Chapter 76
Raindrops gently drummed against the window pane and darkened the room, despite the fact that it was only early afternoon. Emma slept in Regina's arms while a quiz show played on the television with the sound turned down low, to which the brunette paid a little attention now and then before devoting herself completely to her girlfriend again and letting her hands caress her gently. The dialysis that morning had left her very exhausted, and Regina had the unpleasant impression that it was getting worse with each treatment. Whether the chemos or the dialysis were to blame, she didn't know, but it hadn't escaped her notice that Emma slept even more than usual, even when she was with her.
The day at the beach had been a precious gift for them all, one they could live on for a long time, but a repetition had not been possible. To the outside world, it appeared that Emma's condition remained relatively stable, but the young woman felt her strength waning. She hardly ever left her bed anymore, once again had a feeding tube in her nose because she physically couldn't manage to eat as much as her organism actually needed, and had more and more difficulty beathing. She never complained, but unfortunately, even so, she knew that Regina was noticing her slow but steady deterioration.
Regina jerkily raised her head as the door opened. Realizing it was Emma's doctor who had come in, she gave her a curt nod and then lowered her eyes to Emma, who, however, had not been awakened by the sudden noise. "Hello," she said in a whisper before she turned off the television.
"Hello, Regina," Heart also replied quietly, coming closer to the bed. Her gaze remained fixed on Emma for a few moments, her brow furrowing, before she looked back up at her girlfriend.
"You look pretty worried," Regina noted, shifting her weight a little, whereupon Emma stirred a bit but continued to sleep.
"Did she talk to you?" Heart wanted to know, taking a seat in a chair. "I guess not," she then nodded as she noticed Regina's confused expression.
"She's getting worse, isn't she?" the brunette asked in response, feeling her mouth go dry. "She... hasn't said anything, but she doesn't have to," she whispered barely audibly, pressing her lips together, unwilling to allow tears to fall as she studied Emma's sleeping face and stroked her head, which was leaning against her chest and was covered by the fabric of her beanie.
"The cancer cells have continued to multiply with each exam, she has no reasonable clotting or functioning immune system, and her erythrocyte and hemoglobin levels are dropping so rapidly that we can't even re-transfuse as fast as we should." She took a deep breath. "The chemo isn't kicking in anymore. We can change the drug again and hope for the best, but the only thing that really can help her now is the transplant."
"...for which there is no donor," Regina nodded, closing her eyes as she slowly shook her head. "It can't all have been for nothing. She fought so hard, even brought herself to try therapy again when she long since couldn't take it anymore. You have to save her, Heart!"
"Regina..." Emma whispered, her eyes open a crack. Gently, she looked up at her girlfriend, who hadn't noticed at all how loud she'd gotten toward the end, and gave her a weary smile as she squeezed her hand. "It's okay. Now we've really tried everything." Struggling to catch her breath, Emma was silent for a few seconds before raising her eyes to her doctor. "Thank you for talking to her." When her doctor had told her what she had just told Regina, she had then asked her to tell her girlfriend as well. The fact that she was afraid of Regina's reaction had been less the reason than the fact that she did not have enough strength for long explanations and discussions.
"Emma, please don't give up now," Regina pleaded with her girlfriend, stroking her cheek.
"I'm not giving up, Regina. You can only give up if you have a choice. But I don't have one. That's it. Game over." Exhausted, she closed her bloodshot eyes with dark shadows under them and had to cough. Speaking was a real challenge, since breathing alone was already exhausting.
Regina's lips quivered as she let her gaze rest on Emma for a moment and then lifted it again to the oncologist who had silently given them time. "There must be something you can do to help her!"
"We have one very last option," Heart said slowly.
Two pairs of eyes, one brown and hopeful, one green and exhausted, looked in her direction expectantly.
"Henry." She looked back and forth between them, crossing her legs. "We can take bone marrow from him and administer it to you."
"Then do it finally!" Regina demanded upset. This topic had been hanging in the room for weeks; Henry had already made known several times that he was willing to donate, at times downright begging for it, and they had always put him off. "First it was said Emma wasn't in shape, then it was said Henry couldn't donate. What's it to be now?"
"Regina," Emma said quietly, wrapping her fingers around Regina's forearm to reassure her. Her doctor didn't deserve to be yelled at like that, although she probably attributed it to the tense situation and wouldn't take it personally.
"Please calm down so we can talk about this calmly," Heart asked, then looked at Emma rather than Regina, since she was the one whose body was at stake. "Emma... If you agree, we can make the attempt. But before that, you need to know and understand the risks."
"I could die, all right. But I will anyway," Emma gasped. "If there's no danger to Henry, I agree."
"It's not just that you might die," the doctor countered, shaking her head. "In preparation for the transplant, you'll receive high-dose chemo and radiation that will wipe out all your bone marrow. That means your hematopoietic system, with everything in it, will be irreversibly shut down. After the transplant, you will have to spend several weeks in an isolation room, where you will be given special low-germ food and extra purified water. During that time, you also won't be able to have visitors." Before either of them could say anything, she continued. "That's the procedure if all goes well. The bigger problem is that Henry's cells are only 50 percent the same as yours. A rejection, in which your body fights the foreign cells, wouldn't even be the worst thing in this case. Much more likely and serious is a condition called GvHD, or graft-versus-host disease. In this case, Henry's cells attack your body and gradually destroy healthy tissue and organs. We can, of course, counteract both with drugs, but there is never a guarantee that we will be successful, especially when the match is so small. Either way, Emma, any rejection can not only kill you, but will cause you extreme pain beforehand."
"Would Henry be in danger?" Emma repeated her question, as if she hadn't heard any of the words.
"Since the cancer cells are multiplying so rapidly, there's no telling how much time you have left. So we can't risk prepping him over several days first and waiting for his stem cells to transfer into his blood, but have to take them directly from the source, his bone marrow. This means that his iliac crest will be punctured under general anesthesia. He will hardly feel any pain afterwards; you know this from your own punctures. Anesthesia always carries a risk, but since he's young and healthy, it's minimal," she explained calmly.
"What do you think?", Emma wanted to know from Regina, looking into her eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Regina returned her gaze and brushed her hair back. "I think he'll be sixteen soon and can decide that for himself. And he's been talking about nothing but donating for weeks."
"Okay, then... yes," Emma agreed, looking back to her doctor. "I'm okay with... whatever it takes."
Heart nodded. "Then I would ask you to be here with Henry tomorrow morning at eight o'clock," the oncologist said, addressing Regina. "Then he will be thoroughly examined, and if he qualifies as a donor, we will then prepare Emma. In the best case, we can transfer Henry's cells to her in three days."
"Sounds too good to be true," Emma noted with a wry grin.
Heart returned the smile and squeezed Emma's hand. "It's going to be a tough fight, but I'll stay by your side until the end, as I promised."
"Thank you," Emma replied honestly, and again began to cough dryly. She then struggled to breathe for quite a while, whereupon Regina sat her up straighter.
Heart said goodbye when Emma's breathing became calmer, leaving the two women in awkward silence.
"When were you planning to tell me?" Regina asked monotonously after a few minutes.
"She didn't tell me until today either," Emma defended herself. By now she was fighting for every breath and knew she wouldn't be able to discuss it.
Fortunately, Regina acquiesced and carefully slid out from behind Emma and out of bed.
"Where are you going?" Emma whispered, eyeing her wearily.
"Bathroom," Regina replied curtly, but did not go into the small bathroom until she had fluffed Emma's pillow and gently leaned her back against it, as well as raised the headboard of the bed. Emma's labored breathing did not please her at all, and suddenly three days seemed like an eternity. After going to the bathroom, Regina stared at her tense face in the mirror for a while and splashed some cold water on her cheeks before returning to Emma.
She had dozed off again in the few minutes Regina had been gone, but startled when she sensed her girlfriend's presence. "It's getting late," she whispered, putting a hand weakly on the thigh of Regina, who had sat down on the edge of her bed. "You should go home and talk to Henry."
"You're probably right," she admitted, placing her hand over her girlfriend's fragile thin fingers, "but I hate to leave you alone. I have a feeling you're not telling me everything."
"What do you want me to say?" Emma asked quietly, raising her eyes to Regina's with strain. "I'm not feeling well, Regina. I've never felt so bad, it's... like my heart has to take a running start for every beat, and like I stop breathing as soon as I stop focusing on doing it."
Even without the exact words, Regina would have felt queasy. She couldn't remember ever hearing Emma say directly that she wasn't feeling well. Normally, in the moments when she was, she was especially vehement in insisting that the opposite was true.
"You wanted me to be honest," Emma whispered when Regina didn't reply and instead just stared at her in horror. "Don't worry, I'll make it through the few days. This is the final sprint, I'm not going to throw in the towel on the last few meters." She tried a smirk, but since even that was incredibly draining, she just pursed her lips into a crooked line.
"I don't want to go," Regina repeated, tightening her fingers around Emma's hand as if it were a lifeline. She didn't feel good about leaving her girlfriend alone, and usually she could trust her gut.
"You need to explain everything to Henry. And tell him it's okay if he changes his mind. It's his decision alone. By all means, tell him that," Emma asked with as much emphasis as she could muster. "I'll be at the hospital, Regina. They take care of me almost as well as you do," she then added with a small smirk. "Go on. We'll talk tomorrow." She paused, looking into the dark eyes that had been her refuge for a long time now. "I love you."
"I love you too," Regina whispered, pressing a kiss to the back of Emma's hand. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow. Don't drive yourself crazy, it'll be fine," she whispered.
Not convinced by her words, Regina sighed deeply and finally left the room.
Emma gazed after her until the door was closed and suffered another wheezing fit of coughing before her exhaustion caused her to fall asleep almost instantly.
"Don't you like it?" Regina wanted to know anxiously, who had been watching Henry push his cheesy noodles from one side of the plate to the other for quite a while now.
"Yes, I do, it tastes good as always," he affirmed in response, shoving another fork of the food into his mouth. After chewing for a long time and then swallowing, he put down his cutlery. "Mom, Emma is very bad, isn't she?"
Regina was silent, dabbing her mouth with her napkin to buy time. "This donation is exactly what you wanted, isn't it?" she finally replied evasively.
"Yes, of course. But you also told me that I'm not exactly the best candidate for it. If this has changed, Dr. Heart must be pretty desperate," he indicated, looking his mother in the eye.
Regina sighed; she unfortunately liked to forget that her son was no longer ten years old, but pretty much an adult, and thus such things stood out to him. "You're right. The treatments are failing and it's her last chance," she said honestly, even though every word tasted like acid in her mouth.
Henry swallowed dryly and slumped against the back of his chair, arms folded in front of his chest. Regina had already relayed to him everything Emma's doctor had explained to them, and his head was buzzing from all the information. "I hope it will help her," he finally whispered.
"I hope so too," Regina stated honestly, who, listless and appetite-less, ate up the remains of her small portion.
As hard as he found it, Henry did the same as his mother and then cleared the table. He wanted to take as much off her shoulders as he could, and a little distraction was good for him anyway. As Regina rose and headed toward the door, he paused and looked over at her. "Mom?"
Regina stopped and turned to her son.
"Do you want to go to sleep early tonight?" he asked her.
"I probably should, but I don't think I can sleep yet," she replied honestly. "And I don't want to spend hours tossing and turning from side to side."
"Then maybe we'll watch a movie together?" the teenager then suggested, almost shyly. When they hosted movie nights with Emma, it always felt to him more like spending time with friends than with his mothers, since Emma hadn't raised him, shared his taste in movies, and sometimes acted more childish than he did. With Regina, he was more inhibited about that. To him, she was fully his mother, and he wasn't sure if he was being ridiculous by asking her to spend an evening together on the sofa.
Regina's lips twisted into a gentle smile and her eyes began to really light up when Henry made this suggestion to her. "I would really like that," she replied. Even though it wasn't a big deal, it felt like a little bit of normalcy that they could definitely use a dose of. And aside from her sister, Henry was the only person she wanted to be distracted by from her unhappy thoughts.
"Okay, then, let's meet in the living room in a minute?", Henry made sure.
Regina nodded and went upstairs to the bathroom, where she took her medication and freshened up a bit while Henry was filling the dishwasher. So now the moment had really come to decide how Emma's story would turn out. Sighing, Regina propped her hands on the edge of the sink and hung her head. It was so unlikely that she would get well that she would have preferred to curl up in a ball, screaming at the top of her voice, so that she wouldn't have to see or hear anything. All the last months she had not felt so helpless as at this moment. Chance alone would decide whether Emma's life was allowed to go on. "It will," Regina whispered, facing her reflection staring back at her from tear-blurred eyes. "She'll be fine." Since Snow and David always saw the best in everything, Regina had expected that this mantra would somehow reassure her, but it did not. On the contrary, she felt as if her own image was mocking her for her foolishness. Snorting in frustration, she turned around without another glance in the mirror and left the bathroom.
Henry had already made himself comfortable on the sofa, put a bowl of popcorn on the table, and turned on the TV. "What do you want to watch?" he asked when his mother joined him. He didn't miss the tears glistening in her eyes, but he pretended not to notice as he slid a little to the side so she had enough room.
"That's up to you," she said immediately, forcing a smile. "Just no horror movie," she asked.
Henry thought for a moment and finally put in the 'Ratatouille' DVD into the player. An animated movie about a rat who wanted to be a chef seemed innocuous enough to create some distraction.
Smirking at the odd choice, Regina sat back to engage with the film. Soon she felt Henry's head sink against her shoulder and gently put her arm around him.
By the time the credits rolled across the screen, it was just after ten o'clock, making it a good time to go to bed and get enough sleep. But Henry managed to surprise Regina for the second time that evening when he asked if he could sleep in her bed.
Astonished, she eyed her son and nodded. "Of course you can," she agreed, and after they had both been in the bathroom, Regina slipped under her covers while Henry curled up in Emma's bed. "Henry?" she whispered into the silence after a while.
"Yes?" he replied quietly.
"Are you scared? I mean... are you nervous about the exams tomorrow? You don't have to do it if you don't want to, you know? You can always change your mind."
Leaning on one elbow, Henry turned to her in the darkness. "You stressed that several times when you told me about it earlier. I want to do this, I'm not afraid."
Regina took a deep breath and gently squeezed his hand. "Then why do you want to sleep here? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy about it. It's just unusual."
"I'm not afraid of the tests or the surgery," he clarified again, swallowing. "I'm afraid they might find out tomorrow that I can't donate. Then Emma will die."
For a moment, Regina faltered before pulling her son into her arms and stroking his back. "Don't worry about that, honey. I'm not a doctor, but as far as I know, there are very few reasons someone can't donate. These tests are just routine to make sure nothing happens to both you and Emma that could be avoided."
"Okay," Henry whispered in response, snuggling into his mother's embrace. "Good night, Mom. I love you."
"I love you too, Henry," she replied lovingly, closing her eyes. Holding her son as he fell asleep was better medicine for her than all the sleeping pills in the world, and soon she was sleeping a restful, dreamless sleep for once in a long time.
Regina and Henry were awakened by an unpleasant shrill noise, whereupon the brunette rolled to her side and turned off her alarm clock. When the noise continued, however, she forced herself to open her eyes, blinking hard, and stared at the luminous digits. 4:27. Heart racing, she scooted up in bed and reached for her smartphone, still ringing on her nightstand. "Mills?" she answered breathlessly, by now fully awake and sitting upright in bed.
Henry breathed sleepily, then turned, blinking, when he heard his mother's voice.
"No, but..." Regina ran a hand over her face before pushing her legs out of bed and slipping into her dressing gown, the phone still pressed to her ear. Hastily, she pulled clothes from her closet and pressed the bundle to her chest before leaving the room. "I'll be right there."
Tensely, Henry sat up and pushed the blanket off him. He felt hot and cold at the same time. He wanted to follow his mother, but two things stopped him and instead left him paralyzed: first, he didn't want to surprise her while she was changing, and second, he feared that she had just been told of Emma's death. Why else call her in the middle of the night when she would be arriving at the clinic with him only a few hours later anyway?
"Henry, I have to go to the clinic," Regina then said, who came back into the room. She was fully dressed and had ended the phone call by now.
"Is she...?" Henry began tonelessly, but could not finish the sentence.
Regina swallowed, forced herself to calm down a bit and took a seat next to him on the bed. "No, she's alive," she said, pulling her boy to her by the shoulders. "But her breathing deteriorated rapidly overnight. Then some minutes ago, she became so exhausted that they had no choice but to intubate her and wanted my permission to do so. Henry, I need to get to her."
"I know," he nodded as the lump in his throat cleared a little. Emma hadn't died; it wasn't too late. "I'll go with you."
"Henry..."
"I'm coming with you, Mom. I need to see her," he insisted. Besides, he didn't want his mother to have to go through this alone.
For a while Regina was silent before she nodded. "All right, get dressed, I'll wait for you in the car." She was only functioning mechanically now, and it was probably a good thing. If she allowed herself even a single thought about Emma's condition, she would go crazy.