Edward

Carlisle POV

I had been on this shift for thirty one hours now, and I knew that soon I would have to call it a night. The idea filled me with dread; I hated that my need to pretend to be a man left all these people without my assistance through the rest of the night.

I flicked open my chart to glance at my patient rota.

The next two patients on my list were two I had grown very attached to, not a wise idea in such a severe influenza epidemic. Some lives were more fleeting than others, and I knew with sick certainty that Elizabeth Masen and her son Edward were not long for this world.

With my established affection, this idea pained me. I had only been concerned in such an involved way as this once before – a sixteen year old girl who had fallen from a tree whilst reading and shattered her tibia. She was a sweet, bright, engaging child. Elizabeth Masen was much like her in spirit, perhaps the reason I seemed to feel a sense of a kindred spirit.

Elizabeth was caring, kind and... bossy. She made me smile, the way she fought her disease so stubbornly to try and care for her son. And Edward... we had had but a few brief conversations, for he was far worse off than she, but he seemed a truly pure soul. Honest and valiant and noble. Too many ideas of war for my liking, but the quest to be a hero was something I could identify with. I told him at one point to try for peace. He had, despite his sickness, pulled a face of disdain that was typical of a teenager. It had made me laugh.

He was peaceful as he slept, at least.

As I entered their ward, my heart sank. Elizabeth Masen's eyes were closed, a sheen of sweat on her gray face. Her lips were as white as my own snowy skin now, and I cursed myself for not being able to do more. I wished I could help.

I bent over Edward first, checking his temperature with the back of my icy hand. His skin, which would have always felt warm to me, now scalded as I stroked his feverish brow. I sighed dejectedly. It would not be long now for either of them.

"Dr. Cullen?" I heard a voice rasp from behind me. I turned to see Mrs. Masen with her eyes open, struggling to sit up, desperate to get a better look at her son.

"Elizabeth, sleep. You are weak." I soothed her gently, in my best 'patient' voice. It would hurt her to watch as her child died.

"No! No, Carlisle!" Her weak voice commanded me in a way I would not have thought possible. Her green eyes bored into my golden ones, and her face was fierce, her bronze curls soaked with sweat from the effort. She was so determined that I could not argue with her.

"Elizabeth..." I began, desperate to placate her. She seemed to be getting stronger, a grim light in her eyes. I reached to her.

"Save him!" she ordered, wheezing. I glanced at her half-dead son, not being able to bring myself to tell her that there was nothing to be done.

"I'll do everything in my power," I promised her solemnly, reaching for her hand. She didn't flinch away from my coldness. Probably, she could feel none of it from the intensity of her fever. She clutched at my hand with impossible strength for one so far gone, glaring at me with hard eyes.

"You must," she insisted. "You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward."

A wave of shock rippled over me. Did she know what I was? How could she request for me to make her son into something like me?

I stared in horror for a moment, and she muttered, "Save him, save Edward." Then she slumped back onto her pillow, unconscious.

---

I stared at Edward's sleeping face, unsure. His mother had died a mere hour ago, and here I stood.

I'd longed for a companion. A friend, a confidant. Someone who knew the real me, not my human facade. But could I condemn another to this wretched existence on one selfish whim? No, of course not. But his mother had ordered me to...

I wouldn't take away the boy's life!

But he was dying anyway...

I waged an internal war on myself as I gazed down at Edward's sleeping face. This was insane. Immoral. Inexcusable.

Inescapable.

Elizabeth Masen was a good woman. And her son... he was strong. I gazed at his handsome features, his squared jaw, his straight nose, his full lips and his long eyelashes. Features in juxtaposition.

If I'd had a son of my own, I'd want him to have a face like that.

If anyone... why not Edward? If ever... why not now?

I knew my choice was made for me then. I had no choice. I was but fortune's fool.

Edward POV

I was boiling, burning, drenched in sweat. I had that horrible sense, the feeling that I'd be dead soon. The same feeling that had often filled me with a hatred for hospitals. They reeked of death. Of course, I could communicate none of this by now. I was weighed down with the fever, unable to move.

Something touched me. Something incredibly cold. If I'd known where my body was, or how to move it, I'd have shivered.

A voice broke through the walls of my embalming fever.

My mother's voice. Only I couldn't make out what she was saying.

The next thing I knew, I was... flying. The wind whipped my hair, cold against my clammy skin. This was obviously it. Death.

Then a pain... a very sharp, excruciating pain.

And I was burning again, but from the inside. The fire was in the core of my very bones.

I cried out in pain. When you died, wasn't the pain meant to stop? Would it ever stop? The torture persisted, and I wished on every one of my unlucky stars for oblivion.

What felt like an eternity later, I felt a light pressure on my arm, followed by the sound of an exhalation close to my ear. I could smell something... a calming scent that I vaguely recognised. Someone was in the room with me.

"Kill me," I begged the person blindly. I couldn't find my eyelids to open them.

"I'm so sorry, Edward." A melodious voice replied. It took me a fraction of a second to place it.

"Dr. Cullen?" I whimpered.

"Yes, Edward. It's me." He sounded agonized, like there was fire burning him too. "I'm so very, very sorry," he repeated, as if my fever was somehow his fault. How odd.

The fire ripped through my veins, causing me to scream out.

"Dr. Cullen, what's happening to me?" I cried frantically. I was panicking. Surely, this could not be a normal fever.

"You're going through some... changes," he explained hesitantly.

"Changes?" I gasped, writhing in agony.

"You're becoming a... a vampire."

I froze, stopping my frenzied thrashing immediately. I was so shocked; it numbed the fire for the smallest nanosecond.

"A what?" I panted.

"A vampire. Like me."

"How..." I trailed off as another strangled cry rasped up my throat from the agony of my torture.

---

Dr. Cullen stayed with me for a long time, every second of the blistering misery held another apology from him, be it voiced or silent. But as suddenly as the agony had travelled through my body, it had disappeared, until finally, my heart beat its last. I lay now, completely free of the pain that had enveloped me. Scarcely daring to breathe, knowing that I did not need to, I slid from the place where I lay; my eyes opening as I hit the floor gently.

Everything was in such sharp focus. It was like I was seeing for the first time. I saw Dr. Cullen, his face one that would make God himself jealous, one arm extended toward me, his face troubled.

I heard the rhythm of his breathing, the whooshing sound that the curtains made being blown by the wind, the sound of the children playing in the park across the street, the sound of a radio being switched on streets away... I heard everything.

"Dr. Cullen?" I asked, and my hand flew to my throat in shock. My voice was so... different. It was like velvet, smooth and hypnotic. It made me uneasy.

"Yes, Edward?" Dr. Cullen replied gravely, his amber eyes sombre.

"What..." I refused to let myself be distracted by the odd sound of my new voice. "Where are we?"

He studied me curiously for a moment. "My house."

"How did I come to be here?" I wondered aloud, my keen eyes roving over the wooden desk and large chaise lounge in the room, stopping at the colossal bookcase. I could read every spine with ease, though my optometrist had scolded me for refusing to wear my reading glasses as a boy. My mother had refused to pressure me into doing anything that I was not comfortable with.

Thinking of this memory was... uncomfortable, surprisingly. Like trying to see through cloudy water. My eyes had seen so little then. My mother was brought to the forefront of my mind.

"I carried you," Dr. Cullen answered my earlier question, though I had a far more pressing concern now.

"Where is my mother, Dr. Cullen?"

His face grew ancient in his sudden sadness, and already I knew the answer.

"She didn't make it through the fever, Edward. And please, call me Carlisle." His voice was gentle, but his expression alarmed as I grew motionless with grief and stress. That surprised me; I had always been one to fidget in stressful situations.

"Carlisle..." I began, hesitant. "What am I? You told me before, but I need to know..." I couldn't complete my sentence.

"You, Edward, are a newborn vampire."