Hey guys, it's Athena! I'm back! I am so so so sorry about the long wait, I had competitions and crazy real life stuff and I got a boyfriend, which was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. Anyway, here's the next chapter. Small note, this chapter and next is when we start really diverging from the established season 1 canon. It hasn't been that bad up until this point. This one's still not too bad, but we'll see.
"When she'll wake up…" Renee heard things every once and awhile, snippets of conversation she heard "Stable…" and "Renee.." A lot. Renee didn't really want to wake up. Everything hurt, and all she could think of was the fact that if she was asleep, she wouldn't have a panic attack. So she kept sleeping. At times she would be vaguely aware of someone by her bed, holding her hand, and talking to her.
Finally, Renee heard another interesting conversation, the first full one that she had heard since she heard Regina and Victor arguing. She didn't know if she could really call it a conversation, it seemed pretty one-sided to her.
"Look, I know it's wrong and I have a wife, but I don't care. I really don't care about her like I know that I should. Instead, I find myself so attracted and drawn to Mary Margaret. It's weird, I don't remember anything, but I feel like I should remember her. I feel like we've met, and your my doctor and you haven't woken up for a day and this is very weird and awkward." The voice trailed off. About half-way through the man's soliloquy, Renee realized who was talking. David Noland.
"It's not awkward, I used to talk to you all the time. That's what you do around unconscious people when you have stuff on your mind." Her throat was still sore and it hurt to talk, but she opened her eyes and saw David's fluffy hair and green eyes standing by her bed.
"You're awake." He said, slowly, trying to fit his mind around the fact that he just talked about his attraction to a woman with his doctor.
"Hi." He tried again, quickly followed by "Wait, you're awake. I should go get Whale, he probably needs to check you over." David started to leave her bedside, but Renee grabbed his hand, which really hurt to move, to stop him.
"Mr. Nolan, please, give me a few minutes, before you let loose the hounds" She let out a small cough, and worked to push herself up on the bed, smiling slightly before grimacing as her body protested the movements.
"Renee, you're awake!" Graham appeared in the doorway, and at the sight of seeing her sitting up, let the flowers he had brought drop to the ground in his haste to get to her.
"Are you okay? Does anything hurt? How are you feeling? What happened down there? Here, lie down. Do you have any idea how much you scared me?" Graham kept ranting, gently hugging her, and setting her back down, which Renee weakly protested. David, in the meanwhile, slowly backed out of the room and went to go find Dr. Whale.
"Graham, I'm fine, really. Is there anyway I could get some water?" She coughed twice, and Graham sat down in the unoccupied chair in the room. Seeing a pitcher of water for visitors on the corner table, he grabbed a plastic cup and poured some for her.
"Thanks." She drank deeply, then coughed once, her throat feeling so much better. "Now, you may continue with your inquisition."
Now that Graham had had time to calm down, he didn't freak out as much when Renee started to push herself up again, and helped her prop herself up with pillows.
"Well, look who's up?" Victor appeared just as Renee had made herself comfortable in the bed. "How are we feeling today?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I am feeling really sore. What's the damage?" Renee asked this comfortably, leaning back into the pillows while Graham excused himself to answer his phone. While his conversation interested her, it interested her more to know when she was going home.
"You will be happy to know that you're going to live through it. I forsee a full recovery. Although, do we need to talk about proper procedure when you're hurt in the mines?" Whale said all this sarcastically, and looked at her chart.
"You had internal bleeding, you're left arm was sprained. Very sprained. Almost broken. Your lungs were blocked off from smoke from the mine collapse. You twisted your ankle. You broke skin nearly everywhere, and you had a minor concussion. I can let you go in a few days, but only if you take it easy and come back for a check-up appointment soon. And by soon, I mean, before you come back to work." As he said his schpeal, Renee was not happy. Not only did she have to wait a few days, she couldn't even work on the mystery of the patient that Victor and Regina were talking about. Well, at least it wasn't a major concussion.
Renee thought this through and asked a very simple question, "How long have I been out?"
"Uh… About a day and a half, give or take a few hours. When you were brought in, we did scans and the whole nine yards, you don't have any pain meds, as is specified by your chart."
Victor looked at her questioningly, and Renee replied "Yeah, they don't work on me, and I don't really want to when I have a high pain tolerance threshold anyway."
"Whatever. Okay, so I am going to tell the nurses that you don't need constant checking anymore and let people know how you're doing."
"Thanks, Whale" As Victor walked away, Graham came back in, looking frustrated. "Who was that, Graham?"
"That, was Regina. She seems to think that I have nothing better to do than to come over to her place tonight. Not only do I have the night shift, even if I did switch with Emma, I would much rather come spend some time visiting you. Not her." He said this all in a rush, running his hand through his hair, his accent getting thicker as he went.
"Did you tell her that?" Renee knew that Graham sometimes missed the obvious solution.
"I tried." His short response really showed how frustrated he was.
"Did you two have a fight or something? You normally get along pretty well."
"Something like that. She thought that visiting you and being with you, romantically was a waste of my time when, quote "You'll just come crawling back to me anyways, so why bother?"" As he said this, his voice got louder, and he threw up his hands. "You know, before I met you, I would've believed her." Graham said quietly, looking at Renee with an odd wonder.
"Wait, hold up. You two were together? And what, she wants you to get back together?" Renee was trying to wrap her head around the whole situation.
"Yeah, we were. In fact the last time I saw her, romantically, was right before we went out, but to be fair, I didn't think that we would get serious, but after that date, I haven't talked to her romantically. We haven't even been alone together. Please believe me." The end came out pleading, and Graham had grabbed her hand.
"Graham, I believe you. It's okay. I didn't think we would get this serious either. Besides, you are too good for her. You will not come "crawling back" to her, because you're better than that. You don't need her, and I think that you should go tell her that." Renee was quick to reassure her sheriff, and squeezed his hand gently.
"Why would you want me near her, for all you know, I could…"
"Stop. I trust you. And who knows, it could be good for you to finally, officially, break it off. Go. I will be fine and will definitely still be here when you get back." Graham looked hesitant, but after some more urging and reassurance, he left to go ask Emma to cover his shift for the night, and Renee drifted off to some much needed rest.
Renee felt much better the next time she opened her eyes, and sure enough, she sat up in bed without problem, and swung her legs over the side of her bed. When she was about to stand up, she saw a figure in the door, and smiled when she saw Henry and Archie there with fries and a shake.
"We figured you could use a break from hospital food." Henry came bounding in, and set the shake on the nightstand, while Renee grabbed the fries and popped one in her mouth, savoring the salty goodness of the heaven that was french fries.
Archie leaned in and whispered "Graham told me that you were awake, and I figured that you might be bored." He conspiratorially slid some sudoku puzzle books and a wordsearch book onto the nightstand next to the shake.
"So, Dr. Xantho, can I talk to you about the curse, and my explanation of what happened a few nights ago?" Renee mentally sighed. Talk about a captive audience, Archie…
"Sure. I'd love to hear." While she was interested in hearing his side of the story, she also knew exactly what did happen and didn't understand why Archie was here.
"Okay, so the Evil Queen, my mom, Dr. Xantho, was hiding something down in those mines. Why else would she want to completely tear down the place and repave it?" Renee listened attentively as the kid explained his logic and reasoning for everything, even the curse.
"It doesn't sound unbelievable when you explain it like that, Henry. However, I would still need some proof to believe completely." It was true, to Renee, when you took out the part about everyone in Storybrooke being kind-of sort-of reincarnated part, it wasn't a bad theory, and could even be believable.
"Yeah, I figured. That's why I went down there, to get proof for you, Emma, and Dr. Hopper. You guys are pretty much the only one's on my side besides Graham." Henry looked so down at that it almost broke Renee's heart.
"Hey, you know Graham thinks the world of you Henry, always. And Emma, Dr. Hopper and I will always be here if you ever need anything. Just ask. I'll even be apart of Operation… what was it?" Renee looked to Archie, who shrugged his shoulders, obviously happy that Henry had found someone who would listen to his theories and not discount them completely.
"Cobra. You would, really? That would be totally cool. But you are way to close to my mom right now, unless…" Henry looked at her thoughtfully and Renee cut him off.
"I am not going to help you spy on your mom." Henry groaned in protest, and started to beg.
"No, Henry. That's not right. I will do anything else, but I'm not going to spy." Renee decided that this was where she would make her stand.
"Fine. Okay. That makes sense, with what I've read about you in the book." Henry started picking up his things to go, when Renee processed what he said.
"Wait, I'm in the book?" She was shocked. She thought that only fairy-tale people were in the book, or people who had been in Storybrooke a long time.
"Yeah, you're near the beginning, right after Rumplestiltskin. It calls you "The Healer" which makes sense, but your story doesn't. It just cuts off when you are really young. It doesn't make sense." Henry seemed to have thought about this a lot, and it really did seem familiar to her.
"Well, I'll see you later kid. Have fun with Archie." Renee waved goodbye to them both just to see a familiar face in the hallway.
"Mary Margaret!" Renee yelled, and watched as Mary Margaret turned around and saw her. Walking quickly, she came into Renee's room and gave her a hug.
"Hey, you're awake. I was just finishing my rounds, and …. Other stuff."
"Such as?" Mary Margaret always went into detail on everything, so when she didn't Renee was naturally suspicious.
"I resigned, okay. I am practically in an affair, that really started here, by the way. It's not right, and I shouldn't. I just shouldn't." Mary Margaret really did not look very good, she had bags under her eyes and seemed like she was about to either cry or break because of the pressure.
"Come here, why don't we sit and talk for a while. You can catch me up on everything."
"I know that I did not see you just sneak out of Regina's house doing the walk of shame just now Graham." Emma was livid. It was one thing for Graham to be sneaking around, and another for them to be doing it with her son in the house, but the worst was what this would do to Renee when she found out.
"Look Emma, I can explain…"
Emma cut him off saying "Look, it's none of my business. But you can finish my shift since you are obviously done." With that she started to storm off, before she turned back suddenly, having found something new to say. "But you know what is my business, when you mess with Renee. Then it is completely my business. I have always protected her and I will continue to, do you hear me, Dornan?"
"Emma, please. I was breaking it off with Regina officially. It was Renee's idea." Graham was beside himself, trying to get Emma to understand.
"That does sound like a very Renee thing to do, and I will be checking with her, and if it wasn't, I will be telling." Then, Emma finished storming off, and left Graham to finish the shift alone.
Hey, thanks for reading. I'm not sure I'm too happy with how this chapter ended up, but it's hard for stuff to happen when she's confined to a hospital bed. Starting next chapter, things are going to get super-intense. Next episode is "Heart is A Lonely Hunter", which I'm going to have to rewatch and cry. Again. I will try to get this done in a timely manner, but I don't have a great track record, so we'll see.
Thanks to everyone who has followed and favorited this story, and for my reviewer from last chapter. :)
Can't wait 'til next time. -Athena
