Chapter Six

"It smells terrible in here."

I smirked a bit at the bluntness of that. I'd never heard Edward be so forthcoming with complaints. "Sorry," I shrugged, "We weren't expecting company. I guess it's sort of a mess."

"No," he shook his head and glared around the apartment. "It's not that. It…it smells like a wet dog."

"Weird," I said, my face bursting at the seams with nervous sweat.

"Bella."

"Edward."

"Has Jacob Black been here?" he asked, but his eyes screamed another question, a more serious question.

"He…Jacob…" I sputtered, "Yes, he's been here." Because he's my BOYFRIEND. My mind was livid with my mouth for refusing Edward this information.

"Bella," Edward's face got very serious, "There's a possibility that your friend is…. well, something very dangerous."

Friend. "Oh, well, yeah," I shrugged, "You mean the werewolf thing? Yeah, I-I've known about that for a while."

"You know?" he shook his head.

"Of course I know," I shrugged, "Everyone tells me their secrets. I'm special," I joked. He just glared; apparently the awkward friendly banter was over. "It's not a big deal," I told him, "It's been two years. I'm pretty much used to it by now."

He paused for what felt like a long time, and I prayed he wouldn't ask more about Jacob. Then, as if someone had just told him a very funny joke, his mouth turned up, and he started chuckling outright.

"Uh, Edward?"

"I'm sorry," he said, still laughing. "It's just remarkable! You get rid of all the vampires in your life—"

"I didn't get rid of—"

"And you find yourself some other friends who could easily kill you! It is absolutely amazing. You are absolutely amazing." He shook his head. "Honestly, this is a superhuman skill, sniffing out the worst possible people to be around."

"I'm glad I amuse you," I grumbled.

"Oh," he smiled. "I'm sorry if I've offended you. It's just—what are the odds?"

"In Forks? They seem to be pretty good," I reminded him.

"That's true, I suppose, but what are the chances that you would be singled out by both camps? It's like you're destined to be…" He left the words hang in the air. I wondered what he was thinking. Immortal? Killed? Mauled or bitten or dead too soon? "Well, this makes me feel better."

"Jacob makes you feel better?" I had a feeling the sentiment would not be reciprocal.

He shook his head. "Knowing that even without me, you're still not totally normal." He smiled. "That's nice to know."

"I thought you wanted me to be normal," I said.

"Yes," he agreed. "And if you had been normal, it would be harder for me to convince myself that I'm not wrong in loving you."

"Well, there you go, saying that again," I blushed and closed my eyes, "Is this when you tell me what's caused this revelation?"

"I suppose," he agreed. "Let's sit." We sat on the lumpy, old couch the school had supplied, each on the furthest end from each other. "Well, to begin, you should know, for a while I was away from the family. I was living on my own, rather distraught."

"Imagine that," I said, unsympathetic.

"Yes, I guess you had a similar experience at first. But then, in the fall, when you were beginning your first semester, Carlisle came and found me. He talked to me for a while—days—as I sat and half listened. But he persuaded me to come home if only for Esme, and I was to attend Cornell's Medical School." He shrugged. "It had been a while since Carlisle had had an opportunity to update his expertise, but Rosalie had a different idea. She thought it might be more fulfilling if we came with Carlisle to the hospital and worked as interns. Obviously, this was a big step for both of us. We would be around human blood often—every day. It would be a huge test of our control, but Rosalie was confident, and we checked in with Alice frequently. She always insisted that we would do fine. And so, Rose and I started working as medical interns after a century of learning the medical profession.

"And I was—well, I wasn't happy—but I was content. I figured I could fill the hole left in me with good deeds. I thought, maybe helping people live would be enough to make my life worth living. And it seemed to be working. Everyone kept remarking how different I seemed, and I began to believe my own lie—the part about how I would move on and distract myself. And, of course, it was nothing compared to the joy you bring me, but I was pleased with myself. I was no longer helping the human race by not killing them, but I was taking an extra step in helping to keep them alive.

"As an intern, I don't have a lot of responsibility, but I am, very often, the person who is there for the patient, which is a factor of medicine I had never experienced before. I tell them about their procedures, about their life expectancies, about their complications. Very often, it falls to me to tell patients that they are going to die."

I narrowed my eyes and curled in tight against myself on the couch. It was odd picturing Edward wearing scrubs, working side by side with Carlisle in a hospital, but, in a way, it felt absolutely right. I bit the inside of my lip to prevent me from smiling at the pride I felt for him. Conquering his thirst for human blood could not have been an easy feat. It was pretty amazing.

"So, this has been my life for the past year and a half or so. And then, some weeks ago, a young man was admitted with severe frostbite and hypothermia. He had been hiking on Doll Hill Summit, and he got lost—was up there for nearly four days. Anyway, it was him, his wife, and their five year old son in the room, and I was to tell them that we would have to amputate his feet."

"Oh, God," I shuddered.

"Yes, it was very unfortunate," he said. "And, of course, when I explained it to them, both he and his wife started crying, weeping. His wife yelled at me, striking out, finding someone to blame. Their son got very scared and began to cry as well. Now, my job was to inform them and to get the patient, the husband, to consent to surgery—the surgery that would remove his feet.

"Of course, my particular talents are rather helpful in this juncture. I can easily see what the patient wants to hear—what will comfort them. But when I looked into this man's mind to see what he'd like for me to say, I found nothing. There was no comfort for him. There was no hope. It was strange, seeing as I've talked with patients facing death who only wanted to be told that we would let them go with as much grace and dignity possible, but this man, loosing his feet, was completely gone.

"It bothered me for a while. Even after I got the man's signature, and his feet were removed, I still could not fathom his incredible sorrow. And as I took on more patients with varying degrees of injury, I found no one like that man. Rosalie insisted I was being melodramatic—that I was too involved with this patient, and perhaps I was, but I spoke with Alice about it not very long ago." I smiled at the mention of Alice's name, and I found myself eager to see her again, my once future sister. Edward smiled, too. "She's missed you. And she asked me to tell you that she's only avoided you because I asked her to. She never thought my decision to leave was a good one."

I pulled my arms in, hugging knees to my chest. "I miss her, too."

"She'll be happy to hear that," he assured me.

I shrugged. "Go ahead. You talked to Alice."

"Yes, thank you," he said. "I spoke to her about his man, and how frustrated he'd made me. And, well, she had an answer for it in a moment, of course."

"Of course," I echoed.

"She insisted that my feelings towards this man were really feelings I was having towards myself. She said I had lost a part of me, too, and that now I had no hope." He looked at me for a hard moment, and I suppressed the desire to stroke the side of his face to comfort him. "The only difference between us being the necessity of the separation."

My voice was a mere whisper. "You didn't have to give up your feet."

"No," he whispered as well. "Though I thought I did."

I shook my head. "I still don't understand what changed."

"Well, my frustration shifted instantaneously to myself. Me, wallowing alone for the rest of eternity with no choice but to be miserable or have myself killed; is there anyone more pathetic? And the easy answer, I suppose, would be to just be happy. That's what Rosalie suggested. To, in her words, 'get over it.' But, there was no possibility of that. I simply could not get over the loss of, well; forgive the comparison, my feet. My life would never be the same. It would be forever less fulfilling, less whole. And, as Alice pointed out, I was removing my feet based on a hypothesis, which is just lazy science. Bad medicine," he joked.

"You thought I would be better off without you?" I pondered whether I was.

"Oh, I knew you would be. Or, I thought I did. And it took a lot of time and convincing for me to realize something else, something that I hope you agree with," he said cautiously.

"About me?"

"About you. And," he smiled, "Your feet."

"Oh," I sighed.

"And whether or not they're as essential to you as mine are to me," he said, squinting a bit as the metaphor extended too far. "Whether or not," he braced himself, "you still love me."

"Edward," I said, feeling the coolness of his breath on my face as his velvet voice floated around me.

"Because I need you. You're a part of me that I'm not willing to loose. And I'm hoping that I'm a part of you that you aren't willing to loose," he said.

I could see it all happening. Me, admitting to the love that never really left, and him, exuberant, taking me back into the world I thought was lost to me forever—the world where I could love and be loved for eternity, without all the falsities and trials that came with youth and its traps. I could see me kissing him and holding him close and letting him depend on me like I always wished he would.

But I could also see Jacob at home in La Push, in school, waiting for me to come back in two weeks to celebrate everything that had happened while Edward had been elsewhere—everything that Edward was unaware of, that he had to be told about. There was an incredible pull in my chest that forced my lungs to constrict and made my heart ache. It was all too impossible. Too good and too terrible.

"So then," Edward said. "Do you, Bella? Do you love me?"