Chapter 7: Unexpected

What this chapter should be called: Totally and completely expected
Fucks I give: 2

Well, I went in to this chapter expecting Bella to find out she got knocked up. What I didn’t expect was the amount of bad writing I’d have to endure in order to get to that point. We start out with Bella having one of her nightmares. The Volturi are advancing upon her, and she needs to protect the little kid, blah blah blah. She then wakes with a start.

 

“I jolted upright, shocked out of the dream. The room was black. It was also steamy hot. Sweat matted my hair at the temples and rolled down my throat. I groped the warm sheets and found them empty.”

 

Edward has ventured off to the mainland to slaughter some tasty jungle critters, but don’t worry, he’ll be back later. Bella decides that nightmares are scary and it’s too hot to sleep, so she better go and make some fried chicken. That totally makes sense. When I feel hot, the first thing I want to do is stand over a sizzling frying pan, splattering my arms with grease and then chowing down on some piping hot fatty poultry at 4 AM. (+1 Stupidity)

Whatever. She fries up some chicken and takes a couple bites, but it tastes off, so she throws it all away. She then decides to settle back down for a nice 1 AM nap, conclusively ending five totally pointless paragraphs.

 

“When I opened my eyes again, the sun was halfway up the sky, but it was not the light that woke me. Cool arms were around me, pulling me against him. At the same time, a sudden pain twisted in my stomach, almost like the aftershock of catching a punch in the gut.”

 

Bella wakes up with Edward wrapped around her, and then rushes to the bathroom and throws up.(I would do that too if I woke up with anything that vaguely resembled Sparklepeen touching me.) Damn. How is she already morning-sick? At the very most, she should be like, two weeks pregnant. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it works like that. (+1 Stupidity) Edward holds her hair back while she hurls. Afterwards, she assures him that it was probably just food poisoning. Sure, Bella. Whatever you say.

 

“He put on CNN—we’d been so out of touch, world war three could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known—and I lounged drowsily across his lap. I got bored with the news and twisted around to kiss him. Just like this morning, a sharp pain hit my stomach when I moved. I lurched away from him, my hand tight over my mouth. I knew I’d never make it to the bathroom this time, so I ran to the kitchen sink.”

 

They watch tv for a bit and then Bella upchucks again. She reassures Edward that it’s still probably just food poisoning remnants, and then goes to take some medicine and brush her teeth. She rummages around in her suitcase, looking for some Pepto, when she stumbles upon a tampon case.

 

“I picked up the small blue box and stared at it in my hand for a long moment, forgetting everything else. Then I started counting in my head. Once. Twice. Again. The knock startled me; the little box fell back into the suitcase.”

 

This touching, dramatic scene works best if you’re listening to a certain Sara McLachlan number. You know, the one they use in the commercials with the sad animals.

Bella sits on the floor and counts, trying to figure out why she’s five days late for her period because she apparently slept through high school health class. (+1 Stupidity) This next part is sort of hilarious.

 

“No, Edward. I’m trying to tell you that my period  is five days late.” His facial expression didn’t change. It was like I hadn’t spoken.“I don’t think I have food poisoning,” I added. He didn’t respond. He had turned into a sculpture. “The dreams,” I mumbled to myself in a flat voice. “Sleeping so much. The crying. All that food. Oh. Oh. Oh.”

 

Edward just freezes. Seriously. He just sits there like a mannequin while Bella deduces that she must be pregnant, because frequent physical activity and high-stress events don’t mess up a woman’s cycle at all. (+1 Stupidity) After Bella is confident that the lack of her period makes her pregnant, she realizes that she’s been very stereotypically irrational and hormonal, she really must be pregnant. (+1 Stupidity)

Now, I think it’s time to discuss vampire pregnancies. (Don’t laugh.) This is how I currently understand things:

1. When a human is turned into a vampire, then they cannot physically change. They can’t change their horrible hairstyle or ever get fatter or taller. (Question: if you were fat when you got bitten, would you still be fat when you were a vampire?) They cannot get that Mickey Mouse tattoo on their shoulder. Female vampires can’t pop out babies because their bodies can’t change to accommodate a fetus, which is one bit of Twilight mythos that actually makes sense. (+1 Redemption)

2. Vampires are dead. They have no bodily fluids like snot, blood, and spit. By the same logic, they have no semen. They have no heartbeats. They don’t sleep. They’re hard and cold to the touch. Vampires are essentially talking granite countertops.

There are also two things I know about reproduction:

1. You cannot get pregnant from kissing.
2. You certainly cannot get pregnant from granite countertops.

Like a fifth nipple, Bella’s pregnancy defies all logic. (+3 Stupidity)

Bella yanks up her shirt to find that she already has an itty-bitty baby bump. Not bad for being two weeks pregnant. I guess vampire fetuses develop really quickly? Bella thinks about the human reproductive system and decides that Eddie must not have been shooting blanks.

 

“Impossible,” I said again, because, bulge or no bulge, period or no period (and there was definitely no period, though I’d never been late a day in my life), there was no way I could be pregnant.”

 

Okay. Alright. Can we just pause for a minute? There are quite a few things that aren’t making any sense to me here, the first of which is how Edward managed to impregnate Bella in the first place. I already mentioned it, but I’ll say it again: Edward has no bodily fluids. None, zero, zilch. Even if, by some fluke, Eddie did manage to have a couple little swimmers left, they would most likely be dead. Sperm are very delicate little things, and start to slowly die if the temperature dips below 94 F. Edward is cold and undead. There is no way that he could produce a viable sperm. Any sperm of his would either be dead or so tainted with vampire venom that Bella should be halfway to Sparkletown by now. (+1 Stupidity)

Unless Meyer is suggesting the sperm that impregnated Bella was both somehow alive and over a century old, and Ed was just saving it up. (It’s not like his vampire body can produce more.) In which case, that’s both creepy, and sad — because it would mean that vampires don’t masturbate.

The second thing on my mind is the issue of contraception. It seems like Bella is surprised that having sex without any form of contraceptive leads to babies. Christ on a lawnmower, Steph, you wrote this book for impressionable teenage girls and you just skip the contraceptives speech?!? That stuff is not glitter glue.

“For being a vampire that spends most of his time around a delicious human, I really thought you’d have a little more self-control.”

Edward’s phone rings. Alice is on the other end, panicking because she’s had a vision. I’m not sure how, since no one decided to get pregnant. (+1 Stupidity) Bella asks to talk to Carlisle, so she can see if she really is pregnant. Not sure why she needs him to confirm the fact that she has a baby bump. Does she think the bump is just “passion gas” living in her stomach?

 

“While I waited through the split second it took for Carlisle to speak, the vision I’d imagined for Alice danced behind my lids. A tiny, beautiful little baby, even more beautiful than the boy in my dream—a tiny Edward in my arms. Warmth shot through my veins, chasing the ice away.”

 

Even though Bella has never expressed the want to be a mother or have children before right now, she’s suddenly gung-ho on the idea. Okay. Bella thinks about Rosalie and her lifeless womb for a minute, and how bad Rose wanted a child. Hell, if I were Bella, I’d be rubbing this in her face so hard. “I have a working u-ter-us, neener neener nee-ner!”

Finally, Doctor Carlizzle gets on the phone. They chat for a minute, and decide that Bella is probably pregnant. She passes the phone over to Edward, and he talks with Carlisle for awhile. They come to the general consensus that it’s probably best to get Bella home ASAP.

 

“Edward was on the phone for more than an hour without a break. I guessed that he was arranging our flight home, but I couldn’t be sure because he wasn’t speaking English. It sounded like he was arguing; he spoke through his teeth a lot. While he argued, he packed. He whirled around the room like an angry tornado, leaving order rather than destruction in his path. He threw a set of my clothes on the bed without looking at them, so I assumed it was time for me to get dressed.”

 

Don’t you love how Bella just assumes she has to do whatever Eddiekins wants her to? (+1 Red Flag) While Edward tries to deal with travel agents (I guess Emmett is sick of using his superpower for Eddie?) Bella sits in the kitchen and chews on some pretzels. Bella starts sobbing out of nowhere, because pregnancy.

 

“[Edward] pulled me against his chest. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be home in sixteen hours. You’ll be fine. Carlisle will be ready when we get there. We’ll take care of this, and you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.” “Take care of this? What do you mean?” He leaned away and looked me in the eye. “We’re going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you. Don’t be scared. I won’t let it hurt you.”

 

Yes, folks, Edward seems dead-set on implying that he wants Bella to have something that rhymes with shma-shmortion. Uh-oh.

Let’s just get this straight, right now: there is no way in the nine realms that I am discussing the ideals behind this. I like you guys way too much to talk about abortion. (At least the moral and ethical side. Don’t be surprised if I discuss the mechanics to make sure Meyer has her shit straight.) For similar reasons, I also don’t like to discuss religion, politics, or if pancakes are better than waffles (they aren’t). Those are things I simply won’t discuss on the internet, not even if you promised me all the waffles in the universe.

Really, when it comes down to it, all we need to know is that Edward wants Bella to have an abortion, and Bella wants to keep her little demonspawn. Seeing as it’s not Edward’s body, I don’t think he should really get a say in this. (+1 Red Flag)

As Bella begins to tell Edward to stuff it where the sun don’t shine, the cleaning crew shows up. Ed-wad argues with them for a minute, before he brings them in. He’s all PO’d because the lady brought them dinner, as a way to check that Bella was still alive. She’s very concerned for Bella, and in this awkward scene that seems to have been written by a hyper eight-year-old, the Brazilian lady and Edward argue over Bella’s safety.

 

“Suddenly, Kaure was shouting at him—loudly, furiously, her unintelligible words flying across the room like knives. She raised her tiny fist in the air and took two steps forward, shaking it at him. Despite her ferocity, it was easy to see the terror in her eyes. Edward stepped toward her, too, and I clutched at his arm, frightened for the woman. But when he interrupted her tirade, his voice took me by surprise, especially considering how sharp he’d been with her when she wasn’t screeching at him. It was low now; it was pleading. Not only that, but the sound was different, more guttural, the cadence off. I didn’t think he was speaking Portuguese anymore.”

 

Bella moans that if she knew more Spanish, she might be able to reassure Kaure. Right, because Spanish and Portuguese are totally the same. (+1 Stupidity) Eventually, Kaure crosses the room and puts a hand on Bella’s tummy.

 

“She spoke one word in Portuguese. “Morte,” she sighed quietly. Then she turned, her shoulders bent as if the  conversation had aged her, and left the room. I knew enough Spanish for that one.”

 

So, either Kaure is telling us that the baby is cursed or she wants them to name it Morty.

Also, I’d like to point out that even though the word for “death” is similar in both Spanish and Portuguese, the languages are still vastly different. For example: here is a Spanish translation. Now, here is a Portuguese translation. Take a listen to both of those, will ya? Now, tell me that there’s any way knowing one would allow you to somewhat understand the other. I’s kind of like saying, “hey, I know German, so I should be able to get by fine in Romania.” Meyer, you fail at doing anything even remotely academic. (+1 Stupidity)

The cleaning lady also brought some fish fry stuff that makes Bella gag and retch. They leave it at that and are then ushered out by Edward, who leaves his phone on the counter and goes to prepare the boat. The chapter ends with Bella calling up Rosalie for help, and ends at what I assume to be a cliffhanger.

 

“I found the number I wanted, one I had never called before in my life. I pressed the “send” button and crossed my fingers.“Hello?” the voice like golden wind chimes answered.
“Rosalie?” I whispered. “It’s Bella. Please. You have to help me.”

 

“…Help letting you know that my fallopian tubes WORK AND YOURS DON’T! TAKE THAT, YOU RUDE BITCH!” *click*

Chapter Count:
Stupidity: +12                                                                                                                                                                                                    Redemption: +1                                                                                                                                                                                                Red Flag: +2

Book Count:
Stupidity: +63
Angst: +4
Bitch: +6
Thesaurus Rape: +7
Cream Count: +2
Eye Rape: +1                                                                                                                                                                                            Redemption: +2
Red Flag: Edward: +5  Jacob: +1