A/N: I do not own The Walking Dead in any way, shape or form.

Chapter 5

Adrian, Shane, and Rick reached Carl at the same time. Carl lay unconscious on the leaf covered ground as the blood stain on his shirt got bigger by the second. "W-we have to stop the b-bleeding." Adrian stuttered, eyes wide in panic and disbelief. Rick and Shane were completely in shock, not seeming to have heard a word she said. They had to put pressure on the wound as quickly as possible.

Adrian quickly looked around for anything they could use to bind the would but found nothing of use to them. She was looking at Shane when his shirt caught her attention. Adrian looked down at her own, once white, sweat soaked tank top and quickly jerked it over her head. "Rick, I need you to take Carl's overshirt off." she said, slightly breathless from the panic.

Adrian pulled her knife from it's sheath on her thigh and quickly shot a look at Rick who hadn't moved to do as she said. Clearly he hadn't heard her.

"Rick!" she yelled at the man, still not moving.

"Son of a whore!" she yelled loudly.

"Shane, get Carl's shirt off, now! We have to put pressure on the wound, now." she yelled again, thankful that her yelling finally snapped one of the men out of their stupor.

Shane quickly worked on getting the young man's overshirt off as she quickly cut down the front of her shirt. Once she got it cut up she started to pull on the damp fabric, hoping to stretch it some. Adrian instructed Shane to prop Carl up so she could get the shirt underneath the bleeding boy.

Adrian knew that she should be a little worried about being in the middle of the woods in little more than a pair of jeans and a black athletic sports bra, but it was the absolute least of her worries when they had a bleeding and unconscious boy in front of them.

They heard trees rustling coming from the direction of the deer and all three adults instantly became alert. The sound seemed to have snapped Rick out of his shock because he had his glorified hand cannon out and aimed faster than she could blink. Shane had his shotgun up and aimed and Adrian had her bow raised and ready to fire, all pointing in the direction of the noise.

None of them expected to see an older, heavyset man holding a rifle to come out of the trees, but that exactly what now stood in front of them. The man was sweaty from the heat, eyes wide in panic, face pale in disbelief, and breathing heavily, though whether it was from the running or the panic was anyone's guess.

"Oh god. Oh my god. I didn't see him, I swear, I didn't. It was an accident. I swear to god I didn't see him." the stranger started to ramble. "Bring the boy. Bring the boy, I know someone who can help." the man panted, a small bit of hope shining on his face, but none of them moved. "Please, I swear on my life, I know someone who can help your boy. Please, come." the man started to beg when they still didn't move.

"Damn it all." Adrian mutter as she lowered her bow, quickly putting the arrow back in it's rack.

"Rick, grab Carl. We gotta go." she said as put the strap of her bow over her head and across her chest so she could keep her hands free.

"You can't be serious. This asshole jus shot Carl. We can't trust him." Shane said, not believing what he heard.

"It was an accident, Shane. He's as scared as we are and we don't have the luxury of time to argue right now. Every second we sit here is another second we're not getting help for Carl, which this man says he knows where to get it. If he knows someone who can help Carl then we need to get there, like yesterday." she said, pointing at the stranger.

Shane cursed under his breath, knowing that what she said made sense. Rick must have heard the conversation and agreed with Adrian's words because just as she finished speaking Rick was shoving his gun in his holster and quickly picking Carl up and walking towards the man. The man suddenly turned and started running in the direction they assumed was the way to help.

They didn't know how long they had been running, every one of them were exhausted, but none of them could afford to stop. The heavyset man had long since started to wheeze with every breath and stumbled every few feet, to which Shane had to keep dragging him to his feet and force him to keep going. Rick was gasping for every breath, long since exhausted from the combination of the heat and running with Carl's dead weight in his arms.

Adrian, however, felt completely useless. She couldn't offer to take Carl from Rick because she wouldn't make it far running with a boy Carl's size in her arms and she couldn't help Shane with the man because the stranger easily outweighed her by 100 lbs, at the very least. She couldn't do much so she decided to make sure that Rick's path was clear because they couldn't afford any trip ups.

TWD

Life at the Greene farm was quiet and routine. It was almost always quiet and hardy anything ever happened. Today was not one of those days. Maggie Greene was standing on the porch of her family's white, two-story farm house with a pair of binoculars, keeping her eyes on the fields for Otis, who had left some hours ago to go hunting in the woods surrounding their farm.

So imagine her surprise when she seen two figures, clearly not Otis, running through the field towards their house. Maggie lifted the binoculars to get a better look at the people.

It was a man and woman.

The thing that first caught her eyes was the man. He was running with the limp body of a boy in his arms, both him and the boy covered in blood.

The woman running beside him also had some blood on her with a bow strapped to her back but what surprised her the most was that the red headed woman wasn't wearing a shirt.

Whatever had happened to them had been bad. She quickly pulled the binoculars from her face and turned toward the house yelling "Dad!"

Adrian and Rick had just passed the fence when they seen people coming out of the large white farm house. Adrian had offered to take Carl halfway through the field but Rick firmly ignored her, solely focused on getting Carl to the house and to help.

"Hershel! We need Hershel!" Adrian screamed as they got closer to the house.

"Help us, please!" Rick yelled behind her.

"Was he bit?" asked an older man, clean shaven and white hair.

"Shot. By your man." Rick told him.

"Please, he told us to find Hershel." Adrian said to them.

"Bring him inside, quickly." the older man instructed. As soon as they walked through the door the man, Hershel, started to give out commands. Rick and Adrian were directed to a room right off of the living room and told to put Carl on the bed.

As soon as Rick got Carl on the bed he was pulled away from Carl so Hershel could get a look at Carl's would, demanding a pillowcase. Rick didn't seem to hear the demand, so Adrian quickly grabbed a pillow from the bed and quickly pulled the pillowcase off and then just threw the pillow in a random direction.

It quickly became crowded in the room as people came back with the supplies Hershel had demanded. Rick was instructed to move back so they could work on Carl. Adrian could see the toll that the shock was having on Rick, so she left where she was standing by the bed and walked around to him, grabbing his arm and gently pulling him back.

"What's your name?" Hershel asked among the chaos.

"Rick. His name is Rick." Adrian answered for him

"Rick. I'm...I'm Rick." he mumbled only half understanding what was being said.

Shane and the man, Otis, could finally be seen getting close to the house through the window. Rick stumbled out of the room and outside to meet up with Shane and Otis while Adrian stayed in the room with Carl.

"I take it it was your shirt tied around the boy's wound?" Hershel said, cutting her a quick glance.

"Yeah. There was nothing else and I knew we had to get pressure on the wound as fast as we could." she answered, her eyes never leaving Carl's pale body.

"That was smart thinking. It probably helped save the boy's life." he told her.

"Are you the boy's mother?" she heard Hershel ask after a minute.

"No. We're part of a larger group. A woman in our group, her daughter got separated from us and is lost in the woods somewhere. A large portion of us were in the woods looking for her today, but we spilt up a few miles from here." she told him, still looking at Carl.

"Why don't you get cleaned up. My daughter, Beth, can show you to the bathroom where you can wash up. She'll find you something to wear while you clean up." Hershel suggested.

Adrian nodded her consent, although she was pretty sure the shirt was more for his sense of modesty than for her's. A young blonde girl, probably in her late teens, walked up to Adrian with a kind smile and sympathetic blue eyes and showed her to a small bathroom a few rooms away from where Carl was being treated.

It wasn't until after Adrian had washed off all of the blood and put on the soft cotton tank top that Beth had given her that the adrenaline in her body started to fade, that her body had started to shake from the enormity of the situation.

TWD

Adrian was outside on the porch leaning against the railing a short while later. Rick, Shane, and Adrian had been kicked from the makeshift operation room with strict instructions to not enter. Rick and Shane sat on the couch in the living room while Adrian walked outside. Adrian was worried sick about Carl, so she could only imagine how Rick and Shane were felling. And the worst of it all was that Lori didn't even know that her son's life was in danger. She could hear the low voices of Shane and Rick through the screen door but not the words they were saying. It wasn't peaceful for long though.

Soon enough Maggie had flung the door open yelling at Rick that they needed blood. Adrian wasn't far behind Rick and Shane but it was chaos in the room when she walked in. Carl was on the bed screaming in pain as Hershel tried to dig one of the bullet fragments from the fresh bullet would, Maggie was trying to hang an IV bag onto a floor lamp, Shane was being forced to hold Carl down to keep his movements minimal while Hershel worked, and Rick was standing in front of an older blonde woman, she had been heard her called Patricia, holding onto Rick's arm, looking for a vein to stick.

Carl's screaming became too much for Rick, who screamed at Hershel to stop, while Shane yelled at Rick to let them do what they needed to give Carl the blood he desperately needed. The sudden silence was deafening. Shane became worried until Hershel told him that he had just passed out, which was a blessing for Carl. She could only imagine how painful it was to have someone digging around in a raw bullet wound.

Adrian left the room once Rick had been hooked up for the homemade blood transfusion, which only left Carl, Shane, and Hershel with Rick. Her nerves wouldn't allow her to sit still, so she paced the short length of the living room, which Otis and Maggie were sitting in. "How long have you known them?" she heard Otis ask softly.

Adrian looked over to see the poor man racked with guilt. She could tell that he was a kind and gentle soul. "I've known Carl for about two weeks, give or take. The others, less than a week." she told him. "Why were you out there?" Maggie asked her. "We were on the highway and hit that stretch of abandoned cars. We have an RV in our caravan and it broke down so we had to stop to fix it." she said, heaving a deep sigh.

"But, while we were there, a large herd of walkers, the zombies, came through, so we all had to hide under the cars. Carl wasn't the only child we had out there. She got chased into the woods by two walkers who were straggling behind. Me and Rick ran after her, but I was too far behind and she was gone from where Rick hid her when we got back there. One of our guys managed to follow her trail before we lost it and the light." she told them.

"We decided to follow the creek a few miles to see if we could find her and found a church a few miles from here. We heard church bells coming from there and hoped she might have heard them too, so we split up. Rick, Shane, Carl, and I stayed back to look around and sent the rest of them back to keep looking, as originally planned. We hadn't been out there looking long when the deer showed up." she continued.

Everyone was quiet for a few minutes before she walked back outside.

She was sitting on the porch swing a while later when she heard voices from inside and then everyone seemed to come outside, but what caught her attention was Shane carrying his shotgun while both him and Otis walked toward the old blue truck sitting out front. "What's going on?" Adrian asked, following behind Rick and Hershel a few steps. Rick stopped and turned to her, his pale face troubled, much as it had been since that bullet had struck his son.

"Carl needs surgery. Hershel says he can't move while he digs out the rest of the bullet and that Carl has internal bleeding. Hershel has to put him to sleep to keep him from moving or he could accidentally kill Carl. There's a place close by that Shane and Otis can get everything Hershel needs to possibly save Carl's life." Rick explained to her. Adrian's eyes widened in horror and raised a hand to her mouth.

"You're so pale Rick." she said after a moment.

Adrian thought about going with Shane and Otis to help until Hershel spoke.

"It's the blood transfusion. He gave a fair amount to help stable the boy, but unfortunately, he's gonna need more and Rick can only give so much safely." he told her.

That information stopped any thoughts of her leaving the farm.

"How helpful would it be if you had more blood?" she asked the old farmer.

"Extremely."

"Then let Rick give as much as he can and then us me. It doesn't matter the blood type, I'm a universal donor. So use Rick's blood as much as you safely can and the use me."

"That would be extremely helpful, especially since he's going to need more blood after the surgery and Rick can't give too much more." Hershel told her, thankful that they were so fortunate to have more blood to help the boy.

Adrian left the men to say their goodbyes to Shane and Otis before they left. Once they were driving down the dirt driveway everyone walked inside. Rick, Hershel, and Adrian went to check on Carl. Hershel checked his blood pressure, it was a little low but he was stable for the moment, which was all they could really ask for at the moment.

TWD

The hardest part of the next coming hours was the waiting. Rick had given his second transfusion and then he and Lori spoke to Hershel. Needless to say, they were both extremely shocked when they found out that the man performing the surgery on their son was a veterinarian. Adrian kept her distance for the most part, leaving Rick and Lori to hold vigil over their son. She would pop in from time to time to check on Carl and to bring Rick something to eat and drink and gave him strict orders to eat it or she would make him. He got weaker with every transfusion and needed every bit of strength he could get.

Adrian noticed the tension between the couple but said nothing, it wasn't her business.

Not long after dark, Glenn and T-Dog show up. Adrian greeted them both on the porch, where she had been sitting with Maggie. They had brought medicine for Carl, medicine that Daryl had given them. Then she was told that T-Dog's cut had gotten seriously infected and needed to be treated, which lead to Maggie inviting them inside, offering to make them something to eat.

The scariest part of the night was when Adrian heard her name being yelled from across the house. Adrian ran to the room where Carl lay, Hershel franticly checking over Carl, while Rick and Lori were clutching each other tightly, horrified looks on their faces. Adrian was told that they couldn't wait to use her blood any longer and sat her down while Hershel prepared the transfusion kit. They took the bare minimum of her blood, trying to save as much as possible for when the surgery had to be performed.

But they longer they waited, the worse Carl got.

He was still bleeding internally, which meant his body wasn't getting the blood where it was supposed to go. They waited until they couldn't possibly wait any longer. Adrian left the room, knowing she wouldn't be able to watch what had to happen next. Thankfully, neither did Rick or Lori because they all heard a truck speeding up the driveway.

The good news was, Shane was back just in time with all of the supplies that Hershel needed to safely perform the surgery.

The bad news was, Otis didn't make it back and no one could tell his wife until after the surgery.

Everyone but Glenn and Maggie were outside waiting to hear news of the surgery. None of them knew how long they had waited before they heard the screen door creek open. They all stood and looked at Hershel.

"He made it through." he told them, giving them a small smile.

Everyone sagged in relief at the news that Carl would live. Rick went inside with Hershel to tell Patricia about Otis, while Lori went to Carl. Adrian looked up to see Hershel looking at her. "Don't wonder too far. He's going to need more blood soon." he told her.

Adrian nodded that she understood.

About an hour later Adrian was called into Carl's room. Rick got up from the chair beside the bed so she could sit down while Hershel grabbed the transfusion kit. Carl wasn't in such dire need of blood since Hershel managed to stop the internal bleeding but they wanted to make sure that he got enough to help keep him stable.

TWD

Rick didn't know when he fell asleep. He looked down to see that Lori had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, her head resting on the bed as she held Carl's hand. He looked outside to see that is was still dark and he had no idea what time it was or how long he slept for. It was as that thought slowly crossed his mind that he understood what had woken him up.

He looked across the room to see Adrian sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed. She had the tube that was attached to the transfusion kit attached to her arm. She looked pale and tired in the light of the single lamp that was left on. Her eyes were closed as she leaned her head on her hand that was propped up on the arm of the chair. Someone could easily mistake her for being asleep, if she hadn't been humming softly in the quiet room.

"How long have I been asleep?" Rick whispered, startling Adrian from her peaceful humming.

"Don't know. I've been up and down the last few hours. Hershel stopped by not to long ago and said that he wanted to give Carl one last transfusion, just to be safe. He wanted to wake you but I told him he could take what he needed from me. He wasn't happy about taking so much, but I can be pretty stubborn when I want to be." she told him, smiling at him softly.

"Thank you. For everything you've done for him." Rick told her, eternally grateful for her being there.

"You don't have to thank me, Rick. You never have to thank me for watching out for him."

"No, I do. And I don't just mean for this. You saved my son back at the quarry. If it hadn't have been for you finding him in the woods that day, I could've lost my son before I ever found him again. And then you kept him safe before you brought him back to Lori. And Hershel told me that you probably helped save his life when you tied that shirt around his wound." he told her, meaning every word he spoke.

"I watched a lot of TV before." she teased, but Rick didn't smile at her joke.

"You being here to give Carl blood, it saved his life. And I can never repay you or thank you enough for that." he told her.

"But you did." she told him softly after minute of silence.

"When you offered to let me and Kale join the group. You saved us that day." she explained when she seen the unasked question in his face.

"Nah, you guys would've made it." he told her, not believing her words.

"We might've made it for a while, but just two people out on the road? Something would have gotten to us eventually. So, you see, you saved our lives that day when you asked us to stay." she told him, and he believed her that time. The look in her eyes telling him that she firmly believed every word she spoke.

"You should get some more rest. It's been a stressful day for everyone and we all need to rest." she told him, seeing the exhaustion in his eyes.

"What about you?"

"Hershel should be back soon to unhook me from this thing and then I'm gonna go throw myself on that couch out there." she told him, grinning when she talked about sleeping on the couch. Rick didn't say anything else as he got as comfortable as he could and closed his eyes.

He heard as Adrian started to hum softly again and quickly fell asleep.