Snow's poor baby girl was in the hospital and all she wanted to do was go be by her side. There was, however, a problem: taking an infant to the hospital for an indefinite wait was not the best of ideas. Granny was of course more than willing to watch Neal, especially once Snow told her what was going on with Emma, but packing up a baby and his things to spend even just a couple of hours in the company of someone else was not a quick feat.
By the time she'd dropped Neal off with Granny, it felt as if an eternity had passed since Charming's call. A check of the clock proved it had only been forty-five minutes but it was forty-five minutes during which Snow's panicking brain had spun all kinds of horrible scenarios about the reasons her poor baby girl could have passed out (both her and Charming's assurances to the contrary). Then came the actual drive to the hospital with even more horrible scenarios running through her mind. The closer she got, the more Snow's stomach knotted. When she burst into the emergency room, she was a nervous wreck.
The kindly older woman working the reception desk graced Snow with a kind, comforting smile as she approached. "You may go right in, Your Majesty. Sheriff Swan is in room three, around the corner to the left."
"Thank you," Snow smiled. Then, barely breaking her stride, she power-walked down the corridor the woman had indicated to find her poor sick baby girl.
Room three ended up being not all that hard to find. While the receptionist's directions were indeed precise, Snow pretty much just followed the sound of her little girl's complaints. A little breath of relief escaped her lips at the realization that Emma was both alert and feeling well enough to be her typical stubborn self.
"Why do we need to wait for the blood test?" a grumpy Emma was saying – whining, really. "We know it's dehydration. The blood test isn't going to show anything else."
"They just want to cover their bases," an exceedingly patient Charming assured her.
"Well, they've already taken my damn blood and they're running the test now. Why can't they let me go home while they're waiting for the results?"
"The bag of medicine isn't empty yet, love," Killian said gently.
At that point, Snow finally arrived at the room and peeked around the doorjamb. Charming sat in a chair on one side of the hospital bed and Killian was camped out in a second chair on the other. The tiny amount of relief Snow had felt melted away, her heart clenching in her chest, when her eyes landed on Emma.
Her poor sweet baby girl was sitting up in the hospital bed, her face practically the same pale shade as the sheets on which she was lying. The only spots of color at all were the dark circles under her eyes. Inserted in a vein in her left arm was an IV needled, which was connected to plastic tubing that was taped to her skin to hold it in place. The bag hanging on the IV stand beside the bed was only half-full. Her right arm bore a bandage from where they must have taken the blood for the aforementioned blood tests. There were wires attached to leads on her chest that connected her to the heart monitor above her bed.
"Oh, Emma," Snow breathed as she stepped into the room and perched at the foot of the bed. She wanted nothing more than to (very carefully) wrap her baby girl in the tightest hug imaginable.
The irritation on Emma's face melted slightly when she realized just how worried her mother was. "We've already been through this once with Killian," she said, giving her mom as big a smile as she could muster. "It looks a lot worse than it really is."
Since their baby girl had a maddening tendency to downplay her illnesses, Snow glanced over at Charming. He nodded in confirmation, which made Snow let out another soft breath of relief. "Her color will come back as she gets more hydrated," he elaborated. "That's her second bag of IV fluids. Dr. Whale wants that to be empty and her blood tests to come back before he releases her."
"So there's been no talk of admitting her?"
"Still in the room, you guys," Emma grumbled, waving her hand in the air. Killian swallowed a snicker.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Snow said with a sheepish smile. "Have they mentioned anything about admitting you?"
"No, thank God. Sitting here is bad enough."
Charming and Killian stifled chuckles. Snow gave her baby girl a calming smile – because the last thing they all needed was an antsy Emma on top of a cranky Emma – and asked, "Did they give you any idea how long the blood test results will take?"
Emma shrugged. "No. They didn't say how quickly the fluids would go down, either. I – well, my veins … you know what I mean – sucked down the first bag in the ambulance on the way here. This one's taking longer."
"You needed that first one in a big way, kiddo," Charming gently reminded her. "Plus, the bag from the ambulance was about half the size of this one."
"Yeah, well, it's still not going fast enough. I just want to get the hell out of here."
"You don't say," Killian teased, causing Emma to shoot him a weary glare.
Snow and Charming exchanged a smile. Every so often, Emma and Killian would have old-married-couple moments just like that, and it amused the hell out of everyone around them.
After letting the moment linger a beat, Snow reached out and gently grasped her daughter's right hand. There was something she could suggest to help pass the time for Emma but her stubborn daughter was not at all going to like it. "Why don't you try to rest for a little while?"
Just as Snow suspected, Emma refused. "I am resting." She nodded towards the hospital bed to indicate that as far as she was concerned, the very fact that she was sitting in bed was more than enough rest.
Though Snow let out a soft sigh, she didn't push the issue. Her baby was her most stubborn when she was cranky.
After a brief moment of comfortable silence, a suddenly sheepish Emma asked, "Does Henry know? That I'm here, I mean."
"Yes," Snow answered. "He's with Regina and I asked her to keep him occupied until you were released because I figured your room would be overcrowded as it is. They won't be showing up here but I can't make any promises about once we get you home."
The relief that lit Emma's eyes told Snow she'd done the right thing. "Thanks." She waved her hand to indicate the IV and the heart monitor. "This stuff would only scare him and like I said, it looks worse than it is."
Snow ran her eyes over all the equipment in the room. It was scary for her to see her daughter hooked up to those machines; she couldn't even imagine how terrified a thirteen-year-old boy would be seeing his mother in such a condition. "Why the heart monitor?" she asked softly.
"It's just a precaution," Charming assured her. "They checked her heart in the ambulance, too, to make sure she didn't pass out from a cardiac event but the way her body sucked down those IV fluids, they knew right then that it was dehydration."
"Which is why making me sit here and wait for blood test results that aren't going to show anything is pointless," Emma piped up.
"They're just–" Killian started.
"–covering their bases," Emma finished. "Yeah, I know. It's still pointless."
"Pointless, perhaps," a smirking Dr. Whale said as he stepped into the room, "but a necessary precaution." Everyone in the room sat at attention and after greetings were exchanged, Whale delivered his verdict. "As expected, your blood test results came back normal. As soon as that bag of fluids is empty, we'll be able to release you. You're probably going to be tired and out of it for the next little while but that's normal. You'll need to keep drinking water as well, to help get your hydration level back up to where it should be."
"Thanks, doc," Emma said sincerely. Whale smiled at her, gave everyone else a goodbye nod, and left the room. There was silence for a beat, and then Emma deadpanned, "Wow. You throw a guy into a wall once and he's like a completely different guy."
Snow, Charming, and Killian all snickered, the joke a perfect expression of the lightening mood in the room. With the news that Emma's release was imminent, Snow did what she'd been itching to do since she sat down: wrapped her little girl in a very careful, comforting hug.
"I'm so glad you're all right," she whispered into her daughter's ear.
"I'm fine, Mom, honestly," Emma whispered back.
Snow pulled out of the hug and smiled at her little girl, brushing a wayward lock of hair behind Emma's ear. Then a miracle happened: when Snow went to reclaim her seat at the foot of the bed, Emma latched onto her hand. Snow smiled again as she grasped her daughter's hand and held it tight.
(Wisely, nobody called any attention to Emma's silent desire for her mother's comfort.)
"So, what shall we do to pass the time until that bag's empty, love?" Killian asked with a smile.
Emma leaned her head back against the upright mattress and smiled. "I want to hear one of your whoppers."
Again, Snow and Charming exchanged a smile. Killian's "whoppers" were grossly exaggerated stories from Killian's years on the sea. The former pirate had a knack for storytelling and these over-the-top pirate stories amused the hell out of Emma.
"All right, then, love, a whopper you shall hear."
He started spinning a tale about a storm that had arisen out of nowhere, turning the calm sea into a churning monster with walls of waves. "These waves, love, they were bigger than any I'd ever seen before and have ever seen since. The lightning was close enough to strike the sea in front of us and the rain poured down so hard and so fast that the deck was a veritable swimming pool within ten minutes."
Emma lovingly rolled her eyes at the details but dutifully asked, "So then what happened?"
"I tried to outrun it, of course, but this damnable thing followed me. Pirate's honor, love, it followed me. I went port, it went port. I went starboard, it went starboard. Hell, I even turned the whole ship around to double back the way we came, and it followed me. The really interesting thing, though, was that it was only raining aft. The stern was drenched. The bow was dry as a bone."
Snow swallowed a chuckle. She could see why Emma liked these stories, the more ridiculous the details, the better.
Emma was shaking her head. "All right, so how did you make this sentient storm go away and leave you alone?"
"I simply asked it to 'go away and leave me alone,' as you put it. I hollered to the heavens, though now the exact words I yelled are lost to my memory. Not even five minutes later, the sun was shining brightly and there was nary a cloud in the sky."
Everyone broke into snickers. "All right, as far as whoppers go, that was a good one," Emma admitted.
"Why, thank you, love."
"And look at that, Emma," Charming said, nodding up to her IV, "the bag's down a bit more."
Emma grinned, then covered with an exaggerated huff. "Thank God! I just want to go home."
Snow exchanged a loving look with both Charming and Killian over her head. Every so often, the lost little girl inside Emma reminded them that she was no longer lost, and this was one of those times. For the lost little girl wanted to go home, and the three of them wanted nothing more than to take her there.