Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise, I just use their creations to have my wicked way with them. No copyright infringement is intended.
R.I.P. mad4hugh
Many thanks to Jadsmama and Ladysharkey1, my amazing beta team for this story. You ladies rock!
This chapter comes with a warning as it deals with the fate of one Rosalie Cullen and from the books we all know what that fate entails. It will not be a graphic description, though.
25.
The daughter.
I killed her.
He closed his eyes, a shudder wracking through his body as the whole event started playing back in front of him; her laughter as she greeted him at the door, the fight with Tanya, waking up to the dull crash outside that would forever cast his life into darkness…
Isabella's shocked gasp came as a kick to the gut, though, seriously, what did he expect? He'd just told her he had killed his own child, that he was the worst kind of human being in the world. It would have been foolish to think she could just shrug it off.
What he didn't expect, however, were the sensation of cool, slightly trembling hands closing around his cheeks and honest, compassionate eyes shining up at him through unshed tears when he finally dared to open his eyes again and look at her. "What happened?" she whispered.
The loudness of his snort startled them both, his self-loathing as strong as ever as he let out a humorless laugh. "Didn't I just tell you?"
"You told me nothing." Her eyes narrowed as she shook her head, reminding him again of what had gotten him into this mess. "The only thing I know is that you had a child and she died. I want to know how."
"She's dead," he croaked, wincing as the words sliced through his soul like a knife. "What more is there to say about it?" he continued in an equally lifeless tone of voice.
"Edward!" she admonished him. "You can't just drop a bomb on me and expect me to just shrug it off and act like I haven't heard anything. I know you didn't kill her. I want to know what happened, damn it, and I won't stop hounding you until you tell me."
"No?" he tried even though he knew there was no way to get out of Isabella's questioning but by baring his broken soul to her. "Not even if I ask you nicely?"
She sighed, her cool fingers brushing his cheeks. "I know I'm not exactly the one to talk, seeing as I haven't been the most forthcoming with information either, but if we are ever going to stand a chance at making this…" she waved her hand between them before resting it back over his heart, "work, you've got to let me in." She smiled sadly when her words met with nothing but silence. "No matter what you tell me, I'll still be here."
"That's easy to say now," he muttered, still wondering how he was ever going to get the words out to explain to her how his heart got ripped out that day and part of him died along with his little girl.
How he sometimes wished it had been all of him, that it had been his life lost that day instead of hers.
"Trust me," she chuckled, "if there had ever been a chance of me running, I would have done so the second you confessed to killing your kid." Her had rose again to cup his cheek and he found himself leaning into her touch, his eyes closing as he relished in the softness of her fingertips on his skin. "And if it's the falling apart you're afraid off," she went on, her voice completely composed and serious again, "they may not look like much, but my shoulders are strong and waterproof. They will carry you if you need them."
He smiled, for the first time since he'd seen her coming through the door that day, his lips finding hers without looking. "I love you," he whispered.
Her eyes widened slightly as if in shock before her lips pulled into the most radiant smile he'd ever seen. He realized then that, as much as he'd felt it and shown it and had seen his feelings reflected in hers, they'd never actually spoken the words before. It felt…liberating, even at a time like that. "I love you, too, Edward," she answered as her lips pressed softly against his before she pulled back again. "For better and for worse."
He smiled sadly, nodding at her words before repeating them, "For better and for worse," and then summoning all of his willpower before he surrendered, "Okay."
"Okay," she repeated, her fingers lacing with his as she shifted into a sitting position, his head on her lap and her free hand stroking his hair as she waited patiently for him to begin.
Okay. He took another deep breath, still trying to find the strength from somewhere to relive that day. "Where do you want me to start?"
"At the beginning?" she deadpanned, her fingers pausing momentarily over his scalp. "I always find it's easier to start from a happy place. It gives you some leeway to work up to the pain."
He nodded, figuring it seemed logical enough. It seemed such a long time ago, even though his pain was still fresh, his mind quickly hopping over the end of what his story would be to the very beginning. "Tanya and I met in medical school." He sighed, remembering what it had been like back in the day, when his most pressing worry was how to handle his huge workload without turning into a complete hermit. "She transferred from Dartmouth to Northwestern to take care of her grandmother and we just clicked. She was like me - skipping parties and the typical college stuff and fast-tracking through school at a pace that pretty much excluded have anything in common with your classmates."
"That must have been tough," Isabella mused, her hands still brushing through his hair in a way that would have made him purr if he'd been a cat.
"It used to be," he shrugged, "but I still had enough friends to never be lonely or without a drinking buddy. And then, of course, I had Tanya." He smiled at the memories of the good years. "We had so much in common it was almost impossible for us not to become friends but it wasn't until later that things evolved between us. It was all a matter of convenience, I guess."
He could almost hear Isabella's puzzled frown in her voice as she spoke. "Convenience?"
"When you're studying to be a doctor, you don't exactly have a lot of spare time on your hands to cruise around bars, looking for girls," he explained, "especially not when you have your entire family hounding you to excel and prove to them that you'd made the right choice after all. In hindsight we still had it easy back then, with our Residencies still looming in the distance, but if anyone had asked us, we'd told them it was hell." He shrugged.
"Anyway… with both of us being single and neither feeling the need to waste precious time scouring bars to get laid, we just kind of fell into this thing together and it worked. Or, at least, we thought it did."
His anxiety rose as the harder parts got closer. "My parents hated her, of course. They hated that I hadn't picked the job they'd been priming me for ever since the day I was born, and then with me showing up with a fellow doctor-in-training, one who hailed from middle-class circumstances to boot? My mother almost had a stroke." It had felt good, though, to finally make his own choices no matter how much his parents disapproved of them. To him, it was what freedom had felt like. "Things went on like that well into our Residency until one day Tanya told me she was pregnant."
The pressure of Isabella's fingers increased slightly as she realized they were getting closer to the heartbreak. "There was never a question about whether or not we were going to keep the baby. We just made it work, though God knows how we did it without going crazy. We got married, dipped into our savings to buy a nice little place in a quiet neighborhood and had our baby while we completed our residencies. We were just lucky, I guess, that Claire took it easy on us. She was just…amazing."
He smiled, the good outweighing the bad in his mind as it went back to those first few years of having her in his life. "It was a struggle every day, though. Neither of us wanted to sacrifice their career and education to stay home so we constantly had to juggle shifts and nannies while ignoring our guilt over not being at home with Claire, where we really wanted to be, and my parents' ongoing disapproval."
"Your parents disapproved of Claire?" Isabella's fingers stalled with shock, making him shift uncomfortably like his only lifeline was suddenly pulled back.
She chuckled, relief flooding his system as she went back to stroking his hair. "They hardly knew her," he explained. "They didn't so much disapprove of her as of the path I'd chosen. To them, my choice to forgo business school for a medical career was objectionable but not completely insurmountable. After all, my sister, Charlotte, was chomping at the bits to take over the family business and there were more than enough doctors walking around in Chicago's high society to make the profession socially acceptable." He chuckled darkly, his bitterness over his parents' behavior seeping back in. "They didn't understand how I could endanger my career for a 'mistake', as they called it. As far as they were concerned, we should have just gotten rid of Claire and focused on getting rich and 'noticed by the right kind of people'. They hated Tanya, of course. Hated her. My mom and dad thought she was to blame for all of it - that getting pregnant had been her way of getting her hands on my money."
"She wasn't?" The calm, inquisitive tone of Isabella's question took him aback for a moment. It wasn't jealous or insinuative. She just wanted to know.
"No," he answered her question. "Tanya hated the money and all the shit it had gotten us into with my parents. Even when we got divorced, she never wanted any of it, much to my parents shock and amazement."
"Okay." She nodded, digesting this new piece of information. "Go on."
He sighed, the pain already starting to throb through his veins as he started the final part of his account. "As we got further into our training, our supervisors started pushing us farther and harder, trying to get us to reach our true potential. As exhilarating as it was to be able to take more and more responsibility, we were both really starting to feel it in our bones. We were always so tired…" His voice stopped on the threshold of the final stretch, his hands clenching into fists by his side as he breathed heavily through the pain.
"I've got you." Isabella's voice was equally heavy with emotion, the hand she held never loosening its hold, though it must have hurt from the pressure he'd exerted on it. "Take your time."
"I just got home after pulling a double shift," his voice started again, shakily and barely audible but at least he got the words out somehow. "It had been absolute hell – almost like all the people in Chicago had decided to get sick or wounded at the same time. The only thing keeping me sane was the thought that Tanya had the day off, which meant that I could get some sleep while she watched Claire." He took a shaky breath, getting just enough air in his lungs to go on. If he stopped now, he'd never get the words out.
"When I got home, Tanya was in the process of getting ready to leave. One of the other residents on her team had called in sick and they needed her to take over. She'd already called in a sitter who was supposed to arrive at any minute, but still….we fought, like we only seemed to do those days, but there was nothing I could do to stop her from going. Claire was asleep and I only had to stay awake for a few more minutes until the babysitter would arrive; a few more fucking minutes…and I failed."
A sob wracked through his throat as his strength gave out; the misery of those few minutes pulling him completely under. "I could stay awake for hours and hours on end when operating on a patient but I couldn't manage a couple of minutes to look after my own daughter. I fell asleep on the couch waiting for the babysitter and she must have woken up in the meantime and climbed out of her crib…" he continued in a chocking whisper, "Tanya had warned me that she'd attempted to do so a few times before but I…I was asleep. I never heard a thing until…" Until the screeching of tires followed by a dull thud woke him up, his body immediately knowing something was terribly wrong, even before his eyes found the empty crib and the opened back door.
"I tried to get her back," he gasped, his eyes misty through his tears. "I tried to breathe for her and keep her heart going until the ambulance arrived but…it was all for nothing. The blow had been too much for her little body…" Edward took a deep breath, summoning every drop of courage he had to say the words Isabella needed to hear. "She'd already died." His eyes squeezed shut as if the action could somehow keep out the pain. "She died because I fell asleep; because I neglected my daughter."
"She died because of a horrible accident," Isabella spoke, calmly, though inside her heart was breaking. "I know you may feel responsible for it, but you are not to blame."
"Of course I am!" he cried out. "I fell asleep. I left the door unlocked. I failed to notice she'd woken up."
"And would you have done all of that had you known the outcome?" she questioned.
"Of course not!" he growled, his agitation growing. "I loved her. I love her so fucking much!"
"Then you have to see that this was all just one fucking unlucky twist of fate," she pressed. "You didn't want this to happen, nor, I imagine, did Tanya, the babysitter or anyone else. But still it did happen and you can go on and curse fate for being such a nasty fucking bitch or blame yourself until your self-hate has grown so big that you can find no other reason but to escape it in either death or addiction, but you and I both know it won't solve anything."
He gasped, his eyes widening as he looked up. "How did you know?"
She smirked. "I may be unschooled and sheltered but even I know that doctors of your caliber won't chose to wither their days away at a small, country hospital unless something big has happened and, well, if I'd lived through what you've been forced to deal with, I would most definitely look for a way to escape the pain. Any way I could."
The pain. He closed his eyes and thought, it will never go away.
And part of him really didn't want it to; the piece of him that was afraid that if it did, then so would Claire. His pain was all he had left of her.
"So now you know," he finished, taking her stunned silence for rejection, because it's what should be there. It was what he deserved. Still, he couldn't look her in the eyes and see the disgust that he knew would lie in them, so he looked away as he continued. "I wasn't a good enough father to stay awake long enough to make sure my daughter was safe, nor suffer the consequences like a real man would. I'd understand if you don't want anything to do with me after this. Hell, I don't want to be around myself most of the time, to be honest."
Her laughter startled him and he looked up, her eyes not laden with rejection but with a compassion that instantly warmed his bleeding heart. "You silly man! Do you really still think I'm going to walk out on you? Even after everything you've heard me say just now." She shook her head, as if the very idea of it alone was completely preposterous. "You may very well be the best thing that ever happened to me. I'd be stupid to leave you."
"Sometimes I really don't understand you." In spite of his pain and the distress lingering even after his tale had been told, there was a smile on his lips as he looked at her, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing it as softly and reverently as she deserved to be kissed.
"Good," she chuckled, shifting so that she was beside him again, her body stretching out alongside his as she caressed his face. "I'd hate to become boring at some point."
"I don't think that will ever happen." He leaned in, kissing her lips, her face, anywhere he could reach as she spurred him on with the small sounds of pleasure falling from her lips whenever he took his mouth away from hers long enough. Her hands tucked into his soft hair one second then tugging at his clothes the next. Isabella's leg hitched over his of its own accord, bringing them as close together as their clothes allowed.
But he needed her closer. He craved her closer.
"Oh!" she half-moaned, half growled, her hands getting more and more confident as they worked on the buttons of his Oxford, their bodies moving as if their clothes had already been lost.
It was clear she had never experienced anything like this before. Though her body moved with the natural certainty of a time-old instinct, her hands were trembling and her eyes, when opened, continuously searched his for reassurance.
And Edward was more than happy to give it her, his cock painfully hard as he rubbed against her, his mind forever torn between seeking his own pleasure and assuring hers.
She's more important.
She's more important.
She's more important.
He kept on repeating the same mantra over and over again, listening closely for the involuntary moans which poured from her lips every time he hit the right spot, her fingers digging deeper and deeper into his skin as he brought her slowly, but steadily, to the edge of a cliff she'd never stood on before.
And he loved it. Boy, did he love it! The look on her face as she fell apart beneath him drove him to the edge himself; the way her eyes were half closed with extreme pleasure and her mouth fell open in a quiet gasp as her body stilled, her fingers digging into the mattress beneath her in search of anything to hold on to as wave after wave of pleasure coursed through her.
It was one of the most amazing things he'd ever seen in his life and, even though his erection was weeping in his pants for all the pleasures it had been denied, the satisfaction from eliciting that kind of reaction from her outweighed his own discomfort.
"Edward…that was…" she panted, her eyes shining and still slightly distant as she slowly came back to the earth.
"I know, love," he chuckled, pressing soft kisses to her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose…her lips. "And this is just the beginning."
"It gets better?" Her eyes widened as he nodded, her bottom lip disappearing between her teeth again, doing nothing to will his erection away. "But you didn't…"
"That's not important," he lied, though it wasn't completely untrue. "Tonight is all about you." That part was the truth, even though his balls were blue to the point he was afraid they were going to explode if he didn't make it to the privacy of his bathroom to jack off soon, her pleasure was more important than his that night. He knew better than to push her and if they would pursue matters further, that was exactly what would happen.
She didn't seem completely convinced, her brows furrowed as she studied him. "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," he nodded, trying to convince himself as much as her. The sound of the alarm going off on her cell phone offered him the saving Grace he needed to remain the gentleman he'd promised himself to be, though his heart was heavy as he shifted his body away, allowing her the freedom of movement to switch off the little device. "Time to say goodbye, again."
"Will you be here tomorrow night?" Her face was averted, as it always was, but Edward didn't need to see it to know the fragile, vulnerable look in her eyes. His heart hurt, knowing that even after all the promises they'd made, she still expected him to bail.
Not that he wasn't completely innocent of that sin himself.
"I have to work." He sighed, wishing more than anything that he had a more nine-to-five kind of job. Not that he would seriously trade his career for anything but it would have made it a whole lot easier to meet up with her. "I'm covering half a shift for Maggie while she and the Reverend go out on a date or whatever they do…" He cringed, not really wanting to think of his colleague and the priest out on the town. "I'll be off in the morning, though. So we can still meet up then."
She nodded, a small smile breaking through. "Just let me know when you're ready."
He watched from the bed as she gathered her things, making sure she looked as pristine as if she'd just gone out for a late-night stroll through the garden instead of a roll in the hay with a man who was, by all intents and purposes, banned from the property. "I'll miss you."
"So will I." She leaned in for a kiss that grew more and more heated by the second, their hands clawing at each other as all of Isabella's hard work at putting herself back together again was destroyed in only seconds. "At least you will have the benefit of being able to move freely and talk about something else than stuff that seems to have come straight from a history book."
She made a face, prompting him to kiss the frowns away from her skin until they were both breathless again. "Now go," he urged her, using the last bit of his strength to move away from her again. "Before I won't be able to let you go."
"And whose fault is that?" she chuckled, though she took his advice, only her scent lingering in the air as she closed the door behind her.
He sighed, resting his head against the headboard as he tried to take stock of everything which had happened that night; his fear, their fight, her explanation of the agreement existing between her and James, his account of what had happened to Claire…it seemed ages ago now that he had spoken those words and feared their effects. In reality, though, it couldn't have been more than an hour. They were always on limited time.
It was only then that he picked up the jacket he'd hastily thrown aside when he came in, hours ago, his breath stuck in his throat when the blinking light on his phone told he had not just one but ten new messages and over a dozen missed calls waiting for him.
Esme.
He dialed her number on his way back to the car, the tone of his sister's voice when she picked up immediately putting all his senses on high alarm. "Esme? What's going on?"
"Why the hell didn't you pick up your phone! I've been trying to reach you," she wailed, her anger springing more from anguish than from any actual anger. "Where have you been?"
"I...I've been with Isabella," he spoke dismissively, sensing there were more pressing questions to be answered. "What's going on, Es?"
"It's Rosalie," Esme's voice trailed off in a sob. "They brought her into the ER about an hour ago. Edward, she was…" Her voice faltered as Edward drew in a sharp breath, his mind imagining the worst. "How soon can you get here?"
"I'm getting into my car right now," he answered, pressing the button to unlock the doors as he spoke. "I'll be there in ten, fifteen at the most."
"Be safe, Edward," his sister muttered. "I know how you are behind the wheel sometimes and I can't handle having another one of my loved ones ending up in the ER tonight."
"Alright, then make that twenty," he promised, jamming his key into the ignition and starting the car. "Hang in there, sis." He disconnected the call as he rolled out of his usual parking spot behind the undergrowth, carefully hidden from the road in case someone would decide to drive out to the middle of nowhere.
He tore across the roads, steering deftly through all the twists and turns he knew so well until he arrived at the traffic light at the foot of the mountain; the absence of further traffic securing his swift procession through town.
His hands clenched around the steering wheel as he tried to fill in the blanks his sister's speech had left open. Something bad had happened to Rose – something very bad had to have happened to her since she ended up in the ER, and his sister in a state of utter devastation. But what could it be?
A car crash maybe? Or something to do with alcohol abuse? They'd had a few cases come in over the weeks where underage kids had gotten their hands on illegal alcohol and drank themselves into a coma. He had a hard time imagining Rosalie, with all her exalted ideas of becoming the next society queen, would do a careless thing like that, though. Anything with that could risk her pristine record was out of the question with her.
But then if it wasn't that, what was it?
The Waiting Room inside Forks General was buzzing when he came in, the nervous looks and pitiful glances of the staff catapulting him through the main hall and up the stairs to the first floor where he assumed his family would be.
"You're here. Thank God." He only got a quick glance at his sister's face before she'd flung herself around him, her tears wet on his throat as she cried into his shoulder. What he saw, though, was enough to send chills down his spine.
"Shh," he shushed, patting her back as if she were a child as she broke down, her body shaking with deep sobs. "It's alright, sis. I've got you." Rocking her gently from side to side he allowed his eyes to roam the small waiting room, which was empty except for a man snoozing in the corner. "Where are Carlisle and Jasper?"
"Carlisle has been in with Rose from the start," she explained, her words barely recognizable through her crying. "They won't let him do anything, of course, but at least he's able to hold her hand…"
Poor Carlisle. For a moment he was brought back to that day when he, like Carlisle, had been powerless to do anything but just sit there, hold his daughter and pray for the best. He didn't yet know what was wrong with Rosalie but he prayed Carlisle would never feel the pain he'd had with losing his own daughter.
"And Jasper?" he asked, forcing himself back into the present.
"He tore out of here as soon as Officer Howard told us what had happened," Esme sniffed, her muffled cries growing in intensity again. "There was nothing I could do to stop him, and I'm afraid… Oh Edward, it's so horrible. I cannot…"
"Shhh," he comforted her again, "it will be okay."
"They raped her, Edward," Esme cried. "Royce and his friends…and when she tried to resist, they kicked her and hit her until she was broken and defenseless while they had their way with her and then they threw her out the door like she was garbage. How could they have done that to her?"
Edward may not have liked Rosalie much but still his heart broke, hearing his sister's explanation of what had happened to her, his hands balling into fists as he shook with a murderous rage. "Did the police get those motherfucking dirt bags?"
"They are looking for them now," Esme sobbed. "They think they are out in the woods somewhere near the old mill where everything took place. The police found a lot of empty bottles of booze and what looked like traces of cocaine…which must have been what fuelled all of this because I cannot imagine even Royce would do a thing like this. He always gave me the creeps, but this… it's so… so horrible."
"And Rose?" he asked, wanting to keep her talking both to help her through the first stage of grief, where things were just complete and utter chaos in your head and you were struggling to keep from getting pulled under.
"One of the workmen from the timber company found her on his way home. She was lying in a ditch, half naked and severely hypothermic. They are trying to get her warm again while they work on her other injuries."
Edward nodded, the various procedures his sister's adopted child was undergoing flashing through his mind. "What else?"
"She has a few broken ribs, maybe her pelvis too, and there's a nasty bruise on her head but, until she wakes up, they won't be able to assess the full extent of the damage," Esme continued, her breathing slowly coming down as her mind was given something else to do but worry. "Carlisle was optimistic, though. He told me that at least the external damage wasn't as bad as…" The rest was drowned out as Esme started to cry again, the horrific enormity of what had happened still too fresh and great for her to bear.
All Edward could do was hold her and be there for her as she tried to accept the damage left behind by the bomb that had just exploded underneath her life.
They stood there for what seemed like hours and it might as well have been just that, or it could have been just minutes, as the man in the corner kept snoring softly and no other sounds was heard except for Esme's soft cries and Edward's reassuring words that got more desperate with every seconds that passed.
In the end it was Rachel, of all people, who disturbed them with a cautious scrap of her throat, her discomfort showing the way she was fidgeting by the door as she tried to capture Edward's attention, her eyes apologetic as they finally connected with his.
"Do you have any news?" Esme asked breathlessly, her eyes frantic to a point that they startled the nurse.
"I think I heard someone say they were transferring her to recovery now," Rachel spoke, quickly pulling herself together again. "Doctor Cullen will be over with more news soon." Her lips twitched nervously as the crestfallen look on Esme's face, who'd undoubtedly expected more news. "I'm sorry. It was Doctor Masen I was coming to find."
Even in spite of the situation, Edward's eyes shot all the way into his hairline; Rachel's request taking him by surprise. "What do you want?"
If Rachel was offended or taken aback in any way by the tone of his voice, she didn't show it - her lips maintaining that perfect professional smile as she took a small step forward. "I think it's best we speak in private."
Her eyes were commanding enough for Edward to sigh and reluctantly peel his sister's arms from around his waist. "Do you think you'll be alright on your own for a little while?" he asked, waiting until his sister nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
He waited for her to nod once more before he left her, not looking back on the frail and grief-wracked figure of his sister as she slumped down into one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs as he followed Rachel out of the room. "This had better be good."
"Do you really think I'd pull you out of that room for anything less than an emergency?" she snapped. "I may not have acted in a way I'm particularly proud of the other day but I'm not that petty."
"Then what's going on?" He pinched the bridge of his nose, his patience being tested to its limits as he waited for her to explain herself.
"Jasper and Emmett came into the ER just now, both of them sporting clear evidence of one hell of a fistfight." She smirked. "Now they may be stating high and low that they got into a fight with each other, but between those two being as thick as thieves lately and a call from dispatch coming in just now that they are bringing that King asshole in here horizontally and, from what I gather, in a pretty bad shape, I find I have some trouble believing them. I thought you might wanna know."
He nodded, running a hand through his hair as he gave her an apologetic smile. "Go on."
"I put both of them in exam room one and held off on alerting the cops for now," Rachel spoke. "I don't know how long I can keep them off the boy's backs, though, what with King being found the way he was."
"You did what you could," Edward acknowledged. "Thanks."
"I like those boys," Rachel remarked, wanting to make it very clear that she didn't want him to feel indebted to her. "They are good kids." She marched off again, without giving him the chance to say anything else, leaving Edward with no other choice but to either go down to Emmett and Jasper in exam room one or go back to his sister.
He chose the latter, knowing the boys were probably in need of medical attention and a stern lecture on how foolish it was to take the law into their own hands, especially with Jasper still under probation after the stunt he pulled at the mill and Emmett's whole future riding on getting a full scholarship to a half-decent university. He would have been lying, though, if he wasn't also incredibly curious to find out how good they got to that disgusting son of a bitch.
"How is she?" Two eager, worried pairs of eyes immediately searched him out as he stepped through the door separating the exam room from the rest of the floor.
"Both of you would have known the answer to that question if you hadn't run out of here like a couple of mad bulls," Edward responded wryly, deliberately taking his time as he crossed the room and sat down on the doctor's stool. "But to put both of your minds at ease – Rose is as well as anyone can be after the ordeal she's been put through. She was coming out of the OR just now."
Both boys let out huge breaths of relief, though the tension still remained. "Did my dad say anything about her head injuries?" Jasper wanted to know.
"He's been in the OR with her since I arrived but he told Esme the outlook was good," Edward filled them in. "We'll only know for sure when she wakes up, though."
Emmett and Jasper shared a look, their jaws set in a hard line as they each digested the information Edward had given them in their own way. "We should have ended the motherfucker," Jasper finally growled.
"And end up in jail yourselves?" Edward questioned. "You'll be lucky if you get away with what you did. It's generally frowned upon when people take the law into their own hands."
"It's a small price to pay," Emmett shrugged, obviously being of the same mind as his friend. "And it's not like that slime ball would have gotten what he deserved if we'd just let the police handle this."
"You don't know that," Edward countered, setting to work on his initial examination of the two severely bruised right hands after determining that the few cuts and bruises to their faces were only superficial. "Rapists don't really get all that much respect in prison, I heard, and with a face as pretty as Royce's…he's bound to end up being someone's bitch."
That, at least, brought a smile to their faces, their good hands meeting in victorious fists as they both chuckled at the fate Royce would soon be finding himself in. "Payback is going to be a bitch!" Jasper growled approvingly.
Edward wisely refrained from answering or he would have pointed out how being raped as a prison inmate wasn't so different from being raped outside of the county jail. He had a feeling the boys would see things quite differently, even after all the things that had happened. "It looks like you were both lucky," he finally spoke after completing his assessment. "We're going to take you up to X-Ray to be certain but, for now, I don't think there are any breaks." And with a pointed look at Emmett, "or anything else that could have possibly ruined your career before you'd even started practicing for it."
Emmett had the good grace to frown as he rubbed the scabbing wounds on the top of his hands. "I guess I should be a bit more careful with these puppies if I wanna be a doc like you, huh?"
"Indeed," Edward replied sternly. "Pulling a stunt like the one you just did – no matter how much you and I know the asshole deserved it – could have gotten you kicked out of the program if you did it during your internship."
"Don't worry, doc," Emmett grinned, picking up on the one part of Edward's lecture that suited him. "We got him good."
Edward shook his head but before he could continue his lecture, one of the ER nurses interrupted. "Doctor Masen?" She waited until she had Edward's attention before she went on. "A man was brought into the ER just now after he took a tumble in the forest on the run from the police…" The look on her face made it clear which man – or miserable excuse for a man – she meant and it appeared that not just Edward had picked up on that. Looking sideways he saw Jasper and Emmett share a look of devious relief at seemingly being off the hook for their assault on Royce, because it was clear as that that he was the man who had just been brought into the ER. "Doctor Stephens is working on him at the moment but we need a surgeon to assess the trauma he sustained to the head, and Doctor Molina and Doctor Cullen are both still busy."
Edward nodded, knowing that Royce, just like any other patient, deserved proper care when brought into the ER, even though every bone in his body told him to just let the slime ball rot. "And Doctor Banner?"
"He's still on his way in from Port Angeles," the nurse explained. "I wouldn't have disturbed you if someone else had been available, what with your family connection to the Cullens... Do you think you can handle it?"
Edward sighed, knowing there was only one available option at that moment. "Alright, I'll be with you in a minute. Can you get someone to take these kids to X-Ray in the meantime."
The nurse nodded before she made her retreat, leaving him with two baffled young men. "You can't be serious about treating him, doc!" Emmett cried, wincing as he balled his bad hand into a fist.
"Of course I am," Edward growled back. "And so should you have been, if you were in my position. I'm a doctor, Emmett, which means that I will have to treat every patient the same whether I like it or not. In this profession you are going to come across gang members, drug dealers and drunk drivers who just took out a family with two little kids on the highway. If you aren't prepared to treat them just like you would treat their victims, you'd do better to look for another profession right now." He didn't waste time waiting for a response, knowing the boys probably still had a hard time wrapping their minds around what he'd just told them.
And he wasn't quite convinced of it either.
"Alright, what have we got?" he announced as he barged into the OR, taking in the scene of the patient, barely conscious but responding to pain stimuli as one of the ER doc's worked on him, Royce's hands secured to the gurney with metal handcuffs and a police officer standing vigil off to the side.
Doctor Stephens rattled off all of the information she had as Edward set to work, pushing his own repulsion to the back of his head as he did his work. "So, he fell down while on the run?" he called over his shoulder, already knowing the 'official' version of the story but wanting it confirmed for Emmett and Jasper's sake.
"Yep," the police officer nodded with a knowing smirk. "At least that's what we figure happened to him anyway. We found him like this at the foot of a hill, somewhere deep in the forest. The woods are a dangerous place to be in the dark."
Edward nodded, not feeling an ounce of guilt for collaborating in a lie as blatant as any he'd seen. "Especially when you're on the run for the police."
The officer nodded. "Looks like he got off quite easily, though."
"Looks like it," Edward answered, putting his tools aside as he peeled the gloves off his hands. Apart from a few bruised ribs and a busted lip and nose, Royce had gotten off almost scot free.
He sighed, throwing the latex gloves on the floor as he pursed his lips in frustration, trying not to think about the person these wounds belonged to but just of the fact that they were there.
He could treat them.
He would treat them.
"I want an MRI just to be on the safe side, but it looks like there's no serious damage."
In his entire career, he'd never been as sorry to say those words as he was right then.
Thoughts?
I am very honored to have this story up in the race for 'fic of the week' over at tehlemonadestand ( .net). Thank you so much to whoever rec'ed this story. Please vote?