trigger warning: mentions of past child abuse and neglect
Carlisle stepped out onto the emergency room floor. In his hands was the small amount of medical records that his nurses were able to find on his latest patient, the Delilah Porter that had his family befuddled. He had read the records with his typical vampiric speed, and then read them again, and again, making sure he hadn't misread them.
He was baffled. Her first visit to a doctor had been on December 3, 1995. She hadn't been to the doctor before she was fifteen years old.
She didn't have a birth certificate. It was noted in that first doctor's visit. By her second, a year later, she had a delayed birth certificate. A woman named Phoebe Bishop of Massachusetts was listed on it as her adoptive mother. Her biological parents were listed as David and Mary Porter of Arkansas.
Her date of birth wasn't even listed with certainty. The delayed birth certificate recorded it as February 24, 1980 but it didn't seem as though her biological parents had been sure of that. Date of birth estimated to be between February 24—29th of 1980, biological parents unsure of specific date. February 24 1980 will thus be used.
Carlisle didn't quite know what to make of it. Years ago, it was common for birth dates not to be recorded precisely. However, in the past hundred years or so, he hadn't seen anything like it. He'd seen plenty of horrific cases working in the emergency room, too many of them involving children too…even then, those children had birth dates listed.
What kind of parents in the modern age could be unsure of when their child was born? And why hadn't anyone brought her to the doctor?
Her first visit to the doctor indicated that she hadn't been taken care of properly. Multiple bones in her left hand and left fingers had been broken at points in the past and healed improperly, so much so that Phoebe Bishop had paid for multiple corrective surgeries. She was five foot eight, yet weighed little more than a hundred pounds, and she was covered in scars. Particularly around her wrists and ankles, indicating, as the old doctor's notes said, that she had regularly been bound by the wrists and ankles.
Though he didn't show it, Carlisle Cullen was furious.
He believed in the sanctity of life. Children's lives were even more precious. They were innocent, precious things, and people who hurt them deserved a special place in Hell with the hottest of fires. People like David and Mary Porter, he had to presume.
He had to compose himself. Calm down. He had a job to do. He couldn't focus on these reprehensible parents—what could he do about them anyway? Go to their little town in Arkansas and use his monstrous powers to make them regret ever laying a hand on their child?
Well, he could. If he allowed himself to.
He pushed the thought from his mind. He had a job to do. He actually had two jobs to do. He had to fix Delilah Porter's hand and he had to see for himself if she was, as he suspected, a witch.
He fixed a smile on his face, tucked the files under his arms, and walked toward the first triage bay. He kept himself behind the curtain, not wanting to reveal himself just yet. He breathed in deeply, taking in her scent and analyzing it. Alice had been right. Lavender and honey, sweet, but not in the way that food was sweet.
He'd smelled similar before, long ago, more than three hundred years ago…witch's blood. He'd smelled it back in England and in his early days in America but it had been so long that he'd started to wonder if there were any witches left.
When he first came to America at the tail end of the seventeenth century, witch hunts were all the rage in the New England colonies. Most obviously in Salem, of course, but there were smaller, arguably more violent witch trials in all kinds of small towns, forgotten about by history as they didn't have such high body counts.
It was heinous, evil. Even as a relatively young vampire still experimenting with the 'vegetarian' diet, Carlisle hated the senseless killings. He had hated when he witnessed them in England, led by his own father, but being a human, a human who loved and revered his father despite disagreeing with him, he had been a coward. He hadn't stopped his father. He hadn't even ended the tradition. As his father grew older, he took over his work, going after the innocent. He was, however, a bit better at it as his father, and managed to find real vampires—vampires who turned him.
As a vampire, he dedicated himself to the 'vegetarian' lifestyle, strictly training himself not to take human lives. So much so that he began to work as a doctor, as some sort of recompense for his previous human life, where he had attributed to so much death. If he was going to be cursed with immortality, he may as well make the best of it, and help humanity for as long as his never-ending life would allow.
When he arrived in the New World and found the witch trials alive and well there, he was enraged, and felt a degree of responsibility. He felt he had to act as he hadn't acted in his human life. He had no connection to those running the witch trials there. None of them were his father; he owed none of them any ounce of love nor affection. Like his father, the people they killed in those trials were frail old women, widows who had offended the townspeople, sometimes even young girls who had stepped out of line. Very few of them were real witches, but just the same, those witches were innocent. Their only crime had been being born with their powers, something none of them had asked for.
He hated the witch trials so much that he decided to put an end to them himself. Like he wished he had as a human in England. He killed the self-appointed great New England witch hunter himself. Daniel Porter.
Daniel Porter. The only human he'd ever killed that he felt deserved something worse than death.
Porter…any relation to Delilah Porter?
No, it couldn't be. Carlisle had killed that man. He had no chance to reproduce, he didn't think. And even if he had, his lineage certainly wouldn't end with a witch.
Porter was a perfectly common surname. Delilah Porter just so happened to be a witch. Something Carlisle wanted to learn more about.
He readjusted his smile and finally stepped around the curtain, into Delilah Porter's triage bay.
"Nice to meet you, Miss Porter," he said. "Though I do wish we met under different circumstances."
Delilah Porter smiled at him. It was not the same wide-eyed, bedazzled smile he was accustomed to seeing on the humans he interacted with. Like she wasn't at all swayed by his vampiric charm.
"Nice to meet you too, Dr. Cullen."
He set the papers down and washed his hands in the sink, preparing to give her stitches. He looked her over as he slipped on the rubber gloves. Alice had been right. She seemed perfectly normal—hazel eyes, long legs, freckles over her cheeks and nose—but the smell of her blood betrayed the fact that she was not like most humans.
He wondered if she knew she was a witch. Many of them went their whole lives without knowing, from what he understood.
"Kitchen accident at The Lodge, hm?" Carlisle asked.
Delilah's cheeks flushed with embarrassment and she averted her gaze from his.
"Yes."
He approached her cot, offering out his gloved hands to take her injured hand, and asked, "May I?"
She said nothing, but offered him her hand. Heather had done her best to clean away the blood and fluid and wrapped it lightly in gauze that Carlisle peeled away without issue. She was lucky. A centimeter or so deeper and she would've damaged her tendons and likely needed surgery. He was sure having another surgery on her left hand was one of the last things she wanted.
"This should clean up quite nicely," he told her. "It's a pretty straight, even cut for an accident. Shouldn't leave too much of a scar."
At the mention of he word, his eyes drifted up to her wrist. Indeed, as the records said, there was a deep scar embedded around the bone. It was faint now. Probably not all that noticeable to other humans, but his eyes noticed it.
Carlisle pulled the tray of instruments over to the cot and settled himself on the rolling stool so he didn't have to bend over so much. He picked up the syringe of numbing medication and tapped it to get the air bubbles out.
"Can we skip that, please?" Delilah asked.
Carlisle looked at her, a bit incredulously. He was taken aback that she'd dared to question him. Sure, people had the rights to question their doctors, but his vampiric charm usually endeared them to trust him, no questions asked.
"It'll numb you. Surely you don't want to feel the stitches being put in."
Again, her eyes drifted away from his, and she said, "Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy to put the stitches in myself…I'm not used to this much of a fuss for myself, and, no offense, but I don't love hospitals."
That was an understatement.
"Most people don't," he said, offering some kindness. "So I'd suggest we take the edge off with a small numbing injection."
"I appreciate, doctor, but I'd really rather not."
Carlisle paused. Ultimately decided not to fight her on it. She had her reasons, her trauma. He didn't need to press her on it. Nor did he need to add to it.
"Very well. I'm going to disinfect the site again, so this will sting a bit."
He wiped the disinfecting solution thoroughly over the cut and within its depths. Delilah Porter did not flinch. She didn't even look away. She stared down at her hand with something close to indifference in her expression.
It wasn't the worst wound Carlisle had ever seen, not by far, but he was surprised at her lack of a reaction. He was sure that had to have stung.
Nonetheless, he proceeded to thread the needle. Readjusted her hand and watched her expression carefully. She still wasn't bothered.
"I'm going to begin."
She merely nodded, watching intently as Carlisle entered the needle into her skin for the first time. No flinch, no reaction. She didn't even blink. He continued, making three neat, small stitches, and looked up to her again.
"I'm not hurting you, am I? It's not too late if you want some numbing…no shame in taking the edge off."
"I'm fine," she said. Her smile was rather convincing.
"You're sure you're comfortable?"
"I'd be better if I was sewing myself shut, but I'm okay."
Carlisle chuckled and made another stitch.
"You have experience with this?"
"Not exactly," Delilah said. "I never went to medical school. I was taught how to sew and I made do with that when I needed to."
Carlisle knew there was much more to that story than Delilah divulged. In fact, judging by the look on her face, she already felt as though she'd divulged too much.
He finished stitching her hand shut, leaving a row of perfect stitches holding her flesh together, and wrapped it in another layer of gauze to keep it clean for the night.
"Thank you, doctor."
"You're quite welcome, Miss Porter."
He removed his gloves and washed his hands again, typing the necessary information for her to be discharged into the computer. He stopped for a moment. This was his chance to try to get more information out of her.
He glanced at her over his shoulder, flashed her a smile, and asked, "Can I ask what brings you to Forks? It's not often we get newcomers here."
Delilah smiled back. Ever so faintly, Carlisle heard her heart rate increase at the question.
"Change of scenery," she said.
There was nothing in her tone, nothing in her demeanor, nothing whatsoever that indicated that she was lying. However, Carlisle had been around long enough to know that simple statement wasn't anywhere near the whole truth. Young women didn't up and move to Forks out of the blue. Young witches didn't up and move to Forks out of the blue.
"No family in the area?" he asked. He was back to typing on the computer again, his voice perfectly casual.
There was a long lull. Delilah was working out how she wanted to answer him.
Finally, she gave him a monosyllabic answer. "No."
Fair enough, Carlisle thought. He was finished questioning her, he decided, though he didn't have any of the answers he wanted. He was already running through various scenarios in his head that he could use to get Delilah and Edward in the same room.
He hoped that Edward's ability to read minds would work on her, unlike Alice's ability to see her future. He was hoping that their abilities would work on her similarly to how they worked on the Quileute wolves—Alice had never been able to see into their futures, but Edward had never had an issue seeing into their minds.
"I heard you met one of my daughters the other day."
"Alice? Yes, I did."
Her discharge papers printed and Carlisle gathered them, signing each of them with impressive speed, putting his elegant signature on each marked line. He handed them to her and pushed the tray closer, giving her a hard surface to write on, and lending her his own pen.
Thankfully, Delilah was right handed, and was able to sign the paperwork.
"She was excited to see someone young move to town," Carlisle told her. "She's always eager to make new friends…you know, if you do need anything, Alice or anyone else in my family would be happy to help you. I'm sure it can't be all that easy to relocate on your own."
Delilah visibly tensed at his suggestion. She held her breath for a moment, and let it out in a sigh that might've gone under the radar if Carlisle didn't possess superhuman hearing.
"Thank you, but I'm fine on my own," she said. She was still tense, though she tried to show him she wasn't, as she forced herself to smile at him as she got up from the cot and adjusted her jacket around her body. "Thank you again, Dr. Cullen. Despite my hatred of hospitals, this wasn't so bad."
"You're very welcome, Miss Porter. And if you ever do change your mind and find yourself needing a helping hand, my offer will still stand."
She said nothing. Just forced her smile to get a bit wider, using her uninjured hand to brush a few stray sun-streaked wisps of hair behind her ears.
With that, she disappeared out of the triage bay, and escorted herself out of the emergency room, leaving Carlisle behind with more questions than he had answers.
He was fairly certain that she didn't pose a threat to him and his family. But, again, he'd been around long enough to know he needed more information before he decided that for certain.