Fire of Your Soul

Chapter Two

We hope you loved the first chapter of Fire of Your Soul. Thank you to all of you who took the time to review. We appreciate it so much! The next chapter, we're warning you, will have some tissue alerts ... Have some Kleenexes nearby ... just sayin'!

As always, this is not ours. We're not Stephenie Meyer, nor will we ever be. We just like to play in her sandbox, with her toys.

Chapter Two

The ambulance roared toward the hospital with Edward sitting on the gurney, the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Even with the oxygen being pushed into his lungs, he felt like he couldn't breathe like an elephant was sitting on his chest. The guilt he felt from losing his victim. The young woman who slipped out of his hand was Charlie Swan's daughter. The very same daughter he had just boasted about just a few hours before playing at the concert, debuting with the Seattle Symphony.

Fuck!

Edward closed his eyes, but as soon as he did he was bombarded with the images of Angela as she looked up at him. Her sweet, innocent face, so full of fear, begging him to save her. Why couldn't he have just held on? Was he such a weakling that he couldn't hold onto this small woman, just a few moments longer? Was he even good at his job? Angela was dead because of him. Instead of saving lives, he was taking them. How could he look Charlie in the face again?

The ambulance pulled up to the hospital and the EMTs opened the back, wheeling Edward into the emergency department. As the gurney was pushed through the door, it was met by a worried Carlisle and Esme. Edward's chief had called them as soon as Edward was put in the ambulance.

Over the years, the chief had seen what happened to firemen after they lost someone in a fire. Some were able to take it in stride, but others would completely implode, blaming themselves for the loss of a victim. The vacant, broken look in Edward's eyes was the one that was about to implode, or worse, completely shut down. He knew that Edward and Charlie were close friends, with a great deal of respect flowing between the two of them, which made this even worse. So, the chief called in reinforcements with Carlisle and Esme. Edward would need his family in order to get over the guilt of losing a victim, of seeing the daughter of a man who Edward respected die needlessly.

Edward was checked over and was attached to an oxygen mask for the rest of the night. The damage to his lungs wasn't too bad, but his oxygen saturation was low. He was monitored while his hands were dressed.

As Edward's parents watched him while he was being checked out, Esme wanted to hug him, make his hurt go away. She saw the haunted look in his eyes and she knew something tragic happened. The battalion chief, when calling the mayor and his wife, had said that Edward would need his family. However, the reason for that need was left unsaid. She sat next to him, gently rubbing his arm as he slept fitfully after his wounds were dressed.

Carlisle had gone to Edward's apartment, picking up a change of clothes. When he arrived, he heard Edward's angry but defeated voice yelling at his mother.

"There's nothing you can do to make it better, Mom!" Edward snarled. "You can't just hug me, and it magically makes everything better. I fucked up. I lost someone. I watched a girl plummet to her death and there's not a goddamned thing I can do about it."

"But, baby, I just want to ..." Esme said, her voice calm and reaching for his hands.

"I don't deserve it!" Edward roared, pulling his hands away and turning his face away from his mother. As he glared out the darkened window, he snapped, "You want to hug someone? Go help the Swans."

"What do you mean, son?" Carlisle asked, placing his son's clothes on the plastic recliner in his room.

"The girl who died? The one that I couldn't fucking save? Charlie's daughter," Edward said, his voice cracking. "She begged me, Dad. She didn't want to die, but I wasn't strong enough. I let her fall."