Preludes:

CH2 – Journey's Start

Buffy rushed into a brightly lit hallway. Her heart was jackhammering against her ribcage and her palms were sweaty. She glanced frantically around for the dark head of the younger Summers. Buffy had been just walking up the steps from another won battle, this time against the tide of Xander's evil dresser which had refused to enter through his new apartment doorway, when Dawn's call had come through on her cell. She'd started to ask her sister to call back on the house phone in a few minutes, but Dawn had cut her off screeching that something was wrong with their mom.

As Buffy took a quick second to look at the call display, she'd noticed for the first time that the number from which Dawn dialed wasn't familiar. Quickly she had replaced the little gadget to her ear only to find Dawn crying heavily through her garbled words.

"Dawnie, calm down, I can't make out what you're saying!" Buffy raised her voice, "What about mom? Where are you calling me from?"

Her heart had dropped to the bottom of her stomach when Dawn managed to sputter out that she was waiting in the emergency room. Something had happened to Joyce and she had passed out. "Please, Buffy," Dawn pleaded in between harsh gasps of air, "just get to the hospital!"

Now she was steamrolling down the hospital's fourth floor trying to find the visitor's room. As Buffy was about to yank on the arm of a nurse walking by, she found herself with a bundle of Dawn in her arms, sobbing onto her shoulder.

As they returned to the sitting area, clearly visible if she hadn't been in such a panic, she tried to get something intelligible from her sister.

"Dawn, please try to calm down. I need to know what's going on."

"I-i-it was awful. Mom was going to order pizza for dinner and she said she was feeling so much better and then, she just…" the young teen took a deep breath, wiping her eyes. "She was reaching for the phone, and I don't know! She just got dizzy and then she was on the floor. Buffy, I couldn't get her to wake up! I called 9-1-1 and then borrowed fifty cents when I got here to call you."

"Okay. Have the doctors said anything at all?"

Dawn gave a disgusted grunt. "They've had her for, like, twenty-five minutes now and I haven't heard a damned word. Buffy, mom…s-she-she wouldn't wake up."

Buffy held her sister for several minutes as another wave of nearly hysterical crying resulted. Once the outburst had subsided, she found herself wiping her own eyes. She could feel panic beginning to rise again in her chest and knew she'd go crazy sitting here any longer.

"Look, Dawnie…here's my cell. I need you to give Riley a call, okay? I'm going to try to find someone who can tell me what's going on."

"Good luck," Dawn said; her voice was still watery with shedding tears, "I can't get anything out of any of them." Her voice held a mixture of fear and anger.

"Oh, I'll find out something, if I have to start breaking arms!"

As Buffy made her way down the hallway toward the nurse's station, she suppressed her desire to cry. It wasn't easy. She couldn't imagine Joyce ever being seriously ill. In fact, she could probably count on one hand the times that her mother had even gotten the flu.

As she walked up to the semi-circular desk, an elderly woman wearing a pastel blue uniform top looked over her glasses at Buffy. Slipping them off and allowing them to hang from a chain around her neck, she peered at the young woman in front of her. She radiated calm and sympathetic warmth that seemed to sooth Buffy's taut nerves.

"Excuse me. I'm trying to find some information on my mom. She was brought in about a half hour ago or so and my sister hasn't heard anything at all."

"What's the last name, sweetie?"

"Uh, Summers. There's, um, two 'm's and, uh, an 's' on the end."

"Here we are; Joyce?" And at Buffy's nod, "The computer says she's been moved into a room, so she must be stable. Why don't you return to the sitting area? What I'll do is pop down the hallway and look at her chart. When I see who's been assigned to her case tonight, I'll have them paged to come and speak with you, okay?"

For some reason, Buffy felt absurdly grateful for this kindness and shook her head to show she understood. Fighting more tears she returned to the waiting room, only to realize she still didn't know a thing about what was happening with her mother.

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End CH 2