Miles To Go

Chapter Forty-One

Regina felt woozy as she sat in the back of the ambulance, the paramedic still trying to get Emma breathing again. He spoke with the driver in the front, relaying off terms Regina wasn't familiar with while the driver made the call to the hospital.

Three minutes, that's how long it'd been since Emma took her last breath and the seconds were ticking by quickly. Regina sat in the seat, eyes forward and not looking down at Emma, unable to bring herself to look at her fiancée laying there, dead.

Dead.

Her heart was racing as she clutched at her stomach, it flipping every time the ambulance made a turn and all the times in between. Regina barely realized they had stopped until the driver was crawling into the back and they were unloading Emma, a doctor or a nurse already taking over the chest compressions as they rushed her inside.

"Ma'am?"

"I—I need to call someone," Regina whispered, looking down at her hands as she pulled out her phone. As if on autopilot, she found Ruby's number and called her, lifting the phone slowly up to her ear.

"Hey, Regina!" Ruby said cheerfully and she could hear Henry giggling in the background. "What's up? Shouldn't you be—"

"Emma," she whispered into the phone, her voice ragged and sounded foreign to her own ears.

"Regina?"

"...the hospital," she managed to croak out as the lump in her throat grew bigger and bigger, making it so very impossible to say a word or even breathe.

"Regina? What's going on? Did something happen to Emma?" Ruby asked in a rush, the laugher dying in the background. "Are you at the hospital?"

"Y-yes."

"We'll be right there."

Regina pulled the phone away from her ear, taking the nurse's offered hand and climbed out of the back of the ambulance. The moment her feet hit the ground, she nearly collapsed, the nurse holding her by the elbow to keep her steady. Her ears were ringing and the hospital lights almost too bright as the nurse led her into the emergency room. She didn't hear a word the woman said as she was led to a private room just off the emergency waiting room.

"Madam Mayor?" The nurse tried again. "I need you to wait right here."

"But she—"

"Doctor Whale will take care of her. I'll come around with any news," she said gently. "Is there someone else I can call for you?"

"No."

"How about we get you cleaned up?" The nurse said as she looked down at Regina's bloody hands and the blood that stained her jacket. "Madam Mayor?"

Regina nodded, her eyes wide, her stare blank as she allowed herself to be led into a small bathroom where the kind and friendly nurse helped her to wash the drying blood—Emma's blood—from her hands.

"Is someone else coming?" The nurse asked gently, leading the way out of the bathroom once Regina's hands were washed and dried. "Madam—"

"Yes," she whispered, her lower lip trembling. "Someone else is coming."

"Her family?"

Regina only nodded, moving to sit down in one of the green plastic chairs once she finally removed her bloody jacket, one that the nurse took from her and hung it up on the coat rack in the corner. With a sympathetic smile, she left the private waiting room and Regina was left in complete, utter silence.

Bile rose in her throat and she ran towards the bathroom again, barely reaching the toilet in time. She was trembling as she flushed the toilet and moved to the sink, gripping at the edges as she stared down at the running water, her tears rushing back to fill her eyes. Panic gripped her in that very moment, her stomach twisting into knots and she gripped on to the edges of the sink harder as she dry heaved once, twice, before she swallowed past the lump and ran her hand under the running water, filling her cupped palm before she raised it to her lips and sipped. She swirled the water around, rinsing her mouth clean and spit, her stomach twisting again as she shut off the tap.