Chapter Sixteen
Spike woke up from his dream feeling strangely well-rested. Being with Elizabeth, even for such a short time and in such strange circumstances, had been wonderful.
He only hoped that he had done enough to convince her. Sitting up from his chair, he looked at Buffy’s form on the bed and smiled. She looked the same as when he’d fallen asleep, but Spike felt optimistic and hopeful. She would wake up soon, he knew it.
Glancing at the clock on the wall of the room showed that it was well past midnight, and he yawned. He pulled his chair closer to the bed and laid his head down on the mattress next to Buffy’s hand. The dream might have left him well-rested mentally, but he still felt tired physically.
He closed his eyes and let himself drift off to sleep.
***
Simkins stopped by the hospital the following morning, his excitable face lit by a grin. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand and asked Spike if he could talk to him over a cup of coffee.
“Really don’t feel like leaving Buffy,” Spike said. He explained briefly about Drusilla’s appearance the night before, and the dream it had invoked.
“Fascinating!” Simkins said. “All right, we’ll grab a cup of God-awful coffee from the machine in the corridor and sit out there for our chat.”
Spike nodded and fumbled in his pocket for change. He came up with a couple of pound coins and waited impatiently for the machine to declare the coffee ready. When both cups were done, he handed one to Simkins and sat down, looking at the other man expectantly.
“Right.” Simkins set his plastic cup down on the coffee table in front of them and shuffled through his papers. “I haven’t been able to rest for thinking about all this. Though your dream certainly explains why Elizabeth’s documents disappeared; I’m glad it wasn’t just me being a scatterbrain! I went back to the records office after our chat yesterday and got my friend to help with some more research. Do you know how many Elizabeth Summers there were in the world at that time? Too many, that’s for sure!”
Spike nodded, inwardly urging the man to hurry up and get to the point.
“Finding those first documents yesterday was easy enough; I was looking at the county records. But, with them gone, I decided to extend my search further afield. Took me a while, but I eventually found mention of a Nurse Elizabeth Summers at St. Thomas’ Hospital in Manchester. That was in, ah, 1890.”
“Two years after I died,” Spike muttered. He felt his spirits soaring. She had lived.
“Yes. She served there for six years.”
“Anything else?” Spike asked.
“Not so far,” Simkins replied. “I had some ideas for how to continue the research, but tiredness overcame me, I’m afraid.”
“No matter.” Spike grinned. “She didn’t go back to Ethan; that’s all I need to know. She’s going to wake up soon, I know it.”
“I expect so. Within a week, perhaps.” Simkins drained the last of his coffee and stood. “Until then, I think I’ll continue my research, I’ve become quite interested in finding out what happened to Elizabeth.”
“She’ll be able to tell you herself, soon.”
“Quite. I hope that, after you’ve both had some time to process the events of the last few weeks, you’ll allow me to record your experience.”
“Yeah, sure,” Spike said, nodding. “It’ll be—”
He broke off, the sudden flurry of nurses hurrying down the corridor towards Buffy’s room telling him that something was wrong. He dropped his empty coffee cup on the floor before racing after them.
A porter barred his entry to the room, saying something about giving the doctors room to work, but Spike was deaf to the man’s protests. He pushed open the door and came to an abrupt standstill when he saw the crowd of medical staff around Buffy’s small form on the bed.
Her gown had been pulled down and two flesh-coloured squares put onto her chest. A doctor held the paddles of a defibrillator high, said something to one of the nurses, and brought them down onto Buffy’s chest.
She jerked up off the bed before falling back and the sight of it made Spike feel sick. He was unaware of the single word he chanted through tight lips while the doctor repeated the procedure. “No, no, no, no.”
Spike felt his world start to crash down in slow-motion around him when the monotonous whine of the heart monitor broke into his consciousness, and the doctor spoke to his colleagues.
“Let’s call it. Time of death, eleven-eighteen.”
“No! No!” Time caught up with itself and, in a rush, Spike stumbled towards the end of Buffy’s bed. “Try again. She’s not dead—she can’t be dead.”
“Sir—”
“Please,” Spike begged, his voice breaking. “Please, one more time. She lived. Elizabeth lived.”
Perhaps the doctor took pity on Spike, because he nodded to his colleagues, and they charged the defibrillator again. “Clear!”
Spike gripped the top of a nearby chair so tightly his skin turned white. He held his breath, dreading the sound of the heart monitor flat lining again, while the doctor shocked her once more.
When he heard the regular beep-beep-beep of the machine, he sank to the floor in relief, buried his head in his hands, and half-laughed, half-cried until he felt hands on his shoulders helping him to stand and leading him away.
***
Three Weeks Later
Buffy’s condition had been stable but unchanging since her heart had stopped beating. Spike had half-expected her to wake up immediately after, but she had returned to her previous state and was still in the coma. He’d been worried until Simkins had reminded him that it likely meant Elizabeth was living out a long life in the past.
Spike spent most of his days by her bedside. Sometimes he went with Simkins to the records office and looked over the dates and events he remembered from his life as William. Simkins had found the patient- and staff-records for the hospital at Ventnor, and Spike was pleased to see that both Daniel and Alasdair had been discharged healthily in early 1889.
He went back to the Botanic Gardens on one of the days, and saw the grounds with a new perspective. If he closed his eyes he could see the long, monolithic form of the hospital, the chalets dotted around the grounds, and the spectacular view of the sea.
The latter was still there, of course, and he sat down on one of the benches in the garden to stare out at it. There was no menace there anymore. No peculiar feeling other than bittersweet memory. The landscape of the gardens might have changed dramatically in the last hundred years, but it still retained its feeling of peace, of tranquillity and happiness.
Spike almost felt the urge to reach for a pen and paper to jot down a poem, and the thought made him laugh. He truly was both men, past and present combined.
Some nights he joined Buffy’s mother and stepfather for dinner, and talked of his and Elizabeth’s past with them. They were more accepting now, more open to the idea, having seen the incontrovertible proof of documents and dates.
And still, Buffy slumbered.
Simkins hadn’t been able to find out any more information on what had happened to Elizabeth after her stint at St. Thomas’ in Manchester. Spike wondered if she had taken his suggestion and gone abroad, to Paris, maybe. If that had been the case, then they had very little chance of finding her with the resources they had available to them.
They would have to wait until she woke up, and hear the story first-hand.
He sat now at her side, a book open on his lap. He read from it aloud—a poem by Lord Tennyson. “The poet in a golden clime was born—dunno about golden clime, love, eh? London’s not so golden. With golden stars above; Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love.” He paused for a moment to stare fondly at Buffy before continuing. “He saw through life and death, through good and ill—well that’s certainly true. Been through life and death both. He saw through his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, an open scroll. Before him lay —”
Spike stopped reciting when he noticed the sudden twitch of Buffy’s hand. Quickly closing the book, he set it aside and leaned forward. Yes, there it was again: definite movement of her fingers.
He touched her hand lightly. “Buffy? Wake up, love. Open those beautiful eyes for me.”
She moved her hand again, and he felt her fingers curl slightly around his. A few seconds later, her eyes fluttered open and closed again almost immediately against the brightness of the room.
Spike hurried to close the blinds before going straight back to her bedside. “Buffy?”
She groaned a little and struggled to sit up. He helped her, raising the back of the bed up and rearranging her pillows. She blinked several more times before her eyes settled on his face. She frowned. “I—I’m confused.” Her voice was scratchy with disuse, and Spike handed her a glass of water, which she drank down quickly.
“Give it a moment, love. Takes a while for it all to come back to you.”
“I remember you,” she said and reached out a shaking hand to touch the side of his face. “William. No. Spike…”
“Both.” He smiled. “Remembering everything?”
Buffy squeezed her eyes shut once more and lay back against the pillows. “I remember Elizabeth,” she said. “She was me. But I’m Buffy. Aren’t I?”
“You’re Elizabeth and Buffy, both at the same time.” Spike sat on the side of her bed, grinning like a madman, unable to contain his happiness. “I can’t believe you’re awake. I’ve been waiting so long…”
“Not as long as I have,” Buffy said. She opened her eyes again, and Spike was relieved to see she looked a little more like her normal self, and less disorientated. “I—Elizabeth lived until she was eighty-nine and she missed you every single day of her life.”
Spike felt the tears rising, and looked away, only to feel Buffy’s palm on his cheek a moment later. She turned his head back to look at her.
“I’m still a little mixed up right now,” she said. “But the one thing I do know is that I love you. I love you so much, William… Spike.” She laughed through the tears now falling freely. “God, this is confusing.”
“I love you too.” He didn’t know which of them moved first but suddenly they were kissing. Gentle, soft kisses; he was mindful that she had only just woken up from a month-long coma. When they broke apart, she rested her head in the crook of his neck and sighed contentedly. Spike brought his arms around her and pulled her close. It felt so good to hold her again.
A few moments later she sat back and yawned. “I’m so tired.”
“You rest now. I’ll fetch a doctor,” Spike said. He smiled tenderly and pulled the covers back up around her shoulders. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
The second to last chapter! Thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed so far. Thank you to Sotia for beta reading. Hope you enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
This is not the end! There is still an epilogue to come, which will be posted on Sunday along with the picspam I mentioned a couple of chapters ago. The poem quoted in this chapter is The Poet by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Thanks for reading!