"Is she...dying?" Charlie asked, swallowing.

"No," the doctor said, shaking his head. Not yet, not necessarily, he thought.

An optimist, Edward realized, sighing. He didn't begrudge him it. He was young.

She has good chances, the doctor was still thinking, wanting to offer Charlie some comfort. "She's on the transplant list. She's young. The dialysis is going well. She's just been...traumatized." Here he looked at Edward. He knew it was his brother who'd brought her in. The story about falling off the table just didn't add up, though. And that fall hiking from before? He hadn't seen many logs with hand shaped branches.

"You're her next of kin?" he asked Charlie.

"Yeah." Charlie was staring at her, dazed. Exhausted.

"Can I have a word with you in private?" The doctor asked.

Edward closed his eyes, groaning mentally. He'd expected this much earlier. After her last hospital visit. He didn't wait to be asked to leave, but stepped outside the door, looking at Jacob, laid out on the hard plastic chairs there. His smell wasn't improving with time. Or a lack of showering.

"Jacob," he said, waiting for him to stir. "There's a hostel nearby. Go. Sleep. Shower. Please." He pulled out his phone. "There's a room for you."

"I don't need fricking vampire charity."

"It's not mine," he said, "it's Bella's."

"Huh?" he asked, still waking up.

"Bella's." Edward wrote the address down for him on the corner of a take-out brochure, tacked up on the community board. "Here. I'll call if anything changes."

Jacob didn't trust him, and his thoughts were clear on this front.

"If she dies, dog, you can remove me from the world as well."

This, Jacob believed, and he nodded, snatching the scrap of paper from him.

Edward murmured other things to Jacob, quiet words that were meant for his ears only.

Finally, Jacob rubbed his face in his hands, chewing on what Edward had told him. "OK, you'll call me if things get worse?"

"I promise." Hearing the responding thoughts, he snorted out something like a chuckle, "No, I suppose you wouldn't put much stock in that, would you?"

As Jacob walked away, Edward turned his mind back to the conversation in the room.

"Someone's hurt her," the doctor said. "Those aren't injuries from falling. They required...significant force. More than you'd get from slipping. Is there any reason she'd say she fell?"

Charlie's thought, always so muted, were a violent, and boiling rage.

"Yeah," he said, nodding, "I can." Edward's face swum in his thoughts.

Edward's mental moaning continued, and he cursed Victoria and Jun again.

"We're tapering off the sedatives and painkillers," the doctor said quietly. "She should be awake in a few hours, and we'll reassess then."

Charlie nodded silently. Angrily.

Then he sat, and waited.

Seeing the doctor leave, Edward knew he needed to maintain his innocent facade, and walked back in.

"What happened, really?" Charlie asked him. He didn't turn to look at him, still watching Bella.

"You need to ask Bella that," Edward said.

Charlie turned, not expecting this. Expecting excuses, more lies, Edward realized.

"Someone's hurt her."

Edward set his jaw. "You'll need to ask her."

"Who? You know, clearly."

Edward shook his head. "You think it's me, and I don't blame you. Ask her yourself, when she wakes up."

He stayed silent in the face of Charlie's remaining, and increasingly frustrated questions.

They were both glad when she began to stir.

"I'll be outside," Edward said, slipping away.

After the nurse finished her checks, and left, Charlie pounced.

"Someone hurt you, Bella," Charlie started. "I'd like to know who."

Edward could hear her panicked breathing, forcing himself to remain where he was.

"I fell—"

"Bella," Charlie said. "No. No more lies. I don't deserve that."

She thought for a minute, breathing slowing. "You remember my friend, Jun?"

"Sure, you were seeing each other."

"Yeah."

"He did this?"

She nodded.

Edward had never doubted her intelligence, and he gave thanks for it now. The truth, even part of it, was always better, than a lie.

"What happened?" Charlie hushed out.

Edward heard the rustle of her hair, her head shaking.

"You can press charges, Bella."

"He took off, Dad."

"People can be found."

She sighed. "He...left. I filed that missing persons report for a reason. But he came back. He wasn't...right...in the head. He grabbed me at the party, and gave me a shot of something. I don't know what happened after—" she started to cry.

Edward was at the door, hand paused on the handle, before he stopped himself.

"I'm sorry," Charlie said. "But you need to report this. If he hurt you, he'll hurt someone else."

"Sure," Bella said.

Edward could practically hear the guilty squirm on her face. He backed away, hearing Charlie's footsteps approaching.

"Edward?"

Edward entered, moving past Charlie, and to Bella, eyes full of silent reassurances. He kissed her, hands gentle over her face. "You OK?"

She nodded, and then looked at her father, face shadowed with a beard, clothes the same ones he'd come in.

"You need to sleep, Dad," she reprimanded him. He lifted a chin towards the recliner in the room.

"In a bed. Eat something. I'll be fine."

Charlie closed his eyes momentarily, and then looked at the many machines around the room as his only comment.

She tried again. "I'll feel better, knowing you're comfortable." She looked to Edward.

"Alice wanted you to know you're welcome with us. She's got the room ready."

"I'll talk to the police, after you've rested, Dad." She tried to make her voice sound authoritative. The effect was weakened by the trailing off of her air, and the way she had to sink back into the bed.

"A couple hours," Charlie agreed, coming to kiss her on top of her head.

When he left, she asked Edward, voie anxious again, "you heard?"

"Yes," he said, "don't worry. You did fine. Emmett's story will still hold. I'm sure no one will doubt you fell off a table."

She laughed a little, and then stopped, wincing.

He hated it, and his expression was a wavering line, not quite a frown, nor a smile. He wanted to keep his distress from her.

Instead, he leaned in and kissed her. "What can I do for you?"

"Be with me," she said.

"I can do that."

"Good." Her words were getting harder to make.

"Bella," Edward started. "If we're going to change you, I want you to have as much closure to your human life as possible. How can I help you have that?"

She focused on breathing for a moment, then said, air restored. "Help my parents see I'm happy. That you love me."

"Alright." Sticking his hand in his pocket, he wrapped his fingers around the small box he'd put there the day of the competition. "I think," he said, pulling it out, "that I have a question I need to ask you first, though."

She didn't waste air by asking, but looked at him, her eyebrows a dipped line.

"Will you marry me?" He slipped the small box into her open hand.

Her face became a picasso of shapes, all speaking at once, silent, loud and airless.

He waited, a thrill of panic starting to form. It wasn't a question one repeated.

"Yes," she finally managed, her other hand at her mouth, one reaching for him, trying to pull him to her.

When their lips met this time, he felt her hands cling tenaciously to his hair, all her energy spent in holding him. As it faded, her hands slipped away, and she could barely breathe out the words, "I love you."

He was glad he knew how to work the oxygen, slipping the cannula over her face, watching her face, still full of joyful lines, pinken again.

Forcing himself to remain calm, he helped her open the box, and not wanting her to speak unnecessarily, said, "it was my mother's." He slipped it over her finger, and watched her catch its glint in the light.

When she did speak, she chuckled, "Charlie's going to freak."

Edward grinned in response. "I think we can handle that." Then he heard Alice's approaching thoughts. All restraints off, she was looking at everything in Bella's future, and her mind was running at a high pitched whistle of excitement.

She didn't bother with hello, skipping right to a loud, "I get to be the first to say congratulations!"

Bella waved, saving her strength for enduring Alice's energetic self.

"And you're going to be well enough for a wedding!"

Bella looked at her, face full of disbelief, and then pale with horror. "I am?"

"Oh yes! Early May. Right after exams are done."

"I can go back to class?"

"In just a few weeks. You'll still be on dialysis, but you're going to be fine. For the wedding."

Edward could see, in Alice's thoughts, that she would be fine then. What came after was far more troubling.

"What?" Bella asked, knowing the face Edward was making.

"Your health won't hold steady after that," Alice said, far less happily. "Summer, sometime. I'm not sure exactly."

"And the Volturi?" she whispered.

"Nothing new," Alice said, voice serious. "They'll check, but it isn't clear when."

Bella nodded. She'd expected as much.

"It gives you time," Edward said, "to say goodbye."

"Yes." Her throat was tight. She wanted to be happy with their new life together, but it meant the ending of this one, and Charlie's worried face was too fresh.

"We'll need to start planning," Edward murmured to Alice, below Bella's hearing. "Carlisle will want to give notice at the hospital."

Hearing the slap of rubber soles, Edward turned, and pulled the cannula off of Bella, "sorry," he whispered, shutting off the oxygen. "She'll put it back on in a sec."

Bella understood, nodding, paling almost immediately at its removal.

The nurse noticed her colour right away, and as Edward had predicted, put the cannula right back on, only briefly wondering why it felt warm.

"Things hurting?" she asked Bella.

"A little," she said, hating to confirm the suspicions she could see on Edward's face.

Tapping numbers into the dispenser, she nodded, and then left.

Edward frowned. "You need to tell us," he murmured.

"Soon I won't have to," she mumbled.

"And until then, humour me," he said, kissing her forehead.

- 0 -

When Charlie returned the next morning, he wasn't alone. Jacob trailed after him, looking like the sad puppy he was, Edward thought.

"Sure," Charlie said, "I have to leave, but he gets to stay," jerking a thumb towards Edward. He said it lightly, though, happy to see Bella awake, and looking more herself. His hug was tentative, and she returned it with as much force as she could muster.

"He's younger," Bella quipped. "Crappy hospital chairs hurt him less."

Jacob gave her a quiet "hey," coming close. "You look like crap."

"Thanks, Jake," she said pertly.

"Just keepin' it real. It's what I do."

She grinned. "You do it well."

He leaned closer, his whisper covered by the purposeful small talk Edward made with Charlie. "Glad to see you're still you."

Her smile fluttered. "Not long, Jake," she whispered back.

Charlie grunted, ending his interaction with Edward. "Well, I kept up my end of the deal, Bella. You ready to file a complaint?"

Bella nodded.

Jacob turned to Edward for an explanation, who only shook his head in the briefest of motions.

Pulling out his phone, Charlie stepped into the hall, worried about the phone interfering with the machinery.

She watched him go, leaning back, resting. Preparing herself.

"You see," Edward said to Jacob. It was a statement. Not a question.

"Yes," Jacob said.

"See what?" Bella asked, unnerved by this exchange.

"That you're...not well," Jacob said, swallowing, thinking, that you're dying.

"Will you consider my request?"

Jacob nodded. "I'll speak to Sam."

"Want to fill me in?" Bella asked.

"If we change you, we break the treaty," Edward said, playing with her fingers, pulling her left hand out from under the covers.

Bella's eyes widened, knowing Jacob would see.

Charlie opened the door, walking directly to Bella, standing immediately beside Edward.

"They're sending two officers over to take your statement. Should be here soon."

"Sure," Bella managed, Edward's grip on her hand not letting her move it away.

Her stilted motion, in trying to move it, caught his eye, caught his attention.

His eyes widened, and he looked first at Bella, and then at Edward.

"Is that—?"

Edward pretended to follow his gaze.

"An engagement ring. My mother's."

Charlie's throat worked at something. Then his mind went over what the doctors had told him. He produced a challenged, "congratulations."

Then all of them turned, in one fashion, or another, to look at Jacob, excluded from this small circle.

His body was working at something too, but more at keeping himself together in the shape that world expected of him.

"I'm—I'm gonna head home. Bye Bells."

Then, abruptly, he turned and smacked out of the door, nearly interrupting the self-important form of Patrick Bellaney, and his junior officer, just coming down the hall.