Chapter 19: In the Waiting Room

A/N: it's short, but thought I should get it out there.

Challenge: partially to answer a forum request/challenge by DeepBlueJoy for a story with a 'person of color' as a main character – who doesn't die immediately.

Thanks to my betas: zigpal and AerynSpeedleCaine.

Disclaimer: BtVS and AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

Hospital waiting room

Tara and Willow sat, holding each other as they tried to ignore Wes' agitated pacing. Once or twice they heard him mutter something about not failing her again, but it didn't make sense to them. After all, he shot Warren, stopping the madman from killing Buffy outright. If it had been anyone else in the backyard with her, she would be dead already.

However, any attempts to talk to him were entirely ignored.

Just then they heard some nurses passing by, talking to each other.

"It's so tragic. She seems so young to have died."

"Unfortunately, it's not so strange in this town."

"I know, but this time it wasn't anything bizarre. This was something you'd expect to see in a normal city."

"At least the bastard who did this to her died too."

Wes stopped in his tracks, looking defeated while Willow and Tara almost broke down in tears. They all breathed a sigh of relief with the next words though.

"Yeah, they aren't sure if it was the accident that killed him or his blood alcohol content. The autopsy will tell them for sure."

With that, the nurses walked out of hearing range, not knowing how close they had come to breaking several hearts.

A couple hours passed before Dawn came rushing in. As soon as she saw Willow, she veered from the nurses' station and headed right over for answers.

"Dawnie, where-" Willow started to ask.

Only to be cut off by the teenager, "Xander's parking the car; how's Buffy? What happened?"

Willow and Tara broke apart so they could pull Dawn down to sit between them. "She's still in surgery," Willow explained. "They'll let us know as soon as they can."

"So what the hell happened?" Dawn demanded impatiently.

"Language, Dawnie," Tara reprimanded softly.

A new voice joined the conversation, "Hey, I'm with Dawn on this one. What happened?" Xander asked.

"Warren came looking for payback for last night – and probably every other time Buffy thwarted his plans. He didn't count on Wyatt Earp there packing heat," Willow said, sounding very un-Willow-like with her choice of words. "Buffy would probably be dead if it weren't for Wes killing Warren."

Dawn interrupted Wes' frantic pacing to hug him, surprising him enough to stop his inner rant. "Thank you, Wes. I don't know why you're here, but I'm so happy you are," she said, looking up at him with large, wet doe-like eyes.

"As am I," he returned gruffly. Two hugs in one day from the Summers sisters went a long way to healing his battered heart, and he couldn't help but feel a small sense of accomplishment that he gave his – at least temporarily his – Slayer a fighting chance to survive. Although he couldn't understand how Warren had been able to pull the trigger even once, at least he wasn't able to pull it twice.

Before anyone else could say something, the doctor came out, looking tired, but happy. Always a good sign.

"Buffy Summers' family?" he checked before giving them the news. When they nodded eagerly, he said, "She's doing remarkably well. The bullet missed any major organs and the surgery went picture perfect. We've moved her to recovery, but she should be in a room within about half an hour. You can go in to see her, as long as you let her rest."

After he walked away, Dawn realized somebody was missing. Well, two, actually, but only one she was concerned with at the moment. "Where's Spike? We should let him know about Buffy. He'd want to be here."

You could hear the proverbial pin drop in the waiting room – if it hadn't been for all the hospital sounds filtering in from the hallway and beyond, that is.

A/N: Did I have anyone going with the nurses' conversation? Musie had toyed with the idea of killing Buffy off and bringing somebody else (not Faith) in to fall in love with Robin, but I thought for this story, I'd better stick with the original plan.