Daryl no sooner gets those words out – those four damning, world-shattering words – than his legs buckle. And it's almost sick, the way he just sort of crumples to the ground, like he's got no bones, no tendons. Nothing to hold him up, to keep him on his feet.
There's not a snowflake's chance in hell of Rick getting' to him before he hits the ground, but damned if he don't try. It doesn't keep Daryl from falling, landing, grunting in equal parts surprise and pain, but at least he can say he tried.
Whatever good that'll do him.
"Oh God," he hears someone say behind him as he drops to his knees next to Daryl. He thinks it's Carol. Sounds like her. But he's not looking to check. Right then, in that moment, there's nothing more important than the man lying on the ground in front of him.
He reaches for his shoulder. Daryl fell forward, hardly even tried to catch himself it seemed like, and Rick's trying to roll him over onto his back.
Daryl's having no part of it. He don't have strength enough to stay standing, but it seems he's still got enough left in the tank to be stubborn. He jerks his shoulder away, twisting to get his arms under him.
"Hey, now. Easy," Rick says, and he reaches for him again, this time as Daryl's starting to push himself up. He can see his arms shaking and he knows it's just a matter of time before Daryl eats concrete. And maybe it's a moot point, but he'd at least like to spare him that, so he takes him by the shoulders, and he turns him around onto his back and holds him there. "I got you, alright? You just take it easy."
The others are making it over, now. Hershel takes the longest, 'cause his crutches don't make for quick running, but the others make room for him. Rick doesn't see Beth or Carl; he reckons they've taken Judith someplace else, and he's grateful for that.
"Get offa me," Daryl half-growls. The pain and fear in his eyes dulls the edge, though. He tries to push himself up again, but Rick holds him in place with a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't try and move," he tells him. There's already fresh blood on the floor where he landed, and he's gone ashen. Rick's honestly got no idea how he made it this far, but he's got no intentions of letting him push it any further. Things're bad enough as it is.
Hershel's voice cuts through the bustle, calmer than Rick thinks he has any right to be. "I need him up on a bunk. Maggie, get my kit." That's what he's taken to calling their medical supply duffel. Old habits.
"Glen, help me with him," Rick says. His voice comes out pretty damn level, too, considering how hard and fast his heart's pounding. There's a lead weight in his gut and acid in his throat, and goddammit, this ain't happening.
Except it is.
When Glen comes round to his other side and makes to grab his arm, Daryl shrugs him off. "Didn't you hear?" he snaps. "Told you I was bit."
"We heard you just fine." Rick's just choosing to deny what it means. Focus on the task at hand, he thinks. He nods over Daryl at Glen and grabs one of Daryl's arms for himself. He's got his good side, but he's careful anyway, and together, he and Glen ease him up. The weight in his gut settles a little heavier at the sound Daryl makes when they do, quiet as it is, because if just getting him halfway to upright's hurting him, then the next minute or two's gonna be a damn peach. "On three. One. Two. Three."
They haul him onto his feet, and Daryl lets out a stream of curses that don't bear repeating. Not that Rick blames him. Really, it just makes him feel worse.
He puts an arm around Daryl's waist as much for physical support as moral. "You're alright," he says. "You're alright." It tastes a lie on his tongue, but it's the best he's got. "Just a little farther."
Getting him through the cell door's a little bit tricky, but he and Glen manage, and they get him onto the bottom bunk where Carol's just finished putting down some clean sheets. Daryl goes without much fight, even though Rick gets the feeling that's just 'cause he's hurting too bad to put one up. He doesn't even gripe as Glen picks his feet up and puts them on the cot or as Rick pulls the knife belt off his hip. He just lays there, eyes closed, nose flaring, breathing in and breathing out. His breaths are shallow, stuttering, and Rick watches more blood well through the shirt with each one.
Mercifully, Hershel's there now, and there's a chair waiting for him. He sits down, and he gets to work getting that shirt out from around him.
Carol's waiting in the wings with a clean rag when he finally manages, and after a few quick swipes of a knife to lose the rest of the shirt, he presses the rag over a spot on Daryl's side.
Daryl screams. It's held back behind gritted teeth and pursed lips, but it's a scream just the same, and it hits Rick like a physical blow. He doesn't know if he's ever heard Daryl scream like that. Closest he can recall's when they found his brother's hand on that rooftop. Different kind of pain, but strong nonetheless.
He knows it's just reflex when Daryl jerks back and reaches for Hershel's hand. It's no fault of his. Just like it's reflex when Rick grabs Daryl's wrist and pulls it back in front of him.
"You're gonna have to hold him," Hershel says. "Get him on his side and hold him."
And Rick does. He reaches around Daryl's back and pulls him over onto his side, and he keeps one hand on the back of his shoulder. The other goes to holding Daryl's head against the pillow when he tries to crane his neck and see what Hershel's doing.
"Eyes on me," Rick tells him, his voice low. It's just meant for Daryl, anyhow. "Just focus on me." Because Rick can see Carol handing Hershel a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and dread's half the torture. It's bad enough, the way his eyes slam shut and his teeth grit so hard Rick can practically hear 'em grinding when Hershel pours the first splash of it on his side. He flinches so hard, Rick's teeth click, and he tightens his grip on him a little. "Easy now. Try and hold still." Even though he knows he already is. Like he said: it's reflex. No fault of Daryl's.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hershel's face harden. He makes the mistake of following his gaze to Daryl's side, and immediately wishes he'd followed his own damn advice.
It's a bite. No two ways about it. There's a patch of skin about the size of Rick's palm just flat missing from Daryl's left side, half over the bottom of his ribs and half on the tender part below. It doesn't look too deep, at least, but then, deep doesn't matter. It's a bite, and the damage is done, and Rick feels his heart break into pieces. Not again. He can't do this again. Can't lose someone else. Can't lose Daryl.
He tries not to let it show on his face, even as he feels his eyes start to burn and his stomach start to turn. For all the good it does him.
"Told you so," he says, almost casual, like he's talking about the weather or whether or not he recalled where Rick put the keys. Like he hasn't just been given the death sentence.
"Jesus Christ." He takes his hand from Daryl's head and presses the back of it to his mouth. He can feel something rising up his throat, and he swallows thickly. He can't. He can't lose it, now. "How'd it happen?" He's not sure it's the right thing to ask, but Hershel, even knowing what they know, is setting right back to cleaning out the nasty-looking wound, and Rick'd kind of like to keep his mind off it. Absent any painkillers, it's the least he can do.
Daryl shrugs, only to wince, although it's hard to tell if it's because he shrugged, or because Hershel just pulled a shard of something out of it. "Don't know," he says.
"You don't know?" He tries to manage a chuckle, but it comes out hollow and thin. "Just how'd you manage that?"
"Bank gave out over by Yellow Jacket. Slipped and cracked my skull—" he hisses and jerks as Hershel does something with his bite he doesn't much like, and Rick just holds him tighter, "—on a stump, blacked out. Woke up—shit!" He jumps like he's been shot, twisting around as well as Rick'll let him trying to see what Hershel's doing to his side. "Dammit, what're you doing?"
"We need to clean this wound out," Hershel replies steadily.
Daryl scowls. "What for? It's a damn bite. Yer just wastin' your time; I'm dead already. Just leave me be. Or better yet, put a bullet in me." He sounds annoyed with them, put out.
Underneath it, though, Rick can see something else. Sure, he's actin' tough, but really, he's…he's scared. It's in his eyes. He's scared, and he has every right to be.
That doesn't mean Rick doesn't want to help. "You ain't dead yet," he says, and that's just that, because he's not. He's not dead; Rick can't let him be dead. Not Daryl. Not like this. So even if he's right, even if they're just wasting their time, he doesn't rightly care. "You don't even know how you got bit. What's to say it was even a walker that did it?" He knows that's grasping at straws, but straws are all he's got, and he'll hold on 'til the last.
Daryl's face twists painfully, but it's hard to tell if it's for the question, or 'cause Hershel's taking a pair of tweezers to his side again. "There was one in the creek bed when I woke up."
"And it bit you?"
"I told you I don't know," Daryl snaps back. Rick won't take it too personal, though. If there's a time a man's allowed to lose his temper, he figures this is it. "By the time I came to, the damn thing was already eatin' something else. Coyote or something. Damn thing didn't give to shits about me."
There's a sudden jolt of something through Rick's chest. Not quite a lightbulb, but an inkling. A suspicion.
He doesn't get the time to ponder it, though. Hershel's got a knife out, now. There's bits of torn skin hanging off the edges of the wound, and Rick realizes with a sick turn of his gut that Hershel means to cut them off.
Suspicions can wait. He holds Daryl a little tighter in anticipation of what he's fairly certain's about to be a hell of a southward turn in Daryl's already bad day. It's one thing for Daryl to be twitching around alcohol and tweezers, but with a knife that close to him, he's not taking chances.
It's a good thing, too, because when Hershel takes that knife to him, Daryl wants no part of it. Glen's down at the bottom of the bunk holding his legs, and Rick's got him by the shoulders holding him on his side, keeping his hands up in front of him and his head down on the pillow. And Daryl's bucking and twisting, not so much trying to turn himself loose Rick thinks, as just get the hell away from Hershel, but they've got him well enough that he's got nowhere he can go.
"Let me go," Daryl grinds out, voice high and tight. "There ain't nothing for it. Just let me go." It's the closest thing to begging Rick thinks he's ever heard from him. And he gets it. Shit, he gets it. If that's really a bite from a walker, then they're putting him through this for nothing, and there's a part of him that says they should just leave him be like he's asking. Don't waste what time he's got left poking and prodding him.
"Alright," he says. He swallows thickly, pushes himself up a little higher on his knees. "Alright, Daryl, if you can tell me flat out you know it was a walker took a chunk out of you, I will. If you can look me in the eye and tell me you know that bite's a walker bite, I'll do whatever the hell you want.
"But if you can't," and Christ almighty, he hopes he can't, "then you gotta let us try. Alright? You gotta let us try." He leans in close, swallows back the lump in his throat and blinks away the moisture in his eyes, and he forces himself to ask, "So you tell now, and you tell me honest: do. You. Know?"
All eyes are on him, on Daryl. Even Hershel's stopped working, because there's not a one of them there that isn't praying for the same thing.
Daryl grits his teeth. "It was there."
"That ain't what I'm asking."
"Dammit, Rick, I—"
"Daryl!" Rick cuts him off, but when he flinches, his heart sinks. They shouldn't be doing this. Shouldn't be hurtin' him more when all signs point to the worst. But Rick refuses to believe there's not a chance. Maybe it's foolish, maybe it's selfish, but he won't believe that's all she wrote until Daryl swears up and down it is. "Do you know?"
There's a long moment where Daryl answer. Rick's heart is in his throat, and he's pretty sure there's not a dry eye in the house. Including his own. None of them want to lose Daryl; he's their keystone. He keeps their shit together when they're all losing it; he keeps them safe, keeps them sane. Rick knows they're all praying just as hard as he is that Daryl says—
"No."
Carol steps a little closer, and Rick glances back to see her eyes wide and red and wet. "What?"
"I said," Daryl's voice catches, and he swallows thickly. "I said no. I'm not—I…I don't know."
"Wait, so you're saying—"
But Rick silences Glen with a look. Now's not the time, it says, and then he turns back to Daryl. "You know we can't just sit back and do nothin' if there's even a chance this turns out okay."
"Can't just act like there's no chance it doesn't, neither," Daryl manages to say. He's pale as a sheet, now, and each shallow, shaky breath puckers the wound over his side. Rick can feel his bare skin warm under his hands, and he hates it, because he knows what a fever means. "Soon as I kick it, you gotta—"
"If something happens, I'll do what I gotta do," Rick tells him. And he will. It might kill him, too, but he'll do what needs doing for all their sakes.
That seems to settle Daryl down a little, like Rick's just promised away a threat. Leave it to him to be worried about the others when there's a better-than-good chance he dies tonight.
Rick snuffs that thought out soon as it comes. He can't think like that. Not now, when there's still things to do.
"Hold him still." Hershel's voice cuts through the haze that's settled in the room like a lamplight. The world kicks back into gear, and Rick snaps back into his head. He's got to keep it together.
He tightens his hold on Daryl, and this time, Daryl turns his face into Rick's sleeve.
"Damn idiots," he thinks he hears him mutter. There's a certain relief to it, though, that Rick'll pretend he doesn't hear. He doesn't want to die as much as Rick doesn't want him to. And if there's something that feels a lot like tears seeping into the sleeve of his shirt, well then he'll pretend he doesn't notice that, either.
It's gonna be a long night.
