What has gone before:

There's light shining through my eyelids. And someone is calling my name.

Is. A Bell. Ahhh.

I fell asleep! And now it's night. The moon has come up over the trees. It's full. Bright. First time I've ever seen the moon in Forks. Shining in my eyes. Painting the grass silver. With shadows of night.

Isabellahhh.

It's Edward.

...

He's calling me from the forest.

I step off the edge of the gazebo.

"What happened?"

"She's got herself wrapped around a tree."

"Oh God."

"Not the truck, her. She's catatonic or something. I can't wake her up. She's wrapped on tight."

He pried at her fingers; which felt as cold as ice to him. No use. Unless he was willing to break them to pull her off the tree.

"Send medical. Now!"

The Whirl and the Suck

"You don't have to do this, Mrs. Swan."

They were in Seattle Children's Hospital, not Forks, so of course all of what the nurse knew about them was that she was the mother and Charlie was the father. But still, Renee wondered, couldn't people for once, even once, just not assume?

That she and Charlie were still married.

That Phil was her kid brother. It didn't help that Phil and she had similar coloring - dusky blond, and blue eyed.

"She's my baby. I've always been there for her."

"Of course."

And the nurse coached her on how to help turn, and clean, and change the paper pad under a coma patient on a ventilator who had just shit her bed. Like an infant. About the same amount and consistency, too, since the stuff they'd been feeding her through the tube down her nose was basically infant formula for big kids. Renee didn't even bother to tell the nurse that she'd been helping with Bella's care for the past week. At least the doctors had agreed to keep the catheter in for urine. Renee was damned if she'd see her child with diaper rash from being wet. They could damn well give her antibiotics if she got an infection.

She and the nurse finished, and propped Bella on her side with pillows so she wouldn't get bedsores. Bedsores. At her age. She's going to wake up. She has to wake up. There's nothing wrong with her. All the tests said so.

Renee walked out of the glass-enclosed room with its beeps and tubes, to where Charlie and Phil were standing talking with the doctor – an olive-skinned woman in a headscarf. Sabzwari, or Subsvari or something, was her name; Renee couldn't pronounce it right and felt stupid on account of that. She just called her "Doctor S" in her mind and left it at that.

"Renee," Dr. S greeted her with an outstretched hand, "I thought we might go to the family room and discuss Bella's plan of care."

This was going to be trouble. Renee just knew it. But she followed anyway; past the nurse's station, through the double doors that opened when you pressed a plate on the wall, and down the wide hall to a small, cheerfully decorated sitting room with a coffee machine and comfortable couches. It looked like a waiting room in an upscale pediatrician's office, complete with floor puzzles and one of those wire things with the colored beads.

Phil sat down next to Renee, but didn't take her hand. Charlie kept his eyes on the doctor.

Dr. S looked back at all of them and took a deep breath. Renee wondered if she had children of her own. She looked about the same age as her and Charlie. Probably she did, then. How did she stand working in a place where all the children were sick? And some – maybe many – died.

"So, as you all know, Bella has been here for nine days with no change in her condition. She remains in a very deep coma. Our serial EEGs show essentially no brain activity – "

That can't be right. There must be something wrong with the machines.

"And she hasn't responded to any stimuli, not even painful ones."

Phil did take Renee's hand at that. Charlie's face was a mask.

The doctor took another breath. "A flat EEG is a very dire sign, especially when it remains unchanged, as it has, for as long as it has, even under aggressive attempts to elicit a response."

Aggressive attempts. Like submerging Bella's hands in ice water. Or dripping hot wax on her skin. Renee had thought of that one. It was a game she and Bella had used to play with candles – making molds of their palms, and belly buttons.

They'd done other tests, too, with Bella's arms and eyes and ears. Tests with technical explanations about nerves and reflexes and evoked potentials that Renee didn't really understand, so she just ignored them.

"My baby's not dead!"

Dr. S looked around to each of them. "Certain body functions appear to be persisting on their own: heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature. But even the most basic reflexes to withdraw from pain or heat or cold are completely absent. Most difficult as far as her chance of recovery is concerned is that her pupils don't react to light and she seems to have no cough or gag reflex. As for all the things that make her your Bella …" The doctor looked down at her hands. "It would be unethical, and cruel, to offer false hope here. The most that I can say is that her vital organs all seem to be functioning normally so far, and we've been unable to discover any organic cause for her unconsciousness."

"So that's good, right?"

Dr. S held Charlie's gaze. "That is a very difficult question to answer, Mr. Swan. My purpose today, actually, was to recommend a test."

Charlie got that look that Renee knew so well. The one she called his staring down a bear face.

"Shoot."

"This is in accord with accepted practice and with our hospital policy – "

No. Nothing good ever started like that.

"And I also believe it's in Bella's best interest."

"Just spit it out, Doc."

"I'm recommending that we take her off the ventilator."

"No! No, you can't!" The words tore out of Renee's mouth before she could even think them.

"Hear me out. It's not what you think."

Both of Phil's arms wrapped around her, holding her on the couch. "It's going to be okay, babe. Just listen. Let her speak." As if he knew anything.

Catty-corner from them, Charlie's eyes drilled into the doctor. "What's the plan?"

"We shut off the ventilator and see if she breathes on her own. If she does, that is an accepted indication that some brain stem function still exists. It doesn't tell us whether, or how much, she can recover, but it does mean that she can't be declared dead at this time."

"Oh my God!" Renee whimpered into the silent room. Phil's arms tightened. "I gotcha, baby. I gotcha."

"And if she doesn't breathe on her own?"

"If she doesn't breathe on her own, our ethics policies require me to advise you to permit withdrawal of life support, and allow nature to take its course."

Nature? What's nature got to do with this? Nothing about this was natural.

"How long do we wait to see if she breathes?" Charlie grated. "And what's the risk of her getting brain damage from the lack of oxygen while we're waiting?"

The doctor looked at Charlie sadly, as if he was missing a point somewhere. Renee knew exactly what the point was. The doctor believed Bella already was brain damaged, and that's why she was in a coma. Even though all the X-rays and CT scans and MRIs had shown no bleeding or clots or tumors or deformities. Even though the doctor had said that all of Bella's labs were normal.

"Even under ordinary circumstances, the brain can go four to five minutes without air before hypoxia starts to cause cell death. We'd lower her body temperature, and pre-oxygenate her before pausing the ventilator, which would give her more time. The full trial would take about ten minutes."

Trial. Bella was going to be put on trial for her life. That's what this was about.

"What about her heart?" Charlie asked.

"Her heart will be all right."

"Why can't we just leave her on the ventilator until she wakes up?" Renee remembered distinctly, distinctly, the day she'd arrived on the red eye from Jacksonville, and been horrified to see her daughter tubed up to the machines: the ICU nurse had told her that the fact that Bella wasn't fighting the ventilator – wasn't "bucking" it as she'd called it – meant that she needed the machine to breathe. That she wouldn't breathe without it.

"According to the EMT report, Bella was breathing independently when she was found, even though she was already comatose. We don't understand what happened to Bella, why she is in this condition. But the fact that she was breathing independently at the beginning of her coma suggests that spontaneous respiratory function may still exist, or can be elicited in her." The doctor paused, as if considering her words. "If Bella's body is still able to breathe on its own, we need to know that. But the likelihood of her starting to breathe against the ventilator is … it's essentially zero at this point. Stopping ventilation is the only way to determine – "

"You mean they shouldn't have stuck those tubes down her in the first place!" Charlie burst out.

"No. I don't mean that at all."

There was more – Charlie looking angry and scared, the doctor going on about standard protocols and best practice and Renee didn't know what all else. She didn't care. They'd boxed themselves in, boxed Bella in. Things had been done wrong at the start, and now Bella was in a trap. Bella had been breathing and they'd taken that away from her. Now it was too late to give it back.

She stood up. "I can't do this. I'm going for a walk."

Phil stood, too. Charlie's jaw dropped in disbelief.

"We'll meet you in the caf," Renee offered, "We'll get you some coffee."

"You do that."

"What the hell, Charlie? What do you want from me? Is there anything I can do here? Anything?" Renee started to tear up. She hated crying in public. Hated the way the tears burned and her face got red.

Charlie stood up. Renee saw him and Phil exchange looks. Charlie's face was red, too. He and she still had that in common in moments of feeling. "Go ahead. I'll meet you both downstairs."

Charlie sat on the couch with his head in his hands. The doctor was there, waiting him out, without interrupting.

"Sorry about that," he said at last.

"This is a very difficult time for you all." Her face and accent and scarf reminded him of where he had been when Renee had been pregnant with Bella.

"So we take her off the machine and see how she does."

"Yes. Every precaution will be taken for Bella's welfare. There will be a full team at her bedside, monitoring her progress and ready to intervene immediately if there is any untoward response."

"And if she breathes okay, that means it's okay to take out the tube?"

"No."

Charlie felt all the starch go out of his body.

The doctor continued softly, "I'm sorry, Mr. Swan. In her present condition, Bella just doesn't meet the criteria for extubation; except, of course, in the case if you and Renee should decide to withdraw all life support and … allow natural death."

"You're telling me she's going to die?"

"I've recommended trialing her off ventilation to test that. If she doesn't breathe on her own, or at least show signs that her body is trying to, that means that to all intents and purposes she is already dead. It means that there is no neurological integration keeping her body functioning. She's just tissues and organs being kept alive by the machines."

"You said her heart and body temperature were holding their own!"

"Yes, they are. And it's true that those functions are regulated in great part by neural and endocrine centers in the brain stem and hypothalamus. But they can also persist in the case of brain stem death. The body has a lot of plan B and plan C to sustain life if its central systems fail."

"Where I come from, plan B and plan C keep the system going until plan A can get back on its feet."

"If Bella doesn't respond to the removal of ventilation, that means there is no plan A. Not any more."

Charlie felt his throat close and his eyes get hot. Renee had been smarter than him. She'd caught on sooner than he had that this was what the doctor had been driving at. No wonder she'd walked out.

"I'm sorry. I truly am."

The doctor waited again, while Charlie pulled himself together.

"The difficult part will be if Bella does breathe, or try to. Technically, an intact respiratory center would be a rule out for brain stem death, which is what the current legal definition of brain death is in our state. So, legally, Bella would be considered alive. But medically she would be in a limbo between life and death. Yes, we may find that she can breathe on her own, but unless she begins to recover other functions as well, she won't even be able to be extubated without alternative support because she can't maintain a safe airway."

"If she can breathe, maybe she can recover other things, too."

"Every parent hopes this, and believe me, we at the bedside do, too. Especially in a case like your daughter's – where we can't find a cause, and the rest of her body seems to be perfectly healthy. But as a doctor I have a duty to be very clear with you about her present condition. We've been repeatedly testing Bella's neurological responses throughout her stay, and there's been no change. None. When we flash light in her eyes or sound in her ear, her EEG shows no spikes. That means that no sight or sound is reaching her. The same with small electroshocks to her limbs. That means that she can't feel anything, either. Pupil, doll's eye, cold caloric, gag, cough – none of her cranial nerve reflexes are working. This level of impairment is global, and it is profound."

Neurologically devastated teenager – the phrase flashed across Charlie's mind. A blip from late night reading in the hospital's library.

"Sometimes stuff happens that they can't explain, though, right?"

The woman sighed, and looked at her hands again, which had remained clasped tightly in her lap the entire time. "I'm only a doctor, Mr. Swan. I can't advise you on matters of faith."

Charlie rubbed his face. It didn't do any good. The world stayed the way it was.

"What about that PET scan, or whatever it was?"

"It won't tell us anything that we don't already know. And your insurance has refused coverage."

That's why she was recommending this trial off the ventilator, Charlie guessed. It was the last card in the deck.

Carlisle would have ordered the PET scan, would have ordered every high tech test he could get his hands on. Would have made it stick with the insurance company, too. But nobody'd been able to raise him since the fire.

"If she doesn't breathe, what happens then? You declare her dead?"

"No! No. Absolutely not. We will of course resume ventilation. Nothing will be decided in haste."

Charlie saw that his hands were shaking. So did the doctor. She leaned forward and put her hand on his. "Mr. Swan, the apnea test is a tool. It's purpose is to help us assess what is and isn't possible for Bella. Let's just use it as that."

How?

How had everything come to this? Three months ago he'd gotten his little girl back. It wasn't going to be for long. But he'd take what he could get. Then there was that kid lost on the ski trail. It had been horrible for her family when they couldn't find her, but to the patrols and law enforcement it had been sad but routine. Disappearances happened in the mountains sometimes. Then the security guard had been taken by a bear in the next county. And then the girl's remains had been found. And then the bodies started piling up. In pieces. Like things he'd seen in the desert. It was all related – the Cullens, too – Charlie's instincts screamed that to him every night; but he couldn't keep up with the way it all was spiraling out of control, sweeping right up to his front porch, as if ripping his daughter away from him had been the goal all along.

He flashed on her figure in the moonlight, clamped tight to the white-barked tree. She'd been completely unmovable. Three men couldn't unwrap her. Not without chainsaws. Now she was completely limp in that hospital bed, with the tubes and the monitors and the hiss of the ventilator, while he, and Renee, yes and that wet-behind-the-ears baseball player too, had taken turns sitting and waiting and praying and talking to her and reading her favorite books, playing her favorite music; anything to call her back. It'd only been nine days – and they'd been feeding her that goop through the tube since she'd gotten to Seattle – but Bella was still losing weight. He could see it. Her eyes and cheeks were sinking in. She looked older than she was. If she couldn't be woken …

"I'm going to need to think about all this."

"Of course. You're daughter's condition has been very stable throughout her course here. Take all the time you need."

A/N: Thank you, dear readers, for bearing with me as I revised this chapter to reflect more truly what medical practice would be for a patient presenting with Bella's symptoms. All improvements in accuracy I owe to Delirium01, medical expert extraordinaire. Extra special thanks to WoodLily for literary beta and just keeping me sane and in perspective. Both of these wonderful women have the patience of saints with my obsessive perseverating. Any remaining errors or faults are mine alone. I am happy and grateful to say that the next chapter is also already written and beta'd and will post in 7 days. I am currently working on Chapter 60.