A Decision
"What do we do?" Cordelia asked once the Host had left them.
"We make a decision," Wesley replied.
"It's not that easy," Cordelia argued. "What do we ask Angel? How do we ask Angel anything? I don't even know how to talk to him anymore. He cut off communication with us, I just don't know how to open it again. What if we can't? I don't feel close to him anymore. Even if it's partly our fault things aren't like they were. How do we go into all this really awkward personal stuff when there's nothing left to build on?"
"Um, excuse me," The group turned to stare at David Nabbit, who was once again wearing his purple cloak. "I was going to ask if I could hang with you guys for awhile, but I think I'd be intruding. It sounds like you have some important stuff to work out. I couldn't help over hearing, so I'll go, but I want to tell you something. When I was in High School I had a friend who started having problems. We were all aware that something was wrong but she never wanted to talk about it. The harder you pushed her the more she insisted there was nothing to talk about. The rest of us discussed telling the councilor about our worries, but we decided it wasn't our place. She had made it clear that she didn't want help; we decided to respect that. We let her drift father away from us, because she made it was too difficult stay close."
"So what happened?" Gunn asked impatiently when David failed to continue after a few seconds.
"She shot herself one night," David said dully. "I wished we'd forgotten all about respecting her choices or how weird it would have felt to keep trying when she obviously didn't want us to and gotten her the help she needed. We offered her a hand and she didn't take it, so I guess it was her fault, but she's not the one left with regrets, she's dead."
David turned and walked away leaving silence behind him.
"We make a decision," Wesley had said, but Cordelia was right; it wasn't that easy. The next morning came and went and Angel joined them at the new Agency and still nothing had been decided.
Angel squirmed nervously under their stares. Even when they tried to hide it he could feel them watching him.
"Did we… Did you get a case?" Angel stammered.
"No, nothing," Wesley replied. "There's a closet in the other room if you want to get rid of your coat and stay awhile."
"I'm fine," Angel said quickly.
"Come on, it's not like you could be cold," Cordelia exclaimed, tugging at Angel's arm, he gasped in pain.
"What happened?" Wesley asked, concerned.
"It's nothing, it'll be healed in a day or two," Angel protested.
"I've seen what takes you a day or two to heal from," Cordelia scolded. "And it's not nothing."
Looking defeated Angel carefully removed his hand from the coat's pocket, revealing sever burns that trailed up from his fingers, over his wrist to disappear under the sleeve of his coat.
"I'll get the first aid supplies," Cordelia said. "Nothing my foot!" She muttered as she walked into the back room.
"How did you get burned this badly?" Wesley asked, helping Angel out of his coat.
Angel unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and gingerly peeled the sleeve back, but the burns went further up his arm than the shirtsleeve would.
"Angel?" Wesley pushed. "What happened?"
"I didn't go looking for her!" Angel insisted sharply. "I swear it!"
"Darla," Wesley sighed, it wasn't a question.
"I'm sorry," Angel said.
"Angel, you're going to have to take off the shirt so I can bandage it right," Cordelia said upon returning.
"It was hell getting it buttoned in the first place," Angel protested.
Looking exasperated, Cordelia set to work on the buttons herself. Then she blushed and stepped back suddenly. "I'm sorry," she exclaimed. "I didn't think… again… I shouldn't have… but I can't fix it with the shirt in the way and it's not like I haven't patched you up a hundred times before."
"It's okay," Angel sighed, he stood still, head down, not wanting to see their eyes as Cordelia resumed removing his shirt.
When she fell back gasping in shock Angel said defensively. "It's old, I didn't do anything wrong since my epiphany."
Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn were all staring at the ugly dark reddish bruise spreading across much of his abdomen, sending purplish tendrils curling up on to his chest, Angel could feel they're eyes burning into him.
"How… How long ago?" Wesley stammered.
"Two weeks," Angel mumbled.
"I though you said it happened before," Gunn accused.
"I'll go," Angel said. "But I didn't do anything wrong then, some things just… carried over. I can't control that."
"Angel wait!" Wesley cried. "Why aren't you healing?"
Angel shrugged bitterly, "Maybe I'm being punished."
"Or maybe you should have a doctor look at that," Cordelia suggested.
"I'm dead," Angel said.
"This is LA," Wesley commented. "I'm certain we can find a physician specializing in the supernatural."
"Tell me when it hurts," The doctor ordered, pressing lightly against Angel's bruised torso.
The souled vampire sat on the edge of the examination table, his burned arm covered in a light dressing from fingertips to shoulder, staring blankly over the top of the man's head.
"I don't want stoic," the doctor said. "I want to know what hurts so I can figure out what needs fixed." He stared probing the outside edges of the bruise again, gradually working his way inward.
"Now," Angel said quietly.
The doctor nodded and continued with his examination. "Blunt object trauma," he commented absently. "Possibly a baseball bat or a lead pipe, but considering your species it would have had to have been a major league hitter swinging it."
"A sledgehammer," Angel said, hoping to shut the man up.
"Yeah, that would have done it," The doctor said. "You really pissed someone off didn't you. Even I don't get many cases involving sledgehammer attacks. Let me guess, the bruise has been getting larger rather than healing and you're more hungry than normal but feeding doesn't help."
"Yes," Angel replied.
"Well, your stomach's ruptured. Probably popped like a balloon when you got hit. It looks like an overly red bruise, only your kind doesn't have enough blood to bruise this badly. In this case the coloration isn't coming from your blood, it's from what you eat. It gets all sorts of places where it shouldn't, creating pressure and the pain. What's worse is your body only manages to use a fraction of what you eat, so you don't heal right. I'm going to have to go in and sew the pieces back together. I'll have to put you under because if there's on thing I don't like, it's my patients squirming while I try to operate. I can take care the whole thing right here, there's an operating room down the hall. Go finish getting undressed and wait for me there."
"Should I come?" Wesley asked.
"I don't need an audience either," the doctor replied. "You wait here, you can take him home in an hour or so, when I'm finished."
The doctor left Wesley in the examination room and found Angel waiting for him in the operating room, looking embarrassed by his nakedness and generally uncomfortable. "It won't just heal eventually?" he asked, trying not to sound nervous.
"Not right it won't, the only reason vampires ever get injuries that last is if their innards get so badly rearranged that their body's can't get things back in the proper place. In your case, I'd bet that the torn tissue got folded back, even if it does heal eventually, you'd still have a hole in your stomach," the doctor explained patiently. "You'd still hurt."
"Do you really need to knock me out?" Angel asked. "I promise to lay still."
"Don't make promises you can't keep. To repair this I need to cut you open. Do you honestly think you could stay still while I do that?"
"Yes," Angel said hopefully.
The doctor rolled his eyes in disgust. "Trust me, you won't be able to, I don't want your self-denfense reflexes kicking in. Do you think I've stayed alive treating demons this long if I didn't know what I was doing? A lot of you are fairly violent, and suing for malpractice isn't exactly the first thing you think of now is it? Besides your friend's right out side, you aren't in any danger."
"Alright," Angel said uncertainly.
"Good, lay back on the table," The doctor said handing Angel an IV. "I'm going to need you to put this in for me, I still need a pulse to find a vein."
Angel slid the needle into the large vein in the crook of his elbow after several minutes' hesitation.
"Now I want you to count backwards from ten," the doctor instructed.
"Ten, nine, eight… seven… si…"
"Will he be alright?" Wesley asked.
"He'll be fine," the doctor promised. "Vampires make the easiest patients. You can't kill one unless you're trying and all you ever need to fix them is an anatomy book so you can figure out what's in the wrong spot. Give your friend fifteen to twenty minutes to throw off the effect of the medication I used to put him under. Then you can take him home. Tell him to avoid strenuous activity for the next few days and irate individuals with sledgehammers for the foreseeable future."
Wesley watched as Angel's dark eyes fluttered open and focused blurrily on him.
"Are ye mad at me?" Angel asked.
"Not for getting hurt," Wesley sighed.
"I swear. On Buffy's life, I swear I didna seek them out," Angel insisted, the after effects of the medications causing him to fall back into long forgotten speech patterns.
"I believe you," Wesley said, but Angel didn't register the ex-Watcher's words.
"You're mad and you're goin' ta send me away, but I didna do anything bad," Angel protested tiredly.
"They were right," Wesley said to Cordelia and Gunn after leaving Angel at the Hyperion to rest. "The Host was right, that Angel regrets what happened isn't enough to fix things. He was afraid we'd be angry with him because Darla and Lindsey attacked him, that's why he was hiding his injuries, or at least their source. Lindsey must have been what delayed him in joining us that first night to rescue Cordelia. David was right, it doesn't matter how awkward it will be, it doesn't matter who's at fault. We need a new foundation for trust with Angel before all we have left is regrets. What if we'd taken him into a fight with him injured? Either he would have been killed because of it, or one of us would have been because he wouldn't have been able to hold up his end of things."
"Angel said he wanted to earn back our trust. It's time we gave him a place to start, and maybe in doing so we'll have given him a reason to trust us again as well."