A product of quarantine and the Twilight Renaissance.

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, plot points, and backgrounds do not belong to me.

In the five days following, Bella did not leave the guest room. Carlisle would come in to check her leg and make the minimal amount of conversation it took to determine how she was. On the second day their conversation was a bit a bit longer so Carlisle could confirm that Bella was really okay with them going through her grandmothers journals. She'd given him the location and key of her storage unit from her backpack – which had been returned to her while she was sleeping at some point.

(While she was grateful, she'd begun locking the door for a semblance of privacy. Not that much was private in a house of vampires.)

When the journals arrived by way of Jasper and Alice the next day, Carlisle was practically giddy. The journals provided "unbelievable insight" to Bella's physiology, apparently. More than that, it was giving him more insight on the inner-workings of vampires as well. Unfortunately, Bella's almost complete lack of injury or illness up to this point meant that there were no notes on how her body typically heals.

With no historical record, Carlisle was going half-blind. He knew how to heal humans, and he knew how to heal vampires (when they needed it – which was never). With Bella having qualities of both, Carlisle was left upping doses of medicine used on humans (none of which was working) and monitoring her vampire-like skin.

So far, her wound was healing quickly. The pain in her leg was not. In fact, the burning sensation in her leg seemed to only get worse, making it difficult for Bella to sleep more than an hour at a time. Even though she never slept quite as much a normal human (Carlisle had read as much in the journals and confirmed with Bella), this was particularly bad.

Carlisle theorized that the burning was from the venom in the wound trying to burn out what the werewolf had left behind. Basically, it was reacting like the bite was an infection – which in a way, it was. Luckily for Bella, or unluckily depending on how much pain she was in at the time, her body wasn't allowing her to become a combination of human, vampire, and werewolf.

Essentially, all Carlisle could prescribe was rest. Which meant Bella was practically bedridden without even the solace of sleep. She'd only gotten up a handful of times, always with Carlisle carefully holding her upright.

Along with Carlisle's check-ins, Esme had begun leaving food outside her door twice a day. It was almost exclusively diner food, transported in a greasy paper bag. Carlisle had mentioned during one of their (heavily one-sided) daily conversations that they were off a few miles from a little town called Forks. That's where Carlisle worked, and where some of the Cullen children went to high school.

Bella had not let too much show on her face after hearing that absolutely insane (in her opinion) information, but the second he left the room all Bella could think was they're immortal vampires and they're in high school?

This was also how Bella came to know that they were in the state of Washington. Until this point, she'd had so little orientation that they might as well have been on Mars.

These conversations were the only source of entertainment Bella had in those five days.

The room she stayed in had a large window, but the curtains were shut 24/7. This was because Bella's head was still fuzzy and the light bothered her. This was yet another thing Carlisle couldn't explain, but was attributing to the combination of blood loss and infection.

This also prevented her from asking for a book, though she thought of it often. Maybe one of the many she'd seen when she'd first woken up in this giant house. She knew Carlisle or Esme would jump at the chance to do something for her. Something to give her anything else to think about between restless bouts of sleep and comfort between visits from Carlisle. And it would be so lovely to be lost to another world, another life. One less lonely, less uncertain, less painful.

But she was worried that reading would just add to the pain.

Bella also had no technology. She was usually never without a laptop or her iPod. But, just before her scheduled trip, her laptop had crapped out. And her iPod, it appeared, was one of the things that had not made it back with her bag.

This had devastated her in a jarring way, so much so she'd cried after Carlisle left the room. Bella blamed the exhaustion and her less than peak-physical condition on her reaction.

She knew that Alice had asked Carlisle more than once if Bella would want a visitor to keep her company. While her senses weren't back to normal, she could still hear better than the average human. Especially when that conversation had taken place just outside her door. Bella was glad when Carlisle said no, and even more glad when he didn't bring it up with her.

She could tolerate Carlisle's methodical prodding, but the idea of listening to over-enthusiastic Alice made her even more exhausted.

Then again, maybe that exhaustion would have been helpful. At least then she might finally get to sleep.