A chill hand lay on her forehead, while a foreign voice spoke quietly, calming words to her.
Her eyelids opened flickering and she saw the blurred face of an older woman which became clearer bit by bit.
Somebody groaned loudly and it took her a moment to understand that it was she herself.
„How are you feeling?“ the woman asked softly, while she looked examiningly at her face.
Buffy wanted to answer that every single part of her body was hurting, but she wasn’t able to say anything.
The woman seemed to understand her, nevertheless. She bent down to her, giving her a warm smile and said: “Everything’s gonna be all right, Miss Summers, don’t worry.”
She tried to lift her head, but the piercing pain which felt as if her skull was splitting, made her give up.
„Where am I?” Her voice sounded strangely croaking and fragile, as if she hadn’t used it for a long time.
„At the ‘Hope hospital’“, the nurse answered and added after a moment of silence: „Do you remember what happened?“
Buffy nodded carefully and grimaced with pain.
“Ouch...that hurt.”
„Don’t move. Your collarbone and some ribs are broken and you have internal bleeding. Your liver is partially torn.” Buffy swallowed a gasp, her eyes widening in shock.
The nurse told her something about the operation she had had, but she felt so tired that she had problems listening to her.
She turned her head slowly, intending to look out of the window, when she suddenly noticed that she wasn’t the only patient in the room.
“I’m sorry, Miss Summers, there has been a massive freeway pile-up last night with a lot of injured, all beds are occupied. I hope you don’t mind sharing the room with Mr. Adams... Usually we have separated rooms, but in this case... I’m afraid there’s no other possibility.”
She nodded slightly and watched the nurse leave the room, before she slowly turned her head.
A young, blonde-haired man lay in the bed beside the window, watching her silently.
The white blanket covered his body except for his head and his shoulders.
“Hey...” he said softly, looking at her with a slight smile which she tried to answer.
„What happened to you?” he asked quietly.
Buffy tried to turn round to have a better look at him, but every movement hurt and seemed to cost her strength she didn’t have, and so she remained lying motionless.
She didn’t want to talk about what had happened –when? yesterday?- , reminding herself that he was a stranger, but to her surprise she heard herself saying:
„ I was on my way home when I saw a man trying to kill himself. I ate a sandwich and watched him and how he stared at the street without moving. And then, when a truck approached, he suddenly ran onto the street... It happened so fast … I don’t know why I did it, maybe it was an instinct. I wanted to push him away, wanted to save him anyhow. The last thing I remember is the truck and a loud scream.”
She felt that he watched her intensively and sighed: “Bloody stupid of me, I know.”
He shook his head and said so quietly that she barely understood him: „No, not at all...”
His eyes sparkled in the dusk as he turned towards her and said: „I’m Spike”“
„Buffy.”
„Buffy... kinda silly name”, he said and without looking at him she knew he was smirking.
„ Funny hearing YOU say ‘silly` ...Spike. “ She emphasized the last word and smiled when she heard him laughing.
She wanted to add something, but felt her eyes shutting against her will, while a never experienced tiredness crept in her muscles.
For a moment she listened to Spike’s breath, which calmed her in a strange way, before she glided into a deep, dreamless sleep.
********
The next morning Buffy awoke as someone carefully shook her uninjured shoulder.
She quietly groaned without opening her eyes when she heard a voice whisper: „You’ve slept for almost thirteen hours.”
She opened the eyes and saw her room neighbor being bent over her.
For strange reasons she guessed that Spike had sat quite a while beside her, watching her sleeping, and she felt how she started to blush.
“Seemed like you had a nightmare...” he said softly, studying her face for a long minute.
“I dreamt of... the crash.” Her voice came out in a rasping whisper and she swallowed noticeably when she saw the expression of concern on his face.
For a moment it seemed as if he intended to touch her face, but he let his hand sink and smiled instead.
His face was almost pretty with its beautifully sculpted cheekbones and his sensuously formed lips. She shivered slightly while she looked into his eyes, trying to hide it behind a nervous smile.
She couldn’t remember that she had ever seen such an intensive blue... it was that kind of blue which was used for Venetian glass and she had to force herself to look away.
„You okay?” Spike asked, while the tensed expression disappeared bit by bit from his face.
She nodded silently, wondering why she felt touched by the fact that he was worried about her.
He went back to his own bed, leaving her with a strange feeling of confusion and excitement.
*******
Later that day Buffy suddenly noticed that she hadn’t asked him why he was in hospital. It didn’t seem as if he was injured or as if he had been operated.
„When will you be sent home?” she asked after they had silently watched the sunset.
She tried to suppress the nervous undertone in her voice, with little success.
She couldn’t tell why she suddenly felt her throat being knotted as Spike turned his pale face towards her, his lips formed to something close to a smile.
“I don’t know”, he answered, while an expression she couldn’t interpret flickered across his face. “Seems like I’ll stay here for a while.”
And suddenly she knew that he wasn’t in hospital because of a peptic ulcer or another harmless disease, she simply knew it, and, nevertheless, she asked with a slightly trembling voice:
„Why are you here, Spike?”
He turned his head, avoiding meeting gazes with her.
After a long moment of silence he finally brought himself to say in a toneless voice:
„I’m here... ´cause I’m dying. “
********
A huge, indefinable something knotted Buffys throat, hindering her from taking a breath.
Her stomach clenched painfully, while hundreds of thoughts were shooting through her head.
Maybe she had stammered something and maybe Spike had read the questions in her face, she couldn’t tell.
The only thing she knew was that she listened with racing heartbeat as Spike started to speak, desperately trying to get her bearings.
„I have a congenital cardiac defect. Since I was a teenager I knew that I would urgently need a donator's heart, as soon as possible...”
He paused for a moment, as if forcing himself to pronounce the following words.
„I have a hole in my heart. And with every day that passes, without finding a donator, my chance of surviving is sinking. “
Buffy shook her head silently, as if trying to escape the meaning of his words.
Spike spoke in a quiet, indifferent tone, as if he wasn’t talking about himself but about a person he didn’t have any dealings with at all.
He has resigned himself to it, Buffy thought, feeling the desperate need to go over to him and to shake him hard.
Spike’s body was absolutely motionless and his face didn’t show any emotion at all. But his eyes... she could read his eyes like a book, they betrayed his naked fear and his desperation.
Swallowing hard, she searched for words she could tell him, but not a tone left her shaking lips.
The silence wrapped the room in a depressing atmosphere, it covered them like an invisible coat and made both of them feel dazed and helpless.
More than anything else she wished to be able to stand up and to go to him.
Her heart felt like a lump of cold wax in her chest, she wanted so badly to let him know that there was still hope, that he shouldn’t be afraid.
She wanted to put her arms around him... and at the same time she wished that someone would embrace her, telling her that everything would be all right.
*******
The days passed and Buffy watched helplessly how he became weaker and paler.
His skin had become a grayish tone, his lips seemed to be absolutely bloodless and his beautiful blue eyes looked dull, like a picture which had faded in the course of the years.
They spent the days talking about things they both enjoyed, avoiding any painful topic, trying to keep the illusion that one day a smiling doctor would open the door to tell them that a donator’s heart had been found.
She caught herself wishing that she had met him earlier and although they didn’t talk about it, she was sure that he thought she same.
And without knowing when exactly it had happened, she felt that Spike had crept under her skin … into every pore of her body … and that he couldn’t be expelled from there, even if she had tried it.
Two weeks after the accident Buffy was able to move and she was allowed to leave the bed.
And when she awoke on an early Saturday morning and watched Spike sleeping, his eyes firmly closed, a peaceful expression on his face, she got up and carefully sat down next to him.
She touched his blonde hair, mildly surprised how silky it felt under her fingers, and smiled slightly at him when he opened his eyes.
His eyes widened in surprise as she slowly bent down to him to kiss his cold lips.
She felt him wincing for a tiny second, before he lifted his hand and placed it around her neck, stroking her hair and whispering her name as he closed his eyes and kissed her back.
*******
Buffy’s injuries healed astonishingly fast and before she understood what was going on, she was told that she would be sent home the following day.
„You had more luck than Mr. Edwards, the man you wanted to save”, the nurse explained to her.
„ Mr. Edwards is still on the intensive care unit. “
Buffy wanted to answer something, but she didn’t say a single word when she saw Spike’s lips being pressed together to a thin line.
She wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t leave him alone, that she would stay with him as long as he wanted her to be with him, but for any reason she couldn’t bring herself to say a word. She waited until the nurse had gone, before she sat down next to him, taking his hand in hers.
She squeezed it and tried a smile, while she touched his cheek with her other hand.
Spike looked at her face, as if searching for an answer to an unspoken question, and when he finally saw it, his lips parted to a silent “thanks.”
******
The rest of the day passed fast, too fast.
It was about midnight when she heard him asking: “Buffy?”, his voice sounding like thin ice which was about to break any minute.
Buffy understood.
And she crossed the room with a few steps, until she arrived his bed and carefully crept under the blanket.
Spike’s skin was covered with cold sweat and he trembled while he put his arms around her, hesitating.
„I’m here”, she whispered barely audible. „I’m with you and I won’t leave, I promise you.”
Helplessly she began to stroke his back, murmuring senseless words into his ear.
Spike seemed to calm down a little, but his shaky voice betrayed his feelings when he said: „I’m so dreadfully scared.... “
„ Me, too,” Buffy answered, feeling her eyes filling with tears.
„I’m scared of being all alone... when I die. “ Buffy felt the hot liquid dripping onto her breast, she felt the desperation of the man who lay in her arms as strongly as her own and she knew that she was powerless, that she couldn’t do anything else but to hold him and to stroke his smooth skin.
She touched his face with her hands, kissing his wet eyelids.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, while she pressed him against herself, so hard that she was sure that she hurt him.
And she understood with perfect clarity that this man, who didn’t have any hope to survive, desperately longed for hearing the words from her she said without hesitating:
„You won’t die alone, Spike. I’ll be here.... I promise you.”
She did her best not to let him see her sadness and her fear, as she pressed her lips on his, kissing him desperately.
And bit by bit the body in her arms started to relax, while she felt her tears streaking down her cheeks.
They held each other until the morning dawned, and when Buffy opened her eyes, she watched him for an eternity, as it seemed, as if wanting to enclose every single line, every pore of his face into her inside.
*******
It was completely silent on the cemetery, but Buffy wasn’t the only one who visited somebody at this quiet place.
The hands deeply buried in her pockets, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, she looked at the simple monument for a long minute.
She bent down to put a bunch of white roses onto the otherwise bare grave.
She didn’t know whether the dead liked these flowers, she had never had the opportunity to ask him.
Without saying a word, Buffy thanked him silently for everything.
She thanked him that she had met a special person, somebody who had become a part of her in a way, she would never have believed.
Behind her she heard steps and without turning round she knew who approached her.
She felt his warm hand in hers and together they looked at the monument silently.
„His name was Colin...did you know? “ she asked and looked at him.
Spike shook his head silently and squeezed her hand, his eyes still fixed on the simple letters:
Colin Edwards.
They didn’t speak a word for a long time, while both of them thought of the moment when the doctor had opened the door.
The man Buffy had wanted to save … he had taken his last breath that day... and it was his heart which now beat in Spike’s breast vigorously.
There was a bitter flavor when they thought that somebody had thrown away his life, for reasons which they would never be able to find out, and that his death had saved Spike’s life.
It hurt when they remembered that they didn’t know anything about this man but his name, they knew nothing about his past, nothing about his family.
Everything they knew was that destiny had given them a chance, in a moment when they had barely hoped to believe it.
They silently watched the grave, holding each other.
And it took them a long time before they finally dared to smile.
END