Andrea fell backwards, yelping in pain as her body hit the ground and her chest became wet with red all over.
No, no, no, no, no...
Rick's heart sank and he fell on top of her, his fingers instantly ripping her shirt apart so he could assess the damage. It was the cop in him. Think first, feel later. It'd been so imprinted in him that he got to work immediately and let the grief take a back seat.
She moaned in pain and he shushed her with words that meant nothing but came out of him in a tangled mess. They only made sense in his head where it was, "It's okay, Andrea. Shh. Let me see, honey. It's okay," but he couldn't have known what he was saying out loud.
The wound lay right above her left breast and it was leaking red. He wiped at it, but another round flow of red came rushing out. He felt a wave of panic coming for him but he forced it back, knowing he couldn't afford to lose it. Andrea couldn't afford it.
So his mind went blank and first aid training took over. He remembered the classroom and the old the teacher. He went back there. Shane sat next to him, doodling obscene cartoons. Rick sat there, listening. He remembered those lectures now: left side - lungs, stomach, pancreas, heart, what else?
Still alive, though: not the heart.
Too high up: not the pancreas.
She wasn't spitting out blood.
Left lung. But still breathing easy. Not wheezing. Not her lung.
But the blood continued to pour out too fast. He pressed against it to stop the flow and she screamed in pain.
"It's okay," he kept telling her. He knew he probably needed to move her, take her back, but bullets continued to fly above them. If they stood up they'd both get shot. That couldn't happen. They weren't over.
But the seconds stretched into lifetimes and his body trembled, crushed by the helplessness and the desperation. A horrible mix, those two emotions. Wanting to do something and not being able to. Wanting to fix her but not knowing how and there were tears on her face he wanted gone, but there was nothing he could do. Nothing.
His bloody hand rested against her cheek. "Andrea, look at me."
She did and with so much pain, so scared, so desperate he couldn't fucking deal with it. "Rick," she begged him.
"It's okay," it was all he could say and fuck, it was just the worst thing he could say. Because it wasn't okay. But he knew how strong she was and begged her, with his eyes, to stay with him. She survived the end of the world, survived the CDC, and then survived the farm. She could get through this. He needed her to.
But her breathing began to shallow and her body began to shake. She had a chance, he knew that. The wound wasn't life threatening, not yet. But she'd never been shot and her mind made everything much worse. She started to panic and hyperventilate, her pulse quick, and that made the blood flow out faster.
"Andrea, stop," he ordered her harshly like he was ordering her to go on a scouting trip with Glenn or scolding her for making a mistake. "You have to relax. Take a deep breath. Deep breaths."
But she wasn't hearing him. She continued to breathe fast and her skin was shaking. She was having a panic attack and it was killing her. Finally, unable to take it any longer and seeing no other way, he pressed on the wound so hard that her body stilled and she passed out.
Rick thanked the heavens that she was unconscious, because her body then calmed and the blood loss slowed down considerably. But her skin was still pale and blood still pooled all around him. She was going to need a transfusion and he didn't know her blood type. Why didn't he know her blood type? He was the leader, he should've asked everyone's blood type right off the bat. It'd never occurred to him to ask them all but now it seemed so important, something they all should know about themselves.
Nothing he could do, though. Nothing but to press down on her wound and hopefully stop the bleeding. He wanted to do more, much more, but his body soon began to shake again at the reminder that they were in this new world and there was nothing he could do. He couldn't call 911, he couldn't drive her to the hospital, he couldn't take her to a doctor. They didn't even have a doctor, just an old veterinarian who knew more about cows than he knew about human anatomy.
Finally, silence engulfed him. No more bullets. No more shouting. No more of Andrea's cries. No more noise. For a moment he thought he'd died with her, but then he heard Daryl behind him.
"Think we got the last of them. Rick?"
Rick barely turned his head back. "Get Hershel."
"What? Why?" Daryl questioned him but as he took a few steps forward and swallowed the scene, he quickly turned around with a heavy mutter, "oh, shit."
Hershel had taken a part of the battle and in his late age, it'd taken all his energy. But he pushed on as he approached Rick, kneeling by Andrea and inspecting her wound. Rick pulled his hand back and he saw the injury then. A small bullet wound, but the skin surrounding it was quickly turning purple. So quickly that he could see the color of lilac spreading all across her chest like a blooming flower.
The minute the others became players in the scene he let go. He turned his back on the cop and became the man. The man who'd looked at her knowingly in that forgotten department store back in Atlanta. The man who had stood by her for close to a year now, had learned so much about her (yet still not enough). The minute the others took over he became the man who threw her secret glances and felt something in his chest every time she smiled.
Hershel barked some random orders that he couldn't hear because all he saw was purple and red and now he was just a man. And then he was on his feet, not knowing how, but not holding her anymore. Daryl held her instead, picked her up into his arms easily and quickly ran after Hershel. Rick struggled to keep up, and when he finally reached Hershel's room the old man already had her in his bed.
Before the turn her wound would've been meaningless. She would've been discharged from the hospital in less than 24 hours with a prescription for Vicodin.
It was different these days. They barely had any medical equipment. Hell, they had NO medical equipment. Just a knife and fire from a candle. Hershel got to work right away with what he had, dipping his knife into the fire to sterilize it and cutting away at her skin. No medical equipment meant no sedatives, no anesthesia, no medication, so when the hot knife dug deep into her skin, Andrea shrieked loudly, screaming in pain despite being unconscious. Rick reached her side and grabbed her hand, crooning comforts at her just as he'd done in the field. They didn't help. She continued to move and squirm under the fire of Hershel's knife.
"You need to hold her down," Hershel told him. He tried, he really did. But the pain was so intense that her body reacted on sheer instinct and she continued to squirm.
Daryl stepped in, too, pinning her other side and T-Dog had to step in to hold her legs down. The three of them barely made a difference; she kept crying and squirming away from the knife. Rick was in agony the whole time. He just closed his eyes as he held her down, hoping Hershel would finish quickly so her suffering could end.
Daryl felt the agony, too. So upset by Andrea's pain that he couldn't even look at the scene, just pressed his cheek to her shoulder and looked down at the mattress. "Come on, old man, just get it over with!"
Hershel tried to work as fast as he could, digging deep into her as she screamed, and finally finding the bullet. When he did, he grabbed it with his fingers because they'd only been living in this house two weeks and they didn't even have tweezers. The bullet landed on a plate with a clink and his hands quickly tried to repair the damage.
It hadn't pierced any organs, but its intrusion had resulted in the loss of a great amount of blood. Unfortunately, nobody knew Andrea's blood type, and even if they did they didn't have the equipment needed for a transfusion. So Hershel stitched her up and hoped her strength would see her through this.
As he washed his hands off the blood Rick approached him and Hershel felt the exhaustion immediately. He didn't wait for Rick to ask. He, like Daryl, knew certain things. "One inch lower and she wouldn't be here."
Rick sighed. But that sigh could never possibly express what he was feeling at the moment. Hershel saw, anyway, and Rick patted the old man's shoulder in appreciation. "Thanks, Hershel."
"I sent Glenn and Maggie back to town, see if they can find anything that might help," Hershel said and Rick nodded a thank you. He'd been so distracted by Andrea that it hadn't even occurred to him to send a team out. Thankfully Daryl and Hershel were there as backups, because there was no way he had the mental, physical, or emotional energy to be a leader at that moment.
"I know that one," Hershel added with a nod that evinced the knowledge that came with old age. "She's gonna wanna get up. Don't let her move. Wounds are easy enough to heal. Infections are not. If she gets that wound infected that's it for her."
Rick nodded. He would chain her down to the bed if he had to. "Got it."
"Come get me if something happens," Hershel said.
"Yeah, sure," Rick said on autopilot. "Goodnight."
There was nowhere else to go. Being away from her wasn't an option. He walked into the darkened room that Hershel had vacated to spend the night at Maggie's because no one wanted to move Andrea. His body landed on a chair next to the bed and he sighed heavily. He rested his hand under his chin and the stench of iron overwhelmed him and nearly made him heave.
It was only then that he realized his hands were still covered in her blood and the sight made him nauseous. He rushed to the bathroom and washed his hands, watching that red drip down the drain. There was blood on his face, too, on his neck, all over his shirt. He got rid of it immediately, leaving it in the trash, knowing there was no way he would be able to wear it again without remembering what happened that day. He found one of Glenn's clean ones, slipped it on, and went back in there to sit on that chair that had his name written all over it.
She still slept, her mouth only partly open. Her skin was pale and the dark circles under her eyes were huge. Rick swallowed hard, trying not to think of the worst. Andrea was always so full of life, full of energy and fire. Her thirst for being was so infectious that every time he was around her it wrapped him up and he felt such an overwhelming lust for life. She always did that; she always made him want to live. And now, seeing her there, looking so dead...
He lurched forward to grab her hand. It was warm and he felt a pang of fear. If she got a fever, that meant infection, and infection meant death for sure. Andrea couldn't die, though. Well, Andrea could die. They could all die. They would all die eventually. He wasn't scared because she could die. He was a wreck because he couldn't lose her. She was free to leave this Earth and go off somewhere to rest in peace. But she couldn't leave him like this, when so many unspoken words and touches of affection had been denied by his stupid conscience.
Rick didn't believe in God, not anymore. But as he sat there, he prayed. He didn't deserve God's mercy should the man be up there, but he asked for it, anyway. He asked for a second chance.
TBC
