Part 8: MIA

It was late, Buffy stood outside of Spike's room having just been out to stretch her legs. She thought hard about lying down on the couch in the waiting room, instead of going back in and sitting in the stanch backed chairs. She was definitely thinking her decision to not have a cot set up in the room was a mistake. But she didn't want to admit that he would be staying there for any length of time, so she declined it.

She slowly and tiredly headed back into the dim room where her husband and father in law where sleeping or where they should have been. When she walked into the room and saw Spike's empty bed and Rupert's vacant chair she didn't know what to make of it, immediately she turned and rushed over to the nurse's station. To Buffy's further distress Nurse Walsh was the only nurse available.

"Have you seen Spike?" Buffy's voice was shrill and panicked. Nurse Walsh looked up nonchalantly from the paper she was filling out. "If by Spike" she sneered "you mean Agent Giles, then no I haven't seen him Mrs. Giles. I would imagine he would be in his bed, sense it is very late. I think you should go back and check since I'm pretty sure he isn't walking around out here." Buffy glared and the nurse.

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Giles walked down the hall back to his son's room. He took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Sitting back in the room in his terribly restrictive chair he put his glasses back on and was surprised to see Buffy was still gone and shocked to find his son was not asleep on the bed. He was half way out of the room to go find a nurse when Buffy came running back down the hall.

"Giles where were you? Have you seen Spike?" Buffy grabbed Giles's shoulders.

"No I just got up to..." Giles realized that it didn't matter what he was doing now, it only mattered what he did now. "Where would he go, he couldn't have gotten far. He's in no shape to be up and walking around."

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Nurse Walsh neglected to inform anyone that that Agent Giles was missing; she instead left the Hospital and found Agent Finn standing outside.

"What did you do?" the nurse was dwarfed by the large soldier but she held her ground.

"What are you talking about?" Agent Finn put away the cell phone he had been talking on and looked puzzled at the older woman.

"It's none of my business if you want to watch or whatever you're doing to him, but when he goes missing people get nosy."

"He's missing?" Finn

"Well his wife seems to think he's not in his bed. Don't you know where he is?"

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Angel was headed into the hospital when he spotted the man he was looking for.

To be continued...