" - giving me really mixed signals about how big a deal this is, man."

"I really think she'll be okay but this was two very close calls in one week."

"Yeah."

"It's probably not a coincidence, I think Drusilla's using her magic to engineer it somehow. But - ugh."

"Maybe she shouldn't be doing this stuff right now. If you can't - if this sort of thing is going to keep happening."

"I think she'd take that pretty hard, but - maybe, yeah."

Karen wakes up in the hospital before they arrive. Her vision is swimming and her head really hurts and - oh no, is she gonna have brain damage, she really doesn't want brain damage, her brain is where she keeps lots of her her parts.

Alex?

Hey. We're on the way.

OK - I didn't know she could do that, the books didn't say anything, I'm sorry -

You're okay, it's okay. We know now, we'll figure out a better plan.

OK.

Her head really hurts still. Doctors are doing things but she can't really focus on them very well. Her vision's still all blurry and weird, and she's pretty sure it'll fix itself eventually but for the moment it's kind of not great.

I don't think I wanna go to school today. If that's OK.

Yeah, no kidding. It's fine. Azalea and I are on the way.

OK.

Didn't I use to ever succeed at things?

- if I'm sulky and rude for the next day or so it's probably 'cause my brain got mushed. I hope it goes back. I like my brain.

Slayer healing's supposed to be pretty comprehensive. I'm pretty sure you'll be okay. And you figured out Ronnie was missing, meant that we found the mummy girl ...

I guess so. 

She didn't actually save Ronnie, but maybe Ronnie wasn't saveable, and if she had it would've meant the mummy girl would still be stuck as a mummy. 

She's really really tired. That might not be the head trauma, that might be the not getting any sleep. 

Tell Wishbone thanks?

Yeah. He does that.

'M gonna go to sleep again.

They get to the hospital a couple of minutes later. They head in.

The hospital people give Azalea a bunch of paperwork to read over and sign. Karen's lost some blood but probably won't require a transfusion. They recommend letting her stay in the hospital for a bit longer while they determine how serious the head injury is. That will be some very large number of dollars.

Karen's not actually sleeping when they let them in to see her. She cracks an eye open when she hears them.

"Hey, guys."

"Hey. How're you feeling?"

"Solid two out of ten still? ...'m sorry."

"I've had worse weeks, actually."

"Of course you have." But she does look a little less miserable.

"Do you remember what happened?"

She nods, slowly. "We were following her - Wishbone was following her, and I was following him. She was - waiting for us, I guess, she must have been, on the top of this building, and I tried to shoot her, but she dodged it, and - she jumped down, I dropped my crossbow and got out my stake - I tried to attack her, but she dodged again, and then - "

She frowns.

"You know, like, in dreams sometimes, where you're still you and you're still experiencing things, but none of the actions you're taking are things you're deciding to do, they just sort of - happen to you, and you're so - in the dream it doesn't even seem weird until you do something really weird and think to ask why you might have done that, because actually making decisions about what you're going to do is so not a thing that happens that for a while it doesn't even occur to you to try? - I guess I don't know if anyone else has dreams like that. But. Like that. And I dropped my stake, and she said something, and she bit me, and then Wishbone bit her, I think, I couldn't see, and I fell, and something cracked, and - I don't remember after that."