CEASELESSLY (J. HALE)

1.6

Calina

When I first woke up after the horrible incident, all I heard was how lucky I was that I was alive. How happy the nurses were that I pulled through, and how surprised the doctors were that I even woke up.

They waited a week before they told me the true extent of the damage to my abdomen. It was then that I finally felt the pain. As they explained liver transplants, and how they had to shorten my intestines, and how they were looking for a lung, the pain hit.

They shot me up with so much dilaudad that I couldn't even move. Even then I still screamed from the pain, for a week I had been locking the pain away, and when it was unleashed it hit me with fury. Instead of finishing the transplant conversation with me, they spoke with Allison in hushed tones outside the door.

The funny thing about transplants, you never know when your body is going to finally reject your new organ.

. . .

Jasper

"Jasper, get out of here."

I could hear them, I could see Calina, I could feel everything as it coursed through her, it suffocated me, but more than anything else, for the first time, I smelt her blood, and my mind could not be tamed.

All those years I spent living off of human blood came crashing down on me. For a moment in time, I wanted nothing more than just a taste of her. Just a drop, or her whole being, I couldn't tell.

Emmett and Edward had to drag me out of the room, but I continued to lust after the blood coursing through her veins. I fought them, trying my hardest to get to her. That was when Kate electrocuted me so hard I couldn't do anything but twitch for a few minutes.

Now, I sit outside Carlisle's office, waiting for him to tell me anything about her. I didn't notice it at first, I figured she was simply too cold from lying next to me, but when I pressed my lips to her forehead as I got ready to leave, I realized she was much too hot. Burning, in actuality.

With Allison still away, I called Carlisle, who told me it was probably just a side effect of the immunosuppressant. I wasn't convinced, but listened as he told me to watch for other symptoms, seeming to know something I didn't.

She looked sickly, her skin taking on a yellow hue as I watched her. It was her scream that rattled me, and as she lost control and thrashed, she begged me to take it away, or anyone for that matter. I wanted nothing more than to take it away.

Carlisle had heard her cries through the phone and rushed to aide me, but by the time he got there, her control was lost, and for the first time I truly smelt her blood. It was as though all the control I had built up were crushed.

"Jasper." Carlisle's grave voice breaks me from my thoughts.

"How is she?" I whisper, knowing that everyone in this house can hear me, and I don't want Rose to hear, she will only hate me more.

"Stable."

I look to him, and know that this stable is not the end of the grave news, and is no reason to celebrate.

"Jasper, her body is rejecting her liver. I have her sedated, but over time the anti-rejection meds she is taking will stop working. Her lungs aren't much better, I drained the fluid from her abdomen, her left kidney has an extensive infection, and I cannot fix it with antibiotics. I'm taking her to the hospital, I believe that it must be removed. She will be able to live like this, but it will not be for long." He takes a breath, looking at me with saddened eyes, and I feel his grief for me and even my mate.

"How long?"

"Son, I do not have that answer. What I will tell you is that you must appreciate this last bit of human life she has, and you must decide Jasper, she may not have the chance to make the choice herself."

The weight of his words hit me like a train, and if I were human I would be sick knowing that she unknowingly has trusted me without understanding that what I am will eventually kill the life she has. Just thinking about it is enough to make me want to crumble.

I sit back down in my seat, thinking back to all the times I turned humans without regret, only to kill them a year later. Calina has done nothing to deserve the monster that I am.

"If you turn her without telling her, I will never forgive you, and neither will she."

I look over to face my sister, the girl who has played my twin for years, and I feel nothing but anger and hatred radiating off of her. Even I cannot suppress it.

"Rosalie, what am I to do? She doesn't know of us, and she will die if I do not, do you not see that?" I growl.

"She will hate you."

With that, she is gone, and I wish I could follow her to the hospital, but I know that I cannot, the blood will be too much, and again I curse myself for being a monster unlike my brothers and sisters.

I stand, grabbing the chair from under me, and smashing it into the wall. I want to tear everything apart, want to tear myself apart. She is dying, and I can do nothing.

Walking to the balcony, I jump from the platform and run deep into the wilderness, wishing the earth could swallow me up, I leave a path of destruction, destroying everything around me, just as I always do.

She will hate me.