6:14:19 → j. hale, a. cullen

06.

6:09:01

Carlisle took a deep breath before he entered the hospital room, much like he usually did with his other patients, even though it wasn't necessary. His family had called him earlier, warning him about the fact that the Swan sisters were beginning to notice that they weren't as human as they thought they were coming off as. And although he rarely ever showed it, Carlisle worried. He worried about the possibility of one of the Swan sister's speaking to others about their doubts, about the fact that Emery had noticed Rosalie and Emmett speeding their way out of the school. He worried about the behavior Edward emitted while he was around his blood singer.

Forcing his body to look as relaxed, he lowered his shoulders and fixed his posture, before closing the door behind him and facing the small family.

"Emery Swan." He announced, smiling as easily as could be in the situation, looking up at the girl who had a look of numbness on her face. 

Confusion swept through the Cullen's mind as he pondered why she didn't look up at him with wonder or questioning, but quickly looked at her file and realized she was terminal.

And that she was going to find out today how much longer she would have.

Carlisle felt his cold, empty stomach churn in dread for the first time in over a century.

Alice and Japer didn't know that their mate was dying.

▹

Emery barely turned her head at the sound of her name being called, her eyes trained on the blurred poster in front of her, resting on the too white wall. Her stomach clenched with nausea, sweat prickling her forehead with nerves she didn't know would show up.

For years she knew that she was getting worse, that she was going to die. But for some reason, the idea of it all truly coming to an end made her want to run. It made her want to cry. The idea making her already blurry eyesight much worse than it was. She thanked the fact that the bed she was sitting on was facing the middle of the room and not over to her father and sister, the latter probably too busy staring at the face of the father of the boy she was infatuated with.

Emery forced her eyes to meet her new primary doctor, her misty brown eyes immediately capturing a golden honey as soon as her eyes swept to the right.

The doctor introduced himself with a careless smile, although the eldest Swan could detect the tenseness in his shoulder from a mile away. Although she didn't particularly know the reason of his nervousness, it gave her comfort knowing that she wasn't the only one on edge.

"I'm just going to check your vitals, and then we'll get into it, alright?" He asked gently, gently squeezing her shoulder in comfort as he noticed her wide eyes and the clamminess of her skin.

Jerking her head in a nod, she willed herself to relax as the familiar tightness of the blood pressure cuff tightened around her upper right arm.

And if her father and sister noticed the fact that Carlisle purposefully took his time on checking her vitals and then doing it again, as if to give them time to breath and relax for another moment, no one spoke up about it. Although the air in the room lost some of it's tension, and Emery finally relaxed into the hold of the doctor as he steadily kept a hand on her shoulder as he checked her pulse on her back.

"Any serious problems with breathing at the moment?" Carlisle asked, pretending that he listened through the scope, even through he could hear her unsteady and erratic heartbeat before he even entered the room.

Emery shook her head and blushed as the doctor tapped her shoulder to stay still, an almost amused look in his eye as he momentarily caught her eye.