A/N: Just in case I forgot to say it, Twilight belongs to the wonderful and talented Stephenie Meyer. I'm just playing in her sandbox
This chapter was hard to write, I hope it came out better than I think it did…
Please let me know what you think!
Chapter 4- Nudge
I was able to slightly focus on something else beyond the pain when I woke two weeks later. I knew something had caused me to wake up, but I was briefly distracted when I heard my mother's voice downstairs and wondered when Renee had shown up. I hadn't spoken to Charlie during the two days that I watched the DVD except to tell him to leave me alone. After the DVD stopped working, things became extremely fuzzy and my memory of the last couple weeks was a blur. The only clue I had of time passing was my mother's apparent arrival and the date on my alarm clock. I didn't know when Charlie had called my mother. However, all these thoughts were quickly interrupted as an intense wave of nausea overcame me and I threw myself towards the bathroom. Even when a heart is broken, you have to respond to things like a sick stomach.
After my stomach had violently emptied itself, I washed out my mouth and opened the bathroom door to find myself face to face with my mother. She looked at me and threw her arms around me. Suddenly I was crying again, against her. She helped me walk back to my room as I bawled, ruining her shirt with my tears. I don't know how long I sat there and cried but eventually I got hungry.
I looked up into the very worried face of my mother and said, "Mom, I'm hungry. Can I get something to eat?"
She hugged me tighter. "Sure baby, I'll be right back."
She crawled off my bed and walked out of my room, closing the door quietly behind her. The numbness was threatening to take over again and so I wandered downstairs, trying to distract myself for a few more moments. I sat down at the kitchen table and waited for my mom to finish making me some scrambled eggs - one of the few things she could cook with no problems. Wordlessly my mom put the plate of eggs in front of me. I was so hungry I started inhaling them right away. However, only a few moments after I had finished, my nausea came back with a vengeance and I ran up the stairs as fast as I could.
After my second bout of throwing up, I decided that I must be sick, so I went back into my bedroom. As I turned to go back to bed, something caught my eye next to my bulletin board. It was a picture of Angela, Ben and I at lunch. Next to me, there should have been a smiling and heartbreakingly gorgeous fourth person, but he was missing. Someone had cut it out carefully, removing the person that used to be next to me. Suddenly I was so angry I could hardly see straight. How dare he cut himself out of my pictures! He had no right to remove himself so completely from my life. The physical stuff didn't matter that much anyway. The hole in my heart would never let me forget Edward. I started to sink back into the numb abyss that I had been living in for the past two weeks, turning to lie back down on my bed, when I looked at my calendar and gasped in shock.
There on the calendar for today was a black X. I looked more carefully at the whole thing and saw the red X had been two days before. My period was two days late. I started to breathe in a panicked manner as my heart sped up faster than it ever had before. I was never late. My period was like clockwork. I thought about it for a moment and deduced that because of Edward leaving, I was under extreme stress, which I knew could mess with most women's cycles; however, it had never effected me this way before. Of course, it's not every day that the love of your life leaves. At that thought, I began to cry again, convinced that the extreme stress I was under was the reason for my late period. I allowed myself to sink into the abyss again.
A few hours later, I came back out of my waking sleep to be hit with a new wave of nausea. After I had finished losing my stomach contents again, I heard a soft knock on the door. Renee came in quietly and checked my temperature.
Then she looked at me piercingly and said, "Bella, you know I love you and you know that you can tell me anything. I won't tell Charlie, but, I need to ask you something uncomfortable."
She waited for me to answer her but I just looked at her with a dead, empty expression.
After a moment of awkward silence, she pushed on bravely, saying softly, "Bella, I know you are late. I saw your calendar. Your nausea and appetite are making me nervous. Bella, is there any chance you could be pregnant?"
I looked up at my mother in shock. I knew what the answer to that would be. Of course not. However explaining how I knew that was impossible was going to be much more difficult. I knew I was not pregnant because the only person I had ever slept with was a vampire. I laughed to myself humorlessly at the idea of Renee's reaction to that statement, while trying to collect myself enough to answer her question as honestly as possible.
Eventually, I attempted to side step the issue with, "Mom, I am going through a lot right now. I'm sure that's what is messing with my schedule."
However for once in Renee's life she was not about to be swayed from getting a better answer from me.
She directly asked, "Bella, did you sleep with him?"
I frantically searched for a moment, trying to come up with the best way to lie while keeping a straight, unreadable face for Renee. She had asked if I had slept with him. Since vampires could not sleep, I technically could not sleep with him.
I carefully and smoothly said, "Mom, of course I didn't sleep with him. I'm just eighteen. I'm not ready for that yet." Then quickly, to change the subject, I asked, "What's for dinner?"
Renee fell for it and reluctantly said, "Well, we were going to have steak, but I'm not sure if you're up for it."
Suddenly the idea of a nice thick medium rare steak was extremely appealing to me.
With a little too much enthusiasm I said, "Mom I think I can handle it, as long as it is not too well done."
Renee gave me a strange look but walked out of the room to start dinner and ask Charlie to start up the grill.
Over dinner that night, Mom announced that she needed to head back to Jacksonville. She begged and pleaded for me to come with her but I refused. I knew that there was no logical reason for me to stay in Forks now. Phil had a job with a minor league team. Mom was home a lot more. However, I could not bring myself to leave Forks. I knew that he was not coming back, but I couldn't help thinking that just in case he did return, I needed to be here so that he could find me. I adamantly refused, and after a while Renee and Charlie gave each other a long look and gave up. As soon as I could after dinner, I hugged them both and went up to bed. For the first time that day, my meal stayed down.
As I slipped under the covers, I focused on my parent's voices downstairs. They were arguing about taking me back to Jacksonville. Their voices were quite heated over the issue. Apparently, I hadn't fooled them at all. They knew I was staying here for him and even though neither one of them thought it was healthy, Charlie didn't want to lose me again after having so little time with me growing up. Mom eventually gave in and I breathed a sigh of relief, allowing sleep to take me.
Early the next morning, I woke to a banging on my door. My mom was waking me up to say goodbye. I was thankful to be woken from the nightmare I was having. I had been wandering everywhere looking for Edward, never finding him but feeling as if he was just out of reach somehow. I quickly got out of bed and went across the room to open the door to Renee. I hugged her, told her that I loved her and then watched her walk out the door. I looked at Charlie's face as the door closed behind my mother and saw the raw pain and hurt that was deeply etched into his face. He had never gotten over my mother and watching her walk back out the door, bags in hand, was a painful reminder of the day that she had left with me. After a moment, Charlie physically shook his head and turned to face me.
"Almost time for school, Bells. You need to get going if you are still feeling up to it," Charlie said to me carefully, watching to make sure I didn't break down again.
My mother's departure gave me no more excuses to stay home, and my nausea had not returned. I was going to have to get moving and go to school. I ran back upstairs and threw my clothes on quickly, trying to ignore the black stereo-shaped lump in the corner that I had forced out of my truck.
The drive to school was complete torture. Every second of the drive was quiet besides the roar of my ancient truck. All I could do was drive and think about him, which threatened to make the day even harder than it already was. I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled into the school parking lot, knowing that among all these students, there would be someone to distract me and keep my mind off him. My eyes scanned the parking lot and even though I tried to force them to not look for his silver Volvo, they still swept the lot and my numbness returned.
About halfway through my first class, I was shocked out of my stupor when my intense nausea came back. I booked it to the bathroom, not waiting for a pass. After I finished losing my breakfast, I walked up to the nurse's office. Maybe she would send me home and I would be allowed to slip into my unthinking abyss again for a short while before Charlie came home.
When I walked into the office, there was a note on the door indicating that nurse was out for a few minutes on break, but that she would return soon. While I sat in her office alone my mother's question came back to bug me. I tried to brush it away time and again. However the more I tried to ignore her question, the more her questions about me being pregnant voiced themselves. Then, all of the sudden, in one small sensation, my life changed forever. As I tried to ignore the question she had asked me, I felt something in my lower abdomen nudge me.
And yes I am a Nessie fan… although this story doesn't center around her, she will make her presence known
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