke and became even more fucking gut wrenching to hear.
"Jesus, Bella, I didn't marry you for your uterus!" I insisted, but I knew I wasn't getting through to her. "We'll try again. We'll just have a break for a while, and we'll find another clinic."
"No," she sobbed, shaking her head before gazing up at me. "I don't want to go through that again," she pleaded with me, "and besides, we'd have to do a brand new cycle, and I can't reconcile so much money because of me."
"Listen, you pain in the ass," I snapped, cupping her face in my palms and forcing her to fully look at me, "I would do anything for you. If you want a baby, I'm going to fucking give you one!"
She only shook her head, her face tear streaked and blotchy, but beginning to reflect a real hopelessness that I wasn't sure I could break her out of. "Just...give me a while, okay?"
A while... A while became a few days which became a few weeks, and slowly but surely one thing became clear. I was losing her. She was letting this define her and she was beginning to push me away; convinced I'd end up fucking hating her.
Outwardly she appeared to be handling everything well. She went to work, she came home and made me dinner. She talked about stupid shit that had happened at the restaurant, and she even had sex with me, but I could see it in her eyes; the pain and fear of what she'd lost and what she was convinced she'd inevitably lose.
I tried everything I could to distract her, to cheer her up, and make her promises that—she was right—I had no idea I could ever keep, but it was no good. She was retreating away from me.
Then came the day she told me she was going "home" to Australia for a while.
"THE HELL YOU ARE!" I fucking lost it. "You are my fucking wife, Bella, and you're not just going to fucking leave me over this!"
"You can't stop me!" she hollered back at me, fucking daring me.
"Wanna bet?" I challenged her, raising my brow.
"Watch me." And just to push it that much further, she threw her purse over her shoulder, glaring up at me, before moving to leave through the front door.
I grabbed her hand, preventing her from taking another step. "I'm not letting you leave, Bella," I insisted, my voice quiet but full of fucking determination.
She pulled her hand back, but I only gripped her tighter, and in the next moment she was struggling, becoming more and more pissed off the longer I refused to budge.
"Let me go, you asshole!" she demanded, her voice becoming strained until I wasn't sure if she was angrier more than she was upset, but angry she still was.
I smirked at her like the cocky bastard I was, knowing full well I had the upper hand. All it did was push her over the edge, before she slapped me straight across the face, shocking the hell out of me, and by the look in her eyes she didn't fucking regret it. And right then I got the significance of it, and if fucking cut deep, because through everything I'd ever put Bella through, she'd never hit me.
"DAMMIT, BELLA!" I fucking roared, but at the same time, I was gutted. I grabbed her around the top of her arms, pulled her off the ground and anchored her up against the wall. I was too rough; I knew that immediately. I knew by the sound it made as her body slammed against the surface, and as it reflected in her face along with a sizeable amount of shock. But I had to get it fucking through to her at all cost. "Do you know what it would fucking do to me if you left me? DO YOU!?" I yelled at her, the pain of it behind my voice making it fucking hoarse, while she shrunk subtly away from me. "It would fucking kill me! Is that what you want to do?!"
She shook her head a little too quickly, her face slowly beginning to crumble; though, she fought with every breath against it.
"I can't lose you, Bella. I've tried fucking living without you, and I can't!" I admitted, my tone eventually softening in fucking defeat, before I released her and dropped down to the stairs; my head falling into my hands.
There was silence for the longest moment before she collapsed beside me and pulled my head against her chest, and I fucking swear I heard her heart break in two.
"Edward...I'm so sorry! Please—please forgive me!" she pleaded with me, her voice so full of pain that I barely recognized her behind it. "I just...I just..."
But she had no more words left, because after all this shit we'd been through there was nothing left to say. There was nothing left but the two of us.
I engulfed her to me, pressing her face between my palms. "Baby, look at me." My voice continued to break, and so much fucking emotion was spilling from me I felt like it was literally shredding me. "We will get through this, but you have to promise me to never ever do anything like that again."
She only nodded emphatically, the tears flowing in rivers down her face.
"Promise me, Bella!" I insisted, crushing her against me this time.
"I promise," she sobbed, her breath flooding against my skin. "I'm so sorry, honey!"
And then she was kissing me, kissing me impulsively and heatedly as she repeatedly apologized to me, until every last word she spoke became lost against my skin, against my mouth.
I somehow got to my feet, pulling Bella to hers along with me, before I was carrying her upstairs. I ripped her clothes from her body while my heart felt like it was going to burst through my fucking chest.
I'd brought her back, back from that fucking place she instinctively withdrew away to, back to me; back with me. And while we both knew it wasn't the first time this had ever happened, I inherently knew it wouldn't be the last. Because, while I was the only one who could ever find her again in this fucking darkness, she was the only one who could ever find me.
She slept in my arms that night, her little body cocooned against mine as if she feared even unintentionally letting me go. And she sobbed silently in her sleep. All fucking night.
And I knew one thing: I had to do whatever I could to fix this.
The next day I was on afternoon shift. I woke up earlier than she did and got up and made her breakfast before sending her off to work. While that burning fucking agony in her eyes only cemented my resolve.
"You know I love you more than my own life, don't you?" she all but whispered, her voice trembling and threatening her with more tears.
For a moment I only smiled at her, before I slung my arm around her neck and pressed my lips to the top of her head.
"Yeah...I know. Now go to work, you pain in the ass," I teased her with too much emotion in my voice before zipping up her jacket, because only Bella could wear a jacket in the middle of summer.
She broke into this warm, emotionally fucked up smile, but she was there beneath it. It was something I hadn't seen since our honeymoon, and something I was beginning to doubt I'd ever see again.
I watched her leave and the minute her truck disappeared down the drive, I whipped my phone out of my pocket and dialed. It picked up after the third ring.
"Carlisle? It's Edward."
A/N: Ye gods, this was a long one. Anywho, I gotta crash. I'll post more tomorrow.