Author: Kathryn A Pantaleo

Rating: FRM

Disclaimers: All things Buffy belong to Joss Whedon, UPN, Mutant Enemy, and whomever else he shares them with! I can only dream!!

Tires squealing, the white van tore down the street, over a curb and across the front lawn of the Summers’ residence, to stop just beyond the front stairs. The front door opened, and Willow, Tara, and Joyce ran out. Buffy already had the rear doors open, and was pulling Giles out of the van.

Dawn ran into her mothers’ arms, as Willow and Tara came to help Buffy.

"Buffy!" Willow said, "Is he..Oh my God!" she gasped as she caught sight of the blood soaked form of Giles.

"Help me!" Buffy ordered. "Watch his shoulder!"

Willow supported his injured side, as Tara, and a moment later, Anya, took his legs. They carried him quickly into the house. Buffy hesitated. Thus far her only thought had been to get the injured Watcher to someplace safe.

Closing the door behind them, Joyce Summers said, "Buffy, put him in my room,"

Buffy and her friends started up the stairs. Buffy blessed her "slayer strength". Giles was a big man, tall and solidly muscled. They would not have been able to move him without her gift.

Dawn squeezed past them and opened the bedroom door. They gently laid him on the bed. Joyce appeared with a blanket in her hands and covered him. In a gesture Buffy remembered from earliest childhood, she rested her hand on the Watcher’s forehead.

"He’s burning up, Buffy! What the hell happened?"

"Some bad guys got him, Mom. We don’t know a lot more yet." Buffy said. There was no time for all that now. Tires squealed to a halt in front of the house.

Anya looked out the window. "It’s Xander!" she said, and she ran down the stairs to let him in. A moment later, Xander came in to the room with the mysterious Dr. Ben in tow.

Xander must have had some trouble of convincing Ben to make a housecall; the doctor had a shiner. He saw the man on the bed, and vaguely recognized him from the hospital. He had often been there with Buffy and Dawn, and had sat many hours beside Joyce’s’ bed while her daughters rested. He had thought him an uncle, or perhaps a boyfriend. He came quickly to the bed.

"What happed to him?" he asked as he began to examine the injured Watcher. "We have to get him to the hospital. That dagger has to come out!"

"No hospital, Ben." Buffy said quietly.

"You can’t be serious." Ben said.

"You need to treat him here."

"Buffy, you can’t keep him here! That knife has got to come out! He could bleed to death…The risk of infection…"

"No hospital. It’s not safe."

Ben looked at her. "What do you mean, not safe?"

Buffy gave him a steady look. "I think you know what I mean." she said. "Treat him here."

Ben hesitated, then nodded. Giles stirred slightly as Ben began to examine him. He started to weakly struggle with the doctor, fear in his glassy eyes, as he saw a stranger near.

Buffy calmed him again, gently pushing his hair off his forehead, and speaking softly to him. He tried to concentrate on her voice, comforted by her presence.

Ben took a pair of scissors from the emergency medical bag he carried, and began to cut Giles clothes away. Over his shoulder, he said, "Every one but Buffy and Xander, out!" The others quickly left the room.

Buffy sucked in her breath as Ben cut the injured mans’ shirt away. His chest was a mass of bruises. She could clearly see boot prints on his ribcage. Giles gasped as Ben gently probed his ribs.

"What’s his name, Buffy?"

"Giles. Rupert Giles"

"Rupert? Can you hear me?" The glassy eyes came to rest on him. He began to examine the shoulder. "I don’t know who you pissed off enough that they would do this to you Rupert, but let me tell you, they did a good job!"

He elbowed Buffy out of the way, checked Giles’ pupils, and examined the deep cut at his temple. Then he spoke directly to Giles.

"You’re a mess, Rupert. This cut needs stitches.. You’ve got a concussion, that’s why you can’t focus your eyes. You’ve definitely got some cracked ribs. They may be broken, but I can’t tell without an ex-ray. I can’t tell if there are internal injuries. If there are broken ribs, they could puncture a lung. I don’t think that’s happened, your lungs are clear. The dagger has got to come out. You’re losing a lot of blood. If I take it out here and you hemmorage, you could bleed to death. I don’t have any plasma here. I can’t anesthetize you with the head injuries you have. Not here. All I have to help with the pain will be some local anesthetic, and that will really not do much.. Please, I understand that you have concerns about safety at the hospital, but you can’t ask me to do this here. It’s barbaric!"

Giles tried to bring the man into focus. "Do it…please."

"Rupert, you could hemorrhage, you could die! The pain is…"

"No choice…" Giles said. "Do it…now, please?"

Ben looked at him, then nodded. He draped the area with towels. When he was ready, he had Buffy and Xander hold the Watcher down. Then he grasped the knife handle, and in one smooth motion, he pulled it out.

Outside the bedroom, Tara and Willow sat side by side on the top stair. Below, Joyce and Anya sat with an exhausted Dawn. Giles’ scream ripped through the house. bringing them all to their feet. Willow started for the bedroom door, to be stopped by Tara. The strange, gentle witch shook her head, and put her arms around her lover. They could only wait.

Buffy and Xander struggled to hold Giles still as Ben tried desperately to stem the flow of blood. Giles struggled against those restraining him for a moment, then went limp as consciousness fled.

Ben worked frantically, trying to close the wound. Buffy and Xander released their holds on the Watcher, and Buffy began to assist Ben, passing instruments to him, and wiping the blood away. Ben glanced at Xander, whose face had taken on a greenish cast.

"Good job, Harris…Why don’t you get some air?" Xander nodded, stood, and left the room. He slipped out the door, and found Willow and Tara on the landing.

"Xander! Willow said, trying to peer past him into the bedroom, "is he…" she noted her friends’ pallor. "He’s not."

"No! No, Willow...It’s ok. Ben took the dagger out.." His words came faster, "He pulled the dagger right out and I thought we weren’t going to be able to hold him but there was blood everywhere…So much blood…" Xander suddenly clapped a hand over his mouth, and then bolted for the bathroom, where he was noisily ill. Anya came up the stairs. She stood in the doorway and watched as Willow held her shaking friend in her arms, the two of them sitting on the bathroom floor. For once Anya did not feel the pangs of jealousy she normally felt when Xander was close to other girls. She knew that she was in the center of a group who’s bonds went far beyond the normal ties of friendship and love. She felt honored to be here, though she wished the circumstances where different. But she knew that, although she had not become human by choice, and she had no faith or belief in a higher power, of all wonderful things she had learned and felt since becoming a woman, what she saw here was the greatest gift of all. She had never known joy, or friendship, or love before. She had been immortal, but she had been empty. Surely her immortality had been a small price to pay for this.

The struggle to save Giles‘ life lasted through the night, and into the following day.. He was dehydrated, and Ben hooked an I.V up, hanging it from a nail that Xander banged into the wall. With Buffy’s help, he closed and bandaged the wounded shoulder, stitched the cut on his head, and washed the blood from the injured mans’ face. He cleaned and bandaged the rope-burned wrists, and with Buffy and Xander carefully holding the Watcher upright, tightly bound his ribs. Checking vitals again, Ben grew increasingly concerned by Giles rising fever. He had Xander drive him back to the hospital, and returned shortly with more bandages, antibiotics and another I.V. Then, having done all he could for now, he left to go to his regular shift at the hospital.

Buffy spent the night and the next day by Giles’ side. Her mother and her friends tried to get her to rest, but she would not leave him. She held his hand when he was quiet, tried to calm him as his mind wandered in delirium. Several times she and Xander had to restrain him, for fear he would open his wounds as he tossed on the bed.

She didn’t know what he was seeing in his fever dream, but his head tossed restlessly, and he cried out often. Frequently, it was her name, cried in warning, or in fear. She talked to him, and told him she was there, that she wasn’t going anywhere. Some times he called to others. Some of the names she knew.. Their friends here in Sunnydale. The name of Ethan Rhayne came out in anger. The name of Angel in fear, and the name of Jenny with such wonder and longing that it broke her heart.

She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "Please, Giles…Please don’t leave me." Still holding his hand, she gently sponged his face with a cool, wet cloth. "I can’t do this without you. Jenny will wait for you. Please, Giles, come back!"

She pressed cool compresses to his head when his fever burned, and made sure that he stayed warmly wrapped in blankets when he was wracked with chills. She tried to lend her strength to him, and willed him to live. The day passed. The others came in and out of the room. Ben came, changed the I.V. and the bandages on Giles shoulder, injected more antibiotics, and left again, and still she watched, and waited.