Daryl laid back in his bunk,
in his cell, the darkness of night oppressive and hot. Hershel had stitched him
up and given him some of the last of the painkillers but they hardly touched
the pounding ache in his side that coincided with each beat of his heart. It
was infection that Hershel worried about more than the wound itself. Two days
Rick and Michonne had been gone, out looking for some antibiotics that would
kill any chance of his blood getting infected. The alcohol Hershel rinsed the
wound with was now gone. All they could do was boil the bandages and keep it as
clean as possible.
Considering the way he oscillated between hot
and cold Daryl had no doubt he had a fever. When Beth Greene came in at dusk
and felt his forehead, when the alarm came into her eyes, he knew he was in
trouble.
"Beth? Is that really you?"
"It's me, Daryl," she said, dumping
ice into a big bowl of water. They were using precious battery power to make
the ice and she now dumped some of the cold water over his chest, making him
gasp from it. Then she took a rag and, with it sopping wet, rubbed down his
face and neck, trying to cool him off.
"Daddy!" she cried out. "This
isn't working!"
Daryl had never felt so cold and he'd been
through some bad winters without adequate clothing or blankets in his time.
This was a bitch of a chill, making his whole body tremble.
"Drink, Daryl," Hershel was saying.
Somehow Beth had magically disappeared and was replaced with the grizzled old
veterinarian who was tipping ice cold water into him. He was thirsty so he
sucked it down greedily.
"We have to get his core temperature
down," Hershel said. "Go get Dr. S, Beth."
That moment was replaced with him on his feet,
leaning heavily against Glenn, with Dr. S on his other side. He realized he was
moving between bouts of consciousness, passing out and waking up with different
things going on around him. There was a huge tub filled with ice water and he
dreaded the idea of being dunked in it.
"Keep his clothes on," Dr. S was
saying. "Daryl, this will be really unpleasant but you're temperature's
gone up to a hundred five. We can't let it get too much higher."
Whatever he had to do to survive, he would,
though God only knew why. He hated this world and he honestly didn't have it
within him to think of a reason to survive, to fight to stay in it. Wouldn't it
be better to just go into oblivion? Or face whatever comes next? Maybe there
was such thing as a haven. Maybe he'd done enough to earn his way through the
gates and God would let him have a little shack in the woods since he sure as
shit didn't think he'd earned one of those many mansions Jesus had supposedly
gone and prepared for them.
"What happened?"
"You were shot," Glenn said.
"That's the third time he's asked that."
"He's incoherent," Dr. S said.
"It's not unexpected with a fever this high."
Daryl became aware that he was screaming when
he understood that the burn in his throat came from the stress he put on his
vocal cords. They'd put him in the ice and it was pure hell. He'd never known
such cold in his life.
"Oh, God, please stop!" Daryl
shouted, his body shivering violently.
"Take him out! You're killing him!"
Beth shouted.
"He'll die if we don't break this
fever," Dr. S told her. He was shivering now himself, drenched from
Daryl's thrashing. She stood back with her father, tears in her eyes, while
Glenn helped the doctor hold Daryl in the ice bath.
"I've got the medicines!" Maggie
shouted, running through the door with a small box in her hands. At once
Hershel looked through it.
"Okay, this isn't much but it'll give him
a fighting chance. I'll prepare an iv."
"I'll do that. Help Glenn to keep his head
above water."
Suddenly the pain in his body was gone. He felt
pleasantly warm, floating, his entire existence reduced to thought, to emotion.
His eyes made contact with Beth and he wondered why she cried.
...
Humming. It was a sweet sound.
Daryl stood in the field and watched the tall grass sway in the wind. The sky
was a dark shade of blue and there wasn't a cloud to be seen. Had he made it to
heaven after all?
"Like a leaf clings to a tree...Oh my
darling cling to me...for we're creatures of the wind...and wild is the
wind...so wild is the wind..."
Daryl hunted for the source of the sweet voice.
He searched for the beautiful blonde who liked to sing, to bring cheer to their
dreary world. He followed the song, and old one he'd listened to when his
neighbor world turn on their turn table and leave the window open.
He found her. He found Beth wearing a yellow
sun dress with blue flowers beside the stream where she held out a hand. Her
hair was down, a beautiful mess tousled by the wind.
"Come to me, Daryl."
It was a command he happily obeyed. He went to
Beth, stood before her while she pulled off his clothes and left him bare and
hard before him. She stood before him while he pulled the thin shoulder straps
if her dress down and the material fell in a pile at her feet.
"I love you, Beth," he said.
For the first time he wasn't worried about
rejection. This was heaven, after all. He gently laid her in the grass. She
took him to her thighs with a smile on her lips. The wound in Daryl's side felt
like dying. Sinking into Beth Greene felt like going to heaven. He never wanted
to leave.
...
Beth's hand was cool and soft.
Daryl's eyes fluttered open and he saw her face, clearly, as he lay on his
back. The pain in his side had been reduced to a light ache. Beth say beside
him, smiling at him.
"I'm alive?"
She nodded. "You made it. Your fever broke
a few hours ago. You're gonna be fine."
"Had a good dream," he said, but he
couldn't bring himself to tell her she'd been the focus of that dream. He
wanted to. God only knew he wanted to love her, and be loved by her, in return.
"I know. You talk in your sleep," she
said, and her grin widened at the look of alarm on Daryl's face.
She leaned down and kissed his cheek as Dr. S
came to check on his patient.
"I love you, too," she whispered.
Those four words left him speechless, numb,
feeling no pain as Beth got up and left the cell to give Dr. S the room he
needed to treat Daryl.
"The sooner you get well the sooner we can
do something about it."
The numbness was replaced with something Daryl
had rarely known in his life: joy. It formed a bubble in his chest that tugged
the corners of his mouth up into a smile.
"Get me well, Doc," Daryl said,
thinking about Beth and her strong thighs. "I've got things to do."
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