Chapter 2: First Days
Storybrooke, Maine was situated on the ocean only a handful of miles away from the New Hampshire border, which, strangely enough, meant that the nearest major cancer centre was located two states over in Boston, Massachusetts. That was how, after a little over an hour drive, Regina found herself at the Boston Cancer Centre a few weeks after Kathryn's visit to her office.
Two hours into her volunteer orientation, Regina had decided two things. First, this cancer centre, and she wondered if perhaps it was a trait of all cancer centres, was trying very hard to present itself as something other than a hospital despite the fact that it was quite literally connected to the hospital next door via a long covered corridor. The reception area in the entrance of the cancer centre appeared more like a hotel lobby than anything, with its long desk and friendly volunteers waiting to direct you wherever it was you were going. There was a brightly lit atrium where a piano was set up and some good (but not great) pianist was hammering out classical music - the older gentleman leading the volunteer orientation indicated that this occurred for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon everyday. This cancer centre had also steered clear of the white paint usually found in hospitals, going for soothing pastels and warm earth tones that Regina assumed were supposed to put patients at ease. Despite these, and other, clear attempts to make the place less hospital like, Regina couldn't help but think that they weren't succeeding. The air held the same sterile smell that that of hospitals did, no cheerfully coloured sign could make words like Chemo Suite, Radiation, or Hematology seem less ominous, and no matter how nice the waiting room chairs were, a roomful of feeble, very clearly unwell, people was a constant reminder that this was no hotel - which brought her to the second thing she'd decided. There didn't seem to be a person, save for a few of the medical staff, under the age of forty in this entire building. If she had to venture a guess, the average age here, volunteers included, seemed to be somewhere in the 70s. It almost made her feel like an intruder - certainly too young to be here.
The first part of volunteer orientation had involved paperwork and an overview of the tasks they'd be asked to assist with and how to perform those tasks. As if anyone needed to be told how to offer juice and coffee, or even how to help guide patients through filling out a symptom assessment on a computer where the instructions were posted clearly - although the other three volunteers, all in their late sixties, had seemed mildly perplexed by the computer, so perhaps some people did have to be told. They'd now moved on to a very thorough tour of the place, which, although Regina could concede was likely important, it was a pretty big place, she was starting to find a little boring.
The cancer centre was divided into clinics, which all treated different sub groups of cancer. A lab, a pharmacy, a chemo suite, and a radiation clinic were shared amongst the clinics. They'd started with the shared facilities, which were at least unique, but had now moved on to the clinics, which were so similar that it didn't really seem necessary to visit them all. To make matters worse, the other volunteers were getting increasingly chatty as the tour dragged on. At least, after a series of polite but abrupt answers, they'd stopped trying to include her - sharing personal details of her life with a group of strangers nearly old enough to be her grandparents was not on her to do list.
"This is hematology," Alfred, the orientation leader pointed out, as they paused in a waiting room that was nearly identical to the others they'd already visited.
Alfred explained that hematology included leukemia and lymphoma and answered the other volunteers' questions - she didn't understand how they could still have questions at this point. Regina did a quick scan of the room while the others spoke. Having come to expect a room full of elderly people, she couldn't help but do a bit of a double take at the sight of a blonde in a red leather jacket sitting in one corner of the room. She didn't mean to stare but she couldn't seem to draw her eyes away as curiosity got the better of her. The woman was staring intently at the floor, so it was hard to say for sure, but Regina was fairly certain that she couldn't be much more than thirty, if that, which very much made her seem out of place. Despite the fact that the blonde woman was sitting alone, a full three seats between her and the nearest person, Regina wondered if maybe she was here with someone, perhaps she was just waiting for a parent or a grandparent. For a second as an older looking gentleman approached the blonde, Regina thought she was right, but the blonde only chanced the man a quick glance as he reached for a discarded newspaper on the chair beside her and shuffled away again.
Just when the chatter beside her started winding down and Regina was conceding to herself that whether the blonde was a patient or a relative of a patient would remain a mystery, the woman's head snapped up. For a moment Regina thought she'd been caught staring and she quickly ducked her head but green eyes weren't looking in her direction but passed her.
"Emma Swan," the voice Regina had failed to hear previously rung out again and the blonde bounced up and out of her chair.
The blonde, Emma, walked right towards Regina without so much as a glance at her, her head ducked, her bottom lip worried between her teeth. She did not look up until she reached a nurse holding a thin looking chart and followed her around the corner to the scale where they weighed patients.
Patient it was.
xxxxxx
There were eleven days between when Emma got the call that made her cancer diagnosis official and her arrival at the Boston Cancer Centre. They were perhaps the eleven most surreal days of Emma's life - which, given her history, was saying something.
Knowing without a doubt that she had cancer but continuing to go about her daily life as if nothing had changed made her feel strangely like she was living a lie. Surely she wasn't supposed to continue to wake up every morning and go to work, stop for coffee, pick up groceries, do the laundry, or complete any number of other mundane tasks, while cancer cells continued to multiply and multiply and multiply in her body? Surely she was meant to do something and, yet, until she saw an oncologist there was literally nothing she could do. Her life had changed irrevocably in one phone call, yet for those eleven days it was almost as if it hadn't changed at all. The calm before the storm, perhaps.
During those eleven days Emma oscillated, sometimes minute to minute, from extreme impatience (needing the appointment to come sooner, needing to know what the game plan would be, needing to stop doing nothing), to almost indifference (thinking that maybe it would be okay if this pretending to not have cancer thing lasted just a little longer).
Her 26 birthday also happened to land in those eleven days. She chose not to celebrate. What was the point of celebrating the day she was abandoned on the side of a road? Especially since she had no one to celebrate with. Instead, she spent the day trying not to think about it at all. Yet, despite her best attempts, it was hard not to wonder if this would be her last birthday.
When the day finally came for her to head the cancer centre, she was a ball of nerves. She barely slept at all the night before, tossing and turning as her brain ran a continuous loop of scenarios about how the appointment would play out. They varied widely and she had no doubt that none of them would turn out to be even close to accurate.
She was technically twenty minutes early for the appointment. She sat in her yellow bug in the parking garage across from the cancer centre, which she noted with annoyance had ridiculously expensive parking fees, for eighteen of those twenty minutes - not because she didn't want to be early but because it took her that long to work up the nerve to go in. In the end, by the time she crossed the street and was directed to the right floor to check into the hematology clinic, she was actually four minutes late. Not that that seemed to matter much. She sat in the waiting room for forty five minutes before they actually called her name.
The waiting room only amplified Emma's nerves. Within five minutes she'd realized two things - first, that everyone was staring at her, diverting their eyes only when she looked their way, and, second, that she was the youngest person in this room by at least a few decades, which admittedly was likely the reason everyone was looking at her. The looks made her skin crawl uncomfortably. The mixture of curiosity and pity these mostly frail looking old people were directing her way was far too reminiscent of looks she'd received as a child in the foster care system. She wanted to snap at them but instead she settled for staring at her feet.
When her name was finally called, she bounced out of her chair and made a beeline for the nurse who'd called for her, her gaze remaining focused on the floor, not wanting to catch anymore pitying stares.
The nurse led Emma to a scale, scribbling the number that flashed out on the digital scale into the thin chart in her hand. Emma looked away from the digital display, trying to ignore the fact that the number it was showing was ten pounds less than her weight had been when they'd taken it at the hospital before her biopsy less than a month ago. The nurse checked her height next and then led Emma into an exam room. After a stack of forms and a pen were handed over, with instructions to fill them out while she waited, the nurse left her alone.
Emma ignored the stack of paper a moment and turned her attention to the exam room. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary about it. The only real difference between this exam room and the one at the walk in clinic where her life had changed was the direct oxygen hookup above the exam table. At the sight of the oxygen hookup she thought of the few elderly patients she'd seen in the waiting room lugging around oxygen tanks. Emma grimaced, hoping that that would not become something she needed. She really had no clue what to expect.
She bit her lip and ducked her head, diverting her focus to the stack of papers. The first one was straightforward enough. Name, address, insurance information. She filled it out carefully, pulling her insurance information out of the pocket of her jacket that she'd crammed it in this morning. The second one was technically straightforward too but it immediately brought a frown to her face. They wanted an emergency contact. After staring uncertainly at the form for several long minutes, she left it blank and flipped to the next page, which she quickly flipped past as well - there was no way she could provide a family medical history. She sighed, suppressing the sudden urge she had to chuck this offending stack of paper in the garbage and just run away from this place. It wasn't the cancer centre's fault that their standard forms didn't have check boxes for people without friends or family, or for people who were abandoned on the side of the road as a baby and whose every attempt to locate their biological parents had failed.
Emma shook her head, trying to shake thoughts of her childhood and general lonely existence away, and then flipped to the next page. She could actually fill this page out at least and she jotted short answers to the questions about her symptoms. No, she hadn't had any fevers or night sweats. Yes, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, there had been weight loss - the exact amount was a mystery because she wasn't in the regular habit of weighing herself, but she knew it was more than just the ten pounds she'd dropped in the last few weeks. No, she hadn't been experiencing pain after drinking alcohol - which seemed like a very strange symptom - or excessive itching, thank goodness. The last page of the stack was another set of questions she could actually answer, although she was far less truthful with these one, which asked her to rate a range of symptoms related to both her physical and mental well being on a scale of 1 to 10. She might be nervous enough that there was a chance she was going to hurl at any moment but there was no way she was saying her anxiety level was any higher than a one. She wasn't risking them using her answers to these questions to somehow force her to talk with a counsellor - she'd been forced to see enough of those in her youth and she'd vowed to herself never again.
Emma was just re-capping the pen when the door swung open and a brunette walked in. Unlike the nurse who had brought Emma into the exam room, who was wearing scrubs, this woman was dressed in a blouse and a pencil skirt, but the ID tag hanging around her neck, and the fact that she was holding the same thin file with Emma's name emblazoned on the side, suggested she was staff. Emma wondered for a moment if this was her oncologist but she wasn't left wondering long.
"Hi there," the brunette greeted, the australian accent surprising Emma, "I'm Belle, I'll be your nurse. You must be Emma."
Her nurse? Emma wasn't quite sure what that meant, her confusion must have been evident because before Emma could figure out what to say, Belle was speaking again.
"Around here we assign a nurse and an oncologist to each patient. At every visit, me and you will have a chat first, figure out how things are going for you, and then I'll pass that information on before your oncologist comes in. I'll also be the one calling to check up on you and things of that nature. Does that help make my role more clear?" Belle smiled gently, dragging a stool over and sitting in front of Emma.
Emma nodded slowly, letting that sink in. She was already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed and they hadn't even talked about anything real yet.
Belle didn't seem to mind Emma's stunned silence, and she just continued on, holding her hand out, "Did you finish with the paperwork?"
"Oh umm...yeah…" Emma shoved the papers at Belle, nearly dropping them on the floor in her haste to hand them over but Belle caught them before they could hit the floor. "Sorry…" Emma mumbled sheepishly.
Belle just smiled back and flipped through the pages quickly, nodding as she read through them. "You didn't want to specify an emergency contact?" She asked, her eyes still on the papers as she continued to skim Emma's answers.
The question wasn't accusing, or even curious. Belle was clearly just looking for confirmation that Emma hadn't missed the form but Emma still felt her cheeks colour and she rubbed the back of her neck, suddenly very uncomfortable, as she mumbled out a response, "Uhhh...no."
Belle looked up, offering Emma a reassuring smile and a head bob, "Okay." She aligned the edges of the sheets of paper and then slid them into the file. "So…" she started, folding her hands in her lap, "tell me what you know about your diagnosis."
Emma's eyes widened, startled by the question. Wasn't she supposed to be here to have them tell her what was wrong, not the other way around? "I...uhhh...it's Hodgkin's Lymphoma." Still thrown by the question, her words came out sounding more uncertain than they should. "Here," here fingers brushed against the lump on her neck, the long thin line that had bisected it since the biopsy standing out against her pale skin, "And uhhh," she motioned to her general upper body with her hand, sweeping over her chest and her armpits, "Here-ish."
Belle nodded, "Yes, we've got the scans you had done a month ago and the biopsy results." She offered Emma that same gentle, reassuring, smile again, "So have you read much about Hodgkin's?"
Emma relaxed a fraction, suddenly understanding where Belle had been going with her original question. She was trying to figure out what Emma did and didn't know and perhaps also trying to sort out what false information Emma may have gathered from the internet. "Umm…" Emma almost sighed out loud at herself - with all of this stammering she was doing, Belle was going to think she was an idiot. "I haven't read much." It was true, mostly. She'd typed Hodgkin's Lymphoma into Google a dozen times but she could never seem to get much further than a few lines into whatever she clicked on. The whole thing was too overwhelming. It was easier to not deal with it.
"Okay," Belle nodded, "Well, Dr. Eldridge, he's going to be your oncologist, will explain everything and answer any questions you might have on that front. Do you have any questions for me before I go get him?"
Emma gnawed on her lip. She had a million questions but she wasn't really sure where to even begin, so she just shook her head, no.
xxxxxx
Getting the doctor now, apparently didn't actually mean getting the doctor right that second. It was fifteen minutes before the door swung back open and a tall man walked into the room. He had red-ish hair, seemed surprisingly no older than forty, was carrying that same thin file with her name on it, and was wearing an expensive looking shirt and tie. Apparently the staff here didn't do dress down day. Glancing down at her jeans and battered old sneakers, Emma suddenly felt sort of underdressed.
"Hi," the man greeted her with a friendly smile, holding his hand out for her to shake, "I'm Dr. Alan Eldridge. Emma, right?"
Emma looked back up from her sneakers, nodding her head and reaching forward to shake the offered hand, "Hi. Nice to meet you." She grimaced as the words left her mouth, hearing how strange they sounded. There wasn't much that was actually nice about having to meet an oncologist.
Dr. Eldridge smiled knowingly at Emma's expression, "You know...it's nice to meet you, although I'm sorry it is under these circumstances, is a favourite line around this place. So...it's nice to meet you too, Emma, although I'm sorry it had to be under these circumstances."
Emma relaxed slightly in her chair, smiling back, a shy sort of smile.
Dr. Eldridge took a seat in the chair that Belle had previously occupied, moving it closer to Emma and opening the folder now in his lap, "So Belle told me that you don't know much about Hodgkin's, is that true?"
A head bob was Emma's only response.
"Okay...then this is the part where I get to deliver what I hope is some reassuring news. Hodgkin's is generally highly curable."
Curable. What a much nicer C word than Cancer. Despite what was surely good news, or reassuring news as the doctor had called it, Emma didn't feel nearly as relieved as she felt she ought to. "What does that mean? Highly curable?" the question slipped out before she clamped back down on her lip with her teeth, stopping her real question from slipping out. Something about flat out asking what the odds were that she was going to die was too uncomfortable.
The oncologist hesitated a moment, eyeing Emma carefully, clearly trying to gauge how much information she might actually want, before he answered, "Generally speaking, we're talking about somewhere in the ninety percent range for five year survival rates. And, depending on what your staging ends up being and what treatment method we choose, you're looking at almost as good odds that treatment will work the first time around."
Ninety percent. Emma let that sink in. There was less than a ten percent chance that she would be dead, from cancer, in the next five years. She was pretty sure there weren't much better odds than that that she could be receiving when it came to something like cancer. Yet, a negative voice still nagged at her brain, breaking its way through to rain on what was surely supposed to be a bit of light in the dark. But, the voice whispered to her, what were the odds of being an infant abandoned on the side of the road? What were the odds of being a perfectly healthy baby and not getting properly adopted? What were the odds of any of the other shitty things that had happened to her happening? Heck, even the odds of getting Hodgkin's in the first place were much less than one percent - one of the few facts she'd gleamed from her repeated failed attempts at research. Surely if all of those things could happen, then she could easily be in that less than ten percent. Emma swallowed thickly as she yelled at the voice in her head to just shut up, nodding at the doctor so that he wouldn't think that she wasn't listening to him.
If the doctor could tell what was running through Emma's head, he didn't show it, he just carried on speaking when she hadn't said a word after a few minutes. "So based on what you filled out in your intake forms, and based on the results from the scan you had a while ago, it sounds like we're probably dealing with Stage 2 here. That means that the cancer is in more than one place but all above your diaphragm," he motioned with his hand to his own torso, showing her where the diaphragm was and sweeping his hand upwards, "I want to do another CT scan and also get a PET scan to confirm that though. We'll also need to do a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy to make sure that it hasn't spread to your bone marrow. And we'll also need to run a wide range of blood tests."
Emma tried to follow along with everything the doctor was saying, but she didn't even know what some of these words meant - what exactly was a PET scan? She was getting the sense that she was going to forget half of this information. They'd recommended that she bring someone with her when they'd called with the appointment time and she was starting to understand why. She was bobbing her head along as Dr. Eldridge rattled item after item off, until the words bone marrow biopsy left his mouth and she froze. She tried to recover but she could tell just by the way the doctor was eyeing her that she hadn't been quick enough in wiping away the visible signs of the sudden wave of fear that had rushed through her core.
Emma had watched enough medical TV shows to have placed bone marrow biopsy squarely in her list of top five most dreaded medical diagnostic procedures, somewhere between colonoscopy and that really terrifying looking procedure where they shoved a needle in your eye that she didn't know the name of. It had not occurred to her that a bone marrow biopsy was in her future. She'd thought that those were for Leukemia. On TV it was always for Leukemia. She swallowed thickly, "Ummm…" she hesitated, not sure what exactly to say, "Is that...necessary?" Even as she asked it, she knew it was a dumb question. Of course he wouldn't be saying they needed to do it, if it weren't necessary. She doubted he got thrills from jamming large metal needles into people's backs. Or maybe he did. She nearly gulped at that thought, shaking her head slightly to shake it away.
"The bone marrow biopsy?" Dr. Eldridge guessed what had Emma worried. When Emma nodded her confirmation, he continued, "I know it sounds rather...unpleasant. But I'm afraid we really do have to be sure whether or not the lymphoma has spread to your bone marrow. It will affect the treatment plan." When Emma still looked skeptical, he added, "We'll use local anesthetic to freeze the surrounding area first to minimize your discomfort - though we can't freeze your bone itself. What you'll likely feel the most is pressure."
"Okay," Emma sighed partially at his response but mostly at the fact that she'd let herself appear so vulnerable in front of this stranger. That hadn't been part of the plan for today and now she wasn't really sure how to recover. Feeling completely uncomfortable now, she crossed her arms over her torso, wishing she could disappear, as she studied the oncologist, "So...ummm...what happens after that? After the tests, I mean. We figure out the stage and then what next?"
"We finalize a treatment plan, which will include chemotherapy and possibly radiation," Dr. Eldridge answered immediately, his tone serious.
Emma swallowed. She'd known that that was what was coming and yet it didn't prevent the uneasy feeling that settled like a stone in her stomach at the word chemotherapy. Chemo was nearly as terrifying a word as cancer. "Okay…" Emma wasn't really sure what else to say.
"We can talk about the specifics once we've confirmed staging but did you have any general questions?" Dr. Eldridge titled his head as he waited for Emma to consider his question
"No…" Emma responded immediately but then she hesitated, "Well...actually...how long?"
The slight frown on the doctor's face made it clear that he hadn't understood what she was asking, "Sorry...how long for which part?"
"The treatment...how long before its all done?" Emma worried her bottom lip back between her teeth.
"Oh," Dr. Eldridge nodded, straightening a bit in his chair, "again, that's a bit dependent on staging. Generally we'll get through the first few months and then we'll redo a bunch of testing and take it from there. But at a minimum, it would be four months."
Four months was a long time. Emma continued to gnaw on her lip as she tried to do the math in her head. Could she stretch the balance in her bank account out to last that long? Maybe. Maybe not, though. With a quiet sigh the inevitable question slipped out, "Will I be able to work?"
The oncologist blinked slowly, clearly surprised by the question but attempting not to show it. "Well…" her question had been serious and his tone matched hers as he contemplated his answer carefully, "What is it you do?"
"I'm a bail bonds person," Emma supplied.
"Hmm…" Dr. Eldridge mulled over that additional information before providing a response, "Generally I wouldn't recommend it. Especially with a job that is physically demanding as I imagine bail bonds person is. Treatment will be taxing and most people find that they don't have the energy required for much else. But...then again...you are young and in otherwise good health. Perhaps it's a matter of waiting and seeing how you feel once the treatment begins."
It wasn't exactly the answer Emma wanted to hear but it was better than a flat out no, which frankly was what she'd been expecting. A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Maybe she could make this work.
Dr. Eldridge returned the smile with one of his own - clearly relieved to get a reaction out of Emma that was something other than the mostly bewildered expression she'd been sporting since he entered the room.
xxxxxx
Emma had spent lots of time in places she hadn't wanted to be in her life. She'd also run from a lot of those places.
But here she was now in a place she most definitely did not want to be and all she wanted to do was run but she couldn't. Well, she could. It would be difficult given that her pants were currently around her knees, her shirt balled up high, and there were five people between her and the door. But, technically, she could hop off of the exam table where she was lying on her side and leave. Maybe she could leave and never come back. It was a nice thought. Unrealistic. But nice.
"Are you alright, Emma?"
It was Belle's voice that cut through the chatter in Emma's brain and Emma blinked slowly looking up at the nurse, "Hmm?"
Belle's hand hovered as if she wanted to stroke Emma's hair but was hesitating. The hand eventually landed on Emma's shoulder, patting gently, "We're about ready to start. Are you okay?"
"Oh...yeah," Emma bit her lip, her eyes darting from Belle to the other occupants of the room - Dr. Eldridge, two interns because apparently this was a teaching facility and, even though she'd been told she could refuse having them observe, she wasn't exactly sure how to say no to the person who was technically about to save her life when he asked about it, and a lab technician who would be in charge of taking the samples to wherever they were going because she guessed the interns couldn't be trusted to do that. She didn't like that there were so many people here, having an audience only made the whole thing seem more horrible, but she just sighed, "Let's get this over with."
Belle rubbed her shoulder a moment longer before she nodded and people shuffled around, everyone except the lab technician now out of her line of sight. She looked away from the woman and focused her eyes on the wall, bringing one of her hands up towards her mouth and gnawing on one of her knuckles as a distraction, trying to ignore the way her heart thumped loudly, the sound reverberating in her ears.
Dr. Eldridge warned her of each step. First his hands probing to find the right spot over her pelvis, then the stinging of the local anesthetic, then the pressure as the needle for the aspiration was inserted. It was so much pressure that she sort of wondered if she looked behind her if she'd find Dr. Eldridge with one foot resting on the exam table for leverage. Pressure wasn't pain though and she'd just started to think that this wasn't so bad when the strangest sensation she'd ever felt overcame her, it was as if her head was suddenly electrified, or maybe as if something in her brain was being vacuumed out.
"Aspiration done," Dr. Eldridge's words provided the explanation for the sudden strange sensation, "Now we just have to do the biopsy."
There was more pressure again for a moment and some pain and then it was over.
Dr. Eldridge showed her the strange red pencil lead looking sample in the clear container before he handed it over to the lab technician. It wasn't at all what she expected bone marrow to look like.
Emma wondered if this was what her life would be like now. Learning things she had no desire to learn.
xxxxxx
Once they'd put a bandaid over the place where the needle had been inserted and her clothes were back on properly, Emma was instructed to head down to the first level for some blood work, after which she would be allowed to leave this place - at least for today.
Walking out of the hematology clinic, her gate a bit stiff, Emma paused to get her bearings. She considered the elevator to her left a moment but she turned right instead, taking the stairs quickly, ignoring the dull ache in her back.
On the main floor, she looked around confused, trying to figure out where exactly this lab she was supposed to be going to was. She considered wandering around looking for it but her rush down the stairs had only made the dull ache in her back more pronounced and she didn't relish the idea of walking more than was necessary. With a sigh, she approached the front desk to ask for directions.
The receptionist was already talking to someone. A someone with dark hair cut into a bob, who was wearing a pantsuit and heels, which made Emma pretty sure it was a someone who worked here. No one else, even the few volunteers Emma had noticed, seemed to be in anything other than jeans or sweatpants - which, okay, made sense, she had to admit. This was a building full of sick people. Why on earth would sick people be showing up in pantsuits or anything more formal than lounging clothes?
Emma stood to the side, planning to wait patiently for the conversation between the receptionist and the well dressed woman to end but the receptionist's gaze caught hers and the woman smiled, cutting off her conversation with the brunette to address Emma.
"Can I help you with something dear?"
"Oh…" Emma stammered not having expected the attention to suddenly be on her. The stammering only got worst when the dark haired woman standing at the reception desk turned to look at her as well and, wow, she was stunning. Emma stared at the rich brown eyes for a long moment before she forced herself to look away. "I...uhh...I," Emma swallowed, running a hand through her hair and wishing she could disappear into the floor, "Sorry. I was just looking for the lab. For bloodwork."
The receptionist must be used to people making complete fools of themselves, or at least that was what Emma decided, when her only reaction to the word vomit that had left Emma's mouth, was to smile kindly, before looking over at the brunette. "Regina, would you mind showing this young lady the lab on your way out?"
Emma frowned, not appreciating being called a young lady in front of a beautiful woman. She didn't want this brunette, Regina, to get some idea in her head that Emma was like a teenager or something. Not that she thought she looked like a teenager. But still. She was so distracted by her thoughts that she missed Regina's agreement to the request and now brown eyes were staring at her expectantly.
"Well?" the question was accompanied by a slow quirked eyebrow.
"Right," Emma nodded, "The lab. Lead the way."
There was a flicker of something that might have been amusement, but could have just as easily been annoyance, before the brunette turned on her heels and started moving away from the reception desk.
Emma moved quickly to catch up, wincing at the twinge in her back. "So," she said, falling into step with Regina, determined to make herself seem a little less like a fool, "do you work here?"
Regina glanced over at her, "No," there was a slight shake of her head before she looked back in front of her, turning left down a hall, "I'm a volunteer."
"Oh," Emma's eyes widened a bit, not having expected that, based half on her age and half on how well dressed she was. "If you're a volunteer, where's your ugly yellow vest thing-y?" She'd noticed other volunteers wearing some kind of standard issue vest.
Regina looked back over at her, eyeing Emma as if she thought she was crazy a moment before she smirked, "It is rather ugly, isn't it?"
Emma nodded, grinning in amusement.
"It was my first day. Volunteer orientation. I suppose I will be provided the hideous yellow smock upon my first actual volunteer shift," Regina explained.
"Lucky you," Emma smirked.
Regina grimaced at the thought before her features smoothed out, her expression unreadable once more. They walked a few more feet and then she stopped, "Well, Miss…" for a second it looked like Regina was going to add another word but then she clamped her mouth shut and waited.
It took Emma half a second to realize that Regina was asking for her name, "Oh...Emma...uhh...Swan. My last name is Swan. But call me Emma."
"This is the lab, Miss Swan," Regina motioned to the door ahead, ignoring Emma's suggestion to call her by her first name, "Is that all you needed?"
"Yeah that's all," Emma nodded, a hand raking through her hair, "Thanks for your help."
"It wasn't a problem," Regina nodded politely.
"Alright," Emma rocked on the balls of her feet, "I guess I should go let them steal my blood then…" she hesitated and then added, "Maybe I'll see you around this place again sometime."
"Perhaps," a small smile tugged at the corners of Regina's mouth.
Emma smiled back and then with one last head nod, she headed into the lab.
xxxxxx