Edward, Chapter 1

I watched through the pharmacy window as dawn came up, making its appearance as a faint pink stripe on the horizon. Here at my desk, I could see through a clearing in the forest that allowed a minimal view of the skyline above the smaller trees. If the light was coming through, it must be close to 7 a.m. I looked up from the computer log and sure enough, the time said 6:45.

I work part time in the Forks Regional Hospital pharmacy. I do not need to work for financial reasons, but I took this job because I love the sciences and the position helps keep me current in the field. I am a licensed pharmacist, and my family and I live in Forks, quite far from the center of town. My father, Carlisle, is a physician here. He and his wife, Esme, are not my biological parents but have served as my moral guidance and loving protectors for a great deal of my existence. We have lived together a long time, with my four siblings joining the family as the years went along.

Usually, I am assigned to the night shift because it is difficult for the hospital to find qualified staff to work nights. For most people, it's problematic to circumvent their normal rhythms and sleep during the day while staying awake and alert all night. That is not at all a challenge for me, nor for my father, as we do not sleep.

Occasionally, the director of the pharmacy will ask me to report for a different shift if there is a shortage of staff. It's easy for me to adapt to the day, evening or night schedules. I've noticed that each has its particulars, its singular characteristics, including staff who have either followed their individual biological preferences for their work hours, or – having failed to do so – constantly struggle with fatigue while at their job. I cannot often disguise my disdain for these people, since I know well they are liable to commit errors if they devote less than full mental and physical attention to their responsibilities. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I have a mind that works rapidly and can follow several trains of thought at one time. This enables me to quickly catch mistakes that others make while completing my own assignments. Despite the importance of an error-free health care environment, it has earned me the occasional enmity of my colleagues.

Nights are often a quiet time at the hospital, as they are nearly everywhere else. Usually, the shift spends its time filling prescriptions for emergency admissions or surgeries. Most of the time, one or two full-time pharmacists can handle the work load. The day shift, however, is a far different scene. Routine surgeries and new admissions take place during the day, which necessitates a fuller roster of employees. In the daytime, there are usually two full-time pharmacists present, plus a pharmacy technician and the hospital's Director of Pharmacy, Larry Twogood.

Larry had recently hired a young woman for the vacant third slot on the day shift. I'd heard some of the staff's thoughts about her – those who already had the chance to meet her. Larry was confident that she would work out well. Being the manager, he had to be concerned about more than her professional qualifications. He was careful in his judgment to try and ensure that the personality of any new employee would mesh well with others who routinely worked the same shift. Experience is the best teacher, and Larry's experience had taught him that he needed to be as cautious in this area as he did in ascertaining that a prospective employee was legally licensed.

I had earlier finished orders for prescriptions which came in overnight. I prepared a few bags of intravenous fluids necessary for surgery that would start prior to the day shift, and walked them over to the operating room. It killed another 15 minutes. I considered reading one of the books I kept stashed under my desk for these uneventful nights. When I sat back down, I looked carefully outside again to check the weather. The cloud cover had thickened even in the past 15 minutes. It was now raining, with no sign of the sun.

The pharmacy was organized with shelves of drugs along the back wall, fronted by one long counter with several computer terminals and phones where the staff worked to fill prescriptions. Three of us could comfortably sit there at one time. The overall room was quite large, with space for six small desks arranged in three rows in front of the counter. Each of the pharmacists who worked the three shifts had our own desk; the pharmacy technician, Rick, stayed at the counter.

In front of our desks, within the wall facing the corridor, was the prescription drop-off. It was the size of a waist-high, narrow table supported by shelving underneath it, and the upper half was a rolltop, similar to an old-fashioned desk or secretary. It always struck me as odd, because the pharmacy never closed – what need would we have to shut ourselves off like that? In any case, our desks as well as the counter faced the drop-off, which held baskets labeled for each floor of the hospital. At the far end inside of the pharmacy was Larry's small office, complete with a door – a perk of being the director.

I noticed the empty desk next to mine was dusty, so I wiped it off as a courtesy to the new employee. I had a good idea of what she looked like after glimpsing her in the thoughts of other employees in the hospital: a somewhat nondescript female with long brown hair, recently graduated from pharmacy school. Everyone was curious about a young woman who would move clear across the United States to take a job in Forks' hospital when certainly there were plenty of larger pharmacies along the East Coast. It was unfortunate that I couldn't block out these repetitive thoughts, although I had long ago learned how to manage the flow of conversations that constantly slipped into my head. I could push some to the background so they were softer, and could fine-tune others that might be of interest. Usually, I paid strictest attention in the event my family was in someone's thoughts or discussions. We are different from everyone else in Forks, and my skill at reading minds helped warn us if someone was coming dangerously close to comprehending exactly why we are different.

In addition to my parents Carlisle and Esme, I have two brothers and two sisters. In a way, we look very similar although none of us is related – not in the conventional sense of "related by blood," anyway. Initially attracted by our beauty, humans soon shy away from contact with us once their intuition kicks in and they feel uncomfortable, if not downright fearful. Fortunately, we are not nearly as harmful to them as we used to be. My family, led by the compassionate Carlisle, has learned to forego human blood in favor of animal blood. Although it is not as physically satisfying, it soothes the thirst as well as the conscience. We have each chosen to work at this lifestyle, and though it remains difficult to resist temptation, humans are usually safe around us.

It was nearly 8 a.m. I was back at my desk and I could hear Janice Imhoff, the other pharmacist on the day shift, coming up the hall to report for work. Short, compact and rather round, Janice lacked in personality what she possessed in knowledge. Although a capable pharmacist, she was unhappy with her life – at age 45, she had never married, and at this point her feelings of anger were running neck and neck with her loneliness. I had heard her thoughts often enough – acidic, critical, resigned, frustrated – to keep our conversations cursory and impersonal.

This morning, it wasn't just her thoughts I heard; she was also talking with someone whose verbal replies were soft and brief. I detected no thoughts to accompany those responses, though, and was curious about why this was happening. Based on their conversation, I realized that Janice was walking in with the new employee. They were rounding a corner and coming up the far end of the hall.

The talk was about parking and the convenience of the hospital's garage. Apparently our new colleague had worked in places that had surface lots, a nuisance in bad weather. "She's probably glad we have the garage so the rain doesn't ruin her clothes or her shoes. Probably goes shopping a lot; she's young enough," Janice was thinking archly. She promised to bring the girl over to the cafeteria later for coffee if Larry didn't have time to show her its location.

Their conversation had moved on to the need for hot coffee in a rainy environment like Washington State. I could tell by the gradual increase in the volume that they were getting closer, yet I still heard only Janice's thoughts. Odd. This was making me feel at an uncomfortable disadvantage, and I didn't like that.

But that was nothing compared to what I felt next. The two women walked along the open drop-off counter, and I could now see them filing past as they approached the door to the pharmacy. Janice's scent was familiar and uninteresting, and it was almost immediately overpowered in my lungs and throat by the aroma of the stranger next to her.

It was as if I was being assaulted by a force that was so strongly physical I thought I might lose consciousness, even though that was impossible. I am a vampire, and the dangers so common to humans were not even a nuisance to me. My skin was like a concrete sheath which nothing could penetrate, yet this aroma – the delicate, floral and unbearably delicious scent of the young woman's blood – was incapacitating me in a way that I had never experienced in the century of my immortal existence.

I regressed right into the monster I'd been years before I stopped feeding on humans. The scorching thirst bloomed in my throat, more persistent than any I'd ever felt even when failing to hunt for weeks at a time. My mouth immediately dried up and then, just as quickly, venom began collecting at the back of my throat, filling the bottom of my mouth and adding to the agony of the demand I felt for blood – her blood, the blood of this unknown girl who was now walking through the door, right after Janice.

She saw the desks and stopped in confusion, suddenly unsure of where she should go. As she halted her steps, the air around her stirred and danced, teasing its way over to me and torturing my self-control. I felt my disciplined existence slipping downward and away as surely as if it was sand balanced unevenly on a scale. I shut down my breathing and searched frantically for any shred of willpower I might muster.

Although it was mere seconds since she had walked in, I sensed I was already losing this battle and she was going to die. I knew she would come over to the empty desk, the one without a nameplate, take off her coat, put down her purse...and probably introduce herself. Two schools of thoughts immediately began warring in my head: how long could I hold my breath and appear normal so that I could safely leave the hospital without inflicting serious carnage? At the same time, I wondered how long would it take me to kill everyone else in this room – right now, that was Janice and Larry -- so I could get to the girl and kill her quickly, before she realized what was going on? The temptation, egged on by the swirling scent of her blood, gave the edge to the second set of thoughts.

I could dispose of Janice, lock the door so no one else could come in, move quickly into Larry's office, kill him and then grab the girl and crash through the window. It would take perhaps two seconds, total. But the drop off was open, and anyone walking by would see what was going on and would certainly hear the window. Plenty of people were arriving for the day shift, when most hospital employees worked. Could I pull down the roll-top too? It would only add another second to the time.

While I was figuring out the logistics of my attack, Larry stepped out of his office to greet the girl. "Hello, Bella! Welcome! Come on in!" he said warmly. She stepped into his office, leaving behind a fresh trail of scent that dissipated somewhat once Larry closed the door.

Janice had taken her seat at her desk. I could snap her neck in a fraction of a second. She was not my favorite person by far, but I would give her a quick death because she was merely an innocent bystander. I felt far worse about Larry, whom I respected and liked. Another thought, distant and dim while the monster within raged: if I was truly contemplating killing several blameless people at once, then the draw of this Bella's scent was stronger than any other blood I had encountered in all my years as a vampire.

It made me angry –another violence competing with the desire to kill for human blood – that she would have this power over me, to cause me to release the fiend I had kept locked away for so long. Every skill I ever had for stalking and capturing human prey resurfaced as if they had never been subsumed by a moral calling. She walked past me and in three seconds had me contemplating destruction I'd worked for years to contain. It was as if the colossal effort to change myself, to curtail the natural vampire instincts I kept locked down, counted for nothing. And it fueled the desire to kill her, to nourish myself on the red flow within the warm, pulsing arteries along her graceful neck, when I realized how quickly I was ready to cast aside the hard-won fight to retain some humanity.

I could kill her. I would have this! Maybe I could grab her hastily and break through the window, running away with her but not needing to hurt anyone else in the office. I could run to the woods, but the garage outside was not far away and I would have to pass a lot of cars driving to work. They would see me...others I knew and exchanged pleasantries with each day...and Carlisle was on duty today and would be arriving at any minute.

The thought of my father, whose love and support helped me maintain the vestiges of who I'd been as a human, gave me enough strength to harness the monster that was resurfacing so rapidly. I knew that he and Esme would love me no matter what, but this enormous transgression would mean we would have to leave Forks. My brothers and sisters would have to move again. Would they forgive me for uprooting their lives? We'd chosen Forks because the rainy climate enabled us to lead nearly normal lives. Where would we go now?

Janice smiled briefly at me and didn't seem to notice that I was holding my breath and smashing my hands under my desk so I could push my palms into the wood underneath the surface. I gave her a mangled grin and focused on keeping those hands steady so I would not catapult out of my chair and act without thinking. Bella's scent was so potent that my instincts took over, with my more human qualities receding far into the background. I had to hold on.

Larry's door opened and he pointed to the desk on my right, behind Janice. "You can sit here, Bella. We'll get you a name plate soon. Make yourself at home. I think, though, you need to check in with Human Resources? You'll need your parking decal, too," he said.

Bella held her coat over her arms and smiled at Larry. She walked in front of my desk and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. Larry went back in his office and didn't seem to notice that I hadn't introduced myself to Bella. I glared at this young woman, furious at her for making a mockery of the existence that I'd worked so hard to create. She regarded me with clear brown eyes that were now huge and round, and she stumbled a bit as she took in my expression. I realized again, through the haze of thirst and impulse and fury, that I could not hear her thoughts, though they were plain on her face. She clearly believed I was insane, or some horribly cruel aberration of a man. Either way, she was right.

It was 8 a.m. The change of shift saved her life. While I was focusing on Carlisle's teachings and using the images of my family to keep myself under control, my time in the pharmacy ran out. I grabbed my coat, stuck my head into Larry's office to mumble a goodbye, and ran out the door at a human pace, which was as fast as I dared to go.

I debated going to see Carlisle, and then decided to go outside first. The fresh air would help. Although vampires don't need to breathe, we rely on our sense of smell to detect change, danger, or even more pleasant or mundane things. Right now, my nose and throat desperately needed clean breaths. I would go into the woods to calm down and then return through a side door to find Carlisle.

I was outside when my cell phone rang. It was Alice, my younger sister. Technically, I was older than her by only a few decades, but her tiny frame and youthful countenance made her easily appear to be the high school senior she was pretending to be. Like me, Alice had a gift. She could see the future. Visions, unbidden, would come to her once a decision has been made or a course of action chosen. I knew she was calling because she'd seen something.

"Alice."

"Edward! What's going on? Are you all right? I just saw – I don't know, it looked like you were going to -- and then it got all hazy—

"It's okay. Nothing happened. I had a bit of a rough spot there with a new coworker, but I managed to deflect it. I'm heading out to get some air and then I'm going to see Carlisle." Already, the blunt dampness was soothing my head and my chest.