THIRTY-FIVE

* * *

It was always hard to go in.

He thought of surgeons at times like this, cutting someone open and tinkering with a heart, repairing a bone, removing a tumor. Just get in and get out and let the body heal itself. Most of medicine is really just letting us heal ourselves.

And so sometimes Garrett found himself envying the surgeons, the relative simplicity of their work. How do you heal yourself when what is broken is the very thing you need for the healing, when it is the mind that that is injured?

The door opened heavily and he stepped inside. She was on the floor, wrapped in a straitjacket, and he tensed a bit as he saw her in it. He had never liked restraints, even when they were necessary, and the straitjacket was like something out of a horror movie, constricting, binding, terrifying. He would have preferred that they let her out of it now, but the memory of the orderly and his broken arm was still fresh in the minds of the staff and he had been overruled.

Garrett stepped to her, crouched before her.

"Hello, Buffy."

She didn't react right away, and he wondered where she was. Finally she answered slowly.

"Dead," she said.

His gaze didn't flinch. At least she was talking.

"Dead?"

Now she looked at him, her face cut by loose strands of her blonde hair. She seemed far away behind its bars.

"Dead."

"Who's dead, Buffy?"

"Everyone."

He paused. "Including me? Including you?"

"Yes."

"How do you know this?"

She looked away. So thin and so tired, he thought. There is no respite in her war.

"Because everyone dies," she said then. "Always and always. It's everywhere."

"Death."

"Yes."

He nodded now, sat down cross-legged on the padded floor before her. She watched him as he did, her eyes wary.

"That's true," he said. "But it's nothing you haven't known for a long time. But two days ago it was something more, wasn't it? Can you tell me what happened?"

Her head fell forward a bit, the long, dirty strands of her hair hanging loosely before her. For several minutes she didn't speak, and Garrett remained silent. Finally a few words came.

"She died."

"Who did, Buffy?"

"Willow. I tried to save her but she died. They always die."

"Willow. Your best friend?"

Buffy looked over at him.

"Cynthia is my best friend."

A new name. Garrett kept his face calm.

"Cynthia. Can you tell me about Cynthia, Buffy?"

Again, nothing, then a little.

"My dad died. I was with Cynthia, and --"

Garrett tried to place Buffy's father now. In her other world he had run away, she said, had not even contacted them when her mother died, had abandoned her and Dawn. But who was Cynthia?

Slowly, Garrett began to probe, his words gentle, and slowly a few answers came. Cynthia, her oldest and dearest friend. They were at the prom, and then Mom was there, and Dad was dead. A car accident on the way home from something, just a few hours after he had given her a beautiful necklace.

Mom was there? Wasn't Mom dead? He asked this carefully.

"Your mother and father are still married?"

Buffy nodded. She seemed very distant.

"Yes. But he died. And they got divorced and he ran away, and now it's just me and Dawn and Willow is dead. I let her die. I let him die. They all die."

Garrett watched her. He was beginning to understand. "You know me, don't you, Buffy? You know my name?"

"You're Dr. Garrett. Your son died."

Garrett closed his eyes. It shouldn't hurt, but it always did. Had he been right to tell her? Had she misunderstood?

"Yes," he said. "He did."

"I'm sorry. I wish I could save him. But I can't save anyone."

Garrett looked at her again, blinking a bit to make his vision clear. Pain, he thought. There's always pain. Life is always pain. For even a few seconds of love we pay such a terrible price. But we never stop seeking love, despite it.

He swallowed heavily, formed his next words carefully.

"I'm sorry about Willow and your father, Buffy. I want to help you, if I can. Can you tell me how Willow died?"

She looked at him again and he thought suddenly that she was reading his pain just as he read hers. And then, slowly, she began to speak.