A/N: You guys TOTALLY caught me off guard with the whole "reviewing unbelievably fast" thing. I am so proud of you! I actually had no choice but to update. Honestly, I thought it was going to take a while. But you guys reviewed like your life depended on it! Haha. I hope you like this chapter as much as the last one. Chapter title borrowed from the magnificent Miss Kellie Pickler.

Part Twenty-Three

Don't You Know You're Beautiful?

"Well?" Edward suggested.

"Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's confidential," Doctor Collins explained, as if talking to a four-year-old.

"Right," Edward agreed, standing up and kissing my cheek. "I'll be back, Bells."

I gasped, reaching out a ghastly white hand to grab his wrist. "Don't leave me." I tugged on his arm, pulling him back to my side. "If Edward can't know, then I don't care to know either."

Doctor Collins recoiled, looking purely dumbfounded. "You… You love him that much?"

"I do," I said, ignoring the defeated look in his eyes. "More than you could know."

"Very well." He looked on, a determined expression on his face now. "I think you had a panic attack. That is, erm, studies show that you may have been eliciting some hallucinated symptoms…"

"What are you trying to say, Doctor?" Edward wondered.

He was ignored. "Bella, were you thinking about something that upset you when you started breathing hard?" He closed what little space there was between us, reaching out to pat my shoulder.

I tried to shrug away from him. "Yeah," I admitted, resisting the urge to break down in tears. I glanced at Edward, and he held my gaze. "I was thinking about Jacob."

Edward hissed, shoving Doctor Collin's hand away from me. "Let's go, Bella."

I stared at him skeptically. "Where exactly are we going?"

"Just… Can we go, please? I've got somewhere I want to take you," he begged. "Besides, we can go home, and Carlisle can give you twice the service with none of the sexual harassment!"

Apparently, Doctor Collins had not noticed, until that point, that he was offending Edward with his behavior. "Why, whatever do you mean, Mr. Cullen?" he asked with heavy mock innocence. "Like this?" He made a point of brushing my arm with his hand roughly. I grimaced.

"That's it!" Edward shouted, grabbing the doctor's shoulders firmly. "I swore I wouldn't tell anyone about your 'troubling past', but that was for my sake, not yours!"

He jumped back, glancing fervently between Edward and I. "I-I-I-I don't know what you mean!" he stuttered, shaking violently.

"I think you do," Edward argued, his voice eerily calm. "So if you don't mind, Bella and I will take our business elsewhere!"

"Actually, I do." He tore across the room, ripping the IV out of my skin. I screamed, once again, this time for the physical pain. Flashes of Jacob, Quil, and Embry bounced around in my head. I broke out in a cold sweat. All at once I saw Jacob, firing a shot that could have taken my life, Quil and Embry, sneering as they passed Edward in the hall, and Jacob, again, holding me at gunpoint, helpless.

"What are you doing?" Edward was yelling, as I felt Doctor Collin's skinny arms wrap around me. I tried feebly to push him away, but I was weak, oh so weak. He lifted me off of the bed. My hand immediately gravitated to my wrist, which was now bleeding profusely.

I called out to Edward as we rushed down the hall. Something had happened, but I could not tell what. My eyes were heavy, weighed down like bricks. I blinked them open rapidly, trying to make sense of what was happening. Where was Edward? Why was he not coming after us? And, better yet, why did I feel my consciousness slowly dwindling away?

Doctor Collins dropped me somewhere, and in a few seconds I felt the leather seatbelt tighten around me. "We're going for a ride, Bella," he told me, his voice raging with anger.

I did not complain, but I could not if I had wanted to. My tongue felt sticky, like glue, and it clung to the top of my mouth as my eyes struggled to stay open.

He closed the door behind him, and I felt the car accelerating soon after. "I'm going to take you somewhere safe," he promised as soon as we were a safe distance from the hospital. "Away from your stupid, paranoid boyfriend. He doesn't know what he's talking about, you know."

I shook my head, conjuring up the courage to speak. "I love Edward. He loves me. He would never intentionally hurt me."

"You ignorant little…" He cut the sentence off, slapping my face with such force that I automatically tasted the blood in my mouth. "No matter. I'll take you somewhere you can get away from the masochistic leach."

It was then that I decided to give up. I allowed the salty, bitter tears that I had so long been withholding fall quickly from my eyes. I did not stop crying until he pulled into a long, narrow driveway a good two hours later.

"Where are we?" I asked, wiping the shadowy tears away.

A/N: Okay, short chapter, but I had to get something up after all your wonderful reviews. Next chapter is all planned out, and it should be pretty long. I will update as soon as I can, but I will speed up the process significantly if I get to 110 reviews. REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW. And that, friends, is all I have to say. Love you guys,

C.J.