AN: Hello world. Is anyone still out there? I wouldn't blame you if you weren't. Massive apologies for my absence and I hope I can start to make it up to you guys. Thanks for reading this and, if you have come back out of curiosity to see if this is actually a new update or just another long AN, I hope you enjoy this bit of shameless, feel-good, mushy, cliché, Rosalie/Emmett romance. Hopefully, this will be the last time I have to apologise to you. Xoxo

RECAP: We hurried after him as he shouted an apology to his deputy, a huge guy who was instructing someone holding a rifle a few feet away. He rounded the corner and we could see a huge bulky shape covered in a waterproof tarpaulin. Jacob pulled the cover off to reveal a huge red and black dirt bike, which we all climbed onto it slightly precariously. A moment later we were speeding up a dirt track that I hadn't even noticed on my walk down here with my new twin 'frenemies'. (AN – This was a direct quote from last chapter but I wish I hadn't used that word: 'frenemies'. It sounds lame now. I promise I'll never use it again.)

APOV

The instant that giant monstrosity of a dirt bike stopped moving; I was clambering off and jogging towards the infirmary double doors, with Bella hot on my heels. The man who had driven us up, the one that I made a mental note to grill Bella about later, hesitated a moment to turn the keys and take them out of the ignition, as I glanced back, but then he caught up to us and opened the door for the two of us. Quite the gentleman I mused, and then felt immediately terrible for even thinking that whilst Rosalie was hurt.

I charged down the corridor, nearly knocking over another cadet who was coming towards us cradling what looked like a sprained wrist. She winced and cried out in pain, then staggered back to avoid being mown down by Bella and her officer friend.

"I'm so sorry," I shouted, feeling awful for hurting her more than it must have hurt already. Then I was through another door into the single four bed ward of the infirmary. Evidently they didn't have many injuries in this place, so they didn't need so many beds. Either that, I thought with a jolt of fear, or they sent people away to hospital and Rose would not be able to stay with us. We'd only been here a couple of days, for heaven's sake, and I didn't want to spend the summer without her.

"Where is she?" I practically screamed to the lone nurse, who started towards us as soon as we stepped through the door.

"Miss Brandon, would you please desist with the shrieking?" she said sternly and momentarily I was taken aback by her knowing my name, but I quickly recovered and went back to glaring at her impatient. "I don't want to have to make you leave, when Miss Hale asked so nicely that you be brought here, but don't think I won't if you don't calm down."

She made a small gesture with one hand towards the bed nearest the large window to my left, and I turned to see that this bed had an occupant that I hadn't even noticed. Rose was lying back on a pile of pillows and was so pale that it was no wonder I hadn't noticed her lying there. She damn nearly blended in. Well, all except the massive bruise-purple stain covering the front of what looked like an outdoors overall. My throat seized up and my eyes filled with unexpected, and shockingly fast flowing tears. She was bleeding to death, and had been for some time going on the size of the stain, and no one was doing anything to help her.

I didn't know what to do, and my eyes darted around the rest of the room in a crazy attempt to find something, or someone who could do something to help her. I wanted to scream and shout but it was like the air had been ripped from my body and all I could do was clench and unclench my jaw as fear gripped me. A slight movement caught my eye and I noticed yet another person that I hadn't even realised was there until that second. An impossibly large man, who looked vaguely familiar to me, stood framed by the sunlight streaming through the window, casting a huge hulking shadow on the floor next to Rose's bed. He didn't even notice the three of us standing there, staring at Rose, or in my case at him. He only had eyes for Rose and she was equally captivated by him, although her eyes looked weary and not totally focused. They were gazing at each other with an intensity that I would have expected from two people who had known each other for years, and intimately at that, not for what couldn't possibly have been more than a day. I make a note almost automatically to question Rose tonight, after I had talked to Bella about her own man-mountain, and that mundane thought snapped me out of my fog.

Suddenly, as I opened my mouth to say something, Rose turned her head to look at us. It looked like it pained her to move, and I felt another stab of sadness and pain for her. She must have heard me speak before and I had spoken so loudly I wasn't surprised. My inner monologue had seemed to go on for minutes but I couldn't have been more than a few seconds since I had spoken, because the man's head snapped up at the same time, and his eyes locked with mine. I held his gaze pointedly, letting my fear and confusion and overwhelming anger to burn through the air towards him and I refused to break eye contact.

"Alice, Bella. You got here faster than I thought you would," she whispered, and her tone sounded almost guilty, though hoarse and weak. She was blushing when my gaze flicked back to her on the bed, and I couldn't understand how she could act so normal and Rose-like whilst she was, you know… dying!

"Yeah, and I'm not going to let you die," I said insistently, moving to confront the big man as I had been going to before Rose had spoken. "Why are you just standing there? Help her!" Then I watched, not believing what I was seeing, as his lips twisted up in a smile and then he was snorting with laughter, leaving me dumbfounded and more than a little furious. I heard a soft cough from Rose to my left and then she was laughing to, but that stopped as abruptly as it had begun as she choked and shook with pain. I looked from her to him and back, but neither seemed able to speak, Rose gripping the sheets and trying not to cry and the man struggling to stop laughing.

"She is not dying, my dear," the nurse said calmly, and laid a hand reassuringly on my shoulder. "She got hit at close range with a paintball and will have bruises for a couple of weeks, but she'll be back on her feet in no time, now you are both here and I can finally give her this morphine injection." I gaped at her and tried to think of something remotely intelligent to say, but nothing came to mind, so I stayed quiet. Instead I nodded at the nurse, and hurried around to the far side of the bed to take Rosalie's hand gently.

"Oh thank God," Bella mumbled through clenched teeth behind me, and then she did the same of the other side of Rose. An instant later both of us joined hands with each other across the bed, making sure not to lean on her, and Rose relaxed significantly, allowing the nurse to step forward to gently insert a needle into her right forearm and inject the dose of morphine her body needed to recover.

It was an odd phenomenon but ever since we could remember, the three of us linking hands had connected us not just physically but emotionally, allowing us to support each other. When I had broken up with my first boyfriend, when Bella had totalled her first car, when Rosalie had lost her virginity long before she wanted to; our little circle had gotten us through all the hard times and it was something none of us could explain, but neither could we live without it.

"Yeah Alisssss…" Rosalie's words slurred together as she succumbed to the morphine's sedative effects. "It's jusst paint." She said the word paint like a small child, emphasising the 'p' and 't' more than necessary, then she seemed to think of something important and lurched up off the pillow and wrenched her eyes open as much as she could.

"Emmett? Where'd he go? Emmett?" she called worriedly, as if half expecting him to have left, but in seconds the big man that must be Emmett had pushed himself away from where he had been leaning against the window and had hurried over to crouch beside her so she could see that he was still there.

"It's okay, I'm here Rosalie," he murmured softly, seeming to forget it that moment that the rest of us were even there, and then a quizzical look passed across his features. "Hey, how'd you know my name?" he asked.

"Doesn't matter," she said, still managing to smile coyly at him despite being nearly out of things by now. "Please don't leave me?" she asked weakly as her eyelids started to droop and Bella helped her lie back down with a tentative hand on the shoulder.

"Nonsense, Miss Hale," the nurse, who I could now see had Matron Cope written on her uniform, said kindly as she shuffled some papers by the foot of the bed. "Lieutenant Colonel McCarty has other things he needs to attend to, but you can get back to training under his command in less than a week if you heal up well."

"That's quite alright Matron," Emmett shook his head, not once taking his eyes from Rosalie, who was valiantly fighting to keep her own eyes open and focused on his face. They were so cute together, and once Rose was better I really was going to make her dish the dirt. His next words confirmed my thoughts and I almost sighed at how adorable the whole situation was, without the getting hit with a paintball part of course.

"As long as it is not a problem with you Matron, I'd be happy to stay with Rosalie until she wakes up."

"Suit yourself," she said, sounding like it didn't matter to her either way. It probably didn't and, whilst to me it was hopelessly romantic and I couldn't wait to find out everything that had happened between them, she had no reason to think anything untoward of his words. She bustled out in the hall that we had come from less than ten minutes ago and came back quickly with a straight backed, hard-looking wooden chair. 'Emmett' took it from her with a polite smile and a nod and sat himself down beside Rose's bed, close enough that he could reach out and rest the tips of his fingers on top of one of her hands that lay protectively over her bruised stomach as she slipped into a hopefully painless sleep. She sighed at the contact and turned her head almost imperceptibly towards him. He must have noticed this too because he grinned happily, before trying to cover it up as he looked up to see me watching them intently.

I winked cheekily at him as he blushed like Rose had earlier, then took that as my cue to leave and headed to the door, then back down the hall that lead out of the infirmary building. I could hear, rather than see Bella follow me and could only assume that our team leader/boss man, whatever the hell his name was, had come with us too. He hadn't said a word or moved away from the doorway since we had entered the room so it went to reason he would leave when we did.

The next thing I knew, Bella had slipped her hand into mine and I looked back to see a mischievous grin plastered on her face. I giggled in response and my face must have mirrored hers because soon she was giggling too.

"That was easily…" I said, and she finished my thought for me, as if she could read my mind.

"The cutest thing I have ever seen in my life." Then we both burst into hysterical laughed as we burst out of the double doors and headed back to the dirt bike and the rest of our day's training.

Because I was looking back at Bella, and laughing so hard my cheeks hurt, I didn't notice the person walking towards me until I walked straight into his chest…

AN:

Hope some of you can get back into this, and will continue to read because I have so many great ideas to put into this story. More chapters soon… hopefully. Again, I'm so sorry for being MIA for so long.

Charlotte-xoxo

PS. Cliff-hanger! Whoop!