I don't own Twilight, or any authors cited here. The rest is mine.
22.
There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.
And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.
-Pablo Nerada.
Dropping my spoon into my cereal, I peer up at Charlie blankly.
"No," I hear my answer echo off the walls of the house. First the kitchen then the living room, and upstairs. But mostly I hear it deep within my insides, clenching my gut in and out. I can hear the sounds of the air flowing down my windpipe and into my lungs.
"Bella, please - you need this."
"Why Dad? Why did you bring the bodies here?"
He leans back in his chair and I can hear the floor groan beneath us. There's something about silence, combining itself with my tension that can make my hearing skyrocket. Sometimes I wonder if hanging around vampires really is wearing off on me.
Charlie suggested we head to the cemetery to see a couple of graves; Renee and Phil's. Apparently arrangements were made to have them flown up here. I guess maybe I should be pleased, but I'm not.
I'm terrified.
At any point someone could ask me to burn my foot, or to shave my hair off. I could drink a vile of poison and wait for my own death without question.
But I can't...I won't go see that grave. Not the one with my mom's name written in stone - a final farewell to the world and the daughter she left behind. Her sails will never steer across mine again...does that mean I'm left here to float in the middle of a black sea alone?
As Charlie stares gruffly at me from his side of the table, I seem to look through him. Getting up, he walks over to the counter and holds up an envelope. "This came for you today."
"Don't you have to go to work?" The jumbled thoughts come out harsher than I intended for them to.
He huffs, ignoring my tone. "Actually, I'm taking the day off. Those guys can handle a day without my ugly mug."
I chuckle and he breaks out into a smile, tossing me my mail. I pry it carefully open with my fingers and pull out the letter.
Brown Eyes,
I've made some major breakthroughs with this place, but I'll have to tell you about it when I can - writing seems to make me paranoid. I miss standing in the rain with you - have you looked up the painting I suggested yet? Ila used to call the rain "God's tears" because it has healing powers. Maybe he was crying for people who couldn't. You know, crazy people seem to be more down to earth than most of the normal people I know. I hope all is well with you.
Regards,
Confetti
PS. No man is an island. -John Donne
In this moment when the scales fall from my eyes again, it's not in discovering my past. It's not in anger, or sadness, or even being happy. Because now I grasp that final straw and pull it out to reveal the long end of the stick. It's a cold hard slap in the face, a reality check scribbled to my name.
The problem was never that I don't have the option to get better, to try to reach out for help. The reason I'm drowning is because I haven't made any effort at all to grab the hand dangling above me, waiting to help me break the surface; a solution that has been waving itself in front of me the entire time.
If I want to get better, I have to choose to try.
The Cullens left but they came back. They could have come back for so many different reasons, but they came back for me.
No man is an island...
Suddenly, I can breathe without gasping for oxygen. There's no water sloshing around me and I can recall so many things with clarity.
Jasper had read philosophy with me, Rose had opened up. Esme told me to grow, Emmett had fought the monsters with me, Alice had admitted she was wrong.
There are still two more Cullens to face and pulling myself up from the table, I stuff the letter in my pocket and clean out my bowl into the sink. "Dad, will you take me to the hospital?"
Charlie looks up at me, "Something wrong, Bells?"
"Not that kind of wrong, no. I just need to talk to Dr. Cullen."
Sighing, he stands, "You know you can talk to me, right? I want you to know that."
I hug him, saying, "I know. But this is something I have to do - it's about last year when...when they moved."
Charlie pats me gently on the back. "You're a good kid, Bells."
There is a painting by Salvador Dali called The Persistence of Memory.
In it, time covers the land - making everything melt away, even a human face. When I was younger I saw the picture in a book and it scared me. Someday I knew a clock of my own would start melting away. My face would become wrinkled with age, my bones would wobble from the liquid pouring off them and everything in my life would reflect back like a pool of glass.
And then I met Edward.
The pool froze over, covering my world with a thick ice. It didn't matter that I was a small doe in that frosty tundra or that lions shouldn't be there. It merely mattered that my world stopped melting into a waterfall that would fall off the edge of the Earth...because the lion just gazed back at me, making me warm while the rest stilled.
But then he left and the world started to melt again. He made it seem as if time stopping the universe was an everyday occurrence; that I really could go back to loving spring air when winter had surrounded me with delicate snowflakes.
And if the question is whether Eve would try the tempting fruit again, whether she would go back to sweet ignorance or a cold fire of cruel knowledge, I have no doubt she would pick the fruit again - choosing to sin...if sinning is truly what she did.
After all, when Pandora opened the box and released every horrible thing onto humanity, there was something lying at the bottom of the bin: hope.
So as I stand in the doorway of Carlisle's office, I do it with the spirit that maybe I am fixable, maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that maybe not all doctors are evil.
"Hello, Bella. Would you like to come in?" Carlisle asks softly from his desk chair.
There's another person in the room - a woman, stout with curly red hair and glasses. She smiles up at me warmly. I glance between them and Carlisle motions for me to sit down.
"Bella, this is Dr. Seward, she's a colleague of mine from back east. She's also a psychiatrist."
She holds out her hand in offering, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Bella."
"It's nice to meet you too."
"We were just talking about you," Carlisle tells me. "We thought maybe you would like to discuss some more options for medication."
"Yes, Carlisle told me you're currently on a medication called Zyprexa?" Dr Seward asks, turning to me.
"Yeah, I take it twice a day...but it doesn't seem to help everything. And someone usually has to watch to make sure I take it," I reply.
She thinks about that for a minute before saying, "Do you wish to get better?"
"Of course."
"Wouldn't you like to be able to take your meds someday without people watching?"
I nod and she gives me a genuine smile.
"Great! Let's start then, shall we?" For the next hour we talk about changing my medication to see if something else would help. I open up about the condition with her and she tells me, "We just have to fix you up with the right recipe." For once, I don't feel like a science experiment, instead...just an unfinished painting. Our time ends and she gives me her phone number so we can keep in touch - she's apparently starting an office up in Port Angles.
"I'm looking forward to it," I tell her and she smiles, looking back to Carlisle.
"She's lovely."
"She is, my family is quite taken with Bella." He winks and I blush, staring down at my feet as Dr Seward gets up and waves, vanishing around the corner.
Silence descends on the room.
Before I have the chance to think about it, a question pops out of my mouth. "Why...I mean, did you talk to Charlie the other day?"
Carlisle nods, "Yes, Edward and I did."
"Why?"
"Bella, please look at me."
I glance up and level eyes with his.
He sighs. "I've been a parent of five for quite some time now. What's more," Carlisle suddenly snickers, "they have never been toddlers with us - always teenagers. It's...quite the bunch for a couple in their twenties."
I can't help but grin along with him.
"Edward always overanalyzed things, even before you came along. It was never anything major with his skill. When you came to Forks, Bella, something drastic changed with the entire family. At first I pinned it down to you having such a powerful affect on his control."
Nervously, I swallow.
"But then Esme and I saw it for what it really is," Carlisle chuckles again. "He's a new person because of you, Bella."
Scoffing, I snap, "Then why did you guys decide to dump me like yesterday's garbage?"
He sits back and runs a hand through his hair. "What we did was wrong. You're a grown woman who should be allowed to make her own choices. And, if I could, I would go back and ask Edward to really think about what he would be doing - to all of us. You guys should have made the choice together.
"I let our fear of humans get in the way...I didn't even take into consideration how vampire mating works."
Listening as I fidget with my hands, the last sentence catches on my ear like a hook. "Um, excuse me?"
"That's part of what I meant when I said that Esme and I were able to piece everything together - even before we met you. You see, unlike people, our kind only mate once. We stay together until one of us perishes and usually the other follows shortly after."
My mouth is ajar and I quickly close it.
"Edward thought that because you're human, you would function differently and have a normal life. Again, our analyzing got in the way. Obviously you were just as...misplaced by the separation as he was."
"I just don't get why he left. Everyone keeps telling me it was for my own good - that you guys thought it would be better, he could keep me from danger. But what exactly did you think was going to happen? Carlisle, if anything the whole situation made me want to be like you more."
He raises an eyebrow at me.
"I'm serious, when you were here before everyone always had to protect me from one thing or another - it made me feel weak, like I could never measure up to any of you. And then Edward, always telling me how beautiful I was -"
"Are, how beautiful you are, Bella."
Flushing, I nod. "Okay, am. It's just that even with you guys all telling me that, I couldn't help but look around and see the rest of the world's reaction to me. The girls at school were always jealous, the boys were, well, aren't boys always that way?"
He laughs loudly.
"I thought that maybe it was just because he couldn't read me - and then that day he told me you guys were leaving it made me think that there was never anything special about me at all. That Edward had finally figured out his puzzle and gotten bored with me."
"The entire thing was for you, Bella. It was a colossal mistake," Carlisle murmurs. "Do you recall what I told you the night of your last birthday?"
"Tonight is exactly the kind of thing he fears the most, you being put in danger because of what we are..."
"If you believed as he did, could you take away his soul?"
"Yes," I whisper.
"We didn't even think about other humans being a danger to you, hindsight is always 20/15. And as I told you, we consider all of them our children, but actually becoming the role of parent in the ways that Edward needed. . .it was much harder than we would have expected."
"Is that how Charlie was contacted?"
His eyes really even with mine now. "Bella, I would happily spend every day pretending to be your father but the fact is, Charlie is still alive. What kind of people would we be if we couldn't at least help you try and mend your relationship with him? My own father and I didn't see eye to eye, but I would have still liked to have seen him again. Edward felt the same way - he would give almost anything to be able to talk to his mom and dad again. He didn't want to see you and Charlie toss it all away."
I gasp, "It was -"
"Yes, it was Edward's idea. It was never that Charlie didn't care or didn't want to see you, it was merely that he needed a push."
Looking past Carlisle, I stare out the window at the cars entering and leaving the parking lot and feel the weight of everything suddenly crash down on my subconscious. He's right - I could never ask Edward to give up his soul for me. And I do still have Charlie. And then there are the little things.
Renee's hot chocolate, my clumsiness, my brown eyes, . . .Edward carrying me on his back through the forest. I would never die, so I would never see Renee or Phil again.
But what would it do to Edward if I stayed human? I will grow old, wrinkled and melted like the clocks in that Dali painting. And when I died, Edward would undoubtedly follow. The Cullens would lose a family member. And humans change, they grow and morph the more the pendulum swings. What if my feelings for Edward flicker and die someday?
When I glance back at Carlisle, I can tell he's reading my thoughts from my expressions. They soften the more I look at him, but I can also tell he's troubled by something else. "Bella, putting everything aside, I.. .I want to tell you how sorry I am. I should have learned not to allow my family to run away from problems. It's something my father would have done.
"I'm sorry too."
His eyes widen and he leans up in his chair. "What on Earth for?"
I lean in just a tad and reply, "For thinking that every doctor in the world is a monster."
His eyes glass up as he says, "Thompson wasn't a doctor, Bella. He was a twisted pervert that I should have taken care of myself." Bursting into tears, I nod, and he comes around the desk to sit next to me. "It's not your fault, sweetheart - it never was." We don't stop hugging for a long time.
"Are you sure about this, Bells?" Charlie asks from next to me in the driver's seat of the police cruiser.
Nodding, I gaze down at the white tulips in my arms. "Yeah, it's time."
"I can go up there with you if you want."
"No, I'll be okay, Dad." Getting out of the car, I slam the door shut and slowly march up to the gate, pushing it open with one arm. The ground is flat, green - like most of the places in this little town. Charlie told me that Renee and Phil's graves are more toward the back so I don't pay much attention as I make my way gradually over to the little corner. When I do get nearer, I look up and gasp to see who is standing there.
"Edward?"
