Chapter V: Dealing With The Consequences
Sunnydale General Hospital was having a busy night.
There had been a sudden epidemic of measles at a nearby elementary school, and a group of overprotective parents were insisting on having their children checked up on by a doctor before pressing charges against the school; a party at a downtown diner had resulted in several teenagers coming down with suspicious food poisoning; and there had been an accident at a nearby construction site, injuring several workers.
And then, of course, there was the collision at the Lowell Road intersection. Dr. Lynn Horton flipped through the chart handed to her by the paramedics: the accident victims were three males and eight females, assumed to be between sixteen and twenty years old. According to the paramedics' conclusions, three of them – the ones found in the driver's seats – had suffered severe head traumas, five others had broken bones in two or more areas, and all were suspected of internal bleeding.
Dr. Horton sighed as she tracked down the rooms of those who had already been taken out of OR. When will people ever learn? After all that she had seen, it never ceased to amaze her how the same mistakes were repeated over and over, sometimes even by the same people.
Flipping through the chart again, she found that there were three vehicles involved: one belonging to the male teenagers, the other to seven of the females, and the third to the remaining female. No kind of identification had been found in any of the vehicles.
She had been told by a nurse that the four girls who had already regained consciousness had been moved to room E327, and it didn't take her long to locate it; after spending over seven years at the same hospital, its white halls had become all too familiar to her.
"Well," Dr. Horton said, walking into the room, "it's nice to see that you're all alert." Actually, all four girls looked almost perfectly healthy; except, of course, for the bandages that one of them was busy trying to peel off of her arm.
"These things are only good for making my skin itch," the girl explained, glancing at the doctor briefly before throwing the bandage away and rubbing her arm.
"I hear you," another girl agreed. "Eve always says they're a waste of good gauze."
"That reminds me… where is Eve? And Chloe?" The first girl suddenly fixed her attention on the doctor.
"You mean the others who were in the car with you?" Dr. Horton asked, tucking the clipboard under her arm as she mentally noted that there were no apparent injuries among any of the girls.
"Yes…" The girl sitting at the far end of the room shut her eyes briefly. "There were seven of us. In the car. During the accident…" She was speaking slowly, as though she were trying to remind herself what had happened. "Amanda - Amanda was driving. She… where is she?"
Dr. Horton sighed. Possible disorientation – going to have to run a CAT scan on this one. After a while, she had stopped noticing that she had even begun to think in medical terms. "I think you'd better start by giving me your names."
The girl at the far end nodded. "I'm Dawn – and this is Molly, Rona and Vi," she said, gesturing at each of them in turn. Good – no apparent memory loss, Dr. Horton noted. "You're going to have to give me your surnames as well - and your phone numbers."
The girls remained quiet for a few moments, and then the one who'd called herself Dawn sighed. "My full name's Dawn Summers. I'll give you my phone number – you can reach anyone you want to from there."
Dr. Horton took the girl's word for it and wrote down her phone number. "All right. I'm going to call up your parents -"
"Sister," Dawn corrected. "My parents are gone," she explained simply, seeing the suspicion on the woman's face.
"All right, then, I'll call up your sister and then I'll go check on your friends. I'll be back in just a few moments." She started to leave, but then turned around mid-stride. "By the way – do you know anything about the people in the other cars involved in the accident?"
They all shook their heads no, and the doctor sighed. "Never mind; it was a long shot anyway." After she had left, silence fell over the small hospital room.
"I don't remember much of what happened," Vi said, finally breaking the silence. "It all seems like such a blur."
"I feel that way too," Rona added. "And I have a massive headache coming on – I don't think the Slayer super-healing package comes with migraine protection."
They would usually have laughed, but instead the silence settled back into the room, stifling anything that might even have resembled laughter. "When she said 'the other cars', how many do you think she was talking about?" Molly asked, trying to break the heavy mood.
"I don't know. Probably just a few," Vi said. Then her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. "What if someone… you know… didn't make it?"
"You mean one of the other girls?" Dawn's head snapped up, and the sudden pain made her flinch. "No. No way - it couldn't have been that bad." She paused, helplessness suddenly showing in her features. "Right?"
"You're probably right," Rona said soothingly. "We came out fine, didn't we? And it takes a lot to bring down a Slayer."
"Yes, but we're not actually Slayers," Vi pointed out. She wasn't deliberately trying to sink their hopes, they all knew that - she just wanted to be as realistic as possible.
"Oh, God, I hope they're all right," Molly whispered. Dawn sank her head into her hands, trying to clear her mind. Vampires, demons, monsters… Those we can handle. Not car accidents.
A few moments later, Dr. Horton returned to the room, carrying her clipboard. She cleared her throat a few times, and when all the girls had fixed their attention on her she drew a deep sigh. "I'm afraid I have some bad news."
Dawn had always hated that sentence; she remembered all the TV shows she had seen, where people ended up in comas or died and the doctor always broke the news with 'I'm afraid I have some bad news…'
Oh, God, please… Please, just don't let anyone have died… Please…
"Your friends were severely injured, and they were taken to an operating room as soon as you got here…"
And they're fine. They're going to be just fine…
"And, well, there were a lot of internal complications – almost too many to handle. The doctors who operated on them did all they could…"
But they're going to be sore for a little while, or need wheelchairs for a few weeks. Come on, anything but dead… They can't be dead…
"We managed to fit your descriptions to them - and two of them are going to be a little shaken for a while, but eventually fine."
Dawn started to draw a relieved breath, but then she remembered that she had only said 'two of them'. Two? But then… No… Dawn had never been a very religious person, but at that moment she prayed as hard as she could to whatever higher force existed in the universe; she just couldn't stand the thought of surviving Doomsday itself and then losing yet another person she cared about.
"The one you called Chloe… Her injuries were more complicated than those of the others…"
No, not Chloe… Please, no…
"She didn't make it. I'm sorry."
To Be Continued.
