She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"You thought I was doing what?"

The nurse fiddled nervously with her ugly, plastic-rimmed glasses, looking everywhere but at the woman confronting her.

"Well, Doctor Laidlow, it's not that I thought you were doing anything wrong, it's just that, well...." She looked at her coworker for support, but there was none forthcoming. The other nurse was devoting all her attention to straightening, then restraightening a stack of reports. With a visible swallow, the first one continued. "You see, sometimes doctors, not yourself of course," She hastened to add. "Well, they get themselves in a snit, and they do little pranks. To sort of get back at someone they think is slacking, or that they don't like. I was sure, we all were, that the IV's and feeding tubes getting pulled out all the time was some sort of thing you were trying to put over on the staff. To, I don't know, make us tend to your patient the way you expected us to."

Clarita stared at her, contempt and horror warring inside her.

"That is the most idiotic, disgusting, and willfully stupid reasoning I have ever been subjected to! You bloody ignorant cow!"

The nurse straightened slightly, ready to defend herself, but the physician had had enough. She turned away, only to find Janice standing a few steps away, watching the scene with apparent interest. The doctor would have been willing to bet that neither of the women standing at the counter behind her had even noticed the petite redhead was there. Perhaps they still didn't; she had serious doubts about their competence concerning even mundane matters. Stepping closer to the sorceress, she spoke in a vicious whisper.

"Weeks! She's been conscious for at least two weeks, possibly longer!" The very notion that the deranged Slayer had been aware, and stalking the same hallways she herself used, sent a dagger of ice through her soul. Had the girl been responsible somehow for the mysterious deaths that some of the staff were whispering about? She wasn't sure how that was possible, but she wasn't sure of the extent of a Slayer's powers, either. She wrung her hands, staring down at them as she tried to compose herself. "We must call Ian immediately. He can send help, people who can deal with her. If she killed James, then she may know about me, or even you. She could be planning to come after us next!" She was babbling, and she knew it, but neither could she seem to stop. She was a healer, she found herself unable to deal with the idea of a murderer lying in wait just down the hall.

Janice stood impassively, her hands tucked out of sight in her sleeves, waiting patiently for her to stop. Clarita clamped her mouth shut and stood there uncertainly, waiting for the girl to speak.

Seeing that she was through, the younger woman finally did so.

"There is no need to call Ian. To do so would be to admit that we are unable to deal with the girl."

"We are unable to deal with her!" The nurses were eyeing the pair of them curiously, so she led the way a bit further down the other hallway, towards the visitor's lounge. "If she did kill James, and I'm less doubtful about that than I was, then the two of us are no match for her."

Janice gave her a wintery smile.

"In a physical contest, that would be quite true. However, it will not come to that. She is still here, pretending to be harmless. Why this is so, I do not know. It does present us with an opportunity, though." Her eyes widened slightly, and the illumination in the hallway dimmed perceptibly, the light seemingly sucked into the fathomless depths of those dead, black orbs. "I wield magicks that should suffice to hold a Slayer for at least a short time. Whatever her motives in pretending to be helpless, the Beta cannot possibly be at full strength after her ordeal."

Clarita forced herself to calm. She was not a child, and the younger woman's calm was a challenge that she felt compelled to meet.

"Very well." She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. "Your... spells, can hold her briefly. That gains us enough time to put her in restraints, I suppose. But that would only be a stopgap. In order to treat someone like a dangerous psychotic, you have to establish, to a reasonable doubt, that they are a psychotic. Faith was in a coma when she was admitted, she was never conscious for an evaluation of her mental state. Damn it all, we didn't think she had a mental state, anymore!" Calm, calm. Breathe.

The other woman smiled faintly.

"We need not involve any of your colleagues, doctor. You, yourself have the tools to keep the girl under control." Clarita's puzzlement must have shown, because the sorceress raised an eyebrow at her denseness. "Ian told me that he provided you with the compounds the Council has developed to blunt a Slayer's abilities."

The older woman frowned.

"Compounds? Poison is more like it. It doesn't blunt their power so much as it fully occupies it in trying to neutralize the toxin that's trying to kill her. I've tested it in the toxicology lab, and it's the most virulent thing I've ever seen. At full strength, a drop of it would kill a thousand people or more, though it would take a day or two for it to run its course. I never seriously considered actually using it."

Janice shrugged slightly.

"I would suggest you consider using it now. Whatever the Beta is waiting for may occur at any time. If we have not taken steps to control her before that happens, then we may be too late."

Clarita nodded, and headed downstairs to the secure storage locker where she had placed the vial of venom months earlier. She would never use that abomination on a human being, but then, what lay waiting for them was nothing human.

This day was taking forever to get over with. Usually, Faith had no trouble sleeping when she had to. She was lazy by nature; give her a television, some pizza, and a comfy place to lay and she was set. Sleep was something she could do twelve hours a day, easy, despite the Slayer tendency to low sleep requirements. Of course, that was from before. She figured she'd already accumulated a year's worth of sleep, and now all she wanted to do was get up and move. Couldn't do that, though. Not yet.

Five hours till sunset.

She caught herself tapping one foot against the other rhythmically, and firmly put a stop to it. Nervous energy was getting the best of her. Come on, come on, settle down and wait. If she had managed to stay cool for this long, then another few hours wouldn't kill her.

Unless the Council goons were on their way here to kill her. No, don't think like that. How could they know? At worst, they knew the guy had disappeared. Like, wow, that sort of thing never happened in Sunnydale. As far as they knew, anything could have gone down. They couldn't know it was her. Except, if they knew he was coming here, that might be reason enough for them to show. Okay then, say they did. So what? They came to look, and there she was, still where they expected to find her. What were they going to do then, slap her around to see if she was faking? Fat lot of good that would do them. When she was paying attention, her body control was perfect. She wouldn't twitch even if somebody ground out a cigarette against her skin (she knew that to be factually true, but that wasn't the issue here). The only way they would get her to move for them was to do some serious damage; she couldn't afford to be incapacitated on the eve of her escape. She doubted most Watcher dweebs would have the balls to really hurt an unconscious girl.

If they did go too far, well, she had fought their kind before, and hadn't been impressed. James from last night had been an exception to the rule, from what she had seen. She could take three of the average guys, even in her present condition. If there were more that that, she had the gun, tucked just out of sight under the mattress, handy to her right hand. She had no problem with blowing them away if she had to; the Sunnycops would never catch her before she got out of town.

So. It was going to work, everything was going to be okay. All she needed to know, the real thing that was bothering her as she lay here and waited, was what Kira was going to do.

Four and three-quarters hours till sunset.