#bookbeliever

“Henry?”  There was no reason to question who it was; she would have known his voice anywhere.

“She doesn’t know I can hear her, I’m supposed to be asleep, but I know she’s crying.  Something’s wrong.”  He sounded like he was crying too, or at least fighting off tears.  Emma could almost feel and echo of his arms around her waist and his face buried against her when he worried that his mom was sick.

“Maybe it’s just been a long day.”  Everyone had a bad day sometimes, it didn’t have to mean anything.  After all, she was raising a kid and working a job, and things had to get overwhelming sometimes.  

“Ariel picked me up from school because mom had a doctor’s appointment.  She hardly said anything at dinner, not even when I left all my vegetables on my plate.  And she said she was too tired to read to me.  She always reads to me at bedtime.”

Shit.  Emma covered her mouth, taking a deep breath through her nose to try and quell the acid rising in the back of her throat.  

“I’m scared,” Henry whispered.  Emma wondered if it was her imagination or if she really could hear sobbing in the background.  She looked at the time on her cell; it was almost ten o’clock.

“I can’t make it there until almost morning, kid.”

“But you’ll come?”  His voice trembled, but under the sadness she could hear the hope.

“I’ll come,” she promised.

It took her almost five hours, thanks to a never-ending construction project in the middle of town.  Last time she’d only had the bag she kept in the trunk of the car.  This time she’d stopped and packed a duffle with enough for a few days, just in case.  It was three-thirty when she pulled up in front of the salmon-colored house she’d only left a few days before.  All of the lights were off.  After a moment’s consideration, Emma shrugged and leaned back her seat as far as it would go, turned over onto her side and pulled her jacket over herself as a blanket.  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept in her car.  Hell, it wouldn’t be the hundredth time.

II

“Emma?”  She woke to the gentle tapping on her car window and Belle standing over her, wrapped in a robe that had seen better days.  She took a moment to stretch before opening up her car door, waiting for Belle to take a step back.  “I thought you went back to Boston.”

“I did.  I was in Boston, and then New York for a night and back to Boston.”  She closed the car door behind her, not worried about making sure it was locked.  After all, this was a tiny town in Maine, not the city.  She leaned against the car and took a better look at Belle.  Her eyes were puffy, her skin so pale it was almost translucent just below her eyes.  “You’re upset.”

“I’m fine.”  Belle wiped a hand over her face as if that would magically change anything.  Even as she tried to square her shoulders and smile a little Emma could see how tired she was.  She suspected the woman hadn’t slept much the night before.

“For a librarian your definition of fine seems to be pretty off-kilter.”  Emma crossed her arms in front of her, avoiding the temptation to reach out and use her cold fingers to try and soothe the skin that looked so sore from crying.  “You could talk to me, you know. It’s not like I have anyone to tell.”

“Let’s go inside before someone calls Graham to report the stranger sleeping in her car.”  It wasn’t a promise to talk, but at least Belle was inviting her in rather than being mad she’d shown up.  It wasn’t yet eight, and a Saturday morning.  Henry, it seemed, was still asleep.  Belle led them to the kitchen.  “Would you like something to drink?”

“I can make it.”  She knew enough about the kitchen to know that there was a jar of instant coffee in the cabinet.  Not her favorite but since Belle apparently was a committed tea drinker she was glad to find that much. The important thing was that it contained caffeine.  “You want some tea?”

“I already have some.”  She refilled the kettle with water, though, and turned on the stove even though microwaved water would have been fine.  Once that was done there was a pile of mail on the corner of the counter that she straightened by a fraction of an inch and a drawing hanging on the fridge that she moved to the side a little.  Her teacup was on the table and she raised it to her mouth and then put it down again without drinking.

“Did you sleep at all last night?”  When the teakettle started whistling Emma turned off the burner so it stopped making noise.

Belle pulled her robe tighter around her.  She looked down, and for a moment Emma thought maybe she’d forgotten the question or wasn’t going to answer.  Finally, she shook her head.  “I don’t know how to stop moving.”

“Yeah, I know.”  She’d been there before, pacing rooms, afraid that stopping meant she’d never be able to start again.  She took one of Belle’s hands in her own.  “Come on, it’s still early.”

Belle followed her up the stairs, though they paused halfway through so she could take a few breaths.  Emma wished she could put it down to exhaustion.  Henry’s bedroom door was closed and silent within.  Belle’s door was open.  The bed was still made, as if she hadn’t even tried to sleep properly.  Two photo albums were open on the bed, a handful of loose photos scattered on top of the quilt.  There were books too, all looking well worn; Emma was amused to see one was a romance entitled Her Handsome Hero.  There were some papers too, with small typewritten font in a start black against the white.  Emma didn’t try to read them.  She did notice the logo of the Storybrooke hospital.

“So the first secret of sleeping in a bed is having enough room to sleep.”  She moved everything while Belle shifted her weight from foot to foot but didn’t leave.  The photo albums from her quick look before closing them seemed to show a younger Henry and a Belle that looked very much the same.  The man she’d seen in one picture downstairs already; Finn Gold.

“Why are you here?”  Belle asked, not meeting her eyes.

“Because I am.”  She turned down the covers, at the same time kicking off her shoes.  She couldn’t remember if her jacket was still in the car or in the kitchen, but the quilt on the bed seemed like a far better blanket and the four hours of sleep she’d gotten didn’t feel like enough.  She contemplated taking the robe off Belle but decided it wasn’t that important, and steered her into the bed.  She went easily enough; the question was if she’d stay.

“Emma…”

“It can wait, okay?”  She didn’t know if Belle wanted to tell her what was wrong, or ask her to leave, or thank her or staying.  She wasn’t ready for any of them.  Emma pulled the blankets over them.  “Just close your eyes for a couple of minutes.  I’ll be right here.”

Belle bit her lower lip but she nodded.  “Just for a minute.”

It was noon before they woke up.

II

Belle woke up slowly, her limbs feeling heavy and her eyes not wanting to focus.  It felt as if she’d rubbed her eyelids with sandpaper and used cotton balls to absorb any last bit of moisture.  When she moved even enough to try and look at the clock her head pounded.  It was almost 12:30 and from the light streaming into the windows that didn’t mean midnight.

“Henry.”  She tried to sit up but her thudding head had her back on her pillow.

“He said something about a sandwich and cake.”  Emma’s voice was scratchy and dry.  The bed moved a little as she shifted.

Wait, Emma was in her bed?  Emma was in Storybrooke?  Belle pressed the flat of one palm to her forehead and tried to focus.  She knew Emma was here, had looked out the window while making her tea and seen the yellow bug that only meant one thing.  Emma had been asleep in the front seat despite the fact that she’d left for Boston days ago.  Emma had helped her into her bed and stayed.  

No one had shared her bed for five years.

“I don’t understand.”  She took a breath and rolled over, giving herself just a moment before daring to open her eyes.  Emma was looking back at her.

“That makes two of us.  Three, if you count the kid downstairs.”  Emma frowned, but she didn’t sound angry.  She didn’t even sound frustrated.  She looked worried, but not in the clinical way her doctor had looked at her.  Like a friend.  “You might find it easier to talk to me first.  Henry’s going to need to ask questions and I don’t know if that’s the first time you want to say things.”

“I wish I didn’t have to say anything.”  Saying things out loud made them more real.  You couldn’t ignore them, once they were spoken.   She remembered her father shaking as he told her that her mother had died.  She’d been the one shaking when she’d held Henry and told him that Finn was never coming home.  Words had power; something that usually meant good but now felt more like a dagger.

“But there’s something to say.”

“Yeah.”  Belle sat up, wincing at the throbbing in her head.  She needed to take an aspirin.  Could she?  She couldn’t remember if they were on the list of things to take or the one to never take.  There were papers somewhere, but she would find them later.  For now she’d just drink some water.  Slipping out of the bed she went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water, then drained it.  She filled it again and drank half of it in a single gulp.  Leaning against the counter she stared at herself in the mirror.  She looked like crap.

“You okay?”  Emma leaned against the door frame.  In the reflection, Belle could see her watching.

“Okay?”  Belle burst out laughing.  She almost couldn’t catch her breath, a laugh that had nothing to do with humor swelling and getting caught in her throat.  “I don’t remember what okay means.”

“Henry called me.  You were crying.”

“I thought I held it in until he went to bed.”  Damn it, she hadn’t wanted to scare him, and he’d been so worried he’d called Emma.  He couldn’t even ask his mom for help; what kind of parent was she?

“You went to the doctor yesterday.”  Gently Emma gave her an opening.

“It’s called cardiomyopathy.  Restrictive cardiomyopathy, if you want to be specific.”  She would never be able to say it all if she didn’t start with the hardest part.  “It’s my heart.  It’s not working very well.”

There was something poetic about the fact that her heart was, quite literally, hardening.  When had it started?  Whale hadn’t had an answer to give to her.  Last night she had looked at pictures of Finn and had remembered how numb she’d been in the months after he’d died.  Logically she knew the heart was a muscle that didn’t actually have anything to do with the ability to love, but at three o’clock in the morning it seemed more reasonable than anything else she’d learned.

“So how do they fix it?”  Emma took a step closer, her eyes not leaving Belle’s in the mirror.  She sounded so certain that there was an answer.  Belle shook her head.

“They might be able to keep it from getting worse.  Diet, exercise, medications.  They might need to do surgery.”  Without noticing what she was doing Belle’s right hand moved to cover her heart.  It felt fine this morning.  

“What happens if it gets worse?”  Emma mimicked her gesture, perhaps just as unconsciously.  Her hand rested on her chest, shielding her heart.

“I might be a candidate for a heart transplant.”  Belle looked down, breaking eye contact with Emma.  A new heart meant someone else dying.  If things got that far it meant her life depending on someone else.  It meant a piece of her being cut out and discarded.  Failure to get a new heart, if it came to that, meant her son growing up without her.

She could feel Emma’s hand on her shoulder before she looked up to see it.  Tears might have threatened to form if she hadn’t been so dehydrated.  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“I know you can.”  Emma’s hand tightened on her shoulder.  Belle closed her eyes but leaned back a little, into the touch and the warmth.  She was so cold.  “Henry needs you.”

“I have to tell him.”  He’d been so worried that he’d run away to Boston, and she was going to have to confirm his fears.   After months of dismissing everything as ‘fine’ she was going to have to admit that things were a long way from fine.  She was going to hurt him.

“I can stay, if you want me,” Emma offered.