Sorry for the delay (again *facepalm*) I planned to update closer to last weekend than this weekend, but...RL.
Anyways...some of y'all guessed right!
Someone Else's Baby
June 20th 2008
"Am I doing it wrong?" Edward frets, bouncing his not-quite-day-old son as he scrunches up his face and screams like the devil is after him.
The nurse, the one who was here when Lucas was born and returned this morning to find Edward struggling to persuade Lucas to take a bottle, smiles gently and squeezes Edward's shoulder on her way past him. He's been given a postpartum room with a bed, a chair, and one of those plastic bassinet things for Lucas to sleep in—not that his newborn has any interest in sleeping.
"You're doing just fine," the nurse reassures him. "Maybe we should try him with a different nipple?"
Edward sighs, but nods and thanks the nurse—Katie—as she steps out to get a different style of bottle nipple to try.
In another life, Edward would have preferred it if his son could be breastfed by his mom. In another life, Edward would be stepping onto the path of parenthood with a wife, a partner to laugh and cry with, someone he could share ideas with.
"But it's just us, pal," Edward murmurs, trying to keep the edge of worry from his voice as he gives up with the bottle and sets it down. Getting out of the plastic chair he occupied for most of the night, since Lucas seemed to sense when he was getting comfortable in bed and about to fall asleep, Edward carries his son toward the window overlooking the forest. Lightly bouncing him in his arms, he carefully cradles Lucas with one arm and uses his free hand to adjust the blanket wrapped around him. With his arms and legs tucked in, Lucas finally settles, red face gradually lightening as his grunts and cries taper off.
Staring up at Edward with milky blue eyes, Lucas smacks his lips and frowns.
Edward huffs a soft, tired chuckle, kissing his son's hat-covered head. "I know, pal. We'll try somethin' else. You've got to eat. Or, drink, I guess."
And ten minutes later, once Katie has returned with a different brand of bottle and a fresh serving of warmed-up formula, Edward tearfully beams at her as Lucas chugs like a champion.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome, hon," Katie says with a smile. "You're doing a wonderful job."
.
For the rest of the day, whenever Edward starts to fret, Katie sets his mind at ease. By the time he leaves the hospital with Lucas, she feels like an unexpected ally and he's almost confident enough to think he might, just maybe, be able to handle this parenting thing.
~ oOo ~
Katie's hands tremble on the table-top as she requests a moment alone with Edward and Bella.
Edward and Bella share a loaded look before nodding, so both lawyers step out into the hall with Charlotte on their heels. Charlotte pauses, shooting a glance at Katie. It looks as though she wants to say something, but she doesn't, and seconds later, the three of them are alone.
Blowing out a big breath, Katie finally drags her eyes up to Edward's stony expression, then Bella's tear-filled eyes. "I am so, so sorry. When I heard…"
In the days leading up to this meeting, Edward had wondered if he'd get the chance to see Katie again. To see the woman responsible for this whole mess. A woman he'd once thought of as an ally.
Now, he doesn't know how he feels.
Truthfully, he's starting to feel...numb. His mom has reassured him that it's perfectly normal, under the circumstances.
The 'circumstances' being the wrecking ball this nurse's actions have just hit him—and Lucas, Bella, and Milo—with.
His lawyer, Craig Brooks, had informed him that she'd been found along with several of the other staff members on shift that day, but hadn't been able to say whether she would be present at this, or any other, meeting. 'She's relocated since then,' he'd said. All of the nurses present that day would give statements as evidence, but there was no precedent for whether they would be expected to see Edward and Bella.
But here she is.
Older, her once-brown hair now gray, and looking much more frail than Edward remembers.
Stress does that, though. He knows that.
Raking a hand through his hair, hair streaked with a few more grays at his temples than he had just a few months ago, Edward sighs. "What happened?"
Katie sniffles. "I could give you a hundred reasons and say that we were busy, we forgot to put their bracelets on, I should have been more careful since I was the most senior nurse working that day…" she exhales shakily. "But none of those excuses are good enough, are they? None of them can undo what we did, what I did. Or, didn't do."
"No," Bella says firmly, Edward's and Katie's eyes darting to her. "No, none of those excuses will ever be good enough for what we've all been through, what we still have to go through." Her voice wavers only slightly when she adds, "Our sons don't know yet, but somehow...somehow Edward and I have to tell them that their whole lives have been a lie because of your incompetence."
"Bella…" Edward murmurs, reaching over to touch the top of her arm. Not because she's wrong, but because he knows she'll be mortified if she gets so upset that she has a WPW episode.
She shoots him a quick glance and shakes her head.
"No, Edward. She has to know. She has to know what she's done to us, to our boys."
The fury Edward expected to feel when he follows Bella's gaze to Katie and really thinks about what she's done doesn't arrive. She's one of the people responsible for...not destroying, but fracturing...his wonderful life, and yet in fury's place is a lump of grief so intense that it steals his breath. He can't speak as Bella's cheeks flame, as she explains to Katie that mistakes she and her colleagues made twelve years ago mean that two twelve-year-old boys are days, weeks at most, away from having their whole lives turned upside-down.
The thought of shattering Lucas's life into pieces, of being the stranger crashing into Milo's...it breaks his heart.
But faced with the woman responsible, he has no idea what to say, how to feel, so he lets the blanket of numbness tighten around him instead.
"Do you realize what you've done?" Bella shouts, her voice cracking, both hands white-knuckling the edge of the table like it's the only thing keeping her there.
"I...I...Be—Miss Swan, Mr. Cullen, I can't tell you how sorry I am. If I could go back, if I could do that day over…"
Resting a hand over Bella's, Edward gives it a gentle squeeze and softly reminds her to take a breath. Katie pulls a tissue from her pocket and wipes the tears silently streaming over her cheeks. "I know that nothing I say will ever repair the damage we caused. I know that. But I just want to say that I'm sorry—"
Edward swallows around the lump in his throat as she looks between him and Bella.
The chair legs scrape loudly against the floor as Bella jumps up. "Sorry doesn't cut it. I can't...I can't do this, Edward. I can't look at her."
When the door bangs shut behind her a few moments later, both Edward and Katie flinch.
~ oOo ~
The rain falls in sheets, the evergreens surrounding the hospital looking especially vibrant even under the cover of bruised clouds. The trees are one of the things Edward has always liked about Forks. The forest is beautiful and wraps entirely around the little town nestled at the base of stunning mountains, moss and trees and the sounds of nature as far as you can walk in any direction.
Sucking in a big lungful of rain-scented air, Edward strides out of the hospital entrance and peers around in search of Bella, stuffing his hands in his pockets when he spots her. Over on the edge of the canopy, tucked just out of reach of the falling rain, her shoulders shake with the force of her grief.
When he gets within reach, Edward hesitates for a moment before gently placing a hand on her upper back. "Bella…"
"Oh!"
Spinning so fast she almost topples over, Bella's rosy cheeks flush even darker. Dashing tears from her cheeks—a fruitless task since more just fall to replace them—she mumbles an apology.
"Don't." Crouching a little so they're eye-level, he takes her shoulders in his hands and manages a humorless smile, one he hopes she finds reassuring. When she looks at him the way she is right now, with her deep brown eyes staring right into his, he has to fight from crying himself.
If the DNA test results and Katie's admission upstairs weren't enough to hammer the truth home, Bella's face would be.
From the freckles splashed across her nose, the way her chestnut hair has a curl to it, to the flecks of gold in her eyes, she's Lucas.
"You have every right to be upset, Bella. Every right," he finally murmurs. "Are you okay?"
Bella exhales shakily. "No. Not even a little. I didn't expect them to admit it."
"Neither did I," he admits.
"Siobhan has spent days preparing me for them giving us the run-around and refusing to accept any kind of liability, but they just...admitted it. Just like that."
Edward releases her, stepping back to give her some space as she bends to hold her knees and suck in a few big breaths; he keeps a cautious hand extended, remembering the way she'd looked just before she passed out in her kitchen two weeks ago.
Fluffy-headed.
That's how Lucas describes the moments before WPW renders him unconscious. He says his head 'gets all hot' and he feels like someone has pumped his brain full of fluffy cotton candy.
Eyeing Bella as she straightens up and leans back against the awning pillar, Edward wonders if she feels the same. If her symptoms are like Lucas's.
For a moment, just a brief flicker in time, he feels jealous that she shares that connection with Lucas. That she'll always understand that part of him better than Edward can.
"How could I not know?" Bella asks suddenly, her voice small, almost drowned out by the rain slamming into the gravel parking lot. Her eyes are wide, pleading, when she raises them to his face. "How could I not tell? I never even suspected. That nurse...just after I had Milo, Jake made a dumb joke about him not being his because he didn't look like him, which he obviously wouldn't because he's not Jake's, but she didn't know that. She was mortified and I remember just laughing it off, but I...I didn't even notice when they switched our babies."
Running a hand through his hair, Edward expels a shaky breath. "I didn't notice, either," he reminds her, a familiar current of guilt and shame running through his bloodstream.
"But I carried him. I literally grew this little baby in my body," Bella trails off, her voice cracking. "And I just...let them give him away to someone else." Looking up at the moss-covered canopy as she wipes under her eyes, Bella sighs, then snorts. "Who'd have thought I'd end up regretting not listening to one of Jake's dumb jokes. I laughed it off because he's always making them, he's an idiot." Mustering a weak smile, she uses her sleeve to wipe her damp cheeks. "I don't know how Claire puts up with him."
"Claire?" Edward asks softly.
"His wife."
Wait, what?
"Uh…" Edward tries to think of the best way to phrase his next question. "So, you and Jacob are, um…"
"Oh God! You think...you think me and Jake are together?"
As he nods sheepishly, rearranging the pieces of information he thought he knew in his mind, Bella cracks up.
"God, no. We're just friends, always have been. When my parents adopted me, Jake took me under his wing. Being paler than pale and raised on a Quileute reservation kind of made me stick out like a sore thumb, but he took me in like a lost little stray. Integrated me into the pack."
"I can imagine that being difficult," Edward admits with a chuckle, something akin to, relief? spreading through him. "I apologize. I just assumed, but I should have asked."
"That's okay. A lot of people back in the day thought we'd end up together, but it's never been like that with us." Her expression softens. "He's been a great support throughout all this." Turning contemplative, nervous almost, she eyes Edward for a moment before adding, "Milo is with him now. They've gone to some climbing course with one of his friends from school."
Edward swallows hard. "Lucas is with a friend of mine today, too."
They share tentative smiles. It feels, strangely nice, to share such a simple thing with her. Edward can almost convince himself, just for a second, that they're just two normal parents shooting the breeze.
The sound of hurried footsteps coming toward them breaks the spell.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm sorry, Bella love. I know you said you'd be fine, but I just couldn't let you be here alone."
The woman who rushes under the awning to wrap her arms around Bella is familiar.
Edward takes an instinctive step back as things start to slot into place. As he puts together things that had seemed irrelevant or never even crossed his mind.
"Thanks, Mom." Tearfully, Bella smiles and squeezes her hands as Edward's mind whirs. "I'm okay. I just...I can't get past the guilt of feeling like I should have known."
"Oh, love…"
"I'm okay," Bella repeats gently, eyes moving over to Edward. Her mom's follow, and Edward musters a smile as he extends a hand.
"A lot of things make more sense now."
Sue's sheepish smile makes his become a little more genuine as she steps closer. "I'm sorry, love. I didn't put two and two together myself until this morning."
"Wait…" Bella trails off, looking between her mom and Edward with furrowed brows and her head slightly cocked. "You know each other?"
Turning to wrap her arm around Bella, Sue admits, "Harry and Edward's father are old friends, and I'm good friends with his mother. I've known this young man since he was a youngster." She pauses before adding, "Since he was around Milo's age, actually."
It's come up a couple of times now, so I'll quickly mention it here-although Bella is from Forks, she hasn't lived there in years, and when she does visit, she's more in La Push on the reservation than in actual Forks. I live in a reasonably small town and very rarely bump into people I know, even on a non-covid year when we're all out and about more often. So I hope that helps :)
As always, massive thanks to annaharding, maplestyle, and hotteaforme for helping keep this ship afloat. And of course to all of you, too, for making it worthwhile pushing through the writer's block! Y'all got this story to almost 800 reviews and we're only just now ten chapters in. You blow me away with your support-THANK YOU.
xo