The Twilight characters are owned by Stephenie Meyer. I'm just borrowing them.

This is an AU
All in Edwards POV
All diseases, government branches and research groups are made up by me. A layman.

Enjoy!

Prologue
August 17th, 2009

It was such a waste of life!

This human girl laying before a room full of doctors, dying before our eyes. A thin, colorless hospital gown her only shroud. The slow, declining beep of the heart monitor her quiet death knoll.

Her life was so short. Only 19-quick years. An innately good person, suffering at the hands of a disease that my medical team didn‘t know enough about.

I watched, with a few other members of Phazers Biomedical Research group, with seemingly clinical eyes as the girl in front of me slowly perished. Her perfect alabaster skin covered in a heavy, glistening sheen, her chest heaving with each hollow breath. She had asked that we remove her I.V when she started respiratory failure. She wanted to be comfortable. A term she had become unfamiliar with during her stay here at New York- Presbyterian.

She had been my life for the past nine months. She would continue to be so, long after her heart stopped beating.

"Her mother isn‘t here to proxy. She’s listed as DNR, Dr. Cullen." Jessica Stanely whispered, adjusting her stethoscope and stepping back from the hospital bed. Of course, I was already aware of the Do Not Resuscitate order. I helped her sign the document.

The room stilled further. There were 14 of us crammed into the hospital suite. All of us having been affected by this human girl. This child. Her smile made our day. Her tears broke our heart and encouraged us to fight harder against the disease wracking her body. She had fought so hard this passed year, but when her desire to stop treatment out weighed her desire to progress further, I helped her fill the necessary paperwork. I could deny her nothing. Even her own demise.

Jacob Black, my lead researcher, was eyeing the defibrillator next to him. *I can't let her do this! We're so close to beating this!*
His thoughts were frantic, relaying his empathy and love for the girl before us. We all loved her. How could we not? The inhabitants of the room held similar thoughts. Despair rolling off my colleagues in droves.

*She fought so hard..*
*It's like, she just gave up.*
*Can't believe she refused to continue treatment! After 9 months!!*
*I could never have gone through all this. She's so brave.*
*This could have been my break. All the work I put in, the hours of marking enzymes...putting together the clinical trials. For NOTHING!*

I glanced to my left. The last thought sent an almost uncontrollable rage through me. James Von Pierre. Deputy Director of Biomedical Research for the Rare Disease Division, Clinician-Scientist, and the bane of my existence, looked coldly upon the girl who lay on the bed in front of us.

"I should revoke her right to DNR! She was barely lucid when she made the decision." James sneered. I wanted to rip him in half. Instead, I walked to the hospital bed and lightly touched the back of the girls hand. "Edward...think of what she's doing to the trial. Think of the lives she could save!" I had heard James' pleas already. All the same. All for the sake of research.

Yet, even without my gift of telepathy, I would have been able to read the underlying reason of his anger; Medical Journals with his name at the bottom. Recognition. Nobel prizes. His was a purely selfish reasoning. Never once considering the suffering of our patient.

"It was, ultimately, her choice." I said softly, my eyes roaming her face. She had been sick for so long. Diagnosed a little under a year-ago, she flew here from Arizona with her mother to undergo replacement enzyme therapy for the wrongly diagnosed adrenal disease that was wracking her frail body. I looked over to her heart monitor, her blood pressure had dropped significantly. It wouldn't be long now. She was breathing shallowly, her eyes lightly closed. I knew she wasn't coherent, yet I wanted nothing more than for her to open her eyes and let me love her with my own. One last time.

"Bella." I whispered, squeezing her hand lightly. I could feel my throat constricting, not for the first time, with emotion and not with the liquid fire I had learned to ignore. Though her blood had slowly been tainted by the spreading disease, her smell was still the sweetest thing I had ever experienced. Would ever experience. Here eyes moved rapidly under her lids, but they never opened.

"Edward." It was a soft sound that no human could hear. My dead heart ached for her. Even on the brink of death, she dreamed of me.

"Leave." I said quietly. The room full of researchers and doctors balked at my command.

"Dr. Cullen....we'd like to stay." Jessica, the lead nurse, looked to Jacob. *She said I was her friend. I want to be here.* Her thoughts were full of the emotion she felt.

"Edward..." Jacob took a step forward. *I can't leave her.* He put his hand on Bella's shin, and though he did so out of respect and love, I wanted nothing more than to rip the offending appendage off at the wrist.

I looked up to the rest of my team, seeing their pain, understanding the agony of losing this girl.

"I suppose there's no reason for us to stay.” James quickly stepped forward. “She didn't donate herself to us..." James grabbed her chart, once more going over her paperwork. *not that a stagnant blood stream will do any good for our research anyway*. I couldn't take it anymore. I had worked along side this man for too long, letting my anger boil under the surface of my marble skin. I moved quickly, if not a bit inhumanly, to stand in front of him. I grabbed his lab coat by the lapels and shoved him back.

"You will leave. Now. You're done here!" I released him and swept my hand around the room, "You're all done here! Fill out your paper work. Make your necessary calls. Wrap up the trials. I don't care." I could feel the growl in my chest resonating outward. My instincts were taking over. A side that I had kept hidden from these humans for much longer than I had ever hoped began to surface. "She no longer needs to be observed." I took an unnecessary breath, trying to calm myself.

"Edwar-"

"GO!" My shout echoed through the room, rattling the IV stand in the corner. Jessica looked down, playing with the hem of her scrub top. I had never raised my voice. Through all the months I worked here, the long hours, the relentless and superfluous trials, I had never shown such emotion. Outwardly.

I knew my team saw something more than a doctor/patient relationship. There was no use hiding it. I had fallen for this girl. My girl, several months before. She was easy to love. Which made it that much more difficult to let her go.

I walked back to the bed and gently took Bella's hand. "Check on the status of her mother. She should still be in transit from Arizona. I know her flight will be arriving shortly." I didn't look up, but could hear the shuffling of feet as the room emptied. I wanted them to leave. To let me have these last moments with the only girl I would ever love. I knew Jacob Black stayed behind, but I couldn’t find the strength to issue another demand for solitude.

"I...know..what..." Jacobs wavering voice didn't cause me to look up. I didn't want to waste a second looking at anything other than Bella's pale cheeks. Her mahogany hair. Her tiny hands. Her poor, dry lips. I couldn't look away now, even if I tried. "….You must save her! I know YOU can!" At his frantic cry, I stopped my hand from brushing a piece of her hair back as Jacob continued. "Please! Save her!"

I saw him standing rigidly from the corner of my eye. Suddenly, a memory came forward. Similar words spoken to my father 80 years ago. A woman, suffering from fever, her red hair pulled away from ivory skin. A small hand clutching a permanently cold and much larger one. Carlisle’s memory. I had seen it in my own mind.

"Jacob."

"Edward...just do it. She can't....can't..." He released her leg and stepped back. I could smell the tears and I could only feel envy for his ability to show the emotion I felt ten-fold. "The world would be flat and colorless without Isabella Swan in it." His whisper watery. With one last longing look, he stepped out the door and closed it behind him.

I knew what he was asking of me. I had spent hours thinking about it. Days. Months! I knew I couldn't survive in a world without her. This frail human had pushed herself into my skin, into my existence. I knew I'd be nothing without her.

I heard the door open quietly. I didn't need to look up to know who it was.

"It wont be long now, son." I moved my hand to turn off her heart monitor. Without humans in the room, I no longer needed the pretense of using a machine to listen to Bella's heart. I would have been able to pick up her unique heart beat in a sea of people.

"I know, Carlise." I love you, Bella. I listened as her heart slowed. I finally, begrudgingly, looked up to the vampire I had called father for over half a century.

“I love her, too, Edward.” He stated simply, walking to stand on the other side of the bed. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, whispering the Lords Prayer.

“As do I, Carlise.” I leaned forward and gently pressed my cold lips to hers, holding the position for only a moment before pulling back . “That’s why I can’t condemn her.”

.....well?