Hey everyone! A nice and loyal reader (Leyshla Gisel) commented that I shouldn't have made Daisy take Ricks scene. I don't even know why I did that or what the purpose of it was, I just did it. Maybe so there will be some tension between Carol and Daisy? I don't know. But I just wanted to say that I realized my fault and thanks for pointing it out. Don't be afraid to give some constructive criticism! Just to clarify my last chapters AN at the end, I am NOT making Shane a possible love interest (but if you want there to be a love triangle just tell me). He's just an interesting and complex character that I want to get into Daisy's life. There will be tension with the two! Anyway, please review and enjoy

Flashback

The next few years went on without talking to Daryl much, his brother seemed to keep out of jail and get odd jobs. But my family and I on the other hand, seemed to have the worst of luck. My grandmother died shortly after my mother did and some people sold her home in Phoenix for us, but I swear they tried to sell it for the least amount of money. We got three-thousand dollars, but I knew it was worth more. That held us up for about two years when we used it wisely and it seemed that dad never even bothered to notice. Whenever he asked us where we got the money we always told him that Lori earned the money babysitting. In sixth grade I started babysitting myself. Lori and I made out a plan for when we could babysit so one of us could always be home and watch Annabelle.

But grandma's house money eventually ran out and we were just living on mine and Lori's babysitting money. When Lori turned eighteen next summer after she got out of high school, which was only a year away, we'd get to see all the money in mom's banking account. All the money she would have gotten every month from her mysterious land in Texas. Since the money only went to blood relatives from mom's side it would go to us next. Just a year away and we'd be rich with all that saved up money.

I'd started seventh grade that fall, which meant attending the High School. It was a big school, near the top of a hill looking down on the town, with a steep road leading up. Kids were bused in from way up in the hollows and from other poor areas that were too small to have their own school. Some of the kids looked as poor as me, with home-cut hair and holes in the toes of their shoes. I found it a lot easier to fit in than at the Elementary.

The other girls talked endlessly among themselves about who still had their cherry and how far they would let their boyfriend go. The world seemed divided into girls with boyfriends and girls without them. It was the distinction that mattered most, practically the only one that did matter. But I knew that boys were dangerous. They'd say they loved you, but they were always after something.

Even though I didn't trust boys, I sure did wish one would show some interest in me. Daryl was in ninth grade, but I hadn't talked to him in a long, long time. As far as I knew though, he was single.

One day when I was sitting outside with three-year old Annabelle sitting next to me coloring, Daryl, who was also outside caught my eye. He took one look at Annabelle, but then started walking towards me.

"Hey, how are you?" he asked.

I looked up at him and raised a brow. Daryl Dixon asking how I was? I tried to figure out if he was joking or not, "I'm fine, you?"

"I was thinking of going hunting later tonight. Do you wanna join me?" Daryl asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"As much as I would like to…I don't think I can. I should watch Annabelle while Lori's gone tonight. I don't have that much time for huntin' anymore," I replied, "I'm sorry, but maybe I can teach Annabelle how to hunt. And when she's good at it I can bring her out with me."

"Oh, ok," he said, sounding a bit disappointed.

Daryl was about to walk away but I stopped him, "Hey, is Merle winnin' races?"

He nodded, "Yeah."

"Where does he race?"

"A few miles off, near the fairgrounds. I'll bring ya sometime if ya want?" Daryl asked.

"Maybe," I said, "I'd like that."

Daryl gave me one of the smallest smiles and nodded, "Whenever you're not busy I'll pick you up or somethin'."

"Alright," I said in my born and raised Southern twang. Daryl then said goodbye to me and Annabelle and walked away.

Present Day

We ran relentlessly through the woods and then we got to this big field. A large man behind Shane kept on saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," repeatedly. I didn't listen to him, didn't want to. My bottom lip began to quiver as I watched Rick run ahead of him, Carl unresponsive in his arms.

"How far?" Rick yelled behind him to the hunter.

"Ask for Hershel!" he called, "tell him Otis sent you!"

I knew Annabelle and I could've run ahead of Rick, but I felt as if I couldn't. No way was I going to get in between Rick and that farmhouse ahead of us. In the distance, I saw a girl with a brown bob look at us through binoculars and shouted, "DAD!"

Rick finally reached the front steps of the farm house where an old white haired man stood with what seemed to be the rest of his family, explaining, "He was shot, by your man."

"Otis?" a blonde-haired lady asked in disbelief.

I came up next to Rick and said, "Please help. Just give the boy a place where I can operate—," I was out of breath and I shook my head, "Just please help him." I begged.

Hershel looked between Rick and I and then nodded quickly, "Of course, come inside."

We rushed into the house and I followed them in to the bed room where Rick carefully set Carl down, Annabelle looked up at me and asked, "Are you goin' to help Carl?" his voice was shaking a bit at the sight of Carl lying unconscious with blood spilling out of him.

I nodded, "I will…I'll do what I can."

As the girl Hershel called Maggie set an IV into Carl's arm Hershel looked up at me with raised brows, "You can help?"

"Yes, before the fever hit I finished studyin' to become a neurosurgeon," I stated.

Hershel nodded and gestured me to come forward. I put pressure on Carl's wound and suddenly I was in the zone. Nobody was going to tell me anything. It seemed that everybody saw that I was concentrated and when I asked for some Quickclot or Celox a lady named Maggie handed them to me without hesitation. Hershel looked cleaned up around the wound and asked, "He's losin' a lot of blood…"

"No doubt about it," I said as I dabbed the wound myself, trying to get it well enough to operate on, "He's goin' to have to get a blood transfusion. Do you have the supplies for that?" I asked. I looked up at him and back to the HIV stuck into Carl's arm. This man by the looks of it was loaded with medical supplies.

Rick, Shane, and Otis re-entered the room and Hershel asked, "What's his blood type?"

"A-positive, same as mine."

Hershel nodded, "That's fortunate. Don't wander far, we're gonna need you." He then looked at Otis and asked, "What happened?"

Otis took off his hunting cap and stumbled on his words, "I was trackin' a buck. The bullet went straight through."

I scowled and in the calmest voice I could muster I said, "It might've gone through the buck perfectly, but when it hit Carl…"

"It broke into pieces," Hershel finished for me.

I nodded, "We're goin' to have to operate."

The dire reality of the situation makes Rick come out of his trance and he remembers his Lori, and he sobs into Shane's shoulder because she doesn't even know her son's been shot.

Shane took Rick out of the room and I wanted to thank him. I and Hershel…we couldn't be distracted. I needed to focus. We started to pull out fragments of the bullet with the equipment Hershel supplied and I was thankful for it. I've pulled a bullet out of my leg before when my father was drunk once. I was only seventeen at the time, Annabelle was six and became more popular in her school than I ever would be, she was residing at a random friend's house that night. When my father shot me in the leg he quickly dropped the gun and repeated he was sorry as if he were never drunk. Scared out of my mind I crawled to the door and ran, as fast as I could with my limp leg. I remember collapsing under a tree crying and I told myself to stop being such a baby. I grabbed the pocket knife out of my pocket and got the bullet out with it. I bandaged it properly and slowly walked back home where I found my father lying asleep on the ripped-up sofa. As if he didn't even shoot me I subconsciously took his boots off, took the beer out of his hand and the cigarette out of his mouth and started cleaning up. I grabbed that gun off from the floor and traded it with Merle for some money the next day. Daryl wasn't home and Merle promised he wouldn't tell him, although I'm sure he did later.

But this was a different situation. I wouldn't have been able to save Carl out in the woods with a dinky little hunting knife even if I tried.

As I tried to reach for a deeper part of the broken bullet Carl started whimpering and Hershel told Rick to come in. Carl was losing more blood by the second. Patricia, who was Otis's wife acted as a nurse to us and stuck a needle into Rick's arm. Shane came up next to Hershel awkwardly and held Carl down for us. Carl screamed in agony and I clenched my jaw trying not to cry for the young boy who had no pain killers. "It's all right sweetie, we're almost there."

Carl screamed out more, his face becoming pale and Rick yelled out, "You're killing him."

Hershel pulled out a fragment and I did the same. Carl's body then went slack and his eyes closed. Shane's eyes widened and before I could even answer him Shane screamed out, "What did you do? I knew you were a murderer from the very beginning! I knew I should've put that bullet in your head on the first day I saw you!"

For a moment, I couldn't move, couldn't breathe. How did he know? There were endless possibilities on how he found out. He was a cop, he could've heard of me. I wanted to cry out, 'I had to kill him! I had to kill him because if I didn't kill him first he would've killed her!' But I only let this moment of shock and terrors rule me for five seconds. After those five seconds were over I shot my head up and glared at Shane, "How dare you say that when the boy has just passed out?!" Shane's round the bend face dropped and I kept my glare, "Now you either stop giving those strong accusations or you get out."

He let go of Carl's shoulders, stood up and went into the corner. Patricia looked at me wearily as she stuck another needle into Carl. After giving a lot of his blood to Carl I told Rick that he should rest. Rick started to say that he needed to go for Lori, but Hershel and Shane told him he couldn't. I kept quiet after what Shane said to me and when him and Rick walked back out into the living room, I was so relieved.

When they left the room, it was just me, Hershel and Patricia. Looking at the wound dumbly I said to Hershel, "You know we'll have to perform hard core surgery on him, right Doc? You and I both know those last remaining fragments are going to close to impossible getting out."

"There's internal bleeding…we don't have enough equipment to perform a surgery that big…"

I could tell he was looking for my name and I stated, "Daisy, Daisy Jackson. And the girl waiting out in the living room is Anna, my little sister."

He nodded with a kind smile and said, "Daisy, the nearest place we could get the equipment we need is at the FEMA command compost about five miles away from here at the old high school. Do you want to go tell your friend's what's to be done?"

I really didn't want to after what Shane had said to me and Hershel saw the worry etched onto my face, "I'll go tell 'em. You just stay here and take care of the boy."

Flashback

A few days after Daryl's and my conversation I started to get really bored. I wanted to join some club or group or organization where I could feel I belonged, where people wouldn't move away if I sat down next to them. I was a good runner, and I thought of going out for the track team, but you had to pay for your uniform, and I knew I couldn't hand that money in. I then remembered mine and Daryl's past few conversations…if only I could win money for riding in competitions. It would be like a dream.

I remember when I was a little girl and we went to visit grandma in the summer. She would always take us to the state fair and I remembered everyone wearing boots, big belts and tall hats. Everyone would crowd around the racing rink as the horse and riders drew up dust from the ground. My grandma would hold my hand and buy me a slushy as I sat underneath the boiling sun, a bit shaded from the black cowgirl hat she bought me. Dad and Mom would go off together and play games or look at the artwork in the Arts and Crafts barn, while Lori took off with friends that she made at grandma's. Like Annabelle, Lori seemed to be the charismatic and popular one while I was the one walking around with grandma. I wish I knew then the short and few times I would spend with her.

But being with my grandmother those few times at the fair and riding her own horses, I became attached and I didn't forget anything she taught me. I would long to be in that green pasture or riding rink and the widest open spaces, to have the wind in my hair and not be afraid of anything. I wanted to be that girl to win the blue ribbon, and from there started the addiction and want.

I knew I couldn't be living on dreams though, I had to be realistic.

Slowly I began to cut my babysitting times and went to the library more often. I would pull out encyclopedias on biology, chemistry, calculus, anatomy, physiology, microbiology and some physics. Ever since my mother's death I have been interested in the nervous system and the brain, the two most delicate and intricate parts of our body, what makes us function.

And when I studied more and more about the two subjects I became more interested in the spinal area where all of the important things are that can make us have mental illnesses. Most the time the brain had nothing to do with it. It was all the small parts that people usually overlooked. And when I became an intern at the nearby hospital I felt as if I knew what was really going on in the world. I would see nurses run injured people on gurneys to the emergency room and I knew that they didn't care who this person was. They just wanted to heal him or her. I wanted to do that. I wanted to fix people.

Present Day

I drowned out Rick, Hershel, Shane and Otis talking in the background and just focused on the little fragments in Carl and the procedure that Hershel and I would have to make.

Finally, Rick, Hershel and Patricia came back in and giving them all a questioning look Hershel explained, "Shane and Otis went to the school and my daughter, Maggie, went to go get the boy's mother."

I nodded and sucked in the relieved sigh I was about to give out at Shane being gone, not wanting to spend one more second in the same room as him. "That's good…do you have any bandages?"

Patricia nodded, "Of course." She pulled out a drawer in a big bureau and handed them to me, "Here ya go."

As I carefully wrapped the gauze around the wound I couldn't help but to think about Daryl…and the others.

Patricia, Rick, and Hershel went out of the room while Annabelle and I staid just to make sure Carl was all good. Annabelle, who was at the window said, "Lori is back."

I finished wrapping the wound and stood up. I pulled Annabelle out of the room with me and said, "Lori should have sometime alone with Carl."

When Lori came in she went right past us while we waited in the living room. I could hear her breaking down at her son passed out on the bed with a bloody gauze covered wound. I wondered how it felt to see someone you love dearly like that. I know what it's like to lose someone, obviously, but what about someone wounded or sick. I never fully experienced how it felt to know someone you love that much in pain.

Hershel was going to go back in the room and I followed cautiously. When I came in I said to all of them, "When I was bandagin' him…I'm sorry, but I think he needs another transfusion. Can we do that now?"

Rick nodded, "Of course, I'm ready."

I shook my head, "Not from you. You're tired enough. But, if you don't mind, I was thinkin' that Icould give some of my blood."

"What's your blood-type?" Lori asked.

"O-negative, universal donor," I said.

Lori nodded, "Thank you, Daisy. You can."

Patricia cleaned the equipment for another transfusion and came in. I pulled the plastic strap around my upper arm so my veins became visible and inserted the needle myself underneath the elbow crease. The needle and tube was attached to an IV bag which then went into Carl.

As I sat there staring dumbly around myself I noticed what the room looked like and took it all in. There was a painting that was covered with a sheet over a threadbare Victorian sofa on the right. Past the sofa, close to the window, a desk was carved mahogany, another antique that had probably been handed down along with their house, from generation to generation. And books, old leather-bound books.

I waited for an hour and a half to pass and then it was over. I took it all off carefully and my arm was a bit sore and bruised around the area of the strap. I've had worse though, so I'm not complaining.

When I came back out into the living room Hershel, Lori and Rick were all talking. Lori said with worried eyes, "So I understand that when Shane gets back with this other man-."

"Otis," Hershel said.

"Otis, right, the idiot who shot my son," Lori said almost as if she were out of breath in her anger.

"Ma'am, it was an accident," Hershel reassured.

"For now, he's the idiot who shot my son."

"Lori," Rick said, taking her hand, "They're doing everything they can to make it right."

"When they get back, you can perform this surgery."

"I'll certainly do my best…" Hershel said.

"Okay, you've done this procedure before?"

"Yes, in a sense."

"In a sense?" she asked with a confused and worried glare.

"Honey, we don't have the luxury of shopping for a surgeon," Rick said.

I stepped closer to the small group at the table and spoke up, "I can perform the surgery."

They turned around to look at me and Lori furrowed her brows, "You can?"

Rick nodded, "You said you were a neurosurgeon correct?"

I nodded, "Yes."

"You've performed this operation before?"

"Yeah, not on a child, but yes, I've performed this operation."

Lori nodded and Rick spoke up saying, "That's good enough, Lori…and thank you, Daisy," he nodded to Hershel, "and Hershel for helping Carl."

As it got dark out I was starting to become impatient. Where were they? I already replaced the bandages on Carl and Hershel took his blood pressure multiple times. Each time it kept dropping. Soon enough we were going to have to decide whether to do the surgery without anesthetic, which could kill him. I was confident in myself, but performing it on a kid Carl's size was a whole different story.

Rick and Lori got into a fight when Rick said he was going to go after Shane and Otis and Lori basically said 'No way Jose' to the mere idea of it.

What it came down to was Carl dying without the anesthetic or Carl dying without the surgery. I don't want either.

Flashback

At times, I felt like I was failing Annabelle, like I wasn't keeping my promise that I'd protect her—the promise I'd made to her when I held her on the way home from the hospital after she'd been born. I couldn't get her what she needed most—hot baths, a warm bed, steaming bowls of Cream of Wheat before school in the morning—but I tried to do little things. When she turned five that year, I told Lori that she needed a special birthday celebration. We knew Dad wouldn't get presents, so we saved for months, went to the Dollar General Store, and bought her a toy set of kitchen appliances that were realistic: The agitator in the washing machine twisted around, and the refrigerator had metal shelves inside. We figured when she was playing she could at least pretend to have clean clothes and regular meals.

"Tell me again about Arizona," Annabelle said after she opened the presents. Although she had never been there, she knew about us living for some time with grandma when I and Lori were younger. She always loved hearing our stories about life in the Arizona desert, so we told them to her again, about how the sun shown all the time and it was so warm that we ran around barefoot even in the dead of winter, about how we ate lettuce in the farm fields and picked carloads of green grapes and slept on blankets under the stars. We told her about Grandma's house and how she combed our hair every morning and gave us nice breakfasts. "That's where I'm going to live when I grow up," Anna said.

After Anna went to bed Lori sent me down to the bar to go and retrieve Dad and when I got there I told him that it was Annabelle's birthday he simply said, "It's her birthday? I forgot. Well it's hardly worth rememberin' the date she killed your mother." And that was that.

Although she longed for Arizona, the magical place of light and warmth, she seemed happier than the rest of the kids on the Tracks. She was a storybook-beautiful girl, with long blond hair and startling blue eyes. She spent so much time with the families of her friends that she often didn't seem like a member of our family. A lot of her friends were Pentecostals whose parents held that Dad was disgracefully irresponsible and took it upon themselves to save Annabelle's soul. They took her in like a surrogate daughter and brought her with them to revival meetings.

Under their influence, Annabelle developed a powerful religious streak. She got baptized more than once and was all the time coming home proclaiming that she'd been born again. Once she insisted that the devil had taken the form of a hoop snake with its tail in its mouth, and had rolled after her down the mountain, hissing that it would claim her soul. I told Lori we need to keep Annabelle away from those nutty Pentecostals, but she said we all came to religion in our individual ways and we each needed to respect the religious practices of others, seeing it was up to every human being to find his or her own way to heaven.

That summer Lori, because of her good grades and art portfolio, had been accepted into a government-sponsored summer camp for students with special aptitudes. That left me, at fifteen, the head of the household.

Before Lori left, she gave me two hundred dollars. That was plenty, she said, to buy food for Annabelle and Dad and me for two months and pay the water and electricity bills. I did the math. It came out to twenty-five dollars a week, or a little over three-fifty a day. I worked up a budget and calculated that we could indeed squeak by if I made extra money babysitting and with the shifts at the hospital.

For the first week, everything went according to plan. I bought food and made meals for Annabelle and me. I spent hours straightening up and trying to organize the huge stacks of junk.

Dad usually stayed out at night until we were in bed, and he would still be asleep when we got up and left in the morning. But one afternoon about a week after Lori had gone; he caught me alone in the house.

"Hon, I need some money," he said.

"For what?"

"Beer and cigarettes."

"I've got sort of a tight budget, Dad."

"I don't need much. Just five dollars."

That was two days' worth of food. A half-gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, two cans of jack mackerel, a small bag of apples, and some popcorn. And Dad wasn't even doing me the honor of pretending he needed the money for something useful. He also didn't argue or wheedle or cajole or ratchet the charm way up. He simply waited for me to fork over the cash, as if he knew I didn't have it in me to say no. And I didn't. I took out the green plastic change purse and pulled out a crumpled five and passed it over slowly.

"You're a doll," Dad said and gave me a kiss.

I pulled my head back. Giving him the money pissed me off. I was mad at myself but even more mad at Dad. He knew I had a soft spot for him the way no one else in the family did, and he was taking advantage of it. I felt used. The girls at school always talked about how this or that guy was a user and how such and such a girl got used, and now I understood, from deep inside, the meaning of that word.

When Dad asked me for another five dollars a few days later, I gave it to him. It made me feel sick thinking I was now ten dollars off budget. In a few more days, he asked for twenty.

"Twenty dollars?" I couldn't believe Dad was pushing me this far. "Why twenty?"

"Goddammit, since when do I have to explain myself to my children?" Dad asked. In the next breath, he told me that he had borrowed a friend's car and needed to buy gas so he could drive to Gary's for a business meeting. "I need money to make money. I'll pay you back." He looked at me, defying me to disbelieve him.

"I've got bills pilin' up," I said. I heard my voice growing shrill, but I couldn't control it. "I've got a kid to feed."

"Don't you worry about food and bills," Dad said. "That's for me to worry about. Okay?"

I put my hand in my pocket. I didn't know if I was reaching for my money or trying to protect it.

"Have I ever let you down?" Dad asked.

I'd heard that question at least two hundred times, and I'd always answered it the way I knew he wanted me to, because I thought it was my faith in Dad that had kept him going all those years. I was about to tell him the truth for the first time, about to let him know that he'd let us all down plenty, but then I stopped. I couldn't do it. Dad, meanwhile, was saying he was not asking me for the money; he was telling me to give it to him. He needed it. Did I think he was a liar when he said he'd give it back to me?

I gave him the twenty dollars.

That Saturday, Dad told me that to pay me back; he had to earn the money first. He wanted me to accompany him on a business trip. He said I needed to wear something nice. He went through my dresses hanging from the pipe in the bedroom and picked out one with blue flowers that buttoned up the front. He had borrowed a car, an old pea-green Plymouth with a broken passenger-side window, and we drove through the mountains to a nearby town, stopping at a roadside bar.

The place was dark and as hazy as a battlefield from the cigarette smoke. Gaunt men with creased cheeks and women with dark red lipstick sat along the bar. A couple of guys wearing steel-toed boots played pool.

Dad and I took seats at the bar. Dad ordered Buds for himself and me, even though I told him I wanted a Sprite. After a while, he got up to play pool and no sooner had he left his stool than a man came over and sat on it. He had dark brown hair and dark eyes and coal grime under his fingernails. He kind of looked like Tim McGraw. He poured salt in his beer, which Dad said some guys did because they liked to make extra foam.

"Name's Philip," he said. "That your man there?" He gestured toward Dad.

"I'm his daughter," I said.

He took a lick of foam and started asking me about myself, leaning in close as he talked. "How old are you, girl?"

"How old do you think?" I asked.

"About fifteen."

I smiled, putting my hand over my teeth.

"Know how to dance?" he asked. I shook my head. "Sure you do," he said and pulled me off the stool. I looked over at Dad, who grinned and waved.

On the jukebox, Kitty Wells was singing about married men and honky-tonk angels. Philip held me close, with his hand on the small of my back. We danced to a second song, and when we sat down again on the stools facing the pool table, our backs against the bar, he slid his arm behind me. That arm made me tense but not entirely unhappy. No one had flirted with me since Daryl Dixon, but that was years back, we were just friends now…

Still, I knew what Philip was after. I was going to tell him I wasn't that sort of girl, but then I thought he would say I was getting ahead of myself. After all, the only thing he'd done was dance with me slow and put his arm around me. I caught Dad's eye. I expected him to come barreling across the room and whack Philip with a pool cue for getting fresh with his daughter. Instead, he hollered to Philip, "Do something worthwhile with those damned hands of yours. Get over here and play me a game of pool."

They ordered whiskeys and chalked their cues. Dad held back at first and lost some money to Philip, then started upping the stakes and beating him. After every game, Philip wanted to dance with me again. It went on that way for a couple of hours, with Philip getting sloppy drunk, losing to Dad, and groping with me when we danced or sat at the bar between games. All Dad said to me was "Keep your legs crossed, honey, and keep 'em crossed tight."

After Dad had taken him for eighty-bucks, Philip started muttering angrily to himself. He snapped down the cue chalk, sending up a puff of blue powder, and missed a final shot. He flung his cue on the table and announced he'd had enough, and then sat down next to me. His eyes were bleary. He kept saying he couldn't believe that old fart had beaten him out of eighty bucks, as if he couldn't decide whether he was pissed off or impressed.

Then he told me there was an apartment over the bar. He had a Roy Acuff record that wasn't on the jukebox and he wanted us to go upstairs and listen to it. If all he wanted to do was dance some more and maybe kiss a little, I could handle that. But I had the feeling he thought he was entitled to something in return for losing so much money.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Aw, come on," he said and shouted at Dad, "I'm going to take your girl upstairs."

"Sure," Dad said. "Just don't do anything I wouldn't do." He pointed his pool cue at me. "Holler if you need me," he said and winked at me as if to say he knew I could take care of myself, that this was just part of my job.

So, with Dad's blessing, I went upstairs. Inside the apartment, we pushed through a curtain made from strands of beer-can pull tabs linked together. Two men sat on a couch watching wrestling on television. When they saw me, they grinned wolfishly at Philip, who put on the Roy Acuff record without turning down the television. He pressed me to him and started dancing again, but I knew this was not going in a direction I wanted, and I resisted him. His hands dropped down. He squeezed my bottom, pushed me onto the bed and began kissing me, "All right!" one friend said and the other yelled, "Get it on!"

"I'm not that kind of girl," I said, but he ignored me. When I tried rolling away, he pinned back my arms. Dad had said to holler if I needed him, but I didn't want to scream. I was so angry at Dad that I couldn't bear the idea of him rescuing me. Philip, meanwhile, was saying something about me being too bony to screw.

"Yeah, most guys don't like me," I said. "Besides being skinny, I got these scars."

"Oh, sure," he said. But he paused.

I rolled off the bed, quickly unbuttoned my dress at the waist, and pulled it open to show him the scar on my right side. For all he knew, my entire torso was one giant mass of scar tissue. Philip looked uncertainly at his friends. It was like seeing a gap in a fence.

"I think I hear Dad calling," I said, then made for the door.

Present Day

Where the hell are they? Hershel watched Carl as I patched T-Dog up with the new supplies I can get here. Now we all wait. I rock the chair that I'm sitting on in the corner back on its two legs, absently rolling the hem of my ACDC concert t-shirt that I snagged from a store after the fever broke out between my forefinger and thumb.

Annabelle is sleeping on the couch in the room next to us and I can barely keep my eyes open. Damn. I ask Maggie where the bathroom is and she leads me to the first door on the right of a long hallway. I wash my face off and slap myself once or twice to get myself back up. Looking at my watch I go back to the room and decide that I should switch up his bandages again. Hershel beat me to it though. He informs Rick and Lori that we may have to attempt the surgery without the equipment. I start pinching myself after hearing that. I need to wake the hell up if I'm going to be performing surgery.

I went back to my seat and tried to close my eyes for just a little while, but just when I was on the brink of drifting off I heard Carl cough and I shot up. Rick, Lori, Hershel and I hovered over him as he talked excitedly about the deer we saw. All of a sudden, he went still and I was afraid of the worst, but then he went into a seizure. My knees grew weak at the sight of the poor kid and I got the transfusion kit again and waited. His brain wasn't getting enough blood. Rick objected and said he would do it, but I shook my head, "Look in the mirror Rick. Just rest, okay? I'll take care of it." I easily attached the tube to my arm and Carl's arm. This was my third time doing it tonight. With a total of six transfusions Carl didn't seem to get enough blood from Rick or me.

When it was all over with I tried to get some more shut eye and I got about half an hour in which was good enough for me at this point. The latest transfusion wasn't enough and I started to help Hershel sterilize his equipment. Rick gave hope to Lori about performing the surgery without anesthetic and I felt pretty confident in myself about the situation, but Carl had to be strong and take the pain although I knew it would be hard for him. I said a little prayer and drank the coffee Maggie handed over to me gratefully. Lori made her decision on performing the surgery now rather than later when it would possibly be too late. We got Carl onto a surgery table and I stood next to Carl with the blue latex gloves that I haven't worn in a while. I was about to perform the procedure with the tweezers and clamps in hand when the pick-up pulled through the driveway, the headlights shining through the windows. I put down the supplies and Hershel told Patricia to stay with Carl.

As we ran outside I could already see that Otis wasn't with Shane. I looked at Shane and he looked at me all stunned and quiet as I ask, "Where's Otis?"

Staring right into my eyes he stutters out, "We were swarmed…he didn't make it."

I nod and take it as an answer. He hands the supplies bag over to me and I run back inside.

XXXXX

I take out the last piece of the bullet out with a smile on my face and Hershel puts his hand on my shoulder, "You did great." I looked up at him and he has a small smile on his face too. I've never met my grandfather. He passed away before I ever got the chance, but now I think he would look and act like Hershel.

I smile back at him and nod, "We did…but we still need to stop the blood."

We cleaned his wound and patched it up just as before and I can see that with the bullet pieces out that the flesh is now letting it heal itself. Hershel and I then put him back into the bed and he's now seems fine. Of course, I would most likely have to replace the bandages on him about ten times, but that's fine.

Lazily and without thought I rubbed my right eye and Patricia led me to a room upstairs. There were clean pajamas laid out upon the bed with small flowers covering them and she said, "They were Annette's." I look up to her and she explains, "Hershel's second wife."

I nod and give her a small smile, "Thank you…and I'm sorry about Otis. He was trying to make it right."

A tear slips down her cheek and she nods and walks away.

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