An unfamiliar smell stung her nose as she took another breath and tried to open her eyes a little. Her body didn't want to obey her, even this attempt failed, so she had no choice but to listen to the surrounding noises in order to perhaps make sense of where she was and what had happened.
The increased concentration gave her a headache and after just a few moments she was forced to surrender to sleep again.
xxx
The next time she woke up, she finally managed to open her eyes a crack after some effort. She blinked hard to make out anything at all in the darkness and then closed her eyes again briefly to recover from the exertion this had caused.
Slowly, she finally turned her head, which was throbbing painfully, and looked around. There was the window on the right, the television, and the armchair was also in the place she remembered, but no one was sitting in it and certainly not her big sister.
However, her bed was now surrounded by all kinds of flashing devices. A glance at her chest told her that the pink nightgown was also real, but she couldn't remember that the last time wires had been hanging out of her neckline and she had been connected to IV tubes that ended in some kind of access in her throat that pulled uncomfortably as soon as she moved.
She'd woken up, spoken to Zelena, changed her clothes and then... She had no idea what had happened then. Or before that. Or at all. And thinking about it gave her one hell of a headache.
After another rest, she decided to take stock of the situation. Weakly, she pushed the blanket slightly away from her, but then failed in her attempt to sit up. She couldn't remember ever having a headache like this and her chest was on fire after she had lifted it just a few centimeters from the bed, into which she now fell back with a suppressed cry of pain.
Her heart was racing and no sooner had she taken notice of it than the terrible beeping started again, which only increased the pain in her head immeasurably.
"Roni, you're awake. Please try to calm down. You're in hospital and everything is fine, just stay calm."
Regina winced slightly, not even realizing that someone had entered the room. The woman was a stranger and it didn't exactly help her calm down when she was touched and called by the wrong name by her. "Regina," she corrected her and only heard herself gasp softly.
"It's all right, Roni. You don't have to talk. You've had an accident, but you're awake now and a bit better," the woman continued.
"Regina," Regina repeated her name again and this time she was even able to understand it, even if it only came out in a whisper.
"No, I'm Megan. We haven't met yet, not since you've been awake, anyway."
Regina gave it up and closed her eyes, hoping that she would just be left alone again, and to her delight, she got her wish.
"Get some more sleep, it's the middle of the night," Megan said, who pulled the door shut behind her.
Regina actually wanted to continue looking for the reasons why she was here, but the beeping had stopped, her eyes were closed again and she didn't know if she would ever be able to reopen them. Shortly afterwards, she had fallen asleep.
"I say, it's no use wandering around in circles and hoping that one of them will suddenly jump out from behind a tree," Hook said impatiently after a while, tired of following the Charmings' plan of not getting too far away from the others. "We should slowly get used to the idea that they're not here and start really looking for them," he added as two pairs of eyes looked at him punitively.
"I'm in," Henry stated, who in the meantime had made sure that his wife and daughter were well. "Grandma, Grandpa... I can understand you, but Hook is right. If they were here, we would have found them by now. You two should stay here and we'll go looking for them," the young man suggested.
"You and Hook want to look for Emma and Regina? Alone?" David asked, who had already been thinking about where they were going to get horses.
"I don't see any problem with that." When Henry saw that Snow was about to object, he quickly continued. "You two should stay with Neal. And I'd be more comfortable with the idea of someone keeping an eye on Lucy and Ella too."
Snow and David exchanged a quick glance before Snow finally nodded slowly. "All right, then. You're right. Though I hate to admit it!" She smiled and took him in her arms. "Bring them back safely, will you?" she whispered. "We'll try to make our way to the castle in the meantime."
Henry nodded and Hook said goodbye to David with a pat on the back before the two of them turned away and made their way into the deeper forest.
The click of the door lock woke Regina. She was about to get up when she noticed again how her whole body seemed to ache and she opened her eyes.
"Good morning," the man in a white coat at her bedside greeted her.
Regina looked at him silently for a while until he continued.
"I'm Dr. James." Regina still said nothing, not even knowing if her voice would be strong enough, prompting the doctor to ask, "Do you understand me?"
She nodded slowly and immediately paid for it with a severe headache that made her grimace.
"You had an accident, you were found unconscious in the park. There was a sudden, violent hurricane during the night and you were obviously caught in a squall and whirled through the air."
Regina looked away from him and tried to remember. And suddenly it all came back. She had been stupid enough to go after a powerful witch with a baseball bat. But she had had nothing to lose. Now things were a little different. Since she was still here, Gothel's plan to destroy the world didn't seem to have worked, which brought her back to the question of what had happened. At least she could say with certainty that it hadn't been her who had stopped her. "Where is my sister?" she asked quietly. Zelena would have the right answers for her. "Zelena, where is she?"
"I'm very sorry, but no one has been here since you've been admitted," the doctor stated regretfully.
Regina turned her gaze back to him. "Yes, she was here last night. I spoke to her. She was sleeping over there." She gestured vaguely towards the leather armchair.
"I assure you that no one has been here with you."
She hesitated briefly. "'Since you've been admitted'. How long has that been exactly?"
"Two days." The doctor saw her horrified face and continued quickly. "We had to resuscitate you at the scene of the accident. You suffered severe head injuries and have already had several seizures due to hemorrhage into your brain. You also have three broken ribs and a contusion of your spine. But don't worry, as far as we can tell, all of this should heal completely. The only thing you need now is absolute rest. We may have relieved the bleeding in your head, but it's nothing to joke about. If it bleeds again, it could cause permanent damage."
Regina could already tell that she was finding it harder to listen to him again. After all, his information matched what she could now remember. Gothel had thrown her through a wooden wall and the subsequent pain in her back and side had probably been the rib and vertebrae injuries. Thankfully, she had hit her head on the pavement afterwards, which had robbed her of consciousness and taken away the pain. She cleared her throat and shifted her position slightly. "Thank you," she finally said after a while, not knowing what else to say. "For putting me back together. But I can't stay here. My family is probably worried and they obviously don't know where I am if, as you say, no one has visited me yet."
The doctor stood up and looked at her. "Roni, I'll tell you what: you rest for a while and a nurse will bring you a phone later, okay?" Dr. James offered.
"Agreed," she said, as she really wasn't going to last much longer.
He went to the door and opened it.
"Regina," was all she said and the doctor stopped and turned to her questioningly. "My name is Regina."
He looked at her in surprise for a moment and then nodded. "Whatever. See you later."
"Killian?!" Emma's hand rested on her heavily pregnant belly as she wandered through the house looking for her husband. "Where are you," she then muttered more to herself. It wasn't as if the former pirate didn't disappear every now and then to his ship, which he had given up as his home to move into a nice house with her instead. But in the last few months at the latest, as her belly got rounder and rounder and he realized that he would soon be a father, he had at least let her know when he was going away.
Emma was tired of looking for him, so after a while she simply went into the garden, where she dropped into a forgotten blue and white striped lounger. A tall oak tree provided pleasant shade and she had a good view of the covered sandbox that Killian had built for the child with her father's help. The memory of that afternoon made her smile. Her life was still dominated by doubts, but at that moment it had all just felt right, as if she had finally arrived and was allowed to enjoy family life.
Emma leaned back and relaxed, closing her eyes for a few seconds. It was a warm day, which was rare enough, and it was also wonderfully quiet. Too quiet, actually, when she thought about it for a while. There was neither the sound of passing cars nor the muffled conversations of the people who occasionally walked past on the sidewalks.
Emma narrowed her eyes and let her gaze wander over the street, where no one was to be seen for miles around. Something was wrong and she already suspected what the situation would lead to: she had to take care of it. Once again.
