AN: Here we are, another chapter here!
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"I want my babies…I want my babies…I want my babies…"
The line had turned into something caught on repeat. Daryl could imagine nothing more heart-wrenching than hearing Carol say it, over and over again, so desperately. It had long since faded out from the screams she'd started with. It had run through the cycle of hard sobbing, and now she was barely saying it above a whisper as it came out with bursts of sobbing every now and again.
Daryl had stopped trying to tell her it would be fine. He'd stopped trying to ask her to stop crying. He realized that she couldn't.
Their babies had been ripped from her body, as literally as Daryl could imagine such a thing being, and she hadn't even seen them. Perhaps time had been slowed down by their suffering, but it felt to Daryl that hours had passed since the doctors and nurses had left them and their guards had abandoned the room.
The only guard left, now, was the one in the corner that kept silent watch with his weapon, as unmoving as any stone statue had ever been.
Daryl had twisted his body around to get as much into the bed with Carol as his chains would allow. He was holding her the best that he could. He couldn't offer her what she really wanted at the moment, and he could take away neither her physical pain nor her emotional pain.
All he could do was be near her while she repeated the same line over and over again.
Daryl jumped when the door opened to the room and there were finally sounds of people around them. There were guards in the hallway—several—and a nurse entered the room pushing a wheelchair. A guard followed closely on her heels.
"Where are my babies?" Carol asked quickly, starting to sit up.
"Stand up," one of the guards said, bumping Daryl with the butt of a gun. Daryl stood up because the last thing he wanted Carol to have to see, at that moment, was this asshole deciding to blow the back of his head off for hesitating to follow orders. Another guard stepped up and released the lock on the set of chains that held Daryl to the bed. They fell to the floor. His wrists and ankles were chained, but he could attempt to hobble away if he really thought it would get him somewhere before the armed guards dropped him. "Let's move," the guard with the gun commanded. He gestured toward the door.
"Where are you taking him?" Carol asked. "Where are my babies? I want to see my babies!"
Suddenly she found some renewed strength from somewhere inside of her. Daryl glanced over his shoulder at her and his stomach ached with anxiety. If she had ever been wild before—if that was truly a thing—there was a glimmer of wildness in her eyes now.
"I want my babies! Where are my babies?!" Carol spat.
Daryl feared she might bite the nurse who was trying to do things to her—trying to move her.
And he was happy when a familiar face appeared and Alice pushed past him.
"Hey Mama! Hey Mama!" Alice called out. "Hey there—sight for sore eyes. We need you to get in this wheelchair. We need to take you downstairs. It's time go for a ride. Go back to Woodbury. Go home. OK, Mama? Can you—help us out here? Make this move a little bit easier on all of us?"
"I haven't seen them," Carol said, speaking directly to Alice. "I don't know where they are. Please. I'm not leaving without them. I don't even know if they're OK and I'm not leaving without them."
Alice shushed her. She took the key from the nurse who looked annoyed with her job and unlocked one of Carol's hands and then the other. The nurse stepped back at the moment that Carol had her hands free like she might attack, but Carol simply allowed Alice to dress her in the gown she'd brought and to cuff her hands in the short cuffs before she moved to release and re-cuff her feet.
"You're not going anywhere without those babies, Mama," Alice said. "Except—downstairs. You see—they're already down there. They're waiting on us. They're real excited, too, to see you, Mama."
"No," Carol said pathetically. "No—I can't go down there. I can't go anywhere…I have to see them."
"You're going to see them downstairs, Mama," Alice said. "And we're going to go for a ride back to Woodbury and you're going to take them home, OK?"
"I haven't seen them," Carol pleaded.
"I have," Alice said. "And they're beautiful. A boy. And a girl. They're bigger than I thought they'd be. Healthy. Almost five pounds each and they're breathing on their own. So good. They're so strong. So much better than I expected. We're going straight home. They can go straight home with you. They don't even have to stay with me. You're going to see. But they're downstairs right now and they're waiting on you, so we have to go and get them. Can you help me?"
Carol was clearly pained in more ways than one, but she did help Alice get her into the wheelchair despite the fact that, when her feet hit the floor for a split second, she was obviously very shaky. Daryl couldn't help them, though, and it was clear that none of the guards or nearby hospital staff had any intention of helping them. It was all on Alice to get Carol into the wheelchair, and Daryl was grateful that Carol was cooperating even if it was clearly something she was struggling with physically and emotionally.
As soon as she was seated, Alice took her place to push Carol. She patted Carol's shoulder affectionately and Carol rubbed her face against the woman's hand.
"Please—you have to promise me—swear it," Carol said, "that my babies are there."
"They're there," Alice said without hesitation. She started to push and Daryl let them pass before he fell in shuffling behind them. The guards surrounded them in the hallway like they doubted that any of the three of them could be trusted. "They're the first twins that anybody's seen in a long, long time. They're already celebrities. That's what took them so long."
"I—can't—go—anywhere—without—them," Carol warned, each of her words coming out like it caught in her chest and had to be forced out with a coughing sob.
"They're there," Alice repeated. "So strong and beautiful. They're both perfect, Carol. So much more than I expected. When you see them, Carol, you're not going to be able to stand it. But—you have to let us get you in the ambulance, OK? We have to get in the ambulance and then you can have all the time you want with your babies."
"No!" Carol said. She put her foot down like she might try to stop the progress of the wheelchair and it caused some kind of problem. Maybe Alice even caught her foot with the chair. Daryl wasn't sure. Alice stopped and apologized, but Carol was hysterical and never mentioned her foot. "No! No! I won't go! I can't go without them! I won't!"
Alice shushed Carol and when the guards around them started to get more than a little visibly antsy, Alice put her hand firmly over Carol's mouth to muffle her protests. It didn't take much to know that Carol bit Alice, but Alice didn't protest beyond the look of surprise that flashed in her eyes. Daryl was sure that anything else—any other indication of the bite—and Carol might have suffered the consequences.
"I swear to you," Alice hissed, bending down close to Carol's ear, "that you will leave here with your babies. But you have to help me. You have to cooperate. If you don't? You will not leave here with them. Do you understand? You have to do this for them."
Carol's eyes were wide with that look that Daryl had seen earlier—the look, perhaps, that someone had once mistaken for the wildness which needed to be trained out of them. She slowly calmed, though, and she slowly sunk back into the chair. Alice kept her hand firmly over Carol's mouth and, when she moved it, Daryl didn't miss that she turned it quickly and wiped Carol's mouth. The trace of blood left on Carol's lips, at least, would look like Carol had bitten herself. The injured hand brushed against the dark colored scrubs that Alice was wearing and, if any guard realized it was a little blood and not just saliva that she brushed away, nobody said anything about it.
Carol accepted the trip they were taking and let Alice push her to the elevator. She stayed quiet, packed in the elevator with far more weapons than would be comfortable for anyone, on the way to the ground floor. She stoically accepted the journey through the hallways toward the back door where they had come in with the ambulance when it was time for their little ones to enter the world.
The back door was private, it seemed. It allowed them to move people or things in and out without moving them through the main parts of the front of the hospital. Daryl imagined that many of the people who came to the hospital would be uncomfortable seeing a dozen armed guards. Of course, ironically enough, they might even be made more uncomfortable by the presence of two theoretical Wilds.
From the back door, they passed through something that Daryl might have described as a parking deck or a loading bay or something of the like. Across the small expanse of concrete, where the sunlight was finally visible, he could see the ambulance waiting, doors open, to take them back to Woodbury. He could see the guards standing there, armed as well and wearing bullet proof vests like they were necessary, to ensure that the transfer went smoothly.
The most remarkable thing, perhaps, when they entered the concrete-walled space, was that it was filled with the absolutely frantic howl of newborns. It was a sound that Daryl had heard very few times in his life, but he still found the sound of newborns to be something unique. And these newborns were clearly protesting everything about their short existence. The sound of their cries bounced off the walls around them and echoed until Daryl's ears rang with the noise.
It was simultaneously the greatest sound he'd ever heard and one of the worst.
Carol started like she might come out of the chair and Alice reached a hand out, caught her shoulder, and pushed her back in the chair.
"Hands and feet inside the vehicle for the duration of the ride, Mama," Alice said.
"Is that them?" Carol asked.
"That's them," Alice assured her.
"Are they alright?" Carol asked.
Up ahead, now that they were getting closer, Daryl recognized that there was a plastic box on wheels beside one of the guards.
"They're fine," Alice said. "I imagine they're hungry. They were hungry when I left to get their Mommy, and that took a little longer than expected."
"I need to see them!" Carol declared.
"Just help me get you in the ambulance, Mama. Help us all get you in there—and they're all yours," Alice assured her.
Daryl could understand Carol's hesitancy. On the one hand, they both wanted to do everything they could to finally gain custody of the babies that they hadn't seen beyond a glance. On the other hand, the moment they were in the ambulance, they were at the mercy of those around them. There was no stopping them if they decided that they should leave and leave their infants behind.
When they put the gurney down, raised to the height that Carol could easily transfer herself from the chair to the gurney with a little assistance, and a man dressed as an orderly stepped over to help, Carol hesitated partway through her movement to trade locations.
"Alice—swear to me," she said.
"On my life," Alice said. "Let's go home."
Reluctantly, and probably because she really had no other choice, Carol made the transfer. The box was still somewhat distant from them and there was little they could make out from it, but Daryl saw that her eyes were locked on it as they loaded her into the ambulance. They helped Daryl in when she was secured, and he was allowed to take his seat beside her—because Alice didn't require that they be so thoroughly chained as the hospital staff preferred.
And then, just as his stomach began to knot up with the conviction that they'd been tricked, Alice crawled into the ambulance and a guard rolled the box over.
"You better get situated," Alice said. "Because we're hungry and we're angry about it, Mama."
The guard passed Alice one of the babies—all rolled up in a blanket like a burrito but screaming with everything it had in it—and Alice brought it over and gently placed it in the crook of Carol's arm.
"Blue blanket," Alice said. "This is your boy, Mama." She returned quickly to retrieve the other baby from the guard so that they could close the ambulance and begin to prepare things. "And this—is your little girl." She eased the second baby down in the crook of Carol's other arm.
Daryl wanted to jump in there. He wanted to hold the babies. He was anxious for that first sensation of being a father—that first sensation of holding a baby that was his blood.
But when he saw the way Carol's face looked—and he'd never fully understood the meaning of the word raptured until that moment—with one angry baby in one arm and one angry baby in the other, and when he heard her speak to them, begging them to calm down and apologizing to them for her absence, and when the simple sound of her voice slowly calmed the pathetic cries of the tiny, red-faced infants, Daryl realized that he could wait just a little longer.
There would be plenty of time, and this was important.
