Thank you for all the encouragement and your messages, and I hope you keep enjoying this story as Emma and Killian get closer, and Gold gets even more shadier; it's going to be quite clear why after this chapter. Enjoy, and you can expect the next chapter on Thursday.
Ruby brings a fresh sample of Killian's blood up to the laboratory a few hours later and Emma watches the technician put some of it under the microscope, practically bouncing on her feet as she waits for him to write down his initial findings before she can take a closer look.
The procedure of identifying an autoimmune disease consists of looking for antibodies and/or counting red and white cells, checking off the diseases that don't fit the pattern until you find one that does, and since there's over eighty types of autoimmune diseases, Emma has her work cut out for her even when she eliminates those she can based on Killian's symptoms or lack thereof.
The afternoon drips by without Emma noticing, and it's only when her cell phone vibrates that she remembers the dinner she was supposed to attend at her parents'.
"Dad, I'm sorry, I was busy in the lab and I completely forgot."
"I'm in front of your office," David says and Emma smiles to herself, tells him she'll be right there and makes an x next to Wegener's before leaving the laboratory.
The shortcut to her office takes her past Killian's room, and even as she contemplates popping in to see how he's doing something completely unexpected happens; Gold comes out of his room.
Emma pauses in the middle of the hallway, watching her boss close the door and limp away without noticing her, and she immediately goes into Killian's room, half-expecting to find him on the phone with his lawyer because if Gold is rude with all of them present, she can only imagine how he is one on one.
Not that such a thing happens often.
Or ever, as far as Emma knows; Gold loves an audience when he's figuring things out.
Killian is staring at the TV and it's only when she steps deeper into the room that he turns his head and looks at her, his lips tipping up at the corners at her meek greeting.
"Missed me already?" He asks and Emma can't help smiling back, glancing at the TV and returning her gaze to Killian's with her eyebrows arched high.
"Masterchef?"
"It was either that or romantic comedies. Or baseball."
"You don't like baseball?"
"Can't say that I do."
"Blasphemy," Emma chuckles and looks over his chart, reassured that his temperature is normal.
"If you say so."
"It's a beautiful game," Emma tells him and hangs his chart off the foot of his bed. "How's the pain?"
"Bearable."
"Did Dr. Gold have any more questions?"
"Just now? No, he didn't," Killian says and even though he meets her eyes square on, Emma gets the feeling that he's holding something back about Gold's unexpected visit.
"He's not known for visiting patients just to see how they are doing," she tells him and bites her lip hoping he won't jump to the wrong conclusion.
"I guess he considers me more important than your other patients," Killian says nonchalantly and only succeeds in making Emma more sure that he's hiding something.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket and she decides to try getting to the truth tomorrow, bidding Killian good night and hastening to finally meet her father.
Emma stays at work until after 10 p.m. but she's still not closer to solving the puzzle of Killian's condition, and even though she feels exhausted she finds it impossible to fall asleep once she gets home and burrows underneath her duvet.
Her mind is racing with plans for tomorrow, and she keeps thinking about seeing Gold coming out of Killian's room; it's not until she promises herself to ask him what was he doing there that she falls asleep.
She wakes when her room fills with morning light and curses when she realizes how late she is, trips on the duvet as she tries to race to the bathroom and smacks her forehead against the doorway hard enough to see stars.
Luckily, it's Saturday, so she doesn't have to swing by Regina's place, but even though she skips breakfast and drives too fast on the quiet streets, she's still half an hour late to work.
Gold is waiting for her in front of the changing room and she braces herself for impact, but to her surprise he just tells her that he needs her to fetch a patient form Oncology and put him in Jones' room for the time being.
"Why?" Emma asks his retreating back, then sighs and goes to put on her scrubs when he doesn't answer her.
The patient Gold wants transferred is Will Scarlet, whom Emma hadn't seen since they diagnosed him with colon cancer a few months ago.
"Took you long enough to find your way here," Will says when she enters his room and she makes herself smile even though her stomach drops at the sight of him.
He looks worse, not better, and she is once again reminded how much she hates the fact that cancer exists.
"I was busy."
"Aren't we all," Will chuckles and eyes the wheelchair she'd brought along for his transfer. "What's that for?"
"They need a bed here so you're going downstairs."
"I can walk, thanks very much," Will tells her and she doesn't force the issue, pushing the wheelchair ahead of her as Will shuffles slowly along the hallway, using the IV stand as a support.
He makes it into the elevator before he admits defeat and drops into the wheelchair, giving her a warning look to keep her from commenting.
The truth is, she didn't intend to.
Belle meets them in the hallway and grins widely at Will, telling him she's glad to see him again, and even though Emma could leave it to her to get Will settled, she keeps pushing him forward, determined to be the one to do it.
She tells herself it's got nothing to do with the sailor in room 72, she tells herself that she's his doctor and that she doesn't need an excuse to see him, but it's all just for show.
Something is drawing her to Killian's side, something inexplicable and intense. Something she doesn't wish to contemplate too carefully.
"Killian Jones, this is-"
"Will Scarlet. We're to be roommates," Will says and struggles out of the wheelchair so that he can offer his hand to Killian.
"Nice to meet you," Killian says, shaking Will's hand and then leaning around him to greet Emma.
"Morning, Swan."
"Morning."
"Swan?" Will gives her an amused look and sinks down on the unoccupied bed. "How come you never let me call you that?"
"Mr. Jones didn't exactly ask if he could," Emma says with a shrug and checks his IV before throwing the covers over him.
"Don't tell anybody, but I think she likes it," Killian says in a mock whisper and Emma looks between them, already sensing that they are going to get into all kinds of trouble together.
"She is standing right here," Emma says sharply and uncovers his feet, studying the pale blue staining his toes and trying to figure out if it's darker than yesterday or not.
"Whoa," Will says empathically and only then seems to notice Killian's missing hand. "That looks painful."
"You have no idea," Killian says softly, all traces of teasing gone from his voice, and Emma pulls the sheet back down, suddenly eager to get back to the lab.
"I've got to go. Try to behave, Will," Emma says, attempting to sound stern, but Will just smirks and makes a cross over his heart.
"Hope to die," he says and she presses her lips into a thin line, turning on her heel and marching out of the room.
She absolutely hates gallows humor.
"We'll page you if we need you!" Will calls after her but she ignores him, hoping it dissuades him from doing it even though she knows it won't.
She would really like to know why Gold had her bring him here, and tells herself she's just being paranoid when it occurs to her that he might have done it to stop her from getting too close to Killian.
"You are ridiculous," she says under her breath and slams the heel of her fist against the elevator call button, forcefully pushing all three of them to the back of her mind.
She's got more important things to do than dwell on what's Gold thinking.
By the time noon rolls around Emma feels both defeated and a little light-headed with hunger, so she leaves the lab and makes her way to the cafeteria, then sits in the corner putting food in her mouth without actually tasting it; she's more certain that Killian's got Buerger's with every disease she checks off her list, and it terrifies her.
Will's cancer is slowly killing him, but if she is right, Killian's condition is going to keep crippling him and then leave him to spend the rest of his life dependent on other people; she'd only known him for a few days, but she's fairly certain that won't sit well with him.
Gold calls her when she's back in the lab and she shares her meager findings with him, but he tells her to keep looking instead of getting ahead of herself and that's that.
Will starts blowing up her pager not long after and she tries to ignore him, but when she misses the red cells count for the third time she groans and goes to see what he wants.
"Killian needs something for the pain," Will says as soon as Emma opens the door to their room, holding his hands up to ward off her anger.
"I didn't put him up to this," Killian says though gritted teeth when she comes to stand next to his bed, but his eyes are pleading with her to do something to help him.
"Can you get to the TV room on your own?" Emma asks Will and he gets the message loud and clear, departing from the room in record time considering his state.
"It's like this," Emma says and sits on the edge of Killian's bed. "I'm half-way through with the tests that will help me determine how to treat you, so I'll need to take your blood again tomorrow morning. If I give you something for the pain now, I will have to wait for Monday to do the rest of the tests, and considering how quickly your condition is deteriorating, I don't feel comfortable wasting time."
"What if you do all the tests and you still don't know what to do with me?" Killian asks her and balls his hand into a fist she gently pries open, tracing the blue pattern on the backs of his fingers, shivering at how cold his skin is.
"There's always something to do."
"Not always, apparently."
"What do you mean?" Emma looks up and feels a kick in her stomach when she meets Killian's stormy gaze.
"Didn't you bring Will here because he's refusing any further treatment and therefore can't be on Oncology ward anymore?"
"What?" Emma whispers, her heart sinking in her chest because she knows what that means.
The cancer spread and Will doesn't want to suffer chemo when it's clearly not working.
"I'm sorry," Killian tells her, his thumb rubbing the back of her hand because he somehow senses that she's got a soft spot for his new roommate.
"I'll talk to him. He can't just give up," Emma says and forces herself to smile even though she feels like curling up in a ball and crying for a week.
Killian doesn't say anything to that and they just sit there quietly, still holding hands, and for the first time Emma notices that Killian's got a tattoo on his forearm, a vivid heart with a dagger ran through it and a name underneath it.
"Who's Milah?" Emma asks, hoping to get him talking so he would have something to think about other than the pain he's in.
"She was my love," he says quietly, and even though Emma already knows her plan has backfired, she prompts him to continue.
"Was?"
"It's a long story."
"I've got time."
"You do, Dr. Swan?"
"I need a break from staring at your antibodies anyway," she tells him and hopes he can't tell how genuinely curious she is to learn more about him.
"I met her four years ago in a bar downtown. She looked lonely so I chatted her up, and we spend the night walking around, talking about nothing and everything. We ended up on my ship, and watched the dawn break together… That was when she told me she was married."
Emma doesn't have to look at his face to sense tragedy approaching; she can hear it in his voice quite well.
"She came back a few days later, and we never mentioned her husband again. I kept postponing my next trip and she kept coming over, but she never spent the whole night with me. My agent was pressuring me for another book and I finally told her that I had to go, and asked her to come with me."
"Did she go?"
"She said she would, but she didn't meet me the day I was supposed to leave and I assumed she had changed her mind."
Emma looks up and finds Killian staring at his knees, his eyelashes casting spidery shadows against his pale cheeks.
"When I returned three months later, I went to the bar where we had met every night for a week before the owner took pity on me and told me that I'm wasting my time. He told me Milah killed herself."
"I'm sorry."
"She didn't kill herself. She couldn't have, no matter what happened. I know she was unhappy in her marriage, but she never told me her last name and I've spent all this time trying to find it out because I'm certain her husband had something to do with her death. She was many things, but she was never a coward... He must've found out that she was going to leave him for me."
"Is she the reason you passed out in the snow a week ago?"
"It was the anniversary of our first meeting," Killian says and Emma wishes she could feel somebody love her like this just once in her life.
"Your agent was probably mad at you for staying in Portland instead of working on your next book."
"I fired my agent. I'm not going back on the ocean until I find the bastard responsible for Milah's death", he says, then glances at his stump and shakes his head.
"I'm pretty sure you'll be able to sail once we fit you with a prosthetic," Emma tells him, sensing that there's nothing more important to him than being able to sail.
"Perhaps," he says, then leans back against his pillow and looks at her from under his eyelashes. "It's probably time for you to go back to work."
"It is. You're gonna manage without painkillers?"
"If you promise to give me something strong tomorrow morning," he says and she laughs, squeezing his shoulder before she stands up.
"I don't bargain with patients."
"Maybe you should try it once. Could be fun," he says with a wink and Emma's heart stutters in her chest.
He's too charming for his own good and he's perfectly aware of it.
"I don't think so," Emma tells him and leaves his room before that line between them gets completely obliterated.
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