Harrison Memorial Hospital is a drab four-story building with stained, pale-colored bricks, built at the bottom of a small hill. Negan parks in the half-full lot and follows Carl's texted directions to Rick's room in the ICU.
The smell of the hospital, of disinfectant and death, goes right to Negan's stomach and torments his gag reflex. Memories he'd rather forget flash in his mind's eye, and if this whole thing with Rick is just some fucked-up Groundhog Day repetition of the worst months of his life, Negan will throw up and cry and burn this whole fucking place down.
Inside the room are Carl, Judith, Carol, and Rick's deputy, who Negan remembers from his night in the drunk tank. What was his name? Steve? Shawn?
"What the hell are you doing here?" the deputy asks as Carol rushes toward Negan and wraps him in a hug of the grieving.
Negan's a little startled by her affection, but he accepts it. He risks a glance at Rick's immobile form lying in that hospital bed. His body is colonized by wires and tubes, only the beeps of the machines signifying that he's alive. Dread sinks in Negan's gut, and he holds Carol a little tighter.
"Excuse me?" Deputy Dickhead steps closer.
"Oh, put it away, Shane," Carol snaps, disentangling from the embrace. "Negan is important to Rick. He has every right to be here."
Shane scowls like this particular information distresses him. Negan notices the flecks of blood on Shane's deputy uniform. Rick's blood, he thinks in horror.
"You were at the scene?" Negan asks him.
Shane rubs his head, nods somberly. "Yeah, it was—it was bad. He lost a lot of blood. Carl donated some to get him goin'."
Good on you, kid, Negan thinks. Carl's sitting numbly by the window, holding Judith in his arms as he stares out at the dark parking lot.
Negan looks at Rick again, at the IV line descending into his arm, at the electrodes on his chest feeding signals to the heart monitor. "What the fuck happened?"
"Some prick shot him. It was just s'posed to be a traffic stop. But it turns out the guy had an outstanding warrant for robbing a liquor store in Atlanta and shooting the on-duty clerk."
An outstanding warrant. Like the guy did a great job of being a criminal. Are there levels, Negan wonders. A fantastic or splendid warrant? A needs improvement warrant?
He's blocking, distracting himself with inanities to get through this.
Another glance at Rick. Negan can't stop. "What's the prognosis?" he asks, like he's a character in a fucking soap opera.
"They don't know when he'll wake up. Or if..."
Jesus.
"The guy who shot him..." Negan starts. "Is he..."
Shane sees where he's going with that. "I took care of him."
Negan nods, panic snaking into his chest. He tries not to think about the fact that, despite being in the same room with him, he may never actually see Rick again.
No. Don't go there.
He heads over to where Carl's sitting with Judith and sits in the empty space on the couch near the bed. Carl looks like he's been punched in the gut and doesn't know why. Judith is falling asleep in his arms, her eyes occasionally blinking open when she hears a voice.
"You came," Carl says, detached, as though he hadn't expected Negan to show up.
Negan almost cracks a joke like 'I always come for your dad,' because if he can't banter, quip, or insult his way through this like he does with every other watershed event he's going to lose his goddamn mind, but he holds it back and says, "Yeah, of course."
"What do you want to do about the kids?" Carol asks Negan. "I can watch Judith during the day, and I can pick up Carl from school when I get Sophia."
Negan shakes his head. "Just watch Judith while I'm at work. Everything else is on me."
Shane seems to take issue with this. "What? Why you?"
Carol shoots Shane a look that momentarily shuts him up.
"If you're so important to Rick, how come he's never mentioned you before?" Shane asks.
Negan is angry and devastated and so not in the mood to wait for the slow fucking horse to cross the finish line. "Why don't you think about it for five fucking seconds, genius."
Shane does, and his expression shifts into horror, his eyes wide with realization. "You're Lucifer?"
"Oh, so Rick did mention me," Negan says with a grin, leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees.
Shane shakes his head in disbelief. "No, no, this is bullshit. Rick isn't—"
"Careful how you finish that sentence, Shane," Negan warns.
Shane rubs his head again—seriously, what's with that?—and moves for the door. "I gotta get some air."
"There's air in here," Negan says, but Shane's gone before he can reply. Negan cocks an eyebrow at Carl. "Somebody's jealous," he sing-songs.
Carl scoffs and rolls his eyes.
"C'mon, kid, I'm just—I gotta make jokes or else I'll lose my mind. Cut me some slack." Negan scrubs a hand through his hair; Shane's stupid head-rubbing tic might be contagious. "How long have you been here?"
Carl shrugs.
"Five, six hours maybe," Carol guesses.
"Jesus..." Negan holds his arms out for Judith. "Give her to me. Go get somethin' to eat. Both of you."
Carl looks suspicious, like he thinks this might be some sort of trick, but eventually he hands Judith over to Negan. Judith goes easily into his arms, and Negan hefts her up so her head's resting on his shoulder. She doesn't wake up during the exchange. Negan kind of envies her; he doesn't know how the fuck he's going to sleep after all this.
Carl stands up and pulls out a colorful bag from behind his side of the couch. "If Judith needs anything, it should be in here," he says, setting the bag in the space he'd been before taking a phone—Rick's phone, Negan can tell by the case—out of his pocket. Carol puts her arm around his shoulders, and Carl starts typing something.
"Do you want us to bring you anything?" Carol asks.
"I'm fine and dandy," Negan says, feeling anything but.
She nods, hearing his underlying grief, and she and Carl leave the room together.
Negan sighs and settles into the couch, cradling Judith's sleeping form. "Looks like it's just you and me, kid." He watches the slow drip of the IV, the steady pulse of the heart monitor, the rise and fall of Rick's chest.
"C'mon, Rick," Negan murmurs. "Don't you dare leave us like this. If you die, I swear to God I'll kill you."
Five minutes later, a nurse clad in blue scrubs enters the room. Her long, dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail. One glimpse at her face, and Negan feels the pow in his chest. Something about her reminds him of Lucille, and, goddamn it, universe, he can only handle mourning one love at a time.
She smiles at Negan, at the way Judith's sleeping against his chest. "You and Rick are pretty close, huh?"
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"I doubt she'd curl up on just anyone," she says, changing out the IV drip.
Perceptive.
"How do you know Rick?" Negan asks, studying her profile, and now he sees all the ways her features differ from Lucille's: a broader nose, smaller eyes, fuller lips. But the initial sight had shaken him, like seeing a vague shape out of the corner of your eye.
"I'm married to one of his coworkers."
"For your sake I hope it's not Shane."
She laughs like she genuinely understands the joke. "No, it's Officer Chambler."
"Doesn't ring a bell."
"Really?" She finishes her task and turns to him, hands on her hips. According to her tag, her name is Rosita. "'Cause she remembers bringing you in for a drunken barfight. Said you and Rick talked like you knew each other."
She? Interesting. At least Negan won't have to hide his relationship with Rick here. "She must've described me pretty well."
"'Rugged smart-ass with a leather jacket.'"
Negan chuckles. "You got me." The levity fades almost immediately, and Negan sighs. "Be honest: what do you think his chances are?"
Rosita looks at Rick, pained creases on her brow. "We don't know. He could come out of the coma in days or weeks or years. Or not at all. The bullet did a lot of internal damage. His body has to heal from that."
Shit, the emotional wringer might never let up. At least with Lucille there had been a certainty that she was going to die, just a matter of when. But Rick could stay in this suspended, dehumanized state, all his processes co-opted by machinery for the rest of his natural life.
That little flicker of hope, never quite burning out.
Damn.
"I wish there was more to tell you," Rosita says, tenderly straightening the blankets on the bed. "How's Carl doing?"
"About as good as you can imagine." Poor kid might lose both parents in the span of less than five years. And Carl's only fifteen. And, shit, what about Judith? Losing her mother and father before she even enters pre-school.
Rosita's eyes are slightly red, and it occurs to Negan that she's grieving for Rick, too.
Ten minutes after Rosita leaves, a young couple enters the room. The guy is tall and lean with dark, messy hair, and thin wisps of facial hair sprouting over his upper lip and across his chin. The girl is visibly pregnant, her brown hair chopped short. Her eyes are puffy and red, and when she sees Rick she lets out a tiny groan and squeezes her husband's hand. "Oh, Rick... God..." She lifts her free hand to her face, wiping her tear-stained cheeks as she moves closer to the bed.
Her husband sees Rick, but takes greater notice of the leather-clad stranger holding Judith like she's his own. "Uh, hi? Sorry, I don't think we've met. I'm Glenn. This is Maggie."
"Negan."
"Carl's baseball coach?"
"Yeah," Negan says, curious how Glenn might know this.
"Oh, he, uh, he talks about you a lot." Glenn forces up a short, tight smile, which tells Negan that 'talks about' is code for 'bitches about.'
Maggie squeezes Rick's unmoving hand and murmurs something soft before sniffling and raising her head to look at Negan. A heart-breaking smile crosses her face at the sight of Judith asleep in Negan's arms. "Rick would be really happy that you're here."
And just like that, Maggie seems to detect the intensity of the relationship between Rick and Negan, like she knows intuitively that Negan isn't just a friend, that the last thing Rick texted him was that goofy winking emoji blowing a kiss, and Negan feels his heart tumble in his chest.
"Where's Carl?" she asks.
"I sent him and Carol down to the cafeteria. They needed a break."
Maggie sniffles again and crosses the room. She and Glenn move for the couch, and Negan repositions so his legs aren't taking up the remaining space. "I wish we didn't have to meet like this," Maggie says, sitting beside him. Glenn joins her and puts his arm around her shoulders, protective and comforting.
"You and me both," Negan sighs.
"What happened to him?"
"Some piece of human garbage shot him."
In a dark place Negan rarely goes, he considered asking Rick to retire, or at least get a desk job at the sheriff's station, something that doesn't put him in the line of danger every day. Because Negan can't lose anyone else. He's not built for it. He lost Lucille and that shattered him, fucking destroyed him, but he was able to slowly piece himself back together out of the remaining fragments. Some pieces of him are gone forever, little chips of glass broken off and irretrievable, but he's okay, decent enough for Rick to find appealing, at least.
To lose Rick, to be shattered again... Negan doesn't think he'll survive it.
Some people say an experience loses its edge once you've gone through it. Face your fears and you won't be so scared the next time. Negan says that's bullshit. He knows exactly what's in store for him in the event Rick dies here, and he wants no cocksucking goddamn part of it, fuck you very much. With Lucille, he'd been blissfully ignorant, half of him reassured that it would be easier since he had time to say goodbye, that her death was a slow affair rather than a sudden snap of fate's fingers.
He'd never been so wrong in his life.
"Did they get the guy?" Maggie asks.
Negan nods.
"Good."
Eventually Carol and Carl return to the room, and the five of them talk and trade stilted conversation until Carl's nodding off against Carol's shoulder.
"C'mon, kid, let's get you home," Negan says.
Carl shakes his head, his shaggy hair swaying. "No. I'm fine. I wanna stay. It's not like there's school tomorrow. And what if Dad wakes up? Someone needs to be here with him."
Carol takes Carl's hand. "Someone will be. I promise."
Carl still doesn't seem convinced, and Negan totally gets it, because a selfish part of him wants to just set up camp here as long as it takes for Rick to wake up, but included in his deepening bond with Rick is the implicit promise that Negan will treat Judith and Carl like they're his own, and Negan will be damned if he fucks that up.
"Look, I promised your dad I'd take care of you. Now, I'm a man of my word, and I'm sure Rick wouldn't appreciate it if I kept you and your sister here 'til he wakes up. So get your butt to the car."
Carl exhales an angry sigh and grabs Judith's bag. "Fine. But there's no way I'm ever gonna call you Dad."
"That's fine. I prefer 'Your Majesty' anyway."
Negan drives them home in the Impala. Judith wakes up briefly, but the steady rumble of the car lulls her back to sleep, and she's out like a light when they park in front of the house. Negan carefully picks her up, gets her inside, tucks her into bed with the utmost care. He watches her sleep for a moment, envious of her ability to appear untouched by any of this. She has to understand, on some level, what's going on; maybe she does and Negan just wasn't around for it. She might have screamed and cried herself into exhaustion, and in the morning Negan's in for a lot of questions he can't answer.
He has a family now, but this sure as hell wasn't the way he had in mind.
Carl has locked himself in his room, which Negan's not too bothered by, because he doesn't know if he'd be any comfort right now. Carl probably needs to distract himself with violent video games or cute cat videos, or even just texting a friend about the shit-show his life has become.
Negan rinses off in Rick's shower, uses Rick's soaps and shampoo, puts on one of Rick's t-shirts and a pair of boxers and sweatpants.
He falls into Rick's bed and starts to cry.
You can only be strong for so long.
Judith starts crying around three a.m. Carl is already there when Negan arrives, rocking her in his arms and shushing her into calmness. Or at least trying to, because she's still sobbing and blubbering into his t-shirt.
"Go back to bed, kid," Negan says, rubbing his eyes before holding out his arms for Judith. "I got this."
Carl glares at him, but the harsh edges have been sanded off, like he begrudgingly accepts that Negan is part of the family now, or at least until the shit-typhoon of Rick's coma has passed. He hands Judith over and watches as she doesn't stop crying when transferred to Negan.
"You got this, huh?" Carl says, giving Negan a sassy look.
"She just wants her daddy," Negan says, rubbing her hitching back. "Isn't that right? You want your daddy?"
Judith looks up at him, her arms locked around his neck. "Where's Daddy?"
"At the hospital, doll. Remember? He's not feeling good, so he has to stay there and get better. But we can go visit him in the morning, okay?"
"You promise?"
"'Course I do. I miss your daddy too."
Judith's loud sobs have devolved into quiet sniffles, but with the way her lower lip's quivering she's anything but soothed. She can sense that his tone is off, that he's trying too hard to seem like everything's normal.
Carl's still standing in the room, his arms folded over his chest as he observes Negan's technique.
"Go back to sleep, darlin'," Negan says, moving to put her back into her bed, but Judith cries, "No," and clutches harder around his neck.
Negan hasn't read any of those parental instruction manuals—he'd been saving that for when Lucille got pregnant—so he's kind of in the dark about what to do here. "The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner we can go see Daddy."
Her grip doesn't loosen, and she's making this distressed whining noise into his shoulder.
Negan looks at Carl as though to say, 'Got any bright ideas, genius?'
"She had trouble sleeping after Mom died. Dad would let her sleep in his bed. I guess it calmed her down," Carl says.
That makes sense. Lori's scent had probably still been in the room at that point, and Rick's scent definitely has a strong presence there now.
"You think that'll work here?"
Carl shrugs. "You can try. But make sure you put pillows up so she doesn't roll out."
Negan wants to snap back that he's not a total idiot, but he actually hadn't thought of that. Oops.
He carries Judith into the master bedroom, sets up a pillow barricade, and tosses a few onto the floor in case she rolls off anyway. Being in this room seems to calm her down a little, and as Negan tucks her under the covers he's stricken by a paralyzing wave of terror, because he's responsible for this fragile little person—and for Carl too—and the thought of anything happening to either of them scares him beyond belief.
How does Rick leave them for even a millisecond?
Negan keeps watch over her until her eyes close and she falls into sleep, her breaths evening out into a calm rise and fall.
He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. Sleep does not come easily, but exhaustion settles into his bones by four-thirty and sweeps him away.