A/N: Many thanks to my lovely reviewers! I am eternally grateful for your kind words. We're getting down to the wire now. With only three chapters left, this is the beginning of the end… drifting toward the grand finale…

Chapter Fifty-eight

"Baby, you're doing great. Just breathe." Rick tries to control his own racing heart as Erin collapses back onto the pillows stacked up behind her, panting heavily between contractions and trying to catch the breath he keeps insisting that she take.

"My God, it hurts," she whimpers, exhausted after nearly two hours of intense labor.

"I know, sweetheart." Kissing her dampened brow, he sucks in a soft hiss between his teeth, ignoring the painful sensation of the blood returning to his fingers after she loosens her death grip on his hand. Feeling utterly useless, he continues to tell her how wonderful she is doing and how much he loves her, but words can't take her pain away and he prays that it will soon be over.

The first few hours weren't too bad, with mild contractions coming roughly thirty minutes apart and lasting only about twenty seconds. But as the soft rays of the coming sun began to brighten the bedroom, things started to move quickly, and fiercely.

"Rick, please tell me again… what a miracle this baby is," she says weakly as a tear streams slowly down her cheek.

"This baby is a miracle." He wipes the moisture from her skin and fights to keep his own tears from falling. "Our love is so strong that against all odds we created this little girl. She's gonna have big curls of strawberry blonde hair and she's gonna be as beautiful as her mommy."

"And as smart as her daddy… with his bright blue eyes," she says, her voice faint with fatigue but warm with tenderness.

"Come on, Tori! Let's get this over with already!" A gruff voice calls from the hallway, where a socially awkward hunter with a very big heart continues his all-night vigil, wearing out the carpet as if he were the expectant father himself.

"And she's gonna give her Uncle Daryl a heart attack if she doesn't come out soon," Rick says with a chuckle against her temple. "God, I can't wait to see her again."

"Not as much as meeeee!" she grounds out the last syllable as another contraction grips her body.

With an arm around her shoulders, he helps Erin to sit up and lean forward. He can't help but hold his own breath and bear down with her as she crunches her upper body toward her sharply bent knees. "That's it, honey. You're doing great, Red." A screaming grunt of agony echoes off the walls and pierces his heart as she suffers through the powerful contraction. "Just think about our little girl. How incredible it will feel to hold her."

"Keep pushing, Erin, this one ought to do it!" Hershel's voice calls from the other end of the bed.

Five minutes later, Maggie lays the swaddled newborn into the cradle of Rick's arms. He can't take his eyes off the precious face of his beautiful daughter, weary and wondrous and pink and perfect. "Hello, darling," he says softly, feeling as if his whole entire body is one giant smile. She looks up at him with an expression of curiosity in her sleepy blue-eyed gaze and he places the softest of kisses to her tiny forehead. "I love you, Tori." Turning toward his wife, he can't stop the emotional waterfall that blurs his vision when he sees the tears of happiness streaming freely down Erin's cheeks. He leans down and presses a hard kiss to her mouth, a celebration full of joy and immense gratitude, along with a healthy dose of pride woven into the fabric of his incredible love for her. "I'm so proud of you, Red." With his cheek against her jaw, he coughs to clear the dam that clogs his throat. "So proud of both of you."

"I love you," she says in a tearful whisper.

"I love you back. Oh my God, always." He kisses her cheek and then leans back to lay Tori into her arms.

"Hi, peanut," Erin says tenderly and Rick chuckles at the nickname she had once given him grief about. "We did it, baby girl. Didn't we." She caresses the teeny dimple on her daughter's chin. "Rick, she's so beautiful. Our precious little Tori," she whispers weakly and he can see her struggling to stay awake.

Understandable after what she had just gone through, and with very little sleep the night before.

"Erin, see if she'll nurse now," Hershel says as Maggie moves about the room with a handful of soiled towels. "The suckling will help to deliver the placenta."

Rick tightens his hold on Erin's elbow to help position the baby at her breast.

"I'm so cold," she utters faintly as her head slowly dips to the side.

"Erin?" His heart falters as he feels her whole body go limp.

"Oh, no." Hershel's voice echoes from the foot of the bed, working between the pillows that are still supporting her knees. "Erin, stay with us!"

Caught in a maelstrom between the voice of the concerned doctor and the image of his unconscious wife, Rick's madly spinning brain latches onto his daughter and he pulls himself together long enough to lift Tori back into his arms. "Wh… what's happening? Erin!"

"Maggie, we need oxytocin!" Hershel yells frantically before steadying his voice to answer Rick. "She's hemorrhaging. Her uterus isn't strong enough to deliver the placenta."

"Oh my God." Rick's whole world seems to be balancing on the two hands reaching for Erin's still fairly swollen belly. "What do we do?" he asks, terrifyingly numb as his ears buzz with the pulse of a distant heartbeat.

"Otis!" Hershel yells as he presses his hands against Erin's abdomen. "Massaging it will hopefully help it to contract on its own. If not, I may need to go in and remove it manually. Otis! Somebody get-"

"I'm here!" Otis rushes into the bedroom with Patricia and Beth right behind him. "You need blood?" he asks, breathless as if he had just run up the flight of stairs.

"We may so get it ready just in case," Hershel replies, his face a pale mask of professionalism that tries to hide the panic in his eyes.

"Blood?" Rick watches Otis roll up his sleeve as Patricia pulls a syringe and a length of rubber tubing out of a large black medical bag, both moving with the same sense of urgency he'd seen many times in the emergency room at Northside Hospital. "She needs blood?" His voice sounds strange to his own ears.

"Yes. If I can't control the bleeding, she'll need a transfusion and Otis is a universal donor."

"So is Erin, so… so she can take any blood. Take mine." Rick straightens his right arm in a desperate offering.

"No, Rick," Hershel responds brusquely as he continues to massage the uterus from the outside. "O negative can give to anyone but they can only receive from another O neg. That's Otis," he quickly explains. "Beth, take the…"

In a daze of fearful anguish, Rick hears Hershel's voice speaking from an unfathomable distance as Beth takes Tori from his arms. A chair appears beside the bed and a strong dusty hand with severely bitten fingernails guides him down into it. He takes Erin's left hand as he watches Maggie's trembling fingers hang an IV bag on the corner post of the headboard across from him. Dropping his forehead to the hand held tightly in his own, he prays to God and to Jesus and all the saints that have forsaken him, "Please don't leave me, Red."

...

The sun strokes the horizon with the call of bluebirds singing on the breeze as Rick lies next to his wife in the room he hasn't left in two days. He listens to her steady breathing as he stares at her eyes, willing them to open, daring her to look at him with a wicked grin and tell him that it was all a joke. But she remains quiet still, shutting him out of the private world she'd slipped into after giving him her most precious gift two days ago. His sweet little Tori, fast asleep in her cradle a few feet away, is the picture of health, thank God, and sleeps for hours at a stretch. He looks at her often and wonders if she is visiting her mommy by a big willow tree.

With his left hand covering Erin's as it lays upon her stomach, he keeps shifting his fingers slightly, moving them just enough to gently scrape his wedding band against hers, a subconscious signal calling her home. A thin river of moisture threatens to stream from his nostrils and he inhales hard to hold it in. "Today's the day, Red. Hershel says you have to wa…wake up today." Without letting go of her hand, he lifts his wrist and lowers his chin to wipe the tears flowing down his cheeks. "So I need you to wake up now. I can't… I need you to… to come back to me. To us. Tori needs you and… and Carl needs you and … and Hershel says you…," he pauses again, sobbing through another hiccup. "He says you're running out of time." He squeezes her hand tightly in his trembling grip. "But I know you can hear me. I… I know you can. So lis… listen to me now, Red. Open your eyes." He tries to strengthen his words with the authority he has carried for years, but she doesn't respond and his grief gives way to a brief spark of anger. "God dammit, Erin, look at me!" he yells and then buries his face in her ribs. "Look at me," he cries, turning his cheek to lie upon her chest. "Look at me," he weeps softly as her heart beats faintly beneath his ear. "Please, baby. Come back to me."

When his tears are exhausted and his soul is spent, the rhythm of her heart carries him away on a dream of extraordinary love…

A warm breeze drifts into the window from the lake, floating over the nightstand and stirring the curled corner of a worn-out paperback copy of Jack London's 'The Call Of The Wild'. The setting sun glows rosy upon the russet blanket beneath him as Rick rises to his elbow next to Erin.

"Easy there, sheriff," she whispers faintly after he squeezes her hand tight.

He loosens his grip only slightly, still holding onto her hand as if he'll never let it go. She is pale and weak but she is awake, gazing back at him through sleepy eyes – the beautiful green eyes he'd feared he would never see again. "Sorry." He lifts her hand and brings it to his lips, trying to kiss away all the pain she's endured over the last few days. "Now you have to get up, Red. We have to go back now."

"I can't, honey," she says weakly. "You have to let me go."

"No. I won't." He shakes his head adamantly, refusing to give her up. "I can't."

"You have to, Rick." Her lashes flutter slowly, weighed down with the trauma of her ailing body. "You have to go back to Tori and Carl."

"We'll go back together." He swallows hard, fighting the heartache that is ripping him apart. "I'm not leaving you here."

"You don't have a choice, honey. But I will see you again. I promise."

"No. Don't do this, Erin," he begs, tears spilling down his cheeks as he watches her fight to keep her eyes open. "I can't do this without you."

"Trust me. I love you. It's going to be okay, Rick." She gives him a weary smile that shatters his soul. "I need to sleep now, honey. But it's time for you to wake up."

"Erin, I love you!"

"Wake up, Rick."

"Erin!"

"Wake up, honey."

"Erin!"

"I love you. Always," she whispers softly before she gently slips away.

"Erriiiiin!"

Rick opens his eyes with a deep gasping breath that seems to suck in all the air that fills the small room. Something is different about this air. It seems fresher somehow. Lighter. Cleaner. Sterilized. A strange beeping noise chirps behind him and he turns his head. Something moves against his cheek and he lifts his hand to brush it away. When he touches his face, confusion runs rampant when he feels a thin wiry tube stretching across both cheeks with two center prongs leading into his nostrils. He dislodges the tube and looks down at his chest to find more wires connecting him to a small box halfway up on a thin metal pole. Some type of monitor. A piece of medical equipment. Like in a hospital. His hazy brain is fighting furiously, trying to grab onto something that he feels he is supposed to understand. Something tangible. Something that makes sense. An answer to a cruel riddle that seems just out of reach. Lifting his hand again, he holds it in front of his face and notices more tubes sticking out of his wrist beneath a band of gauze and surgical tape. I'm in a hospital!

He turns toward a table to his right and sees a bouquet of flowers, cheering up the room with their vibrant pink and purple petals. Beside the colorful floral arrangement, a tall thin vase holds a single red rose with a swatch of blurry red material tied around the glass encased stem. He blinks hard and the material focuses into the paisley pattern of a bandanna. Erin? He remembers the light fading from her eyes as she slipped away and a thick knot of anguish closes his throat. Erin!

An old familiar voice echoes in the hallway and he turns his head toward the sound, his mind caught in a whirlwind of heartbreak and confusion. He sees a flurry of people walking past the opened door, going on about their business in the brightly lit hallway, as if no strange virus had annihilated the civilized world. He hears that voice again but he doesn't trust his hearing, because the flirtatious bravado echoing through the corridor belongs to a dead man. A moment later, his eyes become just as distrustful when they see Officer Shane Walsh walk into the room.

"Holy shit! Rick, you're back! You scared the hell out of us, man!"

"Shane?" Rick forces the word out of a severely dry throat, gazing in bewilderment at the joyful face of his old partner. But it can't be. You're dead. I buried you myself. You're not real. Unless… Oh, God. "Am I dead?" he asks, croaking low and painful.

"What? Hell no, brother, look at you!" he says, stepping into the bathroom and returning with a cup of water. "You need to shave something fierce but you are far from dead," he says, handing the cup to Rick. "How are you feeling? Hold on, buddy, let me get the nurse."

"Wait," Rick says after draining the small cup to soothe his throat while his head continues to spin. He looks at the monitor beeping behind him and a distant memory swims to the surface. "I was shot."

"Yeah. Messed you up pretty good. They had you in surgery for like six hours that day."

"Yesterday?"

"What? No, you've been in a coma for five weeks, brother."

Five weeks! "It was all a dream," he murmurs, more to himself than to Shane. My God, it felt so real. He glances beyond Shane to glimpse the sights and sounds of the nurse's station just outside his door. The world hasn't ended. It was just a fucking nightmare. What a nightmare! But it wasn't all bad. Erin didn't die! Relief sweeps through his veins for just a moment until his mind catches up with reality and another truth comes crashing in.

She was never with me.

As the memories of the dream come flooding back, his chest hurts and his eyes sting with devastating loss. Erin! He draws his knees up and turns to his side, pulling himself into a grief-stricken fetal position as he tries to fight the misery that is seeping into his soul. She was never mine. Then how can it hurt so damn much?

"Hang on, Rick," Shane says sounding suddenly concerned. "Let me get a nurse. Erin might even be on her way by now."

"Erin?" he breathes, holding onto her name like a lifeline to salvation.

"Yeah, you had your own personal body guard, my friend. Remember that hot redhead you were eyeing in the ER that day?"

Rick nods his head slowly. Always.

"She didn't even work on this floor but she was here every day, even on her days off. She'd sit with you for hours."

She's here. Thank you baby Jesus! Tears burn the back of his eyes as his chest tightens with profound relief. course she's here, she works here. But she isn't mine. She never was. It was just a dream. She doesn't know me. But she came to me! "Why?" he asks his friend.

"If you ask me, I think she was just lonely after breaking up with her boyfriend. Imagine that – she'd rather sit with a stiff like you than be with someone who could actually carry their own end of the conversation. But maybe that was the whole point. Maybe you were a better listener than the other guy."

Rick smiles through his tears as he pictures her sitting by his bed. He glances at the small armchair in the corner and his breath catches on the thin green and white lines of the plaid blanket folded neatly on the upholstery. Their blanket! How can that be?

"I'd walk in," Shane continues and Rick has to tear his eyes from the blanket to focus on his friend. "And she'd be talking to you about her problems and shit while playing chess with you, moving the pieces for both of you and arguing about the game." Shane shakes his head with a laugh and Rick can't help the grin that splits his face at the image. That's my girl.

"She's a piece of work, that one. You should've seen her when some strange virus came through here a few weeks back. Everyone was freaking out after a couple of people died and the hospital was nuts for a few days until they got it under control. She wasn't letting anybody in this room that week. The only nurses she'd let take care of you were Maggie and Beth. Even Doc Morgan ended up reporting to her instead of the other way around. He said he was afraid of her but I think he really just respected the hell out of her, you know what I mean?" Yes, Rick thinks, he most certainly did. "Doc gave her a hard time about bringing that bandanna in with the rose last week, but I think he was just busting her chops a little to keep the playing field level."

She brought the bandanna? Just like the one from the wedding I dreamt about. He tries to hold onto the meaning of that but he can't quite get his mind around it. "Is she okay?" he asks around an enormous lump in his throat, feeling as if he's lost her. But how can he have lost her if he never had her to begin with?

"Oh yeah, she's great. Really great actually. She never gave up on you. I had my doubts," Shane says, shaking his head slowly. "But every day she told me that you were gonna come back when you were ready. Man, you sure took your sweet-ass time getting back. Even Lori was worried about you," he adds with a smirk.

Oh God, Carl! He sits up with a grimace as a sharp pain stabs him in the ribs, blossoming to a dull ache that blooms through the lower left side of his chest.

"How's Carl?" he says quickly, worried about what he put his son through. "I must've scared him pretty bad."

"Easy, Rick. He's fine. He's good. Lori brought him by a bunch of times. He actually sat with Erin yesterday and she taught him how to play chess while me and Lori grabbed something to eat."

A stream of warmth washes through him as he imagines Carl and Erin playing a game together.

"Uh, Rick. There's something I gotta tell you about me and Lori."

"What, you finally got together?" he asks, settling back against the pillow.

"What do you mean 'finally'?"

"It's about time, Shane. I've seen it coming for a while now."

"Really? I didn't even see it coming myself until two weeks ago. I mean, I'd thought about it and all but I didn't know how she felt until we took Carl hiking and he got bit by a rattlesnake."

Rick sits up in alarm, hissing through his teeth at the pain gouging at his side. "What?!"

"He's fine, don't worry, I was more afraid that Lori was gonna die of a stroke the way she was carrying on. But we got him to the hospital in Lavonia and they got the antivenin in him real quick. He thinks he's all tough now that he survived a viper bite." Shane chuckles softly but it's too soon for Rick to find the humor in his son being bitten by a rattler.

Wait. A rattlesnake bite?The memory of another incident slithers at the back of his mind.

"But after that," Shane continues, "Me and Lori just…, I don't know, something changed with her. With us. I swear I never looked at her when you guys were together though. You gotta believe that."

"It's fine, Shane."

"You're sure you're okay with it?"

"Lori and I have been over for a long, long time. I'm happy for you guys. Honestly." A voice in the hallway catches his attention and he turns his gaze toward the door. Sweet baby Jesus.

"Don't worry, Mr. Dixon," the lovely voice says, a hint of Scottish willfulness in the tone he'd heard so many times in his dreams. "You'll be riding your motorcycle again before you know it."

"That's Erin." Shane nods his chin toward the door. "Boy, is she gonna be happy to see you."

Rick's heart trips over the wires hooking him up to the IV pole as he watches his partner walk out the door. His mouth goes dry when he hears Shane on the other side of the wall saying, "I want you to meet someone."

"He's awake?!"

Her voice is a salve to his soul, soothing the heart that is pounding furiously inside his chest. Rubbing his suddenly sweaty palms against the thin white blanket lying across his hips, he feels like a pimply-faced, hormone-raging teenager on the petrifying edge of being noticed by the queen of the prom.

A moment later, his queen literally stumbles into the room, tripping in her haste but catching herself on the end of his bed. She rights herself and stares at him with wonder in her eyes. "Rick?"

She's breathless and beautiful. "Hi," he says softly, quite breathless himself. He thinks he gives her a smile. It's hard to say; his face is numb.

"Sweet baby Jesus," she breathes as her eyes shimmer with tears. "Hi." She leans forward slightly and then straightens suddenly, as if stopping herself from

jumping into his arms. He watches her blink quickly and then brush the bangs from her eyes before meeting his gaze again, clearly buying some time to collect her composure.

She's as nervous as I am!

Her auburn waves are swept back into a long French braid leaving just a few tendrils willowing down the sides. He fights the urge to lift his hand and slip a silky strand behind her ear.

"I'm gonna go call Lori and Carl," Shane says from the doorway, and then Rick is vaguely aware of him saying something to a patient named Daryl in the next room.

He can't take his eyes from Erin as a light, sweet tension drifts warmly between them. No words are spoken but a lot seems to be said as they silently take in each other's presence. When a gruff voice complains to an unseen nurse next door, Rick shakes his head slightly and clears his throat. "Is that Daryl Dixon over there?" he asks, feeling like he's caught in a strange cyclone that keeps giving and taking his dearest friends. He swallows hard to ease the heaviness building in his chest.

Erin does her own little head clearing motion before replying. "Yeah, you know him?" she asks with a curiously leading look, as if she already knows the answer.

"Maybe," he says after a brief hesitation. "Is he okay?"

"He'll be fine as soon as his leg heals." Her eyes are full of the compassion he remembers so well. "His brother got the worst of it in the crash – Merle lost his hand. Now the governor of Georgia will have to go into the witness protection program when those guys get out. He's the one that ran them off the road."

"Erin?" A pretty black woman in burgundy nursing scrubs stands in the doorway, her long dreadlocked hair pulled back into a thick ponytail that hangs a good distance down her back.

Erin turns at the woman's voice. "Hey, Michonne."

"I see your friend finally woke up." Michonne smiles warmly. "Nice to meet you, officer."

Rick nods at the nurse, taking in the surreal vision of the dark woman dressed in scrubs that are identical to Erin's. The polyester top seems so foreign when his mind keeps showing him a figure in a brown leather vest. He tries not to stare. "Uh, yeah. You too."

The woman's eyes shine with genuine warmth. Such a different personality than the character his subconscious had created. He must have heard her name in his sleep and placed her in his dream. Just like Daryl and Merle and the others.

"Erin," Michonne says, her tone turning back to healthcare. "Sorry, but Carol Peletier is being discharged now and she wanted to see you before she left."

"Okay. Did you have any luck convincing her to leave her husband?"

"No," the dark nurse replies. "I'm hoping you can so I don't get arrested for slicing off one or two of his body parts the next time she comes in."

"I wish you would, but it's not worth it. You can't be president of your fencing club if you're in jail," Erin says.

Fencing? Huh. Maybe not so different after all.

"I'll be right back." Erin gives him an apologetic look and hurries to the door, then turns in the threshold as if an unbreakable thread is physically keeping her from stepping all the way through. "Um, don't go anywhere."

Not without you. He returns her shy smile and she walks away. Less than a minute later she rushes back in, more graceful than her first entrance but no less anxious to see him.

"So how are you feeling?" she asks as she moves to the side of the bed and lifts her wrist to look at her watch. When she puts a hand on his forearm, for just a moment, he would swear that time stood still. When the clocks tick again, she lets her fingers rest against his skin for a few extra seconds before she seems to remember the nursing protocol for a patient who has just woken from a coma. She moves her fingers to the pulse at his wrist and consults her watch to time the beats. She doesn't seem to be concentrating on her job though, looking back at his face with every other beat of his heart. He doubts she is going to get an accurate reading. He doesn't care.

Looking at her through a thin veil of confusion, he recalls – quite vividly – the incredible dream he'd just had. He stares at her for a single moment that stretches into many as a visage of images dance behind his eyes; weeks of warmth and worry and precious life and death that had brought them together and made them one. All the time they had spent together, everything they had experienced together; the heartache, the pain, the pleasure, the passion. Jesus. How the hell can he tell her about that! He says nothing at all, unable to do anything but stare at the woman who walked out of a dream.

"What's the matter, Rick? Are you okay?" she asks, sounding suddenly alarmed. "Oh God, I'm such an idiot! I should've gotten the doctor right away." She turns toward the door but he grabs onto her hand to keep her from leaving.

"I'm good. Really good," he repeats wistfully as he continues to gaze up at her. "It's just… I had the strangest dream."

She gives him an odd look; a fusion of slight bewilderment, utter relief and pure joy. "What was it about?" she asks, sounding strangely… hopeful.

How the hell can he explain that dream to her? Even a condensed version would be incredibly long and make him sound completely insane. "It's a long story," he finally says, somewhat dismissively.

"Oh." Her face falls and she looks down, clearly disappointed at his unintentional brush-off.

He tugs on her hand until she is forced to sit on the edge of the bed at his hip. It feels so incredibly good to be this close to her. She sweeps a finger through her bangs in a nervous gesture as his belly rumbles profoundly. "Can I tell you about it over dinner?"

She gives him a beautiful smile as moisture glistens in her eyes again. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot," she says, sniffling through a somewhat bashful expression that holds a tiny spark of something else. "And then I will tell you about mine."

Wait, what? Sweet baby Jesus.