Joyce Summers walked slowly towards the hospital entrance. It was a clean, well-lit place, but despite friendliness of the staff and the attempts to provide a home-like atmosphere, there was an almost palpable aura of despair hanging over the institution.
Gathering her courage, she braced herself for the weekly ordeal. Why do I bother to come here?, she thought. Buffy doesn't even acknowledge my presence anymore. Maybe we should give up hope, stop torturing ourselves like this week after week. Filled with guilt, she glanced at Hank. He's never given up, Joyce thought, no matter how withdrawn Buffy is, or how many violent episodes she has, she's still his little girl.
They entered the building, signed in and made their way to the Dayroom, where the patients were allowed to receive visitors. Hank and Joyce spotted their daughter at the other end of the room.
Buffy and her new constant companion were in their usual spot in front of the Dayroom television, staring at a re-run of Cordy!; both girls seemingly mesmerized by the banal plot and the star's inadequate acting skills. In this gem of an episode, Cordy's old high school friend, Harmony had come to visit, much to Wesley's dismay, with the usual wacky hijinks ensuing.
"At least Buffy has a friend now," Hank said. "I guess that's a positive sign."
Joyce didn't quite agree. On one hand, it was good to see Buffy actually interacting with a real person; on the other, Winifred Burkle was just as delusional as Buffy. Joyce often feared that the girls had an unhealthy effect on each other.
A middle-aged woman joined the Summers. Joyce could tell by her demeanor that she was another sad parent who had lost a child to mental illness.
"I'm Joyce Summers, Buffy's mother. This is my husband, Hank," Joyce said to the other woman.
"Hi, I'm Trish Burkle. Pleased to meet you," Trish said, shaking Joyce's hand. "My husband, Roger is parking the car. Is that your daughter there, the one with my Fred?"
"Yes, that's our Buffy," Joyce said. "She's been here for over eight years."
"She's so young," Trish said. "I'm sorry. It must be so hard for you."
Joyce throat tightened. Trish, sensing her distress, tried to think of the right words to say. Roger Burkle joined them, much to Trish's relief. Hank introduced himself and Joyce.
"Hey, sweetie, it looks like Fred's made a friend," Roger said, determined to be optimistic. "That's gotta be good."
"That's what I've been saying, Roger," Hank said. "Why, before you know it, the girls will be back to their old selves." Joyce smiled bravely.
Later, when visiting hours were over, both couples decided to grab a bite to eat. At first the conversation was strained, filled with awkward pauses, but gradually they relaxed, and over coffee, began to talk about their daughters.
"Fred dropped out of grad school in her second year. We didn't know where she was or even if she were alive or dead," Trish said, her voice betraying her grief. "Then when we found her, she was so, well, crazy. She just kept babbling about priests and cows and something called a portal. It didn't make any sense."
Joyce leaned forward. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it," she said.
"No," Trish said. "It feels good to get it off my chest. My friends back home, they just don't understand what it's like to have your only child in a place like this, but you do, don't you Joyce?"
Joyce nodded sadly. "Yeah, I do," she said softly. "So what happened?"
"She joined a cult," Roger said, his voice tight with anger. "A damned cult. They took our little girl and turned her into a babbling wreck who can't tell fantasy from reality. Fred was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Now look at her! We never should have let her come here," Roger said bitterly.
"A cult?" Hank said.
"Yeah, one of those back to nature communes. The place is a real hell-hole. It's up in the mountains with no electricity, no running water, the members working like slaves while the 'Priests' live in luxury. Roger's face flushed with anger as he continued. "Fred was a physicist and she spent five years doing farm work! You should have seen her, she was filthy, dressed in rags, she looked like she hadn't had a square meal in months. For a while, she was even living in a cave!"
"How did she end up there?" Joyce asked, appalled.
"Fred was always a good girl, if anything she was too nice, too naive," Trish said. "She fell in with the wrong crowd and just got sucked into it. Roger wanted to have the leaders arrested, but the police were no help. They told us that since Fred was an adult when she joined, there was nothing they could do."
"How did you get her out?" Hank asked.
"About the time Fred joined up, one of the original members left. Real nice guy, named Lorne, he's running a nightclub in LA now. Anyway, a friend of his got mixed up in the cult, by accident, and she couldn't get out; the poor girl was practically a prisoner from what Lorne said. So Lorne and this private investigator friend of his went in with some muscle to get the girl out. They found Fred living in squalor, and brought her back to LA with them," Roger said. "She was in such bad shape, she wouldn't even talk to anyone for months. We didn't even know she was here in the hospital until about four months later."
Hank and Joyce exchanged a horrified glance. It had been hard for them to watch Buffy slip away, bit by bit, into her fantasy world, but nothing she had experienced compared to this.
"The cruelest thing is that sometimes we almost get through to her," Roger said. "For a few days last year it really seemed that Fred was getting better. She was responding so well to her new doctor we hoped she'd recover. My memory's getting terrible. What was the doctor's name again, honey?" he said to Trish.
"Jasmine, Dr. Jasmine O'Connor," Trish replied.
"Anyway, Fred had calmed down, stopped babbling nonsense, she acted happy for a change. Then suddenly, she turned against Dr. O'Connor. It was awful, Fred kept insisting Jasmine was evil and rotten. She even tried to attack Dr. O'Connor once. They had to transfer Fred to another floor after that," Roger said.
Trish shuddered at the memory of her gentle daughter ranting and raving like a lunatic; screaming that Jasmine, the nicest person Trish had ever met, was covered in maggots, eating people and wanted to enslave the world.
"I'm just glad Fred's not all alone now," Roger said. "It's good to see her with Buffy."
"God knows what they talk about all day," Hank said. "They just sit there in the corner, stare at the TV, and whisper to each other."
"But where do they get their ideas from?" Joyce said.
Hank shook his head, patted Joyce's arm and said ruefully, "Honey, that's something we'll never know."
Meanwhile, the Cordy! marathon had ended. The television screen now showed a commercial for a local law firm. Sirens sounded while a sleazy middle-aged man in a cheap suit listed the services his low-rent, ambulance-chasing outfit provided. 'Divorce, DWI, Worker's Comp, immigration problems? No problem! Your friends at Wolfram and Hart are more than qualified to win your case or your money back!', he said, smiling insincerely while a disclaimer, written in very small print, rapidly flashed across the screen.
A tall, trashy brunette and a short, scruffy man wearing obviously phony bandages joined him. The woman said 'After my husband was injured at work, I called Wolfram and Hart. They got us a huge settlement. Isn't that right?' The younger man stared blankly for a moment; the woman nudged elbowed his ribs. Blinking, he said in a monotone, 'That's right, Wolfram and Hart helped me get, uh, justice, yeah, that's it.' The spokesman gave an especially smarmy smile. 'Wolfram and Hart - your last hope.'
A second commercial started. Another man, this one tall, dark and rather brutish looking, with over-gelled hair and wearing an ill-fitting leather jacket, came on screen. Staring into the camera, he said, 'uh, I'm, uh, Angelo, President and, uh, CEO of Angelo's Investigations.' His voice trailed off. An off-screen voice called out: 'look at the cue-card'.
Angelo turned around, then continued his spiel. 'You need anything done, like you wanna find out about something like who's running around with your, uh, wife or something, or which jerk in your business is ripping you off, or maybe you wanna track down your deadbeat ex-boyfriend and make him pay for your kid, you come straight to me. I'm Angelo, and, uh, me and my associates, uh, Gunn, and my kid Connor, we, uh, we don't want money'. . . The same voice whispered 'We help the helpless'. Angelo repeated 'yeah, that's it, we, uh, help the helpless.'
The End.