Have a Little Faith, Chapter 17

“All right,” Wesley said, a little deadpan.  “We’ll see you when you get back.” He hung up the phone.
 
“Who was that?” Cordelia asked.  She was staying with Wesley and Faith while her apartment was getting ready.  Alex had told her she needed to clean some files out of it.

“It was Doyle.  He is heading out to San Diego with the demons and should be back next week—“ Wesley paused.  “And that Faith took on the scourge herself.”

“What?” Cordelia asked, her voice shrilled.  “Are you telling me Faith took on those crazy demons on her own?”

Wesley nodded.  “Apparently she was trying to save a boy that had run off.”

“So where is she?” Cordelia asked. “Shouldn’t she have called or something?”

Wesley did not say anything for a moment.  All he knew was that the Scourge was bad and there was no way Faith could take them all on.  He dialed her cell phone number.  It rang until the voice mail came on. Wesley hung up.  He stared at the cell phone for a long time and debated if he should call Lindsey.  He decided not to, yet.  He did not want to put Lindsey in jeopardy.  He took a deep breath. “I’m going to check the hospitals.  Can you help me?” he asked, trying to remain calm.

Cordelia nodded.  “Of course.  We should call Alex and Kate.  A private investigator and a cop; what could go wrong?”
 

“I think I can handle it,” was the first thing that Kate told Alex when they met at the hospital closest to where the scourge had been.

“You really think so, Kate,” Alex said, a little annoyed.  “I find missing persons all the time.”

“And I’m the pro—“

“Ladies,” Wesley said, concerned.  “We can all find her, together.  She may be badly injured or—“

“Don’t think that—“ Cordelia assured him.

Wesley nodded.  They entered the emergency room and walked over to the desk.

“Excuse me,” Kate said, before Alex could say anything.  “I’m detective Lockely.  I’m looking for a missing woman.”

The clerk looked a little dumbfounded and somewhat uninterested.  “Is this woman wanted for something?”

“She’s missing,” Kate said.   “Her family thinks she might be hurt.”

“I guess you can give me a dis—“ the clerk said, still uninterested.

“Can I speak to someone in charge,” Alex demanded, pushing Kate slightly out of the way.  “This girl could be hurt.  She’s only 17.”

“Oh,” the clerk said.  “Dr. Ross?” she called out.  “These people are looking for a woman who might be hurt.”

“Yes,” he said.  He walked over to them.  “How can I help you?”

“Yes,” Wesley said getting tears in his eyes.  “My daughter, she’s missing.  Can you please tell me if she’s here.  Her name is Faith Wyndham-Pryce.  She’s 17, has dark brown hair, brown eyes and is about 5’6.”

“Would have remembered a Faith,” he said.  “But we had two Jane Does tonight—“

“Jane Does—Was any of them-- were they--” Wesley said unable to use any word that meant dead.

“One yes, one in is in the morgue.  The other is in ICU.”

“Wesley,” Alex said and put her hand on his shoulder.  She wanted to deck the doctor for his indifferent attitude. “Why don’t you and Cordelia go to the ICU.  We’ll go to the morgue.”

Wesley shook his head. “No, I’ll go—I have too—The council needs confirmation when things like this happen.  The watcher must identify the body.”

“I’ll go too, Lind-- I mean linen is sometimes difficult to pull back—I mean pulling back the sheet.  Some other people might want to see too, but can’t because they, umm—have to work and stuff,” Cordelia said, then looked down.

Alex and Kate looked at Cordelia like she was a complete idiot, but Wesley understood that she was coming along because Lindsey would have wanted to see Faith.  He would have been happy to know that at least Cordelia saw her.

“It may be intense,” Alex said.  “Maybe one of us should go,” she said.  “Kate and I have seen dead bodies before.”

“No, I’ve seen dead bodies before, gross, yeah, but I’ve seen them—“ Cordelia explained.

“You have?” Alex said, a little shocked.

“Well, duh, I am from Sunnydale.”

Now both Kate and Alex seemed confused.

“A lot of people die in Sunnydale,” Wesley finally explained.  He wanted to put off the inevitable.

“And a lot of people die here,” Kate said.  “Well, we might as well go.  We’ll meet in ICU?”

Alex touched Wesley’s shoulder.  “Faith’s a survivor.  She’s not the woman in the morgue.”
 

Sometimes Slayers were hard to find once the old slayer died.  Sometimes Watchers find them months, years after they had been activated.  Watchers only got one slayer and that’s it.  Once Faith died, Wesley had to retire.  He got a nice pension and lifetime benefits, but it was still devastating to lose a slayer.

Wesley had been Faith’s watcher for less than a year.  In that time, they had gained trust and understanding of each other.

“I think it would really suck for Lindsey if anything happened to Faith,” Cordelia commented.  She seemed completely oblivious to what was going on or maybe this was her way of coping.

“I’m sure,” he said.  He took a deep breath before entering the morgue. There were bodies on tables.  And drawers for more bodies.  In the center of the morgue was a doctor looking over the body of an elderly man.

“Eww, what’s that stench? Dead bodies?”

“Formaldehyde,” Wesley explained and moved towards the doctor while trying to not look at the bodies.  “Excuse me, sir.”

The doctor looked up from his work.  “Yes?”

“Umm—I’m here to see the body of a Jane Doe brought in earlier.”

“Oh, you are a relation?”

“I’m looking for my daughter.”

The doctor got up.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  Hold on.  Let me see where I put her.”  The man looked at the drawers like he was looking for a file.

“Oh, yes,” he said.  “Here we go.”  He went to a drawer and pulled it open.

Wesley slowly went over.  7 months of training, of plans, was it all for nothing?  Had Angelus won without even an attempt?

The doctor pulled the sheet back.

The girl on the gurney looked around Faith’s age and while it was still sad that this girl had died so young, it was not Faith. This woman had been shot.

Wesley shook his head and the doctor put the sheet back over her.

“At least it isn’t your daughter,” the doctor commented.  Wesley instead burst into tears.
 

“Now that was embarrassing,” Cordelia said when they were riding in the elevator to the ICU.

“I’m sorry,” he said and cleaned off his glasses, then wiped down his face.  “I was being too emotional.  Things have been very intense, but I am in control again.  I’m Faith’s watcher. That’s all.  I have no emotional attachment to her.”

Cordelia did not say anything, she just chuckled.

“What is it?”

“Please,” she said,  “people who aren’t emotional attached usually don’t burst into tears.”

“It was joy.  I was happy that Faith wasn’t that body in the morgue.”

“Well, I’m glad.  Lindsey would be happy to hear she’s not dead.  Of course we still haven’t found her.”

“Well, maybe Kate and Alex were having better luck.”
 

Kate and Alex were not having better luck.  They could not find the Jane Doe the people in the ER were talking about.

They both seemed relieve to see Wesley and Cordelia not looking depressed.

“It wasn’t her,” Wesley said.  “Any luck here?”

“No Jane Does.  I can’t seem to get names,” Alex said with a great amount of frustration in her voice.

“Let me try, a distraught father may work better.”

Kate nodded.  Wesley walked over to the nurse’s station alone.

“Please,” he said, trying to sound as desperate as possible.  “I’m looking for my daughter.  They said there was a Jane Doe here.”

“Sorry, sir,” the nurse on duty said. “Everyone here has a name.”

“Her name is Faith, Faith Wyndham-Pryce—If there any one here by that name? Please I beg of you.”

This nurse seemed to have a little more sympathy.  She looked over the list of patients.  “Oh yes.  There is a Lindsey Price.  She was beaten.  We haven’t been able to find her parents.”

“Lindsey Price.  Lindsey is her middle name—Please let me see her.”

The nurse got up quickly.
 

“Faith!” Wesley nearly shouted out, but then he remembered he was in a hospital.  Faith seemed unconscious.  She had been beaten badly, but she was still alive.  There was a doctor with her.

“You’re her father?”

“Wesley nodded.  “Yes, her name isn’t Lindsey.  It’s Faith Wyndam-Price.”

“Well, Faith was beaten badly.  She’s very lucky she wasn’t killed.  There was—There was no sign of sexual—um assault.”

“She called and said people were after her, I got so worried.  I have a friend who is a detective—Will she recover?”

“Yes,” the doctor said.  “She seems remarkable strong and recovering quickly.  She was brought in a few hours ago.”

“She’s a very strong girl.”

“Mr. Price—“ The doctor said, looking him over.  He looked too young to be her father.  He looked in his early thirties, she looked 17 or 18.

“It’s Wyndham-Pryce,” he said.

“I called social services.  She had no ID and she was a minor who was beaten.  Was she involved in a gang?”

“She just went out.  She’s a good girl.  She’s 17. I allow her.  She called saying some people were trying to beat her up, so I called my friend Detective Lockely.  She’s waiting outside.  She can vouch that Faith was a good girl and stays out of trouble.  She must have gotten mugged.”

“I’m sorry.  I know that it may be difficult to face, but she may have been involved in a gang or drugs.”

Wesley was frustrated.  All he wanted to do was shake up the doctor and scream ‘she’s the slayer for christsakes.’ But he doubted the doctor would even know what a slayer was.  “Look, I know I seem young, but I am her—“

“I’m sorry.  I’m sure they’ll ask some routine questions.  Why don’t you spend some time with your daughter?”  The doctor wondered if he should perhaps ask him for identification, but instead decided to talk to the detective outside.

Wesley nodded.

When the doctor left, Alex came in.  Wesley watched the doctor go over to Kate.  He hoped Kate could straighten this out.  The last thing the watchers needed was a problem with the authorities, especially since Faith had no blood family.

“How is she?”

“She’ll recover,” he said, deadpan   “Now I have to deal with the council, because that moronic doctor called social services.”

“They can handle it,” Alex said, still unsure how the whole Slayer thing worked.  She did know that each Slayer had a watcher to help train them and that sometimes they stayed with their parents and sometimes they didn’t.  Apparently Faith had no family so she was always in custody of the watcher.

“Yep, but it doesn’t mean I won’t have problems with them in the future.  I’m not really Faith’s father.”

“I’ll see what I can do.  I have a lot of connections.”

“I appreciate it.”

Alex nodded, then looked over to Faith’s bed.  “She looks pretty bad.”

“Slayers tend to heal fast,” he explained.  “She’ll be okay.”

“Hey,” Alex said.  “She’s only been working for me for a few weeks and already she’s using my benefits plan.”

“She’ll be okay,” Wesley explained.  He went to the bed and touched the side of her face.

“That was a weird name she gave.”

“She’s supposed to give a fake name.  She’s the slayer.  She needs to keep a low profile.”

“Listen, Wes,” she said and touched his hand.  “I got some friends.  I can get her an ID that will make her 18 with your last name.”

“We can ask her when she wakes up.”

He went over to the bed and touched her hair.  Cordelia was right.  He was emotionally attached to her.  He did not want her to die.

Part 18

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