Were you there when the man from Atlanta was murdered in Memphis?

Did you see him layin' at the Lorraine Motel?

Did you hear them say that the CIA is witness

To the murder of a man at a motel in Memphis?

Walkers!

Macyn didn't know if she had imagined or dreamed the warning yelled down from the top of the stairs until it came again from a few doors down. She could hear the commotion in the hallway; out of instinct, she picked up a gun and the crossbow Daryl had showed her how to shoot before shoving her feet into her boots and heading for the stairs.

"I don't think so," Willy scoffed at her. "You stay here with the other women. Dale's staying behind to watch over y'all."

"Willy, I can help," Macyn pressed. "Let me go out there."

"Not a chance, woman. If I catch you out of this basement, there'll be hell to pay."

Pursing her lips, Macyn set the crossbow down, but kept the gun at her side. Daryl passed by her, sympathy in his eyes. She softened her countenance at him, silently begging him to come back alive.

"I'll be careful," he smirked at her before heading up the stairs with the other men. It gave Macyn only a little bit of comfort.

"I should be going out there," she pouted at the kitchen table. "We can't get the hell out of here soon enough."

"But it will be soon," Dale promised. "The whole group is behind you, you know. We all think it's got to stop, but –"

"It's not your place, I get it," Macyn confirmed. "Thanks, Dale."

He smiled at her and asked about her brother. Talking about Robbie perked her up a little bit. It gave her mind something to think about, anyway, while they waited to see if all of the men would come back or not.

.&.

Only a few of the walkers had emerged from the woods, but they just kept coming. Between the six men, they were able to keep them mostly at bay, and work their way closer to the woods. All of these walkers had to be put down or they would just keep coming – keep coming and keep killing.

Daryl walked ahead, his sense on high alert. He had every intention of keeping that promise to Macyn – he would come back to her. He was going to make things right and there wasn't one zombie bastard that could stop him from doing that.

A whistle that he recognized easily as Merle's alerted him that Willy was on a trail in an opposite direction. Daryl nodded just to the left of that trail; they had to cover as much space as possible if they were going to actually minimalize the threat to their current stead.

A rustling of leaves caught his attention. He moved carefully and quietly towards it. The bush didn't move again, but that didn't mean Daryl had been hearing things or that there was nothing there. He loaded his crossbow and took aim, ever-prepared for what was going to come at him.

It all happened at once. The walker came out from behind the tree, still gnawing on a squirrel even as the creature smelled new prey. Daryl pulled the release on the bow and the arrow sailed through the air, slicing through the skull and then the brain of the walker at the same time that Daryl heard the gunshot from behind him, and then the merciless pain of a bullet searing through his side.

"Daryl!" Merle yelled, running for his brother's side. "Y'all, get over here!"

Everyone descended on him at once. Daryl just stared up into the trees, at the sun peeking through and the birds flying across his line of sight. Some instinct told him he was losing a lot of blood because he was suddenly more entranced with the sunlight than he was with the injury.

"We've got to get him out of here," Rick ordered. "Merle, T-Dawg, help me get him back to the house. You four cover us. He's losing a lot of blood."

Daryl tried to tell them that he was fine. In fact, he thought that he said he was fine, that it didn't hurt, but none of them responded so maybe he hadn't said it after all. It was getting cold outside, and dark, very quickly. That wasn't possible though. It was only the afternoon when they left the house, and they hadn't been gone very long.

Still, Daryl felt so cold and tired. Maybe it was just better to let sleep happen.

.&.

"What the fuck happened?" Andrea demanded.

"He got shot," Rick was quick to inform them. "He and Willy shot for the same walker, and it just happened."

"Get him to a bed," Dale instructed. "I'll see what we have as far medical supplies to help him."

Merle and Willy exchanged meaningful glances and hushed words, even as everyone else rushed around to take action. Finally, Willy ceded to whatever Merle was saying.

"Macyn," he called. "Get to it, girl. He dies, it'll be on you."

Macyn met each and every set of eyes on her at that moment before springing into action. She went to the supply closet and emerged with a whole cart of things – medicine bottles, syringes, suture kits, gauze, bandages, drapes. And that was just what they could all make out on the cart.

"Carol, Lori, I'm going to need your help," Macyn called as she rushed down the hallway. "No one else comes in here until I say so."

The three women disappeared into Daryl's room and a few seconds later, Rick and T-Dawg emerged again.

T-Dawg raised his brow. "Macyn just kicked us out of there. She thinks she's going to save him?"

"She is if she knows what's good for her," Merle grumbled before leaving to pace in front of the room.

Willy went to the kitchen for a glass of water before explaining. "Macyn's real smart. She's a fuckin' genius. We met when I was in an emergency room with a busted eye from a bar brawl. She was on a clinical rotation."

"She's a nurse?" Andrea asked.

Willy finished off his water and shook his head. "She was a surgical intern. Not even old enough to have graduated med school and that girl was stitching me up."

No one had ever expected that. Of course, Macyn hadn't exactly been forthcoming with a lot of information about herself from before the world changed. Little things here and there that they all assumed made up her life, but now realized were things they needed to know to understand the person that Macyn had become. It was something to wrap their minds around while they waited to hear news about Daryl's condition.

.&.

Macyn handed Lori a bright flashlight and told the older woman to shine it on the wound, cautioning to hold the light as still as possible.

"Daryl, this is going to hurt like hell, but I can't numb it till I know what I'm looking at," Macyn told him. "Carol, undo this belt, give it to him to bite down on. He's going to need it."

While her two makeshift nurses did as instructed, Macyn tried to figure out just what they were dealing with. The bullet had gone from Daryl's back through his torso and exited just below his ribs. Besides losing a lot of blood, Macyn was concerned about the blood that was spilling into his abdomen – the injuries they couldn't see.

"How bad is it?" Lori asked.

"I think he got lucky, actually. Biggest concern is going to be infection. Bullet's out, which is a good start." She pulled a syringe off of the cart and loaded it with a clear liquid. "This is going to numb it, but not all the way down. I've got to see what we're looking at from the inside here."

"You're going to open him up with him still awake?" Carol asked.

Macyn looked at her and nodded. Daryl groaned as the needle went in; Macyn waited less than a minute, knowing the medicine would hit soon enough. A slightly more thorough exploration and a widening of the wound told her that by some sort of miracle, the bullet had missed his intestines and stomach, and one kidney had barely been grazed. It wasn't going to be the easiest of recoveries, but Daryl was going to live.

She instructed Carol and Lori on how to help her as she stitched him up. It was a sit and wait game now, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

"I'll tell Merle," Lori offered.

"Wait," Macyn pleaded, covering Lori's hand on the doorknob. "I need to start and IV and I – I just need a few minutes to get myself under control."

Lori nodded. "Okay. You want to tell me how you know all of this?"

"We never had money, so I always had the thought in my mind that money would take me places. So, I studied hard, put my good mind to the test. Went to medical school. I was a surgical intern when I met Willy Slater. He was nice at first, you know, they always are. Slowly, he started bitching and moaning about the hours I had to be away. The day before they started slaughtering hospital staffs, I quit my job for him. To this day he'll tell you he saved my life by telling me I didn't need to be a doctor."

Daryl groaned again, in and out of consciousness. Macyn finished with his IV and promised that the pain would go away soon. She pushed the hair from his forehead and looked down at the face of the man she could have lost forever. She ran Rick's explanation through her mind again – remembered that it was Willy who had done this – before throwing her gloves in a nearby trash can and storming from the room.

"You trying to kill people now?" Macyn demanded from Willy.

"He's still alive," Willy waved her off. "It was an accident."

"Was it?" Macyn countered. She was pushing deadly buttons but she didn't care.

Merle gripped her upper arm and pushed her towards the rooms. "What's done is done, Doc. Daryl's in pain now, so you'd better get back there and fix that shit you hooked him up to."

Macyn wrenched her arm away from Merle's grip. "He's your brother. I can't believe you can't see what's really going on here, or that you aren't even concerned with it."

She stormed off towards Daryl's room where Carol was helping him drink some water.

"I don't want anyone else in this room until I say otherwise," Macyn told her. "You, me, and Lori. Got it?"

Carol nodded. "Probably for the best."

"Daryl, I know you're hurting," Macyn told him gently. "You've got to give the medicine a few minutes to work. You'll start getting drowsy and then the pain will fade."

He nodded and coughed. Macyn picked up the wet washcloth from the basin on the nightstand. She wrung the thing out and then wiped his forehead and his face. She spoke to him with comforting words and before long, he had drifted off to sleep.

.&.

Merle sat on the front porch with a toothpick in one hand and a rifle in the other. Footsteps on the wooden floor alerted him to a visitor.

"I'm sorry about your brother," Willy apologized. "Was shooting for the walker."

"Hit him a little low to be aiming for that walker," Merle commented. "Kind of makes me wonder if Macyn is right - if you were aimin' for Daryl."

"Spooked when the gun shot is all. Haven't shot a weapon bigger than a handgun in a while."

Merle nodded and relinquished his post to Willy. "I appreciate you bringing me here. Found my brother, got out of that damn city. If I find out you shot him on purpose though, you had better believe that appreciation won't get you far."

"You threatening me?"

"Nope," Merle replied matter of factly. "Just telling you. I'll send the next watch out in a couple hours."

.&.

Over the next thirty-six hours, Daryl was in and out of consciousness. When he was awake, he wasn't exactly lucid; he spoke nonsense and talked about things that had happened a long time ago. It made Macyn that much more confident in her decision to restrict his visitors.

"Never would have pegged you for a doctor, even for the money," Lori commented while they changed Daryl's bandages.

Macyn pressed her lips into a thin line before replying. "Well, I'm pretty smart, as it turns out. It was my way of getting away from my father, finally. My brother helped me out as much as he could. I took college classes in high school and tested out of some things. Wasn't even two years ahead of where I would normally be if I hadn't done it the fast way. Things with Willy didn't get bad until after we got engaged, about eight months ago."

Lori watched Macyn move; her hands were trained and her eyes were skilled. She knew what she was doing. Here, practicing some sort of medicine, Macyn was the most confident Lori had ever seen her be.

"Thank God we found you when we did, then."

Macyn shook her head. "If y'all wouldn't have found me, Willy never would have shot Daryl."

"It could have been someone else, and then you wouldn't have been around to save him."

"Or someone else would have saved him," Macyn posited. "It could have gone any number of ways. I won't keep arguing – I get what you're saying. Thank you, Lori."

"Thanks goes to you," Lori said with a small smile.

Macyn matched her countenance. "I'm going to sit with him a while, I think."

"What's Willy going to think?" Lori asked, taking a chair.

"I don't know. I'll tell him that I was doing some more exploratory surgery or something. Don't want Daryl to be alone if he wakes up."

"He won't believe that you were doing any sort of surgery on your own. I'll stay with you," Lori offered.

Macyn gave the woman a full smile this time. She had never had a strong woman in her life; her father and then school and then Willy had kept her life so closed it, there wasn't much time for people. She thought again about how ironic it was that the world nearly had to come to an end for her to find all these good things, but it almost made up for the zombies trying to kill them at every turn.