Killed by Death
Buffy is out patrolling, despite suffering from a flu bug. After a run-in with Angel, she collapses and is brought to the hospital. After she is stabilized and admitted, she has a dream about a strange-looking creature and a young boy-except the young boy is really in the kids' ward with a similar flu, and he has also seen the creature. The boy, Ryan, says that the creature is Death, informs her that children have died because of him, and then gives Buffy a drawing of the creature, which only kids can see. Initial research points to a more mundane source of the kids' deaths: Dr. Backer, who has used unorthodox cures in the past. However, Buffy discovers the slashed corpse of Dr. Backer, killed by an invisible creature that attacks Buffy. Eventually, Giles and Cordelia discover that it's Der Kindestod-german for "child death", a monster that can be seen only by children and also feeds on them. Buffy realizes that she can see it only when she's feverish and convinces Willow to give her a small dose of the fever to make her sick enough to see it. She confronts the monster an defeats it, saving the children.
angel and Buffy's confrontations continue, first with his attack on a weakened Buffy in the graveyard, then in an attempt to visit her at the hospital, stopped by Xander, of all people. Xander spends most of the episode playing Buffy's White Knight, to Angel's amusement("You still love her," he sneers."It must eat you up that I got there first")and Cordelia's annoyance. Indeed, Xander and Cordelia snipe throughout the episode, with Cordy making a sweet peace gesture by bringing Xander-loyally standing guard at the hospital against Angel's returning-donuts and coffee.
It's established that Buffy encountered Der Kindestod as an eight-year-old, when she saw her cousin Celia die in a hospital-that trauma would keep her hating hospitals ever since. Joyce expresses her sympathy to Giles on the death of Jenny Calendar, and Giles later expresses concern that, in the wake of that murder, Buffy is making up the "death" creature to give her something to fight.
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