Chapter 27

The tour of the hospital is much more formal than anywhere else they've been. This is mainly because no one dog piles him and they don't give the princess any silly gifts. The two doctors who show Rapunzel and Eugene around act as though they've given this tour before, and this translates into Rapunzel being on her best behavior so as not to disrupt their routine or have them think she's strange.

She could spend all day in the room where they store the medicines. There's so much to take in, stones that are being crushed up in mortars to make fine powders, herbs that hang from the ceiling to dry that smell sweet as smashed berries, vials full of liquids of every color, and jars full of leaches that are both disgusting and fascinating at the same time. She bites down her desire to learn the name of every last ingredient as the doctors hurry them on to the next site.

It's been a few weeks at least since she felt this overwhelmed. She's been doing a good job lately of knowing her limits, of knowing how far she can push herself. She knows the signs of when she needs a break, when she needs to sit and clear all the sensations away. First her shoulders start to feel weak, like she wants to hunch in on herself and hide. Then it gets harder to breathe, not suffocatingly so, but like something heavy is resting on her chest. She feels tight and confined, and at the same time she feels like she might explode while trying to fill the hugeness of the world around her. Then her hands start to shake and at that point she usually drops something.

Her hands started to shake an hour ago.

That's why she would rather spend their tour just in one room. If they're going to show her something, she wants to stop and learn everything about it, so she can understand it and file it away appropriately. Teasing her with hundreds of different things that she's going to have to research later is just mean, and her laundry list of things to look up is getting so long that she's forgotten the first few items she put on it, and that thought just makes the anxiety worse.

Eugene's hand has been at the small of her back since they arrived. He guides her from one room to the next, so she doesn't have to think about it – not that it's much to think about in the first place, but she does recognize that it helps. Every now and then he rubs his thumb against her back in a way that's so reassuring it's almost funny.

Well, it almost makes her burst out in hysterical giggles, but then again that might be more about her nerves than about Eugene.

"…and as you can see," one of the doctors says while leading them down a hallway, "We would like to expand this ward to include-"

He's cut off as a howl rips through the air, long and unearthly and ravaged with pain. She jumps and pulls her hands to her chest, making herself small, trying to cover her heart before the noise can tear it out.

The doctors exchange one anxious glance, then hurry down the hallway towards the scream. Eugene tries to grab her, to hold her back, but she's already darted forward, out of reach. Distantly she hears him swear and chase after her.

It's kind of like a dream, something that she watches without participating, something that's happening around her while she is powerless to stop it. She's had this feeling so many times since she left the tower, since it became clear how much of her life she can't control.

The man stops screaming and starts shaking violently, his eyes rolled back, jerking around wildly on a thin bed while doctors swarm around him, their hands frantic even though she can't make out what they're doing. She can't really see them. With her vision focused on the tortured man everything around him is blurred. She watches as he chokes.

Someone takes hold of her, but before they pull her away there is a moment, a single flash of a glimpse as blood gurgles up and spills over and pours freely out of his mouth. The image burns itself against her eyes so even as she's moved away she can't see where she's going – all she can see is the blood so bright it can't be real and the man's haunted, empty eyes.

She's cold. Cold, and dizzy, and is she shivering or are her hands shaking?

"Breathe for me, alright? Just breathe."

She's sitting on something and someone guides her head down between her knees, plucking her crown from her head before it slips off. She swallows and squeezes her eyes shut, but the blood won't go away. It seeps from her eyes into her mind, then down into her heart and leaves her sticky and dirty and so very, very scared.

"That a girl. You're doing alright. You're going to be ok."

Someone's rubbing her back – and somewhere in the back of her mind she knows it's Eugene, but for some reason knowing it's him only makes her shudder. She wishes the rubbing would stop, because it's making her feel sick.

"Shh. You're doing good. Just keep breathing."

That man is going to die. He might already be dead. He needs help. Someone has to help him.

She lifts her head and pushes herself quickly to her feet. Maybe it's a bit too quickly because she sways before Eugene grabs both her elbows for support, rising from his place kneeling in front of her. She blinks around, realizing that he's taken her outside and that's why it's cold (or part of why it's cold), and he has her crown dangling off his elbow and such a concerned look on his face that she can't even begin to process it.

"Someone has to help him," she says. "Someone has to-" she makes a move back towards the building, but he stops her, and she reaches for her hair, but-

"Woah. Hold on. You need to sit down."

"No. He's dying and I can save him. I can- I-"

She meets his eyes for the first time, and they're so… they're so…

They're so much like they were just before he died.

And now she can't just see the blood, she can feel the stickiness of it, the phantom pulse against her hand as she tries to cover it with her hair – blood so bright it can't be real. And now she can feel his grip on her wrist as he holds her back – or maybe that's actually happening. And now her eyes are clouding with tears.

"Eugene," she sobs, and throws her arms around him, pulling him tight and pressing her cheek against his chest so she can feel his pulse, so she can remember that he is still alive. He enfolds her in his arms, warm and secure and most definitely real, and she contrasts the feeling of his touch, of his cheek against her hair and the moisture of his breath in the cold, with the lingering feeling that her hands are soaked in blood.

"You left me," she whimpers. "You died and left me all alone."

He stiffens and holds her tighter, shutting his eyes against the pain in her voice. He knows. He beats himself up about the same thing, about how he showed her the world and then ripped away everything she knew, everything familiar. Life as she knew it and everyone she loved were destroyed with two quick slashes.

He holds her tighter, as if to say he's sorry. He is. He's sorry he hurt her and he's sorry that it had to come to that. But he's not sorry he did it. He would do it again in a heartbeat.

They stand together like that until her shaking turns to shivers. He pulls back and wipes the freezing tears from her cheeks. Maybe going outside was a bad idea, but he thought that getting some air that didn't smell like sickness would do her some good, and that the cold might snap her back together. He rubs his hands over her arms to try to warm her.

"Come on," he says. "I'll take you home."

"What?"

"Home. Where you live. We'll set you by a fire and feed you something warm and we'll play a game of checkers with Pascal."

Her frown grows more pronounced. "But we're not done with the taxes yet."

"So?"

"So we have to finish."

"They don't need us to finish."

"But people are expecting me. I can't disappoint them."

"No," he says flatly.

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. I'm not going to let you push yourself any more today."

Her eyes narrow. "You're not going to let me?"

He knows this is a trap. He can feel it in the hairs on the back of his neck. So he thinks about his choices for a moment. He could say, no, do whatever you want, and then watch as she has another episode. Or he could hold his ground and have her be mad at him.

He crosses his arms over his chest. "That's right."

She cuts through this show of determination so effectively it's like it never happened. "Stop making decisions for me."

She might as well have punched him. She might as well have renamed her cast iron skillet "Guilt trip" and whacked him over the head with it.

He swallows. "I just… I want you to be alright."

"I'm fine," she says, and there's a defensiveness to her voice that doesn't cover how it's shaking. "I'm going to finish this."

He really doesn't have a leg to stand on to argue with her.