Chapter 15: the crash

The feeling of her body worsening had crept upon her little by little, piece by piece, which is why Bella was on her way towards the reservation, trepidation pulsing through her body. Her hands clenched tightly across the steering wheel. She felt tired, even though her body couldn't sleep more than a few hours at a time. Her mind would beg her for sleep, feeling full and overtired, but the second her head would hit her pillow she would feel wide awake again. She had tried everything, even those relaxing teas Charlie had gotten her and which she didn't even like that much. She felt weaker than before too, but whatever she ate or drank didn't do much for her energy levels. She couldn't remember the last time she felt hungry or thirsty, yet her stomach never bothered her and her mouth was never dry even if she would sometimes forget to have her lunch and come home late. The deciding factor for going over had been Charlie's comment before she left for work.

"Maybe you should stay home, kid. You don't look all that great to be honest."

"Thanks, dad." She had replied drily.

"I'm not joking around, Bella. I'm pretty sure there are ghosts out there with more colour in their faces right now."

"Funny." She mumbled whilst grabbing a banana just to get something in her system and to get Charlie off her back about not eating anything for breakfast again.

She was terrified for what was happening to her and what her future would be like. Was their theory true? Was she actually changing into one of them? The thought alone made her heart pound erratically, she clenched the steering wheel harder, relaxing her grip when it released a tight creaking, like it was groaning at her. She found it ironic how her heart would heart thinking about being one of them, whilst possible turning into one of them. She wondered how it would all go down, if something would go down. She hated the uncertainty. What was she going to do if something was going to happen to her? She would have to leave, go through all of it all alone, she wouldn't have the support of the people she missed and needed the most. Could she do this alone? Could she do go through that alone? Was it going to be like that time in the ballet studio? The briefness of the fire burning through her mind and body hadn't been long, but it had felt like an eternity of painful hell and nothingness. Even the brief thought of the pain made the hairs on her arms stand up with dread.

The road to the reservation was usually always as good as empty, Jacob and the rest of the pack usually opted to run through the woods as wolves instead and they barely left the reservation these days anyway. She froze when someone appeared in front of her car seemingly out of nowhere right when she had followed a bent in the road. There was a woman just a few feet in front of her, her car speeding towards her at full speed. Although she looked more like a statue standing unnaturally still in the middle of the wet road, her skin the colour of smooth, sculpted marble. She reminded her of one of those roman statues she had seen in a museum somewhere. The panic filling her was almost unmatched to anything she had ever felt before, she heard Edward roaring loudly in her head making her clutch her hands to her head as she pressed the breaks with all her might, knowing fully well she was going to hit the woman.

When she made eye contact with the woman, the world around her seemed to slow down significantly, like she had been able to pause the drama around her with a remote and was given time to take in everything around her at her own pace. She saw the trees around her in great detail and colour, noticed the drops of rain swinging in the wind on some of the branches. She noticed the woman was wearing shabby, torn and very dirty clothes even though she had looked like an elegant statue to her at first. She was also barefoot. Her hair was short and dirty blonde, but the things which stood out the most made her panic the most. Her skin was pale and sparkling in the vague sunlight peeking through the grey and murky clouds and her eyes were a bright, crimson red. She could've sworn the crimson of her eyes were swirling as the woman smirked at her, lowering her chin and cocking her head at the same time without moving from her spot in the middle of the road.

Bella didn't know what she was doing, her hands moving in front of her head on instinct, reaching outwards like she could stop the car from skidding over the wet tarmac towards the woman. The sides of her upper arms almost caging her face from whatever was going to transpire in front of her. She wondered what was going to end up happening seconds before it happened, although those few seconds almost felt like minutes in her slowed-down state. The pressure in her chest caged around her heart, seeping through her ribs, it felt like it was making its way to the top of her skin like a bubbly goo. The icy heat of it cocooned and spread through her entire body, from the tips of her ears to the bottom of her feet, making her scream with surprise and pain.

Her eyes were closed and her mind was roaring, so she couldn't see three wolf forms speeding towards her car, they were just ever so slightly too far away from her to stop the sequence of events from unfolding right in front of them. All they could do was push their bodies with as much force and strength as they could, trying to run as fast as they were able to whilst watching the car speed towards the strange, smirking vampire in the middle of the road, listening to what they assumed were Bella's terrified screams.

She didn't know the pressure from inside her chest moved to her actual outside, moving over her hands like an invisible layer of fabric, pushing out towards the danger in front of her without knowing what she was doing. Her mind and body felt like they weren't connected as the vampire in front of her grasped her neck with a frightened and confused gasp, not being able to breathe, even though it wasn't necessary. Bella couldn't see through her clenched eyes and raised arms, couldn't hear through the screaming and pounding in her head, couldn't feel through the pain coursing through her body like the waves of the ocean she had fallen into when she'd jumped off that cliff not that long ago. The wolves couldn't really see what happened just fractions of seconds before the car was about to make impact, they couldn't connect the dots from their viewpoint and would spend the next couple of days confused, wondering what had actually happened.

The strange vampire was thrown back with an invisible force clutching painfully and sharp around her entire body just before the car was supposed to make its impact. She felt like something had engulfed her body with a tight and dense pressure, before she was thrown back several yards further along the road. The shock and surprise making her tumble and roll across the dark and wet concrete. The screaming inside Bella's head was her own and was now mingled together with Edward's velvety voice saying her name over and over again with a scared voice, like a prayer.

"Bella, Bella, please. Bella, Bella, Bella, please. Bella, Bella-."

They watched with baited breath and pounding hearts as the car flipped over, one, two, three times before ending up at the side of the road, upside down. As the vampire was tossed back, the wolves reached her and ripped her body apart without thinking twice. Her eyes wide and scared, her mouth screaming and begging for mercy she knew she wasn't going to get. But the wolves didn't feel anything but disgust and a primal hatred for the strange, red-eyed vampire with the intend of attacking someone in the middle of the street.

Seth was the first one to phase back into his human-self, screaming her name with a panic Leah had never heard before. Leah ran a few feet into the forest, releasing what the others would know, was an emergency howl.

"Shit, oh my God." Seth kept repeating over and over again, his hand shaking as he reached the car, not knowing what to do.

Jacob was seething, his body shaking as he watched the cold one in front of him burn. Wanting desperately to make his way to Bella, Leah and Seth.

"Leah, get over here now!" Seth yelled frantically as she crouched down to look into the car. Even though the exterior of the car seemed fine, each and every window of her truck was completely shattered.

Bella's head, neck and upper back was resting against the roof of the truck. Her hair fanned out around her in an almost angelic way. She was surrounded by glass, the light grey of the roof slowly becoming redder by the seconds passing.

"Shit." He murmured to himself, hearing Leah run from the line of trees somewhere behind him. "There's a lot of blood Leah!"

"I'm here." She murmured as she crashed down onto her knees next to him. Casting a wary look at Jacob's shaking form.

"What happened?" He kept repeating over and over again like he was in some sort of trance.

"Is now the time to start thinking about that?" Leah bit out angrily. "We need to get her out, now!"

"How did she even end up there, wasn't she wearing a seatbelt?"

"She was." Seth noted, taking the snapped fabric of the seatbelt in his hand.

"Shit." Jacob swore.

"We need to rip one of these doors out." Leah said calmly as they heard the frantic running of the rest of the pack.

"There's so much glass." Jacob murmured as he ripped the door out of its hinges, trying to avoid getting shards of the glass into his arm, the groaning of the metal loud in their ears.

"What happened?" Sam said with a loud, authoritative voice as Leah and Seth slowly pulled out her body, wary of possible broken bones.

"A cold one." Jacob spit out, motioning towards the too sweet plume of smoke coming from the woods behind him.

"Shit." Sam swore as he looked how Leah gently tried to smooth her hands over her limbs, carefully avoiding the glass still embedded in her skin in some places. She frowned and made the same path again, a little firmer this time. She sat back on her heels as Jacob started tearing shards of fabric from the sweater he had found next to her, he guessed it had been in the front seat but it had landed on the roof as well.

"Well?" Paul said tensely, he was standing back the most as he eyed her blood, the vibrancy against her pale skin.

"She doesn't appear to have broken anything." Leah said, "as far as I can tell at least."

"How does she not have any broken bones? I feel like even we would have broken bones." Paul said sceptically as he eyed the car.

"Do you really think this is the time to start thinking about those things?"

"It's obviously not very human-"

"Don't you think that the amount of blood surrounding her is very human?"

Leah's tone had finally shut Paul up, he moved back muttering to himself whilst eyeing the crimson red smears of red covering Bella's body, noticing the pool of blood gathering under her body now.

"What are you waiting for?" Seth interrupted their thinking, his voice slightly frantic now, "We obviously have to take her to the hospital."

"We can't do that." Paul answered quickly.

"What do you mean we can't do that?" Leah said angrily.

"We've already concluded that she's not entirely human. What if they find out?"

"How are they going to find out? She doesn't have any broken bones, all she needs is a few blood transfusions and probably more than a few dozen stitches."

"What if they test her blood?"

"So what if they test her blood? Even if they do find something abnormal, it's not like the word 'vampire' is going to pop up on their computer screens."

"She isn't even a vampire!" Seth yelled.

"We can take her to Emily?" Quill added quietly.

"Has anyone thought about what would happen if we don't take her to the hospital?" Jacob added thoughtfully, his eyes hadn't left his friend in front of him yet. His hand still around the strip of fabric he had ripped from her sweater to stop the bleeding from on of the many deep cuts on her body. "If we don't take her to the hospital, Charlie is going to lose his shit."

"He's going to ask questions though."

"It's not like we have to tell him she crashed her car because of a vampire waiting for her in the middle of the road."

"We can say one of those bears terrorising people in the forest ran in front of her car?"

"We need to make a dent into her car though."

"Don't we need to talk about why there isn't a dent in her car whilst there obviously should be one?"

"Later." Sam said tiredly, "We'll talk about that later."

"I mean the leech was tossed into thin air before Swan was going to hit her with her car. We all saw it in Leah's mind, I think we should talk about it now." Paul said.

"Maybe it can wait until the bleeding girl in actually in the hospital." Sam said between clenched teeth.

"I'll take her." Jacob started, ready to scoop her into his arms when Sam interrupted him.

"No, I'll take her. Chief Swan's opinion about you has worsened enough as it is."

"You do realise he's going to blame us again, right?"

"How can he blame us? When a bear ran in front of her car." Paul said whilst motioning his head towards Quill and Embry, raising their thumbs into the air form the front of her car.

"I'll go get a car." Jacob mumbled angrily as he phased and rushed back to the reservation. He didn't want to admit it, but he almost wished the Cullens were here just so he could call the doctor and ask for his help.

Bella was swapping her hand around the side of her bed, trying to get the annoying beeping to stop her from getting a good night's sleep. She was about to roll around to get closer to her night stand when a hand stopped her.

"Take it easy, Bella. You need to be careful with your stitches."

"Stitches?" She grumbled through her dry and painful throat. She coughed weekly as she sat up and opened her eyes, seeing she was once again surrounded by the dull off-white colour of a hospital. And nearly froze when she noticed his cloud-like form staring at her from the windowsill. It took her just a few seconds longer then usual to realise that he was see-through and that the sun was shining brightly through the window behind him.

"What happened?" She asked, moving her gaze to Charlie.

"One of those bears we've been trying to hunt down ran in front of your car."

"It did?" She asked as a random flash of a statue-like, pale woman smirking at her flashed through her mind.

"I'm afraid it did. We'll be needing to get you a new car though, your seatbelt snapped and the airbags didn't go off. I don't know what Billy and Jacob were thinking fixing up a car without fixing the damn airbags-"

"Dad, it's okay. I have some money saved up now."

"It's not okay Bella, you have cuts all over your body." His voice turning softer as he reached for her hand. "And you can't use that money, it's for college. I'll get you new car, I should've gotten you a proper car when you first got here."

Looking down she noticed several bandages on both of her arms, flashes of her arms caging her face flashing through her mind. Moving the blanket from her legs, she noticed only a few bandages on them.

"Your arms took the brunt of it, you have two on your chest as well, one on your back and three on your legs."

"Why so many?"

"The windows shattered."

"Oh, I can't remember." She said awkwardly, looking around at two small bunches of flowers in clear vases on the table against the wall.

"Flowers?" She mumbled.

Charlie blushed and scratched at his cheek, "I got you one and the other one is from Leah and Seth."

"That's nice of them." She mumbled.

"Who found me?"

"Sam Uley. Apparently he was going somewhere with that Paul guy and they found you at the side of the road just after the accident happened and brought you to the hospital."

"Lucky me." She murmured, casting her eyes towards his form against, now leaning nonchalantly against the wall. His arms crossed across his chest, his face still intense with a hint of worry in his eyes.

"You're a very lucky girl miss Swan." The doctor said a tad too happy when he entered the room, not looking up from the clipboard in his hands until he stood with his legs almost pressed to the side of the bed.

"I don't see how she's lucky doctor." Charlie mumbled with an angry glance at the doctor, mumbling something about how he missed Carlisle.

"I disagree chief Swan," he stated enthusiastically, "She doesn't have any broken bones, no concussion, no internal bleeding. Just the cuts."

"Which she will have on her body for the rest of her life." Charlie added.

"Well," he started sheepishly, "she will, but she doesn't have any head trauma."

"Great." Bella mumbled to fill the intense awkward silence as the smiling doctor kept trying to get Charlie to smile at him. "When will I be able to leave?"

"Oh right!" He said looking down at the file again, "the nurse will bring you something to eat, change your bandages and then you'll be discharged."

"Fantastic." Bella said as one of the nurses carried in a tray.