A/N: first, a friendly reminder that I am not a doctor. Take all medical terms/situations with a grain of salt, and please don't feel the need to tell me if I got something wrong. It's a fiction story for a reason :) Second, you'll probably want a tissue. Or a dozen.

Sometimes, I pray for you at night

Someday, maybe you'll see the light

Oh, some say, in life, you're gonna get what you give

But some things only God can forgive

~ Kesha, Praying

EPOV

"I love muffin day," Bella sighed happily, walking down the hall toward the front door with a blueberry muffin in her hand.

I smiled, watching her thoroughly enjoy the small chunk she had broken off and popped into her mouth. An involuntarily memory of her first visit to the old house popped into my head and her shocked expression when I told her Sunday's were usually muffin days. They still were, except now that I knew how much she loved them I tried to make them at least once during the week, too.

I carried her behemoth of a bag to her car, as I did every morning, listening to her heels click on the cement behind me. I dropped the bag in the passenger side seat of her car, walking over to the driver's side to catch her arm before she could get in.

I pressed a quick kiss to her lips, told her to have a good day at work, and watched her drive away. Had I known what the day would bring, I never would have let her out of my sight.

"I don't… understand," I breathed out. My ears were ringing, my heart pounding loudly against my chest, and my brain was having a hard time catching up. Renata went through her spiel again.

"Bella was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital earlier this evening. She was found outside of her former residence by Emmett McCarty. I don't know her exact situation, just that she was badly beaten and that the hospital has said she's in serious but stable condition."

I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting against a sudden surge of nausea rolling around my stomach. Three minutes ago, I was sitting in front of half a dozen cameras and an audience of about two hundred people. Then Jim, the Tonight Show's executive producer, made up some line about there being a technical problem and a production assistant ushered me into my dressing room and shoved my phone in my hand.

I fought against reality as long as I could, held on to the hope that my phone would beep with a text from Bella telling me I was worried about nothing. That she was fine. Because succumbing to the reality where my fiancé was currently in the hospital in serious but stable condition while I sat here in my own self-pity was a hard fucking pill to swallow.

"I'll meet you at the hospital, okay? Edward?" Renata's voice broke through the fog clouding my brain.

"Hospital. Cedars-Sinai. Yes. Okay," my words started coming out faster and faster, a panic building up inside my chest once the shock started to fade.

I stood quickly, grabbing my wallet and keys off of the counter.

"For the love of God, don't get yourself wrapped around a tree on your way there."

I ended the call without a response. Was already halfway down the hall toward the back door before I could pocket my phone. I froze, the sudden white light outside the door taking me back for a minute, until I heard the clicking and roar of shouting. I walked purposefully through the crowd, more than willing to shove any fucker in my way to the ground. They all seemed to get the hint pretty fast, making a line through the crowd. That wasn't to say they were civil in the least, they all held their cameras up and clicked as fast as they could. Thankfully, they were all so desperately trying to shout over each other that I couldn't make out a single thing they said.

After a quick rev of my engine anyone between my car and the exit was quick to get out of the way. I knew the quickest route to Cedars-Sinai, having visited Jasper at work more than a few times over the years. I had seventeen unanswered phone call attempts to Jasper before I was pulling up to the emergency room entrance.

I was pretty sure I was in an ambulance roundabout, but it was the closest spot to the door. I tossed my keys to the security guard that was walking toward me, through another throng of photographers. He could keep the car, for all I cared.

"Isabella Swan," I grunted, leaning over the check-in counter.

"I'm sorry, Sir, I'm going to need you to – "

"Isabella Swan. She was brought in – "

"Edward!"

I turned to the left, and saw Jasper heading down the hall toward me. Pushing off the counter, I felt that lethargic panic settle into my limbs again. I needed to know what had happened, where Bella was and the extent of her injuries. At the same time, not knowing how bad things were might have been better. I wouldn't have to accept something that I didn't know.

Jasper grabbed my arm firmly, tugging me when my feet suddenly refused to move. A door down the hall opened and I watched a patient be wheeled out. I thought nothing of it until I saw the brown hair as she leaned over and started vomiting. Bright red blood spilled into a bucket being held out by a nurse as they rushed alongside the bed.

"Bella," I mumbled, my feet deciding to work again. "Bella!"

"Edward, in here," Jasper grunted, trying to push me into another room.

"No," I snapped. "I need to see her. She – "

"She's on her way to the operating room, Edward. You want her in the OR."

His words made me freeze, long enough for him to shove me into the room. Movement from the corner caught my attention immediately, Emmett hopping up from a chair.

"How is she?" he asked quickly.

"Both of you, sit."

I collapsed into a chair, not bothering to pay attention to the room around me. My head fell to my hands, a fistful of hair coming out by the time I looked up at Jasper.

"Why does she need surgery?" I grunted out, still fucking petrified to hear the reality of the situation.

Jasper pulled a chair up in front of Emmett and I. He was too fucking calm for my liking. "She needs a few things done in surgery," Jasper said carefully. "She has some internal bleeding that needs to be taken care of. That's why she was vomiting as they took her up."

He paused, gauging my reaction before going on. "She's also going to need a total hip replacement."

All of the air left my lungs in a gasp.

Jasper shook his head despondently. "Her right hip is… shattered, basically. Complete replacement is the only option."

Christ. She was twenty-three. Twenty-three and getting a total fucking hip replacement.

I scrubbed my hands roughly over my face. "Is that… it?"

"She's got a few fractured ribs as well as a small fracture in her right wrist. Aside from some heavy bruising and some cuts and scratches, yes. We already got a head CT and ruled out any brain bleeding, which is good. Really good, all things considered."

My thoughts were moving too fast for me to focus on one. "She's going to be okay, though. After the hip replacement," I grunted out the words, fighting against a wave of nausea as they came out of my mouth. "And the internal bleeding is taken care of… she'll be okay?"

Doctors weren't supposed to make promises. I knew it. Emmett knew it. And Jasper sure as hell knew it. It was why he looked so uncomfortable as I asked him to promise my fiancé wasn't about to die on an operating table.

"Doctor Roberts is the head of the ortho department. He'll fix her hip, and Doctor Stevens will figure out where the internal bleeding is coming from and put a stop to it. Stevens is the Chief of Surgery, Edward. She's got the best possible doctors working on her."

It didn't answer my question but I knew he wasn't going to. I was too afraid to push, because I wasn't sure if I wanted the answer.

Mistakes happened.

Scans missed things.

Some people's bodies couldn't handle the stress of surgery.

I had heard one too many stories from Jasper about all of those happening on a daily basis.

"How…" I asked, clearing my throat when it got too tight to talk. "How long will she be in surgery?"

"Probably three or four hours."

I checked my watch. Six thirty-seven.

"Did either of you talk to her? Was she – " I stopped myself before I could finish my question. Asking if she was okay was pointless. She wasn't.

"She was unconscious when I found her," Emmett breathed out. "I thought… I thought she was dead."

Another wave of nausea rolled around in my stomach.

"She's been in and out of it. I tried to talk to her a little bit, but she's pretty disoriented, which isn't unusual. She – "

My head snapped up to look at Jasper. "What?"

He looked guilty for slipping. Like he didn't want to tell me whatever it was. "She was in a lot of pain. Her hip…" he shook his head. "It's good that she's already in surgery."

I rubbed the heel of my palms over my eyes. I had more questions. I was sure somewhere in the back of my mind there were a hundred waiting to be asked, but I couldn't focus on any of them. One managed to sneak through, though.

"Did she say what happened?"

I knew what happened. Everyone in the room knew what happened.

Jasper nodded. "It was Tyler."

"Fuck!" I shouted, standing up suddenly enough for my chair to topple backwards. I had never been a violent man, but I had an urge to hit something. My fist left a hole in the far wall. I could see the blood and cuts on my knuckles, but couldn't feel a thing.

Jasper walked over, wordlessly grabbing my hand and poking at it for a minute. "Nothing's broken. I'll send a nurse in to bandage it up. I'm going to the OR to keep an eye on Bella, I'll try to come down every hour for an update."

I nodded, collapsing in a chair in the corner of the room. A minute later a nurse walked in the room, the door opening enough for both Emmett and I to hear Rosalie shouting in the hallway. Emmett ran out as the nurse pulled a chair up in front of me.

She didn't say anything as she grabbed my hand. She rubbed something on it that finally made me feel the broken skin of my knuckles before wrapping some gauze and a bandage around them. By the time she was done and leaving the occupancy of the room was in the process of quadrupling.

Renata showed up just in time to save Rosalie from getting arrested for fighting the poor girl at the front desk. Alice had wandered in, eerily quiet for the girl who always had something to say. I checked my phone and saw a message from my father saying they were picking up Masen and Lucy and heading over just as they all four barreled in the doorway. I stood up quickly, ignoring the sting in my knuckles and pulling my kids into a tight hug.

Masen backed out of the hug first. I watched him walk over to where Renata was talking to my parents, a deep frown on his face as he listened. Lucy kept her arms tight around my waist, her shoulders shaking as she cried.

We had finally gotten it right. Bella, the kids, and I, we had finally found this perfect little routine and become a family. All of the animosity was gone and replaced with family dinners and hikes and movie nights. Even as I held my daughter closer, I felt like the whole thing was slipping through my fingers.

"Is she going to be okay?"

I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, tightening my hold around her. "I hope so."

…Closure…

I had been lucky enough to never spend too much time in hospitals in my life. Not for the wrong reasons, at least. Jasper and I had lunch together every now and then while he was working. Irina spent a couple days in the hospital after the twins were born. Other than that, I couldn't remember any other time I'd had the misfortune to end up in a hospital. Which meant I didn't realize it was like you were living in another world.

Time moved too fucking slow. The air smelled unnaturally sterile. The bright lights in our windowless room gave no indication of time passing or the sun setting. Sirens sounded every so often and every goddamn time all I could think about was that not too long ago Bella had been the one in the ambulance.

The image of her hunched over the side of the bed, vomiting up blood as she was wheeled away from me played on repeat in my mind. Over and over until I had to find the nearest restroom to finally give in to the nausea that had been rolling around in my stomach all evening.

When I got back, not feeling better than when I had left, I froze when I saw Bella's bag sitting on the chair I had vacated.

"A nurse brought it in," Alice said quietly.

I grabbed the bag carefully, setting it in my lap as I sat down. It was the one I gave her before her first day working with Renata. There was a plastic bag full of her jewelry sitting on top of it. I had watched her put it all on this morning. I swallowed back the lump in my throat as I pulled her engagement ring out, the vivid memory of her smile as I slid it onto her finger for the first time still fresh in my mind.

An overwhelming sense of failure washed over me. This ring had been a promise. A promise to love her until the day I died. A promise to take care of her. To protect her.

I stood up quickly, muttering something about needing fresh air before storming out of the room. I couldn't just walk outside, even through the walls you could hear the steady hum of photographers camped outside. I settled for an empty stairwell.

I sank to the ground, my head falling to my hands. I wasn't sure how long I sat there, stewing in my own self-hatred, before I heard the door open. My plan had been to ignore whoever it was, until a quiet voice said my name.

"Edward Cullen."

My eyes shot up, not recognizing the woman in front of me. She had brownish-blonde hair that fell to her shoulders and olive eyes that looked at me with pity. She had on professional attire, and my stomach dropped when I realized she was probably a journalist who had managed to get into the hospital.

Journalists always gave me pause, though, and this woman didn't have an imposing bone in her body. She sat down beside me, stretching her legs out in front of her.

"I'm Jessica Stanley."

My brows shot up. "Doctor Stanley?"

She nodded.

"I've heard a lot about you. I would have preferred it to be under better circumstances, but it's nice to finally meet you," she said softly, holding a hand out to me.

"I've heard a lot about you, too." My voice was practically unrecognizable, gruff and tight.

Neither of us said another word, time ticking by slowly and silently. It gave me plenty of opportunities to ruminate on just how spectacularly I had failed my fiancé.

"I don't…" I started, shaking my head and twirling Bella's ring around between my fingers. "I don't know how I can ever look her in the eyes again after I let this happen. I promised her. I promised so many fucking times that I wouldn't let him hurt her again."

"You know as well as I do that she would never put the blame on you for all of this."

I shook my head. "She should."

Jessica pressed her lips together, looking like she wanted to say something.

"What?"

"I'm just trying to walk the line of client-patient confidentiality," she admitted before carefully continuing. "She sees everything you do. All of the little ways you try to take care of her and protect her. Even the smallest things that might not mean much to you mean the world to her, because nobody else has ever given her safety a second thought."

I nodded, unfortunately understanding exactly what she meant. Bella thanked me for trying to find her a safe car. She didn't quite understand why I didn't want her taking rides from complete strangers. She realized I loved her because I brought her sunscreen for a hike.

"She knows you'd do anything to protect her. She's never going to blame this on you."

I knew she would never blame me, too. There wasn't a vindictive bone in her body. She was beautiful and selfless and too fucking good for me. Which made it hurt that much more that she of all people had ended up beaten and bloody on the ground.

As much as I still thought she should blame me, I took a little comfort in Jessica's words. I understood why Bella liked her, as much as a client could like a therapist who made them dredge up their deepest secrets. She was easy to open up to.

"I just came by to make sure her doctors kept me updated. I'll be by to see her tomorrow. Which I assume means I'll see you tomorrow, too."

I nodded.

Jessica stood up, dusting herself off and turning toward me one last time. "Don't blame yourself, Edward. She wouldn't want you to."

I stayed out in the stairwell for a few more minutes after Jessica left. I took a deep breath and squeezed Bella's engagement ring in the palm of my hand. My parents looked at me with sad eyes when I walked back in. I shook my head and plopped back down in my chair.

…Closure…

The more time that passed, the more relaxed I thought I'd be. More time meant more of her surgery completed, it meant I was that much closer to waking up from this fucking nightmare. Instead, I got more anxious. More nervous every minute that passed because they were taking too long.

Irina showing up an hour ago had been a good distraction. Having to convince Masen and Lucy to head home with her instead of spending the night in the hospital was a good reprieve from the constant stream of worst-case-scenario's that had been going through my brain the last three hours. Eventually, reminding them that Lady was at home and hadn't been taken care of all evening got them to agree to go. On the condition that I send updates every half hour.

I checked my watch. Ten seventeen.

The door swung open, Jasper walking through with two other doctors beside him.

Fuck.

My stomach twisted, only slightly comforted by the small smiles on the two other doctors' faces, and the gentle nod Jasper sent my direction. I met the three of them in the middle of the room.

"Ms. Swan's surgery went smoothly," one of the doctors said quickly, probably immediately consumed by the tension that had permeated the room in the hours we had been waiting.

"There was more internal bleeding than we anticipated. She had to have a few transfusions and she lost more blood than we wanted, but she'll be just fine."

"Her hip will take a bit longer to recover. She's going to need some physical therapy and some help getting around for a while. She's young and healthy and active, though, so she shouldn't have any problem rehabbing her hip and adjusting. On the other hand, because she's young and healthy and active, there's a good chance she'll need another replacement down the line. Most people that get hip replacements are much older, the materials aren't built to last decades."

I nodded. I knew I'd have questions later, knew there were still a few dozen things for me to be worried about. All I could focus on was how good it felt to finally breathe for the first time in four hours.

"Can I see her?" I asked impatiently.

"She's going to be in a recovery room for an hour or so, just so we can make sure she's stable. Then we'll move her to a patient room where you can sit with her."

"We're going to keep her pretty sedated overnight. Usually we like to get hip replacement patients up and moving as soon as possible, but she's got other injuries that need resting. We'll wean her off of the sedatives tomorrow morning."

I nodded. The whole night felt foggy. I wasn't sure if my mind had been clear and conscious since the PA pulled me away from my desk. One of the doctors, I didn't even know his name, grabbed my hand from my side and gave it a firm squeeze between both of his.

"She's going to be fine," he said sternly. Not in a rude or condescending way, but in the way he knew I needed to hear to break through the all-consuming fear that had taken over my body for the last four hours.

"Thank you," I breathed out, shaking his hand and turning to thank the doctor beside him as well.

…Closure…

I paced anxiously back and forth across the spacious, empty hospital room. It wasn't your average patient room, and I wasn't sure who to thank for that. I had been nothing short of useless in the last four hours, but someone had obviously thought ahead to make sure Bella had a nice room.

The window on the far wall finally gave away the time of day, or night. The sterile scent was still in the air, but it didn't feel quite so claustrophobic anymore. There was no bed in the room, not yet, but there was plenty of medical equipment. Monitors and computers and half a dozen other things I didn't even know the name of. There was a private bathroom attached, one that was shockingly nice to be part of a hospital room. A small seating area was underneath the window, two couches in the corner.

I dropped my suitcoat on the couch, tugging the tie from around my neck and dropping it on top of the coat. Leaning over the windowsill, I saw the crowd of paparazzi still in the parking lot. Thankfully we were about ten stories up.

The door opened and I turned quickly, only to be met with Jasper.

"They're bringing her down now."

"That means she's doing okay, then, right?"

"Yeah, she's doing good," Jasper said hesitantly. "I just wanted to tell you to… prepare yourself."

I frowned, my stomach sinking. "For what?"

"She just… she looks a little rough. She's got a lot of bruising. She needed a couple stitches for a cut on her cheek. All minor things comparatively, but things you should be prepared for."

I nodded, stuffing my hands in my pockets and twisting her engagement ring between my fingers. There was no more time for questions, the door opening slowly again as a bed was wheeled in.

My breath was stuck in my lungs as I watched a few nurses get her situated. I heard them starting up machines and listened to them talk to each other about what they were doing, but none of it registered in my brain.

Her face was swollen, most of it covered in deep purple bruises. I saw the stitches on her cheek, right along her cheek bone. Her lip was busted, a couple butterfly bandages carefully placed which hopefully meant it wouldn't need stitches, too.

"You're sure her brain is okay?" I grunted out, my throat tightening up on me. I knew nothing about biology or brains but I knew someone who took a beating like that was more than likely to have some kind of brain damage.

"She probably has a concussion, but her CT was clear."

I nodded, hearing the nurses leave the room.

"Which hip…"

"Her right," Jasper said, pointing to Bella's right hip.

I walked over to her side slowly. She looked so tiny in the middle of the bulky hospital bed. On instinct, my hand reached out to brush a few strands of hair out of her face, but I pulled it back quickly.

"She's heavily sedated. You won't wake her up."

As softly as I could, I tucked her hair behind her ear.

"I'll be in with Doctor Roberts around six to check on her and start getting her off of the sedatives. Everyone is down the hall if you need anything."

I felt his hand squeeze my shoulder, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Bella.

"Thank you, Jasper," I managed to get out before he left the room.

I collapsed in the chair beside her, carefully resting my hand over her arm. She was too still. And she hated sleeping on her back. But, she was here. The steady beeping coming from over my shoulder told me she was here and alive and safe. After letting my mind get the best of me the last few hours, I forced myself to focus on those three things.

Here.

Alive.

Safe.

I pulled her engagement ring out of my pocket and carefully slid it back onto her finger where it belonged before carefully intertwining my fingers with hers. I matched my own breathing with the steady rhythm of Bella's, feeling calm for the first time all night.

A/N: That's less of a cliffhanger than the last chapter…. Right? I'll get the next one up as soon as possible, I promise. I'll see you soon!