I forgot I wrote this for Li's Challenge Word in March
P For Paramedic
1. The first time he gets a medical degree it's for Carlisle. They're going to be stationary for the first time. The two years before have flown.
For Edward it is his whole life--the whole of the only important life and memory he has now. Two years spent learning about himself, about his thirst, about a world he never comprehended fully and about the man who has given it all to him. For Carlisle it is a new world, but it is also the pause before returning to the life he loves, to the passion (for people and saving people) that drives his world, that is the rhyme and the reason for how he found Edward in the first place.
He's relentless in his pursuit of the ideal. Every morning and every night, to classes and text books, discussion about how things work, pouring over memories that aren't his for insider knowledge on how best things work in the moment. He memorizes charts and data and likelihoods and eventualities and percentages. He could quote it all from rote memory without blinking.
It takes three years, and the introduction of Esme, before Edward realizes just how much the medical school decision isn't wrong (when he can manage the classes, the peers, the hunger, and even standing in the ER room) but it isn't the one for him. It gives and grants and shows him nothing. It's empty of the things that fill Carlisle.
He's sitting at a piano, fingers drumming down an all but forgotten piece of music, clinging from a human memory all but faded entirely, when he finds the first passion that is just his.
2. The second time Edward a medical degree the pursuit is as much topical as it is distractional. Carlisle needs the updated material and Edward is grateful to be out of a house that new born Rosie Red Eyes of the vapid mind and scalding temperament can't leave.
At the end of those medical school years -- this time breezing by so much faster, because he knows all of the material, because he can use his powers with more reliance, and because time is becoming less stationary a thing to follow -- he's not expecting an epiphany. He went into it and got out of it exactly what was expected.
But he had missed out on something, that he only noticed more of when he had nowhere to go. He had missed out on the point when Rosalie had developed a quiet smile or a passion for the flowers outside their new house, had missed the point where her anxiety about space and people was soothed by their presences and did not own a flash of fear.
He stays home with Esme and Rosalie, realizing that he is an intruder in their daytime hours as much as they are in his during the first weeks, watching then. It's ironic that as much as Carlisle is a doctor, the person and prestige everyone goes to asking for help, it's Esme who picks up all the pieces. Esme who operates for all intents and purposes as a simple stay at home wife and mother.
She does the triage work that no one asks for, quietly, without making it obvious, without it being task or chore or obligation. Stitching them each up with calm words and quiet demeanor, day in and day out, handling each gripe and each trivial success. Holding wounds that can't close until time that has no meaning can forged bonds to heal unrelenting memory.
What he knows about medicine most, he knows when he's studying the words and the concepts -- but what he knows about care giving, about the true act of saving lives, is that it will never be his role in his family. He's not meant for that.
But he lives in humbled awe of the two people who are.
1. The first time he gets a medical degree it's for Carlisle. They're going to be stationary for the first time. The two years before have flown.
For Edward it is his whole life--the whole of the only important life and memory he has now. Two years spent learning about himself, about his thirst, about a world he never comprehended fully and about the man who has given it all to him. For Carlisle it is a new world, but it is also the pause before returning to the life he loves, to the passion (for people and saving people) that drives his world, that is the rhyme and the reason for how he found Edward in the first place.
He's relentless in his pursuit of the ideal. Every morning and every night, to classes and text books, discussion about how things work, pouring over memories that aren't his for insider knowledge on how best things work in the moment. He memorizes charts and data and likelihoods and eventualities and percentages. He could quote it all from rote memory without blinking.
It takes three years, and the introduction of Esme, before Edward realizes just how much the medical school decision isn't wrong (when he can manage the classes, the peers, the hunger, and even standing in the ER room) but it isn't the one for him. It gives and grants and shows him nothing. It's empty of the things that fill Carlisle.
He's sitting at a piano, fingers drumming down an all but forgotten piece of music, clinging from a human memory all but faded entirely, when he finds the first passion that is just his.
2. The second time Edward a medical degree the pursuit is as much topical as it is distractional. Carlisle needs the updated material and Edward is grateful to be out of a house that new born Rosie Red Eyes of the vapid mind and scalding temperament can't leave.
At the end of those medical school years -- this time breezing by so much faster, because he knows all of the material, because he can use his powers with more reliance, and because time is becoming less stationary a thing to follow -- he's not expecting an epiphany. He went into it and got out of it exactly what was expected.
But he had missed out on something, that he only noticed more of when he had nowhere to go. He had missed out on the point when Rosalie had developed a quiet smile or a passion for the flowers outside their new house, had missed the point where her anxiety about space and people was soothed by their presences and did not own a flash of fear.
He stays home with Esme and Rosalie, realizing that he is an intruder in their daytime hours as much as they are in his during the first weeks, watching then. It's ironic that as much as Carlisle is a doctor, the person and prestige everyone goes to asking for help, it's Esme who picks up all the pieces. Esme who operates for all intents and purposes as a simple stay at home wife and mother.
She does the triage work that no one asks for, quietly, without making it obvious, without it being task or chore or obligation. Stitching them each up with calm words and quiet demeanor, day in and day out, handling each gripe and each trivial success. Holding wounds that can't close until time that has no meaning can forged bonds to heal unrelenting memory.
What he knows about medicine most, he knows when he's studying the words and the concepts -- but what he knows about care giving, about the true act of saving lives, is that it will never be his role in his family. He's not meant for that.
But he lives in humbled awe of the two people who are.