A huge thank you to everyone that pointed out that there appeared to be scenes missing from chapter 11. That was a huge understatement because what got posted was about a tenth of the completed chapter. Here is the completed chapter, which should clear up any confusion.
As always, thank you for reading.
I own nothing.
Chapter 11 Love At First Sight Complete Chapter
A look of surprise crossed Snow's face. Before she could question the statement that Emma had made, the door opened and the doctor strolled in with a smile on his face.
"She was wise to question the first test. You are pregnant by about 8 weeks. I am going to do a quick physical examination and send you on your way with some pamphlets." He started to feel under her gown.
"8 weeks?" Snow repeated. Her voice was slightly crestfallen.
Emma realized that it was before the curse was broken. She reached over and placed one hand on the hand of her mother.
"Is that a problem?" Emma asked sympathetically.
"Of course it is not a problem." She gave her daughter a reassuring smile. "This child was created out of love no matter when it was conceived. It makes it a bigger miracle because it defined the odds. This child is powerful, Emma. Can you feel it? It already beat a curse!" She smiled excitedly.
Snow turned to the doctor.
"How long before we will know if it is a boy or a girl?"
She was almost giddy with anticipation. It did not really matter to her, but she knew that her husband really wanted a son and so she really hoped they were having a boy this time. With Emma, she knew almost immediately that it was a girl. For some reason she could not feel out this child in that way.
"I will have the nurse schedule an ultrasound for later this week. They might be able to tell at that appointment." The doctor answered.
The doctor was looking with concern at some of the bruises and love bites that were visible on her body.
"Should I be concerned about those? You know, any instances of abuse you report to me are covered by patient/doctor confidentiality."
"It was not abuse. She enjoyed getting those!" Emma stated with forcefulness in her voice that surprised both her and her mother. "At least, I am guessing that she was having fun at the time." Emma blushed.
Snow gave the doctor a guilty look, but she nodded in the affirmative.
"You might want to tone things done a level or two." He advised.
"Can it be dangerous for the baby?" Snow asked curiously.
"Probably not, some women find that their sexual appetite increases during pregnancy. It can be a vital way for the couple to stay connected. As long as you are not going at each other with whips and chains, a healthy sex live can be an important part of your pregnancy."
Emma rolled her eyes, "Please do not encourage her!"
"You should probably be more supportive of your partner. You know, she is not having this baby alone!" The doctor scolded.
"She is my mother!" Emma snapped impatiently.
The doctor looked at her chart.
"She is 28 years old. There is no way she could possibly be your mother." The doctor gave her a skeptical look.
"I see you are not from around here. See what you have done?" Emma turned to her mother, "You are coming to these appointments alone from this day on until you have the baby." She glared at Snow.
The doctor consulted the chart again.
"I see you drink several cups of coffee a day. You might want to cut down on the amount of caffeine you consume."
A horrified look crossed Snow's face.
"I am willing to make many sacrifices, especially for my children," She smiled at Emma, "I was willing to give up my castle and my servants. I sent my daughter away in a magic tree in the hopes that she would have a better life. However, I refuse to give up my caffeine or my trips to Granny's Diner at 7:15!"
Her voice rose in anger and excitement until the doctor was forced to take several steps back against the wall.
"You don't have to go to Granny's at 7:15 anymore." Emma reminded her.
"Oh right!" Snow replied.
The doctor looked at them as if he thought they might need a physiological evaluation.
"Maybe you could try drinking tea?" He asked meekly.
"I guess I could try that." Snow shrugged.
The doctor took that opportunity to flee the room under the pretense that Snow needed privacy to get re-dressed.
"I can hardly wait to tell your father!" Snow practically overflowed with glee.
The expression on Emma's face was harder to read.
"Emma is something wrong?" Her mother asked with great concern in her voice.
"Of course not, I am just not used to seeing you genuinely happy and knowing that David played some part in that happiness. You wear happiness well." She gave her mother a hopeful smile.
Snow hugged her daughter.
"I love you so much. You will always be my little girl, no matter how many other children your father and I have."
"Are you planning on having more?" Emma asked in horror.
"Let's just get through this pregnancy and see what happens." Snow laughed.
Before they left the clinic a nurse printed out several pages of instructions and helpful tips for expectant parents.
Snow was looking at some of the information.
"Emma did that doctor think that you and I are having this baby together as a couple?" Confusion registered on her face.
Emma laughed.
"I believe that was the general impression. Don't worry about it though. He wasn't from around here."
Snow was looking at the pamphlets again.
"Most of what they gave me does not fit my situation and the rest of it is quite frightening!" She commented with a mix of shock and frustration showing on her face.
"Try dealing with it on your own, when you are about to turn 18." Emma commented sarcastically.
"I am so sorry." Her mother lamented. "But it you hadn't gone through it when you were 18 we would not have Henry in our lives now."
"True!" Her daughter admitted reluctantly.
Snow looked up at the sign over a building.
"Oh look Emma, it's a tea shop! I am starving, let's stop for a snack before we go back to the apartment and pick up Henry."
Emma shook her head at the idea that her mother was actually hungry, but allowed herself to be dragged into the tea shop none-the-less.
They found a small table and Snow looked at the menu.
"The doctor told me to drink more tea, but I think we should order some food first." Snow decided that she wanted to try everything, but Emma talked her into ordering a small assortment of sandwiches and cakes.
"What did you mean when you said that the baby is powerful?"
Emma asked with a puzzled look on her face.
Snow that for a moment.
"It just kind of popped into me head and came out my mouth. Your father and I always knew that you were special Emma. You were destined to be the savior. This child feels as if he or she already has a destiny as well and is powerful enough to fulfill said destiny. Maybe every parent feels that way about their children." She studied the menu again.
Emma shrugged.
"Maybe, but I know what it feels like to have a destiny thrown at you. It can be overwhelming and I experienced it as an adult. I want to make sure that my brother or sister does not feel as if they have to save the world just because they are the off spring of Snow White and Prince Charming."
Snow gave her daughter a sympathetic smile.
"One thing is for sure, with you as a big sister, he or she will never have to save the world alone. Now, what do you know about tea?" Snow asked her daughter.
"I know nothing what so ever about tea!" Emma laughed.
"Perhaps I can be of assistance?" They turned towards a voice behind them.
"Jefferson?" Emma asked.
Snow rose from her seat and stood in front of Emma. Her stance was very much that of a protective mother lioness.
"Stay away from her!" Snow's voice crackled with energy.
"I come in peace!" He gave them both a maddening smile.
"It's is okay," Emma insisted, "Jefferson helped me get custody of Henry. He sits on the Child Welfare Council."
"Of course, I remember now." Snow stated, but she still stood firmly between Jefferson and Emma.
"I only came over to find out how Henry is adjusting." He insisted "And to offer my advice on tea." He shrugged.
"I am not sure we should drink anything that you offer!" Snow replied, "After all, you did tie me up and hold me hostage. You did drug Emma, with tea I might add, and you did hold her hostage and force her to make a hat!" Snow glared at him angrily.
"I guess it would be too much to ask you to buy the excuse that we were all cursed?" He gave her an unnerving grin.
"It is way too much to ask! So, pardon me for not wanting to take tea with a raving lunatic!" Snow's reaction was point blank.
Emma's jaw dropped and she looked embarrassed.
Snow was about to leave, but at that moment her tea tray arrived and she was hungry. It was a public establishment and they could hardly afford to poison their customers!
Jefferson addressed the woman who had brought the cakes and sandwiches.
"Alice, will you make sure that they try a pot of the topsy turvey blend. Put it on my tab."
"Seriously, that is Alice?" Emma rolled her eyes.
Jefferson gave her an exasperated look.
"She is not the Alice!" He turned to Snow. "I can see that Henry is in very good hands. He should have nothing to fear with you as his Grandma!" He placed a hard emphasis on the word "Grandma." This unnerved Snow White for some reason. She was glad to see that he was leaving.
"That man is severely unhinged." Snow stated as she watched him leave.
"Still, he did help me with Henry. He has a daughter who he is fighting to get back and there is something intriguing about him." Emma stated wistfully.
Alice brought a pot of stemming tea, which Snow eyed suspiciously.
"There is nothing wrong with my tea or the food severed in this establishment!" She stated with indignation.
Everything looked delicious and even Emma was starting to feel hungry. They dug into the food and drink and hoped that the woman was telling the truth.
"What a strange morning! I guess the food was not drugged" Snow stated as they returned to the apartment.
Emma was about to agree when she saw a sight that made her heart nearly stop. The door leading from the hallway stood slightly ajar.
"Henry where are you?" Emma called franticly.
He wasn't in any room on the bottom floor. Emma ran upstairs to check there. Snow saw a note sitting on the table.
"Emma, he left a note!" Snow yelled up the stairs.
Emma came downstairs and took the note from her mother. She read it out loud.
"I have run away to Boston. I will come back when everyone here is able to get along. I want us to be a real family. Do not try to follow me. Bad things happen when people try to leave."
"We have to go after him!" Snow firmly told her daughter.
"You heard what Henry said, bad things happen when people try to leave." Emma reminded her.
"That was true before the curse was broken. As far as we know, it is now safe to leave. He is my grandson and I am going after him!" She exclaimed as she grabbed her car keys.
Emma had no choice but to go after her mother.
Charming figured that he would have been better off staying home that morning and spending time with Henry. He found it impossible to concentrate and he was actually a liability because he kept getting in the way of the workers.
All he could do was sit and stare at the spot where he envisioned the future nursery and wonder why Snow refused to talk about the fact that they were having another child. He knew that she was pregnant because he could feel it in his heart. Plus, all of the other signs pointed in that direction. She had been moody and her appetite had been staggering. Not to mention her sexual appetite pointed to surging hormones, which were not an entirely bad thing.
A smile crossed his face as he thought about how lucky he was to be with the woman he loved, to have a wonderful daughter and grandson and to possibly have another child on the way.
He looked at his phone to see how long he would have to wait to see his lovely wife. He noticed he had missed a call. With all the construction noise it was sometimes difficult to hear his phone. He played back a message from 10 minutes earlier. It was from Snow and his heart filled with joy at hearing her voice. The connection had been bad and he could only catch bits and pieces of what she said. Something about Henry running away and that she and Emma were following him. He thought she said something about Boston.
Geppetto approached and gave his prince a serious look.
"Is everything alright?" he asked in a fatherly tone.
Charming looked as his phone. His brow was furrowed in concentration. He just could not be sure. Then it hit him, the pain that felt like someone had reached into his chest and was squeezing his heart. The only other time that he had felt it was when Regina had used the apple to poison Snow.
"Snow!" He cried out in agony.
A moment later his cell phone rang.
"Emma, what has happened?" He asked urgently. "I will be right there.
He did not stop to explain to Geppetto. He simply bolted from the cabin as quickly as he could. The only thing on his mind was the safety of his wife and unborn child.
When Charming reached the hospital he saw a nurse attempting to tend to Emma and several nurses and doctors hovering over Snow, who was unconscious. He went straight to his daughter.
"Are you alright? What happened?" He asked with fatherly concern in his voice.
"I am not sure," Emma nearly sobbed, "We were on our way to find Henry and we were near the town limits. That is the last thing that I remember until I heard sirens and we were on our way here."
He gave his daughter a reassuring hug.
"Everything will be alright." He told her as a cast a worried look towards his wife.
"What is wrong with her?" He asked one of the nurses.
"We are trying to find out. She came in unconscious." The nurse shrugged.
Charming's face turned the color of cold ash.
"What about the baby?" His voice barely rose above that of a fearful whisper.
The nurse indicated a separate monitor, "We have the baby on a fetal monitor and the heartbeat is strong. We will be taking her downstairs for an ultrasound as soon as she is stabilized." The nurse gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.
He let out a breath of air.
Doctor Whale had been attending to Snow, but now he stepped forward.
"You know since she is unconscious, now might be a good time to perform a DNA test on the baby. Just to make sure who is really the father of the little tyke." He smiled deviously.
Charming glared at him. This man had a one night stand with his wife, supported Regina at the custody hearing where Emma nearly lost Henry and now the fiend was insulting his unborn child? Charming had taken all he was willing to take from the doctor. He hauled off and punched Whale squarely in the jaw, sending the man flying across the room where he landed firmly on his butt.
"Get him out of here!" Whale yelled. "He is banned from this room!"
Security was there in an instant and started to physically remove the prince. He waved them off and walked out into the hall. Emma followed.
"Feel better?" She asked her father, who was rubbing the bruised knuckles on his right hand.
"A little," He softly admitted. "He has been asking for it for a long time." He said.
"I agree, but how can you help Mary Margaret if you can't both be in the same room." Emma asked concerned.
"Can he really ban me from her room? After all, she is my wife." He looked through the window at her like a lost puppy.
"Unfortunately, you have no legal right to call her your wife in this world. David Nolan is not married to Mary Margaret." She gave him a serious look.
A nurse brought him an ice pack for his hand.
"You have to be kidding me? Everyone knows that we are married." He placed the ice on his bruised hand.
"I said that you do not have a legal right to be in there, but I do. The two of us made out legal documents grating the other power of attorney. I might be able to get you in the room for the ultrasound." She gave him a reassuring look.
"I am not worried about the ultrasound. I was in a coma here for so long that half the nurses have a crush on me." He gave her a triumphant wink. "Where is Henry?" He asked urgently.
At that moment Regina burst through the door, "I would like to know the answer to that question as well. Where is my son?" Her eyes blazed with anger.
"He left a note saying that he was leaving for Boston. We were trying to follow him, when something or someone stopped us."
Both Emma and her father glared at Regina.
Charming slammed her up against the wall and held her by the throat.
"What did you do to Snow?" He seethed.
Regina's eyes bulged and she chocked from lack of breath.
"I did nothing to your precious Snow. Do you really think I would have left her unscathed?" She indicated Emma.
"She cut my break lines the when I first came to town." Emma informed him.
Charming squeezed harder.
"I did not touch the car or either of them." Regina pleaded.
"She is telling the truth!" It was the voice of Grumpy. "I just got finished checking the car. There is nothing mechanically wrong with the vehicle.
"Then she cast some kind of curse and it can be broken." Charming said hopefully.
He let Regina go and she rubbed her neck.
"I had nothing to do with it. I wish I had cast some kind of curse against Snow. I hate her enough." Regina shrugged. "I just want to find Henry and make sure he is alright. We need to find a way to follow him to Boston."
Emma shook her head in positive agreement.
"How are we supposedly going to go after Henry when it still appears to be impossible to leave town?" Charming asked redundantly.
"Why is that anyway? I have left before and so did August. The Curse did not seem to prevent Henry from leaving when he came to Boston to find me."
"There is some kind of barrier spell woven into the original Curse. Not even I know exactly how it works. It might only work on those who were a part of the Curse" Regina admitted somewhat reluctantly.
"What about Gold? Could he help us?" Emma asked.
"I doubt it. The whole point of the curse, on his part, was to get him here to find his son. He is still hanging around, so something makes me think that he is stuck here as well. " Regina hated to share information with enemies, but she wanted her son back and if she had to team up with these two in order to find Henry, she would.
"We should go ask him anyway." Emma suggested.
"Can I meet you two there?" Charming asked. He looked over to where his wife was being stabilized. He wanted to be there when they checked on the baby, but it was clear that he did not want Regina to know about the baby.
"Of course, take your time." Emma stated as she took one last look at her mother.
They took Snow to the ultrasound room by a back elevator, but one of the nurses came and told him where to go, so he actually beat his wife to the exam room. When they wheeled her in she looked pale, still and lifeless. However, she was breathing, taking barely discernible shallow breaths. His heart broke to see her in such a state. It reminded him of how she looked when she was under the influence of the sleeping curse.
Charming measured his life in moments. The first moment he ever saw Snow. The moment he realized that he loved her. The moment she told him that they could never be together because she did not love him. The moment he realized that he was going to go after her no matter what and the moment in the forest when he woke her from the sleeping curse. The moment she agreed to be his wife. The moment Snow became his wife in the physical sense. The moment when Emma was born and the moment he saw the empty wardrobe and knew she had made it to safety. The moment he was reunited with his family after the curse had been broken. So many precious moments that made up his lifetime.
Yet, none of those moments prepared him for the tidal wave of emotions he felt when the image of his unborn child took shape on the monitor. He felt pride and happiness and most of all he felt an overwhelming sense of love at first sight. He could not stop looking at the tiny image on the screen.
His thoughts were interrupted by the technician.
"The heart beat is strong and there is a great deal of movement. I don't think you have anything to worry about. Your son is strong and healthy." The technician informed him.
"Thank you." Charming said, relieved. As an afterthought he added, "You can tell that it's a boy?" He was surprised.
"I had a fifty/fifty chance. I really need to watch myself better. The position is wrong to determine the gender. Sorry if I got your hopes up." The technician replied in a self-conscious tone.
"No need to apologize." He was in love with this child whether it was a son or a daughter was not going to lessen that love.
"We can wait a while and see if it changes position, but I think they want her back upstairs as soon as possible to run more tests."
The technician was almost apologetic, but he was right. Charming wanted to know what was wrong with his wife. Even if they had to run every test available, multiple times in order to find answers. As if on cue, a nurse appeared to take Snow back upstairs. She too seemed apologetic about performing her task.
"Can I have a minute with her?" He pleaded with the nurse.
"Of course" She told him softly. "Dr. Whale leaves at 6:00 this evening. I am sure that the nurse on duty will let you into her room tonight. We really miss having Mary Margaret around, she was our best volunteer and you were one of the easiest patents we ever had." She gave him a reassuring smile.
"If you stop by my office on the third floor I will run you off copies of the ultrasound." The technician informed him.
He nodded a thank you.
As soon as they were both gone he laid his head on his wife's stomach.
"Well, Snow you have gone and done it again. I am head over heels in love with our child. Don't get me wrong, you are still the love of my life and I love Emma and Henry as well. I cannot raise our family alone though. We need you to come back to us, so please come back." Tears spilled onto her hospital gown.
He leaned over and kissed her, hoping that once again True Love would work its magic and bring her back to her family.