Heart of a Hunter

by ChamberMom88

Tea spent her life being the odd man out. Having spent her younger years suffering abuse for being autistic and ADHD, she came into the apocalypse ready to take on the world all alone if she had to. Neither she nor a certain redneck expected to be pulled towards the other, but at the end of the world, who can say no to love?

71. Chapter 71

Newly Revised

Beth woke up in a strange place with a headache and a cast on her arm that she didn't have to begin with, her clothes changed into scrubs. There was a clock on the wall, Beth noting the time before trying to get out of the hospital room. She couldn't find a way out, though, and the only thing she could tell was that she was in Atlanta based on the ruined skyline outside her window. She was alone in the dead city when the last thing she could remember clearly was Daryl yelling at her to get out of the funeral home. He had been trying to fight off walkers and she had ran to the road like he'd told her to and had been waiting for him. After that was a blur; there was pain, the face of someone who looked too pleased, and the feel of a car underneath her. That was all she could remember as the questions began to swarm her panicking mind and the fact that the door was locked did not help the matter. She started banging on it while shouting for anyone who could hear her, pulling the IV out of her arm when she heard footsteps approaching. She wished she would have taken more of Ani's classes instead of playing house-keeper and baby-sitter as she stood in a defensive stance with the needle in her hand. There was so little she could do right now to protect herself and until she knew where Daryl was, she could only rely on herself to do just that.

"Everything's okay, okay?" a doctor told her reassuringly as the door opened and he and a lady officer stepped through.

"Put it down," the officer said. "Drop it, right now."

The sight of an actual police officer in an actual uniform and a doctor still in a lab coat had Beth dropping the needle in her hand while she just stood there in shock. The doctor put his hands in his pockets after having them up in surrender and the officer took her hand off her gun and lowered the hand she'd had out in front of her. Their visibly relaxed states did very little to help Beth's nerves as she began thinking of ways to either get out of the or at least gain the upper hand. It was something that not only Ani had told her, but Merle and Michonne as well; she should always get herself in a position of power and never lose her wits. Even if her body was weak, as long as she kept her mind sharp she could overcome any situation as long as she could wait for the right moment. Beth could at least do that much depending on what she was going to find outside the room she was in. The doctor seemed to be the most approachable, though, as he took a cautious step forward and gave her a small smile.

"I'm Dr. Steven Edwards," the doctor said softly and kindly. "This is officer Dawn Lerner. How are you feeling?"

"Where am I?" Beth asked.

"Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta."

"How did I get here?" Beth asked, knowing she hadn't willingly come to this place.

"My officers found you on the side of the road surrounded by rotters," the lady, Dawn, answered.

"Your wrist was fractured and you sustained a superficial head wound," Dr. Edwards told her. "Can you remember your name?"

"Beth. The man I was with, is he here too?" she asked hopefully.

"You were alone," the officer said.

"No, I was waitin' on the road for Daryl," Beth explained. "He was right behind me. I'd just made it to the road and there was this light and then pain and then nothin'. I woke up here. Your officers didn't find me," she said in a sudden realization. "They hit me with their damn car!"

"If we hadn't saved you, you'd be one of them right now," Dawn explained.

"That's bullshit," Beth spat. "If they hadn't hit me, I'd've been just fine!"

"We saved your life bringing you here," Dawn insisted. "So you owe us."

Beth wanted to retaliate, but she wasn't given the chance to as both the doctor and officer left the room and locked the door once again. She was left to sit alone with nothing to do but look outside at the buildings that were half destroyed in some places and the roads full of walkers. If she wanted to get out of the city, she was going to need to stay in the hospital long enough to get supplies. She barely slept the entire night and the doctor had come in first thing in the morning with a clean pair of scrubs. He waited outside while she changed and then had her follow him as he made his rounds. The doctor told her the basics about how things were run and learned that Dawn was the head officer, but it was in name only. Most of the rest of the officers ran amok doing whatever they wanted to anyone without any real consequences under the guise of the patients being 'wards.' Apparently, she was the doctor's ward and therefore was responsible in helping him make rounds, give medications, and keep track of the patients' vital signs. Beth also learned that the officers were all a part of the Atlanta Police Department where Ani used to work. With any luck, she would be able to use the fact that she knew her to her advantage and be able to keep the upper-hand she so desperately needed.

"Couple of them out there were on a run about a week ago," the doctor explained as they entered another room. "They found a couple boxes of Bisquick and an Earl Haggard tape at a bus stop, and then this gentleman under a bridge. Cardiac arrest and extreme dehydration. I tried to do what I could."

He flipped a switch on the machine and the man slowly stopped breathing, stressing Beth as she asked worried, "Wait, that's it?!"

"If patients don't show any sign of improvement," the doctor said, "well, Dawn calls it."

Beth knew it had to happen, knew that everyone turned when they died, but the emotionless way Edwards jammed a knife in the man's skull was disconcerting. He covered the man with a sheet and made her help him wheel the corpse out of his room and into the hallway. They passed by Dawn and another officer on the way, the doctor having her stop and wait while he talked to them. She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was something very wrong with this place as she looked around. The only person in the hallway was a boy maybe only a little older than her that was mopping the floor and there was only one door open. As soon as she looked in the door, the scared looking woman inside moved to close it, barely even sparing Beth a glance. The prison had been a non-stop flurry of movement aside from when night came around, and even then, there were plenty of people still chatting away. It was eerie hearing nothing in the halls but the quiet whispers of the men and woman behind her. Beth was trying to figure out why it would be so quiet if it was a sanctuary like the prison had been when Dawn crept up behind her.

"Come on," she said, startling Beth. "The body's getting cold."

Beth guided the bed down the hall while the doctor pushed it and he and Dawn spoke about things that needed to be done with various patients. She was trying to figure out exactly what they meant when they said she 'owed' these people and how long it would take her to 'pay off' what she was supposed to owe. As far as she could tell from listening to Edwards, everyone had a role to play in the hospital, whether or not they wanted it. Dawn seemed to be very strict as she talked about what she expected of Beth and what she was supposed to do while she was there. Every door was closed in the hallway and no matter how many corridors they went down, the only people she could see were police officers. There was absolutely nothing in the entire place as of yet that looked like it was a place that was thriving rather than simply surviving. At the prison, they were thriving; even with Daryl in the woods, once she got his head out of his ass, they were more lively than these halls. The only sounds that could be heard were the wheels rolling on the floor and Dawn's keys rattling as she unlocked a set of double doors.

"How many people live here?" Beth inquired as she and Edwards wheeled the bed in.

"Oh, just enough to keep us going," the doctor responded vaguely. "Some of us started here, some came as patients. Everyone has a job."

"Can't we bury him?"

"We only go out when we need to. It may not be the most dignified disposal system, but we work with what we have," Edwards said as he uncovered the cadaver. "We've managed to secure and guard the stairwells, but the windows are blown on the ground floor. Rotters find their way into the basement when they hear a noise. And if the bodies are warm or warm enough, they clean up some of the mess."

"Use everything you can use," she said both in understanding and disgust.

"Plus, it's the fastest way down," the doctor told her with a grunt.

He lifted up the gurney and allowed the body to slide off the bed and into the elevator shaft, Beth hearing the body banging on the walls on the way down. The smell wafting up from the elevator shaft was vomit inducing and it didn't help any when the sound of walkers drifted up to them. If she had been hungry before then, she had been thoroughly nauseated to the point she wouldn't have been able to eat if she could. The stupid rules made it to where the more she took, the more she owed, so she was doing her damnedest to only eat the bare minimum that she needed to. Even as lunch rolled around, she was sickened at the thought of food as she walked into the cafeteria. Dr. Edwards had asked her to go get his lunch and her day only got worse as she saw the cop that kept checking up on her. He seriously gave her the creeps with the way he leered at her and acted like he was the highest of authorities. The guy had even stopped by her room the night before and had been the only visitor she'd had and one of the biggest reasons she hadn't slept. He was standing over the tables with the food on it with a clipboard in his hands watching everything everyone was taking and writing it down. Beth tried to ignore his presence as she grabbed some tomatoes to go with whatever rodent was sitting on the plate.

"You're lookin' better and better," said Creeper Cop told her. "We had a lead on some guns, so me and my partner were pretty far out. That's when we saw you."

"That's when you hit me, you mean," Beth spoke up. "I was fightin' off a walker just fine 'til everythin' went black."

"I think you hit your head, little lady," he insisted with a smile that made Beth's skin crawl. "Yeah, one was eyein' your thighs when we showed up. But, I got there first. Jacked that rotter up. I'm Gorman." When Beth refused to answer he looked at the food and said, "When someone does you a favor, it's a courtesy to show some appreciation. Unless you want me to write down everythin' you're takin'."

"Ain't a favor when you're the reason I'm here," Beth shot back as she put the tongs down and looked at the man in irritation and disgust before rolling her eyes and taking the tray from the kitchen.

Beth sighed as she walked down the corridor carrying the tray and slowed as she approached Dawn's office, the woman talking to the boy who had been mopping the floors. There really was nothing that she could do yet about her situation and could only continue her way to the doctor's messy office. His desk was covered in books with a record playing in the corner and random things piled everywhere. There was a large oil painting on an easel somewhat in the corner taking up a lot of space and the walls were lined with bookshelves or various medical equipment. There were even more books and equipment piled up on the floor and around his desk to the point that there was barely any room for his meal. Only a single lamp illuminated his office and the two chairs in front of his desk where he took consultations and answered questions from visiting patients, although one was covered in books as well. She walked into the office and noticed he was still reading the same book he had been since they had finally finished his rounds and sighed. It was absolutely boring to sit around the office while he read with nothing but the faint sound of music to bide the time with.

"I used to feel like I was drowning in research," he told Beth when she put the tray down. "Now the oceans are dry and I'm suffocating in boredom."

"You're lucky," Beth countered. "If you feel safe enough to be bored, you're lucky."

The man looked over at the record player and pointed to it, "That's Junior Kimbrough. You like it?"

Beth nodded her head and gave him a small smile, "I can't remember the last time I heard a record. I have a friend, Tea, she'd love it. She always loved music."

"It's one of the few perks I get for being the only doctor here," he told her. "And T? Would that be T as in the letter or Tea as in the drink? Important question."

"As in the drink, why?" Beth asked, feigning ignorance and inwardly grinning like the Cheshire cat that he had taken the bait.

"Well, the officers talk about a Tea from time to time, especially Shepard and Lamson. Oh, guinea pig," Edwards said unenthusiastically at the plate in front of him. "Where's your food?"

"The more I take, the more I owe, right?" she asked. "I wanna get back to my friends as fast as possible, including Tea."

Edwards thought for a moment before clearing his desk in front of one of the chairs and ushering her to sit, asking "Have you ever tried guinea pig?" When Beth shook her head, he smiled his reply, "I didn't think so. I wouldn't call it a perk, but it is relatively sustainable. Dawn doesn't have to know. You know, if your Tea is the same as Shepard's Tea, you're probably going to get out of here a lot sooner than you think. If you can believe what Lamson says, she wasn't even a cop when she went after Shepard and her then partner because she 'had a gut feeling,'" he said with air quotes. "Saved Shepard's life that day. Don't really know the details, just that she fought the perp physically after he'd gunned down Shepard. Hit her vest, but still. Swore up and down the perp was about to finish her off when Tea showed up like a bat out of hell."

"Yeah, that sounds like Tea," Beth chuckled, sitting down and taking the offered bite of meat; Ani had said something similar, though she had been sparse on the details herself.

"Well?" Edwards asked as she chewed.

"Different from squirrel," Beth admitted.

"Good enough for Peru," the doctor chuckled, he and Beth sharing a short laugh as she looked at the oil painting. "It's a Caravaggio," he told her. "I found it on the street outside of the High. Like trash."

"It's beautiful," commented Beth.

"It doesn't have a place anymore. Art isn't about survival. It's about transcendence. Being more than animals. Rising above."

"We can't do that anymore?" Beth asked, intrigued by his way of thinking.

Edwards looked back at her with a perplexed look, "I don't know."

"I sing," Beth said. "I still sing. Tea does too. She braids these little bracelets and does people's hair up nice and pretty. There's still beauty in the world to be seen and heard and made."

The sound of running footsteps alerted that they weren't alone, Beth sitting a little straighter in the chair as Edwards fully turned to face the door. Beth hoped that she wouldn't get caught, even if it was just a bite, and have more that she would have to pay back. She was lucky enough to know that she would be able to use Ani's old name to gain some standing, but it was hard. After so long of calling her Ani and the reason why they had started calling her that, it was difficult to keep herself from slipping. It was also exciting, though, to think that she might learn some new stories about Ani when the woman didn't really talk about her life so much as what she had lived through. She was great at giving advice and using her life experiences to drive home a point, but that didn't mean she was very forthwith about the details behind those experiences. If there were people who had known Ani when the woman had been her age, she'd get more of a picture of what she had been like than anyone else. Being able to learn more about Ani was about the only good thing that would come out of this place as Dawn ran in and demanded they go with her to another room.

"We got a new one!" she shouted as a couple of officers were quickly maneuvering the severely bruised and bloodied man into an open room.

"Found his wallet. His name is Gavin Trevitt," one of the officers said.

"He fell from a first floor apartment trying to get away from some," the female officer, Shepard, according to the name tag on her uniform, announced.

I gotta talk to her, Beth thought as she noticed the first officer bend towards Dawn whispering in her ear as Edwards got to work. The woman looked stern but also had a different kind of authority about her than Dawn did. Where Dawn looked like she was trying too hard to keep whatever authority she had over the other officers, Shepard simply held herself in a higher standard naturally. She held herself in the same way Ani and Merle held themselves and it made Beth wonder why she wasn't the one in charge. She looked so much more capable of keeping everything in order just looking at her and yet it was Dawn, who looked almost like a scared rat next to Shepard, that was in charge. Whatever it was that kept Dawn in the position of power, her demand to keep the man on the gurney alive would take more supplies than they could spare. Beth could tell that most of the officers already knew that it would take a miracle, but that wasn't deterring their resolve to heal this man in particular.

"He's lost a lot of blood and his vitals are dropping. I don't think he's going to make it," Edwards tried to reason.

"We've already given him gas-" the male officer said before being cut off by Dawn.

"I got this," she said, almost in a threatening manner as she got right into Edwards's face. "You said you wanted to save people, so save him."

"I don't even know the extent of his injuries," Edwards argued. "Look, this one's a loser. You said you didn't want me wasting resources."

"Well, today I want you to try," Dawn countered, obviously wanting something in particular that had to do with the man on the gurney.

"Okay, plug the EKG and the ultrasound into that battery pack," he told Beth after a moment of distress. "Good, good, good. Now attach it to the patient, Tension pneumothorax. Punctured lung," he narrated as she did as she was told, digging in his pocket to give her a key. "Beth, I need a large hollow needle in that cabinet."

Dawn's impatience had her grabbing the keys out of his hand before he could even finish showing Beth which cabinet he was talking about. She grabbed the needle out and tore it out of its packaging before handing it to Edwards, who simply took the plunger out and jammed the needle into the man's chest. Beth wanted to puke at the sight of the small fountain of blood that came out of the needle before a whining groan was heard and the officers looked on with mixed reactions. Dawn and the male officer looked almost relieved while Shepard remained indifferent about the entire situation. The doctor held the needle in the man's as Beth carefully watched all their reactions, Dawn looking at Edwards expectantly as he hung his head and breathed heavily. These people were so used to not having to worry about what or how others thought to the point that they wore everything on their faces.

"Is he gonna make it?" she asked Edwards.

"He fell from a building, Dawn," Edwards spat at her, annoyed.

"Is he going to make it?" Dawn reiterated frustratedly.

Edwards pulled up the man's shirt to show a stomach that had turned purple, "You see these bruises? He has internal bleeding, but I need a CAT scan to know how bad. And even if I could determine that, I don't have the tools to save him. I told you, this was a waste of resources."

The last thing Beth expected was for Dawn to turn around and smack her with her entire strength, opening a gash on her cheek. She wanted to punch her back, to pull off one of the fancy moves Ani and Merle would sometimes showcase at the prison with the more talented fighters. She knew she could land a few blows herself if she really wanted to, but she also knew that would do far more harm than good. If Edwards was right about how some of the other officers reacted to Tea's memory, she would be able to get the edge she needed to win this fight. And it was a fight in Beth's mind; she either had to make it out of this hospital alive or last long enough for Maggie and the others to come find her. She knew Ani would be coming, and Daryl, if they weren't already in the city, so she had to bide her time. The only thing she could do was psychological warfare, another thing that Ani and Merle had unconventionally taught her. They had been talking about it amongst themselves while she had been trying to get Judith to sleep and mentioned how power wasn't always about strength. Sometimes it was playing mind games by reading the room and finding out what the enemy's weakness was to use against them. They had talked about different ways it could play out and how it could start; one move could be the difference between taking power or losing it. She used what she learned then to smirk while looking Dawn right in the eye, a reaction that the woman was obviously not expecting.

"When Tea gets here and hears you did that, she's not gonna like that you hit her sister," Beth taunted, mildly thrilled at the way Dawn's face contorted into fear.

"Tea as in Titania Parker 'Tea?'" Shepard asked sounding a bit excited while the other officer paled.

"One and the same," Beth said with a big smile, still facing Dawn.

"Tea doesn't have any younger sisters, just an older one she filed a restraining order against," Dawn deadpanned, thinking for a moment that she had the advantage and the girl had just heard one of the others talking about the child that had been nothing but a thorn in her side.

"Yeah, but blood is thicker than water," Beth said, only for Dawn to pale as badly as the first officer did at even the mention of Ani; she could tell they were afraid of her. "She chose me to be her sister, like she chose the rest of us in the group. We're her family."

"Dawn," Shepard said. "There's already bad blood between you and Tea, don't make it worse. She was ready to have you fired before all this went down. There's no telling what she'll do now."

"She can't do anything," Dawn said.

"You'd be surprised," Beth countered with a sneer and a chuckle. "She's different from you. She's not afraid of anythin'. Not the dead, not the livin'. Nothin'."

Dawn paled before stomping out of the room, not wanting to deal with who she thought was just a weak, little girl that turned out to have a trump card in her pocket. If Beth was telling the truth and hadn't just heard a little bit of the gossip from the officers, she knew that there would be blood to pay. Several of the officers still talked about that bleeding heart that had lost Dawn her promotion all because of an error in handling the situation. She wasn't a damned psychologist; how was she supposed to know the 'perp' had just been having a meltdown and not actually trying to hurt anyone, just get to a quiet place? How was she supposed to know the man was neurodiverse and not deranged when he was unable to talk coherently and rocking himself? What was she supposed to do? All she had done was follow protocol and arrest a man that was wandering the streets as if he was some kind of addict looking for a fix. She had managed to get a confession out of him of all sorts of things that had happened in the area, from petty theft to destruction of property. It had been a pretty impressive feat that would have given her a promotion to be a Captain if she had been able to make the case stick. And she was able to until Titania Marie Parker, a tiny kid barely seventeen, showed up to do a mental evaluation after watching the footage and reading the case file.

She had actually had the audacity to tell the Chief of Police at the time that Dawn had coerced the man into admitting to the crimes. While the man did have a previous criminal record, it was also on record that his case was caused by untreated mental health conditions. It had been an honest mistake to which he owned up, paid for the damaged window, and went to court-ordered therapy to help. Tea had told the Chief that if Dawn had read his case file, she would have known all of that and realized that the man might not have been able to keep up with his medications. She also had told him that due to how Dawn had refused to believe his answers, she had begun to act aggressively, only exaggerating the man's mental health conditions. Why? Because he was too defensive about his innocence, which only made Dawn push him harder. If he wasn't guilty, Dawn didn't understand why he had needed to fight so hard to say it wasn't him. Besides, he had confessed to everything and they already had it in both writing and on video, so there was nothing left to do but take it to court.

Dawn had tried so hard to counter Tea's objections only for the seventeen year old to point out that being neurodiverse meant having different reactions to different situations. She argued that it was the same thing as a person who gets accused of cheating on their spouse; they will A) bunker down on their innocence or B) will attempt to avoid the conversation altogether. In the case of A, in a spousal situation, all that would be needed was to prove one's innocence, which was easy enough if they didn't cheat. However, if their spouse continues to accuse them, they will either end up blowing up and leaving or cheating because they have been accused of it so many times they decide they might as well do it. She argued that what Dawn had done was exactly the same thing and that the only reason the man had as bad of an outburst as he had during the interrogation was because of the woman's constant accusations. He had confessed out of anxiety and pressure and had not actually done anything that he had confessed to doing; he simply wanted out of the situation she had forced on him. Tea had then given the Chief a thumb drive so that he could review the video of her own interview with the man in comparison with Dawn's and had given her such a disappointed look when he was done.

Dawn had been required to take six months of extra training for mental illness and neurodiversity and de-escalation techniques on top of a one month, unpaid, leave of duty. She wasn't allowed back to the office until the course was complete and was required another six months at the station doing paperwork before she was allows back on patrol duty. Tea had effectively ruined her chance of gaining any rank past Lieutenant thanks to the fact that she had made that mistake. One slip up, one little mistake, and the teen had been able to completely halt her carrier path for the rest of her time on the force. Several of the officers had started treating her coldly as Tea was the youngest in the station and had saved one of the other officers on top of seeing connections several of them wouldn't. She had started working under Eastman, too, one of their most distinguished criminal psychologist in the precinct, too, which had only further elevated Tea's own standing. She was more successful at the age of nineteen than most adults ever would be in their lives and Dawn was scorned by that fact more than most. If Beth was telling the truth and Titania was a part of her group, that meant that she was coming to the hospital if not already on her way. If Dawn did too much to Beth or treated her too roughly before she got there, that was it; Tea wouldn't let her off the hook with something as simple as a reprimand.

~x~

"Is she always like that?" Beth asked as Edwards cleaned the cut on her face in her assigned room.

"Only on her bad days," he responded with a sigh. "It's unfortunate for us that's the only kind she has. Oh, Noah left you a new shirt."

"What's wrong with this one?" Beth asked, looking at it and not noticing anything wrong with it.

"She, uh, likes things neat," he deadpanned, pointing to the little bit of blood that was on her shirt.

"You've got to be kiddin' me," Beth commented. "Says don't waste resources and we owe for every resource, but she forces us to take them? It's ridiculous!"

"I agree, that's why we all have ways of making her pay."

"Like your office?"

"Like my office," he agreed while giving her a small smile. "I'll wait for you outside."

He left the room, leaving Beth to grab the shirt 'Noah' had put on her pillow and unfolded it, only to notice a lollipop in the pocket. The small gesture had her smiling at the thought that at least one person in this place was genuinely nice and thought of others. While she knew the doctor didn't mean her any harm, Beth couldn't quite trust him, either, especially since he was also complacent in what was happening in the hospital. There was almost a clear line between the police officers that cared and those that had become thugs that, like Gorman, were sick in the head. She'd seen one of them hit an older gentleman, heard the stories about Joan, the woman Gorman was 'using,' who repeatedly ran only to be brought back because she still 'owed a debt.' Beth had been horrified to learn that because she knew that it meant Gorman was raping the poor woman and that running wasn't a guarantee of escape. In order to maintain her position, Dawn turned a blind eye, and in order to not lose his place, Edwards rarely stood up to the others. The good cops were kept on patrol most of the time so that the bad cops could run amok doing whatever they wanted and Dawn still got to look like the benevolent person she tried so desperately to seem to be. Beth had been carefully watching everything that had been going on throughout the day and realized, as she changed out of her shirt, that she was the only one who could protect herself. While using Ani's old name had given her an advantage over Dawn that she had previously not had, she didn't know how long that would work. All she knew as she left her room was that she had to get more information on who all she could get on her side and who she needed to avoid besides Gorman.

"Dawn needs you, now," the man stated as she came to stand next to Edwards having watched as he and Dawn dragged a woman into the room he called from.

"She's lucky we found her," Dawn told Edwards as he and Beth walked in, a large bite in the woman's forearm, before turning to Joan. "Whatever you were thinking, it wasn't worth it. You have two choices. Either we cut off your arm or you do."

"Screw you, and your little bitch!" the woman spat at Dawn and Gorman.

"Smart-ass whore," Gorman said, moving to smack the woman lying on the bed.

"Gorman, get out of here!" Dawn yelled, forcing the man out while the doctor tried to give the woman a shot only to be kicked away..

"It's anesthetic! You need it!" he tried to reason.

"Go to hell!" was his answer.

"She made her choice," Dawn said with a flat tone. "Do it. Do it!"

"No, no, no! I told you to leave me alone!" the woman pleaded as Edwards made sure her circulation was cut off.

"We're not going to let you die!" Dawn told her in a determined voice.

"So she can get usedagain?!" Beth yelled at Dawn. "You can't do this! This is wrong! Tea wouldn't-"

"Beth, I need you to hold her down," Edwards told her, taking note of Dawn's deteriorating face. "Do it now. Now! Or else she's going to die anyway!"

Dawn moved to hold the woman's legs down as Beth held her shoulders, all while the woman screamed, "I am not going back to him!"

"You don't have to," Dawn promised.

"You're a liar," both Joan and Beth said at the same time before Joan continued, "You can't control them."

"I will."

"You won't," Beth countered as she stared hard at Dawn while Edwards began to take the woman's arm off, Joan screaming the entire time until she passed out, wanting to cry and puke all at once and knowing how wrong this whole situation was. "Tea's gonna eat you up when she comes for me."

Beth stared Dawn down the entire time Edwards was sawing Joan's arm off and the woman had looked anywhere but at her or the bloody mess being made. Dawn was weak, Beth could see that now; she couldn't even face the consequences of her actions when they were thrown in her face. She might have the physical endurance of an officer and the strategic brains of one, but she was weak willed and had no real grasp of control in the entire hospital. She was only given the illusion of control because she was the highest ranking officer of the group that had survived out of the units that had been sent to the hospital to oversee the evacuation. The good cops followed what she told them to because she was the highest rank while the bad ones used that fact to their advantage and obviously threatened Dawn into complacency. Her system of paying what was owed was flawed beyond belief, too, if having to change scrubs a second time in a single day was anything to say for it. Beth was still in disbelief that officers of the law would be such thugs to the innocent people they were once sworn to protect as she took her soiled clothes to the laundry room.

"You okay?" a boy around her age asked as she entered. "I'm Noah. Of the, um, Lollipop Guild?"

"Beth," she said with a small smile, the best she could muster given her circumstances. "Thanks for that."

"Figured you could use a pick-me-up after this mornin'," he said while taking her old scrubs from her. "Guess I should have brought the whole jar." He turned around and grabbed her a second clean pair and handed them to her, "Here, these should fit."

"Thanks," Beth said, folding them over her good arm. "Do you know what happened with Joan?"

"Pretty sure you already know," Noah told her.

"No, I mean, if she'd've stayed, worked for a while, couldn't she have just left?"

"I haven't seen it work like that yet," Noah admitted.

"How long have you been here?" Beth asked, wanting to get an idea of what she needed to do herself to get out just in case Daryl hadn't figured out where she was and Ani didn't know she was missing.

"Just about a year," he replied. "Dad and I were both pretty messed up when they found us," he told her, showing her a nasty scar on his calf. "They said that they could only save one. For the longest time, I actually believed them. Now I get it," he said as he looked away at the irony of the situation. "Dad was bigger, stronger. Would have fought back. Would have been a threat."

"They left him behind on purpose," Beth said as she nodded her head, catching what Noah was saying without him having to say it.

"Dawn just looked the other way," he told Beth. "See, she's in charge, but just barely. Honestly, seen some of the other ones more scared to hear that you know Tea than they are of her. Gorman, he, uh, he's not too happy about it, though."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Apparently, your Tea put him in his place a couple times, by putting him on the ground. Dawn doesn't like her either. Wasn't happy you know her," Noah informed Beth. "If it was bad before, it's getting worse now that you've said that name. It's why I'm out of here when the time is right. I came looking for my uncle. I gotta get back to my mom."

"Where's home?" Beth asked, wondering is she could get the rest of her group to go.

"Richmond," he said. "Virginia. We had walls. See, they think I'm scrawny. They think I'm weak. They don't shit about me. About what I am. About what you are."

"Tea, I know her as Ani. But when she gets here, she'll take you too," Beth told him. "If we don't get out to find her first."

~x~

"Do you really know Tea?" Shepard asked Beth later that even when the younger woman was pouring chemicals for cleaning.

"Yeah, she's like my sister. Shepard, right? Heard she helped you," Beth said, digging for information.

"Yeah, just finished her degree to actually join the force as a forensic psychologist. We'd take her to crime scenes every once in a while to get a better idea of what had happened," Shepard informed the young blond, a small smile playing on both their lips at the tale. "Well, we get to the scene of this triple homicide over in the warehouse district, Tea in tow with a few other units and CSI group. Me and my partner go off looking somewhere, checking all our bases. We split off, making sure the perp isn't around still, and well, he was. Tea came running in like she was some sort of vigilante just as soon as I heard the first shot go off. Hit me dead center in the chest," the woman said, no longer simply standing with her hands resting on her belt buckle but talking enthusiastically about what had occurred and reminding Beth of her old high school friends when they were excited. "And here comes this tiny girl, and I mean tiny; about as tall as you, a little shorter maybe, and just as skinny. She comes running in like a chicken with it's head cut off and does this flying kick, no joke, over my body right into the guy's chest. So, I'm on the ground, winded, and this tiny thing is flying over me and just knocks this guy back as his gun went off again, a couple inches to the side of my face! Like, she not only made him miss his shot, but she also managed to disarm and detain him before my partner got there. Said she had a feeling I was in trouble, so she came to check. Saved my life over a gut feeling."

"That does sound like her," Beth said, realizing that Ani had been the way she was about fighting for those she chose to far longer than just the end of the world. "She blew up a feed store close to the prison we were stayin' at. Knocked two people out back at the first camp. I wasn't there, I joined at the second. But one was a cop and the other a redneck."

"Redneck or hillbilly?" Shepard countered.

"Excuse me?"

"Redneck or hillbilly?"

"What's the difference?"

Shepard chuckled, "I guess she never had this talk with you. She, uh, she had this way of trying to make everyone better people, so she'd always try teaching us to think of things a better way, you know? So, we're all getting pissed about some redneck assholes who've been pains in our asses for the longest time and how they'd moved on out of the city. And here comes Tiny Tea, telling us that not everyone we say are rednecks actually are. Apparently, there's a difference. See, rednecks are assholes with a heart; they do the right thing while saying all the wrong ones. A hillbilly is an asshole and a bastard rolled into one; usually the sexist, racist, prejudiced assholes."

"Oh, that makes sense. I don't know about back then. Probably hillbilly from what I've been told, but he's just a redneck now. Tea straightened him out pretty well."

"Now that I can believe."

"Shepard, you've already pulled a double," Dawn said, walking in with a tray a few moments later after the two in the room had fallen back into silence, Shepard not wanting Dawn to hear her talking about Tea. "I've got it from here."

"Yes, ma'am," she said. "Thanks," she stated as she left the room with a look of sympathy to Beth.

"I know you didn't have breakfast. Or lunch. Peace treaty?" Dawn offered Beth as she walked further into the room and placed the tray down on a shelf.

"I don't need much," Beth told her. "I'm not stayin' any longer than you make me. Or than it takes for Tea to show up."

Dawn just gave Beth a look, one that reminded Beth of how her mother would look sometimes when she didn't want to scold Beth but she was still in trouble. She moved over and sat down next to the shelving unit and patted the spot next to her for Beth to sit down. The only reason Beth gave in to the silent order was because she didn't want to wind up with another slap to the face for something she didn't do. However, that's all she did, staring at the food hungrily but not wanting to eat so that she wouldn't owe for even more than she now did for the scrubs alone. Dawn watched Beth, wondering if there was a way she could use the girl to get rid of the 'Tea' problem the hospital was having at the moment, especially her officers. The last thing she needed was them thinking the young know-it-all was going to march in and take over to set things straight. Honestly, Dawn couldn't believe that even after the world had become something unrecognizable the brat was still being a thorn in her side. She needed to make sure that Beth knew her place and what she was expected to do and how she needed to behave. The biggest thing the girl needed to learn was that she would not be intimidated by a nothing like her and that even if she knew Tea, it didn't change anything. Dawn couldn't use the hard way when it came to Beth and thought that maybe a gentler approach to the girl would get her to understand and stop talking about Titania Parker.

"You know, you shouldn't see this as a sentence," Dawn attempted to placate Beth. "I'm giving you food, clothes, protection. When have those things ever been free?"

"When I was with Tea. She never wrote down what I ate or made me pay for it. Didn't keep me in the camp 'cause I 'owed her' even if I didn't ask for help nor 'cause it was her people that put me in it, unlike some," Beth said snidely. "I will leave here."

"You needed my help."

"Only because your people hit me with their car and then brought me here!"

"Try to look at the good we're doing. Hard as it was, we saved Joan's life-"

"For her to get raped again?" Beth asked, disgusted. "I think Tea'd agree with me when I say I'd rather let her die. At least she chose to do that. At least it wasn't forced on her."

"Look, I'm keeping all of us going here. That is not a small thing."

"You're keepin' yourself goin', you mean. I haven't seen you do one thing in this place that helps the people who are here yet! All you do is help yourself and ignore your officers' misconduct."

Dawn was getting fed up with Beth's attitude, "You're just as stubborn as Tea. I was doubting you knew her, to be honest. But you pick everything apart just as good as she does. It's taken a lot to get us here, Beth. What Tea would or wouldn't do doesn't matter."

"I think it does," Beth interrupted again. "She wouldn't let a woman be raped just because a man intimidated her."

"When we're finally rescued, it won't matter," Dawn defended.

"It won't matter?!" Beth asked in shock and absolute fury. "It will matter to the women who's lives and bodies you've let get destroyed because you refused to stand up for them! There won't be a damn rescue anyway! You're lettin' people get hurt because you're a dumbass believin' a pipe dream!"

"There are still people like us in this world, Beth! People trying to rebuild and keep going! If you really want to get out of here, fine, keep working to pay off what you owe and you'll be released in no time if that's what you want."

"It is."

"Then you gotta eat," Dawn reasoned.

"I'll never pay off what I owe if I keep takin', which is the whole point of the system, isn't it?" Beth countered. "Force us to keep takin' 'cause we have to and add even more than we take just so you can keep yourself feelin' powerful. Tea will be comin' to get me. And when she gets here, you best hope she's in a good mood."

"Eat," Dawn repeated as she left the room angrily before she did something she'd regret to the teen, leaving the tray there.

~x~

Beth was in her assigned room thinking about her conversation with Joan the night before and how she had at least been able to give her a little bit of comfort while humming. The woman had confirmed what Beth had suspected herself, that Dawn was a coward who had the ability to control the cops under her watch but chose not to. It was easier to let the officers do whatever they wanted because they were officers than to control them and protect the people. Now Beth had a better understanding of what Ani meant when she said pretty faces hid ugly hearts; Dawn pretended to be a boon to others while she was actually just feeding lambs to the slaughter. The more she learned about the place, the more she was certain that she had to stand up for the people here and hopefully do more than just escape. She had ended up sleeping better last night than the previous one since her stomach was full and Dawn had assured her earlier it wouldn't be charged this time. All she had to do was be a good girl and keep doing what she was told and she would pay off her debt in no time. Beth knew that was a lie as she looked out of the window, remembering that she still had the lollipop as her stomach started rumbling again. She went to grab it from under her bed only to find it missing even after she raised the mattress higher until a voice behind her made her jump and quickly turn around.

"Looking for something?" Gorman asked as he pulled her sucker out of his breast pocket and opened it. "This is yours, right? Mm. Sour apple. Like the kind Dawn acquired from pediatrics. Suppose you could have a taste," he walked up and tried to corner her.

Beth had learned enough to never give up the high ground and quickly maneuvered around the bed so that it was between the two of them before lying through her teeth, "It ain't mine. I was just tucking my sheet in. You better keep your hands to yourself."

"Really now?" Gorman said, putting the sucker back in his mouth and slowly walking around the bed. "'Cause I just want to be sure I'm returnin' this to its rightful owner."

"That would be you," Beth said as she continued to move, hoping that she could keep up with the lie or find a way to get out of the room before the pervert had a chance to grab at her. "I didn't open it. It wasn't mine. You opened it and started eatin' it. That makes it yours."

"Leave her alone," Edwards said, storming into the room as Gorman started moving towards Beth again.

"The girl should've been mine," the officer said as he stopped in his movements and leered at Beth.

"Nobody's yours, Gorman," the doctor spat at him. "Nobody. And if you think you're getting Joan back-"

"Oh, I'm getting her back," Gorman said, spinning around to point the sucker at Edwards. "You think Dawn's gonna stop me?"

"I will," Beth told him. "So will Tea. Bet she's already on her way here."

"Oh, you'd like that wouldn't you. Keep threatening with her name, I dare you," Gorman told Beth when he looked back around to her.

"She trained me how to beat guys like you," Beth somewhat fibbed; she had trained her, but Beth couldn't remember much because she had made Judith a priority over her own safety.

"Uh-huh," the man said, though his face was visibly paler and the cocky smile had turned into a frown. "I'm sure she did."

"Even if she doesn't, I will," Edwards cut in.

Gorman scoffed, turning and walking to Edwards, "You steppin' up, doc?"

"What happens when you get sick, Gorman? When you get an infection? When you get bit?"

"Hmm," Gorman said. "I think there's gonna be somebody. Somebody who ain't you."

"Gorman," Dawn called from the doorway.

"And maybe somebody in charge who ain't her," he said before looking back at Beth and winking before putting the lollipop back in his mouth.

"Why do you stay?" Beth asked the doctor, thoroughly annoyed by his cowardice; Merle had been right when he'd told her that once that as soon as a person showed their true colors, they would prove their worth. "You could leave whenever you want. Why do you stay here?"

Edwards considered Beth's words for a minute before telling her to follow him and leading her down a flight of stairs and through another corridor. He took her to the first and only opening she had seen the entire time but it was grated shut with thick steel gating and pipes. Beth could understand that this opening was barred, but it couldn't be the only exit out of the hospital that was available. There had to be somewhere else that wasn't barred or hindered or surrounded by walkers. She might have to fight her way out through the walkers, but if she was quick enough and they were spread out enough, she would be ablet o find shelter. It didn't matter if Edwards wasn't willing to leave, she would leave as soon as she possibly could. The man bringing her down into the lower levels only helped her to get a better idea of the layout of the hospital which would serve to help her escape. He might be a coward as he walked Beth right up to the barricade before he started telling her about what happened.

"Welcome to the ground floor of Grady Memorial Hospital. This isn't a way out. There isn't one. Not from here."

"Why'd you bring me here?"

"Watch," Edwards he told her as he raked a metal pipe against the gate and walkers swarmed it, trying to reach in to get at Beth and Edwards. "When I start thinking about it too much, I come down and look at this."

"Why did you bring me here?" Beth asked again. "To prove that you're a coward?"

The doctor just looked at Beth as if she already knew the answer, "You asked why I stayed. Come on, let me tell you a story," he said as he lead her up to the roof. "When everything started, Dawn reported to a guy named Hanson. They had orders to clear the hospital and move everyone to Butler Park. It was close to midnight when we heard the jets, the bombs. The screams," he said as he showed her what had become of Atlanta from more than just a window, the city a burned out husk of what it once was. "I was on the third floor and Dawn and Hanson's teams were doing a final sweep. And we knew it was bad. Just didn't know how bad until we came up here. The city had fallen. And everyone we evacuated they were just gone. We kept mostly to ourselves at first, until the food ran out. We started going out on runs, a few of us at a time. We'd see people who needed help. Barely holding on. But we were barely holding on ourselves. There came a time I couldn't look away anymore. I found this kid. Napalm burns on his clothes, his skin. Dawn said we couldn't spare the resources. So we struck a deal. I'd use what I could to heal him and he'd compensate us for those resources through service."

"But the service doesn't end," Beth reasoned. "You're not the problem."

Edwards scoffed and nodded his head, "We lost people. That was the problem. Hanson cracked. He made some calls and got some people killed. Dawn took care of things. She took care of him. She saw us past it. Kept us together. Kept us alive."

"You call this livin'?"

"We're still breathing."

"That's not livin'. That's just survivin'."

"The patients we've helped, they're still breathing. Outside these walls, out there unprotected? They'd be dead," he reasoned.

"Or maybe they'd live and be free from a life of servitude just to stay alive," Beth countered.

"Listen, we're not the ones who make it," Edwards told her, mistaking her to be the same type of weak as he was. "As bad as it gets, it's still better than down there."

"Maybe," Beth said. "But tell that to Joan. To me when Gorman stops listenin' and I can't stop him 'cause I'm not strong enough. Tell me that when you become a woman men prey on just 'cause they think they owe them," she spat at him in disgust.

"How about you look in on Mr. Trevitt and call it a day," Edwards said, not wanting to address that particular line as he'd already been thinking about it and how Gorman was acting. "He's stable, due for another 75 milligrams of Clozapine. And tomorrow, we'll start fresh."

"Sure," Beth said, leaving the man on the roof.

Beth was thoroughly annoyed at the amount of cowardice these people showed and the amount of crap they let others get away with. Edwards thought he had showed her a reason to let things slide, to let sleeping dogs lie, but it had only made her that much more determined. She shook her head as she entered Trevitt's room and took in the sight of the man. He was still on life support and unable to breath on his own, yet Dawn was still adamant that they treat him. She hadn't even been writing down the resources they were using to keep the man alive as if it didn't matter how much was expended. It was a ridiculous system that kept those on the bottom on the bottom and those at the top being allowed to make the rules according to what was best for them. Even when Ani was their sole leader, she made sure that there were people that everyone could go to for certain tasks so that everyone's needs were met. What they didn't have or couldn't find in actual medicine, Ani had done her best with the herbs she had to keep symptoms under control. It hadn't been perfect, and they had lost someone due to diabetic shock as Ani hadn't been able to do much for him. But here, every last little thing, down to the bed sheets she used to the scrubs she was forced to change the second it got a speck of dirt on it. Beth sighed as she entered Trevitt's room and quickly got to work finding the right medicine. They couldn't use the conventional methods of the medicines and they had taken to doing the same her dad had with the antibiotics at the prison. They had resorted to grinding pills with a mortar and pestle, adding a bit of distilled water and mixing them until the pill dissolved. She drew as much as she needed to give the man, carefully double checking she had the right amount twice. Beth was injecting the medicine into the man's IV bag when she heard the mop bucket entering the room, looking back to see the boy who wanted to leave.

"Still at it, huh?"

"Noah," she smiled at him.

He didn't get a chance to respond or even fully form a smile of his own before the machines started alarming as the man began seizing and spitting up blood around his breathing tube. Beth and Noah both tried to figure out what to do to help Trevitt or at least find out what was happening, but they were both inexperienced in medicine. Edwards and Dawn came running into the room to see what was going on, both of them attempting to get the man's vitals in check and stop his seizure. Dawn was righteously pissed as the man flatlined and they'd disconnected all the machines. There had only been two wards in the room when the man had died and she was positive that they had something to do with it. As Edwards began cleaning Trevitt's body up, she stared both of the teens down, Noah having the good grace not to look at her while Beth had the audacity to stare right back. Dawn was positive that the little girl who was constantly using Tea's name to threaten her had something to do with it. The only problem with that, however, was that she didn't know anything about medicine and therefore had to be told what to do regarding it. Dawn wasn't stupid; she knew that something had gone on and that Edwards was the one behind it. The man had felt as threatened as she did when Tea was brought up but had the means to step up and do something about what threatened him while she was forced to wait. Her rage at the entire situation had her picking up a pair of medical scissors right before she slammed them into Trevitt's skull as hard as she could.

"What happened?!" she demanded of the two wards in the room.

"I gave him the medicine like I was supposed to and he started seizin'," Beth said calmly as the woman looked back and forth between her and Noah, her face growing darker with every word.. "If you want to point blame, Dr. Edwards told you yesterday that he wasn't gonna make it."

Dawn fumed and used as much strength as she had to keep Trevitt dead to slap Beth hard across the face for the second time, "Speak out of line again. I'm not about to let things slip just because a ward can't keep her mouth shut."

"This ward will sign your death warrant," Beth spat back at her, earning her being roughly tugged from the room by Shepard on Dawn's orders.

"You've got some mouth on you, kid," the woman said with a small smile, slipping something into Beth's cast. "Keep this handy. Might be small, but it can do a lot of damage if used right. You may need it, and it was Tea's once upon a time."

~x~

Beth was sitting in her assigned room sometime later, having adjusted the small pocket knife in her cast, when Dawn came in and shut her door before she started talking, "You really think I didn't know? That it was you?"

"You mean Edwards? Doin' his dirty work through me? Everythin' with you is blamin' the people you bring in instead of the people you're in charge of!" Beth shot right back, standing and acting as if she had done nothing before the woman walked in.

"A good man's mistakes almost ruined this for all of us and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let that happen again."

"So you blame everyone but the one who's actually makin' the mistakes now? Smart. Keeps you from havin' to take control of the place. You're just as much a coward as Edwards is."

"Every sacrifice we make needs to be for the greater good. The second it isn't, the second we lose sight of that, it's all over," Dawn told her with a sympathetic look, trying to get her to understand why she needed to follow the rules. "The thing is, you're not the greater good. You're not strong enough."

"I am strong."

"How many of my men did it take to save you?"

"After they crashed into me in the first place?! If anything, you owe me! You stole me off the side of the road where I was waitin' for Tea and Daryl! You act like I owe you, but I don't owe you shit!"

"In here, you are part of a system. The wards keep my officers happy; the happier my officers are, the harder they work to keep us safe," she tried to reason.

"That's bullshit and you know it. You're just keepin' yourself safe so you're not the one they're pinnin' down or beatin' up," Beth spat at her.

"This hasn't been easy," Dawn said, trying her best to ignore Beth's statement, even if they hit the nail on the head. "There have been...compromises. But it's working. And after they rescue us, we're gonna help put the world back together. Because we're the ones holding on. That's the good we're doing here. That's the good you're doing here," she tried to reason with Beth. "That's what makes you worth something. But out there, you're dead, or worse, somebody's burden."

"Tea never thought of me as a burden," Beth interrupted, disgusted by what the woman in front of her thought. "She was called weak and pathetic a lot too. And look how pale you get when I mention her name. You think she didn't train all of us that were with her? You're waitin' for help that's never comin' while she made people who could survive anythin', who could make a life together. You're weak, and that's all you're ever gonna be."

Dawn had to leave again, before she punched the girl and knocked her out for being just as much of a fighter as Tea had been. And Tea had trained everyone the girl had been traveling with to the point that a teenager had the bravado to threaten her? Her officers weren't trained to deal with what could very well be a militia operation coming to rescue one person. Tea had always loved her action and war movies; even the Chief of Police could sit and have a long discussion on strategy with the bitch. On top of that, she had practiced several forms of fighting styles out of paranoia that her parents were trying to get her. She had met the Parkers once and had even told them how their daughter was doing and they had been kind and caring and had thanked her profusely for the information. If Tea had trained everyone to be as cautious and as practiced in fighting as she was, it wasn't a far fetch to believe that the girl had a relative army backing her up. It didn't help that more than half of the officers in the hospital would immediately take the girl's side as they all had soft spots for the young girl. Dawn knew that if Tea showed up, everything she had worked so hard to build, everything she'd worked hard to create would come crashing down around her with little effort.

~x~

Beth was pissed beyond belief at Dawn after she had taken her anger and aggression at her out on one of the other people. It was bad enough that Dawn had slapped her as hard as she had, but to take her frustration out on someone completely innocent to the situation was disgusting. The woman was a cop, but she was so corrupt that she couldn't even stand to be stood up to no matter who was truly at fault. Dawn was nothing like Ani or Rick when they looked after all the people in their care without asking for anything back and they never once let anyone be mistreated. The only time Ani had ever beat someone was when there had been a child abuser that came in with a couple of kids shortly after everything with Woodbury ended. She had deserved the treatment she had received and Ani had made sure everyone understood that, too. Beth knew that at times Ani could get a little rough with people when they refused to listen, but it was more either putting them on their butts, knocking heads together, or giving them a verbal lashing. Rick would try to negotiate between the parties at the beginning, but towards the end, he had let Ani take over as his anger issues continued to grow. Even with those issues, the only time he had gotten violent was with Tyreese after the death of Karen and that was partially because Tyreese had hit him. Dawn, though, lashed out as soon as something didn't go her way and it was always the wards that got the short end of the stick. She had let the officers beat Noah until his face was completely bruised with a split lip and a cut on his eyebrow. Beth felt like it was her fault that he looked absolutely awful no matter how much he told her he was alright and that she wasn't to blame.

"I'm okay. Painkillers, barely even hurts," Noah told her. "Dawn needed Trevitt for something. I know that's what that was about. Screwed-up thing is, she's trapped too."

"We're not trapped, and neither is she. She's just makin' excuses to turn a blind eye to the things she doesn't want done to her," Beth told him. "I'm goin' with you, when you go. I'm goin' with you."

Noah looked at her and nodded his head before telling her his plan, "Basement's the fastest way out. Any noise and we got rotters."

"So we won't make any noise."

"I can keep an eye on Dawn. She keeps a spare key to the elevator banks somewhere in her office. Think you can find it?" he asked Beth.

"Yeah."

Later that day, she was doing her rounds in the hospital when she saw Noah helping Dawn move some boxes. A look and a nod to each other was all she needed to find her way to Dawn's office and start rummaging around. She found Trevitt's wallet, realizing that he had been a doctor as well, explaining why Edwards had told her to give him the wrong medicine. Everyone here is dirty, she thought, her mind bringing up Shepard and how the woman had been trying to help, even if it was just in small ways, Maybe not everyone. She replaced the wallet and moved around the desk only to find a pool of blood and Joan's lifeless body lying there. The stump where Edwards had cut her arm off was the source of the blood, a pair of surgical needles lying next to her, presumably her way of death. She needed to get into the desk behind her body, though, and had to tell her it was nothing to get closer to it. It really wasn't anything she needed to worry about as she began searching the desk, a single drawer locked while the rest she could get into. Beth used Dawn's letter opener to bust the lock open, successfully finding the key that she needed with a proud smile just before the door opened.

"Hey there," Gorman said with a smile. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

'Always use what ya got,'Ani's voice filtered through her head as she glanced downwards and back up.

Stepping carefully around the blood and body of Joan, she told Gorman, "Dawn was just lookin' for a key."

"Was she now? 'Cause I was just with Dawn, and I don't seem to remember that happenin'. It's okay," Gorman told her, boxing her into the desk. "Maybe she doesn't have to know. Maybe there's another solution. A little win-win for both of us," he said as he moved in to smell along her neck, making Beth's skin crawl and straight up terror to race down her spine.

Beth looked over her shoulder while grimacing and trying not to let him see her distress, noticing Joan's fingers moving, Just gotta wait a little longer. I can do this. I just gotta wait.

Gorman stood back straight after getting his whiff of her, which still wigged Beth right out, and looked at her straight in the eye, "So how about it, Bethy? We gonna work somethin' out here? Now Joan, she wasn't much of a team player," he said, not waiting for Beth's answer before he grabbed her, whipped her around to where her back was to his front, his hand roaming under her shirt, up her ribcage close to her chest. "Lucky for me, you're not a fighter."

No sooner had he said that than Beth threw her her fist into her hand and used the combined force to elbow the man in his stomach as hard as possible. As soon as he took a step back winded, she stomped on the instep of his foot, knocking him even more off balance as she whipped around. She used her palm in an upward strike to his nose before lifting her knee and bringing Gorman closer with her hands to get his groin.S.I.N.G., Beth thought proudly to herself as the man went down to the ground only for the walker that was Joan to immediately begin attacking him. She knew she had gotten lucky that the walker bit out Gorman's throat or else she would not have been able to get away with stealing the key. Beth quietly, but quickly, grabbed the gun from his holster while the walker was distracted before leaving the room, making sure the door was completely shut. She walked calmly down the corridor, her wide eyes took in everything around her in her attempt not to get noticed. Beth must have looked like she was worried or something as Dawn, Shepard, and Noah came walking down the hall, the girl noticing a few drops of blood on the toe of her shoe. She was starting to hear what they were saying clearly and simply tried to continue down the hall as if nothing was wrong and hoped that Dawn wouldn't notice the 'mess.'

"Probably just the battery. I'll stop in and grab another."

"Okay," Dawn said as Beth went to walk by. "Beth? Is everything okay?"

"Oh," Beth told her after she stopped, as if she was just remembering something. "Joan was looking for you. I saw her and Gorman heading towards your office."

"Thank you, Beth," Dawn said before she walked away.

One look at Noah had them moving quickly to grab the blue bag from the laundry room that contained all the sheets they had tied together. They high-tailed it to the elevator shaft since they didn't know how long they had, Beth using the key to unlock the double doors before Noah got to work. He tied the self-made rope around Beth's waist after making sure it was tied to the wall's railing as a base. They managed to get the elevator doors open as screams broke out from the direction of Dawn's office. It was now or never for them to escape even though the darkness and height of the elevator shaft worried Beth. She wasn't like Maggie or Michonne or Ani; she had never had to do something like this and had never really done much to even prepare herself for something so dangerous. Noah was counting on her now, though, and she had to remind herself that everyone else could do this much at the very least. It didn't matter if she was afraid, didn't matter if she was risking her life; none of it mattered. All that did matter was that she helped in getting Noah out so that he could go home like she promised him she would.

"Ready?" Noah asked her.

"Yeah."

"Once you're safe, I'll climb down."

"Okay."

Beth slowly moved to the shaft and began her descent as Noah cautiously fed the rope down with her so that she didn't slip and he could support her. She silently waited as she got the bottom, watching as Noah began to climb down himself. He was about halfway down when a walker surprised them both by reaching through one of the elevator doors that was partially open. Noah fought the thing off even though it couldn't fully get a hold of him only to lose his grip on the rope in the process. It was by sheer luck that he didn't hit the concrete and instead fell into the hole they threw the dead bodies through, said bodies breaking his fall. Beth threw herself down into the bodies as well, grabbing the flashlight she'd dropped earlier as she stood and looked around. It was dark and the smell was vomit inducing with the bodies just decomposing without a proper burial. The bodies themselves had been ripped apart in some places and in others they were simply piled on top of each other with hardly a scratch. Beth couldn't believe how disgusting it was as she and Noah climbed off the pile and into the basement of the hospital.

"Can you walk?" she asked him.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Okay," she said as she handed him the flashlight and brought the stolen weapon out.

"There," he told her, shining the light on where they needed to go before a walker grabbed him.

Walkers in the basement came out of everywhere as they began to make their escape and there wasn't much room to move. Beth had no choice but to use the gun, causing both Noah and herself to become disoriented. The ringing in their ears becoming louder and louder the more she fired, each flash of light from the bullet discharging brought the darkness back on even darker. When they finally made it out of the hospital, all Beth could hear was ringing and it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the light as she ran ahead of Noah. As walkers came towards them, Beth moved past the chain link fence through a hole and stomped the head of a walker laying on the ground before using the last of her bullets to clear the way for Noah. She kicked one walker out of the way and shoved another as the boy hobbled past her on his way to the heavily chained gate at the end of the parking lot. That was the way out and where they both needed to get to in order to be free of Grady Memorial. Beth knew she wouldn't be able to follow him with how many walkers were between her and the gate and her lack of bullets. She still fought to get through the walkers, willing to risk her life to escape, until the walkers started falling around her. Beth started sprinting towards it only to be tackled to the ground by an officer just as Noah made it out, smiling even as he realized he would have to leave her.

He made it out.

~x~

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Dawn asked Beth in her office, Gorman's disemboweled body and Joan's dead walker on the floor next to them.

"He attacked me," Beth told her. "Just like he's been wantin' to since I got here, since they hit me with their car. Just like he attacked Joan. Just like he would do to you if you didn't turn a blind eye to what he was doin'. I did you a favor by defendin' myself. You don't have to turn a blind eye while other women are raped in front of you. While you let it happen."

"So that we make it!"

"No one's comin', Dawn!" Beth spat. "No one's comin' to rescue you! You're all gonna die and you let this happen for nothin'! The only rescue comin' is for me! Tea will come here, Noah'll find her, and she will find out what you've done. And when she does, she's gonna kill you for it."

Dawn stared at her for a few minutes before looking down at the picture of her and Hanson as her anger boiled while thinking about what the girl in front of her had said. Noah had gotten out, and if Tea was in the city, that meant that he could feasibly find her. She'd already put out an APB on Noah for the officers in the field and as long as they found him before he found Tea, Dawn stood a chance. She had thought this teen was a weak-willed, Jell-O-spined, little girl that would be easy to keep under control. Instead she ended up to be exactly the same as Tea had been once upon a time and completely unyielding in her beliefs. She wasn't afraid to say what was on her mind or defend herself if she was pushed to doing so and she thought very little of Dawn, that the woman could tell. Every time the girl opened her mouth and brought up the little freak that had ruined her career trajectory, it made her that much angrier. After a year of having things under control, a year of making sure they survived while waiting for rescue, all it had taken was a teen mentioning that bitch for the others to get excited. Thinking about how it was all Beth's fault, her anger won out as she grabbed the leather belt next to the picture and beat her across the face with it until she blacked out.

Beth woke up the next day and was given the day off in order to heal from the beating she had received the night before. Her face was bruised and she had new stiches above her right eye and her back and stomach had welts and bruises on them as well. It hurt to take a full breath because her ribs were bruised and her cast had needed to be changed because Dawn had cracked it in her rage. She wasn't bleeding anywhere else, but she also couldn't remember anything after she had told Dawn that Ani was going to kill her. According to Edwards, though, he had heard Dawn screaming about not giving up her position and ran to check on her. He had found her standing over Beth with the belt still in her hands, whipping the girl with all her might. Edwards had barely managed to get the belt away from her before she hit Beth's face again and remove her from the room. Afterwards, he had carried Beth back to her assigned quarters and tended to her wounds before going to talk to Dawn. Beth had been confined to her room for the entire day and was denied any food as well, though someone had snuck a granola bar under her door in the middle of the night. She wasn't allowed to leave her room until Shepard had come in with a sympathetic look and told her she needed to go to the doctor's office so that he could check her wounds. Beth couldn't help the small smile she had on her face when the woman snuck a lollipop into her scrub pocket right before she was left in front of Edwards's door.

"You're healing quickly. A couple more days and you should be ready to jump back into it. Well, that should about do it," he said, grabbing his equipment to put it away when Beth just calmly stared ahead.

"How'd you know Trevitt was a doctor?" she asked him when his back was turned. "That's why you had me give him the wrong meds, right? Why you had me kill him? 'Cause if he'd lived, there'd be another doctor, and Dawn wouldn't need you. She wouldn't protect you."

"Trevitt was an oncologist at St. Ignatius," he told her. "I knew him. They would have kicked me out. Maybe Gorman...maybe he would have killed me. I didn't have a choice."

"Use everything you can use, right? You're a coward," she told him before she looked away.

"You know, when they arrested Christ, Peter denied being one of his disciples. He didn't have a choice. They would have crucified him too."

Beth just leveled him with a glare like she'd seen Ani do so many times to Merle to get him to shut up and realize he was wrong. It worked, or at least seemed to, as the man turned his eyes down and walked away from her. He had known exactly what he had been doing when he used her to do his dirty work and knew exactly what Dawn would do. What he hadn't expected was for Beth to stand up to the woman to the point that Dawn was beginning to crack under the pressure and fear. Beth knew exactly what she was doing when she talked back to Dawn and knew that the more she got under her skin, the better it would be for her. Her chances at finding an opening to try to escape once again and this time actually get out of the hospital. There was nothing she could do for the time being since she still wasn't being forced to work until tomorrow, so she went back to her room to just wait and see what happened. She was walking down the hallway when she noticed two of the officers she hadn't talked to or met just yet pushing a stretcher coming down the hall. They passed her with the woman on the gurney being taken to an empty room and hope flared within Beth as they passed from her sight.

"Carol."