Author's note: hey everyone, sorry its been so long, Christmas is CRAZY! and if there are two thing i've learned this year is that the Holidays are pure instanity and that family is just way to freakin' HUGE. So happy Holidays everyone, which ever one you celebrate and keep those reveiws coming! as a christmas present for me.
Chapter XVII - Labor Intensifies
In a cab, speeding down Legerova Ulice:
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Buffy screamed. "IIIIITSS EARRRRRLLY!"
Spike, Alex and the cabbie all cringed at the shrill sound.
She, Spike and Alex were in a cab on the way to the hospital. She grabbed the grill separating them and the driver. She pounded on it roughly.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" she demanded as she smacked it again nearly putting her hand right through it. Alex winced. She noticed that the metal had crumpled a little. "Its not supposed to be early! I have another week!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
"First?" the cabbie asked Spike in heavily accented English.
Spike nodded.
"She's going through a lot of pain right now." the cabbie informed them.
"Gee, you think I just got freaking paper cut?" Buffy demanded hotly.
Spike shot her a warning look. A look the pregnant slayer pointedly ignored.
"Sorry about her, she's not usually this..." Alex apologized for her.
"No worry." the man responded. "I have three myself."
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" this time the slayer grabbed Spike digging her nails into his arm. "I hate you Spike! This is all your fault! I hate you! You can never touch me again! Even you offspringis insufferable!"
"She doesn't mean that." the cabbie interrupted. "She's just going through mood swings." he assured Spike.
"LIKE HELL I DON'T!"
Spike took one look at the slayer, red-faced and furious and in a lot of pain. Then he turned back to the cabbie.
"I don't think so, mate" he said. "When she says it, she means it."
"Another one?" Alex turned to Buffy. The slayer was biting her lip but she nodded. "Those are pretty consistent."
"What do you know about this?" Buffy demanded.
Alex raised her hands, in defeat, and shrugged.
The cab abruptly stopped. They were in front of the hospital. Alex jumped out and started calling out to the hospital people in broken Czech.
"Son!" yelled the Cabbie suddenly.
Spike, though unused to being called son and nearly frantic, turned back to the cabbie to pay him. He just threw the money in with out bothering to count it.
"Wait!"
Spike turned back impatiently.
"Some advice," the man said. "Don't hold her hand. No matter how much she asks."
Spike turned back to the slayer. She was still clutching the grill on the cab. Her fingers were literally bending the steel. The cabbie shot him a knowing smile.
"I'll keep that in mind mate." Spike said nodding.
He clambered back into the cab and grabbed Buffy. She was kicking and screaming and wailing but somehow, the vampire managed.
He deposited her in the wheel chair that the hospital attendant had waiting. The attendant proceeded to wheel the chair into the building with Alex and Spike close behind.
"Mr. Summers?" a nurse intercepted. Both Spike and Alex screeched to a stop in front of her, wondering where the hell she had come from. "You aren't allowed in there. Besides, you'll need to sign these."
Spike sighed but sat down and started working on the forms. For a second Alex just paced in front of him.
"You want to help me?" Spike suggested.
"I can't" Alex muttered.
She spent a few more seconds pacing and then turned back to Spike with a sigh.
She had decided to help Spike after all, he knew he barely knew squat about Buffy. He looked completely confused. She took the ballpoint pen from him and began working on the forms. He smiled gratefully. Although, while he was working, Spike had his mind on something else, effectively distracting him from what was going on, but now he was getting antsy and proceeded to glare at everyone, after a while he got up and paced around.
He had never been able to stand waiting rooms. Maybe because they were all painted the same color, even here...
Suddenly, something caught his eye. A very big something that looked like a house with legs.
"minion." he hissed.
Alex looked up from the forms. She had just finished them, in record time too. It hit her that her father had used the tone that he only did when he saw something suspicious.
"Thugs" Spike responded to her questioning look. Alex nodded subtly, she knew not to look. Spike thanked any god that would listen for the millionth time, that she was a well trained fighter. Trained by him. Personally. "Right behind us." he added, subtly signaling a countdown. "One, two, three"
The vampire and damphyr turned to see two men dressed entirely in black.
"Mr. William!"
They took off.
Spike shouted instructions to Alex. They were to stay together and lead the goons away from Buffy. After trying to lose them over three floors Spike opened a door and found they were on the roof,
and there were two more demons waiting for them.
"WHERE THE HELL IS SPIKE?" Buffy screamed.
"Your husband is... doing paper signing." one of the nurses tried to explain. But none of them spoke english fluently. She made a motion that Buffy would only guess meant that Spike was singing papers and whatnot.
She could tell they were trying their very hardest to sooth her. Their tones would have calmed down a rampaging lion but did not even come close to pacifying a pregnant slayer.
The room was stifling, at least in Buffy's opinion and to her great annoyance every single, Czechoslovakian nurse just crowded around her and tried to keep her cool.
Doing her very best to ignore the hovering nurses, Buffy chanced a look out the window. There was a blizzard going on outside and here she was being fussed over by half a dozen nurses trying to keep her cool, of course given the fact that nearly seven people were being packed in a tiny room, their efforts were not having any effect at all. How very ironic.
She remembered Verona talking on and on proudly about how long her labor was. She said that it could go up to forty hours.
Great. Buffy thought. Forty hours with the charade brigade in a stifling heat, not to mention the labor part, there was no way that wasn't exhausting.
"AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Are you in much pain, Ms. Summers?" asked one of the nurses soothing Buffy's brow sympathetically.
Unable to speak, the slayer just nodded. Or did her best to.
It was not as if she was a stranger to physical pain, oh no. Buffy Summers had been in a lot of pain before, but never this much. The contractions were much more consistent now and they felt like she was being torn apart from the inside.
Tthis baby better be nice to me. Buffy thought.
The doctor finally arrived.
Right away the doctors and the nurses began conversing with each other in their dialect of which Buffy only understood snippets but she hoped that they would hurry, for their sakes. If she had to go through a few more of those near to unbearable contractions she would rip their heads right off. And if she had to resort to using her own bare hands, so be it.
"Mrs. Summers," he said. He didn't really say what he was going to do but he gestured it and Buffy nodded frantically, gesturing wildly for him to go ahead.
"You fast girl!" the doctor exclaimed. He turned and barked something to one of the nurses and she began to move Buffy.
"Hey!" Buffy exclaimed. "Where are we going?" she demanded of the doctor.
"you." he pointed at her. "Labor finished dilated ten centimeters." he added. "Maternity ward for to..." he didn't have the words so he demonstrated.
"WHAT!" Buffy demanded. Verona had told her that her shortest labor was twenty three hours. She hadn't even been in the hospital for two hours! It was too soon! Way too soon! And where the hell was Spike?
But try as she might she could not stop the nurses from getting her onto the gurney and wheeling her quickly to the maternity ward.
"EAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Spike passed by her followed quickly by Alex.
"I hate you." she said to him angrily.
Spike stopped for a second.
"She doesn't mean it." one of the nurses who was more fluent in English reassured him.
Spike spared her a smile.
"I don't know, miss." he said knowingly. "When she says it, she means it."
"We'll see you in a minute, Pet," he assured as they pushed Buffy through the doors of the maternity ward.
"I HAD BETTTER, SPIIIIKE!" she yelled. "I HAD BETTTER!"