"We can't just leave her!"

Charming glanced back, then stopped, taking in the sight of Snow leaning over Regina's unconscious form, her hand hovering over the mayor's hairline. "She'll die if we don't get her help," Snow said in a panicky voice, starting to fumble with Regina's wrist restraints. His wife looked up at him, her eyes terrified but resolved, and gave him one word. "Please."

Charming let out a frustrated sigh and holstered his gun again, then strode over to the gurney and began quickly but gently ripping off the electrodes connected to Regina's face and body. On the other side of the table, Snow was removing her heavy purple coat and draping it over Regina's upper body, worry tensing every line of her body as she called the mayor's name softly, fear causing her to draw out the last syllable. "Regina?" she whispered feverishly. "Stay with me, Regina, we're here, we've come to get you, okay? Just stay with me, come on, sweetie."

She put two fingers softly to Regina's neck and held her breath. For a few heart-stopping seconds, she couldn't make out a pulse; but then—there—there it was. Weak and irregular, like a baby bird's first wobbly flaps of its wings, but blessedly still there. She looked up at Charming, who was watching intently, gave a worried smile, and nodded weakly.

Charming immediately leaned down and slid one arm under Regina's shoulders, the other under her knees, and lifted her off the table easily, Snow reaching out her arms to tuck Regina's head safely against Charming's chest. "Go, go, get her to the car, David, I'll try to find Neal and Emma," said Snow urgently, pulling him by the arm around the table and towards the door. "If I don't catch up with you in two minutes leave without me." Charming turned and opened his mouth, but Snow said loudly, "GO, NOW!" He strode out, swiftly and surely, leaning forward over Regina's body to protect her as he had done with his own daughter twenty eight years ago.

Snow watched him go, shivering slightly in the drafty room, then cast her eyes about quickly to make sure there was nothing of importance left behind. She strode over to the many-paned window in the wall and looked through the grimy glass, dodging her head around to avoid her reflection. Nothing but a couple of moldy chairs, a concrete floor littered with used cigarettes, and a few large, ugly pieces of machinery similar to the one David had just put out of commission. Several large filing cabinets lined the back wall. Sunlight filtering in from the dusty back window illuminated the many piles of yellowing paper on top of them.

With a last look at the green mat on the ugly metal gurney, Snow turned away and hurried out of the horrible bare room, walking swiftly down the corridor they'd come in through, around the corner, through a heavy metal door, up a couple rusty flights of stairs, and back into the cavernous dark space she'd last seen Emma and Neal. "Emma?" she called, walking into the middle of the space and wincing at her voice, higher-pitched than she'd expected. "Emma! Neal! Are you guys still here?" she cried, turning in place to search the fish-scented gloom around her. Steam hissed quietly from pipes crusted over with unpleasant things and broken wooden platforms lay scattered about, but she saw no sign of movement. She hesitated, then took a step forward, intending to continue in the direction she's last seen her daughter go—but then the same sensation that had torn through her, sitting at her dining table a half hour ago, paralyzed her, burst her eardrums and blackened her vision. It was a sick, ripped-from feeling, as if her nerves had been amputated and roughly sewn back attached to someone else's—Regina's. And what Regina was feeling caused her to fall to her knees in that slimy dark warehouse.

Flash. Pain. Stop. Please. Why? Scream. Scream. Scream. Gasp. Tears. Burn. Please. Stop. No. Silence. Bang. Flash. Dark. Soft. Confusion. Awake. Scream.

Snow's was the voice echoing all around her, but she knew the horror was Regina's. Her vision returned blotchily as she gasped on her hands and knees, tears making the ground swim before her, echoes fading. She looked up, in the direction she thought Emma might be, and sent a prayer in her head to her daughter. 'I'm sorry Emma. Regina needs me. Be safe my baby girl.'

She got to her feet too quickly, feeling sick, but stumbled on towards the exit, stubbornly blinking away the blackness at the edges of her vision because she knew that her two minutes were up; she knew that someone who was neither her nor her daughter desperately needed help; that David couldn't handle this alone.

She made it out into the clean air of the docks and looked around wildly for the truck—there was David, thirty yards away, starting the engine with one arm supporting Regina against himself and a grim look on his face. Snow screamed his name and began running drunkenly forward; his eyes widened with surprise and relief, and he gunned the truck forward to meet her halfway, spraying gravel when he braked. Snow clambered in and slammed the door, pulled Regina's inert body against her own, and urged, "Go, go!" Her husband stepped on the gas as Snow grabbed the phone sitting on the dash and began frantically dialing Mother Superior's number.

"Hi, you've reached the Storybrooke Convent. Please leave us a message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Godspeed." Beep. 'Godspeed indeed,' thought Snow, ending the call and dialing again. Beside her, Regina's breath hitched. Snow pulled the woman closer.

"She screamed," Charming said quietly, after a moment, not taking his eyes off the road but swerving dangerously around smaller cars and scanning his rearview mirror repeatedly. The cool air funneling through the narrowly opened windows turned into a noisy gusting that chilled his face and his sent his and Snow's hair blowing.

Snow, whose attention was divided between listening to Mother Superior's voice on the answering machine for the third time, and rubbing Regina's arm and legs to keep her blood flowing, took a moment to pull her unfocused gaze from the clock tower in the distance. "What?" she said distractedly, Charming's voice but not his words registering in her still-scrambled brain.

"When I put her in the car, she—well, not screamed, but it was a wail or a cry, whatever you wanna call it," he fumbled worriedly, glancing over at the unconscious woman. "She didn't open her eyes but she cried out—I thought maybe I hurt her but she wasn't even awake. She sort of twitched really badly and then stopped."

Snow White thought back to what she'd felt in the warehouse on her way out. David had just confirmed her feeling that the eyedrop potion lasted longer than they'd expected. "Let's just go straight to the apartment, David, it's closer than the convent," said Snow, dialing Mother Superior's number yet again; this time, she stayed on the line until the beep and said in a rush, "Mother Superior, it's Mary Margaret, we've found Regina and she's—she's really hurt. We can't take her to the hospital, we're driving straight to my house…Please, come as soon as you can, I don't—" her voice wavered, but she forced herself to say the words, "I don't know if she's going to live. Please Mother Superior, please hurry."

She hung up, gritting her teeth, and mentally kicked herself. 'You have no right to feel like this,' she spat silently. 'The woman fights for chance after chance and you shut her down over and over again. It's your own fault she's here now. Don't you dare feel sorry for yourself, Snow White.'