Chapter Fourteen

Same Timeframe as Previous Chapter

Somewhere in Northern Virginia

"Whoa whoa WHOA! Daquan, stop the car!"

"Huh? Wha-"

"Just do it! Stop and backup about a hundred feet."

"Yes ma'am," the young, twenty-something, six-foot-four man replied with obedient enthusiasm to the barely five-foot-tall young lady who was five years his junior, sitting by his side. "You smellin' somethin' out there, Scout," he asked with his head thrown over his shoulder as he cautiously maneuvered the car in reverse. "I hope it's a warehouse full of candy."

"Not smelling anything. I saw somethin'," she replied quietly as her eyes worked hard to relocate what she thought she had seen in passing just moments before. "Right here. Stop!"

The car was just barely coming to a rest when she jumped out of the car with knife in hand and began bounding toward the woods.

"Hey! You think you might wanna give me a head's up back here," Daquan suggested in between breaths as he sprinted to catch up to her, but by the time he finished his sentence, Scout had already fallen to her knees beside the subject in question. There was a woman sitting there with her back propped up against one of the trees that lined the road.

"Here, honey, drink some water," she said with the sweet professionalism of a bonafide EMT worker as she clipped her canteen from her belt and held it to Carol's parched lips while her free arm supported her patient's head.

"How long have you been out here on your own, sweetie," she asked, really not expecting much of a response considering the woman's weakened condition, but more than anything looking to keep her awake and somewhat communicative until they could get her back to Riverview. "Daquan, bring the car up as close as you can. Quickly, please!"

He nodded and recognized the need to be swift when the woman suddenly began hyperventilating, prompting him to run as fast as his long legs would take him.

While Daquan fetched the car, Mackenzie AKA Scout, as she became known as through the years thanks to her many talents of that nature, began to unzip and remove the puffy, oversized, and totally unneccessary, considering the current weather, coat to give her patient some more breathing room. That's when she noticed the woman's very prominent, protruding stomach.

"Please, help my baby," Carol managed to mumble weakly with pleading eyes just before passing out altogether in Scout's arms.

"Oh shit, is she pregnant," Daquan asked upon arriving back at the site as he instinctively assisted Scout in transporting Carol to the car without waiting for further instruction.

"Yeah, she pretty much confirmed that if there was any doubt to begin with right before she passed out."

"You think she was looking for us/"

"Maybe. If she came from another community or camp or something though they couldn't have been nearby. It looks like she's been out on her own for some time."

With some very careful maneuvering, they managed to gently slide Carol into the back of the beat-up, but eternally reliable, old Chevy Caprice with Scout hopping in behind her as well to monitor her patient's stats for the duration of the trip back home.

"Hand me the receiver," she demanded politely as she flung her arm forward to grab the speaker device attached to the car's CB radio being handed to her. "Monique, this is Scout, do you copy?"

Barely two seconds later, a vivacious voice came crackling back in response. "Ooooh, girl! Tell me you found-"

"Monique we have an emergency," Scout interjected sternly but professionally, "I need you to find Dena right away, and let her know we're bringing in a woman, mid to late forties, pregnant, second, possibly third, trimester. Vitals currently are stable, but she's severely dehydrated and just lost consciousness a few minutes ago. Do you copy?"

"Copy, I'm on my way to go get her."

"OK, let her know our ETA is about twenty minutes."

"So she is stable," Daquan sought to confirm as he replaced the receiver on it's mount.

"Well, she's breathing. Her pulse is weak, but it's steady. It's this baby that I'm worried about. I'm not feeling any movement."

Daquan whipped his head around to witness Scout using both hands to survey the entire area of Carol's stomach for any sign of life.

"Jeeez, OK little one, I get it," Scout suddenly exclaimed with a bemused chuckle that was also evidently full of relief. "This kid was like uh-uh...don't you count me out just yet."

"Baby moved?"

"More than moved! Kicked the shit out of my hand! I think I'm gonna call this one Li'l Ass Kicker."

The Next Morning

Carol's eyes fluttered open and were greeted by a hundred and one strange-yet-familiar images that instantly thrust her still-foggy brain into questioning which of her immediate memories were real, and which of them had been just some totally convuluted nightmare conjured up by her totally fucked-up psyche. The last time she had woken up in a bonafide hospital bed, it was because Ed had beaten her so bad-no, scratch that. Last time she woke up in a hospital bed, it was when she and Daryl had gone to Atlanta, in search of Beth and she got hit by that car. But that hospital room and this hospital room were different. It had been dark and dingy where this one was bright and airy, and clean to the point where she could still pick up the lingering scent of bleach. The entire scene in Atlanta was probably just one she dreamed up while laying here in her current stay, probably from whatever Ed did to her this time.

But looking down, she didn't see the tell-tale bruises on her arms. Also absent, the television and the numerous other obnoxious devices that typically only added to the discomfort of the entire hospitilization experience. What she did see however as she looked down toward the foot of her bed was a bit of a bump in the landscape. A baby bump.

"Oh God," she cried out as her hands instantly flew to her stomach in search of signs of life after the sight of her pregnant belly caused the fog to clear away.

"Don't worry, your baby is doing fine," the gentle voice came soaring in from an unexplored corner of the room. "Exactly the reason why you-not so much."

With that, Carol see the figure of the woman, probably about the same age as her, move toward her bed and begin fumbling with the bags of IV fluids dangling above her head.

"You're probably gonna have to drink about another dozen of these before you even think about getting out of that bed," she remarked matter-of-factly as she switched the drip from the nearly-empty bag of fluid to a full one. "How long were you out there on your own like that?"

Carol had about a zillion questions of her own that she'd have liked to have answered, but she found herself feeling completely at ease with this new stranger, and therefore willing to just shut the hell up and allow her to help.

"I don't know. Three months?"

"OK, so you haven't been out there alone, like, since the beginning, right? You did live in a community?"

"Yes," Carol nodded, tearing up as memories of her family came to mind.

"OK, what happened? Why did you leave?"

"He happened," Carol said with a dreamy smile as her hands caressed her stomach.

"You found out you were pregnant and you left? With nowhere to go? What the hell were you thinking?"

Carol's instinct would have been to bark back in defense of her actions, but when she had found herself asking herself that very same question repeatedly over the course of the last few months, she couldn't find adequate grounds to stand on.

"I wasn't," she finally replied, "not clearly anyway. But I didn't see a way for me to stay either."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. I mean, most communities we've come to befriend over the years are usually pretty tight amongst their own."

"We are. We're very close, all of us. They're my family."

"Then why did you leave at a time like this? And why didn't anyone come with you?"

"Let's just say, it was just really, really bad timing." When Carol could see that response didn't suit her apparent doctor enough, she continued to elaborate. "My people-we're at war with another community. We already lost people by the dozens. Some were from other communities who joined in the fight, others were my own family...I just had to give this little one the best possible chance I could at surviving, and all I knew was, it wasn't there. Not that my people wouldn't do everything they could to protect me-they would. Every single one of them would, and I would do it for them, and I wouldn't even think before I tried..and that's what terrifies me the most. And this is especially true with his daddy. We would sacrifice our own safety to protect the other...we've already been there, done that a zillion times over. I just don't want any one of us to die before we even get the chance to be a family."

"So based on what you're telling me, I take it he doesn't know."

"No, he doesn't know," she confirmed as tears began streaming down her cheeks. "If I had told him, he would have wanted to come with me, and I couldn't take him away from the family. They need him too. It's Daryl and Rick and I that have been the ones seeing us through from the very beginning. Not trying to sound like I'm full of myself here or anything, but losing Daryl and I both in this fight would be catastrophic for them."

"I'm sorry if I came off as judgmental. Hearing your story, I do understand now why you left. I guess I just didn't realize things were still that bad out there for others. It was rough here in the very beginning and for a few years following, but relations with our surrounding communities eventually got better and we haven't had any problems with anyone at all going on several years now."

"Overconfidence can come back to bite ya, you know," Carol said with a smirk as she shifted herself into a new position seeking better comfort.

"We don't let down our guard here if that's what you're worried about. I know you didn't get to see us from the outside, but we are surrounded by sturdy walls with well-trained guards on duty twenty-four-seven. We don't take anything for granted here."

"Where is here anyway?"

"Actually, I thought it might be nice to start with names first," the lady playing doctor said as she lowered the side rail on Carol's bed and took a seat on the edge. "My name is Dena, and I think you'll actually be quite relieved to know that I was actually a licensed, practicing obstetrician in my former life. Now, I'm still practicing at least, but I hope you don't mind that my license has expired."

"I dunno, do I have any other options," Carol asked with a wrinkle of her nose in feigned disgust.

"Well, as far as licenses go, I'm afraid not, but if you'd prefer to have someone else overseeing the care of you and your baby, I can introduce you to a few very qualified individuals."

"So this is like a real hospital," Carol said as she craned her neck around to get a better look, specifically to what whatever may lie right outside the door to her room.

"Well, yeah, it was. And this actually was the very hospital where I delivered most of my patient's babies."

Carol looked at her as if the woman's nose had grown over a foot long. "You mean to tell me you never left the area where you lived?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much everyone's reaction to my story," Dena replied with a forced smile that led Carol to believe that Dena's situation was probably more of a curse than a blessing. "Except of course for the few that were with me from the very beginning. But that's a story for another time. I've already got you talking much more than I care to have you doing right now. You need to get your rest, but before you do that, you still haven't told me your name."

"Carol," she replied with a smile as she allowed her head to settle back down into the fluffly pillow behind it.

Smiling back, her doctor reached over, grabbed her hand, and gave it a comforting squeeze. "Well Carol, welcome to Riverview."