October 1999
You're hyperventilating; stabbing in your chest and screaming in your head. The sirens are shrieking, the nurses are running and you think that you might just die right here if she doesn't open her eyes.
Five minutes ago, you sat propped-up next to her on the bed, nursing the worst hangover of your young life. Which isn't surprising really- considering you de-evolved last night. Your friends were still giving you strange looks so you'd come to see the one person who knew all your secrets- even if only in her subconscious.
She is the secret you love to keep. Not even Willow knows you come here. She hated Faith for how close she perceived the two of you to have become. You know that if she knew the truth- that it was even closer than she thought- you'd never win her friendship back.
The hospital visits are just the latest in a long line of Faith-related secrets, starting with the first night Faith had taken you out drinking. She'd claimed Slayers could drink twenty times more than the average human. She'd been wrong. Obviously.
Waking the next morning, semi-naked and grimy, you found your skin had turned a sickly yellow colour. Faith cheerfully explained to you, as you retched into the cracked and dirty toilet-bowl, that you had liver-failure. That had been the hardest of all slayer-related injuries (so called because this was definitely, 100 percent, Faith's fault) to cover-up.
Although, on second thoughts, after the first impulse to wrap your hands round Faith's neck and shake the life out of her for making you hurt so bad had receded, it had actually been a pretty good week. She'd sneak into your room every morning with tubs of foundation and you'd chat as the two of you attempted to make your skin resemble a normal colour again. Plus she'd looked awfully kissable that morning, perched on the edge of the tub with ice cream matting half her hair to the side of her face.
She'd taught you to suck chocolate just the right way to ease your hangover and you'd been so caught up in it a moment ago you hadn't noticed the rapidly increasing beats of her heart monitor until her shoulder began to jump against yours.
Her spasms knocked you to the floor before you'd had time to move. Your knee smashed against the cracked linoleum, you scrabbled to push yourself back up. The room filling in seconds. Screeching alarms tearing through your frontal lobes and now you're pleading, screaming, begging for them to stop her, to save her, to do anything. Something.
The nurses are attempting to pump drugs into her, flying everywhere as she shakes. Plump, comfortable arms wrap around you, endeavouring to coax you backwards but they hardly register. "We can't get close to her!" yells one of the fallen nurses to the entering doctor. You manage to fumble your way off the floor and scuffle for a moment with her flailing body. The doctor raises an eyebrow at your seeming ease as you rest your weight against her, but says nothing.
"MAKE HER STOP!" you scream and they rush round, pumping her full of whatever's in the syringes.
Suddenly she stiffens and you're all held in suspense, breath choked down, until she relaxes back against the bed. "Is- is she ok?" The doctor pats your shoulder, his crinkled old eyes comforting in a patronisingly knowing way.
"She's had a seizure. We need to run some tests. We'll call you in the morning." His British accent is clipped as he hustles you to the door, patting you condescendingly on the shoulder.
"No!" You're made immediately suspicious by the doctor's lack of surprise in finding he is powerless against you. He purses his lips as you glare up at him. "I'm not leaving her."
"You cannot be with her while we run these tests."
"Then I'll go with you and wait outside the room."
"Miss. Summers, it would be best-"
"I am not leaving until I know she's ok."
The two of you face off, you let your slayer senses tingle and flow; feel the rush to your fingertips, the narrowing of your eyes and the almost perceptible buzz that crackles in the air. As your vision blurs for a second before evening out into a golden sheen you catch the hint of fear in his eyes- his bubbling resentment reluctantly simmering into wariness. He knows who you are. And of what you are capable. Faith has shown enough for both of you. Slayers kill.
The squat, brunette nurse behind him rests her hand on his arm. The look you send her is appreciative but it's met by one of revulsion. The type of woman to say 'your kind' stares back at you, lip curling; "You might want to say your goodbyes now, Summers, your friend might not be here in the morning." The gasp from the other assembled hospital employees at least reassures you that even if the council has two emissaries here the additional practitioners are scrupulous.
"She will be here. As will I." The lash of your angry impression into her plump surround sends her scurrying backwards without having to lay a finger on her.
The orderly's hustle to the bed breaks the tension and suddenly everyone is rushing around; moving the bed, reading from charts and calling out things meaningless to anyone without a medical degree.
A younger, redheaded nurse eyes you with concern before slipping her hand into yours and patting it. "She'll be alright" For a moment her dimples remind you of the girl on the bed who can't flash hers and it almost has you sobbing right there.
"Thank you." Your voice has a strength you don't feel. You feel hollow. You feel sore and you feel itchy; like there are a thousand spiders dragging their jagged limbs painfully across your skin. It's the sign of danger and it's also echoed from Faith's body. Since she's been in a coma it's as if her slayer senses have attached themselves to you, even a nurse's injection in her skin gives a phantom prick into yours.
"I can take you upstairs to neurology if you like but he's right, you'll have to wait outside. If you'd prefer to wait here I can make sure… she's alright." Looking like the perfect combination of an adult Willow and a juvenile Faith she calms your nerves. The others wait for you to move from the doorframe, some patiently, some angrily.
"Will she be ok?" 'Don't let them hurt her'
"We won't know for sure until we've run these tests" 'I won't'.
So you sit and you wait, on a floor strewn with bits of melted chocolate, and you try not to think of all the awful things that could be happening to her right now. But mostly you're trying to quash your guilt. Because when she first shook you thought she might be waking up. And nothing scares you more than that.
Except for the fact you hate the love of your life.