"Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?"

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

12

Edward bought me a coffee from a café near Pike Place Market, and we took the paper cups across the road to a picnic table overlooking the water of Elliot Bay.

Coffee was my new drug of choice. It helped me get through the day with some small semblance of clarity, and when the nightmares woke me from any small amount of sleep I had gotten, coffee kept me from falling back under. I started to read and write a lot during the night, but I don't know what it was that I read or what words I had typed.

As he sat down on the wooden bench, I tried to focus my mind on Edward. I found it so easily wandered these days, between Rose, Alice, Ben…Charlie, who had let tears well in his eyes in front of me another time too many when I told him last night about Alice and Jasper's miscarriage.

I pushed the image aside as well as I could. Edward looked different out of the hospital fluorescents and pale blue scrubs. The scrubs were great, of course, but Edward in the daylight, away from the smell of disinfectant and the threat of death, this Edward was vibrant and all the more handsome. He didn't look so much like the man who had saved my nephew or seen my sister dead. He just looked like a man. I liked that he didn't carry those things with him.

"So do you take the aunties of all your emergency patients out for coffee?" I broached.

"Only the most memorable ones."

"Memorable for the tears and crazy stupor, and not for the tragedy of it all, I hope."

He glanced at me before looking away again.

"Bella, know that there's not much I can say today that won't seem to relate back to the way that we met. But I most certainly do not remember you for the tragedy of that night. That won't be what defines you or what defines us."

I didn't have anything to say to that. It was the most honest someone who wasn't a family member had been with me recently. We'd only been sitting there for five minutes, so he obviously wasn't going to waste time skirting around the dark clouds hovering over my shoulders. I sipped on my latte and watched a ferryboat head out from the wharf.

We were quiet for a while. It should have been horribly uncomfortable, yet it wasn't. He made me feel like I could say things I needed to say or ask questions I shouldn't ask.

"You must see a lot of death."

"It's an unfortunate side effect of the job, yes."

"Does it get easier?"

"For me to see in multiples, or for the families to deal with once?"

"Both."

"It never gets easier to witness, no. Every one is a punch to the gut. I'm just fortunate to be removed enough from the situation for the pain not to linger for too long. I can try to find a why or a how and resign myself not to let that happen again. The families of the patient don't get that luxury. Their punch to the gut basically wipes them out. From what I know, though…it gets easier. It doesn't mean it goes away. Each day just gets a little easier to breathe, a little easier to stand up straighter, and a little easier to smile without feeling like you shouldn't."

He understood. This blessed man next to me sipping slowly at his Americano and looking at his coffee cup, completely comfortable in his own skin. He understood my fear that none of those things would ever happen to me.

The circumstances of that day we met for a simple coffee were so fucked up. They were fucked up because I should have been able to call Rose. A really gorgeous guy took me for coffee today. We would have gotten excited, and she would have asked all the right questions to check if he was worthy and if I was serious. We talked about death. We talked about how I was a depressed loony who may never smile again. It was super. Then I would have called Alice and we would have done the same, before she called Rose and they would discuss their thoughts on their baby sister's potential relationship.

When I was removed from the surreal hour where things seemed okay on that picnic table, I was able to distinguish that potential relationships didn't come out of situations like this. The dark circles under my eyes had me looking like a zombie, and a good doctor had enough pity for me to apply coffee and company as medicine. Alice and Rose were the type who got to spend their lives with amazing men, not me. No doubt my second impression on Edward was as memorable as my first. I wasn't going to hold my breath for him to call again. Part of me hoped he didn't. He shouldn't concern or involve himself in a life that even I didn't recognize.