Sunnydale Memorial Hospital, waiting room. December 31st, 2000, 11:55 p.m.
The timing was stupid, sitting there in a corner with people pacing and things beeping off down the hall, but it was New Year's Eve, and it wasn't like Xander had anything else he could be doing right now. Buffy and Tara were sitting together pretending to study lit, Willow had taken Dawn on a snack-search adventure, Giles was standing by the window staring out into the darkened parking lot. Spike...was out in the darkened parking lot somewhere; Xander'd seen him leaning against a wall and smoking, a pile of stamped-out cigarette-butts on the sidewalk, when he'd gone out for some air himself.
And Xander had said he would. So he opened his phone and punched in the number that Willow had found for him, once she had a name, a date, and a city, then hit Send and listened to it ring.