Ruby helped to sit Emma on the edge of the bed, “you’ve got to be careful, Doctor Whale says you could still have some injuries from the fall.”
“Where’s Regina?” Emma ignored what Ruby was telling her about her own health, she needed to know what had happened to the brunette. An image flashed through her mind of Regina falling to the grassy ground beside her with her eyes closed and a thin layer of sweat covering her frighteningly pale face. Something else was trying to assert itself in her brain but she couldn’t quite grasp it until it suddenly flooded her memory, “Gold! We have to call Gold!”
Ruby was nodding and trying to still Emma’s hands, “he’s here.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Ruby?” Emma looked at her with an uncanny representation of how her son had looked at Ruby earlier that day.
“It looks bad,” Ruby admitted quietly, “she hasn’t woken up since she’s been in here but Whale can’t figure out why. He says it’s like she’s just asleep but can’t be woken. Gold is with her but.. I dunno.. he’s not as cocky as he usually is.”
“I need to see her,” Emma struggled to stand again but Ruby held her back down.
“Let me get a wheelchair or something,” Ruby said and looked around the ward before walking down the corridor to see if she could find one.
Emma looked around and saw a heart rate monitor, on a tall metal pole with casters on the bottom. She pushed herself off of the bed and dragged her body around the bed and the bedside cabinet and reached out for it. She pulled it closer and then tentatively leaned on it to see if it would support her unbalanced weight and when it did she began to slowly walk out of the ward.
The first thing she noticed was that her leg was truly damaged, everything else felt fine but her right leg seemed uncoordinated and sluggish. She wondered if it was a separate injury to what Regina had healed or if it was a result of her not sitting still for long enough when she had been told to. Either way it was a small price to pay for the lack of total paralysis that she had experienced in the cavern. A shiver ran up her spine at the thought.
She stumbled through some corridors in her search for Regina and suddenly saw Henry sitting nervously in an otherwise empty waiting room.
“Mom!” Henry cried out happily when he saw her, he ran towards her and hugged her tightly around the waist and Emma was glad, not only for the affection but also the extra support in keeping her upright.
“They said you wouldn’t be up for hours yet,” he mumbled into her hospital gown.
“I don’t do well with sedation,” she admitted, “where’s Regina?”
“Mister Gold is with her,” Henry said and pointed to a closed door.
“Why are you on your own?” Emma looked around in annoyance that someone brought him here and left him alone.
“I wanted to stay, Mary Margaret had to take Grace back to the house to get more bottles for her,” Henry explained, “and David went with her.”
“Right, yes, okay,” Emma panicked having only just remembered that baby Grace was in existence, “do you know why Gold is helping your Mom?”
Henry shook his head, “I don’t know but they seem friendly lately, they see each other a lot. He looked really worried when he got here, he told me not to worry but he didn’t seem sure.”
Suddenly the door opened and an exhausted Gold stumbled out and closed the door behind him. He looked up at Emma and raised an eyebrow in surprise, “we’d be in great shape if the Queen was as averse to sleeping as you appear to be, Miss Swan.”
“So, she is just asleep?” Emma asked hopefully.
“Figure of speech,” he waved his arm as he readjusted his cane and walked over to them. He noticed Emma’s grip on the machinery that was not connected to her so simply being used as a crutch, “I suggest you get one of these,” he tapped his cane with his fingers, “I have a couple in the shop..”
“How is she?” Emma interrupted.
“She will awaken,” he nodded, “whatever she was doing drained a lot of her energy. What was she doing?”
“She saved my life,” Emma said proudly and a little for Henry’s benefit.
“Well, that I gather,” he said with a glance at the blonde, “what did she do that drained all her magic.”
“She took my feelings for Emma and used them to find her,” Henry pointed out with a smile.
Gold raised an eyebrow in a manner that indicated to Emma that the spell Regina had used was neither conventional nor advisable.
“She healed injuries I had,” Emma added, “I.. couldn’t feel my body.”
Gold nodded at Emma’s attempt to not go into too much detail with Henry beside her, “that will do it, healing magic is the most draining. That’s why you can’t bring anyone back from the dead.”
“I thought you couldn’t bring anyone back from the dead, because they were dead..” Emma stated.
“No,” Gold rolled his eyes at having to have yet another magical introduction class with the uninitiated, “you can’t bring someone back from the dead because even the most powerful magic user would never have enough magic in a hundred lifetimes.”
“So, healing magic uses a lot of energy?” Henry asked simply.