A/N: This story is supposed to be on hiatus, but I figured what the heck! I'm feeling writer-y today. This'll be short though, since I SHOULD be taking a break. Is it just me, or does this chapter feel kind of up-and-down? I don't know. Please review! Tell me what you think J
When Snow, Regina, and Henry arrived at the front desk of Mount Sinai hospital, there was a different man running the station.
"Where's the guy from last night?" whispered Henry to his mom and grandmother.
"People in this world have shifts," Snow whispered back. "They might work for a certain number of hours, then switch out with another person so they can rest but the business can keep running."
Henry was unfamiliar with this whole "shifts" concept. Storybrooke was a small town, and the curse had pretty much created a specific job for each person in it. This meant when someone was done working for the day in Storybrooke, the shop was closed. Nobody took over for them.
Not wanting to waste any more time over such a silly question, Henry shrugged off the thought and hurried over to the man at the desk. "Hi," he said, a large smile eating up his face. He was just so excited to see Emma again; he could barely contain all his excitement. It was spilling over the edges. He bounced up and down like a six-year-old.
The man looked down on him. You could tell the man was trying to keep track of Henry's bouncing face by the way his eyes bobbed rapidly up and down. Combined with his serious expression and suit, the whole thing looked ridiculous. "How may I help you?"
"Um, we're here to see that girl who tried to jump off the Empire State Building?" Henry replied, raising his voice on the last word as if it were a question. He was still going up and down like crazy. "Her name's Emma Swan, and we're her family. I'm her son, and um," he glanced back at Mary Margaret and Regina, "those are my, uh, aunts. Her… sisters." He smiled wider at the man, who was still trying to keep track of Henry's childlike movements.
The guy looked skeptical about this information, but moved his eyes away from the excited Henry and typed something into his computer anyway. "She's not here anymore. It says here she was checked out yesterday. Apparently, she healed extremely fast and was stable, physically, enough to go."
"Hold on." Regina strode over to the desk. "She tried to kill herself. Don't you have some sort of 72-hour suicide watch policy? Surely you wouldn't just release a suicidal person back into the public? Because I can call my lawyer, and it won't be pretty." Regina's voice was threatening.
"No, no; no lawyers. Yes; we watched her closely up until the point she was released, and it says here she had mild restraints. Ma'am, I believe she was just moved to a mental hospital with better resources for these kinds of situations than us. Your other sister was here the other day and requested that. I believe Miss, uh, what was it? Swan? Is still under suicide watch."
Regina nodded her approval and looked quickly back at Snow. "Who's the 'other sister'?" she mouthed.
Snow shrugged and threw her hands up. "I don't know," she mouthed back. "We'll figure it out LATER." Snow jabbed her finger in the direction of the desk manager to indicate that Regina needed to f-o-c-u-s.
Regina turned back to the man. "Can you tell us exactly where she went?"
"I'm sorry," the man said, shaking his head. "It doesn't say here where she went. I couldn't tell you if I wanted to."
Regina threw her hands up in the air. "I feel like I'm on a wild goose chase. Henry, Mary Margaret, let's go."
As they left the building, Regina said, "I feel like when we finally find Emma, she'll be waiting for us on a merry-go-round, not in a psychiatric hospital."
Henry and Snow nodded their frustrated agreement. It felt to them like they would never find Emma.
Ever.
