Title: How Can I help You Say Goodbye?

Author: blackbeltchic

Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. I am just borrowing them for some heartache and misery, some fluff along the way, and sadly, more heartache.

Spoilers: Some references to The Girl In Question.

Rating: PG13, for maybe some language, and content.

Summary: Buffy isn't feeling well, and it's worse than she could ever imagine.

WARNING: This story is not my usual angst, then fluff. Though a Buffy/Angel story, there is incredible heartache, and possibly character death.

Author's notes: this is my first ever full length First Person Point of View story, and it's not the happiest story. When a person with a heart of stone cries at the end of her own story, you know there's more than the average angst there. If you are a weeper, unless you want a good cry, I would advise you not to read this story. If you decide to anyway, you might want some tissues.

Feedback: Please, I need something to cheer me up after reading this story.

It all started the summer after Angel and Spike came to visit, and my uneventful date with the Immortal, though I didn't know until later that they had been there, or who he really was.

I believe it was the second week in June, when I first woke up in the middle of the night, my sheets soaked with sweat. It had happened a couple times before in all my years as the slayer, after a particular nasty dream, though I couldn't remember any such dream. I just moved over to the other half of my full sized bed and went back to sleep. I'd change the sheets in the morning.

The next morning, during my shower, I found bruises along my legs and hips I didn't remember ever acquiring, but bruises never last long on me. They were still there when I went to bed, but I thought I must have hit something a bit harder than usual. I thought nothing of it.

A week later, I awoke with a sore throat, and the lymph nodes just under my neck were swollen. I hadn't had strep throat since I was thirteen, bit it didn't really feel like strep. I had been at a club the night before, and though it didn't explain the swollen nodes, I just chocked it up to a bit too much partying.

A week after that, I went to my gynecologist with what ended up being nothing but a particularly nasty yeast infection. I had never had one before, and it hurt like hell. But she didn't say anything, and I didn't tell her about the night sweats, bruises, or nasty headaches. There was no need; they were all seemingly regular occurrences, though they didn't happen so frequently, and they all had seemingly plausible explanations.

It wasn't until that first week of July, when I was making lunch that I knew something was really wrong. I started trembling, and I dropped the glass pitcher I had been holding. It was expensive, and I was saddened to see it go. I finally got my muscles under control, and started to clean up the mess. But while cleaning up, I slipped on the wet tile, and fell, cutting myself on my arms, hips and back on the five or six large, sharp pieces of glass.

Andrew found me ten minutes later, sitting on the floor in a puddle of blood and iced tea, shaking uncontrollably from shock, fear and blood loss. They just wouldn't stop bleeding, and I didn't have enough hands to put pressure on them all, at least one was close to an artery. I also think I had pulled something in my back.

Safe to say, he called an ambulance. I had lost so much blood, and Andrew can't stand the sight of blood anyway, it makes him queasy. I remember telling him, as they took me out, "Don't tell my friends. It's nothing." How could I have known all my symptoms added up? How could I have known?