Only a minute passes—standing in the waiting area next to Dawn and Joyce—before Buffy suddenly winks out, her surroundings blurring until she's behind a nurse, holding Buffy's body steady as they slide her off the ambulance's gurney onto a sturdier hospital one.
Okay, very much not a fan of the—
Another nurse settles her in place, gentle hands at the back of her neck and Buffy is immediately on her left side.
-this. Hey, what—?
The first nurse pulls off her sneakers and socks, grazing Buffy's skin for only a half second but Buffy is whisked back to the other side of the gurney again.
Can we hit pause here!?
The nurse turns to collect something from out of a cabinet with wheels on it, everything neatly stowed and in sterile packaging. She turns with a pair of shears in her hands and deftly cuts through Buffy's clothes in long effortless snips.
Ugh, I liked that shirt! Buffy moans, fighting down the embarrassment burning her cheeks as the nurse dumps her clothes into a bin and ties a gown around her front.
A doctor thumbs back her eyelid, flashes a penlight across her retinas and Buffy's whipped to the other side of the bed, standing next to him as he repeats the motion with her other eye. He jots something on a clipboard and passes it to one of the nurses.
"Let's get her down to radiology," he says and Buffy's moving, pulled along behind the medical crowd as her body is wheeled down a corridor and into an elevator.
Out through the elevator doors, down another corridor, people start breaking off until it's just her and the nurse at the head of the bed wheeling her into a room containing computer equipment. What looks like the engine of a jumbo jet is glimpsable through the tinted glass wall.
I'm going in that thing? Buffy asks. No one answers.
With gloved hands, the nurse starts unfastening the earrings from Buffy's ears and Buffy's presence lurches to be by her side.
The earrings are tipped into an envelope and tucked down into a pocket of the gurney.
Lastly, the nurse takes up a large wand from a trolley—
Whoa, hey, where's that going? Buffy sputters.
-and waves it down Buffy's body as Buffy relaxes minutely.
"No other metals," the nurse confirms, and wheels Buffy through to the MRI machine. She's slid onto the attached bed, her head cushioned in a box, and as the nurse presses a button, her body is swallowed up to the hips through the machine's opening.
The nurse retreats to the computer suite with the gurney, dragging Buffy with her.
Buffy leans against the wall as the machine clunks and clanks and bangs, boredly watching her unmoving legs until she can't take it anymore.
Okay! I'm gonna try and find my way back to the waiting room, haunt the vending machine. Maybe Giles is finally there. Hold the fort, she jokes to the nurse writing something on a clipboard, unaware of her presence.
She makes it to the door before an invisible rubber band snaps and deposits Buffy back by the nurse's side.
Wha—
She tries again; straining, her fingers brushing the chrome door—come on!—before the connection lurches, jerking her back to the nurse's side again.
Come on! she reiterates, pulling against whatever's tethering her to the nurse; attempting a run, a sprint, and then a slow amble to see if speed variation might deceive the curse into releasing her but each time she gets no more than a few feet away before the room blurs and she's back at the nurse's side.
Buffy sighs, exasperated. Looks like it's you and me—she squints to read the hospital ID badge pinned to the nurse's scrubs—, Rachel.
Rachel scribbles notes, glances over the radiographer's shoulder once or twice, and writes something else. The process goes on and on and on for forty-seven minutes.
"No head trauma," the radiographer confirms, printing off a large scan of Buffy's brain and handing it across to Rachel.
"Thanks, Don," Rachel nods curtly and pushes a button by the wall. An orderly steps in through the door Buffy had been desperately trying to break out of, and moves to the vacated gurney, wheeling it through to the side of the machine and releasing a catch that slides the MRI's bed out.
Here we go, Buffy mutters as he steadies her body by the arm before sliding her seamlessly onto the gurney, aided by the roll of the MRI's bed. Buffy is next to him in a flash, trailing after him as he pushes her body through the doors back out to the computer suite.
"ICU?" he asks and Rachel hums a confirmation, signing something off and handing it to Don before taking her place at Buffy's feet and wheeling her out into the corridor, into an elevator, up several floors, into another corridor, past a bustling nurse's station and through two sets of doors, until they're in a brightly lit room overlooking the parking lot.
The orderly pushes Buffy's gurney into place against the wall and clamps the brakes on, departing wordlessly back out into the corridor. Buffy's almost to the elevator with him when she's bounced into her new room as Nurse Rachel deftly inserts a needle into her arm and draws several vials of blood.
You know, if I was awake, you'd be so impressed with how not squeamish I am, Buffy says, watching diligently as Rachel unties a tourniquet from Buffy's bicep and labels the vials. She attaches something that looks like a large padded clip onto Buffy's finger and plugs it into a machine that immediately flashes up a lot of numbers and moving graphs. Rachel writes them down on the clipboard and hangs it on the end of Buffy's bed.
The doctor who shone a light in her eyes steps through the door and Nurse Rachel hands him over the printout of Buffy's brain.
"No trauma, just running the blood work down to toxicology."
"Great," says Doctor Someone. Buffy's eyes dart across his white coat until they find the ID tag. Dr Brice, it states. "Can you send someone in to fit her with a catheter and a rectal tube?" adds Dr Brice and Buffy's eyes widen.
What!? She gulps, panicked. Hard hard pass! I'm… I'm waving my catheter rights! Rachel, write that down!
But Rachel's out the door, taking Buffy with her.