AN: I must admit I'm equal parts nervous and excited about this chapter. I feel like it's either very good, or quite the opposite, lol. So I hope you all like it.

I also want to give a huge THANK YOU! to RoxChick. I wasn't sure what direction to take a certain medical procedure or whether I should even include it, after discussing it with her though, I knew exactly what to do! Thanks girl! :D

The afternoon sun beat down on him, making him sweat. The air was still and oppressively hot, so thick with heat and humidity he felt like he could reach out his hand and rip a chunk right out, take a bite. Not even a breeze was offered up to cool his skin or dry his hair, from which giant drops of perspiration dripped down to saturate his shoulders. The prison yard was eerily silent. No one was about, not even the walkers that had become a constant and grisly décor on the fences were present.

It was unnerving.

He studied the area with narrowed eyes and found nothing amiss. But something was off. It was too quiet. Where was everybody? Something must have happened. He was sure of it.

Daryl slipped his crossbow of his shoulder, raising it and crouching into a hunter's stance creeping forward with deft steps, even wearing his work boots, his footfalls made no sound. He slid the outer door leading to C block, opening it slowly, quietly. Peered inside with bated breath, feeling that any second now, the other shoe would drop. Found nothing but a dark and empty corridor. So he started down it, senses on high alert, heart thundering painfully in his chest.

When he reached the room preceding the cell block he glanced around the corner and found Beth standing at one of the tables pouring instant mashed potatoes into a big metal bowl. Lowering the crossbow, he let out a silent and relieved sigh feeling he should be reassured by her apparent tranquility, but was unable to let go of the niggling anxiety that kept clawing at the back of his mind. Something still felt horribly… off.

That's when he realized she wasn't really pouring it. Instead she kept squeezing it with a distinct tempo, about five seconds between each squeeze. Every time she'd put pressure on the box the dusty white flakes would spill out, and each time she stopped so would the flow of dehydrated potato. Talk about fucking weird.

But that wasn't even the strangest part.

Her hair was pulled back loosely, as it was nearly every day, that little braid pulled back with the rest, but the long strands flowing down her back looked almost… alive. The golden locks floated lazily around her face and shoulders, the way it would if she was underwater. It was surreal. The pain in his chest ratcheted up a notch as his heart rate increased in a tempo of its own. Definitely faster than five second intervals between the beats.

He must have made a noise or something because Beth looked up from the box. The box, Daryl noted with something akin to dread beginning to swirl deep within him, that never got larger but never seemed to empty. And the bowl beneath it, that never grew but never filled. She stood there, still squeezing out those damn potatoes, and regarded him with a gaze he couldn't quite decipher. Pity. Compassion. Concern. Maybe a mixture of all three.

"You shouldn't be here, Daryl." Beth told him almost defiantly. She never took her eyes off his, kept squeezing her stupid box of potatoes. As she stared across the room at him, the look set into her features melted into one of resolution, tears shone in her eyes, but didn't fall. "You need to go back. We can't lose you." Then she walked past him, heading outside, a broken trail of powdery flakes following her as she went.

Daryl stared at her retreating form, flabbergasted.

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

What the fuck just happened?

A cold chill ran down his spine, making him shiver. Daryl shook it off and continued on to C block. The first thing he saw was Carol. Then he saw what she was doing and that pain in his chest spiked again. He knew it was caused by his heart pounding from an inordinate amount of adrenaline assaulting his veins, but something about it, much like everything else around here, was just wrong.

Carol knelt on the floor in the middle of the room, her arms slick with blood up to the elbows. A single pristine white hand towel lay on the floor next to her right leg; on her other side was a pile of towels exactly like it, except they were drenched with red. One more was in her hands, and she used it to mop up a puddle of blood from the floor.

Daryl watched as she sopped up the blood, turning the puddle into nothing but a liquidy mess in need of a good scrubbing, and tossed the ruined thing onto the bloody mound beside her with a sickening slop! Then, when she reached over for that last towel one came away in her hands, but there was still one perfectly folded, snow-white towel lying there just as before. The bloodied patch on the floor welled back up into a puddle, right before their very eyes, and Carol went about cleaning it as though this were the most natural way for blood and floors and towels to behave.

Daryl was no pussy when it came to blood, or anything really, he had an iron stomach, in fact. He thought he might retch, all the same.

Carol looked up at him, still drying up the pool of blood, throwing soiled towels onto the ever growing pile and pulling endless new ones from the never depleting single cloth to mop a fresh batch of coppery liquid. He could see that same mixture of emotions Beth had shown him swirling in Carol's eyes.

"What are you doing here, Daryl?" She cried sounding appalled. "Go back. You have to go back!"

When he did nothing but gape at her, she threw a final dripping cloth on top of the others, wiped her brow with her forearm, smearing blood across her face. She stood and walked over to him. "You're a strong man, Daryl. The strongest I've ever known." She spoke in a confiding tone, tender even. "You can do it. Go back."

Then she left the room.

Without her there to stem the flow of blood oozing from the floor, it was growing. And growing. Becoming a river. Seeping past its original boundaries and toward him. Recoiling, Daryl hurried from the cell block, deeper into the bowels of the prison.

"A 'comatose state'?" Rick felt as though someone else said the words. Not him. Some other man, from some other life, was standing there looking down on a broken stranger draped in a light blanket, thick white bandages peeking out from beneath it. He wasn't here. He was somewhere far away. In a hospital bed, in his own coma, dreaming some fucked up dream filled with death and decay and heartbreak. With people near and dear and true and others fabricated, artificial, imagined.

Any minute now he'd finally wake up and Lori would be there, beautiful and unspoiled by the horrors concocted in his twisted mind. Carl would greet him with a smile and a face that still shone with the childlike innocence he'd been robbed of by the cruelties of this life. Shane would laugh and ask if he'd had a nice nap and wasn't he ready to get back to work?, as he gave him a brotherly pat on the shoulder.

But that was just a steaming pile of horseshit.

He closed his eyes, letting out an exhausted sigh.

The operation had taken hours. Nearly six, in fact. Rick was far from an expert, but from what he could tell there hadn't been much change in Daryl's condition. The plank of wood was no longer jutting out of him, a definite improvement. They'd given him a round of antibiotics (only two more doses left on hand, and god Rick hoped it'd be enough) and the blood had been cleaned up. But he was still ashen as ever. Still not breathing on his own. Beth continued to pump air into his lungs for him, only recently back at her post after Maggie had taken over for her somewhere around hour three.

Hershel hadn't been wrong when he'd told them Daryl's liver had probably taken damage; he'd ended up having to extract the injured section of the organ. He was clearly displeased that it was necessary, grumbling that Daryl was already weakened enough and it'd undoubtedly lengthen the recovery process, but assured them all once again that, with time, it would heal and regenerate. Nine splinters were removed from the wound, as well; some so large they could scarcely be categorized as such. And throughout it all, Daryl hadn't so much as twitched. Of course he didn't. Rick thought, the words 'comatose state' ringing harshly in his ears.

"I'm afraid so." Hershel replied gravely with a weary nod. "He could wake in as little as a few hours, or it could be days… or perhaps longer. I really have no way to know for certain. It could be caused by the head wound, or by the blood loss. It could be a combination of both, or it could be something else entirely. He needs a transfusion, but even if we had the necessary equipment, we don't know his blood type. Without a transfusion it's unlikely he'll last through the night."

Hershel paused, a look of deep sorrow filling his eyes. For a moment, Rick didn't think he'd ever seen the aged man look sadder. Not even when Shane had unleashed the walkers from the barn and the inevitable carnage that followed, or the night when the farm fell forcing them to flee and leave behind the home that had been in the farmer's family for generations. Rick watched as the pained look slipped from Hershel's eyes, his lips forming a grim line. "Carol, how many bags of saline do we have left?"

Carol crossed to the rolling table of medical supplies, rummaging through a cardboard box. "Fourteen." Came her muffled reply, her face still bent over the box as she continued moving around the contents.

"Good. Set up a second line and keep both running at all times. We can use it to help replace the blood he's lost. It won't be as effective as a transfusion and it'll take longer, but it just may be enough to turn the tables in his favor. With any luck it'll provide him enough strength to begin breathing on his own again. Hopefully, then, he'll come back to us."

Rick watched as Carol attached a second IV to the back of Daryl's right hand to match the one in his left, her movements deft and gentle. She and Daryl were very close, he knew. He could see the worry etched in her face just as well as he could see it on everyone else in the room, but not once, from the moment they arrived at the prison with Daryl bloodied and broken, to now, had she allowed her emotions to get the better of her. She simply took on each task that needed doing and did it. He couldn't help but admire her fortitude. The meek and oppressed woman he'd met back at the quarry was gone. She'd been reborn into a survivor. Mother to them all, friend, confidant. She was just… Carol. Thank god for Carol.

Hershel pushed himself up on his crutches and shuffled over to examine both IV lines and adjust the drip rates. Letting out a deep sigh, he looked to the others gathered around. "I've done all I can for him. It's up to him now."