Chapter 32
On the following days, Henry and Regina visited Emma together and stayed for half the afternoon, most of which the young woman slept through. The high-dose chemotherapy robbed her of her strength, and the constant vomiting was tiring her even more.
Regina nevertheless felt that she enjoyed not being alone during this time, but having her loved ones with her, even if she was not her usual bursting with energy self.
Against Emma's fears, Henry also took her condition relatively well, though of course he tried hard not to let on how much it hurt him to see his mother like this. Even though he was hopeful, there still remained the fear that hope alone was not enough.
On the sixth day of Emma's hospitalization, Regina came to see her during the midmorning, having finally made an appointment with Archie for the afternoon. It was the first time Henry hadn't come along, as he was still at school at the time and his class would be leaving after their lessons for a three-day overnight adventure in tents in the woods around Storybrooke.
"Ms. Mills," Nurse Edith stopped Regina when she had already reached out for the doorknob outside Emma's room.
The mayor paused and turned to the nurse. "Nurse Edith," she greeted her, once again taking off the mask she had already put on before the conversation. "I know it's not visiting hours. I'm afraid I have an appointment this afternoon, so I had to..." she began to explain herself, but Edith interrupted her, shaking her head.
"That's not the problem," she quickly assured her.
Regina's brow moved up as she stared at her piercingly. "Then what is the problem?" she wanted to know, and only the tremor in her voice showed how nervous the nurse's unusual behavior made her.
"Emma's feeling pretty bad today," she told her honestly.
Regina swallowed. "And that's when she instructed you not to let me see her?" she speculated, her shoulders slumping as it dawned on her that Emma was falling back into old patterns.
"No, she didn't," Edith surprisingly replied, however. "I just wanted to give you a heads up. She's...she's really not well, Ms. Mills."
Uncertainly, Regina nodded only once briefly to signify that she understood and felt her palms begin to sweat. "Thank you." She looked after Edith as she walked across the corridor and entered another patient room, then stared at Emma's name next to the door of her hospital room. Her heart in her chest missed a beat, something it hadn't done since her collapse. Emma hadn't been well all the last few days, so why was she giving her extra warning today? Regina tried to calm herself and took several conscious deep breaths before finally entering.
She couldn't stop her hand from darting to her mouth in shock when she saw her girlfriend. "Emma," she whispered, forcing herself to walk the last few steps to the bed.
"Hi," the blonde whispered, opening her eyes a crack.
Regina hadn't thought it possible that Emma could be any paler than she had been the previous days, yet somehow it was. Her skin was almost translucent and the blue veins stood out clearly on her temples. A nurse had placed a cold washcloth on her forehead, but still her face shone with cold sweat. Gently, Regina reached for Emma's hand and stroked it lightly.
"I'm not very good company today," she said, and no sooner had she spoken than she drew the air sharply through her teeth, her face contorted in pain.
"Just let me be with you for a while, we don't have to talk," Regina replied, stroking her hair. When some blond strands were left between her fingers in the process, she quickly tried to hide them from Emma, who, however, only grinned forced.
"It's starting to fall out, I know." Her voice was raspy and weak, and she opened her eyes a little more again as she studied Regina's shocked expression.
"I'm sorry." She didn't know what else to reply and could barely look at her girlfriend in sorrow, afraid she wouldn't be able to bear her pitying look.
"I don't care about the hair," Emma whispered and gasped, teeth clenched tightly as another sharp pain shot through her body. "I'm just afraid you do," she admitted as she regained enough breath to speak.
"Emma, what are you talking about? I'm sorry it's falling out, but your hair doesn't define you!" she stated indignantly, her brown eyes fixed on Emma's face that was twisted with pain.
Emma swallowed and looked away from her. "This just isn't what you had in mind," she whispered, clearly struggling with tears.
"Emma," Regina said softly, who placed a hand on her girlfriend's forearm. "Can you please look at me for a moment?"
It took the blonde a few moments before she slowly rolled her head back in Regina's direction, her eyes still filled with tears.
"To me, you are and will always be beautiful, no matter what. I fell in love with the beauty of your heart, appearances are just nice accessories and completely unimportant," the brunette said softly as her fingers slid over Emma's cheek, finally removing some salty traces as the first tears fell.
Emma enjoyed Regina's touch, but a moment later gave another agonized moan, her arms wrapped around her emaciated middle. "You shouldn't see this," she whispered, running her hands over her face. "How I lose self-control."
"You're sick and in pain and fighting to get better. Losing self-control looks a whole lot different," she indicated. Her chest felt as if her heart would burst at any moment, and she would have given anything to be able to take Emma's place to spare her that suffering.
"Regina," Emma breathed, suddenly losing the last of her color and trying to sit up. She was so weakened, however, that she didn't even manage to reach for the vomit bowl before she simply threw up in the bed next to her.
Regina was with her immediately, even though her reaction had been a bit too slow, and held the bowl out to her while she helped her up a bit with her free arm.
A frustrated cry escaped Emma when her stomach was empty and her hands balled into fists, pounding the mattress on either side of her.
"Love, don't. Stop, please," Regina begged in anguish. Her own gaze was by now also veiled by tears as she desperately tried to hold her arms tight. She felt Emma trembling under her touch and pulled her to her chest, one hand on the back of her head, the other on her back. "It's going to get better. It'll get better eventually," she whispered, rocking her soothingly as if comforting a child.
As soon as Regina pulled her close, Emma buried her face in her blouse and was shaken by violent sobs that made her weakened body quiver. "How can you say something like that? You don't know if it's ever going to get better. Maybe it's all for nothing and I'll die anyway, and until I do, you'll have to go through this! I hate myself!" Her pain and frustration made her lean back from Regina again and broke as desperate blows against her chest.
Regina barely felt the weak blows of her fists, however, and held her wrists as gently as possible. "Emma, you're allowed to be angry. You have every reason to be. But you have to believe that you can get better!" She would have liked to reassure her further, but was stopped by a knock. As the door opened, she met the gaze of Emma's doctor, Dr. Heart.
The oncologist briefly observed the scene unfolding in front of her before joining the two women at the bedside and gently placing a hand on Emma's shoulder. "Emma. The nurse informed me that you're having a pretty bad day today," she explained the reason for her visit.
Emma tensed and finally stopped struggling against Regina. Only her girlfriend's hands held her upright, and she couldn't manage to lift her head and look at Heart in shame.
"Emma, you need to talk to me if you want me to help you," the doctor said calmly, taking a seat in the visitor's chair where Regina had been sitting before coming to Emma's aid.
"But you can't," Emma muttered, finally raising her head to stare at her from reddened eyes. "No one can help me."
"We can alleviate the side effects, but I have to know them to do that," Heart pointed out.
Regina admired the doctor for her calm demeanor; she herself, on the other hand, felt utterly helpless. Surely such scenes played out often behind the doors of this ward, and Regina didn't even want to imagine what it must be like to come into contact with them on a daily basis.
Emma again drew the air sharply through her teeth, which Regina took as an occasion to let her slide carefully back into her bed.
Instead of her pillow, which was full of vomit, Regina placed a rolled-up towel under her head. "She's in a lot of pain," she finally answered in Emma's place, stroking her girlfriend's forehead. "And she's not keeping anything down."
"Stop it." Words that should have been spoken in a forceful commanding tone passed her lips only as a faint whisper. "It's from the chemo, and I have to endure it if I want to get better."
"Not necessarily," Heart intervened, shaking her head. "You're right, it is from the chemo, but you don't have to endure it, quite the opposite. You need your strength to fight the disease. It doesn't make sense that the side effects already rob you of all your strength reserves. We'll try again with a combination of different antacids, and I'll prescribe the opiates for you to take regularly, not on demand."
"Who says that's going to help?" Emma asked. She had enjoyed being held by Regina, but now she was paying the price for her outburst, and the places where she had touched her were tingling and aching because her nerves had been attacked by the chemo and could no longer distinguish between pain and normal touch.
"It's an attempt, like everything else so far. Unfortunately, with cancer, there's no exact plan you can apply to every patient. You're reacting very strongly to the ARA-C, which is normally the absolute standard for your form of leukemia."
"Could it happen that she'll have to stop chemo?" Regina wanted to know worriedly.
Heart shook her head. "There's absolutely no talk of that yet," she tried to ease her fear for the time being. "We have by no means exhausted all our options, and even if it comes to the extreme and she has to come off the ARA-C, we still have other preparations available that we can administer instead."
Barely reassured by these words, Regina eyed her girlfriend, who was writhing in her bed in agony. "Just do something. Please," she begged the doctor softly.
With a nod, the oncologist rose and briefly squeezed Emma's hand. "We'll do what we can," she assured her, "Just talk to me. It's important that I know all the effects of the medications." With that, she left the room to write down the new orders. She had barely gone a few steps when Regina caught up with her in the hallway.
"Is it going to get better? When she gets through the ten days, will it get better?" the brunette wanted to know, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, making her look small and vulnerable. At that moment, with her tangled hair and blouse full of vomit, she was no longer the fearsome, perfect mayor, but only the anxious partner of a seriously ill young woman.
Heart paused and turned to face her. With a compassionate smile, she gestured toward some chairs in the corridor. "Let's sit down."
Silently, Regina accepted the offer and then looked back up at her questioningly. "I want to know what to be prepared for. I want to be strong for her, but I can't do that if I don't know what we're dealing with and if there's any reason to give her hope."
The doctor took a deep breath and eyed the mayor. "Regina...I know you like to have a plan for everything. But in this case, there isn't one. We have to be patient and see how Emma responds to the treatment. And hope is never wrong."
"What I see is that she's getting worse every day!" Regina flared up, but in the next moment she clenched her teeth tightly and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to calm herself down.
"I understand your fear. It's never easy to see the person you love like that. And I know you disagree, but you're doing a great job. You're there for her and taking care of her without making her feel like she's just a patient. It can happen very quickly that couples drift apart because intimate moments become increasingly rare," she explained to her calmly, without responding to her previous tone. Regina had every right to be angry at the world that threatened her partner's life.
"I just want...", Regina started, throwing her hands in the air helplessly. "It drives me crazy just to be able to stand by. From your experience, can you really say nothing at all about whether she'll recover to some extent?" Her brown eyes had taken on a pleading expression as she looked into Heart's.
The doctor weighed her words carefully for a while, then returned Regina's gaze. "When the cycle is over, I'm sure she'll be a little better. But the next one will follow right after that. She won't have to stay in the clinic as an inpatient then, but the longer the treatment lasts, the more her body will be challenged. She will get weaker, Regina, that's for sure. But I can't tell you to what extent we're talking about. In any case, you should be prepared for the fact that her current hospital stay will probably extend beyond the ten days. If her condition remains like this, I won't be able to discharge her; she hasn't eaten or drunk anything for three days and is on IV fluids only."
"Do you think she'll become a complete nursing case?" Regina asked quietly, her eyes on her hands knotted in her lap. "I'm only asking because...I want to be prepared, then I have to reorganize some things in the office, and our house has stairs and..."
"Regina," Heart interrupted her, placing a hand on Regina's cramped fingers. "No one can tell you exactly how Emma's condition will develop."
"Yes, but..."
"But what's certain is that she's going to need a lot of help, and if you want to be the one to take care of her, there's no mistake in getting some support for your job right now," she nodded.
Regina stared ahead, her thoughts a tangled swirl of various sensations and her brain at the same time busy trying to find a solution to all that Heart had told her.
"You're not alone in this, even if it feels like it," the latter said abruptly. "You can always get help, whether from your family or the hospital doesn't matter."
"I'm her girlfriend. I should be there for her," Regina whispered in a choked, low voice.
Heart nodded and placed a hand on her forearm before standing up. "And you are. But no one can do this alone. Please excuse me now." With that, she walked away to write down her new orders for the nurses.
Regina remained sitting in the corridor for a few more minutes, hoping to regain her composure afterward, before getting a new pillow for Emma and returning to her girlfriend's hospital room. Seeing that the blonde seemed to be dozing a bit, she crept further into the room and put the pillow aside for the time being, but by then Emma opened her eyes and looked at her.
"Well, did you pump her for information?" Emma asked with a wry grin as she tried to find a more comfortable position.
Regina ignored the question and instead lifted Emma's upper body slightly to slide the pillow under her head and back. "Better?"
Emma nodded, following Regina with her eyes as she paced around the room, seemingly beginning to sort through her clothes in the closet. "What are you doing?"
"Checking what I need to bring you from home. You're running low on shirts," she explained, taking the bag of dirty clothes off the shelf to take home and wash them.
"Save yourself the trouble. There's only four days left, it'll last that long," Emma replied lightly, taking a deep breath. Four days seemed like nothing compared to ten, but four more days of being administered chemo sounded like an infinity. "But you could bring me a razor, please. There's no way I'm going to walk around like a plucked chicken. All or nothing, at least I have that in hand. If I'm going to lose my hair, at least it's on my terms."
Tense and nervous, Regina put the bag down and took a seat by Emma's bed again, where she put her left hand between her two and looked into her eyes. "Emma...Heart says that you will very likely have to stay longer this time."
As if that statement had given her new strength, Emma instantly sprang into a vertical position, and only the brief flicker that passed over her face revealed that the abrupt movement had caused her pain. Instantly, her hair became an absolute irrelevance. "She can forget about that, I won't stay here a single day longer than necessary!"
"Emma, please calm down," Regina said calmly, who tried to put her back down.
Emma, however, proved stubborn and simply shook off her gentle hands. "You want me to calm down? You have no idea what this is like! They poison me here for ten days and my only bright spot is coming home! So as nice as it is here, no thanks!"
"She says you haven't eaten or drank something in three days," Regina said in a low voice.
"Then she's lying! I've been drinking!" Emma was aware that she sounded like a petulant child, but she didn't care.
"You didn't keep it down, though. Listen, there's nothing I'd rather do than take you home right now. But how am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to keep up your strength if you throw it all up before it even reaches your stomach?" Desperately she looked at her, her eyes pleading for her to understand.
However, a knock and the entrance of Nurse Edith interrupted their conversation at that moment. "I have the painkiller Dr. Heart ordered, Emma," she explained, bending over the young woman to inject it directly into her venous access. "That's about it. Do you need anything else right now?"
Emma shook her head and managed only a curt, "Thank you."
With that, Edith left the room again, leaving the two to their conversation.
Emma was silent for a while as her jaw muscles twitched from clenching her teeth so tightly. "Okay, fine," she finally said.
Regina breathed a sigh of relief.
"Go."
"What?" Shocked by this turn of events, Regina stared at her in horror.
"You heard me. I want you to go," Emma repeated, her face a mask of impenetrable indifference. "I can even understand it. Why would you want me in your house any longer than necessary? It's unbearable, I'm just a burden to you, so it's better this way."
Shock and pain that Regina had initially felt instantly turned to anger. "No, I won't go! Not like this."
"That wasn't a request!" Emma's face remained motionless, but her body language revealed that she didn't expect any resistance. These days, her girlfriend was doing everything she could just to please her.
"I'm not done yet, Miss Swan!" Regina stood up, her arms folded tightly in front of her body, her eyes two dark pieces of charcoal. "I'll tell you what's unbearable: the idea that you might die. I couldn't stand that. I couldn't stand it if you died, so stop pretending that the worst that could happen is that you'd be a burden to me. The only thing that almost drives me out of my mind is that I can't help you the way I'd like to. That I can't just take this fucking disease away from you, because I would without batting an eye. Because I love you, Emma. And no matter what you say or think, that doesn't change how I feel about you. It doesn't matter if you need around the clock care, how often you throw up all over me, or wake me up at night because you're in pain or having a nightmare. With all of that, you're not a burden to me because those are moments I get to spend with you and that's all that matters."
Emma swallowed and stared at the syringe that contained the drug that decided whether she would live or die. "You're saying that now," she whispered, her voice shaky. There was nothing left of the tough facade she had put on. In the past, she would never have shown her true emotions so blatantly to anyone, but that was before she had met and fallen in love with Regina, and before her illness had robbed her of all strength.
"I'm not just saying this now, I'll always say this. I won't lie, of course there will be days when everything is easier than on others. But I won't curse any of those days, because right now I see each one as a gift." Arms still intertwined against her chest, she stood there, absolutely aware that she would break down emotionally after this day, but it didn't matter. Nothing had mattered since this disease threatened her girlfriend's life. "So, no: there's no way I'm ever going to walk away from you in a fight again, because we don't know how much time we have left together."
Silent tears ran down Emma's cheeks. She had thought it all through so well. She would have moved in with her parents to protect Regina and Henry and keep them from having to watch her deteriorate more and more. But Regina had now ruined all that with her fiery speech. "I might die," she finally whispered, her gaze fixed out the window.
"I know, that's what I've been trying to get you to understand all this time..."
"No," Emma interrupted her, finally looking her in the eye. "I might die," she repeated, "and then you have to go on with your life. You have to endure it and live through my death and then look forward. And if I'm in a bad way, I don't want you to keep me alive at all costs. If I'm dependent on machines, that's not living anymore. You have to promise me that."
"Don't think I'm going to make a promise like that so you can just slip away in the dark of night with a clear conscience. You are the Savior, you are still needed, especially by your son! The Savior won't let herself be taken away by cancer just like that!"
A tired smile appeared on Emma's lips before she closed her eyes. "Promise me."
Regina stared at Emma, whose drained, slender body lay in front of her as if she had already lost the battle. And in that moment, for the first time, she became fully aware that while Emma fought as much as she could, she otherwise had no influence on the outcome of the battle. This realization hit her like a slap in the face and made her gasp briefly. Her heart grew heavy as her lips formed the words she had never wanted to say out loud. "I promise."
