Each Moment Lost to the Past

Chapter 12

Bella's POV

"And he's just the sweetest guy… But, I don't know, Bella, he's only 29, don't you think I'm too old for him?"

"Not at all," I say quickly, twirling the phone cord around my finger. "He sounds really great," I say, truly meaning it. She hasn't mentioned the accident once the entire twenty minutes we've been on the phone. Any guy that can drag Rene's attention away from doctors and treatments is amazing.

"Okay," Rene says, determination leaking into her voice. "I'll call him then, see if he wants to go out again."

"That's awesome, Rene. Anyway, I really need to go, I'll talk to you later, okay?" I hang up the phone with a relieved sigh, and I can't help the small grin that splits my lips. That call wasn't so painful. Maybe she'll eventually just accept the situation and let it go completely.

"Alice call?" Charlie asks as he breezes into the kitchen and glimpses my smile. "You really should just ask the girl out; you've both been mooning over each other for months."

"Oh, didn't you know?" I ask innocently, boosting myself onto a counter. "We've been dating since Christmas."

Charlie pauses with his fresh beer halfway to his mouth. "Are you pulling my leg?" he narrows his eyes at me.

"And you say you're the Chief of Police," I scoff playfully, in a rare, good mood after a call from Rene. "Honestly, I thought you would have figured it out when we went out on Valentine's Day."

He sputters a bit, leaning back against the fridge. "I thought you both were just being deliberately oblivious! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Please, you'd be even more insufferable," I scoff. "You and Jake, though I have to admit that you do have a little more tact. Barely."

Charlie guffaws, eyes dancing. "What, you mean like banning closed doors when she's in the house now? No more sharing you bed for sleepovers?"

"Fine," I shrug. "Just don't complain if you walk past my open door and I accidently flash you. And you might want to call in sick the next day for sleep overs if you're going to be checking that we are in separate beds every twenty minutes all night."

I've learned these past few months of living with the man that, while he likes to joke and try to fluster me, it's even easier to make him uncomfortable- especially if it's at my own expense.

He blusters, frazzled again. "What do you mean flash me? Why would your shirt be off?"

"Come on Charlie; you're a cop- surely you can figure it out," I tease, letting him stew in horror for a few moments before putting him out of his misery. "You know that Alice is a designer. She likes to have me model a lot of her projects."

Charlie calms down fairly quickly, which is a bit disappointing but not overly so.

"You're going to give me a heart attack one day, kid," he grumbles, shaking his head and finally taking a sip of his beer as he goes back to the game. I laugh, climbing down from the counter to go in search of some juice in the fridge.

…..

Spring comes with even more rainfall than usual, but today is a rare cloudless day and the sun even wiggles its fingertips through the gaps in foliage above. Jake and I wind our way through the wet undergrowth with unhurried steps.

"Alice has some more designs she wants you to try on," I say, automatically steadying myself when my foot snags a root. "Saturday good for you? I'll buy the pizza for after." Jacob laughs from just slightly ahead of me.

"I already have six new outfits from her, which are probably the nicest things I own. What's with her and wanting to dress me? Is she trying to buy my acceptance of dating you?"

"She just really likes designing clothes," I grin. "Said her brothers don't let her dress them, so she likes having the opportunity of making male outfits. Plus, she likes you. It's how she shows her affection."

"Affection huh? You're not going to get jealous, are you?" he turns to wiggle his eyebrows at me but ends up tripping over a branch.

I snort at the boy's silliness. "Please, you've got what, six outfits? She's already replaced my whole closet. She likes me way more than you."

"I don't know, I think I can steal your girl," he teases. I bend down to snag a wet branch before proceeding to smack him with it. He laughs, trying to dodge.

We make it to the river with the sun still high above. We had started our journey as soon as school let out, so it will be up, yet, for several more hours. It's the widest part of the river, and the deepest. According to Jake, it's a fairly popular swimming spot in the summer for the people willing to take the hike. My head aches a bit, but it's not an uncommon sensation. I set my bag down next to a stump and fish around for the water bottle I brought.

"So, Saturday?" I ask again, straightening up to take a swig, trying to distract myself from the growing headache.

"Yeah," he says, dropping his bag next to mine and shrugging out of his shirt. "I don't really mind playing dress up as long as it's not my sisters shoving me into a literal dress and taking pictures for blackmail material that they can use when I'm older."

I snort into my water, which doesn't help the growing pain.

"That's some serious forethought," I drop my bottle back into my bag.

"Yeah, no kidding. I think they were born evil."

I roll my eyes at the dramatic boy and start kicking off my shoes. My bare feet sink into the spongy forest floor. When I look up, I notice for the first time that we aren't the only ones who thought the day was nice enough for a hike to the river.

I smile at the young couple walking along the bank, and the little boy trailing after them. They aren't in the flat part that offers easy access to the water, but walking along the ridges.

"Maybe we should have gone fishing with our old men today," I say absently, watching the man haul along three poles and a cooler.

"Why?" Jacob snorts, following my eyesight. It's a nice family scene.

The woman stops to tie her shoe, and the man pauses to look back at her. He's close enough that I can see his eyes crinkle when he smiles. The little boy races ahead of his parents, maybe seven or eight years old. He pauses at the tall edge of the embankment, peering down into the water.

As I watch, the ground under the kid's feet suddenly crumbles. I cry out, my scream mixing with the boy's as he tumbles towards the water. My stomach is in my toes as I rush towards the shoreline.

"Oh, my god!" I shout, plunging thigh deep into the river, and wading deeper as fast as I can go.

"What?" Jacob asks, startled. "What happened?"

"That kid just fell!" I shout urgently surging forward, hoping that I can reach the kid. My eyes haven't left the point I saw him hit. It takes me almost a full minute to make it, and ignoring the pounding in my skull, I immediately dive. I stretch my arms out in front and below me, searching, searching, praying for anything to brush against my fingertips.

When my lungs burn, survival instincts take over and I kick up toward the surface. I gasp in several breaths when my head breaks, ears ringing- someone is shouting- before I desperately dive again, straining my eyes even though it's impossible to see anything in the murky water.

My fingers jam into something hard almost immediately, and I latch on, hope burning through me, as I kick towards the surface. I'm yanked above water, instead, by a hand far too large to be a child's.

I stare into Jakes wide eyes for just a moment before I'm letting go. "Help me! He has to be here somewhere!" I say urgently, preparing to dive down again, but Jacob catches my arm.

"Bella!" He shouts, shaking me. "Bella, stop!"

"He's down there!" I gasp, breathing hard. What is he doing? It's not too late. It can't be. We have to keep trying. But Jake doesn't let go of me, he prevents me from going back under and searching.

"Bella, no one fell! Listen to me! No one fell!"

The words don't make sense. They don't reach past the panic in my chest, the pressure in my head. I saw him. The boy fell- he's in the water- he didn't come back up. His parents must be terrified.

I whip my head up, searching for the parents- if only to reassure them that we'll find him; we won't stop looking. The drop was only about 15 feet- it's not a death sentence. Only… there's no one there. There's no one else panicking except for me.

My ears are finally able to focus enough to hear my best friend, gripping my arm and bobbing in the water next to me. He has the urgency I am feeling, but it's not toward finding the boy.

"Do you hear me, Bella? There was no one."

I blink wide eyes at him, finally understanding that there is no emergency. At least, not for a little boy. Something is very wrong, though.

The pain in my head suddenly spikes, and then all I see are colors behind my eyelids.

Jacob's POV

Jake doesn't know what happened or where it went wrong. The day was good. Normal. He didn't even know things could change so fast.

One minute he and Bella are joking around, teasing each other, and then she gets all spacy. Jacob didn't think anything was wrong with that- if he had a hot girlfriend, he'd daydream about her too. But then she completely freaked out.

Panic oozed from her vocals and her actions, sprinting into the water while screaming about some kid falling in. There was no one there, though.

Jacob didn't think he could get any more freaked by his best friend, than when she woke up from a nap and didn't recognize him, or when he was holding onto her, treading water while she looked around frantically, screaming about saving a boy that wasn't there. He didn't think he could be more freaked out by her, that is, until all of her muscles lock up, her eyes roll to the back of her head, and her entire body starts jerking like it's being electrocuted.

Oh god, he doesn't know what to do. Despite his panic, he immediately latches onto her before her head can dip under the water and hauls her towards the shore. He really wishes, now, that they hadn't come all the way out here, where there's no one around to help or tell him what to do.

He really wishes an adult were here, or at least someone older than him. When he reaches the bank, he hauls her over the mud and to their shoes and bags.

He's winded and weak by the time he lies Bella down, and she's still stiff and twitching and, after a moment, he decides to roll her on her side. That's what you do for someone having a seizure, right? He thinks he saw it in a movie somewhere. Or maybe that's for someone throwing up. He doesn't know, but he's pretty sure their mouth isn't supposed to foam red.

Neither he or Bella have a cell phone and he doesn't know if he should move her, but he can't just do nothing! No one will find them for hours if they just wait it out. His dad knows where they are but won't be expecting them for hours. Besides, when he does realize something is wrong, he's in a wheelchair and he doesn't know if Charlie's been to this part of the river in years.

Jacob quickly jams his shoes back onto his feet and pulls on his shirt. When he looks back over at his friend, he sees that she's stopped shaking but is now worryingly still.

He leaves the rest of their things and goes to Bella. Lifting her dead weight is difficult. He's taller than her now and has gained some muscle, but not a lot. He's more gangly at the moment than anything, but he's determined. He hauls her up and starts down the path back to the house as quickly as he's able.

It's normally a twenty-minute walk if you walk it with a purpose. Jacob has a very important purpose now, but he's weighed down and it takes him almost triple the time to shove through the door to his house.

After he sets Bella down on the couch, on her side still, he rushes to the phone on the wall and immediately dials 911. He rattles off all the information he knows as quickly as he can, and only collapses when the operator tells him that help is on the way.

His legs tremble even as he's sitting, staring at his best friend. Bella has mostly dried, only damp now, but he's soaked in a combination of sweat and river water. He really should call their parents. They're out on the boat right now, but Charlie, at least, has a cell phone.

With a trembling hand, he picks up the receiver once more.

The next thirty minutes are a blur to him. At fifteen, the ambulance shows up- medics rushing into the house, watching them load Bella onto a gurney, mindlessly answering the questions thrown at him, and then climbing into the back of the vehicle, clutching the girl's hand.

Jacob doesn't know what happened or what went wrong. It was a good normal day until it wasn't. The EMTs tell him that he did good, that Bella will be fine, but he can't quite bring himself to believe them.

Fine doesn't dream while it's awake or have seizures after almost drowning herself to save a boy that wasn't real (at least not real in the present). He remembers that kid who drowned last year, Justin, in that very swimming spot. He hit his head and died before his parents could reach him.

When Charlie and his dad meet them on their way into the hospital, having arrived before the ambulance, Jacob can only feel relief that he doesn't have to deal with this alone. They can tell him what to do to help- the EMTs have only told them that they can handle it from there and he has done enough.

A/N: Dun dun duuuuuuuun. I'm super happy about how this chapter turned out. What do you guys think? Dramatic and suspenseful enough? What do you think about Jake's POV?

~Silver~