CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
(BPOV)
When the hour passed midnight, I found myself reaching for more Tylenol and cussing when I dropped the bottle, sending the contents flying across the bathroom floor. The first dose had barely touched the pain and I could hardly move from it, my head spinning with the migraine that continued to pound it's way through my had like a speeding freight train on the run.
It was moments like this that I couldn't help but darkly laugh at the irony of it all. I was a nurse for shits sake. I knew the ins and outs of pain levels and protocol and how much acetaminophen ones liver could withstand without the potential of harmful side effects, but at this point in time, I didn't much care. I needed something for relief... anything... to make it stop. I felt my stomach violently churn as I poured myself another glass of water and the nausea intensified.
I hated this.
The all too familiar feelings of failure swarmed over me when I raised my head to take in my paled reflection seconds before I whirled around and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet.
This was going to be a bad one. The flare ups that started out like this always were and they never changed course, instead they carried true to their previous paths of agony.
Days of barely being able to walk or move or even shower because the touch from the water alone, and the jostle of movement would send you all but reeling to the floor. I hated to be touched in any way or even breathed on when it was this bad. The slightest brush of contact with another made me recoil away from them. The only people I'd ever been open enough to share this hell with was Callie and Tina back at Pen Bay. A night of drinking had proved to be the exact amount of truth serum I needed to spill my guts to them in a local bar on the coast a few years ago. They were generous and understanding about it that following Monday when we were all sobered up and had to face each other at work. Both of them gave me their word that they wouldn't share what I'd drunkenly told them with anyone and they respected how deeply personal it was to me. We'd formed an even closer friendship since then. They were the few people I still trusted most back home and I cherished their friendship.
A light knock on the bathroom door made me silence my tears as Charlie's concerned voice lingered out to me from the hallway.
"Bella? Are you in there? You feeling alright?"
I flushed the toilet and washed my hands and face before clearing my throat and finding my voice to answer him.
"I'm fine, dad. Just ate something that didn't agree with me. Don't worry, I'll be alright. Go back to bed."
I saw his shadow move from under the door at my words and I let out the breath I was holding until I heard his bedroom door latch.
I snuck across the hall back into my room and hurriedly closed the door. I didn't want him, or anyone for that matter, to know about my endometriosis. Call it foolish, but I hated the very idea of pity from others, because to most, it wasn't even something they'd heard of. It was far more common than anyone knew but far less talked about among the thousands of woman out there who suffered in the same way I did. Somehow, it felt shameful or insignificant because it couldn't take your life like some of the other more serious and terminal illnesses in the world. One of the worst feelings about this was the feeling of being alone with it, of being misunderstood or worse, of being looked at as weak.
Since I was diagnosed all those years ago, my symptoms hadn't changed or lessened with time, if anything, they had gotten much worse over the last twelve months and not one doctor could tell me why.
I felt like I was going batshit crazy. How was it that we had all these medical advancements out there but still had no damn answer on curing something like this? At first, once I got my job at Pen Bay, I was more determined than ever to win. To beat endometriosis at its own game and push through the painful symptoms, but I quickly learned that you didn't control it but that it controlled you.
I hauled my bag up off the floor and searched through it for the meds I'd thrown in there last minute. I was on a list of varying medications. All of them expensive and needed in order for me to try and subdue some of the symptoms so I could have somewhat of a normal life and not be stuck in bed for days at a time throughout any given month.
I was given all my options when I rushed into the ER last month from the excruciating pain of a ruptured cyst on my left ovary. I had passed out from the pain and Callie had drove me to Pen Bay demanding that I be seen. When I came to hours later, the on call doctor had informed me that my ovary was scarred from the rupture and that I may need surgery to repair it. I remember him listing the options for surgery and which one was known to work best but I went numb after the first part of his briefing and inadvertently tuned out the rest.
I took the handful of meds in my shaking hands and downed the daily dose before crawling back onto the bed and burying myself under the covers with e heating pad pressed to my middle.
Almost every doctor I had seen in the past told me that I was far too young to have such a severe and complicated case of endometriosis and that the newest scans they'd done revealed nothing new to them. This always left me sinking further into a deeper depression than before because it only confirmed what I already knew, that there was no hope to fix this or ease the pain. One therapist had even been so callous enough to tell me that maybe I had some other deep seated issues from my childhood that could spark my need for such constant medical attention. I cussed and left her room without looking back, my hand connecting with the stack of papers on her clipboard and throwing them at her before I shut the door behind me. Needless to say, I didn't seek out the mental help from a deemed professional like that again. It was pointless and just another way for them to get their hands on your money. Not one of them took the time to invest in me or really hear what I was feeling before unfairly labeling me another head case of theirs that needed some kind of anti psychotic medication. They had tried to get me on every kind of anti-anxiety and mood stabilizing medication that there was and I had stubbornly refused them all cause I knew that this wasn't just in my head. The pain I was feeling was real.
I curled in on myself further, trying to shield myself against the stabbing knife that continued to mercilessly tear me apart from the inside out. As morbid and horrific as that sounded, it was truly what this felt like.
I laid there thinking back to my run in with Angela Webber at the local market, recalling how wide her smile was when she gazed happily down at her two small children and as happy as I was for her, there was another selfish part of me that hated to admit I was jealous of her. I could remember every time I'd seen a similar scene back home. One where I would be going about my day and come across the happy family at the supermarket while I got my groceries, their laughter sincere as they tried to juggle their children and still manage to get everything on their list.
The pain I felt from this only stood to remind me of all those times, all the ways my heart would shatter from the knowledge that I would never be a mother. In all the things that this disease had taken from me in it's ten year wrath, I considered this one to be of the most tragic.
How was it that I could achingly grieve that which I never had? How was it fathomable that I wanted something so much that I couldn't have for my own and yet to others, it had come so easily and natural.
A womans body was made to bear children. We were built for it in every way.
I shook from the cold that invaded me with these haunting thoughts and closed my eyes, trying to find some sort of relief in the sleep I already knew wouldn't find me tonight.
The hours crept by and I found it hard to move as the aching in my legs made the slightest motion painful for me. I slowly pulled myself up and glanced toward the clock, the time making me let out a choked sob when I noticed it was already approaching three in the morning and I was beyond exhausted.
My head pounded with an ache that made my vision blur as the suffocating fear began to take hold.
This was how bad it was right before Callie had rushed me into the hospital the last time. I looked toward my bedroom door, debating on calling out to Charlie as my tears steadily fell. If I yelled loud enough, I knew he would hear me and come running. I trembled like a leaf as I stood on unsteady and throbbing legs and slowly made my way across the room. My mouth opened to call out for Charlie when the sound of sudden movement just outside my window made me still there where I stood, my eyes unable to make out anything in the blinding darkness until I reached forward and switched on the light beside me.
The wind blew the heavy snow coated branches against the glass and I felt my hope dissolve when I realized where the noise had come from, as I peered down to the white ground below. I was about to turn away when the slightest movement in the tree line ahead made me pause and lean in closer to the window, my breath causing the cold glass to fog while I squinted out into the night.
A sliver of russet fur made my breath hitch as I reached down and threw open my window, my body profusely shivering from the bitter wind that continued to blow in through my room now.
I couldn't take my eyes from the tree line as Jacob soon stepped out there wearing only his tattered cut offs and raising his head to meet my far off gaze.
"Jacob."
He crossed the yard in six long strides and peered up at me wordlessly, his dark eyes pained and full of longing, as I backed away from the window and waited for him to climb through it.
I stood there still shivering when he easily leapt in through the opening and landed nimbly on his feet. He took one look at me and then nervously glanced toward my bedroom door, his silent question making me offer up an immediate answer.
"Charlie's asleep." I breathed, hurriedly wiping away the few stray tears still on my cheeks and noticing the concern that filled his gaze at this.
My eyes roamed over his bare shoulders and chest, the rich tan color of his russet skin still breathtaking as I counted the small cuts on his arms and legs, some of them still healing and fresh enough to bleed.
His dark gaze met mine and I saw his countenance change when he caught sight of my reddened eyes and pale color. I felt open and exposed in a way I hadn't allowed myself to be in a long time and it made me want to disappear. I had done well to hide away from the watchful eyes of everyone around me for so long that anything else felt too raw and vulnerable.
Jacob looked torn as he stood there by my window, his hands twitching slightly at his sides as the two of us remained silent.
I could see it in his face, that he knew, without me needing to voice it to him, that I was hurting. That I had been for a long time.
I tried not to show it as the seconds dragged on, his piercing gaze touching every part of me and tearing down the walls I'd built up for the past decade. It was almost as if I could see the pages turning while he slowly but surely began to read me like the same open book I'd always been to him. Something I myself thought time would have erased by now, but when he took a few steps forward and paused, I saw the clear indecision on his face and I knew that nothing had changed. He was still the one who knew me best despite the time that had lapsed.
I blinked and felt the wetness touch my cheeks once again when he looked my way and I hung my head in defeat as the stabbing pain washed over me in another never ending wave that nearly sent me to the floor.
I crumpled under it's weight with a cry that I was sure would wake Charlie, my legs threatening to give out with my words.
"I can't do this anymore."
Jacob was there before I could let out another sob, his strong arms wrapping around me as he braced my fall and held me tightly to him. I didn't cringe or shy away from his touch like I thought I would. Like I had done to everyone else who had tried to comfort me in times past for this hell, instead I let his warmth envelope me.
I had truly forgotten what this felt like. What his embraces had always offered me, the solid sanctuary they provided and I relished in it.
A/N: Thank you for reading and please review. Next chapter tomorrow in Jacobs point of view.
