Eight

The soft squeak of a spoon against a plate stirred Daryl from his heavy sleep. As he slowly became conscious, the pain in his side overwhelmed him. He groaned and touched the area that ached, and he heard the scoot of chair legs against the floor.

"Dad?" He winced when he opened his eyes, and his sight strained against the bright morning sunlight. He turned his head away from the light filtering through the cream-colored curtains and saw Lydia's dark hair frame her face when she sat forward in the chair. Her features were blurry a moment before his eyes adjusted, and when he focused on her, he watched the promise of a smile twitch at the corner of her mouth. "Dad?"

"Hey." His voice was hoarse, and his throat felt rough. The pain in his side throbbed, and he groaned. His hand roamed over the fresh bandages, and the pain grew worse. "You ok?" Lydia let out a shaky breath and nodded her head.

"Yeah, but I'm supposed to be asking you that." She blinked away fresh tears and scooted her chair a little closer. Daryl felt around the bandage. He remembered the walkers. He remembered the gunshot going off and the look of horror in his daughter's eyes. He remembered reaming of the woman from the bar, though it hadn't felt like a dream. He looked around the room. It looked almost familiar, like she'd been there with him and it hadn't been a dream. His fingers picked at the tape on the side of his bandages. "Stop! Carol just changed that. She won't be back for a while." Daryl winced in pain.

"Who?"

"Carol. The woman that found us. She saved you, Dad."

"Carol." Daryl groaned softly and let the name sit in his head for a moment. "How long I been out?"

"Not that long. In and out since yesterday. That's when it…it happened." She swallowed hard. "Daddy, I'm really sorry." Daryl held a hand up and shook his head.

"Wasn't your fault." He cleared his throat and tried to sit up.

"Dad, your stitches!" He fell back against the mattress again, and Lydia reached out to take his hand. "I was stupid. I didn't think about the gun."

"Ain't your fault. Hey. You didn't do this." Lydia shook her head. "Hey. Look at me." Lydia sniffled and wiped at her eyes, and Daryl squeezed her hand. "You pull the trigger?" She shook her head. "Then it ain't your fault. What'd your Uncle Merle always say?"

"Shit happens," Lydia offered, letting out a little chuckle when a grin pulled at Daryl's lips.

"I know I told you not to pay attention to most of what he said or did, but he was right about that. Ain't nobody's fault. Can't blame yourself. Can't blame the dead. What matters is we got through it. Right?"

"Right," Lydia sniffled. "Your fever broke. Carol says you're gonna be ok."

"Where is she?" Daryl asked, looking around the room.

"They went to get our truck and bring it back." Daryl looked around and started to sit up.

"They?"

"Yeah. Her and her daughter. Oh, and the baby." Daryl narrowed his eyes at her for a moment. "But he's too little to do anything." She shrugged. Daryl thought for a moment, thinking back on that night at the bar. No names. They knew nothing about each other. Surely this wasn't the same woman. It would've been some miraculous act of fate for them to have both survived and found one another again at the end of the world.

"There's food here?" Daryl glanced at Lydia's plate, and she shrugged a shoulder.

"Not much, but there's a little left. I saved some for you." She started to get up.

"Hey."

"Yeah?" She looked at her dad.

"You ok?"

"I'm ok. I was scared. But Carol's a really good nurse. She took care of you. I think you'll like her." She looked at him a moment. "Maybe they can come with us."

"To Amarillo?" Daryl asked, sitting up a little. Lydia helped him prop up with a pillow behind his back.

"Yeah. I mean, if she hadn't found us, you'd be…I mean, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have somebody around that knows how to sew up a bullet hole." She frowned. "She's nice, Dad. It's just her and her kids. They're alone like we were. Maybe they can help us find Uncle Rick."

"Maybe," Daryl agreed. "But that's something we'll have to ask them when they get back, right?" Lydia nodded, and Daryl cleared his throat. "Bring me some water, will ya?"

"I'll be right back," Lydia promised, hurrying off to get him something to eat and drink. Daryl groaned softly and scooted up a little more to get a better look at the bandage on his side. It was clean and taped up good.

He still remembered her face, only it was a little different than he'd remembered. Her hair was shorter, her face less full, her eyes still that dazzling, mesmerizing blue. There was sadness and strength and determination behind those eyes, something that had been there before but now seemed more prominent than he remembered. Of course, his true memories were hazed with alcohol and desire, and it'd been so long since he'd seen her face that he was certain his memories weren't quite accurate.

When Lydia came back with a bottle of water and a small bowl of beans, she handed those to him before opening up an orange bottle on the bedside table.

"Antibiotics. Carol said it'd be time for one right about now." Daryl studied the little pill for a moment. "Carol's been making you take them all night. She says you have to take them all to make sure you don't get an infection. She said you still could if you're not careful, so you can't move around too much and break the stitches." Daryl considered it a moment before swallowing the pill down with a few gulps of water.

They sat together finishing breakfast in silence, and by the time Carol and Sophia pulled the pickup and the Jeep into the drive, Daryl was feeling more alert and eager to meet the woman who'd helped save his life.

Carol appeared in the door frame within a few moments of walking in the front door. She offered a smile at Lydia before her gaze dragged over to Daryl. Her breath caught in her chest for a moment when she saw his very aware eyes locked on hers. His mouth parted in a silent question, and Lydia looked between them for a moment.

"Dad. This is Carol. Carol, this is my dad Daryl." Carol nodded shortly, and she took a step into the room.

"We brought your truck back with a full tank of gas," Carol assured her. "You might want to bring some things in. Your dad will need at least a week to rest here to let those stitches heal." Lydia nodded then, and she put her bowl aside.

"Maybe when dad's feeling better, we can all—"

"Lydia, why don't you give me a minute with Carol." Daryl's voice was rough but patient, and Lydia looked to him and then to Carol before she nodded.

"Ok. Sure. I'll be right back." Carol offered her a little pat on the shoulder when she passed her by, and then she came to sit in the very seat the girl had just been sitting in.

"Your fever broke this morning."

"That's what Lydia told me," Daryl said quietly. "It's you."

"You remember," Carol said with a little nod. "Do you remember anything from yesterday? You were awake briefly."

"Thought it was a dream," Daryl admitted. He tugged at a string on his blanket. "You cut your hair." Carol's hand came up to rub the back of her neck and then touch the short, freshly cut tendrils.

"Yeah," she offered with a little chuckle and a sigh. "Makes it harder for the dead to get at." The elephant in the room wasn't getting any smaller, and Daryl looked down at his hands when Carol shifted in the chair.

"So you—"

"Lydia is—"

"Sorry, go ahea—"

"You go fir—" They looked at each other, and both chuckled, though Daryl winced when the pain in his side flared up again.

"Ow, shit." Daryl sucked a in a sharp breath and leaned his head back against the pillow propped at the headboard.

"I can give you something for the pain."

"Not now. Just woke up. Don't wanna be drugged out all day," Daryl insisted when Carol reached for another bottle on the bedside table. She stopped however and sat back.

"Lydia did a great job. She kept you dry and kept the bleeding under control until we found her. If she hadn't, you would've bled out on the road. You did good with her." She looked over her shoulder to see Sophia out in the hall with baby Henry in her arms. She was peering in, but as soon as Carol caught her staring, she turned and walked off. Carol turned to look at Daryl again.

"I thought being a single parent was hard before all this. I didn't know what the hell I was going to do when everything fell apart. Sophia and I just had each other. We adapted. Looks like you and Lydia have, too." Daryl smirked and shrugged one shoulder.

"Adapt…hell, that's all anybody ever gets done doing. Right?"

"I guess so," Carol offered quietly. "Lydia's what, thirteen?"

"Fourteen. Almost fifteen."

"You must've been…"

"Get that a lot," Daryl snorted. "I was seventeen when she was born. Long story." He looked to Carol. "It's just you and your kids?" Carol flinched at the word and wondered how much Lydia had told him.

"Yeah. Just us." She took a deep breath. "Lydia tells me you're going to Amarillo." Daryl offered a short nod.

"Yeah. It's just been me and Lydia for a long while, but before that, we were with people. Don't know if they're still alive, but we know they were heading for Amarillo."

"Any reason why?"

"About a year before Lydia was born, me and Rick barely had our licenses. Rick borrowed his dad's car, and we ended up taking it all the way to New Mexico. We got to Amarillo, and there was just big open fields and this cattle operation. Just driving by made you sick from the smell." He chuckled softly. "But all those fields, all them cattle? If there was any left, they could keep a small group of people fed for a good while. And out in the open, outside of Amarillo, it's flat and you could see the dead coming for miles. You could see people coming for miles. It'd be a good place to settle. Don't know if that's what he was thinking, but I always thought about going out there. Maybe keep going. See what else is out there." He took a deep breath. "Never went a lot of places growing up. There's a lot of places I wanted to see, that I want Lydia to see. But I guess right now all that matters if keeping her safe."

"It's all we can do. We raise them, and we wonder how we keep them alive. I guess we're doing ok so far." She looked at him, and she noticed he was staring her now. The smile was gone from his face, and he cocked his head to the side.

"We gonna talk about this now?" he asked. Carol looked over her shoulder before turning her attention back to him.

"Do we need to talk about it? Seems like a lot of things happened before the world ended."

"Yeah. But Lydia says you have a baby." Carol froze then. "Is it…I mean…" He suddenly felt his face grow hot, and he wasn't sure why. He watched her lean forward in his chair. "How old is he?"

"He was born three weeks ago," Carol said quietly.

"Jesus," Daryl muttered. "You had him all by yourself out here?"

"Sophia was there. She was a big help," Carol said quietly, remembering the night like it was yesterday. Every pain, every stifled scream. She watched Daryl for a moment, noticing how he was thinking very hard about something. She let out a sigh and shook her head. "You can ask me. I know what you're thinking."

"You don't know me," Daryl snorted. Carol raised an eyebrow.

"No, but I know that look. I've done that look. Only, for me, it's usually period math. You're wondering how long it's been since the night we were together and if there's any possibility that Henry's your son." Daryl winced in pain and sat up a little.

"Henry." The word caught on his lips a moment. "Is he?" Carol paused a moment before blinking back tears. She let out a shaking breath and nodded her head. She forced her voice not to quiver.

"There wasn't anyone else." She watched Daryl's shoulders slump out a little, released from their tension, and he nodded slowly, trying to process everything.

"Is he…I mean…"

"Healthy. Eats like a champ," Carol pointed out. At Henry's loud wail, one Carol had come to attribute to his need to nurse—she bristled. "Speaking of…it's time to feed him." She stood then, and she took a step back. Daryl noticed the way she wrung her hands together at her belly before smoothing down the front of her shirt. She was anxious, certainly a far cry from the demeanor she'd first stepped into the room with.

"Carol?"

"Look, I don't want you think feel like you…I mean…I didn't even know you were alive. We didn't know each other. We were strangers. We are strangers. So I don't expect anything. You're going to Amarillo. I'm going…I don't know where I'm going." He hadn't expected her to be a nervous talker either, but he didn't know much about her. She was flushed, and he wondered if he made her nervous. He was in no position to scare anyone, but he felt that his presence and this new revelation had changed something for her, only he wasn't certain in what way.

"Carol."

"What?"

"Would it be ok if…" He cleared his throat. "Can I meet him? Can I meet Henry?"