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Chapter 64

Diagnosis

Bella

"Bella?"

I heard Emmett's anxious voice right in front of me, but I couldn't bring myself to move and look him in the eye.

He knelt down to me on the bed and hugged me as I continued to sob. With his right arm he pressed me against him, with his left hand he stroked the back of my head.

"Bella, it's going to be okay," he kept saying to reassure me.

His hug helped a little, but not much.

Nothing would be good, I would die.

I shook my head.

"I'm ... so scared, Emmett," I sobbed, pressing closer to his chest.

"Honey, it's going to be okay. Once we get to Carlisle, he can help you. It's going to be all right, I'm with you. You don't have to be afraid," he whispered to me, but his voice sounded full of fear himself.

"Nothing's going to be all right, Emmett. I'm going to die," I said, my whole body shaking.

Emmett froze at my words and took his head back a bit while lifting mine a little on the chin.

His eyes were full of emotions - shock, fear, sadness, despair ...

"You're not dying," he said, as if he knew as well as Alice.

How did he know that?

He gently stroked up and down my spine.

"I know it's hard. But can you pull yourself together for a few hours? Just until we get to the Mariana Island airport by boat and get on that plane. Okay. Do you think you can do that? We need to get back as soon as possible."

I nodded and tried to take a deep breath.

But my body was shaking too much to breathe calmly. How was I supposed to stand it like that in an airplane full of people!

Emmett took a slow deep breath in and out.

It helped a little and after half an hour I had my breathing under control again. I still had my legs pulled in and when Emmett let go of me, I stayed in that position.

"I'll quickly take the suitcases down to the dock so the boatman can load them as soon as he arrives," he said, looking to me.

I nodded as a sign that I understood.

I had to concentrate. I couldn't break down again. The boat would be here soon, and after that we would be on planes and airports full of people. I couldn't break down. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I tried to direct all my concentration to the most trivial things.

I looked at the curtains outside the window. They had a slight salmon or apricot tint. There were scattered horizontal strokes in the fabric that stood out a bit like the scars on Jasper. I tried to find a pattern in how the strokes were arranged. Two on the right, one on the left, another on the left, one on the right, two on the right, one on the left, one on the right. I scanned each part of the curtains from top to bottom and memorized the order. After I was done with that, I started analyzing the exact shades. They went from white, where the light fell directly on it, to pink, orange, salmon, brown, beige, apricot - yes, I could even find green - to all black in the places where the fabric folded and created a shadow.

It wasn't until Emmett shook me by the shoulders that I realized he was back.

He only wanted to take the luggage to the beach for a short time. How long had I stared at the stupid curtain?

"Bella?" he asked, looking from me to the window.

I nodded slowly.

"The boat just came," he said. "Close your eyes and pretend to be asleep. Then I can carry you into the boat," he added.

I closed my eyes and let him lift me up.

I tried to relax my body so that it looked like I was asleep. I was grateful for his idea. I was not sure if I could have walked.

"She's asleep," Emmett presumably explained to the boater, and I felt him take a big step onto the boat.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Do not collapse.

I repeated this over and over until the engine stopped and I realized we had arrived on the main island.

We took a cab for a bit until we got to the airport.

But why did I hear so few people at check-in?

I felt the fresh air as we walked out of the airport onto the runway and got on the plane.

Emmett laid me down on a couch.

A couch on a plane? And why couldn't I smell any people, except for the two who were probably the pilots.

Emmett knelt down next to me and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

"You did a really good job with that. We're on a private jet. So except for the pilots in the front of the cockpit, we're alone."

I exhaled in relief because I no longer had to concentrate.

At that moment, I didn't really care how expensive it must be to get a private jet on an island like that and fly all the way over to Seattle. I was just glad we were alone. I felt the movement in my belly again and everything I had to hold back fell back on me. How much longer did I have? What would happen to me? What would Emmett do if I died?

I started sobbing again, not loud enough for the pilots to hear.

"Soon we'll be at Carlisle's, and he'll help you. Stop thinking you're going to die," he said as he sat down on the floor next to the couch and stroked my head and shoulders.

I would like to believe that.

I felt a slight tugging in my belly and put my hands on it, startled.

Not because it hurt, rather ... because I was frightened.

Emmett put his hands on my belly, pushing mine away as he did so. He slowly drew circles on my belly with the palm of his hand, like one did when one had a tummy ache.

I felt something again and his hand flinched slightly when he felt it too.

"You know the first thing that came to my mind when you put your hands on your belly in fright?", he asked in a soft voice over my weakening sobs.

"The fish?", I asked in a weak voice and opened my eyes a little to look at him.

He shook his head.

"No. The first word I thought was 'pregnant,'" he said, and I heard something like regret in his voice.

"Yes, I had thought of that too. But you know it's not possible," I said softly, but my sobs had stopped.

He nodded slowly and stroked my belly again.

"Yes, I know ..." he said, hanging his head a little.

I don't know exactly how long the flight lasted. Sometimes I started sobbing again. Emmett was with me the whole time and said that everything would be fine.

When we landed and the plane door opened, I immediately heard footsteps coming up the stairs into the plane and smelled the familiar scent of my family.

Carlisle was there first and held his hand to my forehead and then to my belly.

He didn't know what it could be and said he wanted to do some examinations at home. I heard Alice, Esmé and Jasper and suddenly felt a little calmer, which must have come from Jasper.

Emmett took me in his arms, and we got in a car and drove home.

After about two hours of Carlisle running various tests on me, he sat in a chair and exhaled in frustration.

"Bella, I can't tell what's going on. I've never seen anything like it, but I definitely felt movement. All the tests didn't produce any results."

His voice sounded hopeless.

I knew that this would happen. I was prepared for it.

"I'm going to die, aren't I," I asked soberly.

Immediately he was at my bedside holding my hand.

"No Bella. It's not like your condition has worsened. I'll just watch you. Maybe it will go away on its own. But you won't die," he said to me.

But for me, this was the only option.

"When did this actually start?", he asked.

"About three days ago we were in Japan, and I thought the blood of the one deer I drank smelled strange. Since then, somehow I didn't feel so well. But just today I felt something in my belly."

"Japan?!" came from Carlisle, somewhat startled.

I did not understand what was so special about this information.

He stood up and rummaged through some drawers until he found a device I didn't recognize. He pressed a button and held it next to my waist.

It beeped quickly, but I didn't know what it meant.

"Didn't you guys catch that?" Carlisle asked, looking at me and Emmett.

Neither of us knew what he meant.

"A nuclear power plant broke down near Tokyo, a few days after your wedding. A lot of stuff got irradiated. And I measure a really high dose of radiation in you. For a human being, this would have been fatal long ago. I suppose the deer itself was irradiated and when you drank its blood, it got directly into your body. Pure radiation from outside could not cause such a high level," he explained. "I don't know of any case of vampires ever being irradiated. We'll have to wait and see what happens. I'm sorry I can't be of more help," he said.

For the next three days, I just lay in bed.

The movements in the abdomen did not stop, but surprisingly I did not feel worse. I no longer put my hands on my belly in fright at every movement. We still had no idea what it was, but slowly I regained some hope that I would not die. When no one was with me at the time, I read books to keep from getting bored. I had no pain and ignored my belly.

Then when Esmé came into the room this morning, I heard her draw in a startled breath and I looked at her questioningly. She immediately stood next to me and touched my belly as gently as possible.

"Carlisle?" she said at a normal volume.

No matter where he was in the house, he would hear her.

And already he was there.

I followed Esmé's incredulous gaze to my belly, on which her hands were still resting. And I, too, drew in a startled breath when I saw what Esmé saw.

"Can that be?", Esmé asked incredulously, but somewhere in her voice I heard perhaps something like hope.

"That's impossible ..." said Carlisle, putting his hand on my belly as well. "Bella, I have to ask you. Did you have sex in those three days after Japan?"

The question clearly made me uncomfortable and if I had been human, my face would have turned crimson.

I nodded.

I knew what the two were thinking, and I couldn't deny that I was thinking the same thing when I saw my belly. It wasn't as perfectly flat as it had been before. There was definitely a little bulge.

"Impossible ..." whispered Carlisle anew.

I was too shocked to say anything.

That simply could not be.

We called the others, and all came to the same conclusion.

Pregnant. How in the world could I be pregnant?

Carlisle said we would just have to wait and watch. He expressed his concern that six days after fertilization, you really shouldn't see any hint of a belly yet. But this little abnormality didn't matter - considering the fact that I was a vampire, and it was simply impossible.

When Emmett and I were alone that night, he put his hands on my belly as gently and softly as he could. He couldn't hide his smile and looked into my eyes.

Something moved again and I wanted so badly to believe that it could be real, that it was possible that what was moving could be a sweet baby.

He beamed when he felt it.

Four days later, Carlisle was sure.

Pregnant, was the diagnosis.

He measured my abdominal girth every day, which grew much faster than was normal.

But what did normal mean in my case?

In addition, Carlisle also measured my radiation daily, and it was getting less and less.

We had no idea how the whole thing could be. Why the radioactive rays suddenly enabled me to get pregnant.

Carlisle came up with various theories, but I didn't really care how it could have happened. I was so happy. First, that I wasn't going to die, and second, that I was carrying a sweet little baby.

Carlisle finally allowed me to get out of bed and I could go down to the living room to watch TV or do anything else.

Esmé and Alice were absolutely thrilled and bought me pregnancy books and read through them with me.

I knew exactly what that meant for the two of them, especially for Esmé. She always wanted to have real children and now here I was ... with a baby bump. Of course, she immediately wanted a child of her own.

But Carlisle still had some concerns that scared me. He said we didn't know what the child would be like. If it would be like one of the immortal children and you couldn't control it, or if it would even have characteristics of a vampire. Since it had to grow and it was doing that now, it couldn't be completely undead.

I was afraid of the Volturi, that they would take my baby away from me. But I tried to suppress the thought. It could not be that our baby was evil.