Bella is in a lot of pain. Yes, we're picking things up just as her body begins to react to all the Edward venom coursing through her body, attempting to keep her alive long enough to turn her into a sparklepire. Bella's body is trying to protect her from the agony, but nonetheless, it feels like she's being tortured in a dozen different ways all at once. That's not actually happening, which is a slight disappointment to me as a reader, but what she's going through is bad enough to give us at least a little satisfaction.
It's understandably confusing to be Bella right now. If we back up a few minutes to when she was giving birth: she knows something is wrong with the little baby boy who is totally a boy inside of her, and she slips constantly between numbness and excruciating pain. Bella is kind enough to take us through the same birth we've just seen from Jacob's perspective, only this time, instead of Jacob telling us that Bella looks like she's in tons of pain, Bella tells us that she actually is in tons of pain! It's a whole new angle!
Skipping past all the repetitive stuff, Bella talks about how she wouldn't have been able to struggle very long for herself...but for Edward, and for Jacob, and for Renesmee, she can do anything! Sure, it's really their faults that she's in this mess in the first place, but if they got her into it, they can get her out.
Bella feels some new heat heading into her heart. Oh, that must be the sparkle venom! It gets hotter and hotter, until it's much too hot. Then it gets even hotter than that. And there's nothing she can do about it, since the heat is coming from inside of her. So, umm, ouch? This is going to suck for Bella.
Yeah, now she wishes she had just gone and died. Every other pain she's ever felt in her life is nothing compared to all the venom going through her body. Becoming a vampire isn't quite as fun as you imagined now, is it Bella?
What really confuses her for a moment, though, is why she can't scream and thrash about like her instincts are telling her to. And a moment later, she realizes the answer: it's the morphine. It seems like an understandable mistake; Carlisle and Edward were hoping that by getting enough morphine in her quick enough, it would dull the pain of the venom. But instead, it's just making Bella paralyzed in her horrific pain.
But wait a second...Bella points out that she more or less knew this would happen! They gave her morphine after James bit her in the first movie, and she knew that it hadn't helped at all. And instead of giving her vampire doctor this very, very important information, she decided to keep it to herself so that Edward wouldn't stop her from becoming a sparklepire. You know, Bella, I don't think the relative amount of pain you're going to feel for a few days is really what was driving Edward to keep you human for as long as possible. Use your brain!
Besides, it's important to point out a few obvious logic issue here: Bella has no idea if the morphine is helping or not. It might be making things more bearable than she realizes. Maybe without the morphine, it would be ten times worse, and she'd be killing herself by contorting her near-dead body because of the pain before the venom could kick in. Do we have a control Bella somewhere who tried this without painkillers? These are the things I wonder about.
Bella wants to die. How do I know this? well, this is a line from this chapter:
Let me die, let me die, let me die.So, yeah, I think she's less than happy with the process so far. But then things change! The venom repairs Bella enough so that she can feel her lower body, so that hurts too. Awesome.
After a while, things start "improving," in so much as that she can begin to feel the ability to move again as the morphine begins to wear off. Of course, now she can feel the pain event more that before too (hah, told you Bella!), but at least she can sort of think about the agony a little more clearly now. Still, she doesn't want to scream, because it might upset Edward. Sigh.
Eventually, she gets control over her body...but does nothing with it, since she doesn't want anyone to worry about her. Then she can start hearing, and she can hear her heart beat, which gives her time to count. She can hear people asking questions that she refuses to answer, because she knows she'll start screaming, and she certainly can't do that. I mean, they all know she's being tormented anyway, but if she screams, then...umm, something. I don't know. I guess, to be fair, that it's hard to stay rational when your body is being absorbed by vampire venom.
She pretends to stay paralyzed even when people touch her. She can hear Edward berating himself; since Bella isn't moving, he thinks something must be wrong. But Bella's heart is doing so well that Carlisle is sure he did everything right. Of course her heart is bouncing along at a record pace -- Bella is going to be the most perfect sparklepire ever, and don't you forget it!
Bella continues hearing conversations, now about some sort of crazy situation that could lead to bloodshed. Oh, Bella, when you wake up and see that your best friend is in love with your baby, that's going to be awesome.
Alice comes into the room a bit later. She's sure it's almost over, because she's starting to see Bella clearly again. She can see humans and vampires, but not in-between, so Bella must be almost up to 100% sparkle!
Bella already has super-hearing at this point, and can listen to the Mariners play on the TV downstairs. Why she wants to endure even more pain this way, I don't know.
A little later, the pain begins to fade slightly from her extremities. Unfortunately for Bella, at the same time, it gets worse in her heart, and she starts to feel really, really thirsty in her throat. Oh yay, she's almost ready to eat some people! As the pain starts moving from her arms and legs directly into her chest, her heart starts beating even faster. She realizes that her heart is her last human organ, and the venom is moving to finish it off. Go venom, go!
Bella's heart stops. But alas, she's not dead. No, she's now pain free and more alive than ever. Well, technically, more undead than ever...but you know what I mean. In our next installment, Bella adjusts to her new life as a sparklepire. Here's a spoiler: it goes well for her.
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