Don't be shy – you don't have to write a thesis in a review to make me smile. Thank you for sticking with me.

-x-x-x-

"Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill."

― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

29

I passed out. Edward was so close to me that he caught my body before I managed to really do some damage on the rock-solid linoleum floor. I was out of it long enough for him to carry me back up to his staff room. I came to cradled in his arms.

"Is it still real?" I whispered against his chest.

"Unfortunately so, gorgeous," he said, kissing my hair.

"Dr. Cullen?" A nurse popped her head around the corner of the door. "Her family is here."

"Could you let them in here please, Carmen?"

The woman held the door open, and Alice's sheet white face appeared. She ran toward me as I sat up enough to collect her in my arms.

"Bella." The way she spoke my name said so much more. What the hell are we doing here again? How the fuck did this happen? I'm sorry, baby sis.

"You saw her?"

I nodded into her shoulder.

"Jesus." She tried to hug me harder but she was already at full strength. "I should have gotten here faster."

"It was okay." It wasn't that okay, but she knew that. I hoped I wouldn't keep seeing the image of my mother under that sheet in my mind. She really didn't look all that peaceful. Hopefully she would look more at peace by the time we had a funeral. Another one.

When we finally released each other, I saw that Emmett and Jasper were sitting nearby with Ben still asleep in the stroller. They were silent. Shocked. Sympathetic. Feeling the painful reminders of being here only months earlier. The boys stood up, and I spent a good minute in each of their arms taking comfort in the kind of hugs that big brothers gave the best. Emmett had known me for more than half my life. He knew our family. He was in this almost as much as Alice and I were, as a witness to our history and a support.

"Where's Daddy?" I asked. He was always Daddy when I was especially grateful for his presence in my life, was scared I would lose him, or wanted to convey my affection for him.

"Dealing with the police crap," Emmett answered.

"What the fuck do we do about the cunt down the hall?" Alice whispered the c-word in light of Ben's sleeping baby ears.

No one said anything.

"Maybe it'll sort itself out," Emmett said, looking at the floor. We all knew what he meant. Maybe he'll never wake up.

"There's this nasty part of me that wants a chance to tell him what I think of him once and for all," I said quietly.

"Charlie said if he doesn't die, he's going to prison. They've got him on a number of charges apparently. Some of them need a bit more investigation, but they'd have a case eventually. Who knows how petty or serious it'd be though?" Emmett explained.

"Do they know whose gun the bullet came from? The one that hit…"

"The surgeon handed two bullets over to police. They'll find out soon I suppose," Edward said. I shifted away from Alice and Jasper back to his lap. He enveloped me in his arms.

"The world would be a better place with out him. But the nasty part of me wants him to suffer more than he has first," Alice said.

There was a collective sigh around the room.

"Do we have to stay here?" I asked Edward behind me.

"No, gorgeous. There's nothing more we can do here. We may as well all head home."

"You can come?"

"Yeah, they've given me leave. They're going to cover my shifts." I grabbed onto him and he squeezed me tighter.

The boys juggled vehicle logistics to make sure Alice and I didn't have to drive. We headed off in a convoy back to Emmett's so he could take care of Ben amongst us gathering together. Someone opened a bottle of vodka, and a glass was placed in my hand as we sat around in the family room. I had Edward on one side of me, Alice on the other, and an empty box of Kleenex sandwiched between our thighs.

Charlie finally joined us at ten p.m. He hugged Alice and me tightly, a couple of tears betraying his fatherly composure. Jasper poured him a whiskey as he took a seat and told us that there was a bullet from the asshole's gun, and a bullet from the prick he was doing business with. One was in a police cell and one had just been pronounced dead at the hospital we had just come from.