Medical experience
FanOfMost asked for a oneshot of …well, basically this is a spinoff request :P
"What on Earth happened?!" Snow asked, alarmed, as Emma hopped into their home supported by Charming.
"She got clipped by some idiot on a motorbike. He was wearing a helmet so neither of us got a good look at him. Don't you worry though Snow, I'll find out who they are and that license will be getting removed." Charming growled as he lowered Emma onto a chair.
"What are her injuries like? Shouldn't you have taken her to the hospital rather than here?" Snow said, already beginning to panic.
"I don't need to go to the hospital. I'm fine." Emma protested.
"That's exactly what she told me. She threatened that if I took her straight there she'd crawl out if she had to." Charming explained. Snow raised an eyebrow at her stubborn daughter.
"Since when did you become a doctor who was able to diagnose yourself?" She questioned Emma. She moved over to her and rolled up the trouser leg of the leg she had injured. She gasped. "Emma, this foot is incredibly swollen. We need to get you to the hospital…"
"No. We don't." Emma grunted. "It's not broken. I've sprained the foot. I can tell by putting pressure on certain points since I'm not throwing up." Emma explained to them through gritted teeth. Just because it was a sprain didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell. "Can someone get me an icepack and some aspirin?" She asked. Snow quickly moved into the kitchen to get what Emma asked for, but neither she nor Charming were done with their questions.
Snow came back through a minute later with some frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel, a couple of aspirin and a glass of water. Emma sighed contently as her mom rested the makeshift icepack on her swollen foot while she chugged down the pills. Snow and Charming waited patiently for a few minutes so the painkillers could begin to take effect before asking some more questions.
"How did you know the points to press to check if you'd broken anything?" Charming asked her. Emma went silent for a moment. She didn't like talking about this time in her life, but there was no point in holding back now.
"After I got out of jail, I bounced around all over the place." She began. "I told myself I was gaining some worldly experience, when really I was just running away from my past. I found myself out in Juneau in Alaska. I liked it out there. It was so far away from everywhere I'd been hurt. But there would be no kipping in cardboard boxes or squatting in empty apartments out there. It was too damn cold." Snow and Charming felt tremendously uncomfortable at the thought of Emma ever having to take either of those options in her life. They listened on. "Some doctor guy found me on my first nice. I had asked him for directions to a hostel or something like that. He took pity on me. He was maybe in his mid-thirties. He said he had a spare room back at his place. I could have it and food if I helped him out at the hospital he worked at. I wouldn't get paid, but I would have a bed and a full belly so I wasn't going to complain." Snow and Charming were no more comfortable with the idea of Emma trusting a complete stranger. What if he had taken advantage of her? Emma could see her parents looked uneasy. "I wasn't thrilled with the idea either. I nearly said no, thinking I was better off taking my chances with the cold. But by then my fingers were getting numb and I thought what the heck? I could take care of myself if need be. As it happens, my gamble paid off. He was a genuinely nice guy. Took me in and got me experience in the hospital he worked in the diagnostics department in. I got experience all over the place in all kinds of wards. I stayed there for a good few months. It was approaching the record of my longest stint anywhere in my whole life other than the Swans. I left after…it happened." Emma suddenly became quiet and unwilling to give either of her parents eye contact.
"What happened Emma?" Charming prompted her. Emma sighed. She hated this bit of the story the most.
"Until he deliberately made sure a man died." Emma explained. Snow and Charming's eyes widened in shock. Why would a Doctor do that? "It wasn't a nice man that he had killed. He'd done lots of terrible things. But still, when I found out he had done it deliberately I couldn't trust him anymore. By the time he got home from his shift I was on a plane to Baton Rouge. Running as far away as possible again." Snow and Charming were gobsmacked. They felt awful for Emma being let down like that by someone she had trusted. They knew how hard she found trusting people.
"We're sorry, sweetheart." Charming said, taking her hand. "We're sorry he let you down." Emma just shrugged.
"People do that sometimes." She said quietly. "I'm just glad I got out of there before things got serious and I got involved in the case. Besides, if I hadn't moved I would never have become a bail bondsperson and Henry would never have found me." Emma said more happily. "Things have a funny way of working out in the end for this family."
"Yeah." Snow agreed. "I suppose they do." Snow and Charming may be happy that Emma's path led her back home, but they both just wished it could have been a more gentle one for her. If they were honest, they wished it was a path she had never had to take at all.
