Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Nine (9/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: My original intention for this chapter was fluff for fluff's sake. Every story needs a little bit of fluff, and this one has been so heavy, I thought it would be nice to have some fun, just as a release. Well, the story itself had other ideas, and the chapter ended up being pretty crucial to the plot. Having Emma and David spend time together was fun but a challenge since the two of them didn't have a lot of hanging-out screentime.

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There were not a lot of things for a patient in the hospital to do. Which made sense, Emma supposed, considering hospitals were for convalescing. But for someone who didn’t really belong there, sitting in the hospital was maddeningly, frustratingly, excruciatingly boring.

Mary Margaret had dropped off a couple of books to help Emma pass the time, but she couldn’t seem to make herself sit still long enough to read more than a few pages. Watching TV had become a chore by the second day. She supposed she could sleep, but thanks to her pesky little nightmare problem, she tried not to sleep any more than necessary.

So she spent a lot of time looking out the window. Unfortunately, her window overlooked the parking lot. The most exciting thing Emma had witnessed was a near miss when a car backing out of a space came within inches of smacking into a car driving down the lane.

The constant activity of the parking lot soothed her, though, and more than once she’d caught herself dozing off in the chair. She actually didn’t mind those catnaps; she never slept long enough to dream.

Emma had been watching the cars since August left, a fact that made her feel somewhat guilty. She should have been working on their plan but doing so required a level of energy that, at the moment, she simply didn’t have. Her eyes had just started to close when a knock on the door startled her back to attentiveness.

Weird, she thought, frowning. She’d already seen August and Mary Margaret and Henry this afternoon. Who else would be at her door? Unless it was Archie, attempting to finish their session from earlier.

David Nolan was nowhere on her list of possibilities, so it came as a complete shock to her when he pushed aside the privacy curtain. “David? What are you doing here?”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”

“It’s all right. I know what you meant.” He waved off her apology, smiled, and held up a small package wrapped up in a brown paper bag. “And to answer the question you didn’t mean, I brought you a present.”

Her brow wrinkled as she accepted the bundle and dug into the bag. What she pulled out made her smile. “A deck of cards?”

“I remember how boring it got in here after a while,” he shrugged. “I played a lot of cards. Pretty much became an expert at solitaire. I could even teach you Clock if you don’t know it.”

Emma vaguely recalled an older girl in one of her foster homes teaching her how to play Clock. Karen, probably. She’d liked Karen--who was eleven but had taken an interest in seven-year-old Emma--but just days before her eighth birthday, Karen was placed in a different home and she never saw her again. “I think I know it.” She smiled at him as she pulled the cellophane wrapping from the deck. “And besides, you may be an expert at solitaire, but I’m an expert at five-card draw.”

When David grinned and dragged the visitor’s chair over to sit across from her, she knew he had accepted her not-so-eloquent challenge. She adjusted the height of the tray table, slid it between them, and shuffled the cards. “We only have time for a couple of hands,” she said apologetically.

“Best two out of three?” he asked.

“Sure.” She glanced around the room and noted the severe lack of anything remotely resembling poker chips. All right, so they’d have to skip the wagering phase of the game. “What does the winner get?”

“Bragging rights.”

She smiled. Only after dealing out the cards and picking up her hand did it click that the man sitting across from her was her father. Prince Charming to Mary Margaret’s Snow White.

She was living with Snow White and was about to play poker with Prince Charming for bragging rights. And these people, who didn’t look any older than she was, were her parents. She let out a breath through her nose and shook her head; no doubt about it, her life had taken a very bizarre turn.

“What is it?” David asked.

Emma blinked. “Huh?”

“You looked like your mind was a million miles away.”

“Sorry.” Emma gave a cursory glance at her cards and set three of them down. Not even a second later, she couldn’t remember what they were. The cards she had left were decidedly unhelpful. She sighed, trying to get back her focus. “I just … didn’t expect to see you.”

“I know I should have come sooner.”

“No, it’s not that at all,” she rushed to assure him. “It’s just that with everything that’s been going on … I guess I didn’t expect you to come.”

“Emma, you’re a friend and you’re going through a rough time. I’m not going to let you go through it alone just because things are difficult between Mary Margaret and me right now.” He set two cards facedown on top of her discards.

All of a sudden, she felt like a little kid being assured it wasn’t her fault that Mommy and Daddy were fighting. She didn’t think she liked it. Again, she shook her head and tried to focus on the game. She dealt David his two cards and then took her three.

The only thing she had to play was a pair of twos. She tossed her cards down with a frustrated grunt.

David laughed. “That bad?”

“That bad.” She turned the cards over so he could see her dismal hand.

“Wow,” he chuckled. “That is bad. Which makes it even funnier that mine’s worse.” He set his cards down to show her four diamonds and a spade.

Emma looked from her pathetic hand to David’s even more pathetic hand and then up at David. “Did I really just win with a stupid pair of twos?”

“Hey, if I’d gotten that last diamond, I would have blown your stupid pair of twos out of the water.”

She smiled at him, collected the cards, and shuffled the deck for their second hand. She was having fun, which was only going to make it worse when the nurse came to kick David out after his fifteen minutes.

Speaking of which, fifteen minutes was such a cruel time limit. It was barely enough time to say hello properly. How in the hell was she supposed to get by on seeing people for a quarter of an hour every day?

That in and of itself was a new feeling for her. Prior to her arrival in Storybrooke, she’d had no one to miss and no one to miss her.

“You haven’t even looked at your cards yet,” David spoke up, once again jolting Emma back to the here and now.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, picking up her cards.

“You don’t have to keep apologizing. I remember how hard it can be to concentrate in here.”

Emma nodded. Of course David would understand better than anyone what it was like spending days on end in the hospital. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? Cards, Emma, she told herself, you’re playing cards.

At least this hand was slightly better than her previous one. She already had a two pair, so she tossed the mismatch. David once again put down two of his cards.

Her new fifth card didn’t help but she could play the two pair, jacks over nines. “All right, whatcha got?”

David set his cards down: a six, a seven, and three fives. “Damn,” she muttered, lowering her cards to show him.

“Neck and neck, Sheriff,” he teased. “Next hand decides it.”

They never got to declare a winner because right then a nurse came in to tell David that his fifteen minutes were almost up. “Looks like I’ll have to take a rain check on that last hand,” he said, rising from his seat.

“Yeah, guess so,” Emma muttered, glaring daggers at the nurse’s retreating form. Couldn’t she have at least allowed them to play the last damn hand? So David stayed for sixteen minutes instead of fifteen. Did it really make that much of a difference? She managed to shake herself from her inner grumbling long enough to pull out her company manners. “Thanks for coming by, David. And for the cards.”

“Don’t mention it.” He gave her a smile, slid the chair back to its original position, and headed for the door. When he reached the curtain, he turned back to her. “Get well soon, Emma. Everyone misses you.”

She swallowed hard. “Thank you,” she said around the scratching in her throat. “I will.”

With another gentle smile, David disappeared behind the curtain.

Emma sat there, staring after him for a long moment. She hadn’t wanted him to go. She hadn’t wanted Mary Margaret or Henry or August to go, either, but she could never quite put her finger on why. She had no idea why David’s visit was the one that made her figure it out, but she now realized: their leaving made her lonely.

All her life she’d been alone. Truth be told, as she got older, her solitary life had been by her own design. No one could hurt her if she didn’t let them in; being alone was just the price she had to pay. However, being alone and being lonely were two different beasts, something Emma hadn’t understood until right this very second.

For the first time, she wanted to get out of the hospital for herself. Not for Henry or Mary Margaret or August or to make sure Regina didn’t win, but for herself. It actually wasn’t even a want anymore. She had a life outside these walls and she needed to get back to it. She had people she missed. People she cared for, and people who cared for her.

Emma inhaled deeply and let out the breath with renewed determination. She would do whatever it took to ensure her release. There was simply no other option.