Alright, well I couldn't leave you guys with that last chapter. And I'm a terrible student and am writing instead of studying. So here is another one! yay! This one is another tough one. Seems like Emma just can't catch a break. Now this time for sure it may be a little while until the next chapter. It just didn't feel right leaving you guys with anything other than Emma and Regina.

PS: Thank you everyone who is reading this! I feel like it's kind of a depressing story right now, but I promise it will end on a happy note! And I appreciate every single one of your views and comments and follows and favorites and everything else. :)

Enjoy!

Just Another Day

Emma slowly woke up just like she had done for the past two weeks in the same hard hospital couch/bed she had been sleeping on. As her vision cleared she saw what she had seen for so long. Regina was still lying in the same perfect position as she was in when Emma first walked into her room. The pain had become numb to Emma, and everything around her just felt like it was becoming normal. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different. The doctors really couldn't even explain why she hadn't woken up yet. There was nothing in the tests that would show she didn't have the ability to wake up.

So Emma went about her usual day of sitting and waiting. There were visitors every now and then but mostly she looked forward to when Henry came up at least once a day and spent some time with her. Graham had not come back since the day he told her about Daniel. She felt a little guilty for getting so angry, realizing that the man was only doing his job when he told her the news. Nevertheless she wished that everything he said was not true. There were so many questions swarming her mind. Did he do it on purpose? That was the big one that she struggled with daily. If he had done it on purpose then it was because he was mad. And if he was mad it was because of her. Which would make this all her fault. Could it have just coincidence? These were the questions that plagued her every day. And none of them brought her any comfort.

The weekly morning nurse came in just as Emma finished washing her face in the sink. "Good morning, Emma. How are you feeling today?" The nurse casually asked as she checked the machines at Regina's bedside.

"Same as yesterday I guess. And the day before that." Emma answered plainly. She stepped out of the way to make sure the nurse had enough room to navigate around the bed. "Anything new?"

"Everything still looks stable."

Emma sighed heavily and wiped some water she missed on her forehead off on the back of her hand and wiped it on her pants.

"I'm sorry I can't give you much more information. We just have to keep holding on that one day she will come back. I'm really glad you are here with her. Lots of patients we get like this don't have much or any family at all so they just lay here alone. It's refreshing to have someone like you around. If she knows you love her, she will pull through." The nurse sounded so genuine, and Emma understood what she was trying to say, but at the same time she had heard those words said to her for almost a month and nothing had changed. Emma smiled so as to not be rude and thanked the nurse before the woman headed back out to the offices in the hallway.

Emma leaned her body up against the small closet next to the sink and allowed her head to drop forward. She took a deep breath, a shallow deep breath, and let her body try to relax as best she could. She thought about about what the doctors had said about there being no reason why she wasn't waking up. That hurt more than some of the other news she had been given since this all started. Did Regina not feel like she had a reason to live? Does she not know how much she mattered? Does Regina understand that Emma, or Henry for that matter, would never be the same if she never woke up?

She stepped over to the bed and stood next to Regina. It looked like her body wasn't even real. Without the constant rise and fall of Regina's chest, Emma would have probably convinced herself weeks ago that this was just a fake version of Regina and this whole thing was some sick practical joke. But her breaths and the beeping heart monitors kept Emma stuck in reality.

She reached down and gently stroked Regina's fingers that stuck out of the cast on her left arm, her skin warm to the touch just like it always was. Despite her state the brunette continued to radiate with beauty. Emma couldn't help but interlock her fingers in the brunettes, holding on with all the strength she no longer had and she sunk down to her knees, laying her head on the side of the bed.

Through her steady breathing to keep herself calm she hardly noticed the pressure growing around her hand. She almost thought it was her imagination playing tricks, teasing her into thinking that Regina was actually holding her hand instead of her fingers lying loosely around her own. When her nerves finally sent the message to her brain that this was not a drill or her imagination her eyes immediately shot up to the hand in hers. She watched it closely as the fingers curved slowly over onto Emma's knuckles and tightened around her skin, the cast hindering too much motion.

Emma was frozen inside trying wrap her brain about what was happening. She stood up from where she had bent over, her hand still wrapped in the brunette's. Suddenly the woman's eyes started making small movements under her eyelids and working down her body all the way to her toes. Emma watched as the frozen posture of the woman melted in front of her eyes. Her toes twitched, then a leg, then her hand wrapped around Emma's even tighter, and then… her eyes.

Emma frantically reached over and attacked the nurse call button, pounding it with her fist. If she had hit it just a little harder, she probably would have broken it.

Then her eyes opened. The eyes that had been shut from Emma for almost a month were now open and Emma had no idea what to do. She had prepared herself for the worst and now this was happening. Right now. This was happening. How could this be happening? Was this real?

"Regina?" Emma pulled her free hand up to the woman's cheek gently trying to gain her attention. The woman's eyes wondered for a moment before landing on Emma's face. Emma could see the confusion behind Regina's eyes and when her eyebrows scrunched together Emma knew that what the doctors had told her had to be true and she felt a piece of her die. Regina didn't recognize her. But that wouldn't stop Emma from trying to trigger a memory.

"Regina, it's me. Emma?" She tried to say her own name hoping it would trigger something. But as Regina's eyes drifted away from her and close again, Emma's heart began to race desperately.

"No, Regina stay with me. Please stay with me. Keep your eyes open. Please. Regina it's me, Emma. Stay with me." Emma had let go of the woman's now limp hand and held on to the woman's face trying to keep her steady. Her eyes fluttered open for tiny seconds but she could not hold them open long enough. And as quickly as those dark brown pearls were there, they were gone.

"No, babe, please." Emma had been quickly reduced to tears. "Stay with me." She rubbed on the woman's cheeks with her thumbs and tried to kiss her. Their lips touched through Emma's falling tears. "Regina, please." She kissed her again, a little harder this time, but there was nothing. Emma wiped her face and stood up searching the machines for some kind of answer but found none. She pushed at the nurse call button again and then immediately headed out into the hall, becoming impatient that this was happening and nobody was there to explain it or help her.

"NURSE!" She screamed out. Her tears overwhelming her. She could hardly breath and her eyes burned with the pain inside of her.

The nurse poked her head out from behind her desk and was immediately startled by the woman scene approaching her desk.

"Emma? What's wrong?" She stood up and walked around the desk to meet her.

"Did you not hear the button? She woke up! What do we do? She woke up, she looked at me, she moved. Where is Doctor Whale? I pushed the button. Where the hell is everybody?" Emma halted herself at the desk searching around for the doctor.

The nurse was already on her way to the room before Emma could finish talking. The doctor was nowhere in sight so she immediately followed the nurse back into Regina's room hoping to gain some answers. She felt like her body was bouncing off the walls but she couldn't pinpoint what was causing it. Excitement, fear, anger, pain, loneliness. Everything was fogging up her brain and when she made it back to Regina's room she could feel her hands shaking and squeezed them together nervously as she waited for the nurse to tell her something. Anything.

"So, what happened?" Emma watched the nurse search through the machines clicking buttons and making them beep.

The nurse checked Regina's heart beat and her pulse and then clicked through some of the past information on the screens but the face she gave Emma when she was finished was not what Emma expected.

"What? What happened?" Emma asked again, eyes wide in anticipation.

"As far as I can see… nothing. Nothing has changed." The nurse gave her the saddest look Emma had ever seen, and the blonde knew exactly what she was thinking. The nurse was thinking Emma had just imagined it all happen. Well that was surely not the case.

"No." Emma pointed at her. "No, she woke up! She held my hand. She looked at me!" Emma protested.

The nurse stepped over to Emma and put a hand on her shoulder. "Emma, I know this is hard. We are all losing sleep and sometimes our minds like to play tricks on us when we are extremely tired."

Emma pulled away from the nurse immediately at her words. "I am not crazy." Emma spit through gritted teeth.

"Oh, that is not at all what I'm saying dear. I'm just saying that maybe you are just tired and your brain thought it saw her move. It happens, Emma. To all of us."

"I did not imagine this! She woke up. I looked into her eyes. I spoke to her. I don't understand what's happening." Emma was growing angry as she wiped the still falling tears from her now flustered cheeks. How could this nurse not believe her? Emma knew what she saw. Didn't she?

"Emma, please, relax. I'll call Doctor Whale and have him sit down with you okay? Maybe you need to just talk it out." The nurse forced a smile and then left the room. There was nothing more for her to say. She was left in a pile of rubble at the foot of Regina's bed as the door clicked closed behind her.

Emma couldn't have imagined it could she? She was sitting right there and watched it all happen. Just as she had every night in her dreams. This couldn't have been a dream could it? What if it was? Emma couldn't even think straight anymore. Did she imagine it? She guessed it was possible, but she knew what she saw. She wasn't crazy.

For the rest of the day Emma found herself unable to step foot in Regina's room. She left quickly after the nurse had left and spent most the day pacing the hallway. Graham had shown up that afternoon after getting a worried call from the nurse. Emma almost didn't want to see him, but knew he wasn't there to give her any more bad news so she welcomed the company. Honestly there wasn't much in the way of bad news left for him to give. Except maybe that she was going crazy.

"I know what I saw Graham. I am not crazy." Her face was flushed with nerves and her voice was hushed as they talked in a secluded corner of the hospital.

Graham rubbed his hands over his unshaven chin. He had spent the last few sleepless nights at the station going through the hordes of paper work he had to do before any action could be taken against Daniel and he had just laid down for a nap when he got the call from the nurse. The nurse told him that Emma had been pacing the hallway for nearly three hours after what had happened and thought it would be a good idea if someone was here to talk to her since Dr. Whale was stuck in surgery.

"I know you're not crazy. But they don't have anything to prove that she woke up. Nothing has shown up on the machines. I don't know what to think. Has it happened again?" Graham asked concerned.

"Maybe the machines are wrong. I don't know, I can't even go back in the room." Emma spoke exasperated.

"Emma, you need to go home." Graham stated shortly.

Emma was passive by the comment, having heard it several times by multiple people over the past month. "Graham come on, you know that's not going to happen."

"I'm not asking you." Graham stated stated more firmly. "Go home."

"No. I'm not leaving until I know what is happening. "

"Emma you can't even go into her room. What are you going to do, sleep on the floor in the hallway?"

"If I have to, yes. I have to be here Graham. I would never forgive myself if I wasn't here when she woke up."

"Emma, I cannot allow you to do that. It's time for you to go home. Think about your son."

Emma's passive tone turned to immediate anger, and she deliberately turned to the sheriff, her face pouring with fury. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare hold my son over me like bait. He knows how much I love him and he knows why I'm here."

"Sure, but do you? Do you know why you're here Emma?" Graham argued.

"Of course! I'm here for Regina. Why else would I be here? Don't turn this on me Graham. I didn't ask for this! I didn't ask for any of this! So you can take what you think you know and shove it up your ass. I'm staying here." With that Emma pushed passed Graham, knocking him in the shoulder as she passed him. Her boots echoed down the hall and Graham couldn't help but kick himself. He wasn't good at this kind of thing obviously, and he hated that every time he talked to Emma he seemed to make everything worse.

Emma on the other hand was racking with fury as she walked away from him. As soon as she was down an empty hallway she threw a fist at the wall, beating it as hard as she could. The pain bolted through her arm as she pounded the white walls, her knuckles bruising with each hit against the dry wall. She was sure she wasn't going to stop until her fist was through the plaster.

"AHHH!" Her shouts turned to tears and as her energy depleted her body fell to the floor. She felt like this was never going to end. Things were never going to change. Giving up seemed so much easier than this. Everybody thought she was crazy, she was living at the hospital, she hadn't eaten anything in at least two days, sleepless nights plagued her and yet she couldn't find the switch to just turn it all off. There was no switch. She never created one for herself. She had to keep going.

She cradled her now throbbing knuckles to her chest and before she could think to do anything else she flipped out her cell phone and dialed the number she had memorized so many years before. The other end rang twice before the heavy voice came through her ears.

"Emma Swan! It's been a while. I thought you'd forgotten about me." He spoke enthusiastically.

"August?" Emma sniffed through her pain. She couldn't bring herself to say anything else as her stomach wrenched as she cried.

"Emma? What's going on? What's wrong?" His tone turned immediately edgy on the phone. His voice low and demanding of answers. Emma couldn't find any words. She didn't know why she called him. She just needed to know that someone was still on her side and would stay with her despite everything. Just like she did when she was a kid. All those times she found herself hiding in her closet at her foster house while her foster father broke nearly every possession in their house in a drunken fit, curled up in a ball as August's voice calmed her over the cell phone he had given her when he left the house after he turned 18. It all seemed like a precursor to this moment. But this time she wasn't running away from her father but running away from herself.

"Emma?" She heard him speak again, this time more deliberate.

"August I'm scared." She whispered through her tears. Her own voice mimicking the 10 year old manifesting inside of her. She was scared, she was lonely, she was in a dark place inside of her own mind.

"Scared of what, Emma? What happened? Is Henry okay?" He sounded soft yet intensely curious. She hadn't told him about the accident. This was the first time she had talked to him since before the accident but explaining what happened over the phone was not something she was planning or had the ability of doing. She was lost.

"I don't know what to do anymore." She kept on. She didn't know what to say or how to say it she just needed to say something. And all she could think of was her falling apart, and her world coming to a crashing halt.

"Emma, you gotta talk to me. What is going on? Where is Henry?"

She kept crying. She didn't think she would have been able to cry anymore, but the tears came all the same. The sobs echoing in the man's ear on the other line could have brought him to his knees if he wasn't already sitting down.

"Okay okay. I'm on my way right now. Just… ah damn it… I'm on my way Emma." Emma could hear the shuffling on the line but only from a distance as the phone fell from her hands into her lap. She didn't even have the energy to hold it up anymore. The brightness of the hallway dug into her temples and she hated being there. Her body fell to the side and she pulled her knees up to her chest, squeezing as hard as she could. Maybe she could just end it all by squeezing herself to death. It was the only way to quiet this terrible dream she had found herself in.