CHAPTER SIX
"Your sister and her boyfriend are here," the nurse says casually, sliding open the green curtain that surrounds them.
Instantly Dawn wishes that the accident had left her in a coma or unconscious at least. Then she wouldn't have to deal with the questions, the accusations, the disappointment in her sister's face. She thinks briefly about lying down on the cot and feigning grave injury. The wreck left her with barely a scratch and she now thinks if she had some big oozing cuts or an indigo shiner around her eye that her sister would take pity on her. But before she can further contemplate any sort of ruse, Spike and Buffy appear.
"Oh, God," Buffy says, relief pouring from her face in sheets when she sees that her sister isn't hooked up to any machines. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, Buff, I'm fine. Just a little shaken," Dawn replies.
"What happened?"
Question number one, Dawn thinks ruefully, and it has to be the hardest one. "First of all, Buffy, don't freak."
"Don't give me a reason to," Buffy says. "The driver you were with was drinking, wasn't he?"
Already Question Number Two, even with the answer to Question Number one still on the launch pad.
"Well, yeah, he was, but---
"Dawn!" Buffy expostulates. "How many times have I told you NOT to get in a car with someone who's been drinking?"
"Listen, I didn't know he had been drinking! I swear! He seemed perfectly OK to me."
"Who was it?"
Question Number Three. A fairly easy one.
"This guy. Michael Lloyd."
"Michael Lloyd?" Spike asks. "The bloke who's a freshman at UC Sunnydale? The one who dates Melissa Braxton?"
"Yeah, that's him."
"I thought you didn't like him. Said he cracked his knuckles all the time and smelled like Ben Gay."
"Well, he is annoying. And by the way, he's not dating Melissa Braxton anymore. He's dating Meredith Cummings."
"The chit who gets out of playing dodge ball all the time because of her implants?"
"Well, that's just a rumor. But she did develop kind of quickly and she does sit out of a lot of dodge ball games."
"I thought she was dating Ben Murphy."
"Oh, they are so over. Didn't I tell you about what happened at Katie Olsen's party?"
"I don't think so."
"Oh, God, it was all over school how Ben and Katie's cousin Brenda were caught making out in the basement. Meredith was soooo pissed that she---
"OK, OK. Enough of the Sunnydale High Soap Opera update," Buffy says, privately marveling about how much her boyfriend knows about her sister's classmates and concluding that the two of them spend far too much time together. "Can we get back to the issue at hand? Dawn, you were supposed to be at a party tonight, but for some reason you left it to get into a car with a driver who was impaired and shouldn't have been driving."
"The party turned out to be really lame. I mean, so boring there were people, like, falling asleep on the couch. Michael said he knew of another party in the hills. I didn't know whose party it was, but Travis did. He said they were pretty cool. So before I knew it, we were all in Michael's car heading for the hills. And then we were heading for a stoplight that was red, but Michael didn't seem to notice. He ran right through it and the car kind of got slammed into by another driver coming through the intersection."
"Oh, good God," Buffy mutters, the image of the accident unfurling in her mind. "You could have been killed, you know that."
"Yeah, I know. But the important thing is I wasn't, right?"
"Yes, that is the important thing. But it still worries me that even after I've told you time and time again not to that you would get into a car with someone who had been drinking."
"Buffy, it's like I told you. I had no idea Michael was drunk. There wasn't any alcohol at the party. He must have had a flask or something."
"Was anybody badly hurt?" Buffy wonders.
"No. I think Michael mashed his mouth on the steering wheel because there was all kinds of blood dripping from his mouth after the accident. And Travis just has a few bumps and bruises like I have. Meredith was OK too."
"Well, at least there's that," Buffy says.
"So…I'm not in trouble or anything, am I?"
Buffy takes a moment to look at Spike. Of course, the idea of punishing Dawn is always the last thing on his mind whenever she goes astray, mostly because her punishments usually involve grounding which means long, long days of her in the apartment when he and Buffy could be fucking.
Finally, a smile breaks through Buffy's worried features. "No, I don't think so. Not this time. I think the accident was probably lesson enough. You just scared the hell out of us, that's all."
"I know. And I'm sorry. I really am."
"That's OK, Dawn," Buffy says wearily, drawing her little sister into a tentative embrace. She eyes her platinum-coifed lover, remembering what they were doing when she got the phone call. This seems to be on his mind as well as he embraces Dawn from the other side. He shakes his head defeatedly and smiles as he places a kiss on Dawn's forehead.
Suddenly, Dawn is sniffing the air, contorting her nostrils in an exaggerated way as a certain scent catches her attention.
"Spike?" she asks, still sniffing. "Why do you smell like vanilla?"
Spike only clears his throat and gives Buffy a warning glare not to say a word. But soon there is something to distract them. All attention now is re-routed to the short, stocky man in the pin-striped tie with the mustard strain on his lapel.
"Well, Miss Summers, it doesn't appear that anything is broken," he says, glancing at his notes before beaming his smile their way. "You're free to go."
"Thank you, doctor," Buffy says. "Is there anything we should do for her at home?"
"She'll be a little sore for a while, I imagine. A little ibuprofen should take care of the aches and pains. Warm baths should help as well."
You might have to wait in line, Buffy thinks as she smiles over at her lover.
"So I'm free to go?" Dawn asks hopefully.
"You are discharged."
The trio emerges as a solid unit from the cubicle. Dawn is a little stiff and she takes slow, measured steps that the Slayer and the vampire match on either side of her. Buffy is still going over in her mind how bad the accident could have been and how lucky she is to be taking her sister home in one piece. Her sister's mortality has been challenged a lot in the short time she's been on the earth. She hopes this will be the one hundredth and final time, but in her heart, she knows it probably isn't. She is a Summers girl after all.
"Hey, there wasn't a lot of food at the party. Can we maybe stop somewhere and get a burger or something before we go home?" Dawn asks.
"Oh, I guess so," Buffy says tiredly. "But we do have some of that leftover potato bake in the fridge if you're hungry."
Dawn aims a terrified look in Spike's direction, a distress signal he knows quite well.
"Uh, Buffy, I could go for a burger as well," Spike says, receiving Dawn's grateful, silent thank you's. "There's a Doublemeat Palace on the way home. We could go through the drive thru."
"Oh, OK. A milkshake does sound good right about now."
As they were winding their way down the hall, they hear loud voices coming from one of the open wards to the left. In their approach, at least one of the voices becomes more and more recognizable. It is the voice of a boy, its pitch wavering from high to low frequencies, repeatedly saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Once they are all able to get a proper view of the situation, they see the familiar boy, hunched over on the gurney where he sits, miserably. On one side stands a tall gentlemen who is not saying a word. On the other side is an hysterical harpy of a woman for whom a loss for words does not seem to be an issue.
"Why did you let this happen? How could you have been so stupid?" the woman asks, seemingly rhetorically as she is not listening to any of the "I'm sorries" being issued in return. "Honestly, I don't understand you sometimes. No, all the time. You have this bright future ahead of you. You're going to be accepted at MIT. You're going to be a chemical engineer who will make a very good living. But tonight you almost threw it all away, didn't you?" The boy just slumps against her continued harangues. She grabs him by his collar. "Didn't you?"
"Mom, how many times do I have to tell you I'm sorry?" he fires back, jerking her hand away from his shirt.
"The thing is, you're not sorry. You don't even realize what you've done. You could have been killed. You could be lying down in the morgue right now!"
"I know, Mom. But I'm not. I'm alive. I mean, aren't you at least happy about that?"
"Yes, I am happy that my son is alive. But I just am having a little trouble understanding why he's sitting here in hospital after getting in a car with a drunk driver. A DRUNK DRIVER!"
"But I didn't know he was---
"Oh, come on, Travis! Don't even try to use that as an excuse. You're a smart boy. You should know what a person acts like when he's been drinking."
"Honest, Mom, it's the truth!"
Before Mrs. Singleton can fire back with a retort, Dawn's small voice intervenes.
"It is true, Mrs. Singleton. None of us knew Michael had been drinking. Travis even asked him before we got in the car and he lied," Dawn says.
Mrs. Singleton makes a slow turn in Dawn's direction and the teenager can feel every hair stand up on the back of her neck. Her eyes cut to Travis, who is silently pleading with her to back off; this is not her fight. She should run away, far away, just as fast and as soon as she can.
"I really don't think this is any of your business, young lady," Mrs. Singleton sneers through teeth that are so gnarled, Dawn thinks her top and bottom front teeth are just going to pop out and pierce her right in the chest like a rain of gunfire.
"Um, actually it is, because I was in the wreck," Dawn replies warily.
"Yes, you were. And I would expect this kind of reckless behavior from someone who spends most of her school days in the principal's office. But not from my son."
Buffy can feel the fury building in her, the heady heat of a battle about to begin. It is the same feeling she gets when she is about to take on a demon. But before she can utter a word, someone has beaten her to a response.
"Hey!" Spike interjects. "Now, Buffy and I do the best job we know how raising Dawn. It's not easy and we do mistakes, but I think Dawn's track record speaks for itself. Out of the ten times she's been to the principal's office this semester, there have been only three times she was actually guilty of what she was accused of. So you see---
"Hey, honey," Buffy says, pressing a hand against Spike's chest. "I think you've made your point. Mrs. Singleton, don't you think you're being just a little too harsh on Travis. I mean, Dawn told us that she had no idea Michael was drunk and we believed her."
Mrs. Singleton gives a curt laugh. "Fine. You just go ahead and wallow in your denial. In the meantime, I'll keep doing the job of being a responsible parent." It seems that Mrs. Singleton is finished with them, but then she turns around again with a new fire alight in her eyes. "One day, Miss Summers, you'll know what it's like to be a parent. Someday you will know what it's like to have something you carried inside of you need your guidance and your discipline. Until that day, don't even think about passing judgement on my parenting skills, you little---
"Samantha, that's enough," the heretofore silent man says, untucking his arm from the folded length of his jacket to coral his wife in before she says too much.
Mrs. Singleton inhales an audible breath through her flared nostrils and demurs to her husband, at last turning around to her son once again. Travis looks at the floor, his shoulders hunched, helplessness registering in his face, pinching his youthful features until he looks as old as his father. Buffy takes the initiative to stir her group away from the joyless trio, leaving them to flit hopelessly in their dysfunction until the doctor comes in and releases the boy to his parents' care and probably more of the same treatment at home.
None of the three says a word about what they witnessed either in the parking lot or in the car. Nothing is said until the Desoto pulls into the parking lot of the Doublemeat Palace. A line of cars snakes its way around the perimeter of the restaurant for the drive thru, but it appears that inside, there are fewer people cueing up at the registers. Dawn volunteers to be the hunter gatherer and as soon as she snags a twenty from her sister, she is out the door, still walking a bit stiffly, to the side door of the restaurant.
Once Dawn is a safe distance away, Spike exhales and slams his hand on the steering wheel. "That woman!"
"I was just waiting for you to say something," Buffy says.
"As a seasoned pro on the demon circuit, I can tell you that that woman is pure evil," Spike says, drumming his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel. In the old days, he would have been taken Mrs. Singleton's actions as a plea for a speedy separation of skull from spinal column. An exception should have been made in this case. Buffy should have allowed him to at least toss her across the room into a table of medical instruments, letting her crash to the floor in a shower of metal. But she is human. Buffy even frowned on the idea of his snacking on a would-be mugger one time, so he imagines any act of violence against Mrs. Singleton would have provoked a similar reaction from his lady love, even though the woman was clearly asking for it.
"I kind of felt sorry for Travis," Buffy says through a dreary sigh.
"You know, I don't like that boy, but I will tell you that his mother should be very glad that Travis even likes girls, the way she treats him."
"I mean, you believe Dawn, don't you?"
"Of course I do. She would never lie to us."
"No, not to us," Buffy says, a minute tingle twitching her lips into a smile.
Spike looks over at her and catches her unannounced expression. After the evening they've had, a smile is the last thing he expects to see on her face. "Hey," he says, dropping a hand on her shoulder for a brief squeeze. "What rates a smile on my girl's face?"
"Oh, nothing," she says, shining a pair of admiring eyes his way as she leans against the seat. "Just us."
"Us?"
"Yeah. You and me. After that whole summer of it just being me with Dawn and second guessing myself and trying to get things right with her through trial and error. It's nice to have someone to be an us with."
"Even though the us is…us?"
She smiles again, linking her fingers with his. "I only want to be an us with you, sweetheart."