Names

Cincinnati, Ohio
Summer, 1911

Cincinnati wasn't nearly far enough, but it gave him more options. The C&O, the B&O, the L&N, Erie and Western and so many others. Tens of trains, leaving nearly every thirty minutes, with the ability to fling him anywhere from Boston to Kansas.

Some moves, Carlisle was able to make deliberately. Columbus had been one such move—he'd planned it months in advance, drawing up his papers—while others necessitated less premeditation. Chicago was the first train leaving Union Station and so it was the one he had picked; giving him less than an hour to stare out at the barges moving swiftly by on the glassy surface of the Ohio. The wet summer air hung thickly as the din of the station swirled around him; high and low voices speaking German and English, ticket machines clacking, the hiss of the steam.

It would be good to be in a bigger city. He longed for the days when smaller towns had been a better refuge; when he had been able to treat patients for years. There had been a gentle intimacy in attending to a mother's fourth birth by lamplight. But smaller towns meant more talking, and in these days when a telegram—or worse, a telephone call—could travel with news of the unusual young doctor with the light eyes, the smaller towns were becoming less safe.

There were two crates of art and books shipped ahead and which would arrive behind him. Those had taken an hour to pack, and another hour lost to visiting the post office at human speed. One hour to feign panic, to explain to the most senior physician about the terrifying telegram he'd received; the need to return immediately to his family home, that his father was gravely ill. Yes, he did have a father; yes, his only family; no, they didn't get on well and that was why Carlisle never spoke of him. Except for the telegram, none of these things were technically lies.

Well that and that he claimed to be going to New England.

Twenty-three hours. It had taken him twenty-three hours to fully dismantle his life. The better part of a decade spent here in the rolling midlands of Ohio, a handful of streets from the university, and in less than a day he had demolished all of it—the small house, emptied, his possessions no doubt making their way to some other train as he stood watching the river swirl. His office, stripped of his diploma, his stethoscope and otoscope nestled neatly in his black bag.

His hand flexed involuntarily over its handle now, just as it had the day before. His memory, so often a blessing for what it permitted him to do, was so readily also a curse, forcing him to relive the most jarring experiences of his unnaturally long life. And it had seized yesterday's encounter and refused to let go.

Based on the sound of its gait, the horse which was pulling the carriage needed re-shoeing, the hooves clopping unevenly against the stone street. There was only one patient in the hospital, down with the measles, and Carlisle had already finished rounds, if seeing one patient could be counted as such. He had been standing near the back door to the hospital, nearer his examining room, when the carriage came to a stop outside. The metallic, salty scent of fresh blood had flooded the air as soon as Carlisle swung open the door.

From the trousered, dangling legs, he at first assumed his new patient to be a young male, and so he was shocked to hear a high, feminine voice take up bickering with the carriage's driver.

"It doesn't hurt," the voice insisted. "I could walk on it."

"You can't," came a gruffer voice. "What are we meant to do with you? The yield is low this year. We can't afford to have you falling out of trees, Esme."

Carlisle stepped outside, saying a brief mental prayer of thanks for the cloud cover which enabled him to act on his concern. "What have we here, today?" he said by way of greeting. The man turned and he got a good look at his patient. She was quite pretty, with long hair the color of an unfiltered honey spilling gently over slim shoulders. Though her high-necked blouse was cut for her figure, it was tucked unevenly into a pair of men's canvas pants, and if he wasn't mistaken, she wasn't wearing a brassiere.

"My daughter," the man said. "She's hurt herself. Our doctor in London is away; we've driven almost two hours." He shook his head. "And people told me it would be my son who would be a nuisance…"

The words seemed to be meant with malice, but Carlisle chuckled anyway. "Why don't we move into my office. I'm Dr. Cullen."

He pretended that it necessitated slight strain for him to help lift the girl onto the examining table but he could tell she was quite lithe—thin and girlish but muscular, her cheeks flushed and healthy. He gently swung her legs so that they were straight out in front of her. She winced but said nothing.

"Did I hear your father mention this injury was a fall out of a tree?"

She grunted disapprovingly. "Storm last week took out a branch and I forgot. Stepped on air."

His smile came unbidden. "Air isn't very supportive."

"So it seems."

Carlisle pressed his lips together to maintain his composure. He gestured toward her trousered thigh. "May I?"

She nodded. His fingers had barely grazed below her knee when she let out a scream which nearly shattered the window. Then she clamped her mouth closed and bit her lip so hard it drew additional blood.

"Right, then." Carlisle spoke half to her father and half to her. "I think the best choice here will be for me to scissor the leg of this trouser."

The father huffed. "Better for her not to have them anyway. Why we can't keep you in dresses I don't understand."

"Hard to climb a tree in a dress. Lord knows I've tried."

Carlisle chuckled quietly even as her father scowled. He used a pair of gauze scissors which were guarded against breaking the skin. But he knew the skin was already gashed, and if he was right, he had caught the distinct, thick, oily smell of subcutaneous tissue. He wasn't surprised, therefore, by the gruesomeness of the open wound, the flash of white among red blood and oxygenated muscle fiber.

The girl's father, however, staggered forward and swayed, and Carlisle moved at full speed to catch him. The man looked up confusedly.

"It might be better if you stepped into the outer room," Carlisle said gently. "More air."

The man gave a long look to his daughter, who scowled. "Go, Father. This is not going to get better."

Carlisle met the man's anxious eyes with a gentle smile. "I'll take good care of her." His hand was a bit more forceful than he intended. But the man nodded, and a moment later, Carlisle found himself alone with the girl. He turned to his desk, removing the bottle of laudanum and a pewter cup. He poured a finger of the dark liquid and gave it to her. She raised her eyebrows.

"It will dull the pain," he explained.

She nodded, swigged the cup, and winced.

"I'm sorry. It's not particularly pleasant, I know." He did not know, but he was used to his patients pulling faces after they sipped it. "We'll need to give it a few minutes to take effect. Would you care to tell me a few things more while we wait?"

He proceeded to take a brief medical history. She was sixteen. She had only ever lived in the house she'd been born in. This wasn't the first fracture, and from her determined expression, he suspected it wouldn't be the last. No surgeries, no diseases. No pregnancies, a question which made her blush. He found himself asking a handful of questions more than necessary, enjoying listening to her talk.

When her eyes went a little dull after a quarter hour, he asked if she would mind if he tried straightening her leg once more. She nodded. This time, when he placed his hands on either side of her calf, she didn't flinch. "Good," he muttered. "Does that hurt?"

A head shake. "It throbs a little." The corners of her lips turned up and she laughed. She looked surprised.

"That's normal," he said.

"Laughing?"

He nodded. "It changes all your senses, not just the ones I need to change."

Her pondering expression gave him just enough opportunity to move at his full speed, placing the fractured tibia back into place. It was a very clean break, all told. She didn't notice his movement until he turned to his supply drawer and removed a jar of catgut and his suturing needle.

"It will be best if you don't watch me," he said quietly, as he bent over her leg.

"Well, what else am I supposed to do?"

Usually, Carlisle told his patients to lie back and count, or to close their eyes and imagine something they found more pleasant. But as he opened his mouth, he found that those weren't the words which came out.

"Talk to me. What took you into the tree?"

"I like climbing. Gives me something to do."

"Haven't you other things to do?" He saw her flinch as he poured distilled water over the wound. "I'm sorry. Your mother surely has things for you to do around the house."

"She does. They aren't interesting."

He laughed. "But she needs your help, I'm certain. Do you have brothers?"

"Jimmy. He's twelve. He can drive the tractor. But so can I."

Carlisle realized at once he could envision this; the girl with her long legs dangling to the pedals of the tractor, her hair gathered over one shoulder, unladylike and wild.

"It's good to be a help," he offered. "Do you get on well with him?"

She sighed. "He's a boy. Boys are troublesome." She paused. "Er, I suppose…"

He laughed heartily. "I was a boy once. As I remember, I was troublesome." He winked. They didn't say anything for a few minutes while Carlisle sutured the inner layers of muscle. Usually he went out of his way to make his stitches slightly uneven, like a human would. But he found himself paying close attention to them now, spacing them perfectly, tying the catgut just so. It would dissolve, and no one else would see them, anyway. When he looked up from his stitching, he was shocked to see the brown eyes fixed on him.

"This doesn't frighten you," he muttered. It wasn't a question, and she shook her head in answer.

"It's interesting."

Interesting was not the typical answer he expected to receive from a sixteen-year-old girl looking at her own exposed muscle. He continued sewing.

"Can I ask you a question, Doctor?"

He kept his eyes on his work. "Certainly." It wasn't uncommon, questions from his patients. He braced himself for the usual ones and sure enough, the first one was expected:

"Why did my leg do this?"

"You landed on your feet, did you not?"

She nodded. "How did you know?"

"The direction of the break. You were moving forward and getting ready to take a step, and the bone snapped in the direction you were going. That's also why it had the force to break through your shin like this. It's mostly inertia."

"Inertia?"

"An object in motion wants to stay in motion," he answered. Of course not something she would know, or ever be taught. "Newton's first law of motion. When you fall, your body wants to keep falling. But the ground had something to say about that."

"It most certainly did."

He couldn't help his laughter. He looked up to her inquisitive face, and then returned to his task, bringing together the skin over the sutured muscle. "When you fell, you created force. That's Newton's second law. You accelerate—get faster—as you fall. And the faster you get, the more force you create. If you'd fallen from a shorter tree, you might have just ended up on your hindside."

"And Newton's third law?"

He raised his eyebrows. "What makes you think there's a third law?"

"Things always come in threes," she said, almost exasperatedly. "Three little pigs. Three blind mice. Three bears."

He grinned. "Well, yes. You're right. And the third law is the one that broke your leg." He bent over the wound, beginning to suture the skin at human speed. Already the blood flow was stanching, the blood on his hands becoming dry and rust-colored.

"All forces between two objects exist in equal magnitude and opposite direction," he recited as he sewed. "So when you fell, you exerted force on the ground, and it exerted force right back. And that is what snapped the bone."

Her lips pursed. "I don't think I like this ground so much."

"Yes, I would suggest you stay in the trees." He chuckled. "Or at least, minimize the speed with which you go from the branches to the ground."

She harrumphed, but the edges of her lips were upturned also. He finished the topmost suture, and went to get the plaster of paris and a rag. When he returned, she was staring fixedly at the wound. She met his eyes as he began to wash.

"Still comfortable?"

She nodded. He was just finishing cleaning the last remaining traces of blood from her shin and calf and reaching for the plaster and bandages when she spoke again.

"What's your name?"

"Dr. Cullen," he answered absently, as he laid one of the bandages perpendicular to the break.

"No," came her voice more insistently. "I mean your actual name."

"Oh."

It wasn't as though it wasn't on the forged diploma. Princeton, this time, which had all but made the head of hospital begin to drool. It was easier if others thought he was from someplace else, someplace more prestigious. It was easier if they were afraid to offend him, if they thought he considered himself too good for them.

It was easier if they left him alone.

And so he couldn't explain why, but as he laid the next strip, he answered, "It's Carlisle."

"That's an odd name."

He looked up. The corners of her mouth were turned up; her eyes alight.

"It was a surname, I believe," he told her. "Perhaps my mother's."

"Perhaps? You don't know?"

He looked away again, back to her leg and to the plaster. He laid a few more strips before going on.

"She…died. Giving birth to me. I didn't know her."

"Oh." She gave him an intent look. "I'm very sorry."

He swallowed. Of course, he couldn't add the more difficult fact. That his memories were so diaphanous, that only the strongest things remained. He remembered his anger. He remembered his sorrow, but not over what. And if his father had ever so much as uttered his mother's name, he did not know it. Two hundred years ago now, he had made his way to the graveyard, now beside a grander church than the small one he'd once known. On the weathered soapstone he'd found the name he'd forgotten: WILLIAM, the last of their tiny family to die. Below it, worn so that only three partial letters remained: SLE. And then, the third name, obliterated by a century of wear, the only letter remaining a single A. He had traced that letter, over and over, hoping some memory would come to him. Even now, the pad of his index finger tingled with the memory, and he closed his hand as though to to hold fast the sensation of tracing the single letter that was all he had left of his mother.

He gulped. He needed to change the subject.

"Esme is not exactly a common name either," he offered, lightly, as he worked a little more quickly. "One wonders why you are not a Mary, or a Margaret."

She giggled. "I don't like common names."

"So then you like mine."

A nod. "I've never met a Carlisle before."

"Nor I an Esme." He laid the final pieces of plaster. "I'll need you to be still for a few minutes. Can you manage that? It is something you'll need to get used to, unfortunately."

She pulled a face, but nodded, and he excused himself from the examining room into the open hallway to where her father sat, waiting. He briefly explained the break, and the treatment, invited her father back into the examination room, and then stepped outside.

Despite the overcast day, the summer Ohio heat was relentless, and the wall of the hospital was searing hot. His head dropped back so quickly that he accidentally shattered one of the bricks. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled, loudly, unnecessarily, before drawing several more breaths slowly and rhythmically, as though he had need of catching his breath.

How had a sixteen-year-old girl gotten him talking about his mother?

He stood nearly long enough to have raised second-degree burns on his back, had he been human, before he stood straight and adjusted his shirt and tie and strode back into the examination room. The father was there, looking every bit as vexed as he had at the start of their encounter. Carlisle made a show of examining the plaster, despite that he could smell it was fully dry. If he took one moment longer, it would be one more moment of her gentle teasing, of his laughter, of her coaxing him…

"She'll need to be fully still for several weeks," he heard himself saying. "In two weeks, bring her back so that we may check on the set of the bone." He turned to her. "That means no tractoring."

She smirked. "And no tree climbing?"

"Certainly not that." He smiled as he nodded toward her father. "Do you need help getting out? The set plaster is quite heavy." It was a question he asked often, but his forearms tingled at the thought of carrying her. But she was after all a slip of a girl, and her father lifted her with only a small amount of strain. A few pleasantries later and the unevenly-shoed hoofbeats were fading in the distance, leaving him alone.

Two weeks. His calendar appeared in his hand without him consciously thinking to take it, and that he did not know how fast he had moved scared him.

What would happen when she returned? What questions would she ask, and what information would she draw from him as a result? Before he meant to say it? While he was caught off-guard?

He swallowed deeply, shaking his head. The stethoscope and otoscope made their way into his black leather bag at an extra slow speed. There was no one waiting, and so he had removed his diploma from the wall also, leaving a discolored rectangle in the dust.

He closed the door behind him.

As he stared at the trains belching their white steam into the heavy summer air, his fingers closed again around the handle of his bag. Lost in the odd symphony of the train platforms, he barely heard the conductor's yell for Chicago. His feet moved seemingly of their own accord, and it wasn't until he reached the platform and the door to the Pullman car that he even noticed the voice.

"Is that all you got, today, sir?"

Carlisle turned. The porter was a Negro man, his jacket impeccable and his hat on straight.

"Just this," he began. "I—"

And then he was stumbling for words. How did he explain this suspicious movement, the speed with which he had eliminated his entire presence, the lack of plans for what would happen when he arrived in Chicago?

But he needn't have worried. The porter shook his head and tipped his hat.

"It ain't my place to ask no white man his business, sir. You have a safe journey now." He moved to greet the next customer, taking on a heavier suitcase, carrying it ahead of the man onto the train as Carlisle stared.

Wasn't that what he wanted? For no one to mind his business? For no one to look too closely, to ask too many questions? For no one to ask him questions that made his throat close and his index finger tingle?

As he lifted his foot to the stair, however, he heard a voice call out for the train to Columbus, and for a hairsbreadth of a second his thoughts carried him away. The train was a little more than two hours—could he ask for his job back? Re-hang the diploma, re-open the bag, and wait for two weeks from now, when she would return…

But then he snapped himself violently back to the present. He had made his choice. He knew his obligation. He understood the danger, even if the joyful girl could not.

And so Carlisle Cullen swung his way onto the Chicago train, and erased himself…

…again.