22. Examination

"Carlisle," I called tensely. Looking back into Bella's eyes, I made my voice as persuasive as possible and said, "You've rested and eaten. Will you please let Carlisle examine you?"

To my relief, she nodded. "Yeah. That's probably a good idea."

Exuding his calming bedside manor, Carlisle smiled as he gestured toward the house. "Every pregnancy should occur with a doctor's supervision, Bella. I have brought some equipment home to help me assess the fetus's condition, and yours."

As I moved to follow them into the house, he shot me a stern look. You have a few apologies to make, Edward. Bella and I will be done shortly. I expect you to behave until then.

Grimacing at being scolded like a child, I stopped in my tracks and watched them walk away from me. Abruptly aware that some of the anger that I felt was not my own, I turned to see my normally joking and smiling brother watching me with a frown.

"Sorry, Emmett."

"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, Edward." He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked slowly to where I stood by the porch. Look, bro... Rose ain't easy for you to live with, I get it. You two are often at odds... and she starts it often as not... I get that too... but you try to attack my wife again, and I won't hesitate to defend her.

"Acknowledged," I muttered. "Don't worry; it won't happen again."

"It had better not."

He walked into the house, and I turned to Jasper, who was delaying returning to the house and the emotional climate he would experience within it.

"Sorry, Jazz."

He shrugged. "You've got no reason to apologize to me. I'd be fighting for Alice's life if hers was in danger too. No matter who threatened it."

Unsurprised by his understanding, I nodded gratefully. "Then, instead of an apology, please accept my thanks."

"For?"

"Stopping me."

He grunted and slowly followed our brother into the house.

I thought of what I had felt when the thing in Bella's stomach had moved against me. It had been strong. Bella's touches had always been gentle. Even when I knew her to be using much of her human force, the pressure of her hands had always been slight. I had always felt her heat more than her strength. Yet when the creature within her had bumped against me, I had felt it. If it had hit against me that hard, what had it felt like to her? It was no wonder there had been a bruise.

A bruise! Our first night - the night the thing had been conceived - I had left bruises all over Bella's body. Never before or since had I left a mark on her skin. But now, now the demon child I had planted was bruising her from within! And it wasn't even three weeks old! What would it be capable of as it grew? What would it be capable of once it was born?

If Carlisle was unable to convince her to give it up - and I saw no reason why he would be able to convince her when I had been unable to do so - then what it was capable of wouldn't matter for long. Once it killed Bella, I would kill it. And if Rose killed me for doing so, that would just make things easier for me. If she didn't, perhaps the wolf who hated me would oblige instead. If not him, surely I'd be able to find someone willing to end me.

I'd spent a hundred years believing that I would never find love. I'd spent a year and a half trying to protect the girl I had finally fallen in love with from myself. I'd spent the past two weeks as her husband, the last week as her lover, and had planned on spending eternity with her. Before Bella, eternity had stretched before me in monotonous boredom. I had finally begun to hope that eternity would hold something else entirely since making Bella my wife. The idea of existing through eternity with nothing more than the memory of her love was appalling.

Listening to Rose's mental tirade wasn't helping matters. She was no longer ranting at Esme, who was herself quite upset with both of us, but she was still thinking directly at me.

Frustrated, I let out a heavy sigh. Both Emmett and Carlisle were right; it was Rosalie I should be apologizing to. She had been the one I'd screamed at. I entered the living room to find Rose sitting on the couch, her arms and legs crossed and an expression of restrained fury on her face. She refused to look at me, turning her head to scowl at a blank wall instead. Emmett was leaning against another wall with an unhappy expression on his face. Esme looked at me as soon as I entered the room, and her eyes immediately began to dart between the two of us.

Imitating Rose's posture, I stood where she could have seen me if she had wanted, crossed my arms and looked in the direction opposite the one she was glaring in. "Sorry."

She sniffed in disdain. I might accept if you really meant it.

Throwing my hands into the air I snapped, "Fine!" and headed for the stairs to join Carlisle, who was just beginning his examination of Bella.

Leaving the couch in a blur, Rose planted herself between me and the stairs. "You are not going near Bella."

"Rose," Esme said in a low, disapproving hiss.

"He's made it clear what his intentions are. I don't trust him not to try something."

"My intention is to find out what Carlisle has to say."

"You can do that from here."

"Rose is right," Emmett grumbled. "Just look through Carlisle's eyes."

"I should be there!"

"I'd say you lost your parental rights when you decided to kill it."

Staring at my brother in shock, I saw Rose's smug smirk in Emmett's mind as he looked evenly back at both of us.

"Thank you, Emmett," Rose said in her most sickeningly sweet voice.

"Damn it!" I growled and stalked away from my sister and the stairs she was guarding to stare out the wide windows. Rose flitted up the stairs to join Carlisle and Bella as soon as my back was turned. Emmett flopped onto the couch with a huge sigh that sounded nearly as frustrated as I was. Esme joined him while Alice and Jasper took the love-seat.

Their eyes were on me as I closed mine and let myself focus only on Carlisle's normally comforting mind. He'd brought many things from the hospital, including a hospital bed, and I watched through his eyes as Bella grimaced when she climbed onto the bed and lay back.

"Are you in pain?"

"No. It's just... I'm not a fan of hospitals."

"This is not a hospital, Bella. It is just a room in our house."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but it's still a hospital bed, and judging by what you've got on the counter there, that still means needles."

Almost amused, I watched as she shuddered. Of all the things for her to be afraid of, needles seemed the most silly to me, especially when I considered all of the things that she should have been afraid of, but wasn't.

"Do not worry about that right now. First, I would like to examine your progress, take some measurements, and see what exactly we are dealing with."

Rose tapped lightly on the door before she peeked her head in. "Mind if I come in?"

Bella smiled tentatively at her. "No. Please do, Rose. I want you here."

I was sure the smug look she shot Carlisle was directed at me, not him.

"Bella... I wanted to tell you I was sorry."

The familiar look of bewildered confusion crossed her face. "For what?"

"What happened earlier. I shouldn't have said those things in front of you."

"Oh. No, it's okay, Rosalie. I mean, you were just fighting for my baby, like I asked you to do."

She nodded slightly before shooting Carlisle a glare. "And I'll keep fighting. I won't let anyone hurt him."

Ignoring Rose's implication that she trusted him no more than she did me, Carlisle had Bella expose her stomach, and he gingerly probed the area around the small bruise it had made when it kicked me. "Tender?"

Bella shook her head.

"Do not downplay any symptoms, Bella. If we are going to help you, you need to tell me anything you feel, and anything you need."

"No, I'm fine. It doesn't hurt."

"How about here?"

"Nope."

With fear tightening my stomach so much that I felt strangely nauseous, I watched as Carlisle probed the rounded bulge with his fingers. ...a pregnant woman's uterus should be firm, but this is much harder than normal... like she has a rock in there... no give at all...

"Bella, we measure a woman's progress from here to here." He ran his finger from her pubic bone to the top of the growing bump. "In a typical pregnancy, each centimeter equals a week's growth."

"And what am I?"

"You are eighteen days post conception?"

A light pink stained Bella's cheeks, but she nodded.

"And you are certain of the day? What I mean is: it is not younger than that?"

"Well, I started eating and sleeping like crazy from the first day, so, I guess?"

A look of concern crossed his face.

"What?"

"It is growing daily what should take it about a week."

"So... eighteen weeks? So I'm about half-way?"

"Not quite. It is not an exact ratio, as you are only measuring fifteen centimeters, but that is still an enormous rate of growth. Dangerously so."

He met Bella's defiant glare with steady eyes. After a moment, he said gently, "Do not think that I do not understand, Bella. Though none of my family are related to me by blood, they are all my children." His lips twitched. "Barring Esme, of course. But I have fought for their lives, and would gladly sacrifice my own for theirs should the need arise."

"Yet you still agree with Edward, don't you?"

"Edward believes this pregnancy threatens your life. He is not wrong."

"He is!"

"As a doctor, I have to look at this differently than the rest of our family. Doctors do not sacrifice the life of a mother in favor of an unborn child."

"I'm not asking you to sacrifice my life, Carlisle. I'm asking you not to sacrifice my baby's."

"Despite all of our technology and the many advances in medicine, women die in childbirth, and have throughout history."

"Oh, please, Carlisle," Rose scoffed. "Babies are born everyday."

"Likewise, women die every day attempting to deliver even the most normal of babies. Which Bella's is not."

"And people die in car crashes every day, too. Are you saying we should all go back to horse-drawn carriages?"

"Now is not the time for flippancy, Rose."

Carlisle's low voice clearly conveyed his disapproval, but though she paled slightly, my sister held her ground. "No, it's not. Now is the time to take advantage of all of those many advances in modern medicine to see to it that Bella and her baby are safely delivered. Pregnancy is not an illness that you need to cure."

"My own mother died delivering me. Pregnancy and childbirth may not be an illness, but they are inherently dangerous, and Bella's more than most. Edward is not wrong," he insisted a second time.

"He's not right, either. Bella's child isn't a demon. You know how he overreacts about everything! This is just par for his course, especially where Bella is concerned!"

Bella pleaded with my father, "You've already agreed to make me a vampire if Edward doesn't. All I'm asking is that you help me live until he's born, and then help Edward change me, or do it yourself. Save me, and him."

Carlisle's lips thinned and he sighed. "Well, let us at least see what the ultrasound can show us, shall we?"

Bella nodded as a smile played on her lips and her eyes lit with excitement. Carlisle spread a bit of gel over the bump and begin to glide the wand over her distended uterus. Rosalie stood behind him so she could see the monitor. I watched through both sets of eyes for the first glimpse of the thing growing in Bella's stomach, but all I saw was a field of white. Where there should have been a grainy black blur of fluid surrounding the grey and white shape of the fetus's body, there was only white.

"It can't penetrate?" Rose asked him.

"So it would seem."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong, Bella. It is only that the ultrasound is not able to penetrate the amniotic sac."

Bella gnawed her lower lip. "So we can't see the baby?"

He handed her some tissue to clean the gel from her stomach and put the device away. "Not with this, but I also brought an x-ray machine home," he explained as he rolled the portable imager to her side. "I have to slide this under your hips and then you need to lie very still."

Bella raised herself off the table so that Carlisle could position the film. He angled the arm over Bella's abdomen, adjusting it until it was pointing at her rounded belly.

"Aren't x-rays bad for a baby?"

"This is not a typical fetus, Bella. Vampires are not subject to cancers, and I do not think you have to worry about infertility."

Bella laughed softly. "No, I guess not."

After pressing a few buttons, he retrieved the film from underneath her, and Bella sat up, dangling her legs over the side of the table while he loaded the picture.

"Hmm."

"What?"

"The x-ray cannot penetrate, either."

I sighed in frustration and heard an identical sigh from Carlisle at the same time. Ignorance again. Or perhaps not. Surely this proves that the fetus is more vampire than human? He glanced back at Bella. Not that I believe that will matter to her, but it reinforces my opinion that Edward is correct. This child cannot be allowed to finish gestating.

"Bella, I need to run some tests. Since I am unable to see the fetus, I am going to have to rely on your body to tell me what is going on."

"You're talking needles, aren't you?"

"I promise it will be very quick, Bella. You will barely feel it."

Pressing her lips together tightly, Bella thrust her arm out to him and closed her eyes, but I was aware of the change in her complexion as Carlisle turned away. Before he could get his supplies, Bella slid from the table and threw herself toward a trashcan.

When she was done, Rose helped her clean her mouth while Carlisle took the can into a bathroom to clean.

Bella sounded mortified when she said, "I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize, Bella. Morning sickness is normal."

"Yes, it is, but I am still concerned. When was the last time you were able to keep anything down?"

"I'm not really hungry..."

The loud grumble from Bella's stomach was proof of her lie. Rose glanced at our father, and I was almost amused at the way he could convey disapproval with the slightest tightening of his mouth.

"Bella, I am going to reiterate: every symptom is important. You need to be honest with me or I might miss something that I would need to know in order to help you."

Bella nodded slowly, looking chagrined.

"Now, I am going to ask you again: when was the last time you ate without getting sick?"

"Thursday," she whispered.

"What about liquids? Have you drunk any water?"

"Yes. Some."

"Did you keep it down?"

"For a while."

He filled a cup with water and held it out to her. "Dehydration is dangerous. To both of you. Sip it slowly so that you will have a better chance of keeping it down." Carlisle watched as Bella took several sips of the water and nodded in approval. "I am also going to give you an antiemetic. Hopefully that will help your nausea."

Bella groaned, but held her arm back out and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Here, Bella. You can squeeze my hand," Rose offered, taking the cup from Bella.

Carlisle's sure fingers easily found the extra warmth under the skin at the crook of her elbow. He gently probed the vein before swirling an alcohol wipe across her skin. He glanced at my sister, whose eyes were fixed on Bella's arm. Her mouth was firmly set, though she was breathing rapidly. "Hold your breath, Rosalie."

She glanced at him and immediately stopped the flow of air into her lungs. Bella flinched as Carlisle inserted the needle. He filled several tubes with her blood, pocketing them quickly before applying gauze to the tiny puncture and disposing of the needle. Rose's eyes were slightly darker when she resumed breathing, but she didn't otherwise react to the lingering scent of Bella's blood that hung in the air.

"Another needle?" Bella groaned as Carlisle prepared the antiemetic.

"It would do you no good to give you a pill to swallow that will only come back up before it has a chance to be absorbed into your system. This will be faster and the effects longer-lasting, besides."

"I feel fine now, though. I'm not nauseous or anything."

"You have not eaten in two days. Starving yourself to avoid a needle is good for neither you nor the fetus."

"Baby," Rosalie inserted angrily.

"Fetus is the correct terminology, Rosalie. It is not a baby until it is born."

"It's okay, Rosalie. Just get it over with, Carlisle." Bella flinched again and hissed as he pushed the medicine into the muscle on her shoulder.

"There. You should feel better soon. Now, I want you to try to eat something. Esme bought crackers and cereal, which many women claim help their nausea. She also bought ginger ale. I suggest you start there. In the meantime, I am going to go to the hospital and have them run these. I will be back shortly, alright?"

Bella nodded and scooted off the table, clutching Rose's hand for balance.

I turned and strode into the kitchen. Our pantry had never been so full of food. Though Esme shopped regularly in order to keep up appearances, she had usually driven the items straight to another town to donate to the food bank. Occasionally, she would bring the items home if she planned on cooking something for Carlisle to take to the hospital. Sometimes it would be sweets for the staff, sometimes a pretense to visit him for lunch at work, but now, our kitchen was overflowing with food. Esme had bought enough to feed our whole family for a month - had we any interest in eating the stuff.

I found the crackers and ginger ale, filled a cup with ice in case she wanted to drink it cold, and returned to the living room as Rose escorted Bella to the couch.

"Thanks," she said when I handed her the crackers. "I guess you were listening."

"Of course."

I frowned as Rose sat beside Bella. My fragile human girl leaned against my sister and began to nibble on a cracker. I opened my mouth to discuss the exam and what it meant, but Rose glared at me. Don't start, Edward. She needs to eat.

I scoffed. "As if I didn't know that already. I brought her the crackers, didn't I?"

"That's beside the point. Don't badger her right now."

I pressed my lips together against the words I wanted to say and watched Bella's face. She refused to meet my eyes, keeping hers on the food she was picking at.

If it were possible for a vampire to sleep, I would have sworn I was dreaming. Once, Rose had tried to convince Carlisle to allow her to kill Bella for jeopardizing our family's anonymity. She'd never been shy about showing her hostility for the girl who had captured my heart. Even after Bella had saved my life in Italy, Rose had treated Bella like an unwelcome guest instead of a family member.

Likewise, Bella had always avoided my sister. She'd been well aware of Rose's feelings toward her. For some reason, she'd even been jealous of Rose, no matter how often I had assured her that my sister and I had never been attracted to each other.

Now, seeing them practically cuddling on the couch, I felt like I was the butt of some sick cosmic joke. My human wife was pregnant with my vampire spawn and being protected - from me! - by the one member of my family who had actively tried to prevent her from joining us. Though I had never been able to talk sense into the girl I loved, I frantically tried to think of a way to convince her to give up the child I had once craved.

Alice abruptly stood. "I don't feel so good," she muttered and headed upstairs. Jasper was by her side before she set her foot on the bottom stair. I was aware that he was trying to send her feelings of calm in an effort to combat the fear that he felt coming from her.

"Bella, sweetheart. Can I fix you something else to eat?" Esme offered.

She nodded. "Yeah. That'd be great, Esme. Thanks."

"Chicken soup," I muttered. Bella glanced at me, meeting my gaze at last with a tentative hope in her chocolate eyes. "To combat the dehydration," I explained in a flat voice.

Bella swallowed her cracker and nodded, and Esme zipped into the kitchen to begin fixing the soup for Bella. Left in the living room with Emmett, Rosalie, and Bella, I was acutely aware of the divide within my family.

Alice feared the thing Bella was carrying. Her inability to see it or Bella made her instinctively distrust it. Jasper believed that, aside from the threat to Bella herself, the thing's existence threatened our family, and anything that threatened Alice was not to be tolerated. Carlisle, though he was on his way to the hospital, had made his feelings plain already. By its very nature, the vampire child would be an uncontrollable threat to human and vampire alike. His memories of the children he'd seen in Volterra had left us both with a deep sense of distrust for the growing demon-child.

Esme and Rosalie were of the opposite opinion. The thing was a miracle, and to be protected at all costs. Emmett, though wary, felt he had to support his wife. It was clear that Rose was already as attached to the thing as Bella was, and if he were to suggest killing it, he might as well have been suggesting he kill Rose's own child. He knew how she grieved over her lost human future, but could never give her a child directly. Supporting her and Bella now was his only chance.

After more than fifty years of relying on Alice to guide us, it was disconcerting to be without the security of knowing that, whatever else happened, our family was safe. Worse, the future she had promised had been tantalizingly close. Now, not even tomorrow was assured.