"Milton?" Andrea coughed as she called out weakly from her tied up position in the dentist chair; blood bubbling out of her lips as she did so. The Governor had kicked her in the ribs several times, and it was getting harder to breathe evenly. She was bleeding from the many shallow cuts that he had scored across her lower belly; each one designed to bleed freely and inflict the most pain, rather than kill her outright.
"I'm here…" He whispered as he struggled to prop himself upright against the wall, he had one hand pressed firmly to his abdomen and with the other waved at the floor behind her. "When the tools dropped, I left some pliers on the floor behind you. If you can drag…" Milton gasped as the pain took his breath away for a moment and then tried to continue. "If you can drag your right foot back you can get them." He spoke the last few words in a rush, anxious that he might pass out before he could complete the sentence.
"I'm gonna get us both outta here, and you're gonna be okay. You're good man caught in a bad situation and you don't deserve to die in this hellhole." Andrea hissed in pain and then coughed again, spitting blood out onto the floor and she dragged her foot back.
"No, I don't think so. When you get free, you are going to find something very sharp and you are going to stab me in the head." Milton shook his head and whispered weakly. "That is what you are going to do. Keep trying."
Andrea felt rivulets of blood running down her stomach and pooling into the chair beneath her. The way that she had stretched out her foot had caused the shallow cuts to split a little further and they were now bleeding profusely. Added to which each breath she took felt like fire burning in her lungs and she could taste the blood at the back of her throat. She abandoned her search for the pliers and sank back against the chair, struggling to breath. She coughed harshly and felt the air rattling in her chest.
"Punctured lung." Milton whispered faintly… Andrea nodded in agreement, that's what she had thought too; she knew that she probably didn't have long but was determined to try and save Milton. "I'm going to try and come over to you." Milton wheezed and attempted to slide down onto his front so that he could crawl over to her.
"No! Stay where you are…you're gonna bleed out if you move too much. I'll be okay once I've got my breath back." Andrea wheezed back in return and coughed again and attempted to stretch out her foot, trying to feel for the pliers; only to sink back as the pain threatened to overwhelm her.
"Liar…" Milton opened one eye and could tell by the paleness of her face that she was struggling to remain conscious. "Why did you come back after you found out your friends were out there?" He wheezed out, trying to say anything to keep her awake.
"I wanted to save everyone. Even The Governor for a while. I had a chance to kill him."
"I stopped you."
"No, this was before. I thought I was pregnant and I was so mad at him for lying about not wanting to kill Rick and the others. He was asleep, I had a knife. But I tried to stop it all another way. Because I didn't want anyone to die."
"Were you pregnant?"
"No, false alarm thank god." Andrea attempted a chuckle but it turned into a coughing fit that had Milton worried that she'd suffocate. She finally finished and when she spat out a mouthful of phlegm, he could see that it was red rather than white.
"I'm still here. I'm still alive." His quiet affirmation gave her reassurance that her scheme wasn't entirely in vain, if one person made it out of Woodbury alive then others would surely follow.
"Yeah, you are." Andrea's voice was barely more than a breathy whisper and Milton knew that if he didn't do something soon, The Governor's little speech about 'kill and die, or die and kill' would some likely become a very harsh reality. He pushed himself onto all fours and nearly screamed aloud at the agony that seemed to radiate throughout his whole body. He nearly bit through his tongue to hold it all in as he attempted to crawl toward Andrea. After making headway of about five inches, he paused panting hard and fought against the blackness that threatened to take him under. He repeated his crawl, stop, crawl, stop motions until he was close enough to be able to reach out a hand to grasp the pliers. With the last of his strength he reached up and cut through the bindings holding Andrea's right hand to the chair; he felt the blackness overtake him and as he started to pitch forward he threw the pliers across, hoping they would land somewhere on the chair. He collapsed unconscious into the ever growing pool of mixed blood forming at the base of the chair.