Chapter 22: The Boy

About an hour after the birth, Lucy had passed out from exhaustion. Negan looked beside himself with worry as he sat in the chair by the bed with his sleeping son wrapped in a blanket. He still needed bathing, but Negan just hadn't stopped looking at the boy.

Carol had thrown some of the soiled linens in a tub to scrub later, and she'd gone to tend to Lydia before returning to the small room downstairs. He was still sitting in that spot, one hand holding his wife's, the other arm cradling his newborn son.

"He'll need to eat," Carol said quietly. "And he'll need a bath to wash off the…the blood." Negan looked up at her as if he hadn't expected the visitor, as if it had been him and Lucy alone at the house all that time. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

"She was reading all the baby books." He huffed out a laugh. "I didn't see the point. I felt sick when she told me she was pregnant. What the hell kind of life can a kid have in this horror show? But she just looked at me and smiled and told me to shut up. 'We'll make it work,' she said. 'We can do anything.' Jesus. She was so excited. And I looked at her like she'd lost her fucking mind, because let's be honest, this isn't the kind of world you paint nurseries in. It's not the kind of world where you look forward to hearing your kid's first cry, because that cry could bring a goddamn reanimated corpse right down on your jugular."

"Why don't I take him?" Carol took a step toward him, and he sat back in his seat, letting go of Lucy's hand.

"No. I've got him."

"He needs cleaned up. And a bottle. Lucy's too weak to nurse, and I can spare a little formula." Negan looked up at her. "Until Lucy's strong enough to breastfeed." She felt the lie slip off her tongue. She was sure Lucy wouldn't ever be strong enough for that. Her color was bad, and was still warm with fever. "I might even have some clothes small enough to fit him. You can rest here with Lucy, and I'll…"

"I can take care of my family," he insisted.

"How do you expect to do that if you don't know what the hell you're doing? You said it yourself. Lucy read the baby books. You didn't, did you?" He looked away. "I have a baby. And I had a little girl. I can help you."

"Why?"

"If I was Lucy, I'd want someone to do the same for my baby." She took another step closer. "Please." He looked up at her again, and she held her breath. Finally, he stood, and he awkwardly adjusted the baby in his arms. This wasn't a man who'd held a lot of babies, and when Carol gently took the baby in her arms, he looked relieved.

"He's small. Too small?"

"He's a little small, but he's a little early." She nodded her head, and she smiled down at the little one, gently touching the tip of his nose with her finger.

"He looks like Lucy," Negan choked out. "I, uh, I don't know what to…"

"It's ok. Just sit with her. I'll give him a bath and bring him back to you. You're going to want to be the one who gives him his first bottle. Trust me. You'll want to remember that."

Carol took the baby from the room and upstairs. Once in the bathroom, she grabbed Lydia's baby bath and gently washed the newborn in it. He was tiny, and he fussed as she washed him, but she spoke to him in soft, soothing words. She wrapped him in a towel and brought him to her room when he was clean, and she lay him down on the bed and opened up the closet to find some things that she'd stored away but didn't really need anymore, like Lydia's old diapers and clothes. The diapers were a size too big, but she made them work, and then she slipped a little white sleeper over him. They were a little long in the legs, but they fit, otherwise. She finished up by swaddling him and taking him back downstairs.

She carefully made a bottle using some of Lydia's formula and hoped it would work for him. She remembered Sophia needing a special kind of formula at first, but Carol figured this had to be better than nothing.

When she returned to the little bedroom, Negan was holding Lucy's hand again, and she was shivering in her sleep. Carol swallowed the lump in her throat, and she gently tapped on the door. Negan looked up, and she smiled down at the baby.

"He's clean and ready to eat." The baby blinked sleepily when Carol leaned down to place him in his father's arms. "Just support his head." She handed him the bottle next, and he struggled to get the little one to eat. "Sometimes you have to put a little milk on his lips. Like this." She took the bottle and gently rubbed the rubber nipple over the baby's bottom lip. A little formula coated his lip and tongue, and he grunted. She popped the nipple into his mouth then, and he began to suckle. She let go of the bottle and let Negan take over. "Look at that."

"He supposed to make that sound?" he asked. "He ain't gonna choke?"

"He's fine. Just support his head."

"I never kept a plant alive. Killed the first goldfish I had after two days. Forgot to feed it."

"Well, trust me, he won't let you forget to feed him." She folded her arms across her chest. "We found Lydia out in the cold. Her mother was just…gone. I guess her father couldn't cope. He, uh, he must have held out as long as he could. It was cold. She would've died if it wasn't for the dog. I guess he belonged to her family. He was barking and making a bunch of noise, and we found her. What could we do? She was helpless. She needed us. We took her home, and she's been ours ever since. She needed us, and I think maybe we needed her, too."

"Us."

"Me and my husband."

"Sorry," he said quietly.

"What?"

"He get bit? That why he isn't here?"

"He's not dead. He's looking for the rest of our group. We got split up at the end of the summer last year. It was just us, and then we found Dog and Lydia." She took a shaking breath, feeling the uncertainties and worries coming back now that the house was quiet again. "He'll be back soon." She knew that was probably a lie. It would be at least a week, and she knew it. She suddenly felt anxious again. "I'll leave you alone with your family." She turned and started to shut the door behind her, but Negan looked up.

"Hey. Thank you. If you hadn't let us stay, I might've lost both of them." Carol felt the lump rise in her throat again, and she just nodded.

"I'm going to go lay down. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks." Negan looked away then, and Carol left him to tend to his son.

When she got back upstairs, Dog looked up at her excitedly, and she gave his head a pat. She shut herself up in her room and locked the door before pulling Lydia into her arms and snuggling her as she slept. She was amazed at how heavy Lydia felt after holding that baby. It was hard to believe how much she'd grown in the last few months. She was getting so big and was just a delight. Those big, dark eyes and that messy dark hair just filled Carol's heart with joy every time she looked in her little girl's face.

Carol put the baby back down in the crib and retreated to her own bed. She sighed, heavy and deep when she crawled under the covers and sunk down against her pillow. It felt so good to lie down. Her bones ached. Her body was weary. She felt the tension just melt away.

But the longer she lay there, the more her mind began to wander back to Daryl. What would he think when he arrived to find these strangers here? What if Lucy didn't make it? What if she died and came back and hurt the baby or Negan? A hundred different scenarios kept her awake, and when she did manage to drift off, she was restless. She tossed and turned and managed to sleep a dreamless sleep for about an hour before Lydia began to fuss.

She lay there, staring at the ceiling until Lydia soothed herself back to sleep. With a heavy sigh, she rolled onto her stomach, buried her head in the pillow and wished she could shake the worry. But she couldn't, and she knew she wouldn't until her husband was home safe with her and their baby girl.

Author's Note: Thank you all so much for the wonderful feedback! It means so much to me! I hope you will continue to read and let me know what you think!