Chapter 2: Plans

Chapter 2: Plans

BPOV

That was the exact moment my life ended—when the TV spoke his name. Air left my lungs and I struggled to breathe. Running to the bathroom, phone still in hand, I heaved my stomach contents into the toilet and sobs wracked my body in painful spasms. At least I was able to manifest physical pain for the mental anguish I was feeling. My heart, once seeing my Edward covered in that bloody sheet, knew he was dead—and with him, half of me. I was not whole anymore, but the shell of a person left behind in the path of her soul being ripped out. Previously, I had never realized that a person's world could end in an instant, that it was even possible for oneinfinitesimal moment to create such a wake of destruction. How could it have even been possible for my body to be physically alive without him breathing on this earth? It wasn't right. Shouldn't my heart have literally stopped beating when his did? It wasn't fair. I had told Edward to come back to me and now he never would.

In my hysteria, I had a brief moment of clarity in the form of a song: I will follow you into the dark—Death Cab for Cutie's lyrics rose through my being. Edward and I were meant to be together for the rest of our lives and after. Knowing what I needed to do now, my life—the few minutes that was left of it—felt purposeful. My fate had been decided the moment Edward's was and now all I had to do was help fate along. With renewed clarity, Alice's tinkling shrieks of horror filtered into my ears.

"Bella! Oh, Shit Jasper, she's still not responding and I can't hear her throwing-up anymore—I think she might be passed out," She spoke to her beloved. I would never get that chance again and the thought caused envy of Alice to surge through my broken heart.

"Alice," I rasped; my throat was raw and scratchy from all of my crying and vomiting.

"Bella! Oh thank God. I thought you fainted. We're about ten minutes away, for some reason traffic is horrid. It'll be ok, I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding—he can't be d-d-dead." Alice's sobs over-took her again and she became useless to talk to. How dare she speak of my dead soul that way? As if she could understand the pain…

"Alice," I repeated. "I can't live in a world where he is not. I'm sorry, but I know he's dead. I love him more than life itself and without him, I have no life," I said evenly through steadily flowing tears. "Goodbye," I ended, chillingly.

"Bella, wait! Don't do anything stupid! We'll be rig—." I hung up the phone and cut her off mid-sentence. Her pleas meant nothing to me now. Only Edward, my darling dead Edward meant anything. I will join you soon...I had thought. Heaving myself off of the bathroom floor took more work than I had expected, I was much weaker than I had thought. The term sick with grief held new meaning for me. Walking purposefully—yet slowly—to our bedroom, I went right to the bed we shared where I had everything packed for my Paris trip. Oh, I'm still taking a trip alright¸ I had thought darkly. Rooting through my bags, I found what I had been searching for, the thing that would take away all of my anxiety and then some: my valium. I walked steadily to the kitchen to procure a glass of water—these pills wouldn't be easy to swallow without some. Without looking back, I downed the entire contents of the bottle and washed it down with all of the water in my tall cup. Deciding that was not enough of a relief of the burning heartache inside, I took a shot of tequila—that always seemed to help heartaches in the past.

Once in the living room I had shared and decorated with Edward, I collapsed on his favorite couch after turning on a video of last year's spring break trip. Secretly, I videoed him making a sandcastle for about ten minutes of him intently working before he caught me and threatened to throw the video camera into the ocean, claiming I was taking away his manliness by capturing such a moment on tape. He did no such thing because I batted my lashes and wiggled my hips—but I did turn the video off after seducing him, of course. I wasn't so kinky as to create a sex-tape while on the beach… that trip, anyways. I could feel the tequila burn its way down my esophagus and into my hollowed-out center, helping the valium create a slight haze in my vision. I closed my eyes before the sensation could make me dizzy. There was no way I wanted to throw up my fatal combination of pills and alcohol: I would have had to start all over again and I was all out of valium. With the sound of his voice and laughter, I drifted off into a peaceful death.

.::.

A certain amount of time had passed, that much I was certain, before I became lucid again. Surely I must have been dead because I couldn't feel or move any part of me. I felt disconnected from my body, almost like a floating entity in a dark abyss. It was just as people who have died and come back have said: I got tunnel vision and at the center of my view was a blindingly bright light. It hurt my eyes; at least what would have been my eyes. Do wandering spirits have eyes? I had thought. In the distance I started to be able to discern a chirping noise, like a bird that slowly became deeper sounding. Then I began to hear the shuffle of… shoes? How queer, I thought again. It started to feel like I had a body again, and something heavy was on my chest making it hard to breathe. Oh, I was breathing. Could dead people breathe? I was full of questions and no answers could be found. The voices came next; they were familiar to me but sounded somewhat distorted like I was under water in a tub and they were on the outside of it. There was a strange urge to open my eyes but I tried to fight it. Suddenly, it dawned on me where I was.

"Aw, FUCK!" I shouted as I sat straight up in my hospital bed. I looked around me and saw the many harried faces of my worried family: Charlie and Sue, looking a little worse for the wear; Alice clinging to Jasper on his lap in a chair; Rosalie with Emmett in the corner, and Esme sitting on the foot of my bed, white as a ghost.

"Bella!" They all gasped and screamed at once, not sure what to make out of my startling waking.

"Tell me this isn't your doing, Alice?" I challenged. I was filled with an intense anger and the anguish I felt before I took the pills was only the more intensified with my renewed consciousness.

"Bella! How could you do this! What would Edward think?" She tearfully accused me.

"Edward is dead. As should I be… he's… he-he's my life! And without him, I have no life," I started to sob.

"Bella, we're so sorry, but you have to pull through this. None of us could handle losing the both of you like this," Emmett explained. It truly didn't matter to me what sort of comfort they were trying to give me. I was broken beyond repair. The only possible way for me to have even been a shadow of my former self was if Edward was to rise from his grave—or the morgue. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious for. Rosalie, Alice, and Esme wrapped their arms around me as I continued to cry and shake. I didn't want comfort—I didn't deserve it. My life was dead and gone. When would they realize that?

"Bella…" Esme softly called to me. Rose and Alice released their holds on me and took a step back. Esme looked about as torn up as I felt. Guilt swelled in my chest. I tried to dampen it down, but since I decided I was in fact alive I couldn't help but feel every bit of it. Regarding Esme with devastation in my eyes, I tried to give her my full attention. She seemed to understand my effort and nodded before continuing. "My son…," she swallowed, pausing to collect her voice, "he is most likely dead. But if he's not, the one person he wants to come back to is you. He chose you. He loves you. It would kill him to see you like this. You're stronger than this honey… and I—I just don't know if I could take it if you died too…" Esme started to bawl again and collapsed onto my bed, our sobs shook the bed together. It would have been a sweet moment with my soon-to-be mother-in-law if it hadn't been such a despairing time. My dad stepped towards the bed as Esme and I were losing it so completely.

"Bells, Carlisle flew to Paris about an hour ago; he transferred your flight to his name. Hopefully we'll find out by tomorrow what is really going on. So far, after calling the Sorbonne and attempting to contact the U.S. Embassy, we've got no leads. I'm not telling you this to upset you further, but I want you to see that there's hope. We've all got hope, honey… and… I just love you so much!" Charlie got choked up at the end—he had almost made it the entire speech without getting teary-eyed. I swore he was more and more in touch with his emotions as each day wore on.

"Isabella Marie Swan, if you ever do something this foolish again, I don't care how adult you are, I will whip your hide, girl! Do you want your father to have a heart attack like Harry, rest his soul?" Sue chastised. I shook my head no. "Good! Now you know how much we all love you so don't ever forget it again!" Sue kissed me on the cheek after her rant and it was just so quintessentially her.

Visiting hours were soon over, and as much as I loved my friends and family—which were a small comparison to what I had lost even though I had great love for them in my heart—I was glad to see them go. I was so incredibly tired in a way that I was convinced if I closed my eyes I would never wake up—I was too hopeful. Everyone kissed my cheek goodbye, offering condolences, their hopes, and love. Alice felt responsible for not getting to me in time. I told her I would have locked myself in the bathroom and done it anyways—I omitted the fact that I still had plans to end my now-emptied life. I couldn't even bring my usually benevolent self to feel guilty about my future final act. Esme stayed in my room with me at the hospital; after all, she would have had to head back to an empty home. Charlie, not wanting to give up on his parental status, chose to sleep in the waiting room—something that was only permitted after he flashed his badge.

Once my 72-hour hold was up I was released from the hospital, unfortunately fully recovered. We still hadn't heard any word from Paris, a sign—only to me—that Edward was indeed never coming home, except in a box. Before, Edward had always teased me at how bad of an actress I was and now I was dead-set on proving him wrong as my final act. Pun intended. Alice escorted me home from the hospital on that Monday. Everyone was adamant that I see a shrink as soon as possible before these feelings of grief spun wildly out of control again. What everyone had failed to realize was that during my suicide attempt I had the most control over my actions then, than any other part of that horrid day. Needlessly, I agreed to their conditions—asking for a few days' rest first—admitting that I had let my emotions spiral out of my grasp and was incredibly irrational. They bought it, just like that. Even after my outburst at the hospital, they believed all of the bullshit I spilled about how all I wanted was to live my life the way Edward would have wanted—complete and utter horse-shit.

"B, be honest with me ok? Do you have any more of those pills you took? I searched your apartment and couldn't find anything while we were waiting for the paramedics to arrive. Do you and Edward really not have anything? Not even Advil?" She asked, bewildered.

"None. We hated the stuff. I only accepted the prescription of Valium for my flights to and from Paris to see Edward. He was the only reason I would have ever seen to take any medication… My mom got addicted to Oxycontin a few years ago so I never even wanted anything as mild as baby-aspirin in the house," I spilled. It was a secret I had kept for a long time, even from Charlie. What was the point now? I was going to die soon anyways—I might as well give Alice a great performance of how 'OK' I was.

"Wow, I never knew that. So… you must have been really upset, like the most ever in your entire life to have done that on Friday…" she hedged. Alice couldn't even bring herself to say the actual words suicide and kill-yourself in all the days since she found me on my couch. It's quite a funny story, actually. On their way to my shared apartment, Jasper called 911 while Alice hyperventilated—for the first time ever—in the passenger seat. They beat the ambulance there by a few minutes so Jasper resorted to kicking the front door down, which was all highly unnecessary because Alice had a spare key to the apartment in her purse.

"Imagine what you would be like if Jasper died. Take that times ten and add a wedding ring," I bluntly replied. She gasped as my words sunk-in. Alice was only a year younger than Edward and me, but it would have been impossible for her to have felt as deeply about Jasper in her two years of dating him—ever since she got to University of Washington—to my soul mate connection of five years with Edward. I wasn't a time snob or anything of the sort, but no one had shit on my love for my man. Of course Edward was her brother, but that sort of love was different and more accepting of loss.

"I know everyone is incredibly upset with what you did, but… how can they not understand—at the very least—you contemplating it? Do they not all have a love they would live and die for? Of course I do not approve at all, but I can't fault you on it," she realized aloud. Never in the years that I have known Alice, did I think I would have to convince her of something reasonable: usually it was the other way around. Once I had convinced Alice of my logic, I knew the rest would fall in line like little ducks in a row. Alice was the guiding force of our blended family, she held us together with her planning ways.

"Right," I concluded. I forced a yawn—quite convincingly, actually. "Is it ok if I just go to sleep? I know you wanted to grab lunch but, I'm so tired. I think I just need a day to sleep this off in my own bed, ya know?" I whimpered.

"Oh of course, that's fine. I understand. We've all been through a lot these past few days and I could use an early night myself," she replied, as she helped me into my apartment. "I'll call you later tonight, yeah?"

"Alright, but before eight o'clock, OK? I feel as though after that I'll be in a very deep sleep. The anti-anxiety meds they have me on make me feel somewhat loopy. Speaking of, what time tomorrow will you be over to dispense tomorrow's dose?" I played along. It was me who suggested that someone dispense my new meds to me each day just to ease everyone else's mind. Everyone generally knew that Edward and I didn't keep other medicine in the apartment, because at one point or another someone would have a headache at our place and we wouldn't have anything to give them when they asked for something.

"Well that depends on whether or not you want to go to breakfast with me," she chirped, almost as her normal self. We were all strained but the ever-hopeful Alice was bouncing back to normalcy better than the rest of us.

"Sure."

"Great! I'll pick you up, say… nine o'clock?"

"Alice, I can drive you know."

"I know, silly. I just want to pamper you a bit. What's wrong with that?" she winked.

"Nothing," I hesitated. "See you tomorrow," I called to Alice as she let herself out.

The moment I heard Alice's tiny dancing footsteps down the hall, I rushed to my newly-fixed door and double-bolted it. Spitting my un-swallowed pill into my hand, I headed for the kitchen to find a plastic baggie for its safe-keeping. I had been tonguing that thing since I left the hospital, and I have to say that it was not without difficulty that I was able to converse with Alice. Next stop on my list was Edward's sock drawer. It held the contents of my escape and the only other person besides the two of us that knew of it was half-way around the world trying to get the scoop on my dead fiancée. Cut it out, Bella, I had thought when my breathing became labored;there is no need for a breakdown. Edward had stashed the remaining bottle of Percocet from when he broke his arm last year in his sock drawer—prescribed by his father, Dr. Cullen. I dumped the bottle into my plastic baggie that contained the one pill I had spit out minutes before. Needing an unsuspicious place to hide my growing stash, I taped the bag to the underside of the bathroom counter. Now all I had to do in preparation was write my letters and wait a few days to add a couple more anti-anxiety pills.

Relief flooded me as I sank into the couch. When I had told Alice I was tired, it wasn't a lie. I had needed a moment alone to fall apart for 72 hours and damn was it exhausting trying to hold it together for the sake of my family. When Renee had called me at the hospital, crying hysterically, I could hardly understand a word she muffled into the phone. It took me an hour and a half of bull-shitting to calm her down and convince her of my new-found hope in What Would Edward Want? I felt like one of those zealots' wearing a WWEW bracelet—maybe that would persuade them completely. Still, I felt no guilt in deceiving them of my plans. I was operating under the old adage of ignorance is bliss. It was my life, or at least it was. Technically I gave Edward my life years ago—when his ended, so did mine.

I slept on the couch that night, unable to bring myself to lie in the same bed that I had slept in every night for a year with Edward before he left for Paris. It was now a bed of death: the death of him, the death of me, and the death of our love on this earth. Alice arrived at my door at nine o'clock on the dot, extremely punctual as always. Her spiky black hair coifed in its usual fashionable way and her seamlessly perfect outfit put my black yoga pants-clad legs and ponytailed-hair to shame. When I answered the door—shocked that she gave me the courtesy of knocking—I was bouncing on one leg with the other crossed over it.

"Hurry in and give me my pill Al, I have to pee!" I urged. She did exactly that, buying into my scheme effortlessly.

"Oh jeez, Bella. Do you always have to put off peeing 'til the last minute?" She teased. Playing on the group's running joke that I'm a procrastinating pee-er, I was flawless in the execution of my plan. It was a partially true fact, but annoying none-the-less that everyone teased me about my bathroom habits. I fake swallowed my pill, tonguing it as I had before and rushed off to the bathroom. Once inside, I spit out the capsule and hid it in my baggie, re-taping it to the underside of the counter and headed off to breakfast. Alice was none-the-wiser.

.::.

By sheer dumb luck, on the part of my family, I was discovered during my second suicide attempt. I had waited a week before following through with my plan of swallowing my collection of pills again—the worst week of my life— after sending out letters the day before, and making sure that I had taken care of every last detail, including making a will. I had given everyone an "I'm sorry" gift when I saw them individually or in their couple-formation. In all actuality, it was a goodbye-gift and an I'm not sorry for what I'm about to do-gift. In my plan was the attempt at not seeming like I was a person exhibiting the warning signs of suicide, so I bought them new things instead of giving them something of mine. It was more exhausting than my 72-hour fake-out had been at the hospital. I felt relief as I swallowed the exorbitant amount of pills at the idea of eternal slumber. Adding to my resolute decision, Carlisle only called once in that week to say that there was no update, that no one would speak to him or even let him inside the hospital where Edward's body was brought to.

This time, I was not discovered by Alice—to which I was thankful for her sake—but by my landlord. Apparently Rose had been calling and calling my cell and got pissed off that I was taking such a long nap—that was the lie I had concocted, an ironic one at that—and called my landlord. She gave him permission to enter my apartment with his keys to wake me up and urge me to call her back. When he couldn't wake me he called an ambulance. The doctors told me that if he had called ten minutes later, I would have been dead. How desperately I wished he was ten minutes late—my cold corpse would have been just as still as Edward's. I woke up in the hospital, not the next day, but two weeks later. The combination of pills I had taken, along with another shot of tequila—which I thought was somewhat poetic: trying to cure my heartbreak—had sent me into acute liver failure. Deciding that I needed time to recuperate and a vast amount of drugs to be pumped into my system to restart my liver (a donor liver was not necessary), the doctors kept me in a medically-induced coma. When I woke up, I was groggier than the first time and less feisty initially.

Instead of being greeted with a pissed-off yet grieving family, my father presented me with an induction form to The New Moon Psychiatric Facility of Seattle. Because I had just turned twenty-two (over the age of 18)—during Edward's absence in September—I legally had to sign it myself. I was kept at the hospital for another week for observation under light sedation because the day after I awoke from the coma, I threatened to kill myself again. My father came to the hospital every day, sometimes with Sue and sometimes without. This time, I had gotten no lectures, only sad expressions and silent tears. Rosalie and Emmett came one day, but Emmett had to carry her weeping form out not twenty-minutes later. Alice came twice: the first time without Jasper, and the second time with. Esme never left my side, but also never spoke a word to me. She didn't have to say anything for me to understand how upset she was with me, and with the unknown status of her son. Renee was also present when I awoke. She, like Esme, never left my side either, but spoke to me. Well, actually she cried more than anything. Unlike after the first time I tried to take my life, I became withdrawn and somber. Charlie would attempt to cheer me up with jokes or funny memories but I couldn't even nod a response. The word catatonic was thrown around a lot by my hospital doctors and visiting family.

.::.

I was transferred over to The New Moon Psychiatric Facility by ambulance while Charlie, Renee, and Esme followed me in a car. Renee had gone to my apartment and packed a bag of clothes, mostly things like yoga pants, fitted t-shirts, my favorite sweatshirt of Edward's and undergarments. What made me nervous was the fact that she packed a lot. They hugged me and cried shamelessly—all of them. Esme told me she was sorry, Renee told me she loved me, and Charlie told me he'd be seeing me soon. Then, they left me in the care of the Nursing staff, orderlies, and head-doctors. I was given a tour of the facilities, told the rules, and explained how if I progressed properly then I would be given more freedoms and privileges. I had never felt more utterly alone than at the precise moment they locked me in my room. That night was the last time I cried. I awoke the next day and said nothing. New Moon has held me captive ever since, and I have no idea as to how long I have been their prisoner patient. My world was filled with varying shades of grey, black, and white and I was just another soul-less ghost trapped on this earthen hell.

.::.

Meeting the other patients was a gamble of survival: do I befriend this one or that? Which one won't attempt to slit my throat in the middle of the night? It was after I met the other patients in my wing that I realized it was for my safety that they locked me in my cell room at night. Out of all the women in my section, I met only two that I considered to be somewhat normal or less-crazy than the others: Victoria and Tanya. Victoria was a feisty red-head that got locked-up in here by a judge for killing her boyfriend James—who repeatedly raped and abused her—in the middle of the night. She felt blessed to be here instead of jail. Blessed, my ass. Tanya was a blonde sociopath, one of those people that liked to set shit on fire just to let the world burn; figuratively speaking of course, she wasn't a pyromaniac, that was another patient whose name I never bothered to learn. I never said much, but my eyes always did the speaking for me: red and filled with sadness. After a little while I learned that they called me Sad Girl not because of my day-to-day sullenness, but because everyone in our wing heard my wailing cries my first night at New Moon.

When it came to therapy, there was group and individual. Group therapy was a joke: it was usually only the crazies that contributed. I never said a word during one of those. Individual therapy was different. Someone coined the term ther-rape-me from that movie Girl, Interrupted and I had to admit, it sure as hell felt like I was in that institution with them. That's exactly how individual therapy felt: like they were raping my mind. Immediately they started me on a mood stabilizer and an anti-depressant: the strong shit. Untrustingly, I continued to tongue my meds as second nature. I didn't want to be one of those drugged-out zombies… just the self-induced kind. I also tongued my sleeping pills at first, saving all my pills up inside my pillow. After, what I assumed was a week there because I had seven of each pill variety; I took my collection of pills all at once, attempting to kill myself again. I was naïve to think that I could effectively end my live in a medical facility where they had the technology to bring you back from an overdose. After that they started to check my mouth to make sure I swallowed my pills when they administered them. Because I was too cowardly to hang myself, that was my last attempt at suicide.

The haze the meds along with the sleeping pills gave me was tolerable, at least then I truly could escape into my head and feel the pain I harbored deep inside my core. Often I would day-dream about being with Edward again. Locked away in my head, I would pretend that either he was alive and we had a wonderful week in Paris together, or that I had died with him and our spirits had united into one soul. My pills made me speak more freely in my individual sessions, and my day dreams were conveyed to my shrink, Dr. Laurent Soigner. He told me that in my fragile condition I was having delusions and hallucinations—common in those of a frazzled mental state. Everything I did here was not my own: my room, my 'friends', even my thoughts were wrong by their standards. Mentally, I was checked out. They could have my body because my spirit was long gone. Slowly I started to eat less and less, having no will to nourish the body I didn't want to be connected to anymore. Eventually I stopped eating all-together and they put me in a plain sheet-white hospital gown and threatened to not give back my clothes until I started to eat again. Mentally, I flipped them the bird and didn't pick up a fork for about a week. That's when they started to force-feed me through an IV. They only did it a few times until Charlie, visiting once a week, cried to me how terribly thin I was. I ate very minimally after that.

Alice visited once and cried the whole time. I said nothing. Rosalie also visited once and didn't look at me when she spoke. I said nothing. Esme sent letters and said all the things she couldn't in-person. One day Esme came with Charlie and Sue, their faces were alight in a way that they hadn't been since my very first suicide attempt. Apparently trying a new type of therapy they had concocted, they started to tell me false news of Edward. They tried to convince me that they had heard from Carlisle that Edward was alive, just badly injured. They tried telling me over and over so many times. Every visit they would attempt their lies ended in me going into hysterics and having to be subdued with tranquilizers as the orderlies carried me off to my room to 'rest'. I didn't know how many times that it happened, just that it did.

Every night I had nightmares of the sheet-covered Edward, bleeding on the street. Every day was a waking-nightmare of grey and pain. My memories started to fade and eventually I truly became the zombie-Sad-Girl that the other patients, crazier patients, joked about. I was nothing and I had nothing.

.::.