This may seem odd, probably because I do not want to follow the typical path that has been created for these kinds of stories. This story will be more about her journey, as well as a completely different relationship that she will have with Jasper since they have such a complicated story from the start. Please be patient, I promise that this will be quite the ride to stay on.
I don't remember much from the night Jared Grant murdered my family, there are flashes, and moments of time where my mind briefly comprehended the medic's calls for me to open my eyes. I can remember the moment they called my brother's time of death 22:14:46. I can remember the lights from the ambulance as they rushed me from the house.
The two things I can remember wholly from that night are the intense amounts of pain that rushed to my brain before they got a load of ketamine in my body, and the hatred I felt for Jared.
I had never hated him before. He was what my mother described as a very lost boy. He had bounced between his mother and his father for the first fourteen years of his life, and neither house was great. His dad was abusive, and his mother an addict. He was fourteen when he moved to Alaska to be with his aunt.
We started dating at fifteen to my family's displeasure. I'm not sure what made my mom angrier, his possessive attitude towards me, or how deranged his mood often was. Of course I never saw how manic he could be until the night he murdered everything that mattered to me. Before that time, he swore I was everything that anchored him to the earth, and I fell for that wholeheartedly.
I didn't watch his trial, refused to speak in it, even to witness. The state still decided to prosecute, knowing that an ax murderer wasn't exactly someone they wanted roaming the streets on the search for a new girlfriend.
I never thought that something like this would happen to me, but life is weird, and sometimes things are just inevitable.
. . .
"Calina?" a knock on my door wakes me from my drug induced slumber, and I open my eyes slowly.
They're still heavy, even though I woke up yesterday and have been sleeping ever since. It seems like now I can barely even stay awake for more than one conversation.
"Cali?" Tanya tries again, moving closer to me. I am barely able to murmur out a soft response, closing my eyes again. She sighs audibly, and I hear her simply sit down next to me, her hand moving to stroke some of the hair in my eyes away from my face.
She continues to stroke my head, her cool hand soothes my pounding head. My fever broke a bit last night, but came back up this morning. The medicine is only making me feel worse, and I cannot have more morphine for another hour.
"When are you going to get better?" Tanya whispers, more to herself than me.
I can't bring myself to respond the answer that we both know to be true. I won't be getting better, and as much as my doctors try to be optimistic, if the my fever doesn't get better, and my antirejection meds continue to work less, I will be dead before I can even finish the month, or much less the next year.
"Jasper isn't back yet, but he wanted you to know that he wishes he could be here."
He left after sending me off after a family emergency in Texas. Rosalie refused to return home, insisting that she was much closer to me than her Great Aunt Tracey anyways. Apparently Jasper was much more close to Tracey than his sister.
"Calina, we all want nothing more than for you to be better. I just wish we could have caught this quicker, maybe we could have reversed it, I even wish I could have caught him quicker too. I just never thought, you know." She trails off, her hand reaching my own.
I want to tell her that she could have never known to prevent what happened, or that I have never blamed anyone for not getting there quick enough. I will be forever in debt to the person who called the police when they did, but I am not daft enough to think that they could have called quicker. The only person I blame is myself for not believing everything my mother tried to make me understand about the way Jared controlled me.
"How is she?" another person enters the room, and I can tell it's Rose just by the way the heels on her boots click against the cool tile.
"Awake, but too tired to talk." Tanya sighs, squeezing my hand again.
"Hey Cali." Rose whispers, sitting down on the bed next to my legs.
"She looks less yellow today."
"Alice, she's awake." Rosalie hisses in the direction of the door and new voice who made the observation about my color.
"Sorry Calina, if it makes you feel any better, it's a beautiful shade of yellow." Alice chirps, and I hear a chair scrape towards my bed, Alice no doubt sitting down in it.
"Where's Kate today?" Rose asks after a pregnant pause of silence in the room.
"She's a bit upset today, Eleazar took her out to hunt to get some of her anger out." Tanya replies quietly, I open my eyes a bit to see her typing away on her phone.
"Hey Calina." I look over to Rose as she speaks, trying to give her a smile.
"Hey." I mutter, but I think it sounds more like a moan.
"Don't strain yourself." She whispers to me, tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear.
"Jasper." I mutter, wanting him more than anything in the world. Without him it seems that I'm much less at peace, and I crave the feeling of safety and calm his presence alone brings me.
"What?" Alice asks, looking over to me.
"Jasper." I whisper again, wishing that they wouldn't have put me on so many drugs.
The door to my room again opens, but I can't make out who has walked into the room, closing my eyes I try to stay awake so that they get the message. The next time I try to say his name, it comes out more garbled than the first two times.
"She wants Jasper."
Edward is the mysterious person who entered the room, and I can't help but hope that something happens with him and Tanya to at least entertain me. Listening to the Food Network all day has come to be mundane already.
"I wish he could be here." Alice soothes from beside me, I'm barely able to look over at her before my eyes shut, and I fall asleep.
It only seems like moments later that I awake, the television playing another episode of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives in the background, but the bed is much more comfortable than I remember, and the room much less bright and sterile looking. Groggily I try to move, ignoring the pain in my abdomen where they took my kidney.
"Hey, hey, hey, Calina, don't move." Someone stops me from moving around too much.
"Where am I?" I murmur, still trying to sit up, I feel much better than before, but still under the weather.
"You're here at the Cullen house." The voice coming from the hands holding me still is someone I barely recognize, and definitely isn't a nurse.
I stare at her, watching as she smile warmly down at me and fixes the blankets that cover me.
"Yes sweetheart, Carlisle thought you would be more comfortable here where he can take care of you, and since Allison is gone and a big storm is coming, he insisted so that you wouldn't get trapped at the hospital, that's proven to be a nightmare more than once apparently." She explains, and my heartrate spikes, I'm not sure I'm ready to trust the family this much, and now I've been forced to.
"Esme?" I ask, hoping I've got her name right.
"Yes?" she cocks her head at me, waiting for my question.
"Is Jasper home?"
Her face flashes with a frown for a moment before she smiles gently.
"I'll see if he's back yet, you stay here and get some rest. I'll send Edward up to see you, he spoke of how he misses you during his photography class today." She nods, still seeming troubled by the mention of Jasper.
"Thank you." I force a smile out at her as she leaves the room, the cheerfulness is sucked out with her and I sigh.
Looking up at the television, I watch as the frosted tip man goes over Captain Crunch French Toast with another chef, a plate that to me looks like diabetes with syrup on top.
Edward's chuckle breaks me from my trance, but turning my head away from the television hurts, so I keep it in place.
"Esme says you're feeling a bit better?" Edward nods at me.
"A little, yeah." I frown "Edward, where did Allison go?"
"Business in Miami, something about the newest client and paperwork. Her flight has been delayed because of the storm." His bronze eyes flicker to mine, and he sits down in a large chair that has been drug over next to the bed.
"Oh." Is all I can bring myself to respond, and I stare at the television again.
Something isn't fully right about this situation, and I can't put my finger on it, or wrap my mind around it, but it's there. Jasper leaving, and everyone's odd habits as well as Carlisle pulling me from the hospital.
My stomach starts to ache, and I can feel myself chilling again, I don't have to be a doctor to know that something is not right.
"Edward, can I ask you something?" my voice rings out in the room, and I think he stopped breathing.
"Calina, I," he's cut off by the door being sprung open.
Wild dark eyes stare down at me, and for the first time since I met Jasper Hale, I feel fear.
"Jasper." Edward warns lowly, staring at his brother.
"I can make it Edward, please, I have to see her." Jasper growls, taking a step towards me.
Edward looks towards me, his face falling, and he sighs, standing from the chair he nods at his brother, and looks to me before leaving the room silently.
"Jasper?" I whisper, unsure of the way he's looking at me.
"Calina, I am so sorry." He tries, taking a step towards me.
"Jasper, what's going on?" I try again, but my eyes grow heavy, the pain medicine wearing off as my stomach aches worse.
"Calina, I want to take your pain away." His face contorts as he sees the pain flash on my face.
"But you can't."
He looks at me like everything about this conversation is hurting him worse than even the pain that's plaguing me.
"I can, and I'm so sorry."
I can feel the burn of pain medicine as it courses through my body. It's too much, and my eyes start to close.
One boyfriend killed my family, and another is going to kill me.
. . .
Rosalie
"Carlisle, what have you done?" I shout, slamming our ornate door behind me.
"Rosalie, please." Esme warns, begging me to stop with her eyes.
"She is dying Rose, infection spread all over, and we couldn't find a transplant for her liver. The technology here is not as high quality as I expected, and by the time we found the problem at the hospital, it was too late. She was dying." Carlisle tries to explain, but I feel myself alight with anger.
A scream from upstairs startles us all, and I freeze, turning to look at the rest of my family and the Denali clan. They all seem to have accepted her fate. Alice has been warning us all week that she is dying, that her will to live is not strong enough to survive the infection, and that her time would come when her skin looked grey and yellow, and infection coursed through her blood as well. I give them all a cold look, listening to her beg Jasper to stop.
"She's dying either way."
