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.
“Normal Again,” 6-17
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.
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