ItHurtsP5

It Hurts (So Bad) - 5

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In twenty-four minutes Dawn was coming through the door. She was wearing a pair of jeans, two different shoes, a dark green silk camisole and a jean jacket. She had a large athletic bag slung over her shoulder. Willow came through the door right behind her. She was wearing pink fuzzy bunny slippers, a floor length red flannel nightgown, a coat that was at least six sizes to big for her and an even bigger bag slung from her shoulder.

Buffy hadn’t been expecting Willow to come with Dawn, but then again she hadn’t really thought about it. They both rushed to the bed where Buffy was sitting, cradling her left arm in her right hand. They both dropped their bags on the floor and stood in front of her almost as if they were afraid to say or do anything.

Dawn was the first to move, she dropped down on her knees and opened the bag she had carried in with her. She pulled a second smaller bag out of it and opened it, reached inside and withdrew a pair of surgical scissors. She then started cutting Buffy’s blouse off of her as quickly as possible. Every cut was made with the intention of causing the least amount of jarring or movement in Buffy shoulder. In less than a minute the blouse was rags laying on the floor.

With the blouse cut off and out of the way they were able to get their first good view of Buffy’s shoulder, back, chest and arm. Buffy tried to turn her head to see her injury herself but the shooting pain stopped her. There was a huge and growing dark red mark that ran straight across her shoulder between the shoulder joint and her neck. They could see where the collar bone had been impacted and broken. From the look of the growing red impact area there was probably some muscle damage or at the very least some deep bruising. By morning the entire shoulder would be black and blue.

“Buffy” Dawn asked tentatively, “what happened?”

“I’m not really sure” Buffy told her with a vagueness in her tone of voice “I think someone tried to rob me.”

“Rob you” Dawn asked quietly?

“Yeah, he hit me with something, a pipe I think” Buffy responded with a puzzled look on her face. “I think he was going to hit me again, so I kicked him, and then hit him, I think, and then I came home. I was going to try to fix it myself, I didn’t want to bother anyone, but I didn’t know how.” As Buffy finished speaking tears started running down her face. “I ‘m sorry I bothered you Dawnie. Spike told me …. I …. I mean, I didn’t know who else to call.”

“I’m here Buffy” Dawn said calmly, reassuringly, hiding the pain she was feeling at the site of Buffy’s injury, and the hopeful joy that she was feeling because Buffy was letting her help her. “You did the right thing, calling me. I’m going to take care of you. We’re going to fix you up, make it better. I promise. You just sit still while we get things ready.”

Dawn turned to Willow and the two of them started talking quietly, discussing the best way to help Buffy and immobilize her arm and shoulder. While they talked, Buffy raised her head and could see Spike in the background watching her and watching Dawn and Willow. He had a look of deep concentration on his face, as if he were listening to every word Dawn and Willow were saying to each other. She could also see that he was starting to become transparent again. Without even thinking about it she reached over and picked up the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and started drinking.

Dawn turned back to Buffy when she saw her movement. Her first thought was to stop Buffy from drinking any more of the whiskey, but she bit her tongue and reached out quickly to grab Willows arm and prevent her from saying anything either. As she watched Buffy lift the bottle to her lips to drink and tilt her head back she could actually see the broken collar bone moving under Buffy’s skin. The site of the bones moving and the pain it must be causing made Dawns skin crawl and her stomach tie into a knot. But Dawn was determined that she wasn’t going to do or say anything that would upset Buffy and make her push Dawn away again.

When the bottle was empty and Buffy lowered it from her lips her eyes were glassy and unfocused. She seemed to be looking off somewhere beyond Dawn, a small sad smile was on her lips. Dawn came back to her, knelt down in front of her and carefully took the empty bottle from her hand, setting it down on the nightstand. Dawn looked up into her eyes as if she was waiting to say or do something.

Trying to focus her eyes and her attention on Dawn, she asked “What?”

“Buffy” Dawn said, still trying to speak in a calm and reassuring way. “We kind of think we should try to clean you up a bit, … before we try to … fix you up. Cause, ah, if we wrap you up first ….. you won’t be able to clean up again …. until your better …. healed up I mean. It’s probably going to hurt some, maybe a lot, so if you don’t want to … it’s okay.”

Buffy bent her head and looked down at herself. She could see that her arms and hands were filthy and that the bra she was wearing was dirty too. She tried to remember when it was that she last took a shower or changed her cloths, but she couldn’t. The shame of Dawn seeing her like this made fresh tears run down from her eyes and made her want to go somewhere and hide.

((Let them help you Luv. They need to help you, take care of you))

Buffy lifted her head and staring out over Dawns head she smiled a little smile at Spike and said in a whispery quiet voice “Okay.”

Dawn didn’t waste anymore time. She carefully slipped Buffy’s shoes off her feet and then with Willows help got her up off the bed to stand. She picked up the scissors again and cut the bra off of Buffy so that she wouldn’t have to move her arms or shoulders to remove it. She then ran the scissors down the outside of her pants, from waist to ankle, both sides, cutting the pants away. Then quickly she cut the panties away.

Buffy was standing there in front of them naked, but seemed to be unaware of what they were doing, she was looking past them, focusing on something else. Slowly Dawn and Willow walked her into the bathroom, which became very crowded with the three of them inside. Willow found a towel and spread it out on the floor of the shower, she didn’t want Buffy to slip and fall. Dawn stepped back out of the bathroom and while kicking off her shoes took off her jacket. She then stripped off her pants. When she came back into the bathroom she was just wearing her camisole and a matching pair of sleeping shorts.

Dawn turned on the water in the shower to make it warm and then very carefully backed Buffy into the shower stall. Willow lowered the lid on the toilet and sat down to be out of the way. She was holding a washcloth, soap and shampoo in her hands to offer them to Dawn when she needed them. Quickly, but carefully, Dawn washed and scrubbed every inch of Buffy’s body to get her clean. She had to wash her hair twice to get it clean and fresh. Several times she had to stop because she could see she was hurting Buffy, but each time Buffy looked out over Dawns head as if she was looking at someone else for encouragement.

Once Dawn had Buffy clean, with the help of Willow, she walked Buffy out of the bathroom to stand in the small kitchen area. Willow kept handing Dawn dry towels until she had wiped Buffy down and had her dry. Dawn pulled one of the two chairs at the small kitchen table out into the middle of the floor and helped Buffy sit down to rest.

All of the movement had caused the pain in Buffy’s shoulder and arm to increase significantly, Spike was starting to fade a little and she couldn’t hear him anymore. When Dawn saw Buffy looking over at the unopened whisky bottle laying on the bed she didn’t hesitate, she hurried over to the bed and picked it up, taking the cap off the bottle as she walked back to Buffy and knelt down in front of her offering her the bottle. Buffy reached out gratefully and taking the bottle in her right hand raised it to her lips and took several large swallows.

It took them nearly a half hour to figure out how to rig a sling for Buffy’s arm and wrap elastic bandages around her to hold her left arm and shoulder immobile without being to tight, but at the same time tight enough to do any good. Dawn then helped Buffy put on a pair of panties and one of Spikes old shirts. The shirt was bigger than anything else Buffy had to wear and she seemed to like the idea of wearing it. Dawn worked the good right arm down the sleeve, wrapped the shirt around the other shoulder and buttoned it up most of the way. The shirt covered the sling and elastic bandages and hopefully would help in preventing any movement of the left arm and shoulder.

Walking her slowly over to the bed, Dawn and Willow helped Buffy get into it. They propped her up in the bed with the pillows, half sitting and half laying back. As soon as Buffy was in the bed she started looking over at the little kitchen table where they had set the bottle of whiskey while they wrapped her up and dressed her. Dawn ran over to the bottle and brought it back and handed it to her. Buffy looked at Dawn with gratitude then lifted the bottle to her lips and took two large swallows.

Dawn led Willow away from the bed and started talking quietly to Willow. “Your going to have to go out and get some more stuff for Buffy to drink. That’s the last bottle and when it’s gone she’ll want more.”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to keep giving her alcohol to drink” Willow asked in a whisper as she looked over at Buffy taking another drink from her bottle?

“No, actually I don’t, but we don’t have a choice. She’s already got so much in her we can’t possibly give her any kind of pain pills. Besides, when that runs out she’s going to want more and if we don’t have any to give her I guarantee she’ll try to get out of bed to get some. That’s how she got hurt tonight in the first place, she ran out of booze and went out for more.” Dawn told Willow earnestly. “All I’m trying to do right now is keep her in bed, stop her from moving around to much and ease her pain. If it takes more booze to keep her quiet that’s what we’ll use.”

Dawn could see the doubt and reluctance on Willows face. “Look Will, I’d go get it myself, but I’m seventeen. I don’t think I’d get very far trying to buy the stuff. The liquor store is right down the street, you can see the sign as soon as you step outside.”

“What if it’s closed” Willow asked hesitantly. “I don’t really like this neighborhood that much at night. I don’t want to go alone.”

“Will, the store is open all night, people do a lot of drinking in this neighborhood. Take the car and park in front of the door, you’ll be safe.” Saying this Dawn went over to her jeans still laying on the floor and took her car keys out of the pocket and handed them to Willow. “Just hurry back.”

Willow took the keys and left the apartment. Dawn went back over to her jeans and started to put them on when she realized for the first time how wet she was. When she was giving Buffy her shower and cleaning her up she had gotten soaked but hadn’t paid any attention because taking care of Buffy was the only thing that mattered. Now that Buffy was in bed and quiet she needed to do something about what she was wearing. She walked over to Buffy’s little dresser and started opening drawers to see if she could find a dry pair of panties and a top to put on to replace what she was wearing. As she was going through the drawers she came across the package that Willow had given to Buffy at Christmas. Dawn hadn’t known what was in the package at the time and because she had gotten so upset that day she had never thought to ask Willow what she had given Buffy.

When she took the package out of the drawer and unwrapped it she was shocked at how callously insensitive Willow had been to Buffy’s feelings. As Dawn looked down at the picture of Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles her stomach turned into a knot. *How could she do that? How could she not know that giving that picture to Buffy would be like stabbing her in the heart? How could she be so mean? How could she be so stupid?* Dawn let a sigh of sadness escape and knelt there shaking her head. She wrapped the paper back around the picture and put it back into the drawer and covered it up again.

When she finally found a pair of clean panties and a tank top that would fit her she stripped off her wet things and put them on. She then went over to her jeans and put them on. When she found her shoes she realized for the first time that they were two different shoes. A brief chuckle escaped her as she though about how hurriedly she had dressed in the first place as she was yelling for Willow to hurry up because they had to get to Buffy to help her.

Dawn started to spread her camisole and sleeping shorts out on the kitchen table to dry when she realized that there was water and wet towels laying on the floor and that the bathroom was probably in even a worse mess. She got down on her knees and used the towels to clean up the water on the floor. As she wiped it up where the water had been became the only clean spot on the floor. Dawn told herself then that she was going to have to do something about how dirty this whole apartment was as soon as possible. She then went into the bathroom and using the towels remaining in there she mopped up all the water from the floor and started wiping down the washbasin and the toilet to give them a little cleaning too. This was another room that really needed some scrubbing. She carried all the wet towels back out to the kitchen and dumped them in a pile, she would have to take everything to a laundry to wash them.

Dawn then found the broom and a dustpan and being very quiet walked over to the bed where hopefully Buffy had fallen asleep. When she got there she found that Buffy was still awake but her eyes were unfocused and she was talking to herself. Every once in a while she would raise the bottle of whiskey to her lips and take a large sip or two. Since Buffy seemed to be unaware that Dawn was even in the room, Dawn started sweeping up the broken bottles that were laying on the floor. She had to make four trips to the trash can with full dustpans before she was able to sweep up all the broken glass. Even then she was certain that it wouldn’t really be safe to walk on that side of the bed bare foot because there was bound to be little pieces of glass in the carpet that she had missed.

**** (12/04)