Bella wakes up to someone rummaging through the drawers of her dresser in the middle of the night.
She hastily flips on the lamp next to her bed, flying upright in alarm. "Charlie?" She cries, and the jacketed figure in front of her freezes. "What the hell?"
He looks at her, wild like a deer caught in headlights, and then continues his search.
"Dad!" She yells, and springs from bed. He doesn't react at all to her yelling, and she reaches out for his arm. He pauses, cold to the touch, when she wraps her fingers as far around his wrist as they'll go. "Dad, what's going on?"
"I need clothes." His voice is hoarse with sleep. He's dressed for work in his police uniform—and a quick glance at her alarm clock tells her its 2:04 AM—with his shirt buttoned up wrong and untucked.
"Woah dad, slow down." She wishes he would sit down; she tugs him to sit in the chair, but he doesn't budge. "Why do you need my clothes?"
Charlie's whole body collapses in on itself. "There's a girl Bells, and she's in real trouble." There's a look in his eyes, one that she remembers all too well.
It's one she saw often enough; sitting on the edge of this very same bed six months ago with her leg in a cast, fresh from a collision with Tyler's black van in the school parking lot. It came with constant watching, arranged driving to school for weeks, her staying home afterschool every day and family friends watching her, all day every day all the time. The ice packs and burnt soup and the fuzzy socks he brought home in such great quantities that she'd had to clear out a whole drawer for them.
Understanding breaks through her delirious, half-asleep haze. "Okay dad, just tell me what happened and I can find her something, okay?" He shakes his head, but doesn't resume his digging. His hands are clenched into fists and practically vibrating with tension.
"A trucker at the station down the road." She filled her giant antique of a red truck there yesterday afterschool. "He just… found her, sitting there. Bleeding all over the place."
Bella pushes him out of the way with her shoulder, and hunts around for and old sweatshirt and PJ pants. "Is she alive?"
"I hope." Charlie never 'hopes'. Things are or they aren't for him and it's that simple.
Her fingers close on the old Phoenix sweatshirt and flannel pants she stole from her giant of a best friend Jake, and she bundles them into a ball and shoves it into Charlie's waiting arms.
"Bells." He says quietly, and she turns to face him. "She's in real bad shape."
In that moment, Bella feels fate for the second time in her life. There is a ribbon between her and her father; ever since her move here two years ago it's been like they were the same person, with their quiet personalities and love of space. She is a sympathetic person, a crier, and tears are pushing at her eyes. There is something so broken in Charlie's simple sad words. He is looking at the girl and seeing her, Bella, propped up in the back of an 18-wheeler and bleeding out. Her dad is the police chief, and in this small town, tragedy is rare. There is another ribbon inside of her now, not as strong as the ribbon that connects her to Charlie or the one from that fateful day last spring, but a small sliver of a connection that she must protect. It's her fight too.
"I'm coming with you."
"Bells, they called Carlisle to scene." That means a dead person, if the doctor isn't even going to the hospital at all.
She finds a line of strength in her voice, and directs it at Charlie in what may well be the first demand she'd ever made of him. "You have to let me come."
He says nothing, but turns and hurries down the stairs. Bella grabs a pair of converse and two of Charlie's jackets, then the car is pulling out of the driveway with sirens blaring and lights blazing in seconds.