Hey how about a new chapter to start off the new year?! I'm a little early for that (or late for Christmas and REALLY late for Hannukah) but I'm doing my best to get the chapters written and edited. I know exactly what is going to happen and we are getting close to the chapters I have been WAITING to write and share with you all!

The song for this chapter is Nothing Else Matters by Metallica (technically used the one from the Jungle Cruise soundtrack. Part 2 if we're getting really specific.).

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Disclaimer: I'm only doing this for a friend. I don't get anything from it but her undying appreciation. I certainly don't get to have fun with Emmett and the boys in my head.

Chapter Twenty One: Nothing Else Matters

CPOV

"What if you pushed me down the stairs so that I break my leg and I don't have to go?" I chuckled and turned to face Bella, leaning into the doorway of my study. I set down the book I had been perusing and gestured for her to come closer.

"While I see the point of such an exercise, I can't say that I like your prospects of survival," I answered calmly. She rolled her eyes with a soft smile and settled on the arm of my chair. I wrapped an arm around her and played with the hem of her shirt.

"I understand why I'm going but Alice literally just listed off about eight stores that she wants to visit and now I'm not so sure my reasons were good enough." I grinned, fully aware that Alice had taken the shopping trip that Bella had agreed to and turned it into a full affair, like she always did.

"If you don't want to go, I doubt she'll force you."

"No, she'll just turn those puppy dog eyes on me and stick out her lip and I'll feel like a terrible human being for disappointing her," she muttered with a pout.

"It's like she wasn't raised with any manners," I teased and her pout lifted into a grin. She looped her arms around my neck and leaned down, resting her head against mine. I closed my eyes, breathing in her mouthwatering scent. Her skin was warm against mine and I basked in the contact.

"I'd much rather stay here with you," she whispered, her breath fanning over my face.

"I'd much rather that as well," I agreed, pulling her into my lap and wrapping my arms solidly around her. Her heart quickened and she pressed a kiss to my jaw lightly. I forced myself to start reciting the Declaration of Independence instead of getting lost in the feeling.

"What are you going to do today," she asked quietly against my neck.

"I'm on call today. So I usually read or catch up on paperwork."

"How about I do your reading and you can go try on dresses with Alice," she said and I could hear the smile in her voice.

"I would but I'm afraid everything just looks terrible on me." She giggled and my mouth quirked into a grin automatically.

She was perfection.

"Bella! We have to go!" Alice came charging into the study, hands on her hips.

"Oh no, I think I'm coming down with something," Bella said halfheartedly, forcing out a cough. "Carlisle should probably check me over and make sure that it's nothing serious." I bit back a laugh as Alice rolled her eyes.

"The only thing you've come down with is a case of raging hormones and unfortunately those will have to wait because if we don't leave now, we won't get to Port Angeles in time to go to all the stores we need to."

"Oh no," Bella deadpanned before sighing. "Okay, okay, I'm coming." She pressed a soft kiss to my lips that left me with a deep desire to shove Alice out of the room and lock the door. She lifted herself off of my lap and began to follow Alice out of the room. She turned back to me while walking. "Remember me," she sighed dramatically and I couldn't stop the laughter at her antics.

Probably just to get Alice's goat.

"I shall keep a memento of you near me always," I assured her with equal dramatics. She laughed and blew me a kiss before following Alice downstairs and out to the garage where Esme and Rosalie were waiting. They climbed into the car and took off down the driveway, leaving me feeling colder and slightly empty.

"I have to take credit for this," Edward teased from downstairs. I scoffed.

"I think you mean blame," I pointed out. I could still feel my blood boiling when he suggested taking my Bella to a dance. I'd thought every unsavory name I could muster. When I'd discovered that he'd told Bella he was seeing someone, I was ready to commit murder.

Meddlesome, interfering little bastard.

He laughed and zoomed up the stairs, leaning in the doorway of my study.

"I don't know why you're so upset. You've taken my wife to so many public engagements that I think losing Bella to me for one measly high school dance is positively trivial in comparison."

"You agreed to the cover stories that we have had over the years, Edward. I certainly didn't steal your wife from under your nose. She and I have played the roles and responsibilities our different stories have required without anything more than the familial camaraderie we share."

"Awh, old man, are you afraid that I will manage to steal Bella's affections?" I glared at him as he baited me.

"I find it far more likely that she will injure herself purposely to escape you." He threw his head back and laughed.

"She plays it cool but we both know she actually loves me." I bristled at his words, despite knowing he didn't actually mean love.

"I cannot fathom how a creature as perfect as she managed to develop such poor, poor taste in friends," I lamented and shook myhead.

"She has excellent taste. The problem is you're such an old man, you wouldn't appreciate quality if it waltzed up and groped your buttocks." I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"I grossly miscalculated, changing you at such an immature age." He smirked at me.

"It's not my fault I'm immersed in the minds of teenagers for most of the day. It was bound to rub off on me." I opened my mouth with a retort but my pager began to buzz and I pulled it off my belt with a frown.

Code Green: Mass Trauma.

Edward sat up, alerted to my alarm.

"Something happened," he asked urgently as I jumped up and began to gather my things, hurrying to get to my car.

"There must have been an accident," I muttered as I grabbed my bag and we sped to the car. He climbed in with me and we sped away from the house.

"I'll let Esme know in case it affects their trip," he said, pulling out his phone. "What can we do to help you?"

"Just make sure Bella stays safe. I won't be able to concentrate if I'm worrying over her."

It wasn't completely untrue.

I could focus on a great many things at once but somehow the thought of Bella in danger challenged me in a way nothing had before. Edward nodded and then hopped out of the car shortly before I cleared the trees to the hospital parking lot, running into the forest. I pulled into my parking space. Ambulances were pulling up and unloading gurneys while cars and people began to flood the road and parking lot. I hopped out of the car, running at the fastest human pace I could get away with into the building. I grabbed a set of scrubs and threw my things in my office. Nurses were rushing around and Dr Gerandy was instructing staff where to send the incoming patients.

"Carlisle," he said, shoulders stiff with tension. He looked relieved to see me but that did very little to ease the stress that nearly radiated off of him.

"What do we have," I asked matter of factly.

"Logging accident. A lot of crush injuries and burns. Don't know for sure what happened but someone claimed there was an equipment malfunction and it dropped logs onto a pile and sent the whole thing rolling downhill. First two are in bays one and two with four more incoming while they triage." I nodded and moved quickly to bay two, meeting the nurses outside the door.

"Patient is a forty-five year old male. Suffered a head and back injury when several logs rolled over him. BP is two thirty-two over one sixty. Heart rate is one-oh-eight." I perused the chart handed to me as we entered, memorizing the information. I looked up, prepared to start my assessment and my blood ran cold.

Charlie Swan.

He was lying flat on the bed, neck in a stabilizing collar and blood oozing sluggishly from his head. The nurses were already attaching a bolus IV and connecting the blood pressure and heart monitors to his arm and chest.

"Charlie," I said over the sound of nurses bustling around him, moving closer. His brown eyes -so much like his daughter's -flew to meet mine and he grimaced.

"I told Earl and Peggy I was fine but they insisted on sticking me in this collar and loading me up," he grumbled. I smirked slightly.

"Can you tell me your name," I asked, pulling my penlight out of my pocket and starting my examination.

"Charles Swan."

"Excellent. What day is it today?"

"March twenty-seventh."

"Can you name the twelve Supreme Court Justices?"

"No, but I couldn't do that before this so that's not really much to measure by." I chuckled.

"What's the last thing you remember before getting injured?" He frowned and winced, the lines in his forehead pulling at a laceration.

"I noticed something on a knuckleboom loader. Looked like a blinking light. I was going over to try and get the operator to take a break and check on it but it detonated and the claw released it's load onto the pile. I tried to move but they knocked me over and rolled right over me down the hill." The nurses had all slowed to a stop while he spoke, horror evident on their faces.

"What do you remember first after the logs rolling over you?"

"Fire. It blew the hydraulic lines and the fluid had ignited. It was raining liquid fire over everything. A lot of people were screaming. I tried to get up and couldn't. I thought maybe I was trapped under a log. People started trying to help the injured and first responders showed up a little later."

"It sounds like a terrifying experience," I murmured, removing the collar from his neck and probing gently for injuries. I didn't feel any hot spots that indicated injury but replaced the collar until we had imaging to support that claim. "We're going to get x-rays and CT scans of your head, neck and back to ensure that you didn't sustain any serious injuries." I dictated my orders to a nurse, who entered them in the system as I spoke.

"Bella," he barked, panic sending the heart monitors into a frenzy. "Where is she?" I turned back around.

"She and Alice went with Esme and Rosalie to Port Angeles to find a dress for the dance. They left about half an hour before I got paged." He relaxed visibly.

"Thank god," he muttered under his breath. I frowned. "Don't call her. She doesn't need to come back until she's finished."

"Is Bella in danger," I asked quietly and his eyes met mine, the panic not completely abated, fighting with fear for dominance. He opened his mouth to answer but the transport team arrived to take him to imaging. He was wheeled away and for the first time in my career, I was torn between abandoning my duties as a doctor and my patients to find Bella and assure myself that she was indeed safe. I didn't know of any reason to fear for her but Charlie's obvious concern for her wellbeing had me on the edge of my control. I took a bracing breath and forced myself to set aside my own concerns and move to the next patient who needed my help.

~~~STY~~~

It was a brutal day. There were more broken bones and crush injuries than I cared to count.

The burn victims were worse.

Burn injuries were some of the only ailments that made me feel like I was human. My heightened abilities provided me with very little to help save or treat them. We'd had nine burn victims admitted to the ER. Three of them had severe burns over less than a quarter of their body. Four had burns over fifty percent.

The last two were in critical condition, barely recognizable as human.

We'd been able to secure a bed at a burn unit at a bigger hospital for one of them. The other I'd been doing my damndest to stabilize.

It was agonizing to hear his anguished screams as we attempted to debride the burns. I'd witnessed many horrors in my long life.

I had watched my father burn innocent women at the stake for crimes of heresy and witchcraft they never committed.

I'd been prey to a ravenous vampire in the sewers of London.

I'd listened to the screams of innocent people being sacrificed to the Volturi as meals, hunted for sport.

I'd watched good men die on the battlefields of America in its infancy, their glorious visions of freedom abandoned as they begged their gods to end their suffering.

I watched men murder their brothers and kin in a war that tore apart the very nation other men had died to create.

I watched the native people of this and other lands fall prey to the whims of the invading conquerors and their insatiable quest for dominance.

I'd listened with mounting horror as radios recounted the assassination of a political leader a world away that would draw the civilized world into an encompassing war.

I'd witnessed thousands of people succumb to an incurable illness while others were felled by bullets half a world away, fighting on a land that wasn't theirs for a freedom they believed belonged to all.

I'd read with dismay the news reports of a man in Germany who had radical ideas that were leading men to turn on their friends and neighbors.

I'd done my best to heal the battle broken and wounded as we were gripped in another global war.

I'd done what I could to better the world and ease suffering: war after war, man turning on man, men discarding women and children like trash.

I had seen my fair share of atrocities in my long existence and trying to treat this young man -a boy who had graduated only a year ago -matched them all in absolute horror and the feeling of hopelessness that came from knowing that even my best efforts weren't enough.

I was resting against a wall outside the hospital, knees propped up, face buried in my hand as I tried to scrub the memories from my mind. The air was wet with the near constant mist that permeated this part of the world. It was already dark and I looked up at the night sky, lost in the stars while I questioned the fairness of today's events.

"Where is he?! Why didn't anyone tell me sooner?" My head snapped up as Bella's voice drifted across the parking lot to me. She was marching from Alice's car toward the ER entrance. Her eyes were alight with indignation. Alice and Esme were following behind. "How long has he been here? How bad is it?" She was directing the questions behind her. I could hear how tight her throat was from the effort not to cry. I stood quickly and walked toward her.

"Bella," I called softly and she turned, her face softening when she saw me. She ran to me, throwing her arms around my waist and burying her head in my chest. She cried softly for a minute before pulling back, face wet with tears while she gripped my scrub top.

"How is he," she demanded softly. I placed my hands on her shoulders, drawing us into the darkened area I'd been resting in.

"He's okay. He hurt his head when the accident happened but he doesn't have any serious injuries outside of some whiplash and some deep tissue bruising."

"What happened?"

"I'm not entirely sure. It appears that there was a malfunction with some logging equipment earlier today."

"Why was he there," she muttered to herself before turning steely eyes on me. "Why didn't you call and tell me he was in the hospital," she accused.

"He asked me to wait," I told her softly. "He didn't want you to worry."

"That's his reason. What's your excuse," she said flatly and I flinched.

"It was his call to make. I've barely had a moment to myself until now with all the injuries. It's been… busy," I finished lamely and she stared at me before nodding and turning away from me.

"Show me where Charlie is," was all she said apathetically before she walked into the ER, not waiting to see if I was following or not.

I had the feeling that this discussion wasn't over yet and even more that I had made a gross misstep with her that left me wanting nothing more than to beg her forgiveness and fix it.