Beth was working to slow down her breathing and walk more calmly as she approached Noah, Dawn and another male officer.
As she passed by them, she looked at Dawn. "Oh, Gorman asked me to let you know he needs you for somethin'. Said he'd be waitin' in your office."
Dawn's brow furrowed. "Did he say what it was about?"
She shrugged lightly. "He wouldn't tell me. Just said it was important."
The other woman nodded. "Alright. Thank you."
As the officers continued down the hall Beth looked at Noah and nodded, whispering. "Got it. Which way do we go?"
He jerked his head at the far end of the corridor and took her elbow. "This way. Come on, we're going to have to hurry. It won't take long for them to realize something's up."
Beth started sprinting but slowed when she noticed Noah was limping and having a hard time keeping up.
They turned a corner into an area of the hospital she'd never seen before, and he pointed to the doors of the stairwell that were locked. "There."
She bent over in front of the lock, fumbling with the keys. There were roughly a few dozen on the chain, but she skipped over the smaller kind and started trying the larger brass ones that looked to match the deadbolt.
Noah was watching the direction they had come from anxiously when they both started hearing the screams. Dawn and the other officer had found Gorman. Two shots were fired, then another moments later.
Beth was trying her fourth key when the lock clicked open. She held onto it in her right hand, hoping it would fit the other set of doors that Noah said was at the bottom.
Together they started descending the ten flights of stairs, going as fast as they could around each landing. Behind her, Noah was started to breathe hard, not used to much physical exertion. He held onto the railing, favoring his leg, and nearly stumbled once but caught himself in time.
They had just reached the second floor when they heard the door high above them bang against the wall, followed by loud footsteps on the stairs.
Beth started taking the steps two at a time. "Come on! Hurry!"
She came around the final turn, seeing the set of glass doors below.
Running down the last steps she saw the empty parking lot outside and dropped to her knees in front of the lock that was the one thing left between them and their freedom. Beth inserted the same key and tried to turn it, but the lock wouldn't budge. "Oh, no."
Noah reached the bottom and stood behind her, bending over to put his hands on his knees. After a few labored breaths he stepped forward to look through the glass, relieved that he couldn't see any rotters.
It had been almost a year since he'd had to survive out in that world, and he was definitely out of practice with defending himself against those things. As Beth kept working each key in the lock he walked back over and looked up the stairwell. The footsteps were getting closer, and he could see one hand sliding quickly down the railing. They were on the third floor now.
He rushed back over to the door. "Someone's coming, Beth. You've gotta hurry!"
"I'm tryin', but there's so many!" Her hands were starting to sweat and she grappled with the ring, holding up the next one. Saying a silent prayer, she shoved it into the deadbolt and it turned with ease. "Got it!"
They both pushed through just as an officer reached the bottom of the steps. Beth swung it shut behind her, looking in through the glass to see it was Shepard, and braced herself against the door.
The other woman threw her weight at it, trying to get out at them.
Beth's sneakers skidded on the asphalt in an effort to keep the door closed, and with her face pressed up to the glass she brought the key still held between her fingers around and inserted it in the deadbolt, locking it from the outside. Then, looking in at the officer, she pulled the gun out from her waistband and used the butt to snap the key off in the lock.
Shepard banged on the glass, furious, but Beth just turned around and started running after Noah, who was limping ahead and nearly to the outside fence now.
She was halfway across the parking lot, gun in hand, when she heard the glass breaking behind her.
A gunshot rang out, followed by a searing pain in her upper arm that jerked her body forward. Her legs buckled, and Beth looked down at her right sleeve, where there was now a small hole and blood spreading through the material. It started running down her arm as she tried to get up and keep going, but Licari caught up to her, striking the outside of her left leg with his baton.
Beth dropped to the pavement in agony and looked ahead at Noah. He was on the outside of the fence now, both hands hooked on the chain link, looking in at her. She shook her head and screamed at him. "Run!"
Beth was dragged back into the hospital like a dog that had run away from its owner. She knew this was going to be bad, but a bitter smile still lingered on her face thinking that it wouldn't be for nothing. Noah was free from this awful place now, and that victory was enough for her today.
With her hands cuffed behind her back, an officer on either side grabbed her upper arms and carried her between them up the stairs. She let her legs hang like dead weight to make it harder on them even though her shoulders screamed in protest. Licari and Shepard groaned in their efforts and Beth laughed inside, still on an adrenaline rush from her near escape, thinking that her shins would be an impressive shade of dark blue tomorrow as they hit nearly every step on the way back up to the fifth floor.
They carried her into Dawn's office where the female officer stood waiting, her face frozen in anger. Beth could see Gorman's bloody corpse behind her and the body of the male cop who was missing a large chunk of flesh where his jugular used to be. The blood was pooling on the floor around him, and he sported a fresh bullet hole in his forehead.
Dawn clenched her jaw and tilted her head slightly to glare into Beth's eyes. "Who the hell do you think you are?" She glanced briefly at the two bodies on the floor. "You killed two of my officers, and now I've lost Noah. You've got no right-"
Beth returned the officer's scowl and spit out her response with a bitter laugh. "Yeah, I got that memo."
She nodded at Dawn's head, whose eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. "I don't know what's goin' on in there that you think anythin' about this place is even remotely okay." Her hands were still cuffed but she leaned forward earnestly, trying to appeal to the woman's rational side. "I know you must have been a good person at one time, a good cop. You wanted to help people, right? This place CAN do good, but not this way." Beth's head shook back and forth, her eyes begging the officer to see reason. "Not this way."
A deeper anger fleeted across Dawn's face as she contemplated Beth's outburst, and then it smoothed out into a kind of condescending detachment toward the young woman before her. She glanced down briefly and then swung her arm around, landing a solid right hook to Beth's cheek, who stumbled back against the wall.
The officer worked her rage out on the other woman for her defiance with several more punches to the face until she slid down the wall, unconscious. Dawn finally fell back against her desk, breathing hard and yelled for one of the officers outside to come in.
"Get her out of my sight. Edwards can deal with her now." As Beth was dragged out of the room, Dawn held her bruised hand to her chest, and stared in silence at the bodies lying on the floor of her office.
Beth jerked awake some time later, her arms lashing out at the person prodding the wound on her right arm.
She tried to sit up and shift away from them but groaned at the pain the movement cost her. Looking around and realizing she was on the bed in her room again, she saw the doctor sitting on a chair beside her, his palms raised in front of him with apprehension.
He looked at the needle and thread hanging from her arm where he'd begun suturing the wound. "You're lucky the bullet went through without hitting the bone. It shouldn't take long to heal."
The sleeve of her scrubs had been cut off, and she examined the hole that was barely weeping any blood, starting to reach over with her left fingers to touch it but Edwards stopped her.
"Don't. I just swabbed it with alcohol and I need to finish stitching it or infection could set in." He dragged his chair closer and nodded at her arm. "May I?"
Beth hesitated, piercing the doctor with a withering stare that made him gulp nervously before she settled back onto the bed, resigned to accepting the medical attention.
As he kept working on her arm, she couldn't ignore the aching in her legs any longer and lifted her left one up, pulling the pant leg back to see.
Her knee was slightly swollen, a red welt on the outside where Licari's baton had struck, and her shin was covered in deep shades of blue and purple. Edwards glanced up to see what she was doing.
"Believe it or not, that actually looks much better than it did a couple hours ago. Have you always been such a quick healer?" He peered up at her over the top of his glasses, curious.
She stared up at the ceiling before answering. "It's kind of hard to say." Moving her head over to look him in the eye. "I've never been beaten or shot before."
He held her gaze for a moment before nodding and turning his attention back to the needle in his hand, tying off a knot and trimming the excess thread with surgical scissors. "I have to do the back of your arm now. Turn over onto your left side and just let your arm rest against your ribs."
Beth rearranged herself slowly to comply, wincing as her left knee pressed against the mattress.
She grimaced at the cold sting of the alcohol as he cleaned the area and closed her eyes, trying not to think of the painful tugging as he began sewing the entry wound shut. It was over in less than a minute, and Edwards wrapped several layers of fresh gauze around her arm. Taping the bandage off, he stood up with his small tray in hand, walking around to the end of the bed and motioned toward the table in the corner. "There's a clean set of scrubs there for you. Do you need help getting into them?"
She sat up with effort and shook her head vehemently. "I can manage just fine."
He closed the door behind him, and she hissed in pain as she swung her legs around and put her socked feet on the cold floor. Beth pushed herself up from the bed and took a few aching steps toward the window.
It was dark out now, her first day at the hospital almost over. Thinking back over the last twelve hours she looked out into the night, wondering how much worse it was going to get here, and knowing that whenever she did escape she wouldn't be the same person she was before.
Reaching over for the clean clothes with a tired sigh, Beth carried them back over to the bed, keeping her eye on the door the entire time.
She got her pants on fairly quickly, although her one knee was a little stiff, but when it came to pulling the shirt over her head she grimaced as she pushed her right hand through the armhole. Slipping her sneakers back on, she stepped into the bathroom and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
The gash on her left cheek was reopened from Dawn's punches, and her lower lip had a split in it that was crusted with dried blood.
She leaned across the sink for a closer look at the other side of her face. Her very first black eye. Beth touched it gently with her finger, thinking that Daryl would be proud if he saw it, and felt the familiar pang of grief at the thought of him.
Leaning both hands on the sink and dropping her head, she gave in to the sudden feeling of hopelessness. The tears fell unchecked as she broke down, aching inside from how much she missed him, and Maggie and Glenn, Judith, everyone. Her Dad.
Beth looked up at her reflection again, knowing if he were here that he'd tell her not to give up. She nodded to herself and wiped away the tears before striding over and opening her door.
There was barely any light illuminating the corridor, just the glow of a lamp shining through a doorway further up the hall. Edwards stood outside it with his hands in his pockets, laughing quietly with whoever was in the room.
Beth just leaned her good shoulder against the wall and watched him in silence, her mind scrambling to come up with another plan. Her thoughts were interrupted, though, as the doctor turned to look up the hall at two officers wheeling in someone new.
She waited as they rolled the gurney up toward her, and as they passed she looked down at an unconscious woman in torn and bloody clothing. Beth struggled to withhold any signs of recognition or worry as they wheeled the new patient into the room next to hers.
It was Carol.
Ah, Grady Memorial Hospital. It's like Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.*cue guitar solo*
Please leave a comment. It will give you a peaceful easy feeling, and I know you won't let me down.
I am so sorry. My dork is showing.