The first time someone spoke to him, it was a nurse.

Gold was not certain how long he had been there, sitting in that hard wooden chair, nor any idea what time it was. It was gray outside the window, and cloudy. The nurses had, for the most part, ignored him as they came and went. Dr. Whale had come in once, perhaps twice, and he had felt the man glance over as he strode past, but his focus was on the patient in front of him, and on putting together the broken bits of her. There was talk of a concussion, and of fractured ribs. Tests were ordered. Gold thought the doctor's voice sounded confident, untroubled, and he tried to be comforted by that. Whale finished with Belle's chart and strode out again, not giving Gold a second glance.

Gold told himself that he must remember to be grateful.

He did not leave. He sat, in a chair, in the corner, even as footsteps, voices, came and went. Then there were long periods of silence, hideous, endless silences that dragged on and on, when the only thing that drew him through one awful moment into the next was the rise and fall of Belle's chest.

Alive.

Eventually a nurse did come, clearly egged on by the others, fiddling nervously with an engagement ring. "Um, excuse me, um, Mr. Gold? We have, um, a waiting area? Wouldn't you…wouldn't you be more comfortable waiting there?"

"No," Gold said. He did not look at her.

She went away.

Dr. Hopper came. The sky outside the window was darker, the steely gray edging towards black. The cricket stopped in the doorway and fussed a bit with his umbrella when he saw Gold. "I, um…the nurses said you were here."

Gold did not reply. Dr. Hopper went to Belle's bedside, sighing as he looked down at her. "I understand Dr. Whale expects her to make a full recovery. Physically, at least," he added in a low tone.

Gold felt his voice, rising up from what felt like a long way away, and heard himself ask, "What do you mean by that?"

Dr. Hopper cleared his throat and fussed with his umbrella for a moment. "I mean that physically she will be fine."

Gold regarded the fussy little man, long enough to make the good doctor start playing with his umbrella again, and then returned his attention to the pale, still form in the bed. So still. So pale. If it wasn't for the tangled spill of her dark hair against the pillow, she would have faded into the sheets entirely. She would be fine. She was alive, and she would be fine. "Good."

"What's good?" Emma Swan strode into the room and headed straight for the bed, with nary a pause as she tossed her hair over her shoulder to give him one of her raised-eyebrow-I-don't-know-what-you're-up-to-but-I'll-figure-it-out looks. "Still here?"

Gold took a long, slow look around the room. Dr. Hopper...was not there anymore. Gold blinked. The air felt as if it was made of molasses, each second trailing out like sap. "Dr. Hopper was just here. A little while ago," he added carefully. Outside the window, the sky had gone truly dark, and the streetlights had come on. "He wished to make sure that Miss French was…well."

The sheriff looked down at Belle, her eyes narrowing even as she sighed. "Is she?"

"You tell me."

Sheriff Swan strolled away to lean against the wall, facing him. "You tell me why I should. I thought you never met a Cecelia French in your life."

"We have yet to be formally introduced," Gold said.

"Seems like an awful long time to sit here for a girl you don't know."

He wondered, dimly, how long it had been, but he couldn't really care. "Would you accept simple human concern for a young woman who was grievously injured...right in front of me?"

The sheriff glanced at the bed, and her expression softened. "No." She turned back to him. "Not for eight hours."

"Because I asked," Gold said. His gaze flickered back to the girl on the hospital bed. Still there. Still there and real and alive. "Because I…care to ask," he said brokenly, and knew he gave too much away in the sheer, desperate rasp of his voice.

The Queen would have seized on it. She would have laughed and gloated and used that moment of weakness to sink her claws in deep. But the good Emma Swan said, simply, "Whale said she'd be okay. Bumps, bruises — broken leg," she added, nodding to the fresh cast on Belle's leg. "But, physically, she'll be okay. Hobble around on crutches for a few weeks. Don't know if that little stunt she pulled is going to mess her up, but if she managed to run around in the woods for as long as she did — "

"Stunt?" Gold asked.

"Yeah. She…" The sheriff tilted her head, examining him. Weighing. Measuring. Deciding. "She OD'd on her meds. Saved 'em up and knocked 'em back. On purpose, Whale thinks. To, uh, get out."

"'Get out.'" Gold said.

"Yeah." He had to give the good sheriff this: she met his eye and she did not look away. Not many did. Her mother and father for one. And…

Alive. She was alive, here and alive.

"Will you tell me what was done to her?" he asked.

"I don't know," Emma said.

"But you have rather a good idea."

"But I don't know," Emma said. And he was — would be — pleased to see that oh so determined look come into her eye. "But I'm gonna find out."

As would he. "I owe you a very great debt."

The sheriff crossed her arms over her chest. "Here I thought I owed you the favor."

"You do."

She rolled her eyes at that, and pushed off from the wall. "Well, while you're figuring out exactly how to pay me back, could you tell me where Mr. French is? I need to speak with him."

As did he. "At his shop, or his home, I presume. Or, if you are not able to locate him at either, I would suggest trying the nearest drinking establishment."

"He's not here?" Emma asked flatly.

"I have not seen Mr. French today."

"Do you know if anyone even called him? His daughter's in the hos — " She stopped abruptly, which made him look away from the bed, just long enough to regard her. There was a tight, thoughtful look on her face. "His daughter is in the hospital," she finished.

"My dear sheriff," Gold said, looking back at Belle, "I neither know, nor care."

"Christ, what the hell is going on in this town?" She gave him a look, and planted her hands on her hips. "You plan on staying here all night?" Gold didn't answer her. "Look, the cafeteria's one floor down. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. A sandwich. I promise she'll be here when you get back."

"No." But he did add, with rather less difficulty than he expected, "Thank you, sheriff."

Emma was watching him closely. "There's going to come a point when you're going to have to tell me what's going on."

"Perhaps." First, though, there would need to come the point when the good sheriff was willing to believe it. "But not today."

She snorted and, glancing at the girl in the bed once again, strode back out of the room. He glimpsed her talking to a nurse, and then charging off down a hallway. Towards the doctor's waiting room, he believed.

Some time later, a nurse came in with a tray of food. Gold looked up at her as she padded in, and she almost dropped it. She set it on the table near him, not the bedside one, and squeaked something about the sheriff before hurrying out.

The tray held a wilting sandwich, a brownie that looked as if had been made of concrete, and a cup of weak tea. He drank the tea.

The hall outside of Belle's door had grown empty, and very quiet, by the time Dr. Whale returned. He bypassed the bed and came to stand directly in front of Gold. "Right. This is me officially kicking you out. Visiting hours are over — " he went on, when Gold would have opened his mouth to speak, "— they've been over for hours, as a matter of fact, but the rest of the staff is too scared of you to say anything, and I've been too damn busy, so they let it go up til this point. But now you need to leave."

"Concussion?" Gold asked.

"That's a discussion for me to have with Miss French, when she wakes up, or with her immediate family if comes to that. You certainly aren't the former, and I don't recall exactly how you fall into the latter?" Dr. Whale gave him an exhausted, humorless smile.

"I believe you mentioned the possibility of fractured ribs."

"Get out."

Gold stood. Slowly, as his leg protested violently at having to stand after sitting for so long. "I would like to request," he began, "that you not allow Mayor Mills to visit…Miss French."

"That's not up to you," Dr. Whale said, flipping briskly through Belle's chart. "It's up to me, and I'm not exactly in the mood to let her have any visitors until I feel good and damn ready. But Regina is listed as Miss French's emergency contact, and I have no doubt she'll try to use that to continue her reign of goddamn terror."

"I trust you will do what you can. It sounds as though I have missed out on quite the story." Self-control made his voice very nearly calm. "It appears, doctor," Gold continued, easing his way towards the door, "that this poor girl was not treated very well under your care."

"If she was under my care, I'd like to think it wouldn't have come to this." And Whale turned his back on Gold to examine Belle's IV.

Gold left the long way, via the accounting office, where it was a simple matter to terrify the office manager into agreeing to send Belle's medical bills to his office.

Then he went home.