AN: I don't know what it is, but I've had a real urge to write this story for the past couple of days and since this one is one that I normally just take notes on and don't feel up to actually writing, I thought that I'd indulge my muse for the time that it wants to play here.
So here's another chapter for you. I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl thought about calling Carol. He thought about it, actually, more often than he wanted to admit. He spent, in fact, a good deal of his free time trying to convince himself that he wasn't thinking about it, which as a result, only made him think about it all that much more.
Merle, Wren, and Mac had calmed down in the week and a half since the incident and didn't harass him about it nearly as regularly. Once he'd started to ignore them, or worse yet to excuse himself to do some other task and left them with the odd jobs that they normally didn't have to perform in his presence, they'd figured out that it wasn't worth their snorts and snickers to keep digging at him when nothing more had come of the event.
Sophia, for her part, continued to nurture the idea that she'd planted in his mind, though, and he didn't fail to notice that she never missed some opportunity to at least mention her warden to him on a daily basis when she was busy handling the myriad of odds and ends tasks that she'd begun to do around the shop.
Today, to keep her out of his hair and to avoid the annoyance, he had her assigned to cleaning up the back room of the shop. It was sometimes called a storage room…it was sometimes called their parts room…really it was some kind of graveyard where everything they acquired and didn't use immediately went to die in a pile of forgetfulness and junk. The whole thing, in fact, was one massive junk pile except for the far left side where they actually did keep the paint wall and one small shelf of odd supplies.
Everything else they needed, they bought off the supply trucks that passed through several times a week because wading through the scrap parts and everything else that had accumulated in the space was far more annoying than dishing out a couple of extra bucks for what they likely already had shoved back somewhere.
So Sophia had been sent into the room of doom to make sense of the mess. It would probably take her the better part of a week if it took an hour, but at least it kept her busy and she was happy to do it because Wren had promised her that any parts she dug out of there, once the place was clean and organized instead of the disaster that it currently was, he would set her to up to paint for practice…and practice meant she was one step closer to painting something they weren't going to toss out in the dumpster or lay to the side for the scrap metal collection.
Wren was in the paint booth at the moment, finishing up the clear coat on the car that Daryl had promised the old woman would be ready by the following day, Merle was tinkering with some side project that Mac had hauled in there, Daryl was working on a car that they'd had tucked to the side since the owner was in no real hurry to have it back, and Mac…like the good boss that he was…was absolutely nowhere to be seen and had left no forwarding number should anyone seek him out during the day.
But this was the kind of day at the shop that Daryl liked the best. It was the kind of day where everyone of the bugging, yapping, annoying people that worked with him were actually occupied…and occupied to a point where chatter was kept to a minimum and nicely contained in small pockets of energy when it seemed that everyone took some kind of simultaneous break for a cigarette…and with the smoking done, so was the conversation as everyone traipsed back to whatever they had put down for just the moment.
These were the nice days at the shop when you could be alone with nothing but the thought of the job in front of you or the memory of a job well done recently completed. Though if you were unlucky, as Daryl was at the moment, there might be one or two other stray thoughts that drifted into your mind.
All in all, though, these were the peaceful kind of days that Daryl lived for.
That was…until disaster struck.
Daryl didn't hear a thing over the radio and the sound of Merle's power tools, but Wren came charging out the paint booth, raising his mask up.
"What the hell happen'd in here?" Wren called, trying to yell out over Merle's racket.
"What?" Daryl called back.
"The hell happened?" Wren called out.
Merle, apparently hearing the yelling, finally killed the noise and stood half leaned over the work he was doing. Daryl raised an eyebrow. It was quiet for a second.
"I heard some kind of big crash…" Wren said. "What'd ya do?"
"Ain't done shit…" Daryl started to say, thinking the little old man had finally drunk himself into some kind of state where he'd start hallucinating all kind of shit even in his sober moments.
But then they heard the muffled and blood curdling screaming. Daryl tried to get to his feet as fast as he could, but before he'd even gained them Wren had yanked open the office door and run through to the back room…the storage room…where the blood curdling howls were coming from Sophia.
"Get me some damn towels!" Wren yelled from in there where Sophia was and Daryl slid to a stop on the gritty floor, turning as quickly as he could. Merle who was outside the office still, had also heard Wren's yelling for the towels and threw Daryl one of the large rolls of shop towels they had. The paper towels were damn near cloth anyway and were far more sanitary than anything else they were likely to have around the shop if she was hurt.
Daryl fumbled catching the roll but finally got his hands around it, rushing into the room that was in even more disarray than normal. He stumbled through the piles of mess and found Wren on the floor where he'd pulled Sophia into his lap.
"Damn near cut her arm off it looks like…" Wren said, holding a shaking hand out to Daryl who passed him the roll of paper towers that he unrolled across the floor, balling up the end of the roll and pressing it to her arm to try to see what happened.
Sophia was blubbering and screaming at best. If Daryl had wanted to make out anything she was saying he would have needed an interpreter at the moment. Wren was calmer than he was, though, so he stood there waiting for instruction.
"It's OK…it's OK…it's not even that bad…just a whole damn lotta blood…" Wren was saying to Sophia in her blubbering state. He turned and looked at Daryl. "Sliced the shit pretty good though…musta pulled one a' them damn metal shelves down on her."
Daryl looked around him then, realizing he was standing amid what had once been one of the thick metal stacks of shelves. The only time he'd ever seen one come down before was when Mac had gotten the bright idea to try to climb the shit instead of bothering to go and get the ladder…the one that always hung out in the corner of the little dungeon like room…and it had come crashing down, nearly pinning him against the concrete wall.
"Get the kit?" Daryl asked. They had a first aid kit and it got more use than the good people who packed it probably ever thought that it would get, though they'd many times over restocked it and even come up with a few of their own items.
"What the hell ya gon' do, Daryl? Douse her in paint thinner and sew her up yourself? No, we gotta get her to the emergency room…" Wren said.
Daryl moved quickly then. At least they had a plan. He knew that Wren, who had damn near wound the girl's arm in an entire roll of paper towels while they were talking, wasn't going to be able to pick her up. She was damn near his size anyway. And Daryl doubted that Sophia, in her current state, was going to be able to get herself anywhere.
Daryl stepped over the pile of stuff and made his way toward her. Carrying her back over the mountain of mess was going to be near impossible if he didn't want to hurt both of them and worsen the situation, but the back door of the shop was in the little storage room and he could get her out of there pretty easily.
Daryl kneed Wren to get him to move away from the girl he was holding in his lap like a child.
"Go get my damn truck," Daryl said. "Bring it 'round out ta the back. We could get there twice 'fore an ambulance ever got here."
Wren got to his feet without question and Daryl scooped Sophia up. Her face was bathed in tears and covered in dust, grime, and some of her own blood. Daryl tried not to look at it.
And what made it worse was that the only damn word he could make out the girl actually saying was "Carol."
"Tell Merle ta call her damn Ma!" Daryl yelled through the shop. He heard Merle yell something back in response and carried the girl out the back door of the shop in time to see Wren pulling around in the truck.
Sophia continued her sobbing screams as Daryl got into the truck as best he could without dropping her and piled her into his lap, not knowing how the hell else to handle the situation and hoping that the blood and the screaming girl would get them a police escort if some son of a bitch cop wanted to stop him for not having a seatbelt on or something.
"Hey, hey, Wendy…just a scratch," Wren cooed as he drove toward the hospital. "Just need a bandaid, all gon' be alright."
Daryl felt his heart pounding from the whole experience and the tension in the truck. He didn't know if the cut was all that bad or if Sophia was just responding to it like anyone who wasn't used to slicing themselves open on a regular basis might. Daryl, for one, wasn't too sensitive to those things. He'd always been pretty damn clumsy and shit happened to clumsy people around the shop. He'd had Wren sew up something more than once…he typically only ever went to any kind of doctor the few times that he got metal shavings in his eyes…and that's only because he wasn't sure how the hell to take care of that himself.
But Sophia…she was damn near having a conniption fit and he was sure her throat was going to hurt just as damn bad as her arm did before long.
"S'alright," Daryl crooned, trying to copy Wren's approach to the whole ordeal. "We damn near there…an' Merle…he done called ya Ma…she gon' be there 'bout the damn time we is."
"Yeah she is!" Wren echoed. "Hell…ya ain't never seen nothin' like a woman tryin' ta get her ass down ta a hospital when her kid tried ta cut they damn arm off."
Sophia didn't let up her screaming, though, and Daryl didn't like the way the noise made him feel. He could handle just about anything if he had to and he didn't think that screaming or crying ever got to him before other than grating on his nerves, but right now his stomach was churning over it.
"We 'bout there…" he said. "Just about there."
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By the time that Carol parked the car and got out, jogging toward the Emergency Room entrance to the hospital, she was glad that she was at the facility because she was pretty positive that the tightness in her chest was the signal of a heart attack she hadn't planned to have at just over thirty.
She had no idea what had happened to Sophia and she didn't know what she was walking into. Merle had called from the shop and said Daryl and Wren were taking Sophia to the Emergency Room because she'd been hurt and Carol needed to get down there.
Carol hadn't asked for any more details. She hadn't even heard anything else. She was pretty sure she never even hung the phone back up. She'd switched off the stove where she was cooking dinner, expecting Sophia home in probably an hour or two tops…and that's if she was running late…and she'd run out the door, getting in the car. She wasn't wearing a coat, she wasn't wearing a bra, and it was only by some strange twist of luck that she even had shoes on.
Carol burst through the doors and found the receptionist. It took her a second to get her breath enough to even be able to speak and by the time she got the woman to understand what she wanted, Robert Wren appeared beside her and caught her by the top of the arm.
"She's OK," he said. "Cut's pretty deep but it's gonna heal. They got her in the back…Daryl's with her. She's gotta have stitches for it but she was given 'em livin' hell."
Carol nodded at him and looked at the doctor or nurse…or whatever the young man in the white outfit that had walked up was. Somehow a clipboard appeared in her arms, though she didn't remember accepting it from anyone, and then she was walking with the person in white toward the back part of the Emergency Room…the exam area…an area she knew better than she wanted to admit.
They brought her into a room where Sophia was on their exam table, Daryl leaning over her like he was trying to hold her down, and Sophia was screeching at him and fighting him and the two doctors in the room like Carol had never imagined the girl would have the strength to do.
"Sophia?" Carol called, coming into the room and dropping everything she had on a chair by the door. Daryl turned around then, a look of relief crossing his face a second before it wrinkled back up with concern.
"See, she's here…" Daryl said. "Thank God!"
Carol stepped forward, taking his place beside Sophia and her heart felt like it might tear in two looking at Sophia's face. She was dirty and red faced and there were dragon tears on her cheeks. She'd cried to the point her voice was hoarse and she was still trying to scream.
"Scared a' needles," Daryl said. "I reckon…they give her a tetanus shot an' ain't even started the stitches yet."
Carol nodded at him, not really able to do more and shouldered him the rest of the way out of the way, taking Sophia's hand…the one right one that they didn't need to work on…in her left hand, she squeezed it a little before putting her hand on Sophia's face, creating a blinder with her hand between the girl and the nurses that were trying to get her ready for the stitches.
Carol forced herself to swallow. She felt like she might start crying just by looking at Sophia and seeing the terror on the girl's face. Though, since she'd stepped up to her, at least Sophia had stopped screaming and her protests had turned more to whines with the occasional burst of sound.
Carol wished that she could trade places with her. She'd gladly take the stitches that obviously terrified the girl. She'd been there before…it wouldn't be anything that new to her, but she didn't know if it might be new to Sophia.
"It's OK," Carol said, leaning her face closer to Sophia's. "Just look at me, OK? Don't look at them, just look at me."
Carol glanced at the nurses and knew they were ready to get started, especially since Sophia seemed to be calming now and seemed less likely to fight them for all she was worth. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Daryl hadn't left the room. He was standing in the corner. She mouthed at him to get Sophia's feet, in case the girl decided to kick or writhe against them, and he raised an eyebrow at her. She mouthed it again and he understood, walking calmly beside her and resting his hands on Sophia's ankles in case he needed to grab them.
Carol turned back to Sophia and smiled at her as best she could. As soon as they started with the stitches, though, she was glad that she'd but Daryl into place.
Carol leaned down close enough to Sophia to keep the girl from seeing anything. Her heart broke every time that Sophia screamed out. She couldn't help her, though, not really…and she didn't know much of Sophia's reaction was pain and how much was shock or fear.
"It's OK," Carol kept repeating. "Almost over…they're almost done…not too much longer…"
Surprisingly, as they got closer to finishing, though, Sophia calmed more. She locked eyes with Carol and by the time they were done, her fighting and her screaming had dissolved into heavy sobs with little sound.
"We can give her something for pain," one of the nurses offered. Carol was pretty sure that both the medical people in there had spoken before, but she hadn't heard any of it. In fact, her ears were ringing as it was.
"Thank you," she said, putting on her best smile…it was the same smile she wore every time she'd been in there. The smile that said I understand that the pain you have to cause me here is for my own good…it's pain that I need. "Could we get it in pill form?" Carol asked, lowering her eyebrows in hopes to gain sympathy for them. She didn't know if Daryl was right and the girl was afraid of needles…she didn't really know anything like that about Sophia…but what she did know was that she didn't want to cause the girl more trauma than they had to and if nothing else she'd refuse the pills here and dose Sophia herself on the medication she never took with her shoulder.
The nurse smiled at her though, and left the room. The second nurse spoke to her, quickly, about the forms that she needed to fill out before she left and she nodded her head again, well aware of how the entire process worked.
And during it all, Daryl was standing there, his hands still on Sophia's ankles, though just resting there now, and Sophia still clutched at Carol's hand as though it were some kind of lifeline. She was shaking, and now softly crying, but she let Carol help her sit up, her bandaged arm held out to the side like she didn't like it and didn't know who it belonged to.
Carol rubbed the girl's hair out of her damp face.
"Are you OK?" Carol asked her, keeping her voice soft and trying to smile at Sophia. Sophia looked at her and after a moment her eyes went wider instead of having the sleepy sobbing look they'd had before.
"I'm sorry…I'm sorry…" Sophia coughed out.
Carol smiled and rubbed Sophia's face, still not pulling her left hand, which had started to lose feeling, out of Sophia's grip.
"There's nothing to be sorry for…it's OK…it's all OK," Carol said.
When the nurse came back in with a cup of water and a cup of pills, Carol finally wrenched her hand out of Sophia's grip and took the things from her, offering them to Sophia.
"Take this and we'll take you home," Carol said. "I'll make you something to eat and you can lie down…you'll feel better."
Carol turned then to Daryl who apparently wasn't leaving at the moment.
"What happened?" She asked.
Daryl shrugged and rubbed at the back of his neck.
"She was cleanin' out the storage room an'…I don't know what the hell happened…" Daryl admitted.
Carol knew that there was a possibility Sophia would get hurt. Sophia had known it too. They'd signed papers that Mac had sent with Sophia detailing that there were certain kinds of injuries that might be obtained…especially once Sophia decided she wanted to start training to do things. Carol just hadn't really expected for her to get hurt.
"I didn't mean to…" Sophia coughed, still trying to calm down and drinking from the cup of water. "I thought it would hold me…"
Daryl growled and Carol turned to face him.
"What? What would hold her?" Carol asked. She felt like she was missing a very big chunk of this puzzle.
"Damn shelves," Daryl growled. "Same damn ones we said don't climb ya ass on…"
Carol pushed at Daryl. Sophia was already upset. She didn't need any extra help at the moment. There might be a time to discuss what had happened…especially if she'd been at fault for the accident…but now really wasn't that time in Carol's opinion.
"It's OK," Carol said, turning back to look at Sophia. "It doesn't matter…OK? What's done is done. We can talk about it later. Can you finish your water while I fill out the paperwork and talk to Daryl a minute."
Sophia nodded, still jerking a little.
Carol offered her another smile and pushed at Daryl again, going to pick up the clipboard that she had to fill out. Daryl followed her.
"Listen," she said, "I don't know what happened…and I understand if you need to say something to her…and I want you to if what she did was reckless…just not tonight, OK?"
Daryl gnawed at his lip and Carol could tell that he was wound up from the event. He nodded and glanced back at Sophia.
"Yeah…OK…reckon it'll keep. She was climbin' her ass up on some damn shelves an' they come down. They got sharp damn edges if ya catch 'em right…" Daryl said.
Carol nodded and offered him the same smile she'd been using on Sophia.
"And she caught them right," she finished. Daryl nodded and glanced back at Sophia. Carol smiled again. "Thank you for bringing her…for taking care of things."
Daryl nodded slightly.
"Ya need help with her?" He asked.
Carol glanced back at the girl and knew that the medication was likely to knock her out, especially with how tired she looked just from coming through the whole ordeal. She knew, also, that realistically she wasn't in the condition with her shoulder to try to carry the girl…good intentions or not.
Carol tried to judge in Daryl's face if he was sincere and he looked back at her. She finally decided he was and she nodded slightly.
"I need to fill these out…get her released," Carol said. "If it's not too much…do you think you could help me get her to the car?"
Daryl stood there a moment and then nodded.
"Yeah…" he said. He paused. "Do ya one better…I'ma go tell Wren ta head on back in my truck. I'll go with ya an' help ya get her settled. Merle can run by an' grab me later or I can walk home…ain't no big piece a' distance."
Carol frowned at him.
"I don't want to put you out," she said, glancing back to make sure that Sophia, who was looking a little heavy eyed, was fine and not at risk of toppling over in some kind of drug induced stupor. For the moment, though, she just looked tired and sad and like she didn't want her left arm to be hers anymore.
"Ain't puttin' me out," Daryl said. He held Carol's eyes for a minute. "Really…wouldn't do it if it were…I don't mind it."
Carol thanked him then and Daryl walked over to talk to Sophia for a moment while Carol took a seat in one of the chairs where she'd dropped off her stuff and filled out the paperwork as quickly as she could so that she could get Sophia home and settled in.