Chapter Text
The thing about Walter Kessler — and Emma would file this under *things I should have googled before I agreed to bring him in* — was that he did not, in fact, weigh a buck-sixty like his bail paperwork claimed. Walter Kessler weighed closer to two-forty, most of it useful, and he had a switchblade he'd apparently been saving for exactly this occasion.
"Walter," Emma said, from her position flat on her back on the wet pavement behind a Dorchester laundromat, one hand clamped over her side and the other still, admirably, holding her taser. "Walter, my guy. This is not going to end the way you think it's going to end."
Walter did not seem inclined to discuss it further. He ran.
Emma let him.
This was, she would reflect later, possibly not the correct call from a professional standpoint. But there was a specific and unpleasant heat spreading under her ribs that was rapidly reorganizing her priorities, and chief among the new priorities was *not dying in an alley that smelled like fabric softener and old rain.*
"Okay," she said out loud, to no one, because apparently that was a thing she did now. "Okay. That's — that's a lot of blood for a good sign."
She got her phone out. Her hands were doing a thing she didn't love, a fine, distant tremor, like her body had already started making decisions without consulting her.
David picked up on the second ring. "Swan. Please tell me you're calling because you got him."
"I did not get him," Emma said. "I got stabbed."
There was a beat of silence so total she could hear David's chair creak as he sat up straight. "You got *what.*"
"Kessler had a knife. I didn't factor the knife into my Kessler math. Dorchester, behind the laundromat on Adams, I need —" She looked down at her hand, at the amount of red currently living between her fingers, and revised her plan. "I need you to call an ambulance, actually. I'm gonna go ahead and call it myself too, but tell Snow I'm fine, because she's going to hear 'stabbed' and lose her whole mind, and I need her mind for later. Tell her I'm fine."
"You just said you got stabbed."
"I'm fine *later,*" Emma clarified. "Right now I'm a little stabbed."
---
She was, medically speaking, more than a little stabbed, though not — as the paramedic informed her with the specific cheerful bluntness of a man who had seen much worse on a Tuesday — *catastrophically* stabbed. The blade had caught her low on the left side, avoided anything that would've made this a very different kind of story, and mostly succeeded in making Emma feel like someone had reached into her torso and set off a very small, very personal firework.
"You're lucky," the paramedic said, running lights through the dark, "Boston Mercy's four minutes out and their trauma team's the best in the city."
"Lucky," Emma repeated, and laughed, which hurt, which she then also found funny, which also hurt. "Yeah. Feeling that."
She was aware, in the disjointed way you're aware of things when adrenaline and blood loss are having an argument for control of your nervous system, that the ceiling was moving, and then it was a different ceiling, brighter, and there were hands on her that weren't paramedic hands anymore, and a lot of voices talking in that clipped ER shorthand that Emma had heard enough times, on enough of her own trips to enough emergency rooms, to recognize without understanding.
And then there was a face.
Dark hair. Sharp, assessing eyes that did a full sweep of her — wound, pupils, color — in about a second and a half, all business, all competence, and Emma, even stabbed, even lightheaded, even actively bleeding onto a Boston Mercy General gurney, had approximately one coherent thought, which was:
*Oh no.*
"Ms. Swan?" the woman said. Her voice had a low, controlled register to it, the kind that probably worked wonders on panicking patients and terrified interns alike. "I'm Dr. Mills, I'll be treating you tonight. Can you tell me your pain level, one to ten?"
"Depends," Emma said. "Are we counting the stab wound, or —"
"The stab wound, Ms. Swan."
"Seven. Solid seven." Emma tried for a smile, which probably came out crooked given the circumstances. "Also I feel like I should mention, purely for medical transparency purposes, that you're extremely pretty and it's making the whole dying thing a lot more complicated."
Somewhere to her left, a nurse made a sound that was very clearly a poorly disguised laugh.
Dr. Mills did not laugh. Dr. Mills's expression didn't so much as flicker, though something happened around her eyes, something quick and assessing that had nothing to do with vitals. "You're not dying, Ms. Swan. You're going to need sutures and observation, and I need you to stop talking so I can look at this properly."
"Copy that." Emma stopped talking. It lasted about four seconds. "Just so we're clear, is that a professional no, or —"
"Ms. Swan."
"Right. Sorry. Bleeding. Focus."
---
Getting stitched up, it turned out, took a while, and Emma had never in her life been more grateful for a long procedure.
She had time to notice things. She had time to notice the precise, unhurried competence in Regina Mills's hands — the same hands that had, twenty minutes ago, been packing gauze against Emma's side with a firmness that hurt in a way Emma found she didn't mind — and the way she moved through the trauma bay like she owned the physics of the room, like every square foot of it answered to her. She had time to notice the small gold cross at her collarbone, the reading glasses pushed up into dark hair, the specific, dry way she said *Ms. Swan* like she'd decided, early, that this was a woman who required managing.
She was not wrong.
"So," Emma said, somewhere around suture eleven, "you do this a lot? Sew up people who probably deserved it?"
"I don't make judgments about my patients' life choices," Regina said, without looking up. "It would be unprofessional. Though I will say" — a small pause, needle threading, precise — "chasing a two-hundred-and-forty-pound man with a switchblade into an alley by yourself falls into a category I'm personally inclined to call *avoidable.*"
"I had a taser."
"You had a taser you weren't holding when he stabbed you."
"I was holding it when he *ran,*" Emma said. "Priorities."
That got something out of her — not quite a laugh, but the corner of her mouth moved, just barely, before she smoothed it back into professional neutrality. Emma decided she'd take it. She decided she'd take it and try for it again.
"How long have you been doing this?" Emma asked. "The ER thing. You seem like you could run this whole building in your sleep."
"Eleven years in emergency medicine. Chief of the department for the last three." Regina's hands didn't slow, didn't so much as pause, the motion of the needle almost hypnotic at this point. "I did my residency here, actually. Never left. Some people find that strange."
"I don't find it strange. I think it's nice, honestly. Knowing exactly where you belong." Emma winced slightly as the needle caught, then recovered. "I've moved around my whole life. Foster placements, then just — bouncing, for a while, before the business. There's something I kind of envy about people who've had one place be theirs for over a decade."
Something in Regina's expression shifted, subtle, a flicker of genuine interest breaking through the clinical focus. "That's more self-aware than most patients manage while actively bleeding."
"I contain multitudes. We covered this already."
"We did," Regina agreed, and there it was again — that almost-smile, harder to suppress this time.
"Can I ask what you do," Regina said, somewhat later, "that results in this kind of injury with, I'm guessing, some regularity?"
"Bounty hunter," Emma said. "Bail recovery, technically. My business partners and I bring people back when they skip court."
"How very Wild West of you."
"It's mostly paperwork," Emma admitted. "And sitting in a car outside somebody's mom's house for six hours. The stabbing part is genuinely rare. I want that on the record."
"Duly noted." Regina finally glanced up, just for a second, meeting Emma's eyes properly for the first time since the stitching had begun, and Emma felt it land somewhere under the numbing agent, somewhere the local anesthetic couldn't reach. "You're doing very well, by the way. Most people don't hold this still."
"Most people aren't trying to make a good impression."
"On me."
"On you," Emma confirmed.
Regina's hands didn't stop moving, but something in her posture went very slightly still, the way a person gets still when they're pretending not to have heard something they absolutely heard. "I see."
"I mean it," Emma said, and this was the part where she should probably shut up, the part where a smarter person, a person less loopy on local anesthetic and low-grade blood loss, would recognize the professional boundary currently being drawn in indelible marker about six inches from her open wound and respect it. Emma had never been accused of being that person. "You've got, like, four other things happening in this room and you're doing all of them and also making fun of my life choices with actual comedic timing, and I don't know. It's doing something for me."
"You're on painkillers."
"Mild ones. I'm coherent. Ask me anything, I'll pass a sobriety test."
"What's the atomic number of carbon."
"Okay, that's not fair, that's a *knowledge* test, not a —"
"Six," Regina said, tying off the last suture with a small, satisfied motion. "It's six. You'd know that if you weren't so busy flirting with your attending physician."
"I'm very good at multitasking."
"Clearly." She peeled off her gloves, dropped them in the bin with a practiced flick of her wrist, and finally, finally, gave Emma her full attention, arms crossed, weight shifted onto one hip, every inch of her radiating the specific patience of someone who had absolutely had this exact conversation before and was choosing, for reasons she likely couldn't fully articulate, to have it again. "You're going to need to stay for observation for a few hours. No strenuous activity for at least two weeks — and I mean that, Ms. Swan, not the version of *no strenuous activity* where you go back to chasing large angry men through alleys on day four."
"Scout's honor."
"You were not a scout."
"No," Emma agreed. "But I respect the honor system."
Regina exhaled through her nose, the closest thing to a laugh Emma had gotten out of her yet, and reached for the chart at the foot of the bed, and Emma understood, with the sudden clean clarity of someone who did not have time for cowardice, that this door was closing. That Dr. Mills was about to finish this chart, hand her off to observation, and disappear into the next twelve hours of somebody else's emergency, and Emma would go home in a few hours with fourteen stitches and a story and absolutely nothing else, and some version of her — some version that had been quietly narrating this whole encounter with a running commentary of *oh no, oh no, oh no* — would regret it for a genuinely embarrassing length of time.
"Hey," Emma said. "Dr. Mills."
Regina looked up from the chart, one eyebrow already climbing, like she knew exactly what was coming and had decided to let it happen anyway. "Ms. Swan."
"I know this is, like, a wild time to ask, given the stitches and the blood and the general vibe of tonight. But I'd like to take you to dinner. When I'm — when this isn't actively healing. Somewhere that isn't a trauma bay, ideally somewhere I'm wearing pants that don't have a hole cut in them for medical access."
For a second, Regina didn't say anything at all. Around them, the ER kept moving — a monitor beeping somewhere down the row, a gurney rattling past, someone paging Dr. Mills over the intercom in that flat, urgent hospital cadence — and none of it seemed to touch the small, suspended quiet that had opened up around the two of them.
"You don't know anything about me," Regina said finally. It wasn't quite a no.
"I know you have great hands, a low tolerance for bad decisions, and you know the atomic number of carbon off the top of your head at" — Emma glanced at the clock on the wall — "eleven forty at night, on what I assume is not your first patient of the shift. I'd like to know more."
"That's an alarmingly effective pitch for a woman who was, forty minutes ago, unconscious on a gurney."
"I contain multitudes."
Regina studied her for a long moment — really studied her, the kind of look that felt like it was cataloguing something, filing it away for later use — and Emma held still and let herself be looked at, because it was, frankly, the least she could do given the circumstances.
"I don't typically date patients," Regina said.
"I won't technically be a patient anymore in about six hours."
"I don't typically date people I meet while they're bleeding on my table, either."
"I'm very against being defined by my worst moments," Emma said. "I'm usually much less stabbed."
That did it — a real laugh this time, quick and surprised, like it had gotten out before Regina could stop it, and she pressed the back of her hand briefly to her mouth as if she could take it back. She couldn't. Emma had already heard it, and Emma already knew she would spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about it.
"Fine," Regina said, and there was something almost rueful in it, like she was making a decision she suspected she'd regret and choosing to make it anyway. "One dinner. You'll give my nurse your number on your way out, because I am absolutely not giving you mine while you're still hooked up to a heart monitor, that feels like a boundary worth maintaining."
"Deal."
"And Ms. Swan."
"Emma. If we're doing this, you should probably call me Emma."
Something flickered across her face — amusement, maybe, or something warmer that she put away almost as fast as it appeared. "Emma. Try not to get stabbed again before Friday. I'd like our first date to happen with you at full capacity."
"No promises," Emma said, "but I'll do my best."
Regina shook her head, though the corner of her mouth had gone soft in a way it hadn't been all night, and turned to go, chart tucked under her arm, already halfway back into Chief of Emergency Medicine mode, already being paged toward whatever came next. She got three steps before she looked back over her shoulder.
"For what it's worth," she said, "you're a terrible flirt."
"I got a yes."
"You got a *dinner,*" Regina corrected. "Don't confuse the two." But she was smiling — actually smiling, the kind that reached her eyes — as she said it, and then she was gone, swallowed back into the controlled chaos of the ER, leaving Emma alone on the gurney with fourteen stitches, a mild concussion of the emotional variety, and the distinct, dizzying sense that Walter Kessler, wherever he currently was, had accidentally done her the biggest favor of her life.
She was still turning the evening over in her mind, replaying the exact tone of Regina's voice, when she became aware of the curtain sliding back and Regina stepping through it again — off the clock now by the look of it, white coat gone, hair loose around her shoulders, badge clipped to a cardigan instead of scrubs.
"You're still here," Regina said, a little surprised, glancing at the monitor. "Shift change. I was heading out and thought I'd check on you before I left properly, since apparently I'm now professionally and personally invested in your wellbeing."
"Or you missed me," Emma said, "in the ninety minutes since you last saw me."
"Don't push your luck, Ms. Swan."
"Emma."
"Emma." Regina came closer, close enough that Emma's heart rate, visible right there on the monitor beside her, did something distinctly unsubtle. "How's the pain?"
"Manageable. Worth it." Emma reached out, caught her hand before she could pull the curtain properly shut behind her, and Regina let herself be caught, let herself be drawn in by the small, insistent tug until there was almost no space left between them at all. "I meant what I said earlier. About you being the best thing to come out of tonight."
"I believe you," Regina said, quiet now, all the earlier professional distance gone from her voice entirely, and when Emma tilted her chin up, Regina met her the rest of the way — slow at first, careful of the IV line and the tenderness in Emma's side, and then not so careful at all, one hand coming up to cradle the uninjured side of Emma's jaw, the other braced lightly against the rail of the bed, kissing her like the entire chaotic, adrenaline-soaked night had been building toward exactly this. Emma made a small, helpless sound against her mouth, fingers curling into the front of Regina's cardigan, entirely unbothered by the stitches pulling faintly at her side, entirely too focused on the taste of her, the warmth of her, the sheer disbelief that this was actually happening.
"Regina Mills," Emma murmured, when they finally broke apart, both of them a little flushed, a little stunned by their own daring. "Kissing a patient. Scandalous."
"You're barely a patient anymore. And I intend to deny this ever happened, should anyone ask." But she was smiling, thoroughly undone, thumb tracing once along Emma's cheekbone before she finally, reluctantly stepped back. "Friday, Ms. Swan. Try to heal a little between now and then."
"Friday," Emma agreed, watching her go with a grin she made absolutely no effort to hide.
She lay back against the pillow, stared at the ceiling tiles, and grinned like an idiot for a solid ten minutes before a nurse came by to check her vitals and asked, not unkindly, what exactly she found so funny about getting stabbed.
"Nothing," Emma said. "Everything. Long story."
---
Snow arrived forty minutes later at a dead sprint, hair escaping its bun, coat half-buttoned, with David two steps behind her looking equal parts furious and relieved.
"You said *fine,*" Snow said, skidding to a stop at the foot of the bed. "David said you told him you were *fine.*"
"I am fine. I'm extremely fine. I am, arguably, the finest I've been in months."
David looked at the chart, looked at the fourteen stitches visible through the gap in Emma's gown, and looked back at her face, which — she was aware — was doing something distinctly unbothered by the actual medical facts of the situation. "You got stabbed and you look like you won the lottery. Explain that."
Emma thought about the low, dry register of Regina's voice, the precise line of her hands, the way she'd said *don't confuse the two* like she was already half-regretting how much she meant the *yes.*
"I have a date Friday," she said.
Snow blinked. David blinked. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor kept beeping its steady, patient rhythm, and Emma Swan lay in her hospital bed with a hole in her side and grinned up at the ceiling like it had personally done her a favor.
"With who?" Snow demanded.
"The doctor who stitched me up."
"You got a date," David said slowly, "out of getting *stabbed.*"
"I contain multitudes," Emma said again, and this time, even through the pain, she meant every word of it.