Chapter 8
Serena stumbled headfirst into a busy day. She made her way downstairs and ignored Angel's presence, pouring herself a cup of stale coffee. She sat Indian-style and sipped her coffee, unable to say any words.
Angel glanced at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, as if she hadn't slept well and was crying. He knew he didn't look that great himself. His dream still shook his soul. He knew she was ignoring him. His hurtful words still burned in her mind. He could see that.
Cordelia felt the tension, and almost grabbed a knife to see if she could cut through it, but thought it was inappropriate. She silently organized and reorganized the stacks of papers that were scattered everywhere. Until she felt a familiar pain, rushing at her all at once.
She twitched in absolute agony and threw herself back against the wall. Her cry of pain was pathetic as she slid to the floor. Serena shouted out her name and ran towards her. The image seared itself into her mind's eye.
A house.a ranch-style house in a working class neighborhood. A sign on the corner post reads VINE STREET.
Angel was at her side, holding onto her arm as the vision continued to wrack her body.
A child. A little, dark-haired girl, no more than five years old. She's in her pajamas, playing in her room.
Serena was there as well, on the other side. She slipped a hand behind her head to keep her from banging it on the floor.
A monkey. The little girl is playing with a monkey doll.
Cordelia thrashed again, her hands going to her throbbing skull.
Someone is in the room with her now. She turned and is smiling. She knows him. She holds the doll up for him to see.
Angel and Serena helped her into a sitting position, but the vision went on, like metal spikes through her head.
What is that? Something is being pointed at the girl. What is it? A gun? Is it a gun?
The pain itself was as bad as it had ever been. The agony of the vision itself, and the suffering of what she saw.
The child is hit in the chest by a bolt of snaking blue energy. It knocks her back to the ground. She isn't moving. She lays there, eyes wide, unseeing.
Then the vision was gone, leaving only the pain. Angel helped her into her desk chair.
"That seemed like a bad one." Angel said. "You okay? What did you see?"
Serena brought her a glass of water. Wesley walked into the hotel just in time to see the excitement. Serena motioned for him to be silent.
"It was a bad one." Cordy stated, sipping the water with trembling hands. "They're always worse when there's a child involved." Cordy looked at Angel. "Something horrible has happened to a little girl. Aubrey is her name. That's all I got, really. That and the street."
Serena was already out the door with Wesley when Angel looked up. Wordlessly, he joined them with Cordelia at the car.
*****
Cordelia eyed the neighborhood. It was a typical working-class neighborhood, with cute little houses with fences and dogs and children running around. Usually, during the day. As soon as night fell, the neighborhood becomes silent and still. Serena tapped a fingernail on the side of the car impatiently. She was well aware that she was crammed in a car with a person who she wasn't exactly fond of. She ignored the person, or rather, vampire, in the driver's seat.
An ambulance was in front of the house, and the paramedics were wheeling a small body to it. A crying mother was by the gurney's side, holding the small body's hand. No one in the car said a word. A crowd of neighbors loitered in front of the house, curious about what happened. Angel turned to Wesley.
"Wes, I need you to stay here and check out the house for clues. The people will go away soon. Just find a way in and look around a bit." Angel said.
"I'll go with him." Serena volunteered herself. Angel shook his head.
"I'll need you to be with me at the hospital. You know me. I'm not a people person." He met her gaze and smiled weakly.
"No, I don't. According to you, only Buffy knew you well." Serena spat, crossing her arms and staring at the little house. Everyone was silent once again. The tension mounted, until, finally, Wesley got out of the car.
"Ah, yes, well." He murmured, not sure on what to say. "I'll meet you at the hospital." With a nod of his head, he trotted off a couple of houses away and went around to the back. Angel drove off. Everyone seemed to disperse and go home, and settle in right away, either going to bed or turning on the television. Wesley cut across the few yards and headed for the little girl's back door.
I didn't know one day I would be breaking-and-entering. He thought to himself grimly. To his surprise, the door swung open easily. Inside, he found several lights on. It all happened so suddenly. Wesley realized. He made his way through the kitchen and into the family room. For a moment, he thought he heard voices, but scolded himself when he saw the television was on. He continued down the hall, concentrating heavily on what could have happened.
The mother might have been watching television when the attacker did something to the little girl. He reached what looked to be the girl's room. The lights were on. It seemed to be a typical girl's room. Toys scattered all over, some littering the floor while other spilled out of a green plastic toy box shaped like a frog's head. On the floor laid a stuffed monkey, as described in Cordelia's vision. Wesley carefully stepped over the toys, and approached the girl's bed. He noticed a picture frame of the girl and her mother. He picked it up, also noticing that it didn't fit quite right into the frame. He turned it over, removed the back to get at the photo, and saw that it had been folded on one side. He unfolded it and saw a tall, smiling man, with a head of dark curly hair. He must be her father. I wonder why it was folded? Wesley struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The parents might have had a nasty separation or divorce.
He turned to leave the room when he stepped on something. He immediately removed the pressure so not to break it. He knelt down, and picked up a glass vial amongst plastic building blocks.
Now, what would a five-year old girl be doing with this? He thought. He studied it carefully. It was about three inches long and about and inch and a half wide, the class opaque. He held it closer and noticed that strange, arcane symbols had been etched into the glass.
A nasty feeling of dread passed over him. Wesley had a sneaky suspicion he knew what this was.
He stood and placed the vile into his pocket.
He left the child's room, turning out the light as he passed through the doorway. Cordelia said a snaking bolt of mystical energy seemed to take something from the child, leaving her alive, but empty, and now, the vial covered with sorcerous etchings, all make a kind of twisted sense to him.
He had to get to the hospital and tell Angel right away. The situation was far worse than they expected.
Far worse.
*****
Angel, Cordelia, and Serena stepped off the elevator in front of the fifth- floor Intensive Care Unit at the USC Medical Center in East Los Angeles. As the elevator door slowly slid closed behind them, they stopped to consider their options. They had been warned at the hospital's patient information desk no one other than family was allowed to visit the ICU.
"So, what now?" Cordelia asked in a stage whisper. Around a corner to their right, she could see three nurses working at their station. One was a young woman and the other two were older, more weathered-looking.
Angel glanced at them, and turned back towards the Slayer and Cordelia. "We'll need to get past them to find the mother and child. Serena and I will need some sort of distraction." Serena and Angel stared at Cordelia expectantly.
Cordy threw up her hands and let them fall at her side. "Of course, a distraction. That's me.Distract-O-Girl."
"Listen, if you don't think you're up to it, I'll." Serena began, trying to volunteer herself again.
Cordy glared at her. "I'm an actress, remember?" Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Though my talents are wasted on stuff like this. So what kind of distraction did you have in mind?"
Serena turned away for a moment to check the nurses' station again. Angel answered, shrugging with hands jammed into his duster pockets. "You said you're an actress," he said. "Act."
"I don't know why I put up with this," muttered Cordelia as she proceeded around the corner to the nurses' station. As she walked, she finger-combed her hair and adjusted her skirt and blouse.
She stopped at the counter smiling, waiting to be noticed. A black woman dressed in mint-green surgical scrubs looked up from some paperwork. She wore a tag that identified her as Dana.
"Can I help you miss?" she asked.
"Good question," responded Cordelia, pointing at the nurse and punctuating the word good with her finger.
The nurse just stared.
"Now, it's obvious to me why you're the nurse and I'm just the person standing here and."
"Can I help you?"
The nurse was getting annoyed. She put her hands on her hips in the universal annoyed-authority-figure stance. The other two nurses behind the desk had taken notice of what was happening at the counter
Cordelia could just make out Angel and Serena waiting around the corner. She gave them both an evil eye as she continued with her performance.
"Yes. Yes, you can. This is the Intensive Care Unit, isn't it?"
Dana in the mint-green scubs slowly nodded her head.
"Great. Well, I've been feeling a little out of it lately? There's been this tingling in my hands"-she held out her hands-"and I think they've been shaking more than usual, but that could be because I'm trying to knock off the caffeine. Did you know that caffeine makes the body produced insulin and if you're trying to lose weight you should probably switch to decaf?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Angel giving her the hurry-up sign and she scowled.
"So I was wondering, in you professional opinion, do you think this could be the beginning of something bad? A brain tumor, maybe?"
The nurse added the paperwork she was holding to a stack in her arms and moved around the counter. "What I think you might need is a visit the emergency room. Why don't I walk you down there myself, hon."
Cordy had to think fast. If the nurse came this way, she would notice Angel and Serena for sure. She quickly reviewed the best terminal illness performances she could remember. Ali McGraw in Love Story, Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolia, and she could never forget Barbara Hershey in Beaches.
Dana gently took her by the elbow. "I'm headed that way now."
Cordelia threw a hand up to her brow. "Oh, my." She said, beginning to sway, "I don't feel so good."
She pitched herself forward onto the desk. Dana caught her under her arms as she began to slide from the counter. Good thing, thought Cordelia, since I don't want to lie on ICU floor. It is a hospital! Who knows what kind of diseases and germs were living there.
The two other nurses came quickly around the desk to assist. Cordy let her limbs go limp, head lolling from side to side. She spotted Angel and Serena sneaking around the corner and heading down the hallway toward the rooms.
Not bad, thought Cordy. In her mind, she was Brad Pitt standing on the stage of a crowded Hollywood auditorium. He tears open the envelope and reads, "The award for best portrayal of a woman suffering from some kind of horrible-yet-vague illness goes to."
The nurses helper her around the reception desk and sat her in one of the chairs. There seemed to be a definite concern for her health as they paged the ICU doctor on call. Cordy only hoped that he was cute.
*****
Angel and Serena cautiously moved down the hallway, looking into the rooms they passed in search of the mother and child. Gunshot wounds, heard attacks, car accidents: so much pain and suffering, but not what they were searching for. They both tried to look as inconspicuous as possible as two doctors emerged from the unit ahead. Only the fact their backs were to the Slayer and vampire had saved them, for they knew how out of place they were.
Serena peered into a room and motioned to Angel silently. It was the patient they were searching for.
The little girl looked tiny where she lay in the hospital bed. IV bags surrounded her with tubing running from the bags to her arms.
The child's mother stood next to the bed, her hand gently caressing her daughter's brow. She was speaking softly to the child.
"Don't be afraid, Mommy's here. It's all right, baby girl. The doctors are going to make you well. That's it. You rest up and I bet you'll be feeling better in the morning. I really do."
Angel felt self-conscious. Those words were not meant for his ears. He glanced over at Serena, to see if she felt the same way. Her reaction surprised him. She stared past him into the little room, her eyes absorbing the mother and daughter. Tears dripped off of her cheeks and onto the floor. She hastily used her sleeve to wipe them away. Angel cleared his throat.
The woman looked up, her cheeks damp with tears. "Can I help you?" She frowned. "Are you a doctor?"
Serena gave Angel a little shove in the direction of the room. "No." Angel gestured to a room behind him in the hall. "No, I was.visiting a friend when they brought your daughter up. How's she doing?"
The woman leaned forward and kissed her child's forehead.
"They don't know what's wrong with her. All the doctors in this place and nobody can tell me what's wrong with my little girl."
The mother began to sob.
Angel stepped forward, towards the bed, Serena following.
The woman laid her palm against her daughter's brow. "I'm sorry. I'm a little upset. But I think she's going to be all right---I feel these things." She wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. "Thank you for asking."
Angel stared at the little girl. She looked so frail, so helpless. She reminded him of something, chords of a memory being gently stroked.
"They taped her eyes shut so they wouldn't dry out." Her mother said, making sure that the surgical tape was still holding the gauze pads in place. "It looks worse than it is."
The woman began to straighten the sheet and blanket that covered her daughter.
As gently as she could, Serena pressed the subject. "I don't want to pry, but in a way, we can't help it."
Angel stepped up to the mother. "I'm a private investigator. Do you have any idea what might have happened to cause this?"
She studied Angel's face for a moment, then stared at Serena, then looked back at her daughter. She resumed stroking the child's hair.
"I had fallen asleep on the couch watching television. I remember waking up know that something was wrong. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach." She stared at Angel again. "Have you ever had that feeling." She stopped. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"Angel," he said. "My name is Angel. This is my.this is Serena."
This made the mother smile for a brief moment.
"That's a nice name, Angel. My daughter would like it." She leaned close to her child's ear. "Did you hear that, Aubrey? His name is Angel. Aubrey Christina Bentone"
Serena turned her head from the mother and daughter, beginning to sniffle. She quietly told Angel she would be waiting outside. He looked at her worriedly as he watched her sit in a chair outside in the hallway, slumping. He knew that she was crying. He turned his attention back to the little girl.
"Aubrey is a pretty name also," Angel said. "So, when you woke up, you felt something wrong. What was it, Mrs. Bentone?" Angel asked, hoping to distract her from her grief.
"Call me June, please." She corrected through her tears. She wiped her eyes with a crumpled tissue and then blew her nose.
"June. What did you do then?" Angel prodded.
The woman's eyes became glassy. She was back in her house, reliving the experience. "I jumped off the couch and ran to her room. I called to her first, but she didn't answer. I started screaming her name over and over again." June clutched the tissue to her quivering mouth. Her eyes brimmed with emotion. "And this is how I found her. No matter how hard I shook her, she wouldn't wake up. My baby wouldn't wake up."
Angel felt the woman's grief as if it were his own. He studied the child's face, her fragile gone structure, the pale china-doll quality of her skin, her tiny delicate mouth.
Then he remembered. The thing that had been gnawing at him at the back of his mind surged forward. A painful memory of his past. Another child--- another beautiful little girl touched by the unnatural.
With excruciating heartache, he remembered his sister and what he had done to her.
It was after he had been taken by the vampire Darla, after he had died and been buried. After he had risen from the grave as a vampire.
He returned home to his family but found he could not enter the house without being invited----one of the strange new rules that governed him now that he was undead.
He lured her to the door. His baby sister. He could still see her eyes, red from crying, red from mourning his death three nights previous. She had been so happy to see him again. She thought he came back to her as an angel.
An angel.
The monster he had become told her that he missed her terribly and asked that she invite him in so he could show her how happy he was to be back. She smiled so innocently as she took his hand and bid him enter.
Angel flinched at the recollection, filled with the self-loathing and guilt that was only part of the curse upon him. He stood in the hospital room and looked down at little Aubrey Bentone, who would now forever remind him of his sweet sister and the horrors he had visited upon her, and he steeled himself against the burden of his past.
He had traded his sister's innocence and love to gain entry to the family home. That had just been the beginning of the seemingly endless depravity and abomination, and yet, of all the things he had done as the monster, Angelus, what he'd done to his sister was probably the worse.
Angel saw his sister lying in the hospital bed, gauze pads covering her eyes, IV tube leading from clear bags of fluid into needles in her arm. He blinked and the child was Aubrey Bentone again. Someone he could save.
Here was a child in desperate need. So much more than Cordy's vision or his own mission for redemption.
Aubrey's mother was singer her a lullaby when Angel reached out and placed his hand on top of Aubrey's. It was warm. Warm with life. With possibility.
"June, I'd like to help her. I want to help your daughter."
Serena stumbled headfirst into a busy day. She made her way downstairs and ignored Angel's presence, pouring herself a cup of stale coffee. She sat Indian-style and sipped her coffee, unable to say any words.
Angel glanced at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, as if she hadn't slept well and was crying. He knew he didn't look that great himself. His dream still shook his soul. He knew she was ignoring him. His hurtful words still burned in her mind. He could see that.
Cordelia felt the tension, and almost grabbed a knife to see if she could cut through it, but thought it was inappropriate. She silently organized and reorganized the stacks of papers that were scattered everywhere. Until she felt a familiar pain, rushing at her all at once.
She twitched in absolute agony and threw herself back against the wall. Her cry of pain was pathetic as she slid to the floor. Serena shouted out her name and ran towards her. The image seared itself into her mind's eye.
A house.a ranch-style house in a working class neighborhood. A sign on the corner post reads VINE STREET.
Angel was at her side, holding onto her arm as the vision continued to wrack her body.
A child. A little, dark-haired girl, no more than five years old. She's in her pajamas, playing in her room.
Serena was there as well, on the other side. She slipped a hand behind her head to keep her from banging it on the floor.
A monkey. The little girl is playing with a monkey doll.
Cordelia thrashed again, her hands going to her throbbing skull.
Someone is in the room with her now. She turned and is smiling. She knows him. She holds the doll up for him to see.
Angel and Serena helped her into a sitting position, but the vision went on, like metal spikes through her head.
What is that? Something is being pointed at the girl. What is it? A gun? Is it a gun?
The pain itself was as bad as it had ever been. The agony of the vision itself, and the suffering of what she saw.
The child is hit in the chest by a bolt of snaking blue energy. It knocks her back to the ground. She isn't moving. She lays there, eyes wide, unseeing.
Then the vision was gone, leaving only the pain. Angel helped her into her desk chair.
"That seemed like a bad one." Angel said. "You okay? What did you see?"
Serena brought her a glass of water. Wesley walked into the hotel just in time to see the excitement. Serena motioned for him to be silent.
"It was a bad one." Cordy stated, sipping the water with trembling hands. "They're always worse when there's a child involved." Cordy looked at Angel. "Something horrible has happened to a little girl. Aubrey is her name. That's all I got, really. That and the street."
Serena was already out the door with Wesley when Angel looked up. Wordlessly, he joined them with Cordelia at the car.
*****
Cordelia eyed the neighborhood. It was a typical working-class neighborhood, with cute little houses with fences and dogs and children running around. Usually, during the day. As soon as night fell, the neighborhood becomes silent and still. Serena tapped a fingernail on the side of the car impatiently. She was well aware that she was crammed in a car with a person who she wasn't exactly fond of. She ignored the person, or rather, vampire, in the driver's seat.
An ambulance was in front of the house, and the paramedics were wheeling a small body to it. A crying mother was by the gurney's side, holding the small body's hand. No one in the car said a word. A crowd of neighbors loitered in front of the house, curious about what happened. Angel turned to Wesley.
"Wes, I need you to stay here and check out the house for clues. The people will go away soon. Just find a way in and look around a bit." Angel said.
"I'll go with him." Serena volunteered herself. Angel shook his head.
"I'll need you to be with me at the hospital. You know me. I'm not a people person." He met her gaze and smiled weakly.
"No, I don't. According to you, only Buffy knew you well." Serena spat, crossing her arms and staring at the little house. Everyone was silent once again. The tension mounted, until, finally, Wesley got out of the car.
"Ah, yes, well." He murmured, not sure on what to say. "I'll meet you at the hospital." With a nod of his head, he trotted off a couple of houses away and went around to the back. Angel drove off. Everyone seemed to disperse and go home, and settle in right away, either going to bed or turning on the television. Wesley cut across the few yards and headed for the little girl's back door.
I didn't know one day I would be breaking-and-entering. He thought to himself grimly. To his surprise, the door swung open easily. Inside, he found several lights on. It all happened so suddenly. Wesley realized. He made his way through the kitchen and into the family room. For a moment, he thought he heard voices, but scolded himself when he saw the television was on. He continued down the hall, concentrating heavily on what could have happened.
The mother might have been watching television when the attacker did something to the little girl. He reached what looked to be the girl's room. The lights were on. It seemed to be a typical girl's room. Toys scattered all over, some littering the floor while other spilled out of a green plastic toy box shaped like a frog's head. On the floor laid a stuffed monkey, as described in Cordelia's vision. Wesley carefully stepped over the toys, and approached the girl's bed. He noticed a picture frame of the girl and her mother. He picked it up, also noticing that it didn't fit quite right into the frame. He turned it over, removed the back to get at the photo, and saw that it had been folded on one side. He unfolded it and saw a tall, smiling man, with a head of dark curly hair. He must be her father. I wonder why it was folded? Wesley struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The parents might have had a nasty separation or divorce.
He turned to leave the room when he stepped on something. He immediately removed the pressure so not to break it. He knelt down, and picked up a glass vial amongst plastic building blocks.
Now, what would a five-year old girl be doing with this? He thought. He studied it carefully. It was about three inches long and about and inch and a half wide, the class opaque. He held it closer and noticed that strange, arcane symbols had been etched into the glass.
A nasty feeling of dread passed over him. Wesley had a sneaky suspicion he knew what this was.
He stood and placed the vile into his pocket.
He left the child's room, turning out the light as he passed through the doorway. Cordelia said a snaking bolt of mystical energy seemed to take something from the child, leaving her alive, but empty, and now, the vial covered with sorcerous etchings, all make a kind of twisted sense to him.
He had to get to the hospital and tell Angel right away. The situation was far worse than they expected.
Far worse.
*****
Angel, Cordelia, and Serena stepped off the elevator in front of the fifth- floor Intensive Care Unit at the USC Medical Center in East Los Angeles. As the elevator door slowly slid closed behind them, they stopped to consider their options. They had been warned at the hospital's patient information desk no one other than family was allowed to visit the ICU.
"So, what now?" Cordelia asked in a stage whisper. Around a corner to their right, she could see three nurses working at their station. One was a young woman and the other two were older, more weathered-looking.
Angel glanced at them, and turned back towards the Slayer and Cordelia. "We'll need to get past them to find the mother and child. Serena and I will need some sort of distraction." Serena and Angel stared at Cordelia expectantly.
Cordy threw up her hands and let them fall at her side. "Of course, a distraction. That's me.Distract-O-Girl."
"Listen, if you don't think you're up to it, I'll." Serena began, trying to volunteer herself again.
Cordy glared at her. "I'm an actress, remember?" Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Though my talents are wasted on stuff like this. So what kind of distraction did you have in mind?"
Serena turned away for a moment to check the nurses' station again. Angel answered, shrugging with hands jammed into his duster pockets. "You said you're an actress," he said. "Act."
"I don't know why I put up with this," muttered Cordelia as she proceeded around the corner to the nurses' station. As she walked, she finger-combed her hair and adjusted her skirt and blouse.
She stopped at the counter smiling, waiting to be noticed. A black woman dressed in mint-green surgical scrubs looked up from some paperwork. She wore a tag that identified her as Dana.
"Can I help you miss?" she asked.
"Good question," responded Cordelia, pointing at the nurse and punctuating the word good with her finger.
The nurse just stared.
"Now, it's obvious to me why you're the nurse and I'm just the person standing here and."
"Can I help you?"
The nurse was getting annoyed. She put her hands on her hips in the universal annoyed-authority-figure stance. The other two nurses behind the desk had taken notice of what was happening at the counter
Cordelia could just make out Angel and Serena waiting around the corner. She gave them both an evil eye as she continued with her performance.
"Yes. Yes, you can. This is the Intensive Care Unit, isn't it?"
Dana in the mint-green scubs slowly nodded her head.
"Great. Well, I've been feeling a little out of it lately? There's been this tingling in my hands"-she held out her hands-"and I think they've been shaking more than usual, but that could be because I'm trying to knock off the caffeine. Did you know that caffeine makes the body produced insulin and if you're trying to lose weight you should probably switch to decaf?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Angel giving her the hurry-up sign and she scowled.
"So I was wondering, in you professional opinion, do you think this could be the beginning of something bad? A brain tumor, maybe?"
The nurse added the paperwork she was holding to a stack in her arms and moved around the counter. "What I think you might need is a visit the emergency room. Why don't I walk you down there myself, hon."
Cordy had to think fast. If the nurse came this way, she would notice Angel and Serena for sure. She quickly reviewed the best terminal illness performances she could remember. Ali McGraw in Love Story, Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolia, and she could never forget Barbara Hershey in Beaches.
Dana gently took her by the elbow. "I'm headed that way now."
Cordelia threw a hand up to her brow. "Oh, my." She said, beginning to sway, "I don't feel so good."
She pitched herself forward onto the desk. Dana caught her under her arms as she began to slide from the counter. Good thing, thought Cordelia, since I don't want to lie on ICU floor. It is a hospital! Who knows what kind of diseases and germs were living there.
The two other nurses came quickly around the desk to assist. Cordy let her limbs go limp, head lolling from side to side. She spotted Angel and Serena sneaking around the corner and heading down the hallway toward the rooms.
Not bad, thought Cordy. In her mind, she was Brad Pitt standing on the stage of a crowded Hollywood auditorium. He tears open the envelope and reads, "The award for best portrayal of a woman suffering from some kind of horrible-yet-vague illness goes to."
The nurses helper her around the reception desk and sat her in one of the chairs. There seemed to be a definite concern for her health as they paged the ICU doctor on call. Cordy only hoped that he was cute.
*****
Angel and Serena cautiously moved down the hallway, looking into the rooms they passed in search of the mother and child. Gunshot wounds, heard attacks, car accidents: so much pain and suffering, but not what they were searching for. They both tried to look as inconspicuous as possible as two doctors emerged from the unit ahead. Only the fact their backs were to the Slayer and vampire had saved them, for they knew how out of place they were.
Serena peered into a room and motioned to Angel silently. It was the patient they were searching for.
The little girl looked tiny where she lay in the hospital bed. IV bags surrounded her with tubing running from the bags to her arms.
The child's mother stood next to the bed, her hand gently caressing her daughter's brow. She was speaking softly to the child.
"Don't be afraid, Mommy's here. It's all right, baby girl. The doctors are going to make you well. That's it. You rest up and I bet you'll be feeling better in the morning. I really do."
Angel felt self-conscious. Those words were not meant for his ears. He glanced over at Serena, to see if she felt the same way. Her reaction surprised him. She stared past him into the little room, her eyes absorbing the mother and daughter. Tears dripped off of her cheeks and onto the floor. She hastily used her sleeve to wipe them away. Angel cleared his throat.
The woman looked up, her cheeks damp with tears. "Can I help you?" She frowned. "Are you a doctor?"
Serena gave Angel a little shove in the direction of the room. "No." Angel gestured to a room behind him in the hall. "No, I was.visiting a friend when they brought your daughter up. How's she doing?"
The woman leaned forward and kissed her child's forehead.
"They don't know what's wrong with her. All the doctors in this place and nobody can tell me what's wrong with my little girl."
The mother began to sob.
Angel stepped forward, towards the bed, Serena following.
The woman laid her palm against her daughter's brow. "I'm sorry. I'm a little upset. But I think she's going to be all right---I feel these things." She wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. "Thank you for asking."
Angel stared at the little girl. She looked so frail, so helpless. She reminded him of something, chords of a memory being gently stroked.
"They taped her eyes shut so they wouldn't dry out." Her mother said, making sure that the surgical tape was still holding the gauze pads in place. "It looks worse than it is."
The woman began to straighten the sheet and blanket that covered her daughter.
As gently as she could, Serena pressed the subject. "I don't want to pry, but in a way, we can't help it."
Angel stepped up to the mother. "I'm a private investigator. Do you have any idea what might have happened to cause this?"
She studied Angel's face for a moment, then stared at Serena, then looked back at her daughter. She resumed stroking the child's hair.
"I had fallen asleep on the couch watching television. I remember waking up know that something was wrong. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach." She stared at Angel again. "Have you ever had that feeling." She stopped. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"Angel," he said. "My name is Angel. This is my.this is Serena."
This made the mother smile for a brief moment.
"That's a nice name, Angel. My daughter would like it." She leaned close to her child's ear. "Did you hear that, Aubrey? His name is Angel. Aubrey Christina Bentone"
Serena turned her head from the mother and daughter, beginning to sniffle. She quietly told Angel she would be waiting outside. He looked at her worriedly as he watched her sit in a chair outside in the hallway, slumping. He knew that she was crying. He turned his attention back to the little girl.
"Aubrey is a pretty name also," Angel said. "So, when you woke up, you felt something wrong. What was it, Mrs. Bentone?" Angel asked, hoping to distract her from her grief.
"Call me June, please." She corrected through her tears. She wiped her eyes with a crumpled tissue and then blew her nose.
"June. What did you do then?" Angel prodded.
The woman's eyes became glassy. She was back in her house, reliving the experience. "I jumped off the couch and ran to her room. I called to her first, but she didn't answer. I started screaming her name over and over again." June clutched the tissue to her quivering mouth. Her eyes brimmed with emotion. "And this is how I found her. No matter how hard I shook her, she wouldn't wake up. My baby wouldn't wake up."
Angel felt the woman's grief as if it were his own. He studied the child's face, her fragile gone structure, the pale china-doll quality of her skin, her tiny delicate mouth.
Then he remembered. The thing that had been gnawing at him at the back of his mind surged forward. A painful memory of his past. Another child--- another beautiful little girl touched by the unnatural.
With excruciating heartache, he remembered his sister and what he had done to her.
It was after he had been taken by the vampire Darla, after he had died and been buried. After he had risen from the grave as a vampire.
He returned home to his family but found he could not enter the house without being invited----one of the strange new rules that governed him now that he was undead.
He lured her to the door. His baby sister. He could still see her eyes, red from crying, red from mourning his death three nights previous. She had been so happy to see him again. She thought he came back to her as an angel.
An angel.
The monster he had become told her that he missed her terribly and asked that she invite him in so he could show her how happy he was to be back. She smiled so innocently as she took his hand and bid him enter.
Angel flinched at the recollection, filled with the self-loathing and guilt that was only part of the curse upon him. He stood in the hospital room and looked down at little Aubrey Bentone, who would now forever remind him of his sweet sister and the horrors he had visited upon her, and he steeled himself against the burden of his past.
He had traded his sister's innocence and love to gain entry to the family home. That had just been the beginning of the seemingly endless depravity and abomination, and yet, of all the things he had done as the monster, Angelus, what he'd done to his sister was probably the worse.
Angel saw his sister lying in the hospital bed, gauze pads covering her eyes, IV tube leading from clear bags of fluid into needles in her arm. He blinked and the child was Aubrey Bentone again. Someone he could save.
Here was a child in desperate need. So much more than Cordy's vision or his own mission for redemption.
Aubrey's mother was singer her a lullaby when Angel reached out and placed his hand on top of Aubrey's. It was warm. Warm with life. With possibility.
"June, I'd like to help her. I want to help your daughter."