Cold As Ice

Chapter 6

Allie woke up and felt her heart sink into her stomach almost as soon as her eyes opened.

The buzzing was back. The strange, fluttery sensation she felt in the back of her head in the days leading up to another one of her amnesia episodes.

It had been months since she'd had the feeling, but Allie knew instantly what it was. She hadn't noticed how much hope she'd begun to store up that maybe, just maybe, the episodes were behind her. Since moving to Forks and starting work, she couldn't remember a time when she'd felt so normal, so healthy.

And even though it was strange to admit, Allie had the powerful intuition that it was all somehow related to Carlisle. Over the past few weeks, they'd begun to develop a friendship. Carlisle was slow to trust, Allie realized, despite being a warm and generous person by nature. It had taken several weeks of working closely with him, but slowly Allie was beginning to glean more personal details from him. He had five children, all adopted. He loved being in nature and always capitalized on good weather to take his family hiking. He'd wanted to be a doctor ever since he was young.

As they'd gotten more relaxed around each other, Allie couldn't help but notice that she felt better. Not just in terms of her episodes, but overall. She felt lighter, happier, and more energetic. She was exercising again; she had cut back on drinking soda; her mood was lifted. Allie had the wild feeling that her life was starting to fall into place. For so long – the past three years, really, since finishing nursing school – she'd felt like she was always five steps behind her life, rushing along trying to clean up the mess that her episodes created. Never able to get ahead, to catch a breath.

Waking up to the buzzing that morning threw everything into question.

She sat up on the edge of her bed. A beam of sunshine filtered in through the blinds on her window. Sun was rare in Forks; even rarer were consecutive days of it. The sun drenched morning marked the fifth day in a row that the weather had been favorable. It also marked the fifth day since Allie had seen Carlisle.

'Damn it, Albrun, stop doing that,' she grunted to herself as she tried to snap her mind away from fixating on the handsome doctor. As happy as she was to see their relationship deepening – although it was still well within the bounds of professional – there was a part of her that felt ashamed of her attachment to him. She hoped she was doing a good job of hiding it, although sometimes she had the unnerving sensation that Carlisle could read her like a book. She felt certain that he would be appalled, and rightly so, if he knew just how important he felt to her. He was, after all, just her coworker. A boss, really, even though she didn't directly report to him.

To distract herself, Allie pulled up Ingrid's contact on her phone. Luckily, Allie was off today and tomorrow, and if she needed it, she had a few days of PTO stored up. The buzzing was insistent, but Allie felt fairly certain it would be tomorrow or the day after before she started to lose time. She'd found from experience that the best way to alleviate the buzzing was to be active. She pressed 'Call' on her phone and lifted it to her ear.

"Allie Bun Bun!" Ingrid's cheerful voice immediately perked up Allie's glum mood.

"Ingrid. It's me. I need a day." From the other side of the phone, Allie heard Ingrid snap quickly into problem-solving mode. Ingrid was one of the few people that knew about Allie's episodes, and Allie had called her more than a few times before to help distract from the building up buzzing.

"Sure thing lady. Let's go to Seattle. Great coffee, good book stores. Plus, nice sunshine will make the drive pretty. Pick you up in an hour?"

"Sounds good." Allie hung up the phone, shooting a prayer of silent gratitude for her cousin into the air. Ingrid understood that the last thing Allie wanted to do when she felt like this was make decisions, so Ingrid was happy to make them for her. Allie wouldn't have chosen Seattle if she were feeling better, but maybe a change of scenery would do her good. Feeling a slight lift in her mood, Allie stood up from the bed and started to get ready for the day.