"Alice?" I whispered, peeking into Esme's and my room. The lights were off, the curtains drawn, and Esme lay on the couch with a cold washcloth over her eyes. Alice stood by the doorway, expecting me.

"She's comfortable enough," my daughter reported. "Well, except for that damn tube."

"I'll take it out as soon as I can. I think I know what's wrong with your mother, but I'll need to ask her some questions to make sure. Do you mind giving us some privacy?"

"I'll be outside." She waltzed down the stairs and was gone in the blink of an eye.

I entered the room and shook Esme by the shoulder. "Are you feeling any better?"

"A little," she murmured, placing her hand over mine and sitting up. "Thank you for everything you've done for me."

"You're my wife," I said, "and you'd do the same for me. But I have to have a serious talk with you now. Alice is outdoors; she can't hear. I need you to tell me—were you trying to get rid of your thirst?"

"Whatever do you mean?" she asked, but the look on her face told me everything.

I sat down next to her, close but not touching. "Esme, why didn't you just tell me if you were having trouble? You didn't have to poison yourself."

She looked up at me for a second before she started to cry. Her shoulders shook and she buried her face in her arms, avoiding my eyes. I put my hand on her back and waited for it to pass.

"I was ashamed," she said finally, her voice still rough with tears. "I was—am—ashamed of my weakness. I love being immortal, Carlisle, and I love being with you, and I love our children, but I hate this bloodlust and how it makes me someone I'm not. It made me a murderer!"

"Esme, that wasn't your fault," I soothed. "We talked about it. You smelled blood at the exact moment you were least prepared to handle it. It was the perfect storm of bad luck."

"You would've been able to resist. You've never tasted human blood except to turn us. You even work in a hospital and it's never affected you. It always looks so easy."

I had to admit, it was easy for me, but I always attributed it to three hundred years of practice, plus my father's rather violent influence. I asked, "Why now? You told me you were hardly ever tempted."

She shook her head. "I thought so too. I thought I was old enough, and had abstained for long enough, that it wouldn't be a problem anymore. But then I was at the home and garden store getting lumber, and one of the men helping me cut his finger on the saw blade, and—" she broke off and rubbed her eyes. "It's the closest I've come in eighty years. I made up some excuse and ran out the back exit. I didn't stop until I got home. And then I couldn't bear the possibility that I might not be able to resist next time."

"What did you take?" I asked, after a brief silence. I'd asked this question to hundreds of people by now, drug users and patients who'd attempted suicide. I never thought I'd be asking one of my own.

"Lead," Esme said, in a small, flat voice. "The house is very old, and the original paint was lead-based. There were a few cans left in the basement that I never bothered to throw away. I saw them and I—I remembered something about one of the symptoms of lead poisoning being loss of appetite. I had no idea if it would have that effect on a vampire but I had to try something. And it worked, I suppose. I could probably walk right into your emergency room full of bleeding patients and not be tempted at all."

I didn't know what to say. I put my arm around Esme and hugged her to my chest. I hated that she'd gotten this desperate and felt she couldn't tell me. I hated that she'd done such harm to herself trying to protect other people. And I hated that I hadn't seen it until it was almost too late. It was the old cliché: a doctor too focused on his patients loses sight of those closest to him. Physician, heal thy family.

"Esme, my love, I'm so sorry," I murmured. But remorse didn't help anyone, and the doctor part of me had already begun formulating a treatment plan. "You're going to be okay, now that I know what this is. The first thing we'll do is see if the lead works its way out of your body on its own. If not, there's something called a chelating agent that will bind to the lead and render it harmless. And then I'll teach you some of the tricks I used to avoid temptation when I was younger. We can practice together."

"What sorts of tricks?"

"Focusing on other senses, like what you're seeing or hearing is a good one. There's also controlled exposure, so that you can become habituated to the smell of blood without putting anyone in danger."

"Is that how you're able to work as a doctor?"

I nodded. "I got my practice in the medical school cadaver lab. A dead man's blood is a good place to start, as the cells have begun to break down and the smell is not as strong. I worked my way up gradually. Even so, it was a great many years before I could watch an entire surgery from start to finish without becoming overwhelmed. It's a slow process, but I think you'll do just fine. I know you will."

I said a silent prayer to God that I was telling the truth, that Esme would have the strength to bear this cross. She was my light; I couldn't stand to lose her.

"Carlisle?" she asked, finally looking up at me.

"What is it?"

"How much longer do I have to have this tube in me? I must look ridiculous."

That broke the ice. I smiled and said, "When you can take blood by mouth, I'll remove it. And you could never look ridiculous, my dear."

The next few days were a relief. I gave Esme the rest of the moose blood, and she felt much better after that. I theorized that perhaps the blood was helping to push the lead out of her tissues, and immediately sent Alice into the woods for more. When she asked what was wrong with her mother, I told her that Esme had been exposed to some lead paint doing one of her building projects. The rest of the story was Esme's to tell or not as she wished.

After twenty-four hours and an entire mountain lion's worth of blood, Esme felt well enough to drink on her own. Once I was confident that she wasn't going to refuse to drink again, I removed the nasogastric tube, much to everyone's relief.

By the time Emmett, Rose, Edward, and Jasper came home, Esme was almost back to her usual self. She hugged everyone as they came in the front door, and admired the dress Rosalie had bought in Tacoma. When Emmett asked why there was blood in the fridge, I gave him the same sanitized version of events I'd given Alice, adding that Esme was too weak to hunt and probably would be for the next few days.

"No problem," he said, "and I can catch her anything she wants to drink, just say the word."

He made good on his promise, too, coming home one night with several containers of the grizzly blood that Esme had asked for. The others went out of their way to be nice to her as well. Edward played her favorite songs on the piano, and Jasper gave her a new set of drafting pencils. Alice, who had been learning some tailoring skills, started making her mother a new dress. Even Rosalie, who usually kept her distance, offered to do Esme's hair for her.

The afternoon before I was supposed to go in for my shift, I called Dr. Snow and asked him if he'd mind covering for me that night, as I wasn't feeling well. He agreed readily, since I covered for him at least once a month when an important sports game fell on a day he was scheduled.

"You never call off work," Esme said, standing in the doorway of my office.

I stood up. "It's good to call in sick at least once a year, for appearance's sake. How are you doing?"

"Better. Much better, actually. You and the kids take good care of me." She reached over and laced her fingers in mine.

"They're hovering a bit, though, aren't they?" I asked, as Edward began another rendition of Pachelbel's Canon.

"Maybe a bit," she conceded, sensing I had something planned.

"How would you like to take a trip tonight, just the two of us? We can go anywhere you want."

She smiled and squeezed my hand. "Well, it's perfect swimming weather. And I recall a fever dream of you and me lying at the bottom of the ocean, watching the sunlight on the water above us."

I kissed her forehead. "Absolutely. I know the perfect place."

After telling the kids where we were going and when we would be back, we changed into something more appropriate for the beach and headed north, to a beach near the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. Medicine and lead poisoning were far from my mind as I parked the car and we stepped out onto the sand barefoot. Our bare skin glowed in the sunlight.

"Come on," Esme called, taking my hand as she ran past. I broke into a run as well, and we sprinted across the sand until the sand gave way to the gray rock of sea cliffs. Salty air blew through our hair as we stumbled to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.

"That's a nice little cove," I commented, staring down at the sandy inlet at the bottom of the cliffs. "It's probably covered at high tide."

Esme smiled, and before I could say anything, she turned around and did a backflip off the edge of the cliff. Tucking her knees, she did a few somersaults on her way down, then straightened up in time to stick the landing. Impressed, I jumped after her, felt the air rush around me, the stomach-turning joy of freefall. I landed next to her, the force of the impact driving me knee-deep into the wet sand.

We splashed in the shallows for a while, and Esme tucked a few interesting shells into her pockets for later. When the tide started coming in, we found a small cave in the side of the cliff and waited. Slowly, the water rose to meet us. We laughed in excitement as the waves began sloshing at us, soaking us from head to toe. The water seemed to rise even faster, until we were completely submerged. I filled my lungs with water so that I wouldn't float to the top. A tower of bubbles rose next to me as Esme did the same.

Brightly colored fish swam up to us and nibbled at our fingers, then swam away in a hurry, sensing we didn't quite belong. Crabs scuttle along the sandy ocean floor, and mollusks opened their shells to eat. Sunlight danced across the surface of the water above us as we watched, cocooned by the ocean, with our fingers interlaced.

~ fin

Author's note: Thank you so much to everyone who read, reviewed, and followed. This piece started as idle musings about how Dr. Carlisle would handle certain patients of mine. I never imagined that it would be this well-received. So thank you, everyone.