CC heard her alarm sounding, but it seemed like it was far away, and unlike most mornings, there was no sight of the sun when she opened her whiskey-heavy eyes.

"What the hell?" She mumbled, and realized that it wasn't her alarm at all, but her telephone ringing. She reached across… the warm body beside her? But it was too late. A groggy, definitely masculine voice drawled, "Hello?"

CC jolted fully awake, and smacked him, hard, on the shoulder. "How many times do I have to tell you not to answer my phone, Winston?" She hissed, and jerked the receiver out of his hand. She resolved to do some serious thinking about her life choices as soon as she dealt with this call.

"CC Babcock," she snapped, and shoved her companion to wake him up. He groaned in protest and flopped over onto his stomach, out of her immediate reach.

"Miss Babcock, you need to come quickly. Mrs. Sheffield has been in an automobile accident. We're at Lenox Hill, and she's asking for you." Niles's voice was stripped of its usual sarcasm and dry humor, and CC sat up in bed, paying no attention to her exposed flesh.

"I'll be right there," she said, her heart racing and all traces of sleep gone from her voice.

"Thank you," Niles responded, swallowing audibly and ending the call.

For an interminable moment, CC held the phone to her ear. Then she turned to the actor in her bed. "Get your clothes on; you need to leave," she ordered flatly.

"Come back to bed," he said lazily, reaching for her breast.

"Get out of my bed and out of my home," she said, and finally the steel in her voice broke through the haze of his hungover half-slumber.

"Couldn't you be a little nicer to me?" He complained. "Didn't I just rock your world?" But he rolled off the mattress and stepped into the tight, low-riding jeans that had gotten her into this situation in the first place.

She snorted. "Not this time, and not last time, and there's not going to be another encore. Out." And as he made his way to her door, muttering unintelligibly and struggling his way into his shirt, CC realized she didn't even have time to shower. Niles had sounded dire, and Sara...

By the time CC made it through the sparse traffic and to the emergency room at Lenox Hill, the sun was beginning to rise on the city. She had just approached the information desk, ready to raise hell to gain access to her friend's room, when Niles silently took her arm and pulled her quickly towards the elevator. He had been waiting for her, and when she looked into his eyes, she shrank back.

"She's… still alive," he said, his face drawn and grey as he pushed the button on the wall.

CC felt an unfamiliar burning behind her eyes. "What do you mean, still?" She demanded. "She's going to be all right, isn't she? This is a good hospital, they're supposed to be able…"

Niles just shook his head, and was saved from responding by a group of doctors and nurses leaving the elevator when it arrived on the ground floor. He took her hand and ushered her inside, then tapped the button to carry them to the intensive care unit.

CC clung to his hand, uneasy with this level of intimacy with the butler, but incapable of letting him go. "What—I mean…" She couldn't verbalize her question.

"She's had a few moments with each of the children, and with me, briefly, and Maxwell has barely left her side. The doctors—" His voice caught. "They say it's a matter of hours. Too much internal bleeding; they can't—"

Again with the burning. "But she, we… just yesterday. Oh my god, Niles." Her disjointed speech matched his own, and he squeezed her hand, once, twice.

At the locked door to the ICU, Niles pressed the intercom and said "Sheffield," his voice stronger than CC could have managed at that point.

The door swung open, and they walked through. A young nurse sat in one of the glass-enclosed patient rooms with the Sheffield children, and CC looked away, walking quickly past them. She pulled Niles along with her, and then slowed, not knowing where to go. Niles stepped beside her and gestured to the left, past the nurses' desk, to another glass door with the curtains drawn.

As they approached the room, they could hear the rumbling of Maxwell's voice, accompanied by the beeps and blows of life-sustaining machines.

Niles pulled back the curtain slightly, and said in a low voice, "She's here."

CC dropped Niles's hand when Maxwell came out of the room, his face streaked with the dried paths of tears. Niles flexed his suddenly cold fingers and thrust them into his pocket as Maxwell pulled CC into his arms.

Urgently, Maxwell said to her, "Go, please. She wants to speak with you. She knows what's happening, CC. I've tried to… but she'll have none of it."

CC pulled away from him and slipped behind the curtain.