#Vampires at work

[jessicanjpa]

I wonder how many patients Carlisle has lost knowing he could have saved them, if only nobody had been watching. I wonder how many times he's spoken to grieving families and lied through his teeth when he said he'd "done everything he could."

... and I wonder how each of those losses has burned him.

[gisellelx]

Headcanon: To keep the secret, Carlisle makes tiny mistakes in things like sutures and doesn’t do them to the inhuman level of detail he’s truly capable of.

As a result, Bella is the only human to have ever experienced being fully treated by Carlisle. Even before she was a vampire, her scar from falling into the plates at her party was virtually invisible to the naked eye.

[daydreamycrustacean]

Loved by god

[liorlen]

gale origin playthru from astarion’s pov or smth like that

[cass-a-rollie]

a witch and her vampire 🩸

[owlyjules]

Second doodle from yesterday! A Jester Vampire! They will at least make you laugh a lot before meal time!;)

[mollyjames]

Taste The Red (Weekly Sketch Poll Winner)

[transthatfag]

give them blood blood gallons of the stuff :)

[horreurscopes]

ELEKTRA: I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth.

(prints)(process video & high res)

[sheisraging]

*incoherent screaming*

[cuntylestat]

Kill me again. Show me the only way you know how to love.

[jessicanjpa]

Still thinking about which patients Carlisle has lost and can never forget...

----------------------------------

first

Edward is exasperating Carlisle (as usual) by putting him on a pedestal (as usual). An excerpt from this chapter of 1950, Edward POV. (They're talking about Carlisle's self-control as a newborn.)

"Son, what do you think would have happened if that herd of deer hadn't come when it did? You know I was near the breaking point. What if it had been a human family, instead? With children?"

I winced, unable to imagine it. "You would have fed."

"Yes, I would have. And I don't think I ever would have recovered from that; it would have destroyed me. I can easily see how that desolation would have led to a future similar to the one Alice saw you create."

"But it didn't."

"No, but that was the path I was on. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge that you and I wrestle with the same challenges... the same monster, as you call it. Of course I'm pleased you have found some inspiration because of my own life, but please, Edward, don't put me on a pedestal. I've had centuries to work on my self-control, and it's been just as real a struggle as your own." He paused. I'm going to show you something.

His mind blurred backward through time, past the memory he had recently showed of him struggling briefly with his thirst as he stitched up the girl's arm. Now he was standing in the shadows, trembling with desire as he watched a barber extract a tooth with bloodied hands. Another blur, and he was crouching down in the bushes beside a thatched house that held a woman screaming in labor. Now he was standing frozen in the midst of a crowd, oblivious to the shouts going on around him as he stared, watching two boxers beat each other bloody. Now he was kneeling over the body of a soldier who had just been killed, leaning his face close to the wound and taking deep, painful breaths. I saw that last image repeated dozens of times. I knew I would need to desensitize myself to an extreme degree if I had any hope of practicing medicine. Of course there was no such thing as stored blood back then. I had to go and find it, freshly flowing. I went wherever I thought I might find someone bleeding: saloons, sickrooms, battlefields… I put a lot of people in danger, Edward. I don't know if it was the right thing to do.

"I always thought… why haven't you ever showed me these things before?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't want to give you any ideas."

I nodded sheepishly, watching in fascination as he showed me more of these memories. He really had come close to losing it, several times.

"But the worst time wasn't my doing at all," he said. Now I saw the stone walls of Volterra in his memory.

I grimaced. "Feeding time?"

"No. I was always careful to absent myself during that particular ritual. I was studying in the smaller library one day when I suddenly caught the scent of fresh blood out in the hall. A human man was screaming. I assumed it was just someone having a meal. But the door was thrown open…"

He trailed off, letting the memories speak for themselves. The door opened to reveal Aro standing there, a dripping knife in one hand and a thrashing human in the other. He smiled at Carlisle, tossed the human inside, and shut the door. Carlisle flew backwards away from the man, holding his hand over his nose and mouth.

"The man pleaded for help," Carlisle recalled bitterly. "And I knew enough, from the little training I had already had, to try and save him. But I couldn't touch him. I couldn't even do him the kindness of easing his passing. There was just too much blood, and it was so unexpected, and I was untried… I just couldn't. I was sure that if I moved an inch, toward him or toward the door, my body would betray me. I would feed.

"So I just stood there. I watched him bleed to death on the floor." It was awful. I couldn't even speak one word of comfort to him; I was too afraid to uncover my nose and mouth. He died with his hand stretched out toward me, still hoping I would do something to save him. The accusation in his eyes was terrible.

It took Carlisle a moment to come back to the present. "He was, in a way, my first patient... the first patient I ever lost. And I can never forget his face."

[gisellelx]

Twilight Advent, Day 6

Masterpost/prompts

Dec. 6 - Which modern medical treatment is Carlisle especially thankful for?

"And Then Run"

(~1,000 words)

It was an incredible machine, he had to admit.

Medicine seemed to be changing faster than either of them could manage to keep up with these days. It had been over a decade since Edward had gone to medical school for the first time; mostly to get out of the now too-full house after the newness of his zany, tiny, prophetic sister and her taciturn husband had worn off. He had learned there about cardiopulmonary bypass; had the experience of watching one safely from the gallery. Even if he had still been human, he could imagine that the rhythm of the metallic clacking of drum against metal would be a sound he would remember forever; alongside it the gentle whir of the fluid that was supposed to be the one thing he could never resist and yet which became simple to ignore as he engrossed himself in his own fascination with the way it spun around. Edward had come to the hospital the way he often did, a question on his mind he didn't want anyone else in the family to overhear. Carlisle, who'd scented him from across the floor, had called him to his side. And so they were both standing here now, before this machine which was an order of magnitude more terrifying and more fascinating than any bypass Edward had ever seen before. The boy—the paperwork on the end of the isolette said he was a boy—before them would've fit in Edward's palms. A balled up fist, too tiny to fit around Edward's thumb, rested near his head, immobilized so as not to interfere with the grotesque maze of tubes protruding from the tiny mouth and the cannulas beneath the skin next to a sternum which was mere inches long. Carlisle, as one of the hospital's cardiothoracic attendings, had come here to take notes, but according to the memories at the tip of his thinking, he had been standing here for a good fifteen minutes. Watching. Thinking. About...something he wasn't quite willing to make clear. As his father danced the delicate dance of trying to think in a way that shut Edward out, the strain of that plus whatever he was thinking about was enough that he balled his fist. "Carlisle? What's bothering you?"

The anger and frustration in his father's thoughts made little sense. The infant—born almost three days ago now, according to the tag—was improving hour over hour.

And then suddenly there was a sound Edward had heard only a few times in his life. The sharp intake of breath; a second, ragged inhalation through the nose. Carlisle's hand covering his mouth as his eyes squeezed closed against tears his body would never produce.

Yet somehow he was still managing to evade Edward's gift, the reason for this outburst just out of reach. Not knowing any other way to get the information he needed, Edward went for the hardest punch:

"Dad?" A gulp and then Carlisle met his eyes. The extra thoughts—charting details, mostly—fell away as though they were a shattering pane of glass and at once, the core thought was clear. The diagnosis, at the top of the chart. The sadness of the family, the shock of their baby being wheeled away, but then this miracle machine, attached quickly but carefully, and suddenly numbers going in all the right directions: Sats, up. Heart rate, up. Capillary refill, almost normal. He understood at once. Moving closer to his father, so that their hips were almost touching, Edward stared down again, hard, at the baby underneath the spaghetti mass of medical tubes.

Pulmonary hypoplasia, secondary to diaphragmatic hernia. The diagnosis Carlisle had made, decades later, piecing together details of a handwritten medical chart with what little his wife had told him. Congenital. A birth defect. Not anything she had done. Not what her husband had done to her. Just a fluke of nature, a bad spin of the roulette wheel that was forty-six haploid chromosomes slamming together.

"This machine would have saved him," Edward whispered, and his father nodded slowly. And then he flashed in both their minds. Edward, who knew what the boy's father had looked like, imagining that man, but softened by the more gentle curves of his mother's face; her lighter hair; her smile. In Carlisle's mind, he had always looked very much like Esme, and sometimes, selfishly, a little bit like Carlisle, too. He was a young man, to both of them—broad shoulders, tall, strong.

"Sixty years," Carlisle finally said. "If she had been born just sixty years later...we could have...I could have..." The fist had returned. "But you wouldn't have her," Edward whispered.

For a moment, there was no answer, aloud or in thought, as Carlisle regarded the infant. The machine whirred and beeped, the artificial respirator thudded open, whooshed, and then closed again.

"No," his father said thoughtfully. And Edward could feel that pain; the aching, stretching sadness that rolled over the thoughts as a life was imagined: just the two of them, missing the caramel-haired woman with her smile, her laughter, and her love. There was another gulp, and Carlisle took a step closer to the isolette, and placed a hand on the top of the baby's head. It startled, likely at the coolness of the touch, the tiny fists clenching and the arms seizing inward. "But she would have him." Then Carlisle removed his hand, stepped away, picked up the chart, and made a few notes before beckoning Edward back downstairs. ~||x||~

Historical note: Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), an extension of surgical cardiopulmonary bypass, was first used the 1970s on a non-surgical patient. While first used on adults, it quickly began to be used to buy the time neonates needed to recover from respiratory failure. By the mid 1980s, the survival rate for neonatal ECMO treatment of respiratory failure was between 70-90%. Montage Masterpost

[ao3commentoftheday]

In case you were looking for permission (or an excuse) to talk about the things you've made.

[hermit-frog]

[ameliathornromance]

A part of you was unsure how your Orc Boyfriend would react. As you pruned the bouquet of flowers in your hands, you were starting to regret your idea. It was only a few paces from the camp now, surely you could just turn back around and throw it away, right?

Flowers were something that women received typically. Maybe he would think you were insinuating something about him, or that maybe he was weaker than you thought he was-

“Love! You’re back!”

Too late for take backs now. Hiding the bouquet behind your back, you watched as your Orc Boyfriend dropped a wood chopping axe and rushed over to you. “How was your walk? Did you get what you needed?”

You weren’t sure why you thought you could hide the flowers from him. He was at least two or three feet taller than you.

He peered over your shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “What’re those for? You’ve never brought flowers back before.”

Well, now or never, you thought. Meekly, you pulled them out from behind your back and held them out to him.

Your Orc stared at you for a minute, looking you up and down in confusion. “I… Um…” Where did you even begin with this? You must look insane.

Sighing, you lowered the bouquet and looked down at the different blooms. “When humans really like each other, sometimes they give flowers. So, I picked some flowers for you.”

There was silence for a moment and you felt your face burning. You knew it, this was a stupid idea.

“You picked these… for me?” His green hand came into view, wrapping around your interlocked fingers.

You nodded, still not looking at him.

Before you could stop him, he had snatched up the bouquet and held it high above his head. He bellowed to his others in the camp: “Look here! My lovely lady brought me flowers! What have you suckers got?!”

Orcs from their various work stations looked up, growled, snarled and swatted their hands at your Orc, “get stuffed you lug!”

Your jaw hung open at your Orc's audacity, before he looked back down at you and gave you the widest grin. “I didn’t know humans did such a thing,” he admired the flowers in his hand, seemingly as big as daisies in his huge hand. “You picked these yourself?”

“Wait, you like them?”

“Why wouldn’t I like them love?” Your Orc kissed you on the forehead. “You went out of your way to get them for me.”

“It’s just… I thought… Human men don’t normally get flowers, so I thought that…”

Your Orc let out a bark of laughter, “but I’m not human, am I love?” He pulled you into his arms and squeezed you tightly. His arms were the most reassuring and calming thing at that moment.

Hugging him back, you realised that there had been nothing to be afraid of. How could you have assumed that he would have been insulted by your gift?

“Anything from you is something to be treasured.” He mumbled to you, giving you another kiss on your lips.

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