So, I had been adding breaks between the original chaps, and it seems FFn didn't appreciate them, and removed. Ugh. Seems this site is still a bitch all these yrs later.
"Why are you staying here?" Edward asked at about midnight. I was now in a pair of hospital issue scrubs. I had come to learn that my Dockers and button up shirts were not comfortable sleeping wear.
I had pulled a reclining chair into the room and I was lying back, staring at the ceiling.
"Because you shouldn't be alone. Why are you not sleeping? I'm sure your doctor would be pissed."
"Not tired. And you have a strange bed side manor there, Doctor Swan." You could hear the smile behind his words. Even if he was being snarky because I was, it was nice that he smiled. People who can still smile still have hope.
"It's after midnight; I'm no longer your doctor."
"My dad was right about you."
I leaned up on my arm and looked at him in bed, the lights dim. "How so?"
He turned and looked at me. "He told me you were a lot of talk, but so worth it." He rolled back over so he was lying on his back. "He didn't add the fact that you are easy on the eye, because it sure is helpful."
"Edward, go to bed." If he hadn't been a patient that I wasn't going to have under my care for a while, I might have commented on what he said. Maybe I would have also added that he too was easy on the eye.
"You got it, Doc."
He rolled over, coughed to the point I was honestly concerned about him, before he started to breathe normal again. I waited for the shift in his breathing and his heart beat to level telling me he'd fallen asleep.
I lay awake for a while after he fell asleep. I watched his profile, his chest rising and falling. I listened to his breathing and tried to think of what was causing this man, who was otherwise healthy, to be dying.
xxxxx
"What the hell, Izzy?" Carlisle was shaking me awake. "Is everything okay with Edward?"
Oh, yeah, I fell asleep in his son's room.
"Yeah, yeah, he's fine. He was alone and I don't know-"
"It hurt your lifeless, cold heart?" Oh, he looked pissed.
"Wow, Carlisle, really? I just woke up can the hate wait?" I rolled my eyes…well I thought about rolling them.
"Izzy, I just, I never understood why you left. Excuse me if I'm a little bitter."
"Can we talk about this later? Maybe when your son isn't right next to us?"
"I tried to talk to you. I called, wrote letters, emailed, but you didn't answer until years had passed. At that time, the questions had all but been forgotten. Just tell me why? Didn't we make a great team?" He reached for me, placing his hand on my arm.
"Carlisle, we made an awesome team, but we were in different places. You wanted one thing and I another. I promise we will talk later, but not now, okay?"
He nodded.
"Plus, we now have an audience," I whispered.
Tanya, a man I didn't know, and a woman I knew far too well, all stood on the other side of the glass wall of the room.
They had showed up sometime in the middle of the heated conversation between Carlisle and myself.
Awesome! Just how I didn't want to be reunited with Esme Cullen.
Esme Cullen, my least favorite person in the world was walking toward me.
Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but I knew her like for me only extended to my possible ability to save her son.
If I wasn't the possible light at the end of this bad tunnel for the Cullen family, I was positive she would have rather I had fallen off the face of the Earth all those years ago.
"Iz- Doctor Swan, you already met Tanya, and I'm sure you remember my wife, Esme." No shit. "And this is Eric, Edward's best friend," Carlisle said. "Our other children will be here soon." He wrapped his arm around Esme with that comment.
"Nice to meet you all." I looked down at myself. I was in wrinkled scrubs, bare foot, and was sure I had bed head.
Esme looked at me with a death glare. Yeah, I got it, you still hate me.
Well, isn't that lovely.
"Doctor Swan, has there been any change in my husband condition?" Tanya asked.
"Well, not much. He is having issues with his vision now, so we will be running some additional tests this morning."
"Izzy-"
I gave Carlisle a stern look before I turned and addressed Tanya. "Later today, we will hopefully have a better idea of what's wrong with him. I wish I could wrap my head around all of this. I fear that my original diagnosis was probably incorrect. The vision loss doesn't fit. I will be back around later."
I excused myself, slipped on my slippers, and left the visitors with Edward. He needed them. He definitely didn't need me hanging out any longer.
Sleeping in patient's rooms was normally not an accepted practice.
Once back in my office, I opened my rolling wardrobe and pulled out a pair of slacks and a shirt. I went to my desk, bent over and unlocked the bottom drawer to get a pair of panties and a bra.
I stood back up and Carlisle was in my office.
"What now? Want to fight some more?"
"Izzy," he shook his head and blew a breath out his nose.
"I need to get ready, what do you need?" I collected my clothes in one hand and placed my other hand on my hip.
"Why didn't you call me about Edward's vision?"
"Why didn't you tell your wife nothing ever happened between us?"
"What? How is that of importance?"
"Were you not in that room five minutes ago? The hostility and tension with your wife was nauseating. If she is going to be here, and I am going to continue to treat your son, you will tell her. Got it?"
I slid past him and out of my office. Once in the hall, I ran as fast as I could toward the staff showers.
I flipped the bench down in the shower and threw a towel on it. Sitting my ass down, I let the spray from the water run over me.
I worried that Carlisle wouldn't tell her. Maybe he had moved past it, but obviously Esme hadn't. I couldn't be there, in that room with her glaring at me if I was going to try and save her son.
I was in the middle of washing my hair when I heard the bathroom door open.
"Doctor Swan, you in here?" It was a voice I didn't know.
"Yeah and naked, can this wait?"
"No, it can't."
"Okay, but talk and make it quick."
"My brother, he's not going to make it, is he?"
I peeked out the curtain and this tiny little girl was sitting on the bench by the lockers.
"I don't know. We are doing our best."
"Edward doesn't deserve this." She sniffled and ran the back of her hand along the underside of her nose. "My brother…you need to make him better, Doctor Swan."
"Give me a minute, okay?"
She nodded and sniffled some more while I hurried and finished my shower.
I wrapped a towel around me and left the stall.
"What's your name?"
"Alice Cullen."
"Alice, I promise you, I will do my best."
She nodded and walked away. I felt like there was more that she wasn't saying…something she wanted me to know, but didn't want to say.
I'd have to find a way to talk to her again. If she knew something that would help save her brother's life, I had to get her to share it.
"The patient's vision is now blurred." I wrote the new symptom down on our white board.
"ALS wouldn't cause this," Victoria said.
"It's almost like a toxin or something," Tyler said.
"But if it was a toxin, he would be getting better," Angela snapped back.
Those two needed to get over their issues. Victoria and I both rolled our eyes.
The three of them started to bicker over the idea of it being a toxin verse a disease.
"Just run a tox-screen for every fucking drug they have a test for."
"Bella, that will take all day!" all three of them yelled.
"Yeah, and maybe all night because Tyler and Victoria will be running those tests. Angela, I want you to get him back in an MRI. Get a brain scan then do a full eye exam. I want to check every angle. See if we can see something in his eyes."
I started to head back to my attached office, but stopped to look back at my team.
"Go! Edward can't wait all day."
All three jumped up and headed out of the conference room.
I kicked off my heels and pulled out an old med school book.
I guess it was time to get versed again in the off the wall diagnosis.
Whatever he had, it was something I hadn't ever seen before.
I sat at my desk and pulled up Edward's vitals on my computer.
At least his heart beat was strong. I prayed the rest of him would stay that way. I opened the medical book and I started in the index, looking for all of Edward's symptoms.
There was a knock at my door before it swung open.
"Carlisle, I get that we are friends, but this is still my office and I am still working." I closed the book and plastered a smile on my face. "What can I help you with, Doctor Cullen?"
"Why are your lackies in there with Edward? Why are you not doing the work?"
"I guess you don't know how this works, but I tell them what to do and then they do it. It's a nice little system I have going."
"Izzy, we came here to see you, not your residents."
"And this is how I work it. If you don't like it, find a doc back in New York to help you. Otherwise, go be with your son and let me do my job."
I clicked my computer off and I headed out of my office. Carlisle followed me until I went into the woman's bathroom.
I was going to lose my mind if he kept this up…and then I couldn't treat his son.
I washed my face off with some cold water and left the bathroom.
Lucky for me, and Carlisle, he was gone.
I paged Angela to see where she was and if Edward was with her.
As soon as she responded, I headed to meet her in the MRI scan booth.
"How's he doing?" I asked her as I sat down next to her.
"He's strong, but scared."
"Yeah, he has a drive about him that will really help if he can hold on to it."
"Bella, how well do you know Carlisle and his family?"
"Carlisle, pretty well. The rest of them, not at all, why."
She shook her head. "I don't know. Something about them. I feel like they are hiding something from us. They want us to fix him, yet whenever I ask a question, I get some open ended answer that doesn't help."
"Have you tried to talk to Edward when he is not with them?"
"Yeah, he's confused and has stuck to the story that nothing has changed in his life."
"Well something has changed."
The scan came up on the screen. Edward had a tumor behind his optic nerve.
What the fuck? How was this possible?
"Re-oh my god-rerun the scan. Now!" I yelled orders as I walked out of the tech room for the MRI.
I hobbled down the hall, pulling my heels off so I could run to my office. I hit the stairwell and took them two at a time as I ran my way up the stairs.
I threw my shoes on the floor as I ran into my office.
I plopped down at my desk and pulled out the file that Carlisle had sent to me.
Original brain scan was clear.
Bone scan, clear.
Full body scan, clear.
And now it wasn't.
Now he had at least one tumor that was fucking with his vision.
How was that possible?
Only a week had passed since the last scan that was also clear.
How did this happen? What changed? If he was going to get a tumor, wouldn't he have had it from the beginning? Wouldn't it have been what caused the symptoms? Not shown up after the fact.
I banged my head down on my desk. Unless he had multiple illnesses, nothing made sense.
"Doc, what's the deal?" Victoria asked as she walked into my office.
"He has a tumor behind is eye. It wasn't there before."
"Oh, no good. I wanted you to know that so far the tox-screen has been negative. We have tested for the common drugs, poisons, and toxins. We are moving on to the not so common."
Victoria wasn't one for patient attachment, which made her good. She looked at the big picture, not the frail person she was handling.
"Just, just check everything okay?"
She nodded and headed out of my office.
I called over to the nursing staff and asked them to get Carlisle to my office, now.
He came running in, out of breath.
"They said it was important and Edward has been in testing for a while. What's going on?"
"Sit."
He did as I asked.
"We need to talk. First, have you talked to your wife?"
He looked off into space.
"I'll take that as a no. Look, you tell her or I tell her, but I will not involve you in your son's case if you are going to act like a toddler. Understood?"
He nodded.
"You are an adult, act like it. I want to help your son, but I won't deal with the shit you created."
"Got it." His jaw was tight. He was pissed.
Good.
"Now, let's talk about Edward. He has a tumor behind his left optic nerve."
"What?" he all but yelled and jumped out of his seat.
"Sit." He did. "It wasn't there before. I'm having the scan re-run as we speak. I need to ask you something and I want complete honesty from you."
He nodded.
"Are you hiding anything from me or my staff?"
"As in?"
"As in the fact that you son shouldn't still be presenting with new symptoms. A tumor could have caused his symptoms. Those symptoms wouldn't have caused a tumor. Something is either seriously wrong with your kid or with the history you gave me. "
"Izzy, I don't know what to tell you. I have been as honest as I can as both a medical professional and as the father of your patient. Trust me."
"I need to talk to your son with no one else around. Can you manage to get them all out? Maybe for a nice family dinner?"
"Yeah, yeah I can. My other son and his wife got in earlier, so we can meet them before they come here I guess. Tanya may put up a fuss, but I will talk with Edward and tell him to tell her to go."
"Good. I want you all gone. I'm going to have a doctor patient talk with Edward so maybe I can save his life."
Carlisle had minimal issues getting the family out of the hospital.
He told them that Edward was going to be in testing for a while and they all should take a much needed break.
Tanya gave him a bit of trouble, but not much.
Once they were gone, I had Angela bring Edward back to his room.
I was waiting for him when he got there.
"Where's my family?"
"Well, I'd personally assume they are not here."
"Ha-Ha-Ha. You're funny doc." He smiled at me. The smile hardly reached his eyes. That's not good.
"Well thank you. But in all seriousness, I need to talk to you one on one."
"Sure thing, Doc."
"How's the vision?"
"It's crappy still."
"That's to be expected at this point. How's the rest? When you stand, are you solid on your feet?"
"For the most part. Everything else is okay, I guess."
"I want to talk to you about your life, okay?" He nodded. "The other day you said I'm not a shrink, but sometimes those mental things play a bigger part than you would expect."
"Whatever you need to make me better." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "I'm paying attention, there's just no point in keeping my eyes open when I can't really see.
"Understood. Okay, let's start small. Tell me about your sister."
"Alice, well she is five years younger than me. She has looked up to me her whole life. I know her seeing me like this is ripping her apart."
"You love your sister?"
"Of course."
"She loves you?"
He nodded.
"What about your friend that's here?"
"Eric? We have been best buds since elementary school. We grew up together; been thought everything together. We went to college together, everything. He was the best man in my wedding."
"Your wedding, tell me about that, about your wife."
"Tanya, she was Heaven sent. She has the biggest heart out of anyone I know. She has been with me through thick and thin. We met right before my car accident. Did my dad tell you about that?"
I nodded. "Yes he did," I added as an afterthought, seeing as he can't see me.
"Well, she supported me when most wouldn't. She was wonderful. After that we were literally attached, through thick and thin."
"Oh, that's lovely." People in love made me in need of a doctor. Carlisle said that accident was when he was nineteen, so they had been together a while.
"How did you meet her?"
"We met," but then Edward started into a coughing fit that took a good five minutes to get under control. His voice was getting more and more raspy. He sounded like he had a horrible sore throat.
After some water and a spray of lidocaine on the back of his throat, Edward was able to continue.
"We met at a bar. I was like any college kid with my fake ID in a bar. I bought her drinks, I wooed her. Eric was with me that night when I met her. I worried we would have to fight over her." He started to laugh, which caused a brand new fit of coughs. "But she wanted me, even after I wrapped my car around a pole that night."
"So you met her the night of your accident?"
"Yeah. What a way to make a first impression, huh? She had left the bar when I did. She was following behind me, on her way home, when I lost control and went off the road."
"So she really has been there for you, huh?"
"Yeah. Hey doc?"
"Yes, Edward?"
"Why is this all important? I figured you would be asking me different stuff."
Because it tells me more about the people around you…
"Just something to talk about to get your mind of things. Plus, insight into the man can help get insight into the illness."
He coughed. "Good to know. Now that you know my life story, are you going to cure me?"
I reached out and patted his hand. "Soon, Edward, hopefully soon."
I am re-reading as I go along, correcting some errors. It's nice to revisit. But I'm also super sick with some nasty virus, so this will be my last for the day. To this point is the original 11 out of 54 chaps.
