Red River Blue
Chapter 33
Hershel carried his bucket of elderberries, racking his brain for any other natural remedies that he could think of. Ginger root, especially if it was boiled down, might help. The same could be said for garlic and horseradish. But the problem was that none of these plants grew wild anywhere in the vicinity of the prison. If they did Daryl or one of the kids would have found them long before now. When they didn't have their faces buried in comic books, Carl and Wren had been pouring over a book they had found on wild foraging. Anything edible within a few miles had been located and either eaten or marked down on a little map so they could go back later and pick the wanted food item once it was fit for consumption.
Hershel set his bucket of berries down near the door that led into the block where the sick people were being secluded. He wanted to get in and help them as soon as possible, especially now that his daughter's husband had taken ill. Glenn was a good man and Hershel had come to care for him like a son. He was willing to risk his own health to make sure the young man got the care he needed. But first he had promised himself that he would alert Wren's mother to what was going on between her and Carl. His first concern was for the two young lovebirds that were in the medical building with no supervision. But his second and more pressing concern was for the group as a whole. Hershel knew things would get ugly in a hurry if Rick's son somehow managed to impregnate Merle's youngest daughter. The two men had just recently started getting along better. Hershel didn't want that to change.
Most of the people in River's cellblock had taken ill. As Hershel entered he got a chill. The only movement in the place was the small flutter of the curtains that had been hung in the doorways of the cells to give the occupants some small amount of privacy. As he crept silently by, Hershel realized that some of the curtains were no longer necessary. Because the people that used to live in rooms he was looking into were dead now.
The cellblock River lived in was the noisiest. It had the most people and the most children out of the three blocks they had cleared for people to live in. A few days before Hershel had come by to fix up Merle's leg. Children had been running and playing. Mothers called out to the children and to each other. Now the silence was oppressive in contrast. For just a moment, Hershel got the eerie feeling he was already dead and walking through a ghost town. Then he heard a loud hacking cough.
Almost immediately Hershel felt his whole body go tense. The sound of a cough had quickly become the most feared noise in the entire prison. Hershel forced himself to relax and keep walking towards the noise. A few moments before he had only been coming in to talk to River about her daughter, now he was afraid of what he might find inside her cell.
Hershel's prostetic leg was slightly shorter than his real one. Because of it, he had a slight hobble to his step and often used a cane to get around faster. The quiet of the air around him made each shuffling step sound louder than it really was. He got closer, the cells passing by, until he was right outside of the room he knew belonged to River and Merle. The curtain to the girl's cell was open and he could see some of Wren's drawings hung up on the wall inside. A portrait of Carl caught his eye. It was quite good and had captured the serious look that the boy often had on his face when he was thinking hard about something.
Another loud cough came from inside the closed cell, followed by the sound of someone vomiting. Hershel took another step forward, bringing his fake leg down onto a board game that some of the kids must have left out. The plastic pieces scattered across the cement floor, making little ting noises as they hit the ground and bounced away. Hershel looked down to make sure none of them were broken. When he looked back up there was a gun pointed into his face. River hesitated. Then she back him up against the wall and shoved the gun closer to his face. The business end of it was touching his jawbone. But it was the shake of her other hand and the hitch in her breathing that scared him more than the gun. Her eyes were bloodshot and she looked on the verge of losing control over herself.
"Yer not takin' him down into that fuckin' death trap," she announced. Hershel nodded. Now he understood what was going on. Merle must be sick. And River wanted to take care of him herself. She wasn't going to let anyone take him away. Hershel didn't blame her. He planned on taking care of Glenn. That's just what families did for each other.
River pulled the gun out of his face long enough to gesture with it. "Go on and git," she told him, "and I swear if ya send Rick down here to try an take Merle I'll shoot 'im dead. I swear I will." Hershel wasn't sure who she was trying to convince, him or herself. She was sniffling and wiping her nose on the hem of her shirt with the hand that wasn't holding the gun.
"I'm already here," Hershel said. His voice was soothing. Calming. And River knew Hershel was a good man. She wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around his neck and beg him to help her. But she was afraid. Sick people kept going down into that cell block and only bodies were coming out. "Why don't you let me take a look at him?," Hershel coaxed. After another moment of hesitation River stepped back and shoved the gun back into the holster that was strapped to her belt. It hung lower on her thigh than the denim shorts she was wearing. They were so short the bottoms of the pockets were hanging out, flapping as she moved.
Hershel pulled the curtain back and braced himself against the strong smell of vomit. Merle was lying on the bed, looking worse for wear since the last time Hershel saw him. He was lying on his back with his arm over his eyes, the metal sleeve he usually wore was on on the bunk above him. Seeing him without it on was almost like seeing him naked. He looked raw and vulnerable. River was hovering close by, shifting her slight weight back and forth from one foot to the other nervously as she waited to see what Hershel was going to do.
Getting a little closer, Hershel tilted his head to the side and took a look inside the large plastic five gallon bucket that River must have taken from the garden area to be used as a barf bowl. Hershel expected to see blood inside. All the people that had the flu were vomiting blood, lots and lots of blood. There was so much that at the end it was even coming out of their eyes and noses. But there was nothing but vomit in the bucket.
"Has he been coughing up blood?," Hershel asked, glancing towards River for an answer. She shook her head. Hershel leaned and and pressed his hand to Merle's forehead. The man moved his arm and looked up at him. He looked a little green around the gills, but instead of the fever Hershel had been expecting to feel, the man was cold and clammy.
"Have you eaten anything that no one else ate?," Hershel asked him. Merle looked up at him, confused at first. But then his face twisted up into what could only be described as a rather sickening grin on his pale face.
"Yeah," he rasped, "Pussy." Hershel stepped out of the way just in time to be missed by the damp towel River flung into her husband's face. River's anger at his crude joke made Merle laugh. She was scared to death over his condition. This was not the time to be making jokes. The laughter only lasted a few seconds before Merle was turned over grippping the green plastic bucket for dear life as he emptied whatever might be left in his stomach into it.
"Serves ya right," River told him, though even her scolding sounded half hearted. There were dark circles under her eyes and her usually rosy cheeks were void of color. If she wasn't careful she was going to land herself in a sick bed due to sheer exhaustion. Hershel just shook his head, trying to remember if he had ever seen someone barf and laugh at the same time before. Then River just sort of barelled into him. She hugged him around the waist and rested her head against his chest, muffling her sobs into the front of his only clean shirt.
"Is he gonna die?" she asked once she had regained control over herself. Hershel was impressed with how quickly River had gone from crying out a few choked sobs to being calm again. She was done crying before Merle was done dry heaving over his puke bucket. Not for the first time, Hershel thought about how much River reminded him of his first wife. Maggie's mother. She had been tough like that, and she had to be to put up with the crap he put her through. River had already backed away from him, embarrassed at her emotional outburst, but Hershel reached over and rubbed her shoulder. She reached up and squeezed his hand with hers since even smiling felt like it might take too much energy.
"How bad is it?" she asked, glancing again at Merle. He was done making jokes and had returned to lying on his back with his arm protecting his eyes from the dim light.
"I think he's got food poisoning," Hershel said. Every case of the flu he had seen had come with a deadly high fever. No one else had been vomiting. And he had seen both Merle and his brother eat some disgusting things. Food that other people would have thrown away. He had been telling them both for months that they were going to end up sick. It just so happened that his prediction came true while the rest of the prison was sick with the flu.
"I'm not dying," Merle asked from under his arm. The huge grin that lit up River's face made Hershel smile. It had been a while since he saw anyone that happy. The tears were flowing from her eyes again, but this time they were happy tears.
"No, you're not dying," Hershel replied. Before he could stop himself he added on another piece of choice advice to his diagnosis, "...but I think you better lay off the pussy for a while."
As Hershel walked back through the empty cell block he heard laughter behind him. This was chased by the sound of Merle vomiting again and then River laughing harder as she knelt in the doorway wringing a washcloth out in cold water to put it across Merle's forehead. For the first time since they found the first person dead from the flu, Hershel felt hopeful again.