Author's Note: This chapter is short but I'm gonna put up another in about an hour :) Sorry about the lack of real medical knowledge- I've only been in real hospital treatment for bulimia so my knowledge of anorexia is limited. :/ I would like to point out that Dawn is not suffering from Anorexia Nervosa (the traditional eating disorder)... It is more that, as she's depressed, she doesn't get hungry alot and food makes her feel ill. To an extent she's punishing herself but it's more subconscious, if that makes sense, she really doesn't get hungry and the thought of most foodstuffs makes her feel ill. Sorry, I wasn't sure if that was clear in the previous chapters.
In the next chapter (or at most, the one after that) there will be proper Spawnage :D squee
A not-so-vague Disclaimer- I own nothing, Joss Whedon does.

Spike pushed open the door of the hospital room, ignoring the Scoobies sitting outside. Though he didn't breathe, the sight he was greeted with made him take a sharp inward breath. Dawn was lying in the bed, dressed in a hospital gown that hung off her, making her look like a child and various tubes and wires seeming to go in and out of her skin. She was unconscious and it looked like her glamour had completely faded, her skin was deathly white with a bluish tinge to it, her arms were covered in marks from where she had cut or burned herself, all in various degrees of healing, some barely scabbed over but most were raised silvery-red marks, in great contrast to her skin. She was thin, he had seen that before but now it was more pronounced around her face. Her make-up had not been marred and it seemed strange to see sooty black eye-liner on what looked more like a corpse than a seventeen-year-old girl. He reached down to touch her arm and ran his fingers down the almost serrated skin, worse than that feeling was the cold that was almost radiating from her, despite the blankets covering her. He could hear the slow, uneven rhythm of her heartbeat and could see that every breath she was taking was putting pressure on her chest, pressure that she couldn't cope with. He took one more sweeping look at her and left the room, where he was greeted by the Scoobies.

"What did you do to her?" He said, in an even tone. The group looked at each other as if unaware of how to reply.

"What did we? She did this to herself!" Xander replied, finally.

"She was fourteen when she was put into your custody. She was just a child."

"We did all we could," Willow said, as if she wanted to move the conversation alone. It was too late; Spike was looking at Xander as though he was considering biting him, or at least maiming him.

"You did all you could?" He shouted at them all. "If you couldn't look after her you could have sent her to live with her father. At least he had the sense of mind to get her counselling after everything that happened."

"Yeah, and we got her to go. What else could we have done?" Xander said with his fists clenched.

"You could have watched her." Spike said, taking a step back from them, trying to control himself.

"She had a whole load of glamours on herself." Willow argued, looking both very young and very old (weary was probably the best way to describe it) at the same time.

"Oh, that's alright then! It's not like you don't have experience in those areas!" Spike said sarcastically. "The glamours she had on her only hid the marks to people who didn't know that they were there, who weren't looking close enough to see them. Not people who are supposed to be her guardians."

"Can we stop, now?" Tara said, standing between Spike and Willow. "The doctor wants to talk to us."

With that the group seemed to calm down. They both walked over to the female doctor and listened to her with the air of those who were completely uneducated in medicine.

"Dawn's suffering from extreme malnutrition. Her body is, in effect shutting down. From the marks on her body I would guess that she suffered from some form of eating disorder, most likely anorexia nervosa."

"But she'll be okay? They have clinics for that, right?" Willow asked, her face filled with childlike hurt.

"In normal cases, she would probably be able to recover for the most part, physically, at least. But this is an extreme circumstance; it's a marvel that she was walking around at all with her body in this state. It looks as if her organs are in a very bad state. In all likeliness, if she does wake up, she will probably die of organ failure within the next month or so."

"If she wakes up?" Xander asked. "So she might not?"

"It's unlikely. I'm going to have to advise you to prepare for the worst."

They stared at her, all unsure of what to say. Finally Spike spoke.

"I'm going to sit with her 'till morning." He said, and walked back into the room. He pulled a chair up next to her bed and sank down onto it, in shock.

By the time he was back at the motel he knew what he had to do.