Author's Note: Okay, I'll admit that I'm starting to crack under the pressure of pleasing everyone. For the longest time, no one was reading this story and I could write whatever the fuck I wanted. Now there's a lot of expectations and I hate disappointing people. I guess I'm not the hard-ass-bitch that my author's notes portray me as. I love all of you amazing women who have been reading and reviewing me. The constructive criticism is appreciated too. There is a special place in Hell for flamers. Anyhoo, this chapter may be difficult for Jake fangirls to swallow. Ahem. The thing is, this isn't exactly a Bella/Jake story. While I couldn't give all of my amazing Jake girls what they wanted, I could please one of them. The character Sonja belongs to wordslinger. I just borrowed her. Sonja can be found in Distortion, written by wordslinger (beta'd by yours truly). Some dialogue was stolen from wordslinger too but she says she's cool with that. Ha! We'll see.

Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.
Bella Swan, Twilight, Chapter 1, p.11

No longer tethered to the IV, I could move around the hospital more freely but couldn't bring myself to stop reading. Twilight wasn't so bad, except for the fact that even more than ever, Edward seemed like a dream, a beautiful hallucination brought to life by my own loneliness. Edward's dialogue was so eloquent, I couldn't help but re-read repeatedly everything he said. My own words were inadequate. Everything about my character was.

In truth, I really didn't like Bella Swan very much.

If this wasn't my own life I was reading about, I think I would have had trouble accepting that Edward really loved Bella. Their relationship was so inequitable. The only explanation I could come up with was that he found solace in the quiet of my mind...or that I was a puzzle for him to play with.

Why did I never let myself be angry with him? Was he blameless?

The ending of the book left me somewhat unsatisfied. There was no happily-ever-after and, in truth, there never would be until Bella became a vampire. Was I reading a tragedy or a romance? I'd read enough Shakespeare to know what my fate was if this was a tragedy.

I cracked opened the well worn copy of New Moon and skimmed through the parts I already knew, desperate for some insight; to find out where my train jumped off the tracks.

Oh, and I was such a coward indeed. I couldn't even bring myself to read the scene in the woods.

-({})-

"This is so going to suck. Don't let them give me Thorazine, okay?"

I was the very definition of the word, 'pussy'. Terror-stricken, I clung to Jacob's arm and stared at my ugly shoes. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Did I really need to be back in this hospital? What I could only describe as a bad omen, sat like a bowling ball on my gut. I felt positively sick.

"Hey," Jake said tenderly and lifted my chin. "I love you, Bells. No one will ever hurt you again." He smiled with such innocent confidence that I could feel my own drawn mouth quiver into a little grin.

"You're the sweetest piece of jailbait I've ever fucked, Black." I wanted one last taste before the White Coats hauled my crazy ass back into Ward Four. More than just lust, I was desperate for the connection.

He caught onto my mood rather quickly and lifted me into an embrace so that my legs hitched around his hips. "I'm not jailbait. I'm over eighteen."

Pulling his lips into a suck between mine, I clung to his neck and whispered, "I want one more fuck but you still haven't given me that Gatorade I requested."

"I've got a Red Bull in my pocket."

"And here I was thinking you were just happy to see me."

-({})-

I was a disheveled mess. The White Coats weren't quite sure what to do with me and Dr. Banner was away at a conference, so they called in Charlie and left me well enough alone. I didn't look forward to his wrath but right now, he was Jake's problem.

Slumped into a chair in the common room, I begged for cigarettes from anyone who knew me from a hallucination.

"Look what the cat coughed up."

Oh god and fuck, if it wasn't Kane, the queen of crazy. "Hey, Cum Bucket. I'll trade you masturbatory material for a smoke." It's hard to shake a nickname as vile as that particular pussy word.

She laughed wildly and tossed her mass of unruly dark hair forward to pull a brush through it. "I go by 'Sonja' now...and dude, the only cock I'd like to borrow from you is the one you rode in on."

I scowled. "He's mine, bitch. Hands off!"

Inexplicably, she walked over to me, contemplated my hair, and then proceeded to drag the brush through it. "I didn't get a good look at him anyway. You look like shit," she explained and sprayed me down with Aqua Net, tearing through my hair ruthlessly.

"Ow, Kane, stop! That shit kills the ozone, you know."

"I told you, call me Sonja...and fuck off with that tree-hugger crap about global warming. I say, bring that shit on. I hate the fucking cold. So what if the oceans rise? We need more beaches. Make some margaritas out of those lemons!"

"Fuck it! A cigarette is not worth this torture. There's no way I'm getting outside so it doesn't matter."

"Is that a double dare?" Kane handed me a smoke and then dragged me by the hair to the nurse's station. "I'm taking this bitch outside for a smoke," she informed the nursing staff brashly.

Yeah, that wasn't going to work. You didn't pull Alpha on a White Coat. That was just plain dumb.

"I don't think so, Candace. Bella is a flight risk," the head Coat admonished.

"Call me, Sonja! Flight risk doesn't even scratch the surface. She's psychotic and stupid, though." Kane, that fucking bitch, had the audacity to wink at me and add, "I swear, if she tries to get away, she's going down. She's little. I can take her." She leaned over and whispered something into that greasy-faced nurse's ear. Said nurse blanched, turning the same colour as her coat, and pressed the buzzer to unlock the door.

"Five minutes, Sonja. I mean it."

Sonja smiled and I couldn't help but smile back, feeling all Thelma and Louise for a minute. She would be a good ally, should another jail break become necessary. I offered the only compliment I could think of as we exited the ward. "You're sort of lovely for a criminally insane psychopath."

"Ah, that's sweet. I don't mind being criminally insane as long as I can be lovely. I'll be the prettiest girl in the ward. Straightjackets become me."

We used the stairs, instead of the elevator and stopped to flash the construction workers through the stairwell window. "It wouldn't even be a challenge really," I said suddenly, itching again for freedom. "We could just leave, you know...break out?"

"You mean, catch a ride with one of the teamsters out there?"

"Nah," I said and pulled her by the hand outside. "We could just fuck off and no one would ever see either of us ever again." Not that I wanted to leave Jake, but it was an errant and indulgent thought. How sweet it would be to just start over again, to deny the fucking insanity that my reality had morphed into.

"Have you been self-medicating again?" We sat on the curb and I tried in vain to light my smoke with Sonja's Zippo. She handed me her own lit smoke and plucked mine from out of my lips. "Well, don't bogart, bitch. Pass me the fucking NyQuil."

"Where should we go?" I joked, still indulging in my little escape fantasy.

"I'm a tropical kind of girl. We could disappear into a native Mexican village for the rest of forever."

"What, like, live in a shack on the beach?" I mused.

"Why not? I would be so fucking happy. I wouldn't need anything other than shorts, tank tops, and flippy floppies."

I took a lazy drag of my cigarette and exhaled a perfect smoke ring. "Tropical is nice but I'd like to go back to Canada, I think."

"No fucking way. it's too cold."

"At least our drugs and cigarettes are better. Oh, not to mention, the Heath care system!"

"Yeah, right. I bet they don't even have 911 in Canada."

"Nah," I teased. "We use 912."

She gave me a strange look and I wasn't sure whether or not she actually believed that snarky comment. Her eyes became erratic suddenly.

"Oh...oh, wow," she breathed, her gaze fixating on something over my right shoulder. She seemed unsettled. Jeez, nothing ever fazed Kane- I meant, Sonja. What caught her attention?

I turned around and saw Jacob approaching, his eyes glassy too.

What the fuck? Where was I when they were passing out the happy pills?

"Hey, Jake," I said and ran towards him. He stopped when I reached him, but he seemed to be fighting the urge to keep running. Growling, I draped myself possessively around him. Limply, he wrapped an arm around my waist. He'd never greeted me so dispassionately before...this was not good.

"Um, hello?" I repeated.

"Hi," he said, but not to me.

"Jake," Sonja said reverently, her voice trembling.

He released me and fell to his knees, staring at her like a blind man... Oh fucking Christ...

"No!" I screamed.

"I'm sorry, Bells," he whimpered, confirming my nightmare.

Well somebody call 912. Jake had just imprinted on Cum Bucket. Fuck my life!

Author's Note: Um, what did you think? Hate me? Love me? I'm dangerously close to the end of my outline so hopefully, all will make sense soon enough. Um, voting opens on March 15th for the Indies and, fucked-up as it sounds, this story is a finalist for best AU or Canon.