Title: Night Watch
Summary: Snow returned her attention to Emma then. Oh, her stubborn, stubborn baby girl. Maybe if she had gone to the doctor at the first signs of illness, she wouldn't be lying in the emergency room right now.
Spoilers: If you're current, we're good.
Rating/Warning: K+, for mild language. Family angst/fluff, as per usual.
Word Count: 3088, so sayeth OpenOffice.
Characters: Snow, Charming, Killian, and Emma.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's toy box.
Author's Note: I know it's been a while, so hi! How've you been? ;) I got hit with some writer's block for a while there as well as some problems controlling my new-to-me-as-an-adult asthma, but things are getting better now on both fronts. This story was inspired by, of all things, the ER reruns PopTV has been showing every Saturday. I'm a little rusty so feedback is very, very welcome! Enjoy. :)
Unable to resist the motherly urge any longer, Snow White brushed her hand across her daughter's forehead. The sheer amount of heat radiating from Emma's skin made Snow wince. Oh, her poor sweet baby.
"No change?" Killian Jones murmured, his voice catching. Hints of his earlier panic still remained in his tone.
A slight shake of her head was all Snow could manage. No, there was no change to the feel over baby's fever. There hadn't been a change in the hour and a half they'd been sitting in this small room in the emergency department of Storybrooke General. Hell, there hadn't been a change since the frantic phone call from Killian that had shattered everyone's until-then-peaceful night.
"How long had she had the low-grade fever again?" Charming asked. Sitting in the chair at the foot of the right side of the hospital bed, he was the furthest away from Emma and even that bit of distance was clearly killing him. Snow sat by her head on the right side while Killian had taken up residence on her left.
Charming's query was mainly to fill the tense silence. The three of them had been over the hows and the whys of the situation a few times already in the last ninety minutes.
"A couple of days," Killian replied almost absentmindedly. His gaze remained locked on his wife, who was sound asleep but squirming uncomfortably against the fire of her fever. "She was complaining of a sore throat as well but wouldn't hear of letting anyone examine her."
Snow returned her attention to Emma then. Oh, her stubborn, stubborn baby girl. Maybe if she had gone to the doctor at the first signs of illness, she wouldn't be lying in the emergency room right now. Maybe this entire midnight adventure would have been avoided.
Getting a phone call in the middle of the night that her daughter had spiked a dangerously high fever was not something Snow cared to repeat anytime soon. (Or, really, ever again.) During that frantic phone call, Killian had explained that he'd been watching Emma the past couple of days in an effort to stay on top of her illness and that when they went to bed, she was fine. Tired and sluggish but fine. Two hours later, Killian had awakened to find Emma burning up and, aside from a few moans and groans, unresponsive to his attempts to wake her.
Snow thanked her lucky stars that her own family was law enforcement in Storybrooke because she must have broken the land speed record driving from the farmhouse to Emma's Victorian. In the time it took her to arrive, Killian had managed to lift Emma out of bed and carry her down the stairs.
He'd emerged through the front door just as Snow shifted her car into park outside the house. And now one thing was perfectly clear: Snow never again wanted to witness her poor baby limp in her son-in-law's arms. Her heart had leaped into her throat at the sight of her poor little girl, so sick and so uncomfortable from the fever wreaking havoc on her body.
Together, she and Killian had gently settled her in the backseat of the station wagon and then had taken off like a shot for the hospital. Charming had dropped Neal off with Granny and a panicked Henry off with Regina before joining his wife, son-in-law, and sick baby girl in the emergency room.
"What's her temperature now?" Charming asked, drawing Snow from her reverie.
She squinted up at the monitor above her daughter's bed. "104.3," she replied with another wince. The sad thing was, that temperature reading was an improvement. Emma's temp been 104.6 upon arrival.
Charming nodded somewhat grimly. "When did Whale say we'd get the test results back?"
"Any minute now," Killian replied. Once again, he did not look away from Emma. Snow glanced up at him and her heart leaped into her throat again at the sheer desperation written across his face.
With Emma still unresponsive, the fever and the sore throat were the only symptoms her parents and husband had been able to inform Dr. Whale of before his initial exam. Thankfully, that short list had been enough to give him a direction. By some miracle, he'd managed to get Emma to respond enough to open her mouth so he could take a look at her throat. The second he shined the light on her tonsils, he cursed under his breath and muttered, "How she's even able to swallow is beyond me."
He'd ordered a rapid strep test, the results of which they were waiting on now. Part of Snow felt silly for not thinking of strep – her little Neal was just getting over a case of it himself – and part of her felt massively guilty.
Emma must have caught her baby brother's illness and then not mentioned a word to anyone when she started feeling sick herself, even though she knew Neal had strep. Oh, her stubborn, stubborn baby girl.
"Is what he thinks she has dangerous?"
Snow finally drew her gaze from her poor sick daughter and turned her motherly eye on Killian. The poor pirate still looked so worried, so frightened. She couldn't imagine how terrifying it must have been for him to wake and find Emma so sick. Plus, after his centuries in the Enchanted Forest and Neverland without the benefit of the modern medicine of the Land Without Magic, he had a tendency to view every illness as if it were life-threatening. "No," Snow assured him, her tone gentle. "Neal was diagnosed with the same thing a few days ago."
As a matter of fact, little Neal was still on his course of antibiotics. Out of the corner of her eye, Snow saw Charming close his eyes against the realization that baby brother had passed his illness onto his big sister. "If she has strep throat," Snow continued, "Dr. Whale will give her the same kind of medicine Neal is on and she'll be perfectly fine."
The explanation elicited a small nod from her son-in-law, though the desperation refused to budge from his face. It would probably stay there, Snow figured, until Emma opened her eyes. Killian took a deep breath and held it a moment before saying, "So not being able to wake her ..."
"A result of the fever's hold on her," Charming said.
"Was Neal's fever this high?"
"No." Snow shared a soft sigh with her husband. "He'd been fussy and wasn't eating much so we took him to the doctor before the fever had a chance to spike."
Left unsaid, of course, was that if Emma hadn't refused to see a doctor when she began feeling unwell, her fever probably wouldn't have climbed this high, either. Killian clearly connected the dots himself because he muttered, "Bloody obstinate ..." before trailing off and letting the subject drop.
Mother and father exchanged a slightly amused glance. Yes, their Emma was indeed obstinate but they all loved her for it, occasional middle-of-the-night trips to the emergency room and all.
After a couple silent minutes, Killian slid his hand under Emma's limp one. Mindful of the IV inserted into the vein in the back of her hand, he tightened his grip to give her what comfort he could. "Bloody hell, even her hand is on fire."
It did not at all escape Snow's notice that Emma stopped squirming the second Killian took her hand. The touch of True Love, comforting enough to cut through even the highest of fevers. It must not have escaped Charming's notice, either, because he whispered, "Her hand may be hot but hold onto it. You're calming her down."
For the first time that night, the hint of a smile curled onto their son-in-law's lips.
A few minutes later, Dr. Whale entered the room to deliver the inevitable verdict. "It is strep," he told the worried family, who let out relieved breaths in unison at the news. "We'll get her started on a course of antibiotics that she can continue at home. I'm sure it goes without saying, though, that we want to keep her here until her fever comes down to a more manageable temperature."
It certainly did. "Thank you, Dr. Whale," Snow said.
He gave her a nod and then left the little room to put in Emma's orders. Charming stood up from his chair, stretching slightly. "I'm going to call Regina and let her know what's going on. Henry was out of his mind with worry when I dropped him off."
Snow could only imagine. When she arrived to take Emma to the hospital, poor Henry had followed his stepfather outside and insisted he go too. Killian had managed the impossible and talked him into staying with Regina.
Now that they knew for certain that Emma had strep, Snow was even more thankful that Killian had made him go with his other mom. He'd clearly already been exposed but sitting in this small room with Emma wouldn't have helped matters. "Make sure Regina knows to keep her eye on him, too," she softly instructed her husband. "He's been around both Emma and Neal and they're contagious."
Charming nodded and, after sparing one more glance at his sick baby girl, ducked out of the room to make his phone call in private.
"That goes for you, too, you know," Snow said to Killian, who finally tore his gaze from Emma to look up at her with a somewhat confused frown. "She's been contagious for days. If your throat starts feeling sore, let someone know."
A touched look crossed her son-in-law's face. "Aye, milady. Thank you."
"You're welcome." Snow reached for her daughter's other hand and held on tight, briefly shutting her eyes when she felt the heat still radiating from Emma's skin. A glance across her daughter's bed proved that poor Killian was still worried and so, so scared for his wife. "Killian, she's going to be fine."
He nodded but did not appear to relax at all. And he wouldn't, not until Emma was awake and talking.
The deep love Killian had for Emma was shining in his eyes, sending tears to Snow's own. It was obvious that this man loved her little girl with the depths of his soul. So obvious, in fact, that Snow knew what his response would be to her next suggestion before the words even left her mouth. "Why don't you try to get some rest? I can watch her for a little while."
"Thank you but no. I want to be awake when she wakes."
Snow smiled and gave him an understand nod. Just as she'd thought.
Throughout the night, mother, father, and husband watched over Emma. They all took turns holding her hand or murmuring gently to her when her sleep grew restless or treating her fever with cool compresses. Modern medicine may have been working to get Emma's core temperature down below the danger level but all three of them felt like they needed to be doing something.
Their treatments seemed to be working, at least. They'd managed to get her fever down to 103.6, a full degree lower than her arrival temp.
The sun was just peeking through the gauzy curtains on the wide windows behind Emma's bed when their ministrations began to bear even bigger fruit. Killian gasped softly, the sound drawing Snow's and Charming's attention away from their sick little girl. "She just squeezed my hand," he said somewhat sheepishly. Clearly, he hadn't meant to startle them.
Snow looked back at Emma. At first Snow thought she was still squirming against the fever but after a moment, she realized her movements were different. This wasn't Emma fidgeting uncomfortably against the fire in her body; this was Emma beginning to stir. "Emma, sweetie, can you hear me?"
A wrinkle of Emma's nose and a soft whimper were the only outward responses Snow got. When she glanced across the bed at Killian, however, he nodded. Emma had once again squeezed his hand, answering Snow's question in the only way she could manage at the moment. "It's all right, baby," Snow murmured, a smile tugging at her lips, "take your time."
It took another few minutes of stirring but Emma finally managed to drag her eyes open. "There you are, kiddo," Charming said, a gentle smile on his lips.
Though Emma's eyes were open, the cloudiness in them that told Snow that she wasn't a hundred percent awake. Still, after the hours of being unable to get her to respond at all, they'd take what they could get.
Emma opened her mouth, presumably to ask what was going on, but winced in pain moments later. Everyone else winced along with her; she'd just taxed her poor raw throat. "Don't try to talk, love," Killian said, releasing her hand to brush his thumb along her forehead.
"You're in the hospital, Emma," Snow explained, her voice gentle as she grasped her daughter's other hand. It was a testament to how far Emma had come from the woman who'd first arrived in Storybrooke that she squeezed Snow's hand as tightly as she could. "You spiked a high fever in the middle of the night and we brought you here. Looks like you picked up a case of strep throat from your little brother."
Emma let the information sink in for a moment, then nodded. She opened her mouth again and this time managed to rasp, "At least you guys are teaching him to share."
After the long hours everyone spent watching the monitors as Emma squirmed in her fevered sleep, her joke was the perfect release. A chorus of chuckles went up around the little room. Snow even felt tears pricking her eyes, tears of relief that her baby was going to be all right.
Her baby was, however, still very sick and feverish and just the few moments she'd spent awake had already taken their toll on her. Her eyes started to flutter again as the descending exhaustion threatened to pull her back under.
"Go back to sleep, kiddo," Charming said, his voice soft. "We'll be right here when you wake up."
"You promise?"
Snow looked up at both Killian and Charming in surprise. Poor Emma sounded so young right then, so afraid that she would wake up and her family would be gone. She sounded so much like the little girl she'd once been, the one who'd had nobody to comfort her or even sit with her when she was sick. It was the fever, Snow knew, but her baby's question still made her heart clench in her chest. "We promise," she assured her, giving her hand a comforting squeeze. "We'll always be with you."
A sleepy smile tugged Emma's lips. "Good," she mumbled as she slipped back into slumber.
With a mother's gentle touch, Snow brushed her hand down Emma's fiery cheek. "Sleep well, baby."
Once again, there was nothing for the now slightly less worried family members to do but wait and watch both Emma and the monitors above her bed. It took a good couple of hours for Emma's temperature to dip below a hundred and three, and her sleep turned peaceful for the first time all night. Finally, a sense of calm settled over the room.
And it was that sense of calm that led the mostly sleepless night to start catching up with everyone. When Snow felt herself drifting, she ran her hand over her face. A glance around the room told her she must have been out longer than she thought. Charming had finally nodded off leaning forward in the chair, his arms pillowing his head on the mattress. Across from her, Killian sat lightly dozing, his hand still gripping Emma's. The contact between husband and wife had no doubt contributed to Emma's peaceful slumber.
Eventually Emma began to stir, causing Killian and Charming to blink awake. And this time when Emma dragged her eyes open, Snow could see clarity. The cloudiness of her gaze the last time she woke was completely gone. "Hey, sweetheart," she whispered, capturing her daughter's attention. "You're in the hospital."
A still somewhat disoriented Emma frowned at her. "Wait, did we already do this once?"
Her voice still came out raspy, no doubt owing to her sore throat, but Snow smiled at her anyway. "Yeah, we did. Sorry. You were really out of when we we last talked and I didn't think you'd remember that conversation."
"I don't. Not really. Just remember you saying I was in the hospital and …" She trailed off, swallowed, hard, and then winced in pain. Realization lit her eyes a moment later. Whether it was a vague memory of their previous conversation or she'd just connected the dots from her symptoms, Snow would never know. "I have strep throat?"
Charming gave her an apologetic nod. "Courtesy of your baby brother, unfortunately."
She nodded as well before turning her head to find her husband. "If you had to take me here in the middle of the night, I bet I scared the shit out of you."
Snow hid a smile – her Emma had such a way with words – as Killian chuckled, squeezing her hand. "None of that, now, love. I'm just thankful you're all right."
She smiled lovingly at him as she pulled her hand from his and reached out to cup his cheek in her palm. Then she looked from him to her father to her mother in turn. "Don't tell me you all stayed here last night. You didn't have to, you know."
The three of them exchanged a surprised glance. Clearly she didn't remember asking them – in not so many words – to stay. Not that it mattered; they would have stayed anyway because they loved her and she was sick and they wanted to be with her. "Of course we did, kiddo. We're your family."
Despite the sore throat and the fever, a touched smile lit Emma's face. In that smile was the little girl Emma once had been, now basking in the love surrounding her. "Well then, at the risk of sounding mushy, I'm glad you're my family."
Tears leaped into Snow's eyes as she caressed her little girl's cheek. As far as she was concerned, Emma could sound mushy any time she wanted. "And we're glad you're ours."