Chapter 10
For the next several minutes, Daniel felt like he was trapped in some kind of crazy kaleidoscope of big, gushing tears, hot, sweet breath, and huge, moist lips, as Emma kissed him on his face again and again, sobbing into his shoulder all the while. The crazy thing was that she had swooped Daniel up off the ground, dangling his limbs multiple feet off the ground as she hugged him to her, squeezing in desperate affection, to the point where he was barely able to get his words out anymore.
"Emma..." he panted weakly, hardly able to make a sound as she compressed his lungs into his chest. "Emma...p-please...please..."
"Oh Daniel!!" she cried, continuing to hug him to her as she nuzzled his shoulder over and over, interspersing her innocent, almost animal-like emotion with wet, sloppy kisses directly on his face. "I've missed you soooo much!! You...you can't even know!! Oh my god, oh my GOD...I just...I never want you to leave me again!! *Smoochsmooch* Promise me, Daniel!! *Smooch* Promise me that you'll take me away from here!!"
"Emma..." Daniel forced out, as his face began to turn pale white from lack of oxygen, "C-can't...can't breathe..."
"Huh?" she asked, sniffing her nose and blinking the tears out of her eyes as she looked up from his shoulder (which at this point was sopping wet with her tears). She stared into Daniel's face for a couple moments, puzzled at his wide-eyed panicked expression, and it was only after Daniel started gaping wildly like a fish out of water that she realized that she was holding him too tight, and that he couldn't breathe. Quickly extending her arms outward, she gave Daniel the space he needed to catch his breath; his legs, though, were still dangling well off the ground. It wasn't lost on him that Emma's huge hands (which felt extra enormous under his armpits) were having absolutely no trouble in holding him off the ground, at arm's length.
"Oh! Sorry!" she said quickly. "Are...are you ok?"
"I'm fine," he answered, coughing a few times before he blinked rapidly and made a notable effort to give Emma a reassuring smile. He had known, from the conversation on the phone with Dr. Kline, that Emma was having a kind of breakdown...or at least some kind of panic attack, and that he needed to prepare himself to deal with it. But nothing could have prepared him to see his girlfriend this huge. It didn't matter that he was 6'1 -- she was well over 3 feet taller than him, and frighteningly strong...and worse, she was frightened and upset.
"It's all good, Emma!" he added bravely, maintaining his smile in an attempt to calm her down. "It's all ok! I'm here, and...and we're not g-gonna be...be separated again, ok? You understand? I'm...I'm not going anywhere."
"But WE are, aren't we!?" asked Emma. "We're not gonna stay here...You're gonna get me out of here, right!?"
"R-right...yes," said Daniel, nodding vigorously. What else was he going to say? He didn't know what was the best decision, medically-speaking, but he was in no doubt that it would have been dangerous, in that moment, to say anything except what Emma wanted to hear. For the next few minutes, he continued to give Emma exactly what she wanted, comforting her and reassuring her over and over that he wasn't going to leave her again, and that he would pull her out of the Institute as soon as possible. He was never really comfortable in her arms, even if she had stopped inadvertently squeezing the life out of him, because, in her unstable state, Daniel didn't quite trust her to know her own strength. Several times, he had to remind her not to squeeze too hard under his arms, and to not kiss him too hard.
"I...Ow! G-Emma!" he exclaimed, after one such kiss directly on his face felt like she was about to suck the skin off his nose and cheeks. "Th-that...that hurts!"
"Aw, I'm sorry Daniel!" Emma said immediately, shaking her head. "I j-just...it's soooo good to finally see you again...and...and touch you!"
"I...y-yes...it's good to see you too," he replied, quite truthfully. But the more nuanced truth was that Daniel was feeling more shocked and stunned at Emma's sheer size and strength than anything else. She was basically using him as a teddy bear, a role that he had not prepared for as he drove up to the Institute. But he resigned himself to this temporary position, calming his gigantic girlfriend in the middle of the night, in the Institute parking lot, bathed with the strange and surreal illumination of his car headlights, which he had forgotten to switch off the moment he saw Emma.
A little while later, Daniel had convinced Emma to go back inside the Institute and get some rest in her dorm room. She had been reluctant to go at first, but after he promised that he would be taking her home the next day, Emma finally relented. Ever since her emotions had snapped earlier that night, when she confronted the legion of doctors outside her dorm room, Emma had not been able to think very clearly. She knew that, in her tantrum, she had reverted to a strange kind of childishness, which took on a new flavor and dimension when she embraced Daniel. Her free-flowing emotions had changed, at that point, from anger to desperate and unfettered infantilization. She was aware that it was probably embarrassing for her to be seen in such broken pieces, in such a tattered and regressive state, but she didn't care. Even after she had calmed down, she didn't really regret her emotional outburst. It was the only way that she could have thought to react to the situation...and anyway, it had gotten her what she wanted, hadn't it?
The one big aspect of her behavior, though, that Emma remained oblivious of was the sheer extent of how terrifying she was to all around when her emotions were unstable, particularly when she was angry. Somewhere in her subconscious, Emma remembered the pale terror on the faces of the doctors as she stomped her feet in the hallway, screaming and shouting down at them...somewhere in her brain, she knew how badly she had scared them all. But Emma didn't want to think about any of that now. If she started to go back to that memory, she got sick to her stomach. In any case, Daniel was here and she had calmed down, so it was all over. And besides, if she was really being honest about the whole thing, Dr. Kline, Martha, and the others had kind of set themselves up for everything that happened -- what had they been thinking, gathering like that at her door, like they were setting some kind of trap for her, with all their syringes filled with god-knows-what drugs!? What had they expected to happen??
Emma was so exhausted that she ended up just going back to her dorm room and falling asleep, with Daniel by her side, of course. Once she was asleep, Daniel sat there beside her bed, staring strangely at her bare feet that hung off the bed, a bed that was already designed to accommodate a 8-foot-plus giant or giantess. But Emma, being almost nine-and-a-half feet tall by this point, was just too big for it. Minutes later, however, she was asleep. Daniel peered into her face, which had softened with sleep...he felt so sorry for her, to the point where it seemed like his heart would break. She didn't deserve any of this. She was just an unassuming, kindhearted girl who wanted to fit in and be loved, eager to love back in return. He noticed that his shoulders and armpits were already sore from her tight, affectionate squeezes...as was his entire diaphragm. He would really need to somehow teach Emma to be cognizant of the effects of her size and strength, or else she was really going to hurt someone one of these days. Her huge chest rose and fell...rose and fell...as Daniel helplessly watched her massive breasts go up and down, up and down. What were they going to do now?
"Daniel," whispered a voice from around the door. It was Dr. Kline. Daniel waved to him, smiling sadly. Dr. Kline motioned for him to quietly join him in the hallway, and Daniel rose and followed, pulling the door to very gently so as not to wake Emma up.
"So...um, yeah, she's out," said Daniel, shaking his head ruefully. "She's...uh, had a tough night, I think."
"We all have," said Dr. Kline seriously. "I'm sorry, Daniel, but...I just have to be honest with you. I've never seen anything like the growth that Emma has been experiencing recently."
"Like...the, uh, the extent of the growth? The speed?" asked Daniel.
"Both!" said Dr. Kline immediately, speaking barely above a whisper. Even though his voice was quiet, it carried a tone of true alarm and perplexity. "It's unprecedented, at least in my experience. I wish I could say that we knew what was going on with her, but...we...we just don't know."
