Blood Moon [a Twilight Saga FanFiction]

Cranial Race

THE SICK GIRL IN THE BATHROOM WAS LAUREN PEDDING, a Freshmen whose mother, Michelle Pedding, came to pick her up from down the road at Forks Elementary School. Mrs Peddings welcomed me to Forks before ushering her daughter out with sick bags.
     "That girl is always sick," Shelley Cope said standing at the window and watching them drive away. "I wonder if she doesn't like her classes after lunch, I should talk to her teachers..."
     I toned out Shelley's talk, only because I knew the real reason why Laura Pedding was 'always sick'. Something I didn't mention because there was no way I'd have known without my gift. I made a note to keep an eye on the young lady and try to talk to her when I could. Maybe even get her to talk to my favourite psychiatrist if he'd take her.
     Even if Igor was only pretending to be a student here, he could still help her. Bulimia was a serious problem.
     I returned to my infirmary and got cleaning after Laura's visit. I was disinfecting the cot when the bell to end lunch rang and the final hours of the school day went on. I came out and joined Shelley in her office and she kept talking. For an older woman, she sure did gossip a lot.
     She let me in on some of the juice Fork High staff gossips, like how Coach Clapp was sneaking away to make out with Ian Walter, the janitor... even though Coach Clapp was married with children. So the gym teacher was a closet homosexual? or bisexual? I rolled my eyes at Shelley's gossip, how humans made love was so complicated to me. Love is love is love.
     Even though I was only half paying attention, I heard when Shelley stopped babbling. I looked at her and she was looking at something in her lap. A folder, her breath was softer. Her heart steady...
     "Shelley? Are you okay?" I asked.
     She didn't respond.
     "Shelley?"
     I approached her and rested a hand on her shoulder, just as her phone rang, making her jump under me and hurriedly get the phone.
     "Thank you for calling Forks H-"

     "Shell' it's Jack," a voice on the other side said. I could hear chaos ensuing in the background. "I've got a couple of boys heading the way for the new nurse. Give her a heads up, it's a bloody one."
     Jack... Coach Clapp. I managed to catch a little of what was happening with the students in the background of the call. Someone had been hit in the head. Hard.
    I looked out the window and as two boys came around the corner into sight from the gymnasium. Jack had been right, there was a lot of blood from one boy's head and that worried me.
     "That was Coach Capp, apparently you've got a new... what are you looking at?" Shelley asked.
    She got up and stood beside me.
    "Oh my God!" she gasped when she saw them. "I'm calling an ambulance right away!"
     I nodded and began running out to help carry the boy. I heard Shelley call for Harold Green for his help while she was on the phone.
     "Who... who are you?" the young man carrying his classmate asked. His face flushed, covered in sweat. I heard his already racing heart go that little bit harder and faster when he caught sight of me.
     "My name is Eliza Fraser, I'm the new school nurse. What happened here?"
     They were playing baseball. The boy carrying the wounded, Jacob Myer, had let go of the bat at the wrong time as his classmate, Liam Attier was taking off his helmet. Liam had got hit in the head, hard.
     "I wondered when old Juls was getting replaced. Damn, ma'am, you are really-"
     "What happened to your friend?" I asked again, slightly more stern than last time.
     I knew I'd have to be to get anything out of a teenage boy who had just seen probably the most beautiful thing he'd seen since... well since Rosalie went to school here probably. Though he wouldn't have been Rosalie's classmate. Too young. However, from his past, I could see that Jacob had seen Rosalie in passing and was already thinking I was more beautiful than her. She wouldn't like that at all.
     "Right! He got hit in the head with my bat. We're playing baseball and..."
     "What's his name?"
     "Liam, his name is Liam Attier."
     "Liam. Liam, my name is Elisa Fraser, I'm the new school nurse. Can you lift your head for me? Hold your head up?"
     He groaned heavily but slowly his head tilted upward.
     That was when Harold finally joined us.
     "I've got him! I've got him!"
     Harold scooped and picked up the child in his arms, carrying him.
     "Get the door," I told the other student who ran ahead to do what I asked.
     I pulled out some gauze I conveniently had put in my pocket during my cleaning and held it to his head.
     "Liam, I need you to open your eyes. Get him on a cot," I said.
     As Harold put the boy on a cot, with a grunt. Liam was suddenly very sick, thankfully he still had the mind to roll and hit the unsavoury green wall and not his school principal.
    Heavy head bleeding, vomiting...
    "Thank you, I'll take it from here," I said to Harold and Jacob.
    "Will he be okay?" Jacob asked.
     "Get him out, Harry," I ordered and rested kept my hand on the gauze until Liam was finished being sick. "Liam, can you look at me?"
    He managed to open his eyes, his left eye, opened considerably less than the other.
     "I... d-d... feel..."
     "I imagine you wouldn't," I said knowing what he was struggling to say.
     Vomiting, nausea, one side of his face was weak, though that could have just been the trauma.
     Then I finally let myself breathe.
     I had only ever smelt a bleeding brain once before that moment. There was the regular human scent, that thankfully no longer burnt my throat drying craving for it, but there was also a jelly-like wetness smell to it as well. No other sort of bleed I had come across had that sort of smell to it.
      "Liam," I picked up his hands and held my palms to his, he was struggling to hold his head up. "I need you to push on my hands as strongly as you can, okay? Push."
     "Am I..."
     "Just push, honey. It'll be okay."
     I felt the force, the effort he began putting behind it... The left side was very weak in comparison. Dropping eye, weakness of the limb...
     I turned to quickly grab my little flashlight and turned back to him.
     "Keep your eyes on me, Liam. Look at my finger I'm going to shine a light in your eyes, it'll be irritating but I need you to keep looking at my finger in front of me, okay?"
     His pupils didn't react to the light.
     Physical symptoms were telling me what his scent already had me know. Liam Attier had a bleed in his brain.
     Then someone worse happened, his heart stumbled and a smell I hadn't smelt since I stopped working with adults filled the room with his jelly-wetness brain bleed scent. This one was bitter, an unwanted change inside Liam Attier that terrified me for this child's life.
     I kept an eye on Liam, as his eyes began to flutter.
     "My... h-h... it..."
     His head hurt...
     "Shelley!" I called out as I rolled Liam on his side as his whole body began to convulse. "How far away are they?" I heard her scurrying around the desk, she wasn't on the phone anymore so they couldn't be far.
     What sort of emergency service hung up before the required services arrived? I'd have to have a word about that. Whether it was in Port Angeles, here in Forks, or in Seattle, I'd have to find a way to have a word about that. The paramedics weren't going to know about Liam's condition until they got there. And with no forewarning, that could have been dangerous.
     She burst through the door and screamed, her skin paling and turning a soft green.
     "How far away are they?"
     In answer to my own question, I could hear the sirens now. So not far at all.
     "Hope... hopefully not much longer," Shelley said. "Should... should I call his parents?"
     She hadn't already? "You look like you need to sit down. I'll call his family when the paramedics get here and take him away. You look as if you're about to pass out."
     She was still staring at a seizing Liam, in the doorway.
     "Shelley, get out or get in! Either way close that door!"
     She stumbled backwards, closing the door behind her. I heard her stumbling back to her desk and as she sat, Liam stopped shaking. I heard the familiar rumble and bubbling deep inside Liam's gut so, while still holding him to his side, grabbed a sickbag from inside the drawer beside the cot, and held it under his face while he was sick again.
     "That's it, Mr Attier," I said softly and rubbed gentle circles on his back. "Let it all out."
     Even his vomit smelt of blood and brain bleed.
     The paramedics arrived in a minute after I heard the sirens, thankfully Shelley was a fast recovery and was able to meet them at the door.
     "Liam Attier. Hit in the head with a bat during gym class. Our new nurse, Eliza Fraser is with him..." Shelley told them as they approached. Three of them.
     Three?
     They opened the door and I looked at them over my shoulder.
     "Cullen?" The younger man asked. I saw from his uniform he was a student paramedic, his eyes going straight to me.
     "Don't bring up that name, Mike," Shelley hissed at him. "We already have."
     I focused on the two older paramedics, now approaching us.
     "What do we have?" The older female asked, Judy, a slightly bigger, stockier build woman with dark skin. She actually looked as if she could have been part of the local wolf tribe if not her past telling me that she had moved from further North when she was a child.
     "Severe head trauma, I've been unable to get a set of obs but he needs to get to the hospital right away."
     "Pity Doctor Cullen disappeared," the other, James, muttered under his breath, to Judy. "He'd be perfect for this."
     "You're obsessed with him, I swear," Judy laughed at her coworker.
     "Excuse me," I grumbled. "He's been sick twice, seized for a minute and has a great amount of weakness in the left side of his body. If I'm not mistaken he probably has some sort of cranial bleed and needs to get to Hospital stat, so if you two are done joking around and gossiping you can get around to saving this boys life!"
     "Right away, miss," James stuttered. "Judy, Mike, go get the gurney."
     The other two ran out in a hurry but I heard them.
     "I know you never worked with him, but far out she reminds me of Carlisle," Judy whispered.
     "Hold him, I'll get his vitals while they're doing that," I said to James. "Keep him on his side," I snapped when I could hear him starting to roll Liam over. "He's just seized and been sick? I don't want him choking on anything."
     While my back was turned to James, I was able to quickly put on gloves and get the machine ready. At a rushed human pace, I attached him up to the machine and got it going to read his blood pressure and pulse... even though I already knew his pulse was low, BP was low. Respiratory rate, deep, soft, at a slightly slower rate. All things a human wouldn't know without machines help.
     Liam didn't even react to the cuff on his arm inflating. His only reaction was his brows twitching.
     While the cuff inflated, I rechecked his head while James continued to hold him. I checked around where he was hit with the bat for anything unusual.
     "Are you related to a Carlisle Cullen?" James suddenly asked me. "You look like him."
     I found what I was looking for.
     "His skull is shattered," and that was no longer my top priority as his heart faltered. "Lay him on his back."
     "You said just now that-"
     "Lay him on his back!"
     He did and perfect timing. Liam fell unconscious.
     "Liam? Open your eyes, mate. Liam?" I did the test I had seen and heard many nurses complete over my years. Open your eyes. Squeeze my hand. The usuals. I believed someone in Nanaimo had called it the COWS step of CPR.
     "Same medical intuition as Cullen as well," Jacob muttered under his breath as he pulled the defib out of the cupboard at the end of the bed. I didn't check his past to know how he knew where it was. I didn't want to know how many kids had experienced medical emergencies there. "Wonder if that means..."
     I had to hike up the skirt of my dress a little to get on top of the cot to begin compressions. During cleaning, I had already discovered that the cot did not raise and lower.
     "Careful now, babe, I'm getting his shirt off."
    "Don't call me that," I hissed and kept compressing while Jacob cut the collar of Liam's shirt and watched him closely as he put the scissors down then firmly grasped the shirt.
     "Ready? Now!"
     I quickly removed my hands from Liam's chest, with enough time for Jacob to tear Liam's shirt in half. Then I was able to get back to compression.
     When Jacob began to apply the patches of the defib, Judy and Mike finally got back with the gurney. Mike cussed and Judy ran up to me.
     "Mike, take over for her!" James ordered and Mike rushed over. Without missing a beat, which was great import, I stopped, jumped off the cot and Mike began.
     "Tell me everything you can," Judy said, as she closed the door behind the gurney.