Edward POV

“You have to change her!” Alice demanded, as we gathered with the rest of my ‘family’ in the living room of our too extravagant house. I looked over to Carlisle, clenching my fists, but he gave me no reason to doubt Alice.

“I can’t do it. I can’t take her soul.” I gritted my teeth together. It helped against the pain I was feeling. The deep, dark never-ending pain of denial.

“She could recover.” I growled, not even able to say her name as I spoke of the monster taking her from me. The thing in her blood that had destroyed her basic defenses and left her body open to invasion from any type of illness. And she was being claimed by one.

My beautiful Bella was being attacked by an infection in her damaged body that couldn’t fight it. She had been in the hospital intensive care unit, completely unresponsive, for two days now. I was watching her life slip away from her and I couldn’t bring myself to do the one thing that could save it. I couldn’t take her soul. It was perhaps, what I loved most about her.

“Edward,” Carlisle spoke up, and I whipped around to face him. “I’ve seen people with this illness. Even with a bone marrow transplant, (which Bella doesn’t have a match for) the survival rate is very low. Most people don’t live past 5 years.”

I wanted to cover my ears, block out all he was saying. How would he know something like that? He wasn’t Alice. But Alice did know, and I wasn’t listening to her either.

“Edward, you have to save her. You love her, right? You don’t want her to die.” Emmet said with his booming voice.

If only none of them knew her, I thought to myself, clenching my jaw. All of them cared about her too, and I couldn’t make any decisions for myself.

“Besides,” suddenly Rosalie, who I did not include in the category of Cullens who liked Bella, said, distantly. “If she dies then she loses everything but her soul. Then it floats up to Heaven, or whatever the humans believe in, and you both lose each other. Better to keep it going I’d say.” She flashed her fierce eyes at me and I winced.