Chapter 3
A pedestrian walking along Main Street the following morning might have been having a normal day. There were patches of ice all over the sidewalk, roads, trees, and roofs, making everything shiny, but the glare was softened by the fresh snow. In other words, it was a cold, but charming day.
He would have first heard the roar and then seen a red truck inching along the road. Then he would have noticed the driver: an average-looking teenager, who could have disappeared in a crowd easily with her dark brown hair, gripping the steering wheel as if she was on one of the world’s greatest roller coasters. Maybe he could have even seen the girl biting down on her lip so hard that it bled.
Then, he would notice the trail of cars following the truck. Almost all of the drivers were tapping their respective steering wheels.
I was aware as I went down Main Street that I had single-handedly stopped traffic in one lane with my fear of icy roads. The cereal and orange juice that I had consumed that morning churned in my stomach. Everything was sparkling.
Once I got into the parking lot, I parked in the closest one to the entrance to the parking lot. I would have to walk farther, but it didn’t matter. I almost fell out of the truck in my haste. But before I could try to fast-walk to the school without tripping, I stared at the wheels.
Charlie had put snow chains on them.
My first thought was that I didn’t have to drive so slow after all.
Then, another feeling, gratefulness maybe, rose in me. I glanced around. No one was looking at me; the few people around were walking or running as quickly as they could into the school, save the Cullens, who were standing around their Volvo. I bent down, no longer in a hurry to get into the school, staring at the snow chains and trying to fight off the strange feeling in my throat.
I should have tried to get into the school. I didn’t want what happened next to happen. Tyler Crowley had no idea what he had done when he lost control of his car, to my fate, to the Cullens’ fate.
But at the time, I only knew that suddenly, there was a screeching sound and it was growing exponentially. I turned my head and with the clearness that only adrenaline could give me, I saw Tyler’s pale face disappearing and reappearing as his dark blue van spun around, in a general trajectory towards me. I would be crushed, the van wrapping around the side of my truck.
I could comprehend all of this, but I couldn’t move.
And then I was crushed, but not by the truck. My head fell against the pavement and pain registered, but there was no time to scream; the truck was still spinning towards me, even though there was a shadow hovering over me. The shadow swore and spun around, so that he was sitting next to me, and his hands pressed into the side of the van. The van stopped spinning, groaning as the tires started to pop.
“You all right?”
Oh, for God’s sake, he had to save me! Of all the people...
How did he save me?
“I’m fine. What the heck did you do?” I muttered, trying to sit up. Something was cold around my waist; I looked down. “Get your arm off me,” I whispered, trying to sound threatening. I felt a bit dizzy though-I didn’t sound nearly as effective as I could have. Edward obliged, but he kept staring at me.
“You need to get to the hospital. You knocked your head,” he stood up and peered into the van. “Tyler’s OK. They’re getting him out.”
I tried to sit up again. “Don’t move,” he commanded.’
“I’m perfectly aware of what I can do,” I snapped. “How did you get here? You were standing by your car.”
The Cullen’s jaw tightened and he sat back down next to me. “Clearly that knock on the head is severe,” he said, his voice still light.
“Don’t use that angel’s voice on me; it doesn’t work,” I said. His lips quirked into a smile at the word ‘angel’ but I bulldozed on, trying to ignore the growing cold creeping up my legs and arms, “You have to explain to me.”
“Once you’ve been in the hospital, you’ll understand that it was all an illusion,” he said smoothly. He stood up and started to push on the van, lightly, as if he was using minimal strength. The van shifted away to reveal a couple of EMTs and two teachers who had evidently helped to move the van aside. The EMTs were bearing stretchers.
“Oh, God, Charlie’s going to think that I can’t drive even with snow chains,” I muttered under my breath as they put me on a stretcher. “And why isn’t he getting a stretcher?” I asked, pointing at the Cullen. He grinned at me and my heart started racing again. “Damn you,” I muttered. “And you have to explain to me later.”
He rolled his eye. “All right, all right,” he said.
"She all right?" one of the people said as they put me on the stretcher. I strained to hear.
"Yeah. I managed to crawl into the wreck pretty quickly. She seems to have hit her head though. You might want to look at that. She's confused."
"Cullen, you--"
"Quiet, dear," one of the other EMTs said in a soothing voice. I glared at the Cullen.
They loaded me like baggage into the ambulance, but they seemed to take an awfully long time doing it, so I heard people yelling about both Tyler Crowley and me. It seemed that people had stormed out of the school to see the crash and gossip. No mention of Edward. And the last thing I saw before they shoved me in the ambulance was my dad’s face.
“Bella!” he yelled. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. And I wasn’t driving and thanks for the snow chains,” I said in a rush as the people were strapping a neck brace around my neck. Charlie looked at me as if I had gone insane, and then started questioning one of the EMTs.
“Edward, you know that you’ve done something-“ one of the female Cullens’ voice was the last thing I heard and I wanted to think about how infuriating the entire Cullen family was, with Jasper avoiding me like the plague, Edward being bipolar apparently only towards me, and Emmett acting as if I was a normal person. But they were injecting something into me via an IV, a painkiller.
It made me sleepy the entire way, too sleepy to protest being carried in like some invalid and loaded into a wheelchair. I guess by that time, I was in no condition to walk, but if they hadn’t given me that painkiller, I would have been able to walk.
As if to make a point, Edward strode ahead through the automatic doors.
They dumped me onto a bed, the typical emergency room, separated from the next room with a thin cloth. As I adjusted the bed, I saw Tyler being ferried in with a stretcher. He looked awful; he had a turban of bandages on his head and a deep cut on one of his cheeks. He looked over, saw me, and started talking.
“I’m so sorry, Bella!” he talked quickly, but he must have had some aspirin as well. His words were slurred. “I couldn’t control the car and it went insane-“
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. You look awful,” I said. Tyler winced and fell back, as if to confirmed what I had said.
Just as they pulled Tyler into a room, they pulled me out and X-rayed my head, confirming that there was nothing wrong. They took off the neck brace for me as they wheeled me back.
“Dr. Cullen will see you briefly and then you can leave,” the nurse said as she put a small plastic wrap around my finger. It glowed red suddenly and I saw data running across the computer screen to my right.
“Just why is a surgeon seeing me?” I blurted out.
“I believe it was a request.”
A request? No doubt Cullen had asked for some strange reason. “Thank you,” I said. She beamed at me and left. Just as she left, Edward came in, his face perfectly neutral.
“Are you all right?” he asked. I closed my eyes. His...appearance didn’t suit my mood. And he didn’t seem any more willing to explain to me how he managed to cross the parking lot within two seconds.
“Yeah. Not even a concussion. I’m fine,” I turned over, trying to avoid his gaze.
“Is she sleeping?” I opened my eyes and turned back over to see Dr. Cullen: blond, a face that could have been the basis for Renaissance paintings, marred only by dark circles under his eyes.
“No,” I muttered.
He looked up at the computer that was hooked up to my arm. “You seem fine. Your X-rays, everything.”
“I’m fine, really.” He sat on a nearby chair and felt my head carefully, his eyes narrowed. I winced slightly at one point; he nodded, as if this confirmed what he thought.
“Nothing major, I believe. Your father is in the waiting room. I think you should stay home for the day, and come back if you have a headache or feel busy.”
“All right,” I said, sitting up. I gasped; the pain was severe.
“And don’t move too quickly,” Dr. Cullen added, a smile playing on his lips. “Somebody will come and take you in a wheelchair. I’m going to be checking on Tyler,” he said to Edward, and he stood up and left.
“You can explain now,” I said to Edward. Edward’s face was still rigid.
“I don’t owe you anything,” and he sat down, turning his face away from me.
I was reminded once more of my diagnosis of bipolar disorder. With every word, the Cullen was reminding me of his problem.
“Beside,” he said, addressing the light green curtain separating me from Tyler’s room, “people who hit their head are usually confused.”
“I’m not confused and your father made it clear that there’s no injury,” I settled back on my bed. “Tell me the truth. Or I’ll tell everyone my version of the truth.” He looked at me, the corner of his lips lifting in some semblance of a smile. “People aren’t going to believe that you dashed across the parking lot, pushed me aside, and left dents in the car. And there isn’t a scratch on you.”
The smile was full-blown now. “No, no one will believe that,” he said, running a hand through his hair.
“I’m not telling anyone. And I want to know the truth, but I won’t tell anyone.”
His eyes widened. “You-“
“Please. You were talking to one of your sisters. She was telling you that it was...a bad idea to be so ‘obvious’.” I raised my fingers and curved them into quotation marks. “Whatever that might mean.”
“You know,” he said, picking up a tissue box and examining it as if it was so fascinating, “the simple solution is,” he waved a hand, as if slapping away a fly, “to forget about it.”
“Forget,” I said slowly, “that I could have died if a guy hadn’t dashed in front of me and left dents in a car? Difficult.”
“Then don’t ask questions.”
“So you think you can order me around?”
He was silent. He placed the tissue box back onto the white counter, next to a box of latex gloves. My eyes followed him. He had to tell me. He wasn’t that mean. Or that bipolar.
He stood up and pulled aside the curtain, just as the nurse came back, pushing a wheelchair. She helped me out of the bed and into the wheelchair. Edward stood by the entrance of my room, as still as a statue.
“Do you regret saving me then?” I whispered savagely as I passed by.
I looked up to see a strange expression on his face, and then I sat back in my wheelchair.
The waiting room only had a couple of people waiting for admittance, Charlie, and a couple who I could only assume was Tyler’s parents. Charlie shot to his feet at the sight of me and came right to my side.
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently, touching my arm.
“Don’t worry. This is just hospital rituals,” I said. I glanced at Tyler’s parents. “I hope Tyler’s okay,” I said in a low voice to Charlie.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, taking car keys out of his pocket. “I’ll be right back. I’ll drive the cruiser right up to the driveway.”
“All right,” the nurse said cheerfully, wiping a strand of black hair out of her eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” Charlie said, patting me on my shoulder.
He was right. It couldn’t get much worse than almost being crushed by a car. As I sat there, waiting for Charlie to get his cruiser, I convinced myself that it was true. Nothing could trump this. Nothing could get worse. Somehow, the fact that I had to convince myself seems like foreshadowing: life only got worse.
AN: I cut a lot of dialogue between Edward and Bella, simply because they're not close enough yet. And a lot of Bella's OMFG Ppl are paying attention to ME. No student is waiting in the waiting room (how did they get out of class? It makes no sense) and Bella doesn't rip off her neck brace. I thought that was absolutely stupid; you take off your neck brace just because you think it's ugly and inconvenient when potentially it can save your life.
Chapter 4