Buffy talks to the doctor

Okay, thought Buffy. Now I'm seriously screwed. Either I'm talking to a completely fictional character -- in which case I really am insane and never likely to get out of here -- or else I'm in the position of convincing the world's most famous skeptic of the existence of vampires. Er, good luck to me with that.

But perhaps there's another way.

"Why do you keep looking me at me like that?" asked the woman who claimed to be Dr. Dana Scully. "Surely you're not comparing me to that TV character you talked about last time we met?"

She knows, Buffy thought. No, wait, she's obviously just guessing. It's not like she could read minds. If she could, she would know I was sane and that I deserve to get out of here. But maybe there's another explanation. Perhaps she's the First -- no, she's taking my pulse right now so that theory is shot to hell.

"You seem to be healthy," said Scully. "And you seem to be acting more lucid since we weaned you away from those blue pills you've been taking. If it wasn't for your memory problems and your continuing obsessions with imaginary characters -- "

"What makes you sure the stuff I've been talking about is imaginary?" said Buffy. "Surely, as a doctor, you've come across your share of stuff that can't be easily explained by ordinary science and -- well -- stuff."

"Ah, this argument again," said Scully. "Well, your doctor and I told you last time how impossible it was to find this place called Sunnydale on a map. Nor does it show up on any GPS. There isn't even an Internet site for it and nowadays, there is an Internet site for almost every town in America."

"But surely that alone is not proof. I'm sure there's no Internet site for **** Valley and that exists."

"But you can find **** Valley on a map. Sunnydale you can't. And even if you could, a whole town full of vampires? Really? Not to mention demons and witches and all that other stuff you talk about. You're almost as bad as this other patient I used to have -- a young blonde college student who claimed to be an amateur detective but who also kept insisting she could talk to dead people. Then of course there was the Sarah Connor case -- but I really shouldn't talk about that right now. Right now we need to talk about you."

"Okay," said Buffy. "Let's talk about me. Why am I being kept naked?"

Scully sighed. "Because you kept tearing off your hospital gowns, Miss Summers. Don't you remember? Indeed, before that, you kept tearing off your clothes in public, insisting you were the victim of a curse -- for some reason, you seem very obsessed with curses -- and apparently there was one such incident at a school dance. Apparently someone broke your heart or stood you up or something -- the details of that story change almost every time you tell it. Almost as if you were some character in a bad soap opera."

"But I don't remember any of that," said Buffy. "Why am I being punished for something I can't remember?"

"You are not being punished," said Scully. "It was your idea to go naked in the first place. Something about a hex being put on your clothing or something. About the only things you've allowed us to keep on you without throwing some sort of violent fit were that cross around your neck and your medical I.D. bracelet."

"Medical I.D. bracelet?" asked Buffy. "What medical I.D. bracelet?'

"The one right here on your left arm," said Scully.

And sure enough there was a medical I.D. bracelet on her arm. One that Buffy did not remember ever getting. And one that she suspected her mother did not know about.