The Hospital.

"And how's my favourite patient doing this morning?" asked Dr McGregor. He was an elderly man who wore round, horn rimmed spectacles and his thick grey hair stood up around his head in a halo. He stood, twirling his stethoscope around his fingers, as he waited for the nurse to remove her bandages.

Favourite patient? Buffy wasn't sure what made her his favourite patient. Apart from answering yes or no didn't think she'd ever had a conversation with him. Usually he just read her notes, prodded her injuries until she yelped with pain, and then wrote down an observation before moving on to someone else.

"Me?" Buffy waved a bandaged hand at him. "I'd say I'm peachy with a side of keen." Hoping he wouldn't ask too many personal questions. On the other side of the curtain, only a few feet away, was another bed and another occupant who couldn't help overhearing everything being said.

Buffy was in a children's ward. She hated it. It wasn't just the lack of privacy, the constant smell of disinfectant, or being with kids who were a lot younger than herself. No, it wasn't just that. There was something about this place, maybe all hospitals, that made her skin crawl and kept her on constant edge. She kept imagining demons lurking in corridors and closets, ready to spring out and suck the life from her when there was no one around.

"Hmm," replied the doctor as he read through her notes. " Peachy, eh? You're making me think of lunch, although I suspect it will be some time before I see peaches and cream again. So Miss..." he lifted the notes closer to his eyes and squinted, "Buffy Summers. Can you tell me when your birthday is and how old you are?"

"According to my passport it's January the 19th 1927." She tried to sound chipper about it. The truth was, that until she'd opened her Mom's purse and found their identity papers, she'd no idea when she was born. "I worked it out and I'm fifteen."

"No recollection of how old you were, before you saw your passport?"

"Nope." Buffy shook her head. "It was all a blank until I found Mom's papers." When she'd seen her date of birth she'd had her doubts, but later, after cleaning up, she'd looked in the mirror and it was definitely her own fifteen-year-old face looking back at her. She continued, "I didn't know Mom and I had been born in England either, until I saw it on the papers."

According to the paperwork the reason for them returning to England was so that they could reunite 'with family'. Was that her father? Was Hank Summers waiting for them somewhere, wondering why they'd never turned up? Was he scouring the hospitals, out of his mind with worry? Or was he overseas, fighting?

"Do you know what amnesia is?" Dr McGregor dropped the notes back into the container hanging from the bottom of the bed. Nurse Wilson, a sturdy girl from Yorkshire, had unwrapped the bandage on Buffy's head and was now removing those on her hands.

Buffy replied quickly, "Partial or full loss of memory. Often brought on by a blow to the head, a traumatic experience or bad drugs. I've got two out of three." She'd overheard Dr McGregor's long-winded lectures to the medical students when he'd been doing his ward rounds.

"Uh, hmm, very good." He sucked his teeth and rocked on his heels, eyeing her thoughtfully. "This type of memory loss is often associated with a trauma such as you've experienced. Have you had any more headaches over the past couple of days? Have you seen any flashing lights, auras around objects, or have you seen been seeing things that aren't really there? Hallucinations and such?"

"Nope," said Buffy. "I never see anything weird. I'm totally normal." She'd never admit to seeing things that other people said weren't there. She knew what would happen if she did - a lot of therapy and a nice padded cell. Uh-huh, never, ever, do that.

Doctor McGregor smiled. He took off his glasses and began to rub the lenses his handkerchief. The action gave Buffy a sudden flashback of another man doing exactly the same thing. She wished she could remember his name or if he was important to her.

"That's very good news." The doctor looked pleased. "Very good news, indeed. No memories coming back at all?"

"Just random things," Buffy replied, hoping he wouldn't ask for details. Some of her flashbacks were odd and might get her diagnosed with insanity. "I have dreams."

"About?"

"It's more like nightmares," explained Buffy. She'd dreamt her Mom had died of a brain haemorrhage, of a curly-haired woman trying to kill her, and a particularly nasty dream where she'd thrown herself off a tower into a swirling vortex and hit the struts on the way down. She wasn't going to tell him about those, instead she said, "They're about losing my Mom and they're about being buried underground."

"As to be expected," remarked Dr McGregor, who was shining a light into her eyes. "Look to the left and then the right for me, please. Thank you! What was I saying? Oh, yes. After what you've gone through, I'd be very surprised if you didn't have a bad dream or two."

He put away the torch and moved his attention to the top of her head. His fingers raked through her hair. "No personal memories appearing? Your pets or your school? Hampden High wasn't it?"

"It says Hemery High on the paperwork." An image flashed through her mind of sitting in the sunshine outside a pretty high school with friends. The scene was then overlaid with a darker one, of a burnt out school gym, and the uncomfortable feeling that it had something to do with her. Buffy felt a guilty flush rise in her cheeks. "Umm, no."

He made a little tssking noise from between his teeth. "Not to worry, not to worry."

The way he said it made her think that she should be worried. Buffy shot a glance at the nurse's face to see if she thought it was a bad sign. Nurse Wilson had her head turned away, sorting out the old bandages.

The doctor went on, "I've seen many cases of amnesia where the memories return once the patient is in a more familiar environment. I have no doubt that it will be the same for you."

"I live in hope," replied Buffy. Hoping she'd have some nice memories. The few she'd had so far weren't exactly making her want to share.

Dr McGregor had given up on trying to find signs of a scar on her scalp. "You've remarkably good healing skin, Miss Summers."

"It's the vitamins," Buffy explained. She wasn't sure why she felt the need to cover up her fast healing. "Mom's always been keen on me eating healthily. She makes sure I have my five a day. I had the healthiest lunch-boxes in school."

He raised a bushy white eyebrow at her, making her pause. Yeah, if she had amnesia, she wouldn't remember her lunch boxes. Changing the subject, she asked, "How's my Mom?"

"Your mother is as well as can be expected. I have every confidence that by the end of the week she'll be well enough for a visit." He kept his head down as he spoke, holding and inspecting each hand and then running his fingers across the scarring. "Right now she needs peace and quiet."

Buffy nodded. She got the same answer every day. No visitors. It hadn't stopped her. Every night she'd pull the curtains closed around her bed and place pillows underneath the covers to make it appear as if she was asleep in there. Then she'd sneak past the nurse, go up the stairs to the next level and, if the coast was clear, dash into her Mom's room. In all the times she'd been in there, her Mom had only woken once. She'd smiled at Buffy and murmured her name before drifting back to sleep, it was as if she'd been too exhausted to stay awake. Buffy hadn't minded the lack of conversation. She spent most nights in a chair drawn up next to the bed, holding her Mom's hand as she slept. Buffy tugged her thoughts back to Dr McGregor, who was talking again.

"Less than three days for all those injuries to completely heal." Once again, he'd removed his glasses and was vigorously polishing them. "I could do with taking those magic vitamins, myself"

He took a step back, regarded her thoughtfully, before addressing the nurse, "There's no need to re-bandage. All the lacerations have healed well and there's no sign of bruising."

"Yes, Doctor McGregor."

"Well, Miss Summers, you'll be pleased to know that I can discharge you. Your family can collect you straight away."

The nurse looked up sharply. "We haven't been able to locate a family, doctor. I'll need to speak to the orphanages."

"Whoa! What do you mean an orphanage?" Buffy didn't like hospitals, but she liked the sound of an orphanage even less. Shouldn't they keep her here until her memory returned? She'd been counting on staying in the hospital until her Mom was better. If she wasn't a patient, how would she be able to sneak in and sit with her during the night?

"It needs to be somewhere local," Dr McGregor said to the nurse. "She will need to come back for a follow-up in around ten days time. Can you think of anywhere that might be willing to take her?"

"I could just go back to the hotel where we are staying," Buffy interrupted. This orphanage thing they'd sprung on her was freaking her out. "I've got the key to our room. All my clothes are back there and I'll be no trouble to the staff. There's money in Mom's purse, she's got savings in a Post Office account and I've found a key to a vault in Gringott's. It's not as if I'll starve."

They both ignored her. Nurse Wilson simply smoothed the bedsheets down as she considered the doctor's question. "I was going to say Barnado's, then I remembered they've shipped most of the orphans overseas to safer countries. Oh, I know!" Her face beamed at Buffy, almost as if she was about to give her a birthday treat. "I know the very place for you." Buffy knew she was heading for trouble when the woman patted her arm excitedly. "It's local, clean, and very friendly. I know most of their long-term children have been evacuated to the country, so I'm sure there will be room for you until your Ma's better."

"What's this place called?" Buffy asked. Not that it mattered. She knew now she was going to hate it. Under the blankets, she wriggled her toes as she got more and more agitated, and the urge to flee became stronger.

"Wools," Nurse Wilson said. "Mrs Cole runs it and you can't meet a nicer, more God-fearing woman. A tight disciplinarian, but you'll have three good meals a day, a nice room, and plenty of little friends to play with. You're in for a lovely treat, Buffy."

"Yeah, guess me and little Orphan Annie are going to become besties," Buffy replied sourly. Mrs Cole probably drank, hated kids, and made them scrub floors. "Bring on Daddy Warbucks."

…...

A/N; Only short but a natural place to end. Wools orphanage next!

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