Chapter Four
note: I got a note from a reader telling me that I got the ambulance procedure completely wrong here. :P I'm very grateful for the alert, and I admit that I know nothing about hospital procedure in the U.S, so I'll ask you to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story, okay? :) if I get anything else wrong please tell. I won't bite.
"Giles?"
Buffy stopped her rendition of her night at the Bronze sharpish as she felt Giles grab her arm suddenly. She spun around quickly. He looked terrible; how had she not noticed it before?
"Giles!"
He tilted his head to one side, looking confused, as though he wasn't quite sure what was going on. She caught a hint of fear in his eyes—that set all her alarm bells ringing. Then he collapsed.
Several swear words escaped Buffy's mouth as she dropped to her knees next to him, slipping her arms around his limp body and shaking him, as though he was merely sleeping and she could shake him back into awareness. Brushing her hand against his forehead, she realised with growing horror that he had a fever. What was going on?
They were attracting stares from fellow students but no-one was moving. Buffy's blood boiled. "What're you doing?" she screamed at them. "Call an ambulance! Hurry up!" There was a dash and a few students ran off, hopefully for a phone or a teacher. Preferably the former.
Tears stung Buffy's eyes. "Giles, come on, this isn't cool. Wake up. Giles…"
A classroom door opened and a teacher who Buffy didn't recognise ran out. A brown-haired woman in her thirties, that was all that registered in Buffy's mind. Her focus was entirely on Giles.
"Mr. Giles?" the random teacher said, kneeling next to them. She looked at Buffy. "What happened?"
"I—I don't know," Buffy said helplessly. "H-he just collapsed…"
The teacher said some other things after that, but Buffy didn't hear any of them. Looking down at the figure lying in her arms as though dead, she felt horror rising like bile in the back of her throat.
The ambulance must have been called, because suddenly the corridor was full of professional-looking doctors and nurses, and they were prying her away from her watcher, speaking to one another in technical medical terms that Buffy didn't understand.
"Giles…"
"Come on, kid, it's okay, we've gotta leave now, give 'em space," one of the doctors was talking to her, leading her away, and she followed, still in a state of shock. The unnamed doctor brought her into the school hallway, where a hoard of curious students and teachers were staring, and into the principle's office.
"Giles. Is he going to be alright?" she asked as the doctor shut the door.
The doctor was evasive. "He's a teacher at this school, correct?"
"Rupert Giles. The librarian." Buffy said. "Is he gonna be alright?"
"I don't know." The doctor admitted, and the door opened to admit the monkeyman himself, Snyder.
"Summers," Snyder growled. "What happened? Why are there doctors in my school?" He pointed a bony finger. "This is your fault, Summers!"
"How is it my fault?" Buffy managed to be incensed, an another emotion adding to the already bewildering number inside her head.
"Mr. Snyder, please," the doctor said. "A member of your staff has had a medical emergency."
"Giles," Snyder snarled. "I knew it. That librarian is more trouble than he's worth. I should have known he'd pull a stunt like this when I ordered him to come to my office for an official reprimand for tardiness."
The doctor looked rather shocked. Evidently he was unused to Snyder's lack of logic. "I seriously doubt Mr. Giles became seriously ill on purpose, simply to escape a reprimand."
A lump formed in Buffy's throat. "Seriously ill?"
"Sweetie, we don't know yet. But I promise you he'll have the best possible care," a nurse had just entered the room and caught what Buffy had said. She was plump and kindly-looking, middle-aged with brown hair that had a few shots of grey threading through it. "Are you very close to him?"
Buffy shrugged, feeling numb. Yes. He's my watcher. Sometimes I take him for granted but he's like my father. I shouldn't ever forget that but sometimes I do. So I really need him to be okay. I don't know what I'll do without him. Instead she said, "I guess. I spend a lot of time in the library. We talk sometimes. After school."
"Mr. Snyder, do you have Rupert Giles's medical information in your records?" The doctor asked. Snyder groused a bit, but they both left the office, the kindly nurse going with them, leaving Buffy alone.
Buffy left the office a few moments later, listening to the wail of the ambulance sirens getting softer in the distance.
Giles.
He was gonna be alright. He always was.
"Buffy!"
She turned around to see Xander and Willow running down the corridor towards her.
"We saw Giles—he didn't look too good," Xander said, concern etching his every feature. "What happened?"
"He's gonna be okay, right?" Willow asked a little desperately. "Right?"
Buffy looked from Xander to Willow and then back again. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know."
That wasn't the answer either of them wanted to hear, but it was the only thing she could say. Willow hugged Buffy tightly. "We'll go see him after school," Willow said. "I'm sure he's okay. He's just really tired, maybe, he spent ages doing research last night and then that demon…"
"The demon…" Buffy muttered. She looked up. "It was the demon. Had to be. That demon did something to him. I should've gone with, I never should've let him go on his own."
"Buffy, it wasn't your fault," Xander said firmly. "We don't even know that it was the demon. Maybe it's a virus or something. Timmy Walter in my chem class passed out the other day, and it turned out he had this bug that's going around. I mean, you can treat bugs. You know?"
Xander wasn't always the most eloquent of people, but he doing his best to be comforting, and Buffy knew he was worried too, so she smiled at him. "Yeah. We'll go see him after school. I'm sure he's fine. He's Giles, he gets into scrapes every other day and he's always fine."
She was convincing no-one, but Willow and Xander nodded and smiled like they believed her and went off. All of them knew that Giles was not okay, and that it did have something to do with the demon, but saying so would serve no purpose except to make them more upset about what had happened.
They paused, and then turned and went their separate ways.
-break-
Darkness.
Cold.
Terror.
Giles squinted, trying his best to see through the gloom, but it was like shouting into the wind. He could see nothing. He was nowhere.
"Let me out!" he shouted, but he couldn't hear his own voice. The darkness was so absolute that it devoured sound, too. "Please. I'm sorry."
There was nothing. Giles tried walking forward, but it was no use. He was in a void. It wasn't darkness, he realised. It was nothingness. He was in a place where nothing existed. Like the spaces between stars.