A few weeks had passed, patients came and went, but I still thought about Lucille which of course made me think of Negan. I wondered if he was okay, or if he was losing his mind in the silence of his home which once held so many memories for him.

"You're doing it again." My fellow intern Jane brought me out of my thoughts as we sat at the table in the cafeteria.

"What?" I furrowed my brow at her.

"That guy, you're still thinking about him. You've had tons of patients since his wife. You can't beat yourself up forever."

She was right, if I still felt this horrible it was hard telling how Negan was coping with it all.

Despite the grieve councilors wanting to see him twice a week, I hadn't seen Negan since the night at the bar when he saved me the trouble of throwing Shane out on his ass myself. This didn't surprise me though; Negan didn't seem like the type of guy to sit around talking about his feelings and feeling sorry for himself.

"How do you expect him to move on if you can't?" She asked, bringing me out of my thoughts once again.

I didn't have time to respond to Jane's question before both of our pagers went off.

"We gotta go to the pit, come on." I jumped from my chair, leaving behind my tray of food as I ran through the hospital to get there as quickly as possible, Jane following close behind.

When we got down there, ambulances were pulling up and we were quick to help the patients out of the back with the ease of the rolling gurneys, checking over them for breaks, internal bleeding and any other thing that could've happened to them.

"What do we got?" I asked in a panic, this was the first time our attendings had let us take charge of the situation, but these people looked to be perfectly healthy other than a few scrapes.

"Car wreck," the paramedic stated. "Van came out of nowhere and threw the guy from his motorcycle. They seem to be fine but the guy is pretty banged up."

I listened over his words carefully and nodded each time I got a new fact from the accident. The man and his wife were stable, but they had to come to the hospital for scans and tests just to be sure there were no underlying injuries that could later cause them problems.

Once we made sure the two passengers were okay to be taken inside by a couple of other interns, we ran over to help Jane with the man who was said to be thrown from his motorcycle, but the paramedics were at a loss.

"We don't have any ID on the guy and he's being pretty stubborn on giving us any information." He sighed before they carefully brought him out of the ambulance.

When they pulled him out on the gurney, I noticed that he was still wearing his helmet via the stubbornness the paramedic warned us about. I furrowed my brow at the peculiar situation and stared down at the man on the stretcher.

"Sir, I'm gonna need you to take off your helmet. It's a safety hazard and we need to check for any visible and internal damage." I spoke and oddly enough the man seemed to relax at the sound of my voice.

He nudged me as a sign to take off the helmet since his arms were pretty banged up, and when I took it off, my lips parted out of the huge surprise to see Negan underneath it.

"We've gotta stop meeting like this, Doctor Greene." He chuckled weakly.

The paramedics and Jane both looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"So our John Doe is actually...?" The paramedic waited.

"His name is Negan. Book an O.R. just in case. We're gonna get him up to CT and rule out every possible scenario." I sternly ordered the others, taking charge of the situation. I couldn't protect Lucille, but I could sure as hell protect him.

Surprisingly, everyone listened to my words and I was carting Negan inside, checking over his visible injuries with slight panic on my face.

"You know, you're pretty cute when you worry about me." His eyes lazily stared at me as he was being moved down the hall.

I was furious and worried, and he was making jokes. I had no reason to be furious or worried though, and I didn't understand why I felt this way. Ignoring his words, I glanced down at him once we were in the elevator on the way up to get his scans.

"Negan, what the hell?" I finally sighed.

He furrowed his brow at me in confusion, silently egging me on.

"You haven't shown up for your meetings with the grieve counselor, you haven't been paying off Lucille's hospital bills, and now you almost get flattened in the street?" I ran my hand over my exhausted face, letting out another soft sigh.

"Well, Doctor Greene," he grinned. "If I didn't fucking know any better, I'd say you've been keeping tabs on me."

I felt myself tense slightly. Maybe in a way, I had unconsciously been checking on his status, but it wasn't for any underlying reason other than the fact that I was doing my job... and two other fields' jobs as well.

"I didn't come to these appointments because they're a fucking joke." He spoke up again. "I'm not gonna sit down for an hour and cry about my dead wife. She's gone. I fucking know that. I also know that there's no way in hell I can pay off these hospital bills without selling my house or working myself to death. I don't know how I'm gonna pay off my own fucking hospital bills now because this CT you're talking about just sounds fucking expensive."

He went silent for a while as he tried to take labored breaths. I frowned as I looked down at him; he was broken. Emotionally, mentally, and now physically.

—

Negan's CT scans came back looking clear, he was fine and there was no internal bleeding that we needed to worry about. He did however dislocate his shoulder which had since been popped back into place thanks to our orthopedic surgeon.

He was put up in a room so we could evaluate him for a night or two which didn't go very well when we informed him, but he finally cooperated and we settled him into a room on the opposite end of the hospital from where Lucille's room had been.

I was finishing up a few things before I went home for the night when I walked past Negan's room. He looked empty and lost and frustrated, which he had every right to be.

"If you're gonna come in then come in, but don't stand out there and stare at me like I'm in some fucking zoo exhibit." He snapped, looking over at me.

With a soft exhale of breath, I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me.

"Didn't your parents ever teach you that it's not polite to stare?" His eyes narrowed.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be nosy, I was just checking up on you." I fibbed.

"It's a good thing you're a doctor because you're a fucking awful liar." He chuckled.

I gave him a weak half smile and sat down in the chair next to his bed.

"I talked to my Chief about doing your scans pro-bono. I explained everything that happened, not that he didn't already know, but I reminded him that the hospital was burying you under bills and he agreed to it."

A few moments passed and he didn't seem very thrilled with me, but I could tell that he was thankful.

"You're a real piece of work, Doctor Greene. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that you were some sort of fucking angel." He chuckled, his gaze softening on me some.

We sat comfortably in silence for a while until I checked my watch, noticing that I had been sitting there with him for over an hour and I needed to go home and get at least a little bit of sleep before my shift the next morning.

"I should probably get going, I gotta be back here bright and early." I yawned as I stood up, placing my hand on top of his.

Negan glanced down at my hand and let out a faint chuckle, looking up at me with a nod.

"Goodnight, Doctor Greene."

I walked over to the door and placed my hand on the handle, but then looked over my shoulder at him.

"Negan?"

"Hm?" He glanced at me with a confused expression.

When I opened the door and took one step out, I smiled at him.

"You can call me Natalie."