"Hi. Emma Swan, I'm looking for my son, Henry?" The blonde leaned into the hospital counter, smile sheepish and a little worried.
"He was moved yesterday?"
"Henry Mills?" The woman at the desk asked.
"Yeah, he was on the fourth floor." Emma's smile evened out. She was on more familiar ground now.
"Yes, he was moved to two doors down. 433." The woman smiled. Emma Swan was a regular, visited her son every day. Sometimes she was only there for a few minutes, but she never missed a visit.
Never.
Emma made her way up the familiar stairs, the same way she'd been going up every day for two months. In fact, it was all so familiar that she went through the same door she'd been travelling through for eight weeks… And found herself facing a scruffy, battered man who must have been in his thirties and most certainly not Henry.
"Ah, are you a nurse then?" The man smiled widely, a smirk more than a smile. He combined copious amounts of facial hair with playful charm, and in conjunction those were very dangerous things.
He had both in spades.
Emma chuckled a little.
"Sorry, my son was in this room. Not used to having to find the new one." She ducked out around the doorframe for a moment before sliding back around. "Ahaha, you don't happen to know where they moved him, do you?" The man's smirk widened dangerously.
"Maybe I do and maybe I don't." He shrugged, lifting both hands into the air in a helpless expression. "I might tell you… If you can get me out of here for a day." Emma's eyes instantly narrowed. She crossed her arms and put on what her older brother David liked to call her 'Detective Face'. In return she called him Prince Charmless.
"Why do you need me to sneak you out for a day?" She asked suspiciously. And from the way his smile faded, there was good reason to be.
"No reason," he said. She nodded and smiled and turned to leave.
"Right." The man rolled his eyes as she stepped out the door.
"Killian Jones, by the way." He called after her. She shook her head.
"I don't care!" She called back.
"Liar." He smirked to himself. As the sound of her footsteps faded away, so did his good mood. Reality washed over him, flowing through the cracks in his skin like salt water. It was only once she'd gone that he'd realized how much happier he was with her around.
He dropped his head back onto the pillow and reveled in the pain.
Meanwhile, Emma was winding through the streams of orderlies, doctors, and nurses filling the hallways of the hospital. After leaving the man; Jones, his name was Jones, she tried to keep herself from thinking. In her son's room, she had asked an orderly where Henry had been moved.
"Room 433, ma'am." The man smiled. She nodded her thanks and began the treacherous process of navigating the hospital.
Upon finding room 433, Emma Swan was pleasantly surprised by the swift impact of her son's hug.
"You're supposed to be in bed." She said, smiling.
"You're supposed to be at work!" He retorted, grinning.
"And I will be. In a few minutes," Emma shrugged casually, flopping onto Henry's bed, "Or maybe an hour." Henry grinned even wider and launched himself at his mother. "Hey, drawn anything new?" she asked, gazing fondly at the re-taped wall of drawings that had been meticulously transferred from his old room to this one.
"Yes! Wanna see it?" Then, to her nod, "You're the best mom ever!" He said. Emma rolled her eyes.
"Oh, just you wait 'til Mary-Maragret and David have kids. Best mother no more!" She laughed, pulling Henry in for another hug.
"So did you meet Killian?" Henry asked excitedly, scrambling off the bed to fetch his latest drawing. Emma made a face.
"Who?" She lied, pretending she didn't notice Henry's devious grin.
"You know. The guy in my old room?" He tilted his head knowingly at her and she stuck her tongue out.
"Yeah? And? Why should that matter?" He smirked, jumping back onto the crowded hospital bed to show her his latest masterpiece.
"You're lonely." She raised an eyebrow.
"Henry Swan, are you playing matchmaker with me?"
He nodded vehemently, "He's lonely, too."
"Well, kid, loneliness isn't an issue with me." She smiled down at the drawing, which proudly displayed her, David, Mary-Margaret, Ruby and Victor. A family, with a widely-grinning Henry right in the middle. "I've got all of you."
Henry made a face, "Whatever you say."
Later on, much later than Emma had promised by at least two or three hours, while leaving the hospital, Emma found two police officers and a nurse standing outside Killian's room. That Man, she told herself, That Man.
"What happened?" She asked the nurse curiously. The woman looked around, checking to make sure nobody was listening in.
"I'm just an orderly. I'm not supposed to know." She leaned in closer to Emma. "But that man in there? He's on suicide watch."
Emma drew in a breath.
"What did he do?" She asked tightly, confused as to why she cared about this man she'd only just met.
"I don't really know. Something happened to him, something bad. He jumped in front of a car." Emma swallowed.
"He was hit by a car." Emma repeated disbelievingly.
"Yes." The orderly nodded.
"He jumped in front of a car." Emma was having trouble understanding this, reconciling the flirting, cocksure man in the hospital bed with the desperate, broken man who threw himself in front of a car. She swallowed.
"Yes."
"On purpose," she tried one last time, hoping for a denial this time. He seemed so alive. So unlike anyone lost enough to want death.
"Yes."
"Huh." Emma blinked. She spun on her heel and stalked back down to the man's room, throwing the door out of her way and letting it slam violently against the wall.
"Ah, hello love! Just couldn't get enough of me, could you?" Emma pulled him up by his hospital gown until they were face-to-face.
"You're on suicide watch!" She cried, "You can't leave the hospital! And you were going to make me sneak you out!" She let go and spun around, palms on her forehead. "I hate you so much." He smirked and straightened his sheets with his uninjured hand. "You're just so…"
"Dashing? Handsome? Devilish?" Killian suggested. She turned and rolled her eyes.
"Stupid," was all he got, flat and angry. He just chuckled.
"I wouldn't kill myself on your time. Too much paperwork, I suppose." Emma opened her mouth to ask if this was a joke to him.
And then she realized it was. But it was a joke he was laughing at.
It made him happy.
She made him happy.
She closed her mouth and smiled.
Maybe not such a lost cause, after all.