back on my vampire bullshit

It’s a bad day. 

He shouldn’t be surprised anymore, honestly. 

The doctors always said that it was unlikely she’d recover. 

“Hello Alice,” he says kindly, as he slips into her room. It’s a nice room - Esme arranged it for her when they brought her here; the floral bedspread, the nice armchair, the bunny lamp, the framed art. If he didn’t look closely, it’s just an ordinary bedroom. Just one with a long glass panel in the door, with an IV stand next to the bed, and a trolley with medical supplies against the wall.

The weekly flower delivery is consistent with two bouquets still blooming cheerily. 

She blinks sleepily at him from the armchair, dressed in leggings and an oversized sweater. He recognises Esme’s handiwork in the sweater, a pattern of flowers in purple and white. She doesn’t say anything, she just watches her, barely able to lift her head. 

Not many fourteen year old girls recover from mysterious strokes. It’s been five years; Alice isn’t going to get any better. He tries to make peace with it, but that hope still lingers. That one day he’ll walk in, and she’ll smile and talk, and be able to leave. 

He places the magazines he brought with him on the rolling table, and checks over her things; her toiletries are still half full, and she still has a decent supply of snacks - that makes him sad, because it’s been a while since he replaced them.

It’s a pretty typical visit; her laptop is unmoved from last week, her schoolwork still gathering dust. Esme was always so optimistic she’d need them. He straightens things, checks things, and her eyes track him around the room as he moves. He talks a little, but mostly he is quiet. It was always her that did the talking, and now… well, now she doesn’t. 

He finally sits down in the chair next to her. Her left arm is strapped in its usual brace, a cannula taped to the back of her hand. It’s thin and pale, and her veins are jarring against the skin but it looks no worse than it did last month. He tries not to let his gaze linger on the scarring around the wrist. Her nail polish is chipped, but that’s always been something Esme liked doing for her. 

The nurses showed him how to stretch her bad arm out when she first arrived, and that’s always part of his visit - unstrapping the brace and gently stretching out her arm and massaging her palm. Watching her fingers feebly attempt to uncurl; theoretically, the tendons should have shrunken and tightened so that she’d have to fight to straight them out. But it’s almost like her hand has petrified, she just doesn’t have the strength to flex her hand out. 

She lets out a sound of pain as her manipulates her arm, and he’s fascinated by how cold it is, how pale it is. How the long scratch down the back of her hand never fully healed, how the scar still feels fresh as his fingers slide over it. 

He wonders if Bella knows how lucky she is, that Edward sucked the venom out fast enough. 

Her emotions are the same mangled soup they’ve been for years; sometimes he can offer her some calm, some peace and reassurance, but it’s getting rarer and rarer; the medications they have her on fill most of the gaps, but he hates that it has become regular practice. That there was no other choice. 

His own fault, truly. If he hadn’t… well, it’s one of a least one hundred regrets that he has in regards to Alice. 

He refits the brace, and pulls her sweater sleeve back down and Alice leans back in the chair - a good sign, a confident movement that didn’t involve guidance or support. It really is the little things. 

Before he can ask her what she wants to do today - a book, a magazine, a movie - the nurse bustles through the door with a cheery knock - one of her usual caretakers, Carla - holding the pink and white roses that he brought with him. She’s not allowed candles or incense, and the hospital smell permeates everything, so he tries to pick flowers that smell nice to cover it for her. 

“Jasper! Good to see you,” Carla beams, setting the flowers down. “How have you been?”

“Good. How’s Alice been doing?” It might seem rude but he still finds small talk with humans banal. He’s here for a reason. 

“She’s been doing well this week,” Carla reassures him. “She’s been eating, and taking her medications without any trouble. She’s been sleeping a little more though, so we’re just keeping an eye on this. A few very bad seizures late last month, but they seem to be stabilised now. Her arm seems to have plateaued, but we’re hoping the degradation can be corrected; her physiotherapist has a new program for her, but they’ll email your parents all that information.”

“Did the results come back from the MRI?” 

“They did - the doctor doesn’t see any cause of concern,” Carla is quick to reassure. “There is nothing to worry about, Jasper. I know at the next quarterly meeting, her team are considering speech therapy. Her labs are steady, she’s stable.”

“Thank you,” Jasper says, and Carla smiles and nods at him as she begins to hook up another I.V; they’ve been trying to wean her off of the various I.V. liquids but Alice is nothing if not stubborn, and she’ll be living through another quarter of getting certain meds and supplements through the cannula in her hand. But they got her off the oxygen years ago, so banishing the I.V. is a realistic goal.

Baby steps.

He is grateful that Carla seems to genuinely care about Alice’s wellbeing. Her entire team does; it’s an expensive facility that has the luxury of allowing the staff the time to know their patients. He wouldn’t have allowed her to be placed anywhere else. 

Carla leaves them alone, and Alice’s eyes return to his. She’s calm today, a good baseline, and he smiles at her. He hopes that he really does see the quirk on the right side of her mouth, that she really did try to smile back. 

He settles on a movie today, some latest release that the girls at Forks High have been talking about. 

She makes it through about half before another nurse - Nancy - brings in her lunch; she always getting agitated if he stays through her meals, so he takes his leave. 

“Have a good week, Alice,” he says. “I think Edward’s taking a girl to prom next week, so I’ll bring all the family gossip.”

There’s something incredibly sad about leaving her there with the nurse encouraging her to use her right arm to bring the ‘safe’ foods - bread and carrot sticks, mostly - to her mouth, in a place she hasn’t left in five years.

That there’s really only one way this story ends, and it isn’t with Alice living a long and happy life. 

She looks exhausted, as she fumbles with her food, and he slips away before she catches him watching.  

—

He goes to sign out at the desk, greeting the staff that are used to his visits; few of the patients have such reliable and consistent guests that aren’t mothers. It’s just the nature of their injuries and illness. 

“Jasper, headed home?” Carla is there with a mug of hot coffee. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he scrawls his name into the book, another nurse initially his check-out. “Bit of a drive home, and Nancy brought her lunch.” He’s tried visiting after lunch, so he can stay longer, but she always falls asleep after lunch and, well, she’s at her best in the mornings. 

“She enjoys seeing you, you know,” Carla mused. “She always does well after you visit. She loves seeing your aunt as well - she was disappointed when Mrs Cullen stopped the weekly visits.”

Bella. Esme had wanted to stay closer to home after the incident with James, wanted to help Bella out with her broken leg, and had lessened her weekly visits to monthly ones. He needs to ask Esme to come see her more often, though. Alice needed routine, and it wasn’t like she had anything else in her life.  

“Esme’s been swamped with work,” he manages casually. “I’ll try and get here more often.”

“I know she’d enjoy that, but please don’t worry about her, Jasper. She’s safe and sound here, and she understands that. Just remind your parents that her quarterly team meeting is next month - I know how busy Dr Cullen gets - and I’ve sent an email through on her belongings that need refreshing.”

“I’ll let them know.” Jasper looked back at her closed room door. “See you next week, Carla.”

—

The drive back from the hospice is always the same. The guilt weighs a little more heavily, the futility of the situation feels a little more obvious. 

None of it was her fault. She had just been an odd little freshman who’d taken a shine to him. He’d been the monster, the one leeching all her emotions, fine-tuning the flavour to something he like. He was the one stalking her as she slept, an addict seeking another hit. He didn’t know that he was messing her up.

She’d just been a kid. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

She had cried when he finally broke and bit her and then he’d made her quiet and obedient. When he’d managed to pull away, she’d been glassy eyed and broken in so many ways. And the closest thing to a solution Carlisle had had was to stage a hit-and-run, and then come forward to take custody of her, so he could at least make amends. 

And that’s why once a month, he drove to Seattle to visit her, with flowers and candy and whatever glossy magazine he thought she’d like.

He could frame it anyway he wanted. So could the nurses and doctors. That today was a ‘good’ day because she wasn’t having seizures, she wasn’t struggling or fighting against her care. She wasn’t crying. That her eyes were tracking people across the room, and all those tiny little things that were essentially meaningless in the bigger picture. 

She wasn’t getting better. She couldn’t. What he’d done wasn’t the kind of thing that could be fixed. And one day, sooner rather than later, it’ll be too much. It’ll get the best of her and…

The guilt tastes sour, and he speeds up to distract himself.