Normal Again

 

By Alicia

October 23, 2004

[email protected]

 

WILLOW: You are not in an institution. You have never been in an institution.
BUFFY: (whispers) Yes, I have.
WILLOW: What?
BUFFY: (sighs) Back when I saw my first vampires... (shot of the photo) I got so scared. I told my parents ... and they completely freaked out. They thought there was something seriously wrong with me. So they sent me to a clinic.
WILLOW: (shocked) You never said anything.
BUFFY: (tearful) I was only there a couple of weeks. I stopped talking about it, and they let me go. Eventually ... my parents just ... forgot.

 

Monday

 

Cats ought to be more careful when they cross the street.  Two brown tabbies nearly got squished under our car wheels a second ago. They ran off into the bushes rather than trying to cross the street at the last minute.  Mom didn't even see them.  Maybe they were vampire cats.  If we'd actually hit vampire cats, they would have bounced off the car, picked themselves up and gone back to their nighttime activities…hunting regular cats, I suppose?  Or mice?  I’ve never seen a vampire cat.  Are they dangerous?  Where would I stake a vampire cat?  How would I find the heart on any cat?  I suppose I should have paid more attention in biology.

 

I’m sitting in the back of my mom’s black station wagon, thinking about vampire cats, and a laugh bubbles up from my stomach.  It doesn’t quite reach my face.  If Mom knew what I was thinking about, she’d be even more freaked out than she already is.  I can’t handle any more freak right now.  I'm still reeling from all the trouble I've been in lately, and so is everyone else.  We so don't need a mental illness diagnosis.

 

The freeway sign says “L.A. 5 miles,” as I look backwards, so I bet Dad didn't see it, and he has no idea how far from home we are.  I have Slayer vision...enhanced senses, enhanced pain tolerance, greatly enhanced strength, yada yada.  Right now it's only another reminder that I really am a freak…or a regular girl with a freak Calling.  I’m not crazy.  All my senses are alive. It’s weird how everything slows down when you’re scared.  But I’m not scared; I can just tell these doctors that I’m not crazy and they’ll let me go home, and everything will be all right.  I face monsters all the time, whether I'm looking for them or not.  Something tries to kill me almost every night.  I burned down an entire gym containing one bona-fide demon king.  I’m not scared of guys in white coats.

 

They say that popular girls constantly remind themselves of their glamour, of their positions.  I've never been one to rehearse my accomplishments.  I'd rather do than think about doing.  But since the alternative is accidentally catching Dad's eye from the middle rear-view mirror or making a noise that Mom might interpret as an invitation to ask questions--I do mentally rehearse who I am.  My name is Buffy Summers.  I am...well, I used to be...a student at Hemery High.  I live in L.A.  I'm smart, popular, athletic, and the yearbook is like the story of me.

 

That leads me right back to the fact that I'm leaving L.A. ...well, at least leaving L.A. for the suburbs, heading for an institution.  Populated by guys in white coats.  Time to get on with the not-being-scared.

 

Dawn is curled up on the seat beside me.  She’s wearing this petulant why-is-Buffy-getting-all-the-attention-again expression, but she’s huddled in the seat so she looks like she’s five years old instead of nine.  She’s not touching me.  I’m glad of that.  I don’t want her to feel me shaking.

 

“We’re here,” Mom says as Dad stops the car in the circular driveway marked “Emergency.”  He gestures for us to get out, and Mom steps out eagerly while Dawn, and I obediently tumble to the sidewalk.  Mom takes the keys from Dad with a don't-ask-I-have-to-do-something look and parks the car while the rest of us wait at the entrance.

 

“This isn’t an emergency,” I whisper.

 

“None of the other entrances are open this time of night, that’s all,” says Dad.  He looks distinctly uncomfortable.

 

He doesn't even live with us anymore, not most of the time.  He and Mom think Dawn and I don't know they're applying for a divorce--at least, Dad acts like we don't know when Mom's not around.  Usually when he's with us, he sticks around Dawn and me.  Mom says Dad adores me.

 

Right now Dad looks afraid of me.

”I’m not crazy,” I say.

”I know you aren’t,” he says.

 

“You do?”

 

“Sure, and soon you won’t be haunted by all these crazy things, either."  Unspoken, the thought hangs in the air: soon you're not going to get in trouble for no apparent reason anymore, but he adds instead, "They’re going to help you, sweetheart.”

 

I give up.

 

We sit in the emergency room in one of those little stall things for over an hour.  I feel awkward, sitting on the edge of one of the emergency room roller-bed-cot-things, fully clothed and feeling fine.  I try to get up and drag everyone back to the car twice.  Mom won't have any of that.  Other than keeping me on the cot (physically, and I shudder when her touch reminds my overactive imagination of the closely confining hold of a straightjacket).  Dawn prowls the room, picking things up and playing with them.   I’m glad she’s here.  That strikes me as weird; how many people can even stand having their little sisters see them put in an institution?  I am awfully embarrassed, but at the same time, it’s comforting to have her around.

 

I don’t know whether Dawn believes in vampires and Slayers.  She's at that funny age where she'll believe almost anything one week and absolutely nothing the next, where she says she's too old for fairy tales but sleeps with a good-luck Care Bear.  She's been keeping diaries for about two years now.  She thinks I don't know.  I've been a good big sis there; I haven't snooped.  That might have been a mistake, since now I don't know what Dawn thinks of this whole thing.

 

Back when Merrick first told me about my calling--back when there was all the chaos and I was staying out until all hours and really getting in trouble--Dawn wouldn't let up on me about what was really going on.  I was barely at home, but during those moments when I was, Mom would give up after three or four questions, but not Dawn.  It's hard to remember now, how much I actually told her.  Not the details.  I may have snapped that there were things in this world that she couldn't possibly understand, but Dawn's standard retort is that they aren't so tough.  She's at that age where she believes in superheroes too, and I could never be one of those.  I'm going to have a hard enough time proving I'm not crazy.

 

Um…how many non-crazy people end up here, anyway, and how long are they going to keep me? 

 

“Buffy Summers, reporting for sanity,” I say to the doctor.  No, it’s just a nurse I'm talking to, but he has all this official stuff on his shirt and in his hands. 

 

The nurse, the guy with the nametag saying “Brett,” whoever he is, gives a nervous chuckle and beckons my mother out of the curtained area where I’m sitting.  Ha—with Slayer hearing I could have heard every word of their exchange—except I don’t want to listen.  I play with my hands and hum to myself.  I look up to see what Dad’s doing, but he seems absorbed in one of the medical journals from the rack on the wall.  Dawn's still playing with stuff.  I think she's trying to listen

 

Brett flings aside the curtains and walks right up to me, offering to shake my hand.  I give him a dubious expression, but I comply.  “So you’re the girl who sees vampires,” he says in an over-hearty tone.  “And you have a 'sacred birthright.'  We'll work on that.”

 

There isn’t anything I can say to him.  Buffy Summers, intimidated?  But I can’t forget he thinks I’m crazy.

 

He gives everyone a tour of his friendly neighborhood psyche ward.  He acts subdued by the fact that it’s past midnight and everyone’s in bed.  There’s a woman moaning in the far room, but I definitely don’t want to think about that.  He offers to check my stuff, but I don’t have anything with me—earlier this night, when I found a nest of vampires completely by accident and wasted them, come home to Mom waiting in the living room wanting to know where I had been and I was so tired and confused that I told her the truth instead of making up some lame excuse, she had packed me right in the car. 

 

I wonder if she brought Dad and Dawn because she didn't trust them in the house alone.  I wonder why Dad was around at all. I guess I’m being cynical…and from all the self-help posters on the walls, I think I’m going to be called on that pretty soon, darn it.  This place is torture even for the sane.

 

Brett promises my family that they can come back in visiting hours tomorrow, and Mom says she’ll bring some of my clothes and my toothbrush.  Dawn adds that she’ll bring my diary.  I whisper that I don’t want the doctors reading it—I say it’s because I wrote stuff about being a vampire slayer, but there’s lots of other private stuff in my diary—but she looks so despondent that I tell her to bring Mr. Gordo instead.

 

They leave.  I change into a flimsy little hospital gown because Brett insists I can’t sleep in my clothes. I’m the only one in the room, but Brett says there will be another girl in the other bed, the one nearer the wall, tomorrow.  She'll be younger than me.  Will she be crazy?  My sleep-fogged brain can't care...well, no, it can, but I use a trick of my Slayer senses to make it not.  Before he finally leaves, Brett removes the laces from my shoes.

 

That’s stupid.  If I were suicidal, there would still be tons of means in here to accomplish the deed.  The cords on the blood pressure equipment would work just as well as shoelaces, for instance, and I check to see if my pillow is made of breathable material or something, and it’s not.  The last occupant left plastic silverware in the drawers.  Even plastic knives, for goodness’ sake.

 

I stare in the darkness long into the night, counting things the nurses overlooked.  Concentrating on how stupid they are keeps me from crying.  Maybe my eyes sting, but just the stinging won't leave any traces for the nurses to see in the morning.

 

 

Tuesday

 

Life's a show, and we all play our parts

And when the music starts

We open up our hearts...

 

One moment I'm asleep, dreaming about something, I can't remember, and the next moment I'm wide-awake staring at the little red clock on the blood pressure machine.  It's 5:58 AM.  The nurses are changing shifts in the corridor.

 

I'm in a graveyard.  It's dark, always dark, even when it should have been light.  A vampire is piling dirt on my coffin.  I can't breathe...

 

I can't remember my dream.  Okay?  Buffy Summers, prom queen, vampire slayer, sane, is in control of her own mind.

 

I start to rise, but with perfect timing, a tall black lady nurse pushes me back into bed and starts taking my blood pressure.  I moan and push her away, but she just calls another nurse, and he's stronger even than me, or at least stronger than I have to pretend to be.  It's all I can do to hold still through their poking and prodding, though.  Did I mention I hate hospitals? 

 

Finally they go away.  I set two records: before today, I've never woken up and immediately rolled out of bed with no desire to go back to sleep, and I've never, ever pulled on yesterday's clothes without bothering to do my hair.  I stuff my feet into my shoes without looking for the laces and march out in the corridor like I have a mission.  I trip over someone's discarded IV--sure, like whoever had it is going to keep it on if he or she wound up in a mental institution in the first place.  Did I mention I really hate hospitals?

 

About half of the other patients are still in their beds, asleep or taking their turns being roused by the nurses, and the other half are in the common room at the end of the hall eating their breakfasts.  Since I don't think they have room service in psychiatric hospitals, I look through the trays in the little holder myself until I find one labeled "Buffy Summers, Regular Diet." 

 

I carry the tray to the nearest table before I make myself look at it.  It has a whole bunch of plastic cups of wilted fruit and some pancakes under a heat cover.  And five white pills in a medicine cup in the top right corner.  I take the tray to the dining table and look around to see if there’s a professional watching me.  Of course there is.   It's Brett, looking three-quarters asleep.  I put a pill in my mouth and spit it into my orange juice.  I take a bite of mushy pancake.  I repeat until all the pills are gone.

 

Only one problem with that little strategy—the orange juice was the only thing on the tray that I felt like eating.  Now there's nothing.  I poke the lady next to me, a middle-aged woman who seems completely absorbed in her food.  "Uh, can we get coffee in here?" I whisper.

 

She doesn't answer, but Brett comes up and says, "You can have decaf."  He hands me a little Styrofoam cup of weak, lukewarm coffee.  I taste it, make a face, and drink it all anyway.  It scorches my tongue.  That's a good, normal feeling.  I scorch my tongue with my coffee every morning, drinking it before Mom notices I have it and tells me to drink something better for me.

 

A guy in a white coat interrupts me before I'm finished playing with my food.  "Hi, Buffy," he says, holding out his hand for me to shake.  "I'm Doctor Taylor.  Are you ready to talk for a little while?"

 

That doesn't seem so bad.  I get up, toss the orange juice cup into the trash can and slide the rest of my tray back in the warmer unit with the other discarded trays, and follow him.

 

We go back into the room where I slept.  Again, I have this image of myself from the outside, the little girl, the patient, perched on the side of the bed waiting to be taken care of.  I hate it. He’s sitting on the rotating stool staring at me.

 

“Buffy Summers, reporting for sanity,” I say again, because that phrase worked so well the first time.  I'm not in a straightjacket, right?  I hate being tongue-tied.  I'm the one with all the snappy retorts.  Did I mention I hate hospitals?

 

“Buffy.  How long have you been seeing,” he squints at my chart, “vampires?”

 

His patronizing tone annoys me.  That's really why I don't say anything, although Merrick's lectures about secrecy ring in my head too.

 

He pretends I did.  “I see.”  He scribbles.  “And what do you plan to do about this?

 

I roll my eyes at him.  “Invite them to afternoon tea."  He really looks like he's going to write something down, so I say, "I see a vampire, I stake it.  I see one in here, I'll find out how to dust it.  Do you want to be turned into a vampire?"

 

“Do you have a history of violence in your family?”

 

“Vampires.  Are.  Real.  They try to kill me sometimes.  I've been told I'm supposed to hunt them so you can be safe in the daylight,” I say.  I don't mention that the last time I went looking for a vampire was before the incident in the gym.  I hardly know what it means to be the Slayer yet (and not having anyone to ask is one of the things that got me into this brand-new psychiatric mess).  I say, "I'm damn good at it too" because I'm scared and it sounds good.  I feel so vulnerable here, even more than I did in front of the principle's office.  I blame it on Merrick.  I wouldn't be here if he was alive--I never would've let the vampire thing slip to Mom--but I can't get past the absurdity of a Slayer in a mental institution, and I wish I had official instructions.  I wish I had any instructions.

 

The doctor is still talking.  “When did a…vampire…try to kill you?”

 

My cover is blown sky high anyway, and I seriously doubt he's listening, so I tell him the whole story—Merrick surprising me and making me learn about my physical abilities, missing the first vampire's heart the first time but then letting my hands tell me what to do and seeing it turn to dust, seeing Merrick die, the battle at the prom, fighting Lothos and burning down the gym.  I leave out the nightmares and most of the gory details.  He drops the stupid pencil and meets my eyes, and I begin to feel like a person again.

 

“And that’s it,” I finish.  “I’m the Chosen One…and I’m fifteen—sixteen! —years old.  I'm trying to figure out where I'm going from here.  Then Mom surprises me when I get in late because I'd just won a battle against seven of them, and freaks out when I tell her the truth.  And here I am.”  I start to ramble until I see his glazed eyes.  "Can you tell Mom I'm not crazy?  I promise never to try to drag her into this other world again.  And Dad--can you tell him that there are good reasons I keep getting in trouble?"

 

He's not listening anymore, but writing on his clipboard.  “I think we can teach you some mechanisms to defuse these negative thoughts, for starters,” Dr. Taylor mutters.

 

I stare at him.  “What?  Negative thoughts?  What are you talking about?”

 

“You seem like an intelligent young lady, Buffy.  You just need to recognize that your monster delusions and learn to overcome them.  When you understand what they're doing for you, you'll be able to replace them with healthy coping strategies."

 

“You didn’t hear a word I just said, did you?”  I interrupt him.

 

Maybe he senses how frustrated I’m becoming—or how close I'm coming to smacking him (and no matter what anyone says, my Slayer strength is real; I'm crumpling the bed rail in my hand)—because he says, “We’ll pick this up tomorrow.  Take it easy.  Attend the groups.  Learn what we’re about here, what you can take with you.”

 

As he turns to leave, I fire one last question at him.  “Are you the one who'll send me out of here?”

 

He nods, although his back is to me.  That's rude, so I'm mad at him for that too, but I just say, “When?”

“That’s up to you.”

 

He leaves.  I sit there for a long time staring at my hands.  I used to play with my nails in history class.  I try that now.  It doesn't feel the same.

 

 

The doctor's praises for the morning groups still ring in my mind as I poke my head out of the room.  I'm about to ask a nurse where I'm supposed to go when someone shoves a pile of badly mimeographed pages into my hands and tells me to use them to fill out a Scantron form.  The pages are full of weird statements.  The Scantron has letters A through F corresponding to "Completely Agree" through "Completely Disagree."  There are about five hundred of these statements.

 

I take the first few seriously.  Yes, I'm in control of my basic emotions.  No, I don't think the world's against me.

 

Do I think life's against me?  I'm honest enough inside--and again there's a change from the girl I was even a few months ago, who wouldn't have even given it a thought--honest enough for the question to make me uncomfortable.  I leave it blank.

 

Somewhere around statement number thirty five, I start playing connect-the-dots.  I find out how many words I can spell with the first six letters of the alphabet: "CAB," "DEED," "FACE..."  Like they're going to read it anyway.

 

I give the pages back to the pretty dark-skinned condescending lady doctor just in time to take the last tray from the lunch cart.  The soup is cold, and so is everything else.  I put it back.  No one notices.

 

Visiting hours start at two in the afternoon.  Two to six, each weekday.  I'm a little embarrassed to be learning the schedule and settling into the routine at a psychiatric ward, but it does look like I'll be here for the rest of the week.  I refuse to let myself think beyond that.  Mom and Dawn walk in right at two.  I fling myself into my mother's arms like a child.  (It's hard to be embarrassed about anything I do when I have my name plastered in big red letters on the white board behind the nurse's station next to a record of my daily bowel movements.  That's another story that I think I'm going to delete from my memory.)  When I finally pull away from Mom, I wonder if I'm going to get away from this whole experience with any dignity left.

 

Mom looks like she thinks I'm not going to leave at all, judging from the size of the suitcase she's carrying.

 

I hope she just had a case of the guilties for sending me here and took it to The Gap.  I don't recognize the top poking out of the left front pocket.  It's kind of cute.  Whatever else I say about my mother, she has killer taste in clothes.  Maybe the bag is full of cute new ones for me to wear, at home.

 

I'm almost as glad to see Dawn as I am to see Mom.  She gives me a dignified little sister hug under Mom's satisfied gaze, but then Mom leaves to give the nurses the third degree about me and Dawn throws herself into my arms like she hasn't seen me in months.  Or like she's afraid she won't see me for months, but I refuse to dwell on that.  "What's wrong, Dawnie?" I whisper.

 

Even shaking, she manages to put the bossy little-sister in her tone.  "Buffy, you need to get your butt home this instant."

 

"Well, duh, just let me out the door without a straightjacket...no one wants that more than—" I start to say "me," but Dawn puts her hand over my mouth.

 

"Mom and Dad fought about you all the way home last night," Dawn whispers.

 

I had wondered why Dad wasn't with the others...well, no, I hadn't, not in the middle of a workday, but I hadn't expected them to start in on me so soon.  I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.  I've been in trouble lately.  A lot of trouble.  Mom and Dad haven't talked about much else when I've been around, lecturing me when they think I'm listening and quarreling about me when they think I'm not.

 

"Dad said he didn't mind paying for the insurance, but no daughter of his was going to be called crazy, and that's when Mom said you need help and she was going to fight anyone, especially him, to get it for you, and he called her a—"

 

Dawn breaks off when Mom suddenly leaves the day nurse and comes back over to us.  She pretends to be excited about bringing presents, but she's covering up being so scared that it terrifies me too, and she starts unpacking the suitcase right in the hall.  I pick it up with one hand and take hers with my other, pulling both mother and suitcase into my room.  Mom recommences unpacking.  I'm almost distracted for a few moments.  I hold up a top that just came into style last week.  Mom must really be feeling guilty; she'd never let me wear that outside of the hospital.  There are going to be some Battles Royale over club outings the instant I get out of here.

 

Being the Slayer isn't a self-centered delusion.  It's a calling I didn't choose...I spend a lot of time wishing I hadn't been Chosen.  It's a peculiar kind of wishing and not-wishing all at once.  The wish is always there for life to be easier.  To be able to gossip about clothes or sneak out to clubs the way I did a few months ago, without the weight of the world on my shoulders.  Yet there's also this little voice that makes me try out the strength in my arms, and whispers that without the destiny I wouldn't have that.  Everything is so much more intense when you're the Slayer.  The intensity...it isn't exactly pleasant, but it feels good; it's something you get used to, even in only a couple of months.  And I don't know what it would be like to have that and lose it again. 

 

I succeed in not showing any of these thoughts, I guess, because Mom catches the eye of the psychiatrist from outside the door and chases her into the adjoining empty room.

 

Dawn pulls a slim pink diary out of the backpack she always wears and hands it to me.  It has a picture of ice skates on the front, and a little padlock across the pages.  "It's blank," she says, "so you can start again.  You should write in code.  You're secret identity girl anyway.  I mean, if you think you--if you really are--whatever you are, as a warrior, you should have a cool secret identity."

 

I thank her, toss the diary on the bed, and then just hold her close for a very long time.

 

 

The sun sets just as the staff starts shooing away all the visitors.  It's January, after all; winter, even if it isn't cold.  I watch it from the edge of my bed with Dawn's gift open in front of me.  I can't think of a good way to start writing.  I've never felt so alone.  The Slayer is always alone.

 

A vampire walks past me.  My door is open, and I get a close and personal view.  She's in vamp face.  How stupid is it possible for an undead creature to be?

 

Pretty stupid.  Did I mention that I'm in the "short-term" ward of the crazy hospital (due either to my stubbornness or Mom's insistence that there isn't anything wrong with my grip on reality)?  The vampire walks right past all these nice open public short-term rooms to hunt the schizophrenics in the hall next to us.  Those patients have been in their rooms for years, plenty of time for their rooms to count as their homes instead of public places like ours.  I can see the vampire bouncing off their thresholds.  She just keeps trying.  Wow.

 

Stupid or no, eventually she's going to kill someone unless I do something about it.  I toss my diary on my bed and start searching my room for something pointed and wooden that survived the suicide-implement purge.

 

I'm already starting to hunt.  My motions change; my instincts kick in.

 

The night nurse chooses that exact moment to walk into my room.  Her nametag says "Shellie."  She has blond curls, and a face that would be sweet if it wasn't permanently twisted into the most condescending expression I've ever seen in my life.  She wraps a blood-pressure cuff around my arm and chirps, "How are your thoughts, Buffy?  Feeling violent right now?  How's that grip on reality?"

 

Maybe I'm fed up with her already, or maybe some of the stupidity in the room is contagious, because I blurt out, "There's a vampire behind you."  I kick myself as soon as the words are out.

 

The vampire is behind her, heading the other direction now, back out of the schizophrenics' ward, toward the far side of our hall which is the day room, and I'm close to panic.  There are still visitors in the day room

 

"We're in the hospital to not see things like that," she says down her nose.

 

I hit her.  Solid blow to the temple.  She goes down like a...like a...I'm too satisfied to think of a good metaphor.  She's out cold, though.  I rip off the blood pressure cuff, and I'm tempted to just bolt out of the room, but first I do take the time to check that Nurse Shellie isn't seriously hurt.  She'll wake up in a few minutes.   She won't have any brain damage that she didn't already have from birth.

 

If I can get it into our empty group room, I can find a way to deal with it.  No innocent victims if , and no witnesses either.  Merrick would approve. I'm disappointed...I'm desperate for something to prove that I'm really the Slayer, not a crazy girl, so I can go home and do my job.

 

Self-pity bout over, it's time to hunt a vampire.  I should've asked Dawn to bring a stake.

 

"Visiting hours are over," I say with only a hint of sarcasm.  I shove the vampire into the group room and close the door behind us.  "Oh, but you're not a visitor.  Why don't you stay here and do a feelings check?"

 

It lunges at me.  I avoid the fists and teeth easily.

 

"We'll make an exception if you're here for family group," I add sweetly.  I back out, swing the door solidly shut, and turn both of the outer locks.  I check the schedule posted on the door.  "DBT 11:00; Bipolar Support 1:00."

 

Whatever the heck DBT is, the people congregating to talk about it tomorrow are going to do so in the middle of one big pile of dust.  There are a zillion windows in that room.  I couldn't find anything to stake it with, but the sunlight tomorrow will do the trick.  Just so long as no stupid nurses open the door before sunrise and get themselves bitten.

 

I don't have time to think about that.  Brett, fresh for the night shift, taps me on the shoulder.  I think he found Shellie.

 

At least the being in trouble is familiar.  Normal, even.

 

For me, now.

 

 

Wednesday

 

It's all right if something comes out wrong

We'll sing a happy song

And you can sing along

 

I spend the night in an actual straightjacket, unable to tell the doctors what had happened.  I'd stretch their selective memory defenses if I tried.  There are reasons no one knows about vampires.

 

Around three in the morning, I finally doze off.

 

I'm standing on the edge of a harbor.  It's raining; I'm soaked to the skin, but I don't feel the rain next to...I can't identify what I feel.  Whatever it is, the air is as saturated with it as it is with water.  It's pain...but it's not the kind of scary, burdensome pain...it's love, but it's a raw love identical to desperation.  I won't be able to breathe when the man holding me now takes back his arms and separates himself.  I can't see his face.

 

I know he wants me to keep going.

 

He's told me that.  "We never win.  Not completely.  But it's important to keep fighting, and I learned that from you."

 

I love him so much it hurts...I love him so much it's possible to be the Slayer.  I'm at that harbor again.  He's going to take back his arms...

 

My eyes snap open.  6:04 this time. 

 

In the half-dozen or so times I've had that dream--I mean, that specific dream; I've had prophecy dreams and nightmares almost every night--since I found out about I was called as the Slayer, I haven't been able to hate that particular series of images.

 

I've never felt love like that.  I've had steady boyfriends...since forever...sometimes seems like yesterday, sometimes seems like another lifetime ago...you know, pre-two-worlds.  I was popularity queen at Hemery, at least until I was Called.  I like dating.  I like dancing, and I like—uh, making out, I suppose would be the term.  But I've never, ever experienced that kind of love.  I can't even remember it very well when I'm awake.

 

Today I realize that...the pain in the dream is more than I can handle; yet it comes from a connection that means life.  It comes from a place that is fully alive.  From a connection.

 

The Slayer is always alone...but does that make being the Slayer the opposite of being alive?

 

I must have cried out in my sleep, because one of the nurses—Daryl, that's his name—hollers, "Buffy, are you okay in there?"

 

That's professional.

 

"I'm dying, and my only cure comes in a Milky Way wrapper," I holler back.

 

I lie in bed a few more moments trying to crystallize that memory, that feeling of being alive, but I give up and get up.  They must have removed the straightjacket in the night.  I shudder at the memory, and resolve that no matter the cost, I won't give them another opportunity to do that to me.

 

There's a little form next to my breakfast tray with options for tomorrow's meals.  Some of the options don't seem bad, but it's more the principle of it—it's humiliating to be fed like a child or an invalid.  I do, however, circle both the "apple" and the "orange" juice options for tomorrow's breakfast.  I can use my apple juice to lose the pills and still have something to drink.  Then I circle peanut butter and jelly sandwich, breakfast, lunch, and supper.  Let's see if the staff really follows through on that.

 

Dr. Taylor assembles everyone in the group room after we're all done eating.  There's about a dozen of us, including two people who arrived during the night.  It's the first chance I've had to pay attention to the others.  Today I'm aware enough to look around, and there's no one pulling me away.   I'd wondered if they were all crazy, like everyone thought I was...but they're not crazy.  There are a several elderly people...one even whispered to me that he knew this place was a lot comfier than the old folks' home where he usually lived.  Of the rest—well, they're all coherent.  They all make sense.  No boys younger than thirty.  I'm not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.  There's no one my age.  Beyond age and coherence, I don't think I want to know.  All of them seem to think they'll be getting back to their lives soon.  I hope I'm reading that right.  I begin to relax a little.

 

However, the first "group session" weirds me out so much that I run out after ten minutes and hide in my room through the second.  No one notices.

 

It finally has time to hit me that everyone in here thinks I'm on some sort of ego trip.  I don't know how many different ways I tried to say I didn't choose to be the Slayer...and saying that doesn't help.

 

What if they're right?

 

Am I really the Chosen One? 

 

Get a grip, Buffy, I tell myself.  That vampire last night was real enough, and I took care of it.

 

I have time to sneak down to the group room and check.  No vampire.  Big pile of dust.  I draw a smiley face in it with my finger before heading back to my room.

 

Dawn's idea of keeping a diary in code suddenly sounds awfully good.  I can write "asbestos" instead of "vampires"—it's a building code violation Dad got called on when I was five and he thinks I don't remember.  I search for a word to use instead of "Slayer" or "Calling" or "Birthright," and the only one that comes in my head is "turkey." A Sunday School song from the time I was in elementary school rings in my head: "If God can love turkeys, then God can love you.  For you are a turkey, but I am one too."  I write the lyrics on the first page.  It makes me laugh out loud.  There's an edge of hysteria in my voice that won't help with my Buffy-isn't-crazy image, but I don't think anyone's listening. 

 

Dad comes about fifteen minutes after visiting hours start at two.  He stands in the entrance to the hallway holding a box of chocolates.  I don't see him until I inch out of my room.  He's standing there just like he's a vampire and needs to be invited.  With what Dawn said yesterday, I don't expect to see Mom, but I'm surprised Dawn isn't there.  I know she misses me, and I know she jumps at the chance to get out of school.  Even though she says she adores school.  Dawn's weird that way.

 

What I wouldn't give to be in school...but I wouldn't be there even if I wasn't here; I got kicked out.  (Then again, even if none of that had happened, I probably wouldn't be in school.  It's Junior February Dance Shopping Skip week...like every week in January, and February.)

 

I can't get around the fact that I'm not out dress shopping because of the Slayer thing, though.  I wonder if the world needs me that way anymore.  I hope not.  There are so many other things I want to do, and none of them involve any more time here in the hospital!  The fear that they'll never let me out is waning a little...but it's really up to Dr. Taylor whether he sends me home or into one of the longer term units.

 

Dad draws me back to the present and answers an unspoken question at the same time.  "Dawn isn't speaking to either your mother or me.  Dawn says you're telling the truth with this vampire thing and we're keeping you away.  If it keeps up much longer, your mother is going to try to get her some help."

 

I smirk.  "Dawn's a hair puller," I say.

 

What Dad doesn't say is just as important as what he says...he's scared, I can tell, scared that I'm not just weird Buffy, that there's something wrong with all the kids in our family.  I make a mental note to tell Dawn to lay low and never mention if she notices a vampire.  Now I regret all those stories I told her, those big-sister ghost stories with the flashlight under the covers.  I wonder if I have phone privileges here.  Maybe so.  The guy who came in an hour ago has already made more trouble than me; I’m staying as far away from him as I can.

 

Standing there in the hall with Dad is beyond awkward, so I invite him in my room and open the chocolates.  They're the first substantial food I've had in three days, and they're wonderful.  I search for anything safe to say to Dad.  He searches for anything that won't tell me to snap out of it.  He leaves just before three.

 

I spend the rest of my afternoon fine-tuning my coded diary skills.  It might come in handy later...I mean, secret identity means I have things I'll have to communicate without broadcasting to observers or enemies.  Assuming I have anyone to communicate them to—I think this secrecy thing will take a long time to get used to.  I wonder what Merrick told the other girls about it.  I make myself stop wondering that really quickly.

 

 

My new roommate hobbles through the door just as they're bringing in the supper cart.  She "hobbles" because there's a cast on her right foot and she's on crutches, although she's pretty good at swinging herself around on the crutches.  She's younger than I am.  Her hair is jet-black, and her prominent glasses somehow make her look even younger, if that's possible.

 

She picks up her supper tray with one hand while supporting her weight on a crutch with the other, and I offer to carry it for her, but she says she can handle it.  She maneuvers the tray to one of the tables one-handed.  I read the nametag.  Tasha something; I can't make out her last name.

 

I take my tray next to hers, although I still don't really feel like eating.  I wonder what to say.  What does one say to someone who's just been admitted to an institution, anyway?

 

"How are you?"

 

"Been better," she says.

 

More silence.  "How did you get that cast on your leg?”

 

“Playing soccer.”

 

“I’m a cheerleader.”

 

“Oh.”

 

The question hangs in the air of course, from each of us: what are you in here for?  But I’m not ready to ask it, and I have a feeling that Tasha isn’t either.

 

We eat in silence.  So does everyone else; I guess when people think other people are crazy, they keep their distance.

 

I’ve given up on getting Tasha to talk any more that night, but she suddenly looks up from her tray and gives me this brilliant smile.  “Uh…”

 

She’s looking for my name.  “Buffy,” I say.

 

“Buffy, would you please get me a carton of milk from the fridge?”

 

There’s a refrigerator across the room with drinks and fruit that we can take at any time.  I get up.  “Sure,” I say.  “What kind?”

 

“Two percent.  Thanks.”

 

 

 

Thursday

 

Where there's life, there's hope

Every day's a gift

 

Thursday, January 24, 1997

 

I filled out an entire week of peanut butter sandwich meal requests.  I think I need to eat something besides chocolate.  Tasha copied me.  That's two things I know about my new friend now: she likes peanut butter and she always drinks two percent milk with her meals.  Listen to me...a part of me wonders if I should be ashamed, popular girl Buffy writing down what some thirteen year old kid likes, but mostly, I can see myself changing and I like it.  Popular kids aren't the only ones worth being friends with...by now I should know.

 

Group is freaking me out even worse, but I promised the doctor I wouldn’t run out of the room this time.  He said that if I didn’t see…vampires, I guess I can write it in the past tense… anymore, he might get me home as early as Monday.  I must put this away as we start; don't want to be rude.  Although with all the noise in the room right now, I doubt my having a diary out will matter all that much.  Okay, being good now.

 

Yikes.  Now I know why Tasha's in here.  I never thought that voices inside someone's head could be that loud, that persistent and physically real.  It makes me wonder things about the things I see...but I'm not going there at the moment.  I'm having enough trouble with everyone else's story.

 

Before the group, today was the first day I could say I was more annoyed than terrified.

 

I can see Mom and Dawn in hallway entrance, impatiently biding their time until they let the visitors in.  Dawn has something she wants to tell me, but I don't think Mom will give her a chance this time, at least from the looks Mom is shooting at Dawn.  Great; is Mom going to start giving me the third degree about the things I think about?  Must go again.

 

At least I didn't see any, uh, asbestos coming through the doors as the visitors leave.  It's hard to keep up the front when my family is here, but the nights are worse.  Tasha and I are sitting at one of the tables in the common room now.  She's drawing something, and I'm writing in this for the night.  When the nurses saw the diary, they gave me a whole pile of lists to write about.  I don't want to do that, though.  This is the one place where I get to be just Buffy, and not, well all those other things.

 

Right now Buffy desperately needs to see a hair stylist.  It's starting to scare me. Even worse than the things that some of these other crazy people are doing...goodness, I didn't think it was possible to do that with puzzle pieces and game cards!

 

My name is Buffy.  I'm a student at Hemery High, and the whole yearbook is full of pictures of me.  I know how to dress.  I'm popular.  I'll be popular just as soon as they let me back.  I see things that are real.  I see attractive boys who aren't nurses (at least during visiting hours, when they're really present), and I'm going to have a chance to do something about it.  Soon.

 

And that little exercise in positive thinking is really helping me feel better—sarcastic voice here, since I can't do that very well in my diary.  I'm going to bed.

 

 

Friday

 

Wishes can come true

Whistle while you work

So hard, all day

 

It's a good thing we go to bed so early, since Tasha and I take turns having nightmares all night long.  I'm afraid to ask what hers are about.  I'm learning that...there are some horrors just best concealed.  I used to have nightmares about rejection and failure and losing my boyfriend—you know, the usual types of bad dreams, not too different from Dawn's—but since I was Called, they've been steadily becoming less metaphorical and more violent.  Even my just bad-dream-nightmares, even taking out the prophecy dreams.  This is what my world is becoming; I die in my dreams every night.  It scares me.

 

Not that I can mention that when the nurse asks how I'm feeling at about three in the morning!  Like a dope, I say "scared," but then I have to make up a lame reason, and it takes at least twenty minutes to convince her to go away.  Amilyn, that's her name.  Score one more nurse who told me I wouldn't let them help me.  At this rate I'll have the entire staff on that list...but I don't care what they think of me so long as they send me home.

 

I fall back into a restless sleep.

 

"The darkest place I've ever been?" says a redheaded girl who I should know but don't.  "This is what lies beyond that."

 

It frightens me all over again.  I feel like I've been carrying the burden...the weight of the world; that's a cliche but that's what it feels like...for much longer than a couple of months.  For almost as long as I've been alive; for as long as I've been really Buffy.  I'm supposed to be the leader.  Yet I can't win.  It's like one of those games of Capture the Flag, where you come up with all these great strategies only to get tagged in the first five minutes, where reality defeats you before you even have a chance to get started.

 

I almost sleep through breakfast; I wake up and make myself as presentable as I can as Dr. Taylor barges into my room.

 

He asks if I've seen any vampires lately.  I tell him the truth: I haven't seen one since Tuesday (and that one's dust).  He smiles and makes a few notes on his ever-present clipboard, and then he starts describing how he's going to adjust my medication.  I zone.

 

"...release as early as Monday."

 

"You mean it?"  I whoop.  "I can go home?"

 

"You're not crazy, Buffy," he says.  "We have people who have different types of disturbances," and he draws me a little diagram.  It makes my eyes hurt and I unfocus them, but it was nice of him to try.

 

"...and you're more at this end, you're neurotic as opposed to psychotic, and neuroses tend to responds better to drugs like Paxil and..."

 

It's worse than Mr. Ritgar's tenth grade Greek History.

 

Note to self: never read that huge file-folder chart they're keeping on me.  Cancel note to self, because if they ever let me, which doesn't seem likely, I won't need the reminder.  Give me a vampire's nest any day, with something to pummel.  Wow...I check the thought; I'm even thinking like the Slayer now.  Is this what my world is turning to?  For about the twenty zillionth time this day, I wish that I had someone to entrust those questions to.

 

"Any questions?"

 

"Do you have a punching bag in this place?"  Lovely.  That's going to help my reputation as sane ordinary student Buffy.

 

"We have an exercise bike.  Exercise is important in dealing with various types of anxiety..."

 

I nod and smile until he finishes the lecture.

 

"...just open the far door in the common room."

 

"Thanks!"

 

I've only missed one group, but for the nurses' benefit I pretend I'm still talking to Dr. Taylor for the rest of the morning so I can keep the door shut.  I borrow Tasha's handheld cd player and check out her music collection.  For thirteen, I heartily approve of her taste...no, wait, she's too young to listen to a few of these songs!

 

It works great for me to unload all of the morning's tension, though.  Monday.  A weight has been lifted.

 

I get a message after lunch that my family is planning on spending the whole day with me tomorrow, but they have other obligations today.  I don't really mind, even.  I find that exercise bike.  After I ride conventional-style for long enough to be really jittery, I start doing handstands and vaults over the seat.  Tasha pokes her head in the door and we amuse ourselves until Shellie comes in and tells us to cut it out.  Tasha draws a picture of Shellie under assault from weird external voices.  I mentally add a few vampires.

 

 

Saturday

 

To be like other girls

To fit in, in this glittering world...

 

I feel a little better this morning because I wake up without the burden and fear of being the Slayer.

 

The Slayer is always alone.  But somehow--I'm not.  I even say that.  "I won't be alone."  There are others to take up the torch.  The burden has lifted...I still have my senses, and my calling, and my ability, but it's qualitatively different.  Lighter.  I'm not alone.

 

Dawn shows up right after breakfast with a box full of pictures she colored for me.  We leave Mom and Dad to talk to all the on-call doctors they can grab, and we spend over an hour covering every inch of my walls and mirrors with pictures.  I survey the effect.  If I have to be in this room for two more days, it looks like it's mine and I like it!  Tasha does too.

 

I wonder if another stupid vampire comes in, if it would bounce off the entrance to my room now, but I hope I'll never have the chance to find out.  And I push the thought down as quickly as it comes, without saying anything or even missing a beat in the conversation I'm having with Tasha, Dawn, and Tasha's little sister Jennie about Spring nail polish.

 

Mom enters the room right before lunchtime and asks if we want deli sandwiches.   We all agree wholeheartedly, so she makes a Subway run.  When she comes back, she says that Dad's relieved I'm doing well and he had to leave.  There's a chill in her voice that I don't want to approach, like, ever.

 

The entire psychiatric ward is a zoo—we're tripping over friends and relatives, and the poor nurses have to wade through the crowd to take everyone's blood pressure.  I never thought I'd feel sorry for a nurse who was trying to stick a needle in my arm, but there you go; I guess anything's possible.  I so need to get out of here.

 

We clean up the takeout mess, and Mom pulls out a rental copy of Toy Story II.  She says that she thought it might work with all the little kids running around.  Dawn rolls her eyes and asks Mom if she thinks we're all five, and I laugh because it spares me having to make a protest.

 

I catch Dawn's eye and she laughs too.

 

"You like cartoons," I tease her.

 

"And you don't?  I've seen you downstairs, early on Saturday when you think no one's up, cheering the Roadrunner on and making little monkey noises!"

 

"Liar."  I know—and I'm sure Dawn knows—that the scenario in question happened last month, but I can't give her another reason to compare me to a howler monkey.

 

Dawn goes back to examining the movie case.

 

Mom goes in the common room and starts setting up the VCR, and I pull Dawn into my room, because the Dawn I know would never have given up so easily.  "What's wrong, Dawnie?" I say.

 

"Mom and Dad are getting divorced and the three of us—you, Mom, and me—are moving to Sunnydale," Dawn blurts out.

 

There's a million things that I can think of that I want to say: questions, like why now and is it my fault for getting kicked out of Hemery, regular moving fears, terse comments like good, a fresh start, and the thought I cannot say, that there won't be so many vampires and other scaries out in the middle of nowhere so it'll be the perfect place to get back to my life.  The thing that actually comes out of my mouth is classic big sister.  "They told you this?"

 

"I was hiding in the front coat closet listening to them fight."

 

I stroke her hair.  "You shouldn't do that, Dawnie.  Not when I'm not there with you."

 

"You're locked up here."

 

"Only until Monday."

 

"You'd better get out Monday."

 

"Promise.  Monday night I'll be back in my own bed where I belong, and you can come over and hide under the covers, and we'll talk this whole thing through.  Until then, don't listen to them."

 

"Like you can give me orders from the crazy ward.  I bet it's your fault that Dad's leaving, with you burning down the gym and everything."

 

I want to tell her to look at the way Mom and Dad have been treating each other—to make the thought, that it might be my fault, go away—to make that not true—but I hold back because she's my little sister and she has a good reason to be mad at me.

 

"Movie's starting!" Mom hollers from the hall.

 

I give Dawn a look and make her promise me not to hide in the closet tonight.  Like she's going to keep it, but at least I can say I tried to protect her.

 

Every patient under thirty, and every visitor in the hall, is gathered in front of this twelve-inch TV screen.  These people need lives in the worst way.  I should talk.  Both of my eyes are glued to the cartoon.

 

I drag them away when Dawn starts making hot cocoa.  She has an entire tub of cocoa powder and a carton of milk, and she's filling enough of these little hospital styrofoam cups for every patient and visitor in the dayroom.  I catch her right before she shuts the microwave doors and cover the cups so they won't explode in the microwave.  Dawn says she was going to do that.  Instead of responding directly, I wait until the cups are out of the microwave, the cocoa is stirred, and Dawn's happily slurping a huge cupful with more marshmallows than cocoa.

 

"Those are really monkey brains," I whisper.  "The marshmallow factory dries them out in a tub of sugar, but they get squishy when they get wet.  Squishy brains."

 

"They are not," says Dawn.

 

I sip my plain cocoa and give a mysterious smile.

 

Dawn spews her mouthful of cocoa all over the dayroom floor.  She gets a spot where it's tile and not carpet.

 

The nurses look rather upset with me, but it's worth it for the laughter in Tasha and Jennie's eyes.  Dawn will forgive me.

 

I wonder if Mom will forgive me.  Then Dawn pokes me, and I look at Mom.  She didn't even notice the practical joke.  Passions, her favorite soap, is on where the cartoon used to be, and Mom is about three inches from the dayroom TV.  Mom's crying.

 

She will never hear the end of this.  Dawn and I pinky swear it as we watch Mom's face reflected on the screen and silently laugh until tears are running down our faces.

 

Mom tells me that she has an art show tomorrow, and Dawn has a birthday party, and asks if I'll be all right until Monday when they can come get me to take me home.  I give them each a thumbs-up and tell them I'm great.

 

 

Sunday

 

Life's a song you don't get to rehearse

And every single verse

Can make it that much worse...

 

Breakfast is an hour later on the weekends.  I manage to keep myself asleep until seven.  It's not easy with all the machines beeping and flashing, but maybe I can get used to anything.  Or maybe I'm just exhausted.  Hospitals are so alien...there's lots of reasons to hate them.  The atmosphere itself just saps energy.

 

I tell all the nurses I’m going home tomorrow.  I’m not sure if they believe me, but since the only way to find out is to sneak a look at my chart, I give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

A couple of the visitors ask me why I don't have any, but I say that I don’t need someone to sit and entertain me.  I don’t need anything except a good long night out dancing…but I hope that I’ll get it soon.  If we’re moving to a little tiny town, I can find a new club and get a fresh start.  I daydream about it all morning.  New school, new friends…okay, they’re not exactly daydreams since I’m so scared of so many things—being behind on classes, not making friends, getting into more trouble—but I’m not expecting vampires around.  I’m scared of the things a normal girl is scared of.  I’ve done fine all week talking like the other world doesn’t exist.  I'm ready to go out and do it in the world.  I'm all about secrecy now.

 

I spend the morning baking peanut butter cookies with Tasha.  The nurses really want us out of our rooms doing projects—and I’m sucking up for them today—Jennie is here again, and all of us can still leave the hospital meal trays; ergo, baking project.  First we gorge ourselves on dough.  Then we gorge ourselves on cookies.  It’s fun.

 

Maybe sane Buffy is philosophical Buffy.  I like cookie dough.  Besides the fact that it’s sugar, and sometimes you can put chocolate in it—I like the way it’s great when it’s not done yet.  And I like the way that the finished cookies taste even better than you’d ever expect just from tasting the dough, but when you’re eating dough, it seems like the best thing ever made.

 

Tasha’s family leaves promptly at three thirty in the afternoon.  She goes with them.  I tell her not to come back, but to give me her address.  I can’t give her mine since I’ll be moving soon, but I promise to write.  I wonder if I can keep that promise.  The old, pre-Calling Buffy wouldn’t have even said she would (or have wanted to be friends with Tasha anyway), but the new, Buffy-who’s-keeping-her-Calling silent…we’ll see.  I still think I like this new Buffy better, even though I'm trying to act like old Buffy for the world.

 

The old Buffy would have no qualms about using her Slayer hearing to eavesdrop on the doctor talking to Tasha's family.  The new Buffy is genuinely concerned about her new friend.

 

Enough philosophy!  Whichever person I am, I'm standing outside the door pretending to examine the nurse's "assertiveness" chart and listening with both ears.

 

Tasha had an averse reaction to her ADHD medication.  She's on a new medication, and she's sleeping soundly again and having no wild mood swings.  They wanted to have her under observation while switching the meds, but everything's fine and she can go home.

 

ADHD medication.  I wonder for a moment what that stands for, but--doing a quick scan of all the posters around here--I find one with "Basic Facts about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder."   Symptoms: Inability to Focus; Concentrating on Everything At Once; Compulsive Inappropriate Jokes."  Hmmm...sounds a little like Dawn.  I chuckle.  Not really, but there's one more thing to store for when she gets too annoying.  I read on.  More boys have this disorder than girls, and more kids get the label than really have the illness.  Usual treatments: medication, time.

 

That doesn't sound so bad.

 

I'm just glad Tasha isn't crazy.  I run to the opposite end of the hall, look out the window, and wave goodbye.  She blows me a kiss.  She's all cuddled up in the backseat with Jennie.  She doesn't even look hyperactive.

 

My new roommate arrives almost as soon as Tasha is out the door.  I pout a little bit and take down a few of the pictures I’d put up on the other side of the room when I thought I’d have it to myself now, and greet the new girl.  Tasha didn’t turn out to be crazy…

 

This one maintains she isn’t crazy; she says she just has a physical problem, and she makes the nurses take her blood pressure every half hour or so.  Her name is Ellen, and I can’t get her to stop talking.  It’s just as well; there are less chances for me to talk about things I shouldn't when I can’t get a word in edgewise. 

 

I leave her to settle in and take every bit of nervous energy I have out on the exercise bike.  Since nurse Shellie can't kick me off, the bike looks distinctly worse for wear when I finally get tired. 

 

Another vampire blows through the hallway after supper.  It's a teenaged guy, not in vamp face this time, but dressed last century's clothes and sniffing his way along.  I swear under my breath.  I can't tell anyone what I've seen, and I can't let anyone see me do what I need to do, but if I don't stake that vampire, it'll snack on one of the innocents here.  Maybe one of my friends.  What are hospitals like without Slayers to protect them—is that where the unexplained deaths come from?  And why can't someone figure out how to uninvite the vampires?

 

In other words, why do I have to carry the weight of the world?  Especially as a secret?

 

I stalk the vampire into group room two.  Good...no one around.  Bad...no windows.  I try to think of something to say to distract it as I'm rummaging through the art drawers for wooden paintbrushes.  The handles are all plastic.  Cheap art suppliers!

 

He tries to get around me, saying that he's just sneaking in after hours to reassure his girlfriend. 

 

"Is that what you call it?" I say.  I can't think of anything clever.  This place is definitely getting to me.

 

"What?"

 

"'Reassure,' not 'bite'?"  Lame, Buffy, lame.  I knock over the entire art table to retrieve a tongue depressor some sloppy nurse dropped in the middle of group last week.

 

"What are you talking about?"

 

I aim the tongue depressor at the heart.  Then I stop.  We've edged out of the group room back under the common room windows, and he's standing in the sunset.  Vampires can tolerate late sunset, I think, but the sun isn't really down yet, and it's bathing him in orange light.  He's not sniffing anymore.  He just looks mad.  Most of the other patients and all of the nurses are in the common room now.  Everyone's staring at me.

 

I try to get behind the knocked-over table.  Slayer combat reflexes kick in, and I'm on the outside watching my body.  Three nurses hold me down.  I thrash; I leave several good bruises (including one genuine shiner for Shellie), but someone jabs a needle into my arm and the world goes black.

 

 

Monday

 

Still my friends don't know why I ignore

The million things or more

I should be dancing for...

 

I swim to consciousness...the clock jumps several times before it finally settles on 1:29.  I feel awful.  My limbs are heavy and my mind threatens to slip back into sleep at any second.

 

This is the first time since I got here that they managed to drug me.  They actually stuck needles in me.  They left needles in me!  I rip the needle out of my hand and try to shove the IV pole across the room (it only goes about three inches, but I feel like I've shoved it, and that's all that matters to me at the moment).  I sit and stare at the blood running down my hand.  Was that supposed to hurt?  I don't feel anything.  Ignoring pain.  Is that part of being the Slayer, or am I just beyond caring?

 

Did I dream?  There are images in my mind...a time when I was hurt like this, when it did hurt, when a blow that only left a bruise felt like it had broken my arm.  It's like something's trying to tell me that my Slayer abilities are real.  That vampires are real, that my destiny--no, my mission--is sealed, and that if I just keep walking ahead, somehow, I will find the strength to live it out.

 

But I can't do this.  The Slayer thing, I mean, even the secret Slayer thing.  It's a weight, a real weight heavier than my head and arms, and it's what's keeping me from sitting up, not the drugs.  It's the weight of a destiny I didn't choose.  If the way that the destiny came over me was the only thing...well, I could deal with that.  It's heavier than that.  The weight of a destiny that everyone around me says isn't destiny at all but self-centered delusion.

 

It was hard enough when my own senses told me I was right.  When Merrick told me I wasn't crazy (as I recall, I told him he was crazy), and when I was out in the world using the Calling that not many would believe.

 

Now I don't even have that.  My own senses were wrong.

 

Since I got here, everyone has jumped to lecturing me on how to fix my senses without proving that they were wrong at all, and that made me mad, but I realize now that they can't prove a reality.  I wonder sometimes how tenuous my own hold to it has been.

 

All my supposed Slayer strength won't even let me sit up.

 

What if it doesn't matter whether I have it or not?  There's no pressing need for me to stake vampires anymore, not since Lothos and that attack on the gym.  There's no reason for me to keep on doing it, only the quiet truth that I'm the one who can, but I'm beginning to doubt that.  Memory is one thing; seeing my own senses proven wrong in front of about fifty people who tell me I'm deluded is another.

 

So I won't be the Slayer anymore.  I retire.

 

The thought vibrates through my heart with all the force of an oath.  Something enters and something leaves.  I'm unprepared for the grief that descends on me as the weight of destiny departs.  Grief...it enfolds me, envelopes me until I cannot lift my eyelids, even to let out the tears that leak from the clenched lids.

 

It's the first time since I arrived here that I've cried.  The first time in my life that I've ever cried like this.  It's like a part of me is watching from the outside, waiting for the weight to lift and the pain to ease, just enough, but it never does.

 

To lift the weight, I think after almost an hour of hopeless sobbing, I'd need an outside connection...love, the kind of love that existed only in the dreams.  They're only dreams.

 

No connection, not really.  The nurses leave me alone, and I'm grateful for that, at least when I can feel at all outside of the cloud of grief, which is only in microseconds.

 

A doctor's face—not Dr. Taylor; younger and unfamiliar—appears and then vanishes in the crack where the door hangs ajar.  "She's awake," I hear him say from the hallway.  I force myself to stop crying just in time—and perhaps a bit of my ordinary human strength has returned, since I am capable of that—as Dawn flings the door open and rushes through the room to my bed.

 

Dawn's crying from hysteria, not grief.  She lifts me right out of the bed, and I find the strength to wrap my arms around her.  It's enough; the weight eases enough for me to move.

 

Mom's right behind Dawn.  "Sweetie?  Are you okay?" she asks over and over.  I keep waiting for the what happened?, where I will either have to admit that I was wrong discerning a vampire or say that it was all unreal and I was sick—but the question never comes.  She just asks if I'm all right and strokes my hair.

 

Dad's in the doorway.  He's holding a funny cartoon pig balloon and another box of chocolates.  The box is enormous, plenty for all four of us.  I ask him to come join us with a trembling voice.

 

It's not a resolution, but it's an uneasy truce.  Dad comes and sits on the bed on my other side from Mom and opens the candy.  We talk about nothing.  Strength slowly returns to my arms and legs.  I can feel the tension leave Dawn with every ebb of strength in me, and when it's time to leave, she's sitting normally and not plastered to me.

 

They leave at seven, after an extra hour that the staff granted us.  I don't want to know what Mom and Dad discuss with the doctors around their time with me.  Dawn ties the balloon to the head of my bed, and curls the ribbon with one of her hair barrettes.

 

Ellen comes in, chattering, also about nothing.  I make the right noises and try not to let her know there's only one thought in my head.

 

I'm not the Slayer.  I'm going to go back and live like a person.

 

 

Tuesday

 

All the joys life sends

Family and friends

 

It's easier to live with the secrets again today. I don't have that same sensation that I'm pushing away a burden that I did when they first told me they were sending me home, but I do feel that I can adjust.  I wake up at 5:43, and I'm wide awake.  There are no scars or bruises anywhere on my body from my activities the day before.  My eyes are hot and heavy, though.  Is this what it's always like when you cry too much?   I pretend to be weak for Brett as he takes my vitals, pretending nothing is wrong.  I vaguely remember one of the doctors telling him to see if I need a straightjacket, but he doesn't mention that.  Good.  That would have been beyond humiliating. 

 

Will the Slayer healing fade as I keep not-using the Slayer abilities?  Will I be physically able to not-use my Slayer abilities?  Is it not supernatural healing, after all, but just the memory of a delusion?  I stop my mind right there.  Today I'm going to be strong.

 

But as I think it, as I send the commands to my rebellious arms and legs to get up, I start drifting back into dream. 

 

I notice that again.  It's like there's something out there telling me I can't quit.  This is my choice, I try to tell it...it doesn't belong to whoever invented the concept of the Slayer or even whatever raised the first vampire, but to me.

 

It's not listening.

 

I know I'm dreaming.  I'm in the past, but not that far in the past.  Only yesterday.  Mom is holding me on one side, and Dad is standing awkwardly by her side, and Dawn...no, that's not right.  There's no little girl in my arms.  Just the three of us.  I don't have a sister.  I never had a sister.

 

But I do.  I need her.  She's me, in the deepest sense I can imagine.  I want Dawn back!  I will it, and slowly, the little girl takes shape and form again, and she's there in my arms.  She's my potential.  She's the reason I have to make choices.  I feel protective.  Not warm mixed with annoyed, or affectionate mixed with exasperated...just protective.

 

The scene shifts, and once again there's no Dawn.  Nothing feels right without her.

 

I force myself awake, and I do not mention that dream to any of the nurses.  What would I say--I dreamed my sister wasn't my sister and the only way to get her back was to take up a destiny I don't believe is real anymore and I never wanted?  I can't even think of enough code words to write about it in my diary.  I don't want to figure it out.  I want to forget.  It was just a nightmare anyway.  Dawn is coming with Mom and Dad the very next time I get visitors.

 

Dr. Taylor doesn't say anything about sending me home.  He doesn't say much.  He makes some more noise about medication and tells me to get back to group.  As long as it's just pills, I can find creative ways to not take them.  They're never drugging me like that again.  I'll give up my calling, but I'll never give up me, and I'll never let anyone take that away.

 

I get distracted from the scary groups all morning when they bring in a new patient.  People have been coming and leaving every day, but this is different.  The new girl's name is Emma, and she's kicking and screaming—literally—but not about being in the hospital.  She gives this aura of being held back from...who knows what.  It frightens me, and yet I want to know if I can help.

 

That's a good way to sum up this entire place.

 

My instincts—only two months, and I've developed Slayer instincts? or are they delusions?— tell me to help by finding something to pummel.  But that's not going to be the way I solve problems anymore.  So what do I do?

 

The question cycles in my head all day, and as the daily routine ends, I'm no closer to finding an answer.

 

 

Wednesday

 

Don't give me songs

Give me something to sing about!

I need something to sing about...

 

When I was first Called—like, in the first couple of weeks when I started discovering my body's abilities—I had these vivid dreams every night.  Not exactly nightmares, but not exactly pleasant, and they would always happen in some form.  I saw this master vampire I had to fight, faced him dozens of times before I actually saw him.  Since that time, though, my Slayer dreams have been more vague.  Just images, hints; I'll wake up with the sensation that I've been fighting something—or fighting back to back with someone for something (not the same thing at all), but not vivid and quickly forgotten.  Since I retired from being the active Slayer, I've had nothing, not even regular dreams.

 

I feel like I haven't slept all night.  Now that I'm finally coming to the end of this institutional waking nightmare, every hour spent unconscious is one less hour I'm here...but tonight my body rebels.  I count everything I can think of.  Sheep, clouds, stuffed pigs, famous ice skaters, stakes...no, not stakes (although I might carry one in my purse when I leave here since I do know how to use it...just in case I run into weird stuff in the future...just in case I was wrong about my destiny not being real).  I count things I can't wait to do when I get out of here; that's fun for an hour and thirty five minutes, by the red numbers on the blood pressure clock.  What idiot thought counting was a good way to fall asleep, anyway?

 

The hospital bed morphs into an unfamiliar bed in my room at home, and I give a huge sigh of relief as I feel myself slipping into dreamscape.  I love those dreams where I know I'm dreaming.  The first thing I always do is try to fly, and the next is turn my little sister into something ridiculous with absolute impunity.  This time, though, although I feel myself dreaming, I can't affect the dream.

 

I'm in a room that's not really my room—I mean, it is, the whole place is arranged and decorated so that it screams mine, but it's not that much like my real bedroom at home—and there's an unfamiliar black haired girl sitting on the bed.  No, she's a brunette; she's just wearing black lipstick and eyeliner.  She has an air of sophistication over a very real beauty, but I think she's younger than she looks.  Her features are set, in an expression of steel.  I feel as if I ought to know her, but I don't.  Pain radiates from her, like the sophistication, but it doesn't either attract or repel me; it's just there.

 

The older girl fuzzes out and Dawn takes her place.  They don't morph or anything, but I can't tell who sits on the bed when.  Dawn is different too.  She looks like I think she might look when she's my age.  She's much taller, stronger, turning into a great beauty, and she's full of that same pain.  I reach out to her.

 

Dawn is gone and the dark-haired, lithe girl who feels like she might have been my sister is back in her place.  "Can't kick it's butt, B," she says.  "But then, you knew that."

 

I'm dreaming and I know that too, but I find that I do know what she means.  "It" is the pain I see in her and Dawn...the lingering horror of my own time in this place, and the pain I've seen in the few days I've been here in this institution.  I just want to leave it behind me, and this girl is telling me I can't fight it.  So?  I already figured that one out; no need to send me a message in a dream.

 

I want to know who this girl is.  She's me, my other half...me in a different way than Dawn is me, the person I might have been rather than a distilled version of the person I am.  I can't straighten it out, and the dream is getting fuzzy while the sense of hospital bed and blood pressure monitor is getting stronger.

 

I use every bit of my will to stay in the dream.  "Not going to try...to fight," I tell her.

 

"You have to," she says.  Her voice is emotionless, but Dawn's voice, as my sister takes the other girl's place midway through the sentence, is filled with emotion.  "Things worth fighting for..." Dawn says.

 

I want to hear the end, but the beginning of her phrase echoes in my hospital room as I wake.  "Things worth fighting for..."  My roommate is as quiet at night as she is, um, vivacious during the day, so all the other sounds from the hospital filter through our room.  Then again, I should be used to that...

 

I know what woke me.  The girl in the next room is crying.

 

I toss off the blankets and slip out of my room on those too small mass-produced hospital slippers.  I check the hall to see if the coast is clear.  Shellie is playing Solitaire at the nurse's station, and there's some janitor at the very end changing the towels, but other than that, everything is quiet and as dark as hospitals ever get.  I pad from my room into the next.

 

As I push the door open, I wonder how I possibly heard Emma's sobs in my room.  She's being so quiet that I can barely make out the noise from inside her room, and I'm listening for it.  She hasn't heard me.  She's in the bed farthest from the door, and she has her back turned to it.

 

I'm right next to her before she notices I'm there.  "Hey," I whisper.

 

She sits up.  Emma isn't really a girl at all, not the way I thought she was, although she can't be older than twenty.  Her hair is strawberry blond, falling almost to her waist, and she has this kind of delicate grace that makes it look like she's a girl, at least from far enough away to obscure her haunted green eyes.  Up close, she looks like she's at least twenty years old. 

 

I can't think of anything to say.

 

She breaks the silence for me.  "Did I wake you?"

"Oh...no," I lie.  Well, maybe it isn't a lie; something did wake me, but I doubt it was Emma's voice.  "I was just...restless...I came in to see if there was anyone else awake to talk to.  Or go do a puzzle or something, if the Nazi Generals out there will let us out of bed."

 

"Oh."  She scrubs at her face and gives me one of those fake smiles filled with pain that I've learned to recognize so well in the past week.

 

"You okay?"

 

"Sure.  I've been better."

 

I think how Tasha used the same phrase, but when Tasha said it I believed her.  Emma is...beyond me.  I wonder if I should go back to my room.

 

She motions for me to sit down next to her, and suddenly she starts talking.  Situations without resolutions, questions without answers.  She's like me in that.  Questions without answers.  I won't give her the standard caveat, you have so much to live for.  I don't know if she does.  But I want her to fight.

 

I finally tell her that.  Sometimes all you can do is make one little connection.  Fighting is hard, and painful, and every day...and that's not just Slaying (which I'm not thinking about anymore), but life.

 

I can't put it all into words, but Emma seems to understand.

 

We stay there talking, right up until the doctors draw us away.  I want it to be longer.

 

 

Mom strides into the hall like a woman on a mission (maybe she should be the Slayer...but now no one has to be, I promise myself), and shares a glance with Dr. Taylor, who's still here doing something or other.

 

"They say I'm sane-Buffy now?" I say.  I try not to be sarcastic.  As much emotion as I have rolled up in all of this, coming here, what I've learned, what I've been told—I don't want to jeopardize my chances of leaving.

 

"You can go home tomorrow, Buffy," Dr. Taylor says.  "As long as you keep on your meds, I think you can keep these delusions from affecting your thoughts."

 

I pretend not to have heard his last sentence.  That doesn't take much, as the weight of the rest of his words hits me.  "Tomorrow?"

 

"Yes.  Now, I have some affirmations for you, and I really do want you to work on these negative thought patterns..." Mom looks absorbed.  I keep from yawning in the doctor's face.  Tomorrow.

 

Emma comes up behind me.  "I'm happy for you," she whispers.

 

"I know it's just for today, but this is something to fight for," I whisper back.  "Living.  Really living."

 

"I know."

 

 

A/N  The character Emma is based on my scattered memories of Anna Westin, who I knew for about two weeks.  So many people have done things in her memory; this is my own contribution to a woman who was and could have become a dear friend.

http://www.annawestinfoundation.org/annastory.htm

 

 

 

Thursday

 

Life's not a song, life isn't bliss

Life is just this, it's living.

You'll get along; the pain that you feel

Only can heal by living,

You have to go on living...

 

I bounce through the hospital's morning routine in a haze of excitement.  Not even Ellen can annoy me.  "They're sending me home today too," she whispers.  "I've had too much fun."

 

"Fun," is not a word I associate with a psychiatric hospital.  I can't wait to be normal again.

 

I almost forget to get rid of my pills, and my apple juice is three quarters gone before Daryl taps me on the shoulder and tells me to take my medication.  I wait until his back is turned, spit one pill in the apple juice container and two in the dregs of my orange juice, and get rid of the whole tray at lightning speed.

 

Dad doesn't come.  It's the middle of his workday, and Mom says he said he'd make some time to spend with me once I'm home.  I pretend not to hear the edge in Mom's voice.  She and Dad don't know that Dawn and I know about their plans, but there will be time to fight about that later.  Dawn and I fully agree on something.  That feels weird!

 

Dawn bounces in holding an enormous blue stuffed bunny rabbit.  I tell her to give it to Emma; I have plenty of stuffed animals and Mr. Gordo in my bag to get home safely.  Okay, he's sitting on top of my bag.  He has to breathe.  Dawn will understand that.  I'm not sure anyone else will.  It feels good to have a normal secret, one not connected with the other world I'm trying to forget.  I have to remember to tell it to Dawn sometime.

 

Dawn gives Emma the bunny, along with an enormous hug.  "Thank you," I can see Emma mouth around blue fur and brown hair.  I smile at them both.  I hope Emma can find the strength for another day, and another. 

 

And then it's done, and we're free to walk out the door, all of us.  Mom, Dawn, and me: our family.  They're all I need to keep fighting for.  I mean, fighting for myself; I'm through with the other type.  It barely crosses my mind; the sunlight is bright, and I think it is going to be possible—possible to turn from the Calling and just be me.

 

 

There's a song line—I can't remember where it's from, but it goes, "Let the speed and the freedom untangle the lies."  That about sums up the way I feel right now.  I'm in the same physical place I was two weeks ago, buckled in the back left seat of Mom's station wagon, but I wonder now why the car never seemed to go so fast, or the motion of the vehicle ever seemed to feel so good.  I feel like I left crazy Buffy back in the laundry bin at the hospital.  I even left Slayer Buffy behind me in that bed on Monday morning...the girl in my skin now is just Buffy-Buffy.

 

And when I wake up tomorrow, no one is going to take my blood pressure or give me the third degree about my dreams.  That thought alone is exhilarating.

 

Dawn's in the same place she was two weeks ago, too, sitting next to me.  She's not huddled into half a seat, though, but vibrating around the entire back of the car like she usually does, taking up every bit of possible room.

 

Dawn's saying something, too...sometimes it's hard to tell whether she's talking, or just singing and quoting and spouting random facts that even she's not listening to.  But she's actually saying something.  I draw my attention away from the window.

 

"Mom," she's saying, "Buffy's taking up more than her share of room!  Get that into your own seat..."

 

Mom adjusts the rear view mirror so she can see us instead of the road.  "Buffy, tell me you didn't buckle your stuffed pig in the middle seatbelt," she says.

 

I undo the belt and tuck Mr. Gordo under my left arm where he can see out the window.  "Okay.  I didn't."

 

Mom's trying not to laugh.  I can see her face in the mirror.

 

"We need ice cream," I announce.  I take my new, freshly dog-eared diary out of the backpack at my feet and flip it to the last page with writing.  "See?" I hold it up for Dawn's benefit.  "It's right on my list of priorities the moment I get free.  One, eat ice cream.  Two, get so jazzed up on caffeine I can't see straight.  They haven't let me have any for two weeks now.  Three, wear one of those great new outfits out dancing with boys.  Four, movie other than G-rating and self-help-y title.  Guess what's playing right now?"

 

Mom must know, because she casts a worried look at Dawn in the mirror and says, "I'll pull off as soon as I see a Dairy Queen."

 

"Can we go to TCBY instead?" asks Dawn.  She says, I think; she might have shouted or whined it, but with Dawn I can never tell.  "It's cooler and I can get pineapple yogurt and everything..."

 

"Okay with you, Buffy?" says Mom.  "It's your day."

 

I roll my eyes at my sister.  "TCBY's fine," I tell Mom.

 

"Good.  Is there anything else you really, really want right now?"

 

“Real coffee,” I say.  Frappacino, I think, but "coffee" sounds so much more dignified, and after finally ditching the too-short hospital gown and personally scrubbing the nurses' white board with a whole bottle of Windex, for the first and last time in my life, I want to sound dignified.

 

Mom looks worried.  Good.  She was wigging me out with all her cheeriness; I kept expecting her to drop another bombshell on me.  I pray she doesn't still think I'm a crazy girl to be treated with kid gloves.

 

“Honey, don’t you think you’re a little young to drink that stuff?” Mom says.

 

Whew, normal Mom mode.  I retort, “I’m old enough to sit in groups listening to rape survivors and not old enough to drink coffee?”

 

Mom ignores the group part—good; I didn't mean to bring it up, and I hope Mom's selective memory is finally kicking in.  Mom says,  “We’ll hit a Starbucks drive-thru on the way to TCBY, then.  Coffee for you, hot chocolate or apple cider for Dawn."

 

“Please.  I am totally old enough for coffee,” says Dawn

 

She looks like she thought the listening to other people's horror in group thing was cool, too.  I dope-slap her.  Gently.

 

“Mom!”  Dawn yells in that shriek of hers that threatens to shatter the car windows.  “Buffy hit me!  Can we take her back and trade her in for that sweet girl I gave the teddy bear to?”

 

“I don’t know,” Mom says dryly.  "It's a thought."

 

"Look!  Sugar this exit!" I call.  There's a huge sign on the edge of the road with both a Starbucks and a TCBY on the "Food" section.  Maybe it's an omen.

 

Omen or coincidence, I'll take the treats and be happy about it.  I feel the need for more sugar than the human body can handle.

 

 

WILLOW: You've carried the weight of the world on your shoulders since high school. And I, I know you didn't ask for this, but ... you do it every day. And so, you wanted out for one second. So what?
BUFFY: I got Dawn killed.
WILLOW: Hello! Your sister, not dead yet!

“The Weight of the World,” (5-21)

BUFFY: Things have really sucked lately, but it's all gonna change. And I wanna be there when it does. I want to see my friends happy again. And I want to see you grow up, [Dawn]. The woman you're gonna become. Because she's gonna be beautiful.  And she’s gonna be powerful.  I got it all wrong.  I don’t want to protect you from the world. I want to show it to you.

“Grave,” (6-22)

Let the road wind tie our hair in knots

Let the speed and the freedom untangle the lies

Maybe fear can vanish before love

Oh, God, don't let this love be denied...

--Rich Mullins, The River