Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

PART II

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

OFF WITH HER HEAD!

David gave his wife's hand a squeeze as she was prepped for surgery. Emma had done her thing with the dreamcatcher (and Ingrid's memory stones just to be safe) and all that was left was the medical part.

"This will work, Snow. I love you. You're spirit, your soul. And I know you'll love me too, no matter who's heart I have. You loved the heart of a nameless peasant before..."

"Blah blah blah," Nurse Ratched harumphed. "We all know you'd love her even if she had staples on her forehead and bolts in my neck. Stop making me nauseous with your sappy claptrap and get back in your bed!"

"You'd better listen to her, mate," said Hook, "or you might wake up arse-raped!"

"Why is he here!?" David hissed at his gathered family.

"He has Mom's blood type," said Emma with a grimace as she shifted on her hot pink donut pillow and tried not to feel so dizzy she was going to throw up, "and we figure if any of her other organs fail, we can just kill him and use his."

"Hey! I did not agree to that!"

There was a knock on the door and Dr. Frankenstein entered. Seriously, he was in full-on creepy mad scientist threads and declared, "Okay, let's get you two to my completely non-FDA-approved basement laboratory! I've got the tesla coil all charged up and Happy has agreed to play Igor!"

"Why would he do that?" asked Regina with a scoff and Whale shrugged.

"I provide him with medical marijuana for his depression."

"Wait... Happy suffers from depression?" asked David, startled.

"Ironic, right? Anyway, it's go time! Muahahahaha-eh-cough," said Whale. "Please disregard the evil laughter."

Tinkerbell exclaimed, "All right! Off with her head!"

"Why is she still here?" growled David.

Emma shrugged and said, "I think she and Ruby are dating. Or just getting drunk and clubbing together. I'm not sure. Anyway, if this heart transplant thing doesn't work, I'll totally rip out Hook's and give you his, which is obviously used and damaged, but just to tide you over until we can find a better one!"

"HEY!" Hook cried. "Stop trying to steal my organs!"

"You do have nice eyes," observed Tinkerbell, giving him a very creepy inspection.

"Stop weirding me out, devil fairy!"

"Junior Mint?" Neal asked Emma as he sat in the observation room on his own hot pink donut pillow. Why the basement laboratory had an observation balcony was pretty nonsensical, but who cared? This was kind of cool... aside from the back pain, vertigo, and fever caused by getting a huge needle stuck in the base of his spine to determine if his teenage lover had given him an STD in a motel room over a decade ago. At least Emma had to get one too lest she to explain the whole dead-divine-STD-curing-intervention thing.

There was crazy shit like magic and demon swords and then there was crazy shit like talking to angels in your bedroom.

"I already said 'no'," harumphed Emma, fighting a headache.

"I'll have one!" said Hook, the only one spared the STD testing, since he'd gotten the full routine last time around.

"You already ate a gallon of ice cream and you're the only one who didn't have a medical procedure!"

"All of you shut up!" snapped Ruby, who had to get tested because she was a slut under the Curse and had probably slept with someone who'd slept with someone who slept with Hook... or they'd just slept with Hook since she was kind of bisexual even if she hadn't told anyone but Tinkerbell. "My friends could die down there."

"I thought you hated them for being shitty friends?" said Emma.

"I do and they are but that doesn't mean I want them dead! I mean, I'm still stuck as your godmother! I don't want that responsibility!"

"I'm a grown woman!"

"With the emotional development of a fifteen year old slut! If you and Neal and Regina all die, that means I have to take care of Henry or something and he's clearly disturbed!"

"I am not disturbed!"

"Oh no!" gasped Belle who angrily had to get tested because Regina made Lacy a bigger slut than Ruby, "I shouldn't have signed that paperwork! If they die I have to take care of their kid with the stupid name!"

She shouted down to the medical team, "DON'T LET THEM DIE! I CAN'T BE SADDLED WITH THE STATISTICALLY STUPID SPAWN OF TWO IDIOTS!"

Down bellow Dr. Whale and his team of malcontent mostly fake healthcare workers who made ends meet selling pharmaceuticals off the books and the occasional body-stealing-replace-it-with-a-transfigured-log scheme worked with remarkable precision to carry out their mad boss' plan.

Exactly what was going on wasn't entirely clear to those watching, but there was a mix of weird machines and Tinkerbell was there waving the Apprentice's penis-and-balls wand. There was fairy dust and some glowing stuff that was either a potion or a crazy drug. Then David had his chest cut open and Snow had the top of her head lopped off.

Tinkerbell used magic to remove the half of Snow's heart from both soulmates, put the two halves back together, and then set the glowy thing aside while both were on by-pass and that slow-decay stuff Whale had invented, since if a heart was magically alive when it was removed, a person couldn't completely die from other natural causes... or something... which was how Cora had a zombie army... or something.

Whale then examined David's actual physical heart, which was dead, beyond any help to restart the electrical impulses using science since its magical electrical essence - or something - had been crushed weeks ago. It basically transformed instantly into an atrophied lump after Snow's love magic shit was removed from it.

Whale threw it in the trash bin.

"Heart?" he asked and Ratched handed him a bloody organ which he quickly sutured into place.

"Magical heart?"

Tinkerbell brought over a glowy heart. "You're sure this will work?"

"They are soulmates. It should be compatible by some bullshit magical laws from what Belle tells me."

"All right then!"

Whale shoved the magical heart in, Tinkerbell zapped it with the dick wand, and David's new ticker started beating.

The two fist-bumped success while Ratched scowled in disapproval.

"It's four-twenty. Can we take a break?" asked Happy.

"We have to do Snow White's brain first. Snow White's brain and then I'll break out the good stash that Anton brought in last week to celebrate," Whale told him.

"When you put her memories back," the Dwarf considered, "can you make it so she treats us better? I mean, she totally uses us like we're undocumented immigrants and she's a skeezy small business owner who won't even give us health insurance. Also, do you think we can sue her now that she's Mayor to get health insurance and mine safety regulations?"

"I think that's a question for Regina, Happy."

From the viewing balcony, Regina shrugged and responded, "Why the hell not? Sue her ass, what do I care?

"Pass me one of those mints, Person," she directed at Neal.

"Stop calling me that!" Neal growled.

"Shut up the both of you!" Whale directed at them. "Also, your test results came back. Good news, you don't have syphilis, but you are half-siblings!"

"WHAT!?" both of them shouted and a Junior Mint went flying and into David's chest, unnoticed by the intern who was suturing him up.

"I WAS KIDDING!" exclaimed the doctor. "Do you know how long it takes to get DNA test results? I still don't have the syphilis tests back! This isn't CSI! Seriously, though, I have fifty bucks says Gold was all up in Cora with his scaly-"

"SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Regina cried. "I AM NOT RELATED TO ANY OF YOU!"

She ran out of the gallery.

"So... you could be related to my murderous step grandmother?" Emma uttered with raised brows at Neal.

"Ugh. And I have to do family trees next week for school!" moaned Henry. "Can I just write 'INCESTUOUSLY FUCKED UP' and get a free pass?"

"Language," Emma and Neal scolded.

Henry harumphed and went back to eating his Funyuns.

"How long does it take to replace a brain? Bloody hell," complained Hook.

"I dunno, maybe Whale can replace yours next," said Neal.

"Just share the bloody Junior Mints, Neal."

Brain surgery took forever it turned out. A loud electrical crackling and a bright flash of bluish-white light awoke those who'd tried to stay for the procedure.

"THEY'RE ALIVE! THEY'RE ALIVE!" Whale was cackling madly over the two operating tables.

"Why is my mother wearing that wig?" asked Emma. "And are those bolts?"

"YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR!" Tinkerbell shouted back before removing the Bride of Frankenstein wig from Snow White's bandaged head and the stick-on Halloween bolts from David's neck.

The couple was then taken up to recovery for the anesthesia to wear off. Of course, David was the first to wake since his wife was being kept sedated until some scans could be done to assess her brain's blood flow and electrical activity.

"Did it... work?" David groggily asked.

"Well, you're both alive. Mom is still sedated," replied Emma. "Do you want to see her?"

In the back of Gold's pawnshop, after some drinking and Prozac, Regina stood over the magically comatose ex-Imp and grumbled, "Wake up and tell me you didn't shag my mother, Rumplestiltskin!"

AN: Are Neal and Regina related? You decide! (Who's gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It's chocolate, it's peppermint, it's delicious.)

Next up: Surgical... success?