AN: Hello again! Thank you to Amber, mrskaz453 and VampWolf92 for their reviews. I had a long chat with mrskaz453 about the abuse in this story and I really hope I don't upset any of you with it. I hope I don't upset anyone with anything. Things are gonna happen and I'm sorry if they do. Forgive me. I'm really sorry about the delay once again. This is going to go on a whenever I can update now because I entered college! Freshman year baby! So I am going to be getting busier and busier. Thank you to everyone else that favorited or followed. They really help me write. Daryl shall be in the next chapter! Yay!
I have a question: How would you like Daryl and Eliza's first meeting to go?
Hope to get some feedback.
I own nothing but Eliza, Josie and whatever characters you don't know. I would love to have Daryl all to myself though...
Enjoy!
Chapter Five
Eliza was watching the girls when the quite farm life changed. It was an end to the serenity, to their slice of heaven. She heard Maggie scream out "Dad!" The one word breaking the tranquility of the early afternoon. Eliza looked out over the green fields. A man came running to the farm; two other's trailing far off behind him. Anxiety flooded Eliza like a dam breaking, the rush overtaking her easily. It wasn't Otis; the man was far too slim to be him. A stranger then. Eliza began to worry about what had gone wrong on Otis' hunting trip; who he might have ran into. She couldn't even tell if Otis was with them.
She yelled for the two playing girls to come back to her. Sofia and Josephine had been playing all day. Eliza could tell that Sofia was happy to be a kid again. Though Sofia was older than Josie, Josie was able to get the older girl to relax and have fun, to forget the ugly world for a day. Eliza had offered to watch over the new girl. Being a mother came naturally to her and wasn't like she could do much else. She was the only mother on the farm or so she figured. Patricia never mentioned a child. They had been tasked with washing clothes that morning, but Eliza had let them go after an hour seeing how bored they had been.
The two listened to her, running to her quickly, Sofia holding Josephine's hand. They knew there was no kidding around anymore. Sofia helped her up the stairs of the porch where most of the residents of the farm had gathered. The man was coming closer. Hershel stood wary of what was happening out in front of them; Jimmy was armed with rifle. Maggie had grabbed a bat. Eliza clutched the two girls behind her.
"What's going on?" Eliza asked, fear evident in her voice.
Patricia looked her, her face worried. "Not sure. Should get the girls upstairs though. Don't wanna scare them."
"I'll take them," Eliza offered before ushering the girls inside, to safety.
She hobbled quickly to the steps and ushered the girls to go up quickly ahead of her. She heard voice outside. She figured the man had gotten close.
"Eliza, do you think that man could be from my group?" Sofia questioned, with every ounce of hope she had in her voice.
Eliza glanced at the young girl, but she didn't answer. She wasn't sure how to answer her. Eliza opened up Beth's room, the girls following her in. Josie and Sofia both climbed onto the bed while Eliza lingered by the door so she could listen. She would protect these girls the best she could. She got a glance of Josie's big blue eyes and her heart faltered. She wouldn't fail her child. Never would she.
"Eliza?" she heard Sofia ask. "Do you think…?"
She had just asked. "I don't even know if he is friendly, Sofe."
"But it could be! Right?" Sofia was unsure and you could hear it in her voice.
"Maybe," Eliza murmured, hoping she wasn't giving Sofia any false hope.
"Patricia, I need my full kit. Maggie, painkillers, coagulates, grab everything. Clean towels, sheets, alcohol. Just about everything we used for Eliza," Hershel ordered. "Beth, go trade places with Eliza. She's got medical training I'm gonna need."
Eliza heard the young girl's footsteps as she ran up the stairs. Eliza left the room, yelling back at the younger girls to stay in the room with Beth. She ran into the room she had been residing in to find a man covered in blood and young boy on the table, bleeding profusely from his stomach.
"Is he alive?" the stranger questioned, he hadn't noticed Eliza.
"Eliza, grabbed that pillow case," Hershel instructed. Eliza grabbed the pillow case from Maggie and folded it into pad the wound. She sat on the bed lightly next to the young boy, applying as much pressure as she could to the wound. It looked like a gunshot wound. "I got a heartbeat, it's faint."
Eliza glanced up and saw the stranger relax when he heard the boy was still living. His dark hair was coated with sweat and grime. He was disgusting with blood, dirt and sweat coating his clothes and skin. Maggie pushed the man back, saying that they needed space to work. Once he had backed off, Patricia pushed him out of the room. Maggie handed the bag and IV to Eliza and took over applying pressure. Eliza set off quickly to inserting the IV. Even though she worked years ago, finding a vein and sticking the needle in was second nature.
"Can I have medical tape?" she asked looking up at Patricia or Maggie.
Patricia went through the bag quickly before throwing her the white tape, along with cotton pads. Eliza taped the IV down with a cotton pad covering it and hung up the bag on the bed post, squeezing it to get the fluids moving through the tube.
Hershel moved Maggie from covering up the entry hole to inspecting it more closely. Eliza leaned over to take a look with him. "Is there an exit hole?"
"No, which means it's still in there. However I think it's pretty messy in there. Bullet must of spit up; I see pieces," he replied, sighing.
Eliza nodded. "Not good. It probably nicked something with this amount of blood. He's gonna need blood Hershel."
"Good thing we can do that now," Hershel said, remembering how they had found the equipment out in the farm after Eliza had gotten better. It was old but it would do.
The man reentered, only he had Otis and another man with him. Eliza pushed down the uneasiness she felt so she could focus on helping the boy. It was hard. So very hard. The room was small, filled with so many people. One of the men came to stand behind her, which made her very uncomfortable. Her skin started to crawl as she shifted closer to the boy as the man came closer and closer. Dread filled her when he stopped near her shoulder. Neither Otis nor Jimmy came close to her. They knew better somehow. The closest was at the dinner table, but even then they distanced themselves, allowing one of the Greene girls and Josie to surround her.
"Rick, know his blood type?" Hershel asked him.
"Yeah, same as mine," Rick answered. He sounded weary, he didn't look all there. Eliza felt for him, figuring that he must be the boy's father. She would have been the same way.
"Don't wander far. I'm gonna need you." Hershel looked up to Otis after he had spoken. He looked very distressed over the whole situation. "What happened?"
Eliza listened to the story with one ear, but she was focused on taking the boys blood pressure which was steady for now to distract her mine from the man behind her. Eliza was sure his pressure was going to start falling soon though, unless those fragments hadn't nicked anything. She was highly sure they probably did however.
The shot had gone the deer Eliza heard Otis tell them.
"Deer slowed the bullet down," Eliza muttered to Hershel, who nodded in agreement.
"It did not go through clean," Hershel informs the two men. "It looks like the bullet broke up, split into pieces. I can get them out but I'm counting six…"
Rick began crying about how his wife didn't know about their son being shot. She glanced up with her green eyes and saw him crying, he truly looked upset. How could a parent not? She wondered if Gabe would have been upset like this if Josie was shot. She would be for sure. She would be inconsolable until Josie got better.
A part of Eliza wondered if Gabe had cried when he left, when he never came back. When he died a part of her mind whispered. No. He was alive somewhere, trying to get back to her and his daughter. He was not bit, changed somewhere into the walking dead. He was surviving, trying to find his way to his Harlow girls.
"I'm gonna try getting the fragment out," Hershel told her. "You'll need to hold him down. I'm not sure if the pain will wake him up."
"Of course."
"Patricia get Rick set up on the transfusion," he instructed.
Eliza rested her body weight against the boy's legs and upper torso, trying her best to stay out of Hershel's way. Hershel grabbed his tool of choice, already sterilized by Patricia, and started to poke around lighting in the whole. She heard him sigh before he dug down deep in the red hole in the boy's stomach. The boy woke instantly, crying out. He screamed for her father. He withered against Eliza's arms. She tried to keep him as still as possible. He shouldn't move much with Hershel digger into the wound.
"Move, I got him," she heard someone shout at her. Her shoulders tensed as she felt how close the man was to her. The yelling froze her in place. Her heart quickened, her mind fading. Her body still struggled to hold the boy down. "I said move!" The man behind her pushed her out of the way and Eliza fell ungraciously onto the floor.
She cried out as she landed on her thigh. She felt the stitches pull and liquid begin to flow. Tears welded in her eyes from the anxiety of the situation. Panic set in on her and she couldn't focus. She heard more shouting from Rick and Hershel and it only added to her increasing level of panic. Her chest was tight, her muscles frozen. She couldn't move, couldn't talk, see or hear. Somewhere Eliza heard someone say her name. She felt someone was pulling on her arm.
Then she was in the living room, on the couch. Maggie was crouched in front of her. She was mouthing something to her. Eliza thought it was her name, but she couldn't hear over the roar of her blood in her ears. She tried to focus but she couldn't shake the terror in her body. Maggie disappeared from her view but it was filled in a minute by her precious baby girl. Her golden-red hair appeared like a halo around her. Eliza's little angel. Stiffly, her arms went to hold Josie, bringing her tight against her in an embrace.
Slowly, Eliza could hear again. Her daughter was speaking to her, speaking nonsense but it calmed her. The roar died down and her vision began to focus on what was happening in front of her. The feel of her daughter calmed her with each minute. Her breathing returned to normal as she sat there listening to her daughter talk and talk away.
Don't forget to tell me how you want Daryl and Eliza's first meeting to go!