Waking up is not supposed to hurt.
Not unless you take a three hour nap on the couch and regret every moment after that. Then in that case, waking up would most certainly hurt. It's usually metaphorical, a languish exhaustion that makes you feel like there's not enough water in the world to drink and no amount of food to fill that unmistakable void that follows. You kind of wait it out and go about your day with that nagging feeling until bedtime.
However, waking up in the middle of the road with the morning sun cooking your face, and a sharp white hot blade piercing the center of your chest, is painful in an entirely literal way. Not only is Don completely convinced he's got a third degree sunburn on his already aching face, he's also convinced that there is no way in hell he actually survived getting shot at point blank, considering it was aimed right at his fucking heart.
He writhes against the cold and unforgiving slab of concrete that had been supporting his unconscious frame, along with his ass, shoulders, spine, neck, and skull all throbbing with discomfort, moving his torso at all opens a whole new can of agony. It's the kind of pain that stuns a person out of any kind of response that doesn't sound like a tiny shrieking insect.
Oh yeah, he was shot alright. He's just trying to figure out why he didn't bleed out immediately after hitting the ground because he certainly passed out from how unbelievably painful it had been, like getting sucker punched right in the bronchial tubes by a freight train.
Don cranes his head up to see the entry wound; trying his darndest not to move anything else in the process. He sees a dime sized hole sitting about an inch or so off center between his pectorals, blood staining the fabric of the jumpsuit a few inches around, but frayed black, burnt. A careful hand reaches up and gently dabs the wound. The frayed ends of the jumpsuit are crisp to the touch, it's tingling with the reboot of a harsh burn that he's sure is going to hurt like a bitch the minute he decides to get vertical, oh yeah, point blank and everything that follows, including instant cauterization.
The leader of the group that attacked them, whoever he was, probably insecure about the amount of leather everyone was wearing when Don insulted him, had jabbed him pretty good with the end of his rile before firing. Like he assumed that by doing so, the insistence of his shot would somehow hurt Don more than a normal gunshot wound. In the laughable reality, the bastard only really ensured Don's survival. He could have easily bled out even if the bullet didn't destroy something important.
Assuming the bullet isn't still lodged in his chest, there ought to be a gaping exit wound sitting where his spine should still be. Making sure he could actually move his entire body wasn't something the shock has allowed him to find out just yet. Don lays his head back down; well he can move his arms and feel pain, so that's good. However, the pain is centralized at his chest where the bullet hit, there's no pain or swelling to indicate an exit wound of any kind.
He swallows heavily, his entire mouth coated from front to back with the metallic taste of blood, most likely seeped in by the aching gash across his lower lip and chin; he can feel the itching of dried blood flaking on his jaw and neck. His guess, the bullet is stuck somewhere in his sternum or ribs.
Don carefully reaches up and dabs at the wound once more, this time pressing against something that at first he guessed was bone, right up until he taps the end with his fingernail to indicate something metal and foreign, non organic to the touch. His conclusion, the bullet is most definitely lodged firmly in his sternum.
His hypothesis, weapons from pre-war are the only weapons that were at the peak of their condition, in this day and age, the quality of such must have deteriorated, leaving weapon impact and effectiveness something to be desired. Had Don been shot with a pre-war assault rifle, it would have shattered the bone on impact and left him with a gaping wound to breathe through. Since he'd been shot with whatever that guy had shot him with, the bullet not only wasn't travelling at the right speed to do the job, most likely due to a maintenance or bullet quality issue, it had come very close to almost literally bouncing off his chest.
Don starts to laugh, but immediately regrets it when his entire chest erupts with scolding white hot pain, his chortle ends in a sharp gasp. New conclusion, the bullet is lodged firmly in his sternum and now all the bone within the radius of impact is now either fractured or broken.
So the bullet didn't kill him, but having his heart or lung punctured by a shard of bone definitely would. He may be in a fair bit of trouble if he can't find something to set and pressurize his ribcage. A length of material wrapped diagonally around either side would work until he could find a doctor. If doctors were even still a thing in this post-apocalyptic hellhole, right now, he could really use a Stimpack, or some Med-X, or... oh.
Oh shit.
Somewhere in his mind, waking up from being shot had, understandably, taken the forefront of his concern. However, while assessing his condition, again understandably important, he'd forgotten the entire reason he'd gotten shot in the first place.
Carolyn.
"F-fuck me," Don gasps aloud as he practically leaps to his feet, forgetting the concern of his ribs killing in with a wrong twist, as he stumbles, half running, towards the yellow house she'd taken refuge in. He makes it to the door before the pain of only breathing is too much to handle and he has to stop. He presses a hand to the door frame and listens through the pounding in his ears, his head pulsing with a headache almost comparable to his ribs. He presses a hand to his chest in an attempt to quell the pain.
"Carolyn!" He calls out desperately, his voice choking and hoarse, "Uh, guess what, I've been shot! So, if you're in here, now would be a really good time to come out and give me a hand!"
Silence...
"Ooh-kay..." He exhales unsteadily and takes a few steps in, immediately noticing the half assed barrier Carolyn must have thrown together in her panic, what looks like Garbage Mountain from where he stands, just a table with piles of mouldy cardboard boxes with a recliner stuffed underneath. He wishes he could take a picture of it if only to preserve how pathetic it looks, he'd probably end up using the picture for cannon fodder. Honestly, he can't give her too much flack for it; it's probably the first time she's had to hide from angry leather clad hooligans.
Quickly he shoves the boxes aside, sending the pile to the ground with deflated impact, unloading the half dry paper contents across the already filthy floor. He leans over the table to look into the kitchen, all he can see immediately is the large fridge and stove as they sit apart and untouched, groaning uneasily as the wind shifts the house around him. She's not here.
At the foot of the table, torn and hooked on the wall next to the base of the recliner, Don spots what looks like the same coat as the one Carolyn had been using last night. He leans over and pulls it off from the nail it had caught on, tearing the sleeve further, and immediately he notices the weight of full pockets. He quickly rummages through it, on one side is an orange Holotape taped and written on, and the other, a fully loaded and unused 10mm pistol with the safety still on.
He's suddenly filled with dread; she wouldn't have left this behind unless she was desperate to escape. Which means she's out here somewhere without protection, without anything but her Vault Suit, and he can assume that it would make her stand out like a sore thumb, it doesn't exactly scream 'nothing to see here folks!' Anyone with a good vantage point could spot her a mile away.
He turns to where he'd left the makeshift campsite, only to see that it's been totally ransacked, they didn't even bother to make his damn bed afterward. In fact, all that was left was the satchel bag he'd made last night out of an old pair of pants; literally, he'd found slacks and put them off just above the knee, knotted the remaining ends, and used a belt to close the top up. After filling it with odds and ends, a little food, ammo, and water, it had looked like he was carrying a bloated pair of shorts.
And of course they looted that too, of everything but a few damn bobby pins, and after combing through the house ruins, he literally has nothing left to defend himself but is own damned fists. And considering one wrong twist could shove a rib into something important, he elects that hand to hand combat may not be optimal.
So maybe Carolyn leaving the pistol behind wasn't a terrible thing, if he were looking for any kind of silver lining.
Don stuffs his findings into his pair-of-pants scavenge bag and takes off in a rush to the other side of the street, slow enough to avoid any more unnecessary pain. If she was hiding out in the area, the bare foundations of what used to be her house would be his best guess. She would go somewhere familiar and therefore, safe.
"Carolyn!" He calls out, standing the open doorway of the home waiting to hear anything but the unnatural groan of old metal, but to no avail. God these houses are nightmare fuel, and Don isn't sure he likes the idea of being alone in this suburban graveyard that would be indisputably haunted.
Don skims over each room, making sure she's not hiding away and is only too afraid to answer him, but it's empty. Though he does find that the general sense of unease grows the longer he's in the house, it's not just the damage and tattered furniture making the oxygen heavy and noxious. It's all of the residual energy of what used to be their home. Both hers and Nate's, before his enlistment, and particularly after, Don can recognize it only because his own house had the same suffocating air when he returned home to Nora.
Every noise triggered an alarm, any sound that he couldn't immediately explain would warrant investigation, he avoided walking on the lawn, always kept his back to the wall at the dinner table, he would eye people as they walked by the window, he even sniffed his food before taking the first bite. All these paranoid habits that followed him home dominated the first few weeks. It was somewhere within those last few months that Don realized that being home meant that the danger was gone, and he started to get better. The smog began to dissipate.
Though, he would still jump six inches off his chair when the toast popped out of the toaster... but in Carolyn's house, it's like the energy never thinned.
Don quickly shakes himself and hastily continues his search, making his way up to the Cul-de-sac and through the houses that weren't reduced to a pile of rubble. In every house he'd scavenged from, there were no signs of new barricades or that Carolyn had been there at some point. Not anything but a few muddy boot prints tracked into the rooms that lead only back outside, bigger than Don's feet, and likely belonging to any one of those ruffians. They searched the houses, albeit without much care, but there wasn't a lot of room to hide. If she took refuge in any of them, it wouldn't have been for long. It looks like they even went so far as to take the bodies of the three men that Don was able to drop. Only the dried bloody smears of where they fell remained. Too bad, Don might have been able to use whatever they had on them.
After making it down to the bridge, searching the last isolated house on the end, Don stares out passed the shallow river to the tree's at the bank, the roots overgrowing through the stone lining and collapsing most of what used to hold the soil back when the river rose in the spring. Don considers his limited options, though he knows the closest town is Concord and that's most likely where she would go next, it's the same direction the initial attack came from. He can assume the Raiders went through Concord from wherever they came from initially. He could track them as far as that if they ended up grabbing her after all, though there were too many places they could go from there. Including whatever is left of the entirety of Boston.
North and West are all woodlands for miles, so he can count those out. Carolyn wouldn't run off into the woods without supplies, at least Don really, really, hopes she wouldn't. Though, in terms of general panic, she might have, if even just to hide. He wants to assume she would go somewhere that provides immediate shelter; she was afraid after all, not stupid.
He'll scout out the gas station first; see if there's anything worth looting, he could use some basic first aid and something to drink along with whatever he can find for self defence. He'll need more than just a 10mm with a full clip if he has to take on any more of those bandits.
Before setting out on what could very possibly be a suicide mission, Don back tracks up the hill to the motionless body of the Mr. Handy Bot they shot down, Codsworth is what Carolyn called him. He can recall the Robertson house being the talk of the neighbourhood, the first in their location to have one; they'd won him in some kind of contest and didn't have to pay for it. Don remembers begging Nora to convince them to let him have a look at the bot, he missed working with the Mr. Gutsy's while on the field and he was really itching to get his hands on another.
He bends over to inspect the damage, it looks like the bandits had completely glossed over even taking any of the scrap, though the husk of metal itself is very well and done and would probably be only good for recreational disposal. He peels back some of the metal plating loosened by the kill shot and locates the hard drive tucked down near the base. The three inch black box comes loose with a snap and he inspects it to find that it's still in pretty good condition. With this, he can hope to implant the memories and personality matrix into another machine, maybe even something a little deadlier like a Securitron. In any case, the Bot didn't deserve to go out like that and Don has the know how to bring him back from robo-purgatory.
He smiles forlornly at the Mr. Handy corpse and pats the top of it's shattered globe, "I gotcha, buddy."
Don stuffs the drive into his satchel, checks the condition and the ammo count of his pistol, and takes a single grounding breath with his hand pressed firmly to his chest to limit his rib expansion. He shouldn't be fighting, or even walking around like this. His family doctor would shit his pants if he knew.
When he turns on heel to start his trek to what he assumes is a still standing gas station, a large furry animal sits in his immediate path, startling out of him a loud and undignified GUH! As he flinches back and almost trips on one of Codsworth's limp armatures.
The animal, a German Sheppard, only cocks its head up at Don curiously, watching him with studying brown eyes as the man regains his composure. Don's pretty sure that if his finger was on the trigger at that very moment, he would have absolutely shot the poor thing down due to reflex.
"Holy shit-" Don gasps, the ache in his chest flaring in response as he braces a hand on his knee to exhale, "-DOG."
The dog whimpers a little, and Don notices it's holding something angular in its mouth, which it promptly drops to its muddy paws as a kind of offering. He immediately recognizes the white and purple syringe of a full Med-X dose. Only slightly covered in dog drool and dirt, but he takes it as a sign from God that good things still exist in the apocalypse.
He practically drops to his knees in relief, taking the Med-X and wiping it off in the bend of his elbow. He can't assume that it's anywhere near sanitized enough to actually use without the risk of infection, but he'll risk it for a pain killer. He thinks for a moment to perhaps save it when he's in a secure environment, giving himself a chance to properly asses his wound other than poking at it with guesswork, that and he's sure too much will make him too high to do combat. At least being in pain keeps him grounded.
"You're a good dog, yes you are," Don coos at the Sheppard, fluffing up the fur around his neck with his scratches, "bringing a stranger pain medicine, good boy."
When Don opens his satchel to put the Med-X away, the dog immediately dives forward and stuffs entire muzzle into the bag, "Hey, no, no, bad poochie!" Don tries to push him away, "There's nothing in there for you!"
The dog grabs and yanks out the musty old coat Don had stuffed away, bringing with it, the rest of his scant inventory which scatters on the ground at his knees. Don kind sits back on his feet in total judgement, unimpressed at the animal's behaviour, watching as he drags the coat back and begins to paw at it. It appears that he's trying to spread it out, laying it flat against the ground, and sniffing at it rapidly, pausing at the arm crooks and collar to inhale deeply, and then starts sniffing at the ground in the direction of the yellow house.
Don, watching the dog apprehensively, slowly stuffs everything back into the satchel. He's not entirely sure why the dog went for the jacket, or even why it brought him drugs, but he has a sneaking suspicion that he belongs to someone, maybe someone with intentions he's not sure he wants to know.
When the pooch continues forward and disappears around the side of the yellow house, Don elects to follow for curiosities sake, with the safety off of course.
Around the side of the building, Don pushes through the overgrown foliage into a partially fenced backyard, though the picket fences have been totally strangled by lush vines, only recognisable by the flecks of white paint and semi-angular forms they managed to keep. Any free standing bits lay scattered across the ground, probably knocked over by the initial blast of the bomb, or simply from the elements.
He spots the dog sniffing at the ground near the end of the hedges growing in every direction like bracken claws. He's pawing through the grass and ferns to grab at something with his mouth, something glass that reflects the sunlight and flashes Don in the eyes for a second.
When he trots back over with his discovery, he drops it at Don's feet with an anxious whimper, what looks like a pair of glasses.
Don leans over and picks them up, there's an arm missing on the left side and one of the lenses is cracked like a spider web. The frame is also bent inwards at the nose and the ends are caked in dirt like someone heel stomped them into the mud.
For a moment he's lost to the significance of a pair of broken glasses, until he remembers that Carolyn had found a pair down in the Vault to wear, an old pair a lot like this one.
Anxiously, he marches up to where the dog found them and recognizes the patters of a violent struggle. Ripped and torn grass grinded into mush, ferns smeared into the mud, a boot print larger than Don's forearm similar to the size he'd found in some of the houses, and what he hopes to god isn't blood smudged on the broken picket fence piece jutting outwards next to the disturbed hedge.
Don reaches out to touch the end of the fence where it looks like something muddy had been caught on the sharpest end. He grips and pulls off a strip of stained bright blue fabric. What he recognises as the same fabric of his Vault suit, only what he thought at first as being mud is actually blood that had soaked in and was dried by the sun.
He was wrong in assuming that she escaped; those bastards snatched her up while she was trying to get away, most likely after he'd been shot and she found herself alone and vulnerable. Don's hands ball into white knuckled fists, he should have cooperated with them, struck some kind of deal, tried to ensure that neither of them were killed, even if that meant giving in to post-war gang bangers. At least then Don could have done something more productive than get left for dead.
But no, he's been a wise ass his entire life and God help him if he didn't always get in the last word. His drill sergeant had an ulcer for every word Don ever said while in training, but it was always Don that faced the consequences of his actions, not like now, where it was his fault his wife's best friend was kidnapped.
At his side, the dog nuzzles at Don's hand, pushing his face between his arm and leg to get his attention. Don pats his head gently, and then turns to kneel down at face level with the pup. He holds out the bit of fabric to his muzzle, "Hey boy, I need your help to find my friend. Can you track her?"
The dog sniffs at the fabric, and then sniffs the air; he cocks his head in the direction of the Sanctuary Bridge and then barks at him affirmatively.
"Good boy," Don praises, "Though, let's try to stay away from the center of the hornets' nest, okay?"
The dog merely cocks his head and whines in confusion.