Eleven: IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
Buffy had been going hard at work and slaying. The post-holiday season always seemed to mark the start of pre-swimsuit-season panic and the rise in demon activity on the Hellmouth prior to the spring climax. This particular year, there hadn't been any serious "Big-Bad"-type evil, just the regular Sunnydale variety... amplified.
Buffy was getting run down. She'd caught a cold before Christmas and just couldn't seem to shake it. An evil demon cold bug? Perhaps, lots of folks in Sunnydale were displaying similar signs. Given that no new menace had as yet been identified, speculation amongst the Scooby Gang abounded. Alas, research produced nothing, so no one was really sure.
After several weeks, Spike begged Buffy to see a doctor and forego work and slaying altogether to rest; he and the Scoobies would take up the slack.
"Spike, I'm fine. It's just a cold," Buffy insisted.
"Please Buffy," he pleaded, "Just a few days, luv. You're looking a bit-"
"Oh I see: I look awful." She was getting defensive.
Hate when she gets like this; won't hear reason. Spike sighed. "Well, you must admit, you're a bit... pale."
Buffy was emphatic, "I'm just tired."
"Right then. Take a few nights off," urged Spike. "Go to be early. We'll sleep late-"
"Oh I get it. Now it's about getting me in the sack is it?" she snapped.
He winced. Set myself up for that one. Should've seen it coming. "No luv, I just thought-"
Buffy glared. "Doing the thinking for me, again?!"
Girl's really on her game today. Her mouth's certainly not sufferin' any; tongue's still razor sharp. Spike would have found the escalating conversation entertaining --- even arousing --- had he not been so worried about Buffy's health. "Sod it." Spike threw his hands in the air. "I give up. Do what ever you bloody well please, like always," he conceded and went to leave the room.
Without warning Buffy collapsed.
"Buffy!" He rushed to her side. "God luv. You're burning up. Let's get you to a doctor."
------- o -------
Diagnosis: a "touch of" the flu had turned to pneumonia.
Treatment: bed-rest, fluids and a course of antibiotics.
Spike ensured the doctor's instructions were followed to the letter.
For a few weeks, everything appeared to be as normal. But before long, the concerned husband was taking his sickly wife back to the doctor following a similar episode.
Buffy had been in the examination room a long while. The doctor and nurse had been in and out several times each. Spike was growing increasingly agitated imagining the worst. Joyce blacked out a lot because of the brain tumour... Oh God, not Buffy.
The nurse approached the waiting area. Keen for answers, Spike leapt to his feet and walked toward her.
"Excuse me."
"Mr. Summers?" asked the nurse.
"Yes. How's my wife? How's Buffy?" His tone was strained. His brows arched. Trepidation filled his wide eyes.
Pleasantly, the nurse simply replied, "Please come with me. Doctor Brandt asked me to bring you back."
"What's the matter with her? Is it serious? Will she be alright?" His worry heightened with each unanswered question and every step toward the exam room. What will I do without her?
When he was lead into the room, Buffy, dressed in a paper gown, greeted him anxiously from atop the exam table, "Hi Spike. Doctor Brandt, this is my husband, Sp-"
"William Summers," Spike intervened.
Even after several years together, Buffy still hadn't gotten used to the "regular guy" identity he'd assumed. To her, he was still "Spike", just a new improved super human version. (That's "super human" as in a "yippee isn't this wonderful, Spike's alive" kind of way, as opposed to "superhuman", like herself, having exceptional abilities or powers.)
"What's wrong with my Buffy, Doctor?" His fear rang out through his voice.
"Please, take it easy, Mr. Summers. Have a seat," the doctor instructed, trying to calm the nervous wreck before her. "Your wife is just fine. The problems she's been having the past couple of weeks are perfectly normal for a woman in her condition."
"Condition? What condition?!" Why the bloody hell can't I just get a straight answer?!
"Spike." Buffy reached to her edgy husband and took his hand. "I'm fine. Just a little pregnant is all." Yeah, "a little". Ha! Trying to keep things light. La-la la-la la.
"Preg-" Stunned, he was unable to get the word out.
"We're going to have a baby," she squeaked hesitantly.
"A baby?!"
Do you have to repeat the end of every one of my sentences? Buffy frowned. I mean really, what do you think?
"How'd this happen?" Spike asked. "Oh, course I know how it happens. But how did this happen?! We've always been careful," he rambled. "I mean, always. We never-"
"Well, as I've explained to your wife, it's possible that the antibiotics she was taking for the pneumonia may have decreased the effectiveness of the contraceptive pills," Doctor Brandt suggested.
Buffy smiled nervously at her husband, "Or it might just be another one of our little miracles."
"True," the doctor agreed. "In any event... It's early days yet, but if all goes well, and I can't see any reason to doubt it will," she assured, "you should expect your little bundle around about the end of October. In the mean time, let's get you set up for an ultrasound and a follow-up. And Mr. Summers, I'd like my nurse to draw some blood. Buffy is O negative, so we'll want to check your Rh factor...."
Spike chuckled then muttered, "I've always been right fond of O neg." He'd taken to making "vampire-esque" remarks again since he began writing his memoirs in earnest.
Buffy's jaw dropped and eyes widened. Did he really say that out loud?!
------- o -------
Spike took Buffy's hand as they made their way to the SUV.
"Spike?" Buffy began tentatively.
"Yes luv?"
"Are you OK about this? The baby, I mean."
Spike stopped and turned Buffy toward him, holding her at arms length with both hands so he could see her face. "Course, Buffy-luv. Yes. Aren't you?"
She had that "timid little girl" look about her. "Well, I just wasn't sure. I mean, we've never really talked about it except in the we're-SO-not-ready sense."
"But that was years ago," he said with a smile as he cupped the side of her face. "Now, I won't say I wasn't a little... surprised when you told me. But I guess I was just so relieved to hear you were alright... I don't know... This is all just so... remarkable."
And, of course it was --- that a man who'd been dead for over a century and a woman, who'd cheated death twice, exceeding her prophesied life expectancy by more than a decade, had created a new life to share literally and metaphorically --- remarkable, indeed.
"Are you happy, luv?" Spike asked, his tender blue eyes searching her apprehensive olive ones.
"I... I think so..." replied Buffy nervously. "I mean... Spike, I'm kinda scared." She began to cry.
"Oh Buffy. Why?" He put his arms around her and smiled.
"Well... this is big. I mean really big. A baby."
"Yes luv." He held her tightly. "Our baby."
------- o -------
As Buffy's pregnancy progressed, concern grew right along with her abdomen. At first it was only Spike and Dawn who worried and made sure she never patrolled alone. Summer was slow on the slaying front and the Scoobies helped out. It gave them time together; time that was becoming increasingly limited as their own lives and responsibilities took them in different directions.
By the end of summer, with Buffy in her third trimester, everyone was worried about her --- and, to her annoyance, everyone was giving her advice: her doctor (to whom she paid more heed than anyone else on the subject of her pregnancy), her husband, sister and closest friends (whom she tried to indulge as much as possible), just about every little old lady at the grocery store. It was driving Buffy crazy and only made her want to patrol more to work out her aggression.
Dr. Brandt had recommended reducing Buffy's work load at the gym to client training sessions only --- no more heavy aerobics, kick-boxing, or other high impact teaching. Ha. High impact. You don't know the half of it, Doc.
Spike was at his whit's end trying to convince Buffy she simply shouldn't be patrolling anymore. In an attempt to find a replacement to take the pressure of her duty off Buffy's shoulder, he entrusted Giles to persuade the Council to send someone to take over. Giles, of course, was no longer with the Council, a fact of which Spike was aware, but the desperate father-to-be simply knew of no other person who could help him. He was confident, however, that Giles would do everything he could for Buffy, as would any other loving "father" for his daughter.
Speaking with members of the Council, Giles learned that Faith had been killed a few years earlier in a prison riot --- surprisingly to some, she was trying to stop the chaos when she was fatally wounded in the crossfire. Her replacement barely lasted long enough to be identified by the Council. After almost a decade without any real control, the Council had high hopes for their newest Slayer. They were quite insistent that if they were to send her to Sunnydale, Buffy, Spike and the Scoobies could not interfere with this Slayer, her Watcher, or his methods of instruction.
The Scoobies were more than willing to comply: Willow and Xander were finding that --- especially after a full day's work --- they just weren't as spry as they'd been in their teens and early twenties. Willow was now teaching computer science full-time at the high school, and she'd found herself on more than a few occasions having to dust a former student. Xander preferred his chisels to stakes, creating to destroying. He'd developed quite a name for himself in the community as a fine wood-finishing craftsman, so his professional skills were always in demand and kept him busy. And if that wasn't reason enough, they both found it tough to meet prospective companions in cemeteries in the middle of the night. For them, the "thrill" of slaying had long waned.
Dawn was a little harder to convince. She'd developed some finesse of her own and actually enjoyed slaying, but soon she'd be graduating from U.C. Sunnydale. Buffy wanted Dawn to find a job somewhere that she could enjoy a "normal" life. She and Spike were doing well financially, due in large part to the success of his first two volumes of stories, so Buffy had offered to help her sister to get set up somewhere --- anywhere other than Sunnydale. While Dawn wasn't yet ready to "leave the nest", she consented to leave slaying to "the professionals".
Spike only wanted to know his wife and child would be safe. Having a soul and being alive hadn't really changed his loyalties much; they still lay firmly with those he loved. What had changed, was his claim to need for a "spot of violence" before bed'. He no longer felt it --- frankly he'd have traded the violence for some sweet snogging or a good shag with Buffy (a mediocre one for that matter) long before he'd actually had that opportunity. In the years since his "rebirth", Spike had only gone out on patrol to help her. With Buffy agreeing to refrain from patrolling until after the baby was born, Spike was more than satisfied to pass every night snuggled up to his darling wife in lieu of roaming cemeteries in search of demons.
------- o -------
At 6:24 p.m. on October 31 --- Halloween --- Jack Giles Summers was born, by caesarean section. (Come on: that "big head on that skinny little body". The regular way: not gonna happen.) 7lb 13oz. Mother Buffy recovering well. Proud father, William, buying rounds for mates.