She flew out the door dressed so haphazardly that she was sure if she got pulled over the cop he would take one look at her and send her on her way. They would have to catch her first though, she didn't plan on stopping for anything or anyone.
She looked scary and she didn't care, she didn't even brush her hair. The roads were dark and quiet at two twenty am.
She was going to speed to and just let them try and pull her over, that wasn't happening.
Merle was meeting her at the hospital, but it was a twenty minute drive from where she was. That gave her time to pray and she did it out loud, begging God to please not take him away from her. She realized in that moment as she cried her prayers up to God that she could not live without him.
Walking out on him and living apart, those years all wasted in her mind now. If something happened to him and she had wasted those three years because she was chasing a dream of what she thought her life should be, she would never get over it.
Three years that they could have been together.
They would just have to dig two graves.
An ideal of what you were supposed to want was just that, an ideal, it wasn't fact. Of course she loved children, she was a teacher. That didn't mean she would be incomplete without children of her own. She had it all wrong all along.
She thought she was supposed to be one thing, a mother all her life. She was supposed to be, not wanted to be.
He was what she wanted. She had been so stupid and selfish and now it might be too late. She would take it back, all of it if she could. She wished to turn back time and change it all.
She cried all the way there and stopped and texted Merle when she was close to tell him to meet her outside.
Merle was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the wall outside the hospital as she barreled into the parking lot on two wheels practically. She parked and ran over to Merle like she was being chased by a serial killer.
"Easy darling, they won't let us back there, they're working on him." Merle said.
"The hell they won't." She said grabbing Merle's cigarette and taking a drag. "Come on lets go."
She swung her purse over her shoulder and stomped into the ER.
/
There were people working on Daryl and he was in and out of consciousness. His head hurt like a motherfucker and they were starting an IV on him, he could feel that. He was out of it almost entirely but he heard someone talking to him. He could have sworn they said "Your wife is out in the lobby pitching a fit, so you better come back to us."
Then he was out again.
/
The nurse finally let Merle and Carol in the room and she explained things to them. He was on a ventilator because he had a collapsed lung and broken ribs from the CPR the man who found him tried to do. Daryl had been hit head on by a drunk driver who fled the scene. He sustained serious injuries.
A truck driver had come upon the scene and found him unconscious and called the ambulance. He then gave Daryl CPR and that had saved his life.
They had him in a drug induced coma to heal the swelling on his brain, which they were handling with medications through the IV line.
The next 24 to 48 hours were going to be crucial and would be touch and go until then due to the possibility of a head injury.
It was a big waiting game now.
Carol pulled up a chair and sat down next to his bed and she looked at his face, he had two black eyes from where he hit the steering wheel and various cuts on his face. There was bruising all over his chest and his lip was split.
She let the tears slip down her face not caring if Merle or the nurse saw her.
Merle touched her shoulder as she held Daryl's hand.
"I'm not leaving him Merle." She said taking hold of Merle's hand on her shoulder with her other hand.
"I know Sis." Merle replied.
She didn't leave his bedside except to go to the bathroom or to go to the chapel and chat with God. She was making deals, begging and crying now. She needed a miracle and she would bargain with the devil if it saved his life. The Devil or God whoever answered first, she wasn't being picky.
She never stopped talking to him or holding his hand.
She held his hand through the night and talked to him about their life together, telling him the story of them as if she was reading it from a book. She started with their first meeting at fourteen and talked to him about what their life together was.
She told him about how even before he asked for help in geometry, she had always thought he was cute. She told him that he was and always would be the best thing that ever happened to her.
That he was all she needed and she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. She wasn't incomplete at all, he was her other half, she was already whole with him.
As the hours dragged on with no change at all and the machines rattled on she recited their story, reliving and seeing their life together with new eyes.
It was a good life. And she wanted it back now.
The words tumbled out of her memory with ease and on the third day when the nurse came on at eleven pm Carol was sitting there telling him about when he took her fishing when they were sixteen and she stood up and tipped the boat over. He didn't get mad at her and they laughed about it for a long time after that.
Her memories were bittersweet now, she finally knew what she really wanted and it might be too late.
The nurse, who Carol recognized now as the same nurse that was on the night before, by the name of Kathleen, hung a new IV bag and smiled down at Carol.
"Can I get you anything Mrs. Dixon? I think we have some ginger ale in the kitchen?"
"I'm ok thanks Kathleen." She smiled and pulled a blanket over her shoulders. She had slept there the night before and the one before that and intended to do the same tonight too. Despite Merle bitching that she needed to take care of herself.
"Keep on talking to him, they say people in coma can hear."
Carol nodded, she had heard that and she fully intended to talk the entire time until he woke up. They had taken him off the vent earlier in the evening and he was breathing on his own but still not awake. She stood up and leaned over to place a sweet kiss on his lips and a tear fell from her eye and landed on his face. She wiped them away softly.
"Mrs. Dixon, his EEG came back normal, they D/C'd the Mannitol, for the cerebral swelling, it's resolved now. Also they backed off the other medications so he could wake up at any time." She said. "Head trauma was minimal as far as they can tell. He'll wake up soon."
"And I intend to be there."
"You really love him it's so plain to see." Kathleen said and Carol nodded. "You don't see love like that every day."
/
Merle was there the next morning with coffee and bagels for Carol and he once again started telling Carol to go home. He was worried about her because she hadn't left the hospital in three days. She looked like hell and Merle didn't like it one bit.
He felt responsible for her well-being, and he wanted to do the right thing by her, Daryl would want that. But she was one uncooperative woman.
Maggie and Glenn were going to come offer to sit with him so she could go home to sleep but she would tell them no.
Her friends were worried about her and Merle told her he was going to carry her out over his shoulder when Maggie and Glenn got there.
"Merle I'm not leaving him, I'm never leaving him again." She said softly. "Not ever."
"Come on Sis, we'll call you if anything changes."
"No, Merle I have to be here, I have to tell him." She said.
"You're exhausted and you need to get some good sleep."
""I'm not going." She put her hands on her hips now.
"I'll carry you out myself, don't think I won't, Carol….."
"Will you leave her the fuck alone Merle." A voice came from the bed and both of their heads turned to where Daryl was grimacing but very much awake. "You two are making my head hurt."