ASL Chapter 8

Breaking

Carlisle POV:

I had never seen my family suffer like we had these last few was worse is worse knowing just how close my son came to dying in that accident. Emmett and I agreed that no one in the family would ever know how bad the damage to the car was. I could not even begin to understand how he survived, I'm only grateful that he did. I don't think that I would ever be able to survive burying one of my children. I know my wife wouldn't survive something like that.

3AM. I laid in the bed for a few moments longer before getting up and making my way downstairs to the kitchen to get something to drink. I didn't have to worry about waking Ethan tonight. He had a tummy ache and a slight fever, so Tanya took him home and stayed there with him instead of retuning to the hospital to be with Edward. It had to be all the excitement of the day. When I talked to her earlier she said he was already feeling better but wanted him to rest in his own bed tonight.

I sat down on the couch with my cup of tea and started flipping through the channels on the TV. After finding nothing but infomercials on I turned on the DVD player only to find that Esme left the disc in from this morning, and I was watching Thomas the Tank Engine.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew someone was jumping on me and giggling. I opened my eyes to find my granddaughter right in my face, "Nana says get up!"

I got up off the couch, taking Kara with me. I found my wife attempting to clean a kitchen that was already spotless. I had been catching her doing stuff like this since the accident. Right now I was considering it was a harmless coping mechanism. If it got any worse, she and I were going to have to sit down and have a long conversation. I didn't want the stress of our lives to break her. I loved her too damn much to sit back and allow that to happen.

"How did we end up with this one?"

"Alice called this morning and asked if we'd mind watching both of them for a bit while she went to a doctor's appointment." She pointed to the baby carrier sitting on the kitchen table that I had missed when I walked into the room. That took me back to the fact that my family was falling apart. I wasn't sleeping, Esme wasn't coping well. I didn't have to ask to know that Alice was not seeing a doctor regarding her physical health. It was no secret that she was trying to take all blame for Edward's accident on herself and it was starting to break her.

"Ahh. Well. the next time you decide to send this monkey to wake me, would you please remind her that I am way too old to be used as a trampoline? What time is it anyway?"

"It's almost noon."

"Why did you let me sleep for so long?"

"I figured you needed the sleep seeing as you have been waking up in the middle night, every night."

"You know about that?"

"Of course I know. If I could hear my children attempting to sneak out of their bedrooms down the hall from me, over your snoring, don't you think that I could hear my husband trying to sneak out of our own bed?" The stern 'you will never be able to fool me' look she gave me made me laugh. I should have known better than to think my wife wouldn't notice.

"Are we waiting for Alice to get back before we head up to the hospital?"

"She is going to meet us there when she's done. So we should get going soon."

I ran upstairs to clean up and get ready to go. I was just about to step into the shower when an idea hit me. I went back out into the hall and yelled downstairs to Esme to call our favorite pizza place and order one of those Hawaiian pizzas that Edward loved as a teenager. I heard her yell back that she would as I turned and went back into the bathroom.

As I stood in the shower, I thought about another situation that I was going to have to deal with soon. A friend of mine, Dr. Doug Jameson, was running the practice for me so that I could be with my family. He had retired last year and although he says his wife is happy to have him out of the house, he doesn't want to work long term again, nor should he be expected to. I was going to have to return to work now that Edward was awake and on the mend, at least physically. The only real problem was that now my own retirement plans were going to be on hold indefinitely, as no one knew when Edward would be able to come back to work or if it was ever going to be possible.

I walked into Edward's hospital room an hour later, with the pizzas and Kara in tow, while Esme took the baby with her and went in search of some plates. I was surprised to find Edward sitting alone in his room. I set the pizzas down on the table that was in front of him and turned to get Kara settled in the chair that Tanya normally sat in.

"We thought you might be getting tired of hospital food already."

"The stuff they serve here is just horrible. Thank God Bella brought me a burger last night. She really saved me from starving all night."

"You saw Bella again last night?"

"Yeah. She brought dinner and we talked about some things that were frustrating me."

"That had to be quite the conversation. Did it help?"

"It did. She at least gave me a good starting place to work through everything. She gave this…" he held up a notebook and a pen. "…and she wants to me to write down everything that I feel the need to talk about so we don't miss anything. I'm supposed to get as detailed as possible about why I feel the need to talk about it and why I think the subject is frustrating or upsetting me. She also wants me to write down anything that seems familiar to me or I think might be a memory so we can discuss it with her first. She said that it was better to explore it with someone unbiased, to avoid someone feeding me information to fit the scenario in their mind, because it may not be a memory at all."

"That's a good idea," I said handing him a plate of pizza now that Esme had joined us. "Dr. Snow said that Bella is the best occupational therapist the hospital has."

Our conversation was interrupted by Tanya and Ethan coming into the room. Ethan looked a little conflicted as he looked between his cousin and best friend, who was sitting in the corner, and his dad in the bed in front of him. He decided pretty quickly that his Dad was more important at the moment and started trying to scale the bed. I reached down and helped Ethan up onto the bed and got him settled next to Edward. The rest of our conversation could wait until the child was asleep and we knew he wasn't going to overhear us. All of us, including the kids, watched as Tanya entered the room in a manner that was extremely cautious. We continued to watch as she awkwardly approached Edward and gave him a kiss on the cheek before grabbing a slice of pizza and carefully taking a place sitting on the foot of his bed.

Tanya POV:

I was so exhausted by the time I got to the hospital. I had spent the morning cleaning my house that was quickly becoming a 'to be condemned' area. Between the cleaning and Ethan whining and having a fit about wanting to see his daddy right now. As soon as I pulled the last load of laundry out of the dryer and had the clothes folded we could be on our way to the hospital. I was trying to figure out how we were going to work around Edward's cast when they finally let him come home. The stairs were going to be too dangerous with casts on his arm and his leg. Maybe he could sleep on the couch? Or I could get a roll-away bed that was big enough for both of us to sleep on. I hated not having him next to me at night. I was getting frustrated because I thought my nights of sleeping alone ended when his residency ended.

I had just finished packing Ethan's toy bag and had just pulled out the thermal bag to pack some snacks for him when Esme called to tell me that they were picking up pizza for everyone for lunch. It was always nice when there was something that I could forget about. There were so many things that I would love to let someone else worry about for a change.

That thought made me look over at the stack of bills sitting on the table. I sighed and realized that I would have to pay them when I got home tonight. The money would have to come out of our saving this time. I couldn't do that for long. It had been almost a month since the accident, and if Edward didn't gain his memories back soon so he could return to work I was going to have to find a job to pay the bills.

We entered Edward's room and Ethan immediately ran for Edward. Bella had told me that one of the best things I could do for Edward was to treat him the way that I normally would. I needed to try to act normal around him. It wasn't that I didn't want to. I wanted everything to be normal again. I wanted him to look at me the way that he used to, the way that left no doubt in my mind that he was in love with me. Now he just looked at me with curiosity and wonder. I wanted him to want me again. I mean physically. It had been so long since we were together. I briefly entertained a fantasy of sending everyone home so that I could try to jog his memory by climbing into that bed with him.

I sighed and dropped that thought. It would be a while before his injuries were healing enough for anything like that. I shuffled across the room and placed a quick kiss to his cheek and sat at the foot of his bed. I needed to be close to my husband. I missed him so much. I missed him holding me and the innocent touches as well as the intimate ones. I needed him so much that I felt like I was starting to suffocate.

Esme handed me a plate of pizza but I really wasn't hungry. After ten minutes of picking at it I gave up and set in on the table in front of Edward and excused myself to go to the bathroom. I hesitated to return to Edward's room when I was done so I wandered off to the cafeteria. I got myself a large mocha as a treat and took off for the outdoor walking gardens. I found a bench, sat down, and allowed myself to get lost in my thoughts and worries about the future of my family.

What was I going to do for a job? I had never had a job in my life. My parent's supported me through college until I married Edward and then he took care of me. But now he couldn't work and he needed me to take care of him. Everything was now my responsibility and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to put it off for long. But there was so much to consider, like what was I going to do with Ethan while I worked? What if I couldn't find a job that paid enough to allow me to keep up the mortgage on the house? What if we lost our home? I knew that Carlisle and Esme would take us in but I didn't want it to get to that point. With my limited job skills and my non existent job history. I realized that the fact of that matter was that I might have to seriously consider taking on two jobs to make ends meet and be able pay all the hospital bills that the insurance wasn't going to cover.

A hand on my shoulder startled me out of my thoughts. I looked up to see Bella standing there holding a Kleenex out to me. I hadn't even realized that I had started crying. "Hey, why don't we take a walk and talk for a bit?"

"You wouldn't mind?"

"I am here for all of you, Tanya, not just Edward."

We spent the beginning of our walk in complete silence. Then Bella started pointing out some of the flowers that were her favorites. Then she told me about how her first boyfriend in junior high gave her a dead cactus that he had obviously dug out of his yard when he came to pick her up for their first date. "I swear, the damn thing smelled like it had come from a litter box! I handed it to my mom who told me that she would take care of it. I never saw the thing or the boy again. And seriously, how the hell do you kill a cactus?" I was laughing so hard that I had to take a seat on the bench that we were passing.

But it was enough to get me to open up with her. Once I got started talking I just couldn't get myself to shut up. I even told her about the miscarriage. We talked as we walked around the garden and before I really knew it, we had been there for a couple of hours and made a couple of passes around the whole garden. She had managed to calm me down quite a bit. She told me there was a lot that I could do with my degree in education. She had a friend who worked as a corporate trainer. While corporate trainers got paid a lot better than teachers in public schools did, I doubted that it was going come close to what Edward was bringing home as a doctor. I hadn't really solved my problems, but just getting them off my chest with someone made me feel a lot better about the near future.

Before we got on the elevator to go up to Edward's room she handed me a piece of paper with her cell phone and home phone number on it with the instructions to call her day or night if I needed to talk.

When we walked into Edward's room I found Edward asleep on the bed, Ethan and Kara playing in the corner, and Rose and Alice talking quietly in the corner of the room. "It's about time you got back here. Alice and I made a decision. The four of us are going out tonight and have a girl's night out. We are going to do dinner and maybe a movie. Or maybe a bar. Yeah, I think we need to get drunk. But no loud clubs with drunks trying to cop a feel; I am totally too old for that now. " She looked over at her sister, "You get to be the designated driver since you can't drink."

"I can't go out. I have Ethan. And I don't want him to have to sleep away from home again. He's barely slept in his own bed since the accident."

"Jasper is going watch him and he'll babysit at your house so Ethan can sleep in his own bed tonight." Alice told me in a tone that said that it was a final decision with no room for arguments or negotiations. I nodded my agreement and went to sit by the window. Edward's room overlooked the garden that Bella and I had just been walking through. I wondered briefly if they had seen us and that was what spurred them on to plan a girl's night out. I let that train of thought drop. The more I sat there thinking about it and listening to the girls make plans the more excited I got to get to dress up and go out as though I didn't have a care in the world.

Bella grabbed Edward's chart off the door and started copying things down into her notebook. She she started to flip back and forth through the pages of her notes and the hospital charts making notes on both before putting the charts back and excusing herself from the room saying she had an appointment with another client to get to. Before she left she asked me to let the nurses know when he was awake so that she could come back to work with him.

A few hours later found me in my bedroom while Ethan played with his trucks on the bed behind me. It seemed like such a normal thing to do. In fact, it was something that I would do often. Edward and I had always made sure that we had one night a week that was just for us. Even if we had to do our date night at home because we couldn't afford to go out, we would dress up and make the night as special as possible.

I was pulled out of my thoughts when I heard someone come in the front door. I knew that it had to be one of my sisters-in-law. They knew to just come in when we had plans to go out. I could hear someone protesting as they came up the stair, "Really Rosalie, I shouldn't come up here. She doesn't know me that well and it's a little presumptuous."

"Trust me. She won't care. I barge up here all the time."

"That's different. You are family and I am just her husband's physical therapist."

I peeked out of my bedroom in time to see Rose wheel around and set Bella straight, "You may be Tanya's husband's therapist at the hospital but tonight you are my husband's friend and therefore a friend of mine. You got it?"

"Yeah. If you're sure."

As Rose started to growl I figured I should step in and put an end to the debate, "I'm in here. I just have to finish my hair and I'll be ready to go. Where is Emmett?"

"He's downstairs in the kitchen. He decided to get started cleaning that fish tank like he promised." Rose said as she went to sit on the bed.

"That thing was his idea so it should be his responsibility."

"What kind of fish is it?" Bella spoke up still standing by the door.

"It's a go'fish. His name is Jacob." Ethan said as he jumped into his aunts open arms.

"He looks so much like Edward." Bella commented.

"He acts just like his father too," Alice chimed in as she appeared at the doorway next to Bella. She came waltzing in, pulling Bella along with her. She practically forced Bella to sit down when they reached the bed. I felt sorry for Bella. She looked a little uncomfortable and I could understand, I think I would be uneasy about being dragged into a stranger's bedroom the first time I came to visit their house.

A couple of hours later found us sitting at the restaurant drinking and laughing as Bella told us yet another story of Emmett from high school. With the exception of Alice, we were all extremely drunk by now and having the best time that I could remember having in a very long time.

A/N:

Happy Saturday. First I want to say thanks to Sweetpea123 for betaing this for me. But I did make a few changes after she cleaned it up so all mistakes are mine. Happy St. Patty's day to everyone. IF you go out please be safe. It's actually my sister's birthday and she had so many green birthday parties that she detests the color now. LOL! Reviews will get teasers!