Note: Twilight is not mine. This is all just S. Meyer's work with an Eddie who was sick with COVID-19 instead of the Spanish Flu.
He synced his phone to the speakers, putting on an oldies playlist, and he sang along with a song I'd never heard. He knew every line.
"You like twenties music?" I asked.
"Music in the twenties was good. Much better than the thirties, or the forties, ugh!" He shuddered. "The fifties were bearable."
"Are you ever going to tell me how old you are?" I asked, tentative, not wanting to upset his buoyant humor.
"Does it matter much?" His smile, to my relief, remained unclouded.
"No, but I still wonder..." I grimaced. "There's nothing like an unsolved mystery to keep
you up at night."
"I wonder if it will upset you," he reflected to himself. He gazed into the sun; the minutes
passed.
"Try me," I finally said.
He sighed, and then looked into my eyes, seeming to forget the road completely for a time. Whatever he saw there must have encouraged him. He looked into the sun — the light of the setting orb glittered off his skin in ruby-tinged sparkles — and spoke.
"I was born in Chicago in 1999." He paused and glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. My face was carefully unsurprised, patient for the rest. He smiled a tiny smile and continued. "Carlisle found me in a hospital in the summer of 2020. I was seventeen, and
dying of the Coronavirus."
He heard my intake of breath, though it was barely audible to my own ears. He looked
down into my eyes again. "I don't remember it well — it was a very long time ago, and human memories fade." He was lost in his thoughts for a short time before he went on. "I do remember how it felt, when Carlisle saved me. It's not an easy thing, not something you could forget."
"Your parents?"
"They had already died from the disease. I was alone, my immune system already weakened. That was why he chose me. In all the chaos of the epidemic, no one would ever realize I was gone."
"How did he... save you?"
A few seconds passed before he answered. He seemed to choose his words carefully.
"It was difficult. Not many of us have the restraint necessary to accomplish it. But Carlisle has always been the most humane, the most compassionate of us... I don't think you could find his equal throughout all of history." He paused. "For me, it was merely very, very painful."
I could tell from the set of his lips, he would say no more on this subject. I suppressed my curiosity, though it was far from idle. There were many things I needed to think through on this particular issue, things that were only beginning to occur to me. No doubt his quick mind had already comprehended every aspect that eluded me.
"When the COVID-19 epidemic hit, he was working nights in a hospital in Chicago. He'd been turning over an idea in his mind for several years, and he had almost decided to act — since he couldn't find a companion, he would create one. He wasn't absolutely sure how his own transformation had occurred, so he was hesitant. And he was loath to steal anyone's life the way his had been stolen. It was in that frame of mind that he found me. There was no hope for me; I was left in a ward with the dying. He had nursed my parents, and knew I was alone. He decided to try..."
His voice, nearly a whisper now, trailed off. He stared unseeingly through the window.