A brief note from the author:
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. If you don't recognize it, it's probably still not mine. Alex is mine. All things Twilight belong to Stephanie Meyer. Now on with the story!
My eyelids weighed a thousand pounds each. It took all my strength to open them, and when I finally did they fell closed again almost immediately. I tried again, and they fluttered open. I squinted against the bright light. I already knew where I was. The sterile odor had given it away. As I looked around the Forks Emergency Room, I wondered who had brought me here. And what the doctors might have found. I'd never been to a doctor. I'd never been sick. Maybe a little head cold here and there, the flu once, but never anything serious. Anytime I got hurt, it was usually minor and healed within a few hours.
I knew I was different. Grandpa Richie had told me that I had to do and say certain things so that people wouldn't freak out. Like, let the other team win sometimes in little league, or lie about my age.
Now I was nervous. Was all of that for nothing? 23 years of carefully fitting in, up in smoke after a simple car crash?
"Oh good, you're awake," a voice said. I looked to my right, where a nurse was fiddling with an IV drip. "I'll go get the doctor."
I sighed as she bustled away and I looked down at the offensive little needle stuck in my arm. Another reason I'd never been to a doctor. I peeled up the tape and look away as I pulled the needle out. I was about to swing my legs off the bed, ready to make a run for it (no normal human could keep up with my speed), when a handsome blond doctor approached.
Well, hello, doctor!
"You shouldn't be moving around just yet, Alexandra," he said kindly. "That was a bad crash you were in."
I returned his smile as I settled back into the pillows. "I feel fine, Dr-" I glanced at his name tag "-Cullen."
Dr. Cullen glanced over the clipboard in his hands, flipped a few pages and made some notes.
"From what I've heard, you're lucky Deputy Lucas happened to drive by when he did," the doctor said to me. "You could have been hurt a lot worse."
Ha! If he only knew…
"Do you remember what happened?" he asked.
Of course I remembered.
"I lost control of my car," I said. I didn't feel the need to mention the giant wolves. That would be a surefire way to get a transfer out of the ER and into the psych ward.
I shook my head and scrunched my brow. I lost consciousness, I should be confused and disoriented, right?
"I think I hit tree?" I looked up at Dr. Cullen, who nodded and made some notes.
"You memory doesn't seem to be affected, that's good." He closed the clipboard and looked up at me. "However, we came across a few… abnormalities," he continued. "I want to keep you overnight, just for observation so we can make sure there are no negative long-term consequences."
This is why I stayed away from doctors.
"Abnormalities? What kind of abnormalities? I'm supposed to start work-"
"I already spoke to Chief Swan," the doctor interrupted. "Who, by the way, is waiting outside to speak with you." He started walking toward the exit, tucking the clipboard under his arm.
"But what about-?"
"We'll get you into a private room," Dr. Cullen called back from the doorway. "Then you can have visitors."
And he was gone.
This was exactly why I stayed away from doctors. My elevated body temperature, accelerated heart rate, rapid healing, who knows what an x-ray would look like. It was better to play it safe and avoid the inevitable questions.
Oh, I'd been hurt before. Like any kid, I'd had my fair share of skinned knees and bumps and bruises. But they'd always tended to heal within a few hours, a day at most.
So the question remained: Which abnormalities had this doctor found?
I didn't notice I'd been biting my nails until a hand covered the one at my mouth and gently tugged. I looked at the nurse, who smiled patiently back, dropping my hand quickly.
"Your fever is so high, dear," she said. "You shouldn't have pulled the IV out. You need all the fluid you can get. Not to mention we had enough trouble getting it in the first time. Now hold still. This will pinch a little."
I turned away and held my breath. There were two of the "abnormalities." High body temp and hard skin. Terrific. And from the sounds of it, at least half, if not all, of the Forks Police Department was hanging around outside. Up and leaving would be out of the question. Nope, I would have to ride this one out. Awesome.
A few minutes later, the nurse, Gertrude, I'd learned, had me brought upstairs to the fourth floor. Thankfully, she brought me the back way, so as to avoid my fan club of sorts, which consisted largely of people I hadn't met yet. It was a simple, standard, single room, complete with private bathroom and TV suspended from the ceiling. No muss, no fuss.
"Okay hun, if you need anything just push this button here." Gertrude handed me a cord with a red button on the end.
"Thanks," I said. "Um, where's my stuff?"
"Oh, it's all right under the bed. Do you need anything in particular?"
"Just my phone."
Still smiling, she reached down and a moment later stood upright and handed my phone over.
"Okay," she said. "Feel better, hun."
I smiled back at her as she left. My phone had no waiting messages, so I opened up Angry Birds to bide my time until I was bombarded with visitors.
I didn't have to wait long. On the one hand I was slightly annoyed. I was on a roll and had just unlocked the Toucan. But on the other hand, I might as well get it over with.
To begin with, only Chief Swan came in, but I saw at least a half dozen faces crowded in the door's window, not even attempting subtlety.
"Hey Alex," my boss greeted me. I put my phone down. "How are you feeling?"
I shrugged. Nonchalance. Always a great way to ease a tense situation.
"Been better," I said. "But not too bad, considering. I'm sorry, I think I'm gonna miss my first day."
"Dr. Cullen already briefed me. You take whatever time you need. I want you at a hundred per cent when you start." He pulled out a small note pad and a pen. "I just need some information for the accident report," he continued. "What happened, exactly?"
I took a slow, deep breath, stalling. Do I tell him about the wolves? I definitely couldn't tell him I lifted my car a hundred or so feet into the air.
Half-truth it is, Lex.
"I was driving down the road-"
"Where were you going?"
Away from the mutant, steroid-ingesting wolves that wanted to eat me.
"I just wanted to get familiar with the area," I said instead.
He nodded for me to continue.
"So I was driving and this wolf just ran right out in front of me-"
"Wolf?"
I nodded. "I mean, a big wolf. A big black one, the thing was just…" I shook my head. "It was massive."
An odd look came over Swan's face. This wasn't new to him. He knew the area was infested with these things.
"Okay," he finally said, "so a big black wolf ran into the road…"
"So I swerved, and I guess I swerved the wrong way and went down the ravine and into a tree."
Chief Swan finished his notes and put the pen away.
"Uh, Chief? How's my car?"
Hesitation. Not good.
"Well, it's uh… totaled."
Shit.
In New York, that wouldn't have been so bad. At least there was the subway. But in Forks, Washington? Population seven? Surrounded by forests? I was screwed.
My thoughts must have shown all over my face. Swan had that awkward 'what-is-there-to-say' expression etched into his face. He quickly shook himself out of it and glanced behind him at the faces pressed against the glass.
"Oh, go ahead," I sighed. "Let them in."
He looked back and nodded. That's all the encouragement my newfound entourage needed. There were eight in all. Some in uniform, some not. It turned out that this was, indeed, the entire department.
As they all rushed to my bed, I called out, "Who is Lucas?"
Heads turned and a young man, possibly about my age and somewhat handsome, stepped forward wearing a friendly and slightly bashful smile.
"That's me," he said. "Tommy Lucas."
I stuck my hand out. "Alex," I smiled. "I wanted to shake the hand of the man who quite possibly saved my life, before I met anyone else."
Of course it had never been that close of a call, but nobody needed to know that, and he grinned and blushed as he shook my hand.
"Just lucky I came along when I did," he said. "I heard the crash, you know. If not for that, I'd have just kept going. I wouldn't have seen your car from the road."
Luck, he called it. I called it cursed. Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.
The next couple hours passed surprisingly quickly, getting to know who I would be working with. The deputies in Forks rode solo, but Lucas volunteered to ride with me until I got acclimated. It would be nice to have someone show me the ropes. This was definitely not New York. Sure, we had gangs and drug dealers and robbers. But they had giant wolves that chased cars at ninety miles an hour. If that were any indication of whatever else might be hiding within those dense trees, I was a lot safer in New York.
At eight o'clock on the dot, a candy striper came in and ushered everyone out. Chief Swan promised one deputy would be posted outside my door at all times. So if ditching was a slim hope before, it was an impossibility now, if I cared about keeping up appearances. Which I did.
Lucas volunteered for first watch. I was thankful he took "outside the door" to heart. I was exhausted, and frankly sick of answering questions. So when there was a light tap on my door right after I figured out how to turn on the TV, I wanted so badly to throw the remote at whoever was walking in. I refrained, however, which was good because the remote was attached to the bed by a cord, for one thing, and for another, it was Dr. Cullen walking in. I couldn't afford to make an enemy of Dr. Cullen by denting his skull with the remote. He was already too suspicious. I needed to stay on his good side so I could go home.
"Alexandra." He smiled warmly as he approached with his seemingly ever-present clipboard. "Feeling better?"
I tried to return the smile again, but too much had been going on for my liking, and my mind was reeling with questions and worry. So, it logically followed that I failed miserably.
"I'm just really tired," I said, hoping he would take the hint and leave.
He didn't.
"Understandable," he said. "I prescribed more morphine than normally necessary. Your high body temperature burns it off faster than the average human."
What did he mean by that? Average human? Did he know? He was too calm. He knew something.
I forced a smile onto my face and made sure it stayed this time, despite my painfully obvious discomfort.
"Yeah, I've always run a little warm," I said dismissively.
I flinched away slightly when his hand moved toward my head. He brushed my hair back and studied a spot on my head out of my line of sight.
"And these stitches here, right along your hairline," he murmured slowly. "Looks like you may not have even needed them. You had a nice, long laceration that ran from your temple down behind your ear, but, it's almost completely healed now."
He pulled his hand away and my hair fell back into place.
I laughed nervously. "Guess it wasn't as bad as it looked. So, when can I go home?"
Dr. Cullen wrote a note or two on his clipboard, smiled, and stuck his pen back into his pocket before stepping toward the door.
"Like I said," he answered, "I want to keep you overnight for observation. If you're still doing well in the morning, you can leave."
I sighed in defeat and looked back up to the TV as the doctor reached the door.
"Oh." He paused, turning back to me. "One more thing."
My eyes rolled away from the TV just in time for me to see Dr. Cullen pulling his hand from his pocket, and catch a flash of silver whizzing straight toward my head.
Please, please review! If it sucks, tell me! If you happened to have actually liked it, definitely tell me! Thanks! By the way, this is actually going somewhere. You'll see. Just hang in there.
Ren
