Breaking Dawn Book 2, Chapter 18 Summary

How It All Goes Down

There Are No Words For This

  • Rosalie carries Bella upstairs, her body violently twitching. Edward gives her some morphine while Alice calls Carlisle. Bella screams for them to get the baby out. It appears that her placenta has detached and that the baby's now suffocating.
  • Before the morphine can spread, Rosalie cuts into Bella's skin. Transfixed by the blood, Rosalie's killer instincts take over. Jacob tackles her and Alice drags her outside.
  • Jacob and Edward hear another loud crack coming from Bella's body. Her spine has broken, thereby paralyzing her legs. While Jacob performs CPR, he reminds Bella of her promise to stay alive.
  • He watches Edward biting through the vampire skin that's surrounding the baby. He then hears Edward whisper "Renesmee." Bella holds the girl for a few seconds before she gasps in pain and Edward takes the child away – the baby bit its mother in her chest.
  • Bella's heart stops. Jacob performs CPR – in vain. Jacob yells at Edward to change Bella into a vampire.
  • Edward asks him to take the baby, but Jacob tells him to "throw it out the window." He doesn't want anything to do with it, much less see it. Rosalie returns and takes the baby instead. Jacob notices the baby's mysterious fluttering heart beat as Rosalie carries it away.
  • Edward stabs Bella with a syringe full of his venom while Jacob keeps performing CPR. Edward covers Bella's body with bite marks, then licks them to seal her injuries with venom, which can then help them heal.
  • When Bella's heart fails to start beating again, Jacob believes that she's dead: "…there was nothing there, just me, just him" (18.83). He no longer feels the pull to be near Bella, but instead feels a strange urge to get away from her.
  • Edward maintains she's still alive and keeps pushing her heart faster than Jacob.
  • On his way out, Jacob sees Rosalie feeding blood to the baby. Rage and hate fills him. "Sam had been right. The thing was an aberration… Something that had to be destroyed" (18.106).
  • Jacob realizes that the pull brought him here to this creature. He believes that he needs to kill it to avenge Bella's death. Not only that, but he resolves to take down as many Cullen family members as he can along with it.
  • Jacob is about to strike, when the baby turns to look at him. "Warm brown eyes, the color of milk chocolate – the exact shape that Bella's had been" (18.135). His shaking anger suddenly morphs into an internal glowing heat. As Jacob stares at the baby's face, all ties in his life come undone and wrap around one thing in his universe: Renesmee, the newborn baby.
  • That instant, he hears the frantic pounding of Bella's "changing heart" upstairs.