It wasn't noticeable to those who didn't know, but Zelena noticed the following morning that Snow avoided her gaze at breakfast. She didn't know if she was ashamed of what she had asked of her that night, or if she just didn't want to be approached about what she was up to with the Wicked Witch. Zelena suspected that the latter was the case, but didn't put much stock in it. She knew that she wasn't exactly popular in the Charming household, even though they probably saw it as their duty to let her eat at their table after she was part of the family... Sort of. The black sheep, so to speak, that she had been all her life, no matter where she had gone.

"Aren't you going to talk to me now?" Henry's gaze was on Zelena, who was sitting to his left, stirring her porridge, lost in thought.

She looked up and noticed that several pairs of eyes were now resting on her. "I didn't realize you were talking to me. What was that?" To cover up the fact that she was embarrassed by the situation, she straightened her shoulders and tossed back her mane of red curls.

"I asked you how you slept and if you'd heard anything new from Hook, Emma or Mom," Henry repeated his words.

Zelena's gaze slid to Snow, who immediately inspected the cheese platter as if she had just found a long-lost family heirloom. "I slept well, thank you for asking," she said clearly, observing Snow's reaction, who heard nothing, or at least pretended not to. Then she turned to Henry. "And since that's the case, I haven't heard anything from anyone yet. Did you have any more luck with the crystal?"

Henry shook his head, embarrassed. "I probably shouldn't try again before the evening. It's unlikely that Emma will expect an attempt at contact outside the agreed time, and if they're working on creating a portal between the worlds, they won't have all day to wait for it."

What Henry said sounded reasonable, but it bothered Zelena that the last connection to her sister had been severed. "You're right, try again at the agreed time. Maybe your mother's pirate will manage to show his face here again at some point."

"You're not worried about Hook, are you?" Henry grinned slyly at his aunt from the side.

"Worried about him? Never, ever!" she snapped back, drawing nervous circles on the table with her fingertip. "I just don't want to have to look for him if he's unable to hold the compass the right way round."

Henry grinned to himself and shoved another spoonful of the porridge into his mouth. He knew it was never going to be the big love between them, but there were several clues that his aunt and stepfather cared about each other, starting with the fact that they just couldn't stop teasing each other.

"Henry, don't even think about it!" Zelena hissed, who hadn't missed the raised corners of his mouth.

However, this only made Henry grin even more widely. "That's okay. You know, there's no shame in not hating someone's guts. Don't you think it's nice to have breakfast here with us instead of alone in your room? You have a family you can always come to if you have a problem and Hook is part of that family too. I know you wouldn't leave each other hanging if it was a matter of life and death."

"I only get invited to these meals to avoid awkward questions. They certainly don't do that because they like me so much."

"Well, actually, I think they do like you. And they'd like you even more if you didn't make it so difficult for them. They're not your enemies, Zelena!"

Zelena's gaze slid over Snow and David, then Neal and finally Ella and Lucy. She wondered what they thought of Henry sitting with her at the other corner of the table and whispering.

"You worry far too much about what they think of you," Henry said, as if he had read her mind. "They're just having breakfast in peace and probably don't have anything special in mind."

"Yes, maybe that's the case. But I'd better be careful before I'm disappointed again. I'm very sorry, but no one in my life has ever been serious about me before, so why should it suddenly be any different now? Excuse me, I've lost my appetite." With that, she pushed her bowl away, swung herself off the wooden bench and left the dining room.

Regina's hand lay in the incubator and her index finger, which seemed huge in contrast to her tiny hand, gently stroked the sleeping girl's fist. The traces of tears on her face had dried by now, but in Regina's free hand was still the note on which Emma had hastily scribbled some shaky letters authorizing the doctors to inform Regina of her condition and ordering that Regina should have custody of her baby if she could not take care of it.

'Swan baby' was written on the crib, as Emma had not gotten around to naming her baby girl. "You'll get your name, don't worry, little one," Regina whispered as the baby stirred slightly, only to just go back to sleep.

She took a deep breath and withdrew her hand from the incubator to lean against it for a while. Regina felt nauseous, which was not only due to the situation with Emma, but also to her own condition. For a while, the adrenaline in her blood vessels had helped to keep her upright and functional, but slowly it seemed to be wearing off and her body was making it clear that she was anything but fit. The note in her hand began to tremble and as Regina massaged the bridge of her nose with her fingers, she noticed the cold beads of sweat on her forehead. She consciously began to breathe in and out deeply, reducing the dizziness that had overcome her at least a little.

"I really should take you back to the ward now," the midwife said calmly, placing her hands on her shoulders from behind.

Normally, Regina would have simply shaken her off, but she didn't have the strength and knew that she was right. "Just one more moment," she asked softly, gathering the last bit of energy she had left to stroke the baby's head again. "I'll be back soon, I promise." After that, her arms simply slipped weakly back into her lap and she let the midwife push her back to the intensive care unit without putting up any resistance.

xxx

Regina was delighted to be able to lie in her bed again, but she was far too upset to sleep. Her gaze slid to the monitor, which she could now read quite well and which confirmed how she was feeling with a much too fast heartbeat and low blood pressure.

'There were complications during the birth, I'm very sorry.' The gynecologist's words echoed through Regina's head again and again, preventing her from resting. It would be decided in the course of the day what would happen to Emma; first she was left to sleep to give her body the opportunity to somehow compensate for the high blood loss and accept the foreign blood that had been transfused into her. Premature placental abruption during childbirth was rare and dangerous, but since Emma's baby was already far enough along and she had been at the hospital in time, everything had gone well according to the circumstances. She shouldn't worry.

Regina felt her pulse quicken as she heard the phrase she hated so much, 'according to the circumstances', as if her thoughts were too limited to process the true extent of the catastrophe.

She hadn't even realized that someone had come in the door when she was suddenly approached by the nurse on duty, whose name she didn't know. "Even if it's difficult, you must try to calm down," the young woman's gentle voice asked as she read Regina's values from the monitor and entered them into her chart.

"Could you calm down if your friend had almost died giving birth to her baby and had left you a note making you the child's mother when she couldn't be?" Regina met her with a question and looked her firmly in the eye.

"Very probably not," she said honestly, before sitting down on the swivel stool by her bed, which was normally only used by doctors when they came to her with bad news. "But whatever happens, it won't help your friend if you get worse again. You should also use the time she's recovering to get some rest. There's nothing you can do for her at the moment. Maybe she'll be awake the next time you can get up," she tried to cheer her up.

Regina appreciated how much she was trying to make her feel better and took a shaky breath. "I know all that. But I can't..." When she realized tears were welling up in her eyes again, she closed them. Even if there wasn't much left of her majestic strength and imperturbability anyway, she at least wanted to avoid crying in front of others.

"I can give you a mild sedative, if you don't mind. Then you can sleep peacefully for a while and you'll feel better afterwards," she offered her.

Regina immediately wanted to refuse, but then thought about it a little more carefully. Because the nurse was right, in this state she was of no use to Emma or the child. "Fine," she said after a moment's hesitation, "but I want to be woken up immediately if anything changes or happens!" she quickly added her condition.

"I can live with that," the nurse nodded and stood up.

When she was gone, Regina bit her lower lip until it hurt and she tasted blood. How had it all gotten so out of hand? Emma had come to help her and now they were both in intensive care. One thing was certain, something was going very wrong here.

When the nurse returned, Regina watched as she administered the medication into the venous access near her collarbone and then nodded. "Thank you." It was all she could say at the moment; in addition to her physical discomfort, her mind was a blank from the mental strain it had been under over the last few hours.

So it was not surprising that the medication had calmed her heartbeat and that she had sunk into a deep, dreamless sleep moments later.