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Guest- It was indeed intentional! Absolutely love that you picked up on it!
Chapter warning: Themes of body dysmorphia and panic attacks.
Sorry this chapter took so long! I've literally been editing it all week and I still somehow both like it and want to set fire to it. Enjoy!
-Rhy's POV-
Someone is screaming. Someone is crying. Maybe, just maybe, they're singing...
When my eyes open, everything is quiet.
I'm lying in a bed, my shirt gone, warm sheets clinging to my bare skin.
Someone's holding my hand.
I try to sit up, but I can't.
"Don't try to move," Maggie's voice is here. "You're in the infirmary."
"Why can't I-" I try, my arms numb.
"You're okay..." Maggie coos. "It's just the anaesthetic wearin' off."
I feel drunk, only it's not the same as when we got drunk the other night. Woozy like a kite taken on the icy winter breeze. It's like my head is a million miles up, and my body never found the elevator.
"Is it over?" I ask.
"Yeah, it's over."
"Are you going to shout at me?" I mumble quietly.
"No, Sweetie. You did what you had to."
"What happened to me?" I ask, realising I'm not actually sure.
"Well, you bruised a rib or two falling down those stairs," Maggie sniffs, her eyes red from crying. "And your ear... most of it is gone. Denise says you'll be able to hear, except for..."
"Is Carl..."
"He's fine..." Maggie puts a hand on my shoulder when I try to sit up again. I make it a little further this time. "Judith too."
I let out a whisper of ease, sinking back into the bed a few inches.
"He'll be here soon..."
"Is there a mirror?" I quickly ask.
Maggie hesitates before holding up a small, handheld mirror. I look, and the top of my head is wrapped in white bandages, covering where I used to have an ear. I look like a mummy that someone gave up on.
"Can I see it?" I ask hesitantly, wanting to raise a hand to my head, my arms still not listening to me.
Maggie looks put off by the idea, and I start to feel sick.
"Rhys?"
I recognise the small voice, looking up to see Mikey at the door with his mum.
"Thought I told you not the infirmary..." I say.
He looks guilty. "Yeah... sorry about that."
"Glad you're okay..." I manage a smile.
"Thanks for saving my life..." Mikey smiles back, not achieving it as easily.
"Thanks for saving mine."
Maggie tells him I need to rest, and Mikey nods, walking from the room with his head hung. His usual spirited aura seems to be replaced with something more melancholy.
Deanna smiles at me a little before leaving too, her face full of creases and stories. "Thank you for helping my son."
When we're alone, Maggie pushes her head into her hands, shaking it.
"What is it?" I ask.
"While you were out... the horde- half of it broke off and made it back here. Alexandria is surrounded with walkers."
"The walls can hold," I tell her, trying to sound optimistic but coming off uncertain.
Maggie nods into her hands, but something tells me there's more.
"What is it?" I ask again.
"Rick made it back before the walkers... so did Michonne," Maggie tells me through cracks in her fingers. "...Glenn didn't."
"Is he-"
She shakes her head, putting her hands in her lap to stare at me. "Nobody knows..."
"What about Sasha?" I ask, my throat dry.
Maggie shakes her head again. "She and Abraham didn't come back either. Nor did Daryl."
I take a moment to swallow that. Trying extraordinarily hard not to let how I feel slip to my face. I don't want Maggie to see that.
"They should be fine." Maggie doesn't sound convinced. "They'll still be leadin' the other half of the horde away from us... should be back today at some point... they'll find a way in."
Somewhere in her wet green eyes, I get the sense she's avoiding something more. I consider how her eyes are like a pond of glowing algae, a wonderful green, hiding mystery and depth.
"Are you going after Glenn?" I ask.
She stares at me, staring like she's deciding whether to lie to me. Then she nods.
"You can't," I whisper.
"I'll be careful."
"I'll go with you."
"You can't..."
"It's not safe-"
"You can't come," Maggie cuts me off, careful not to let her tone stray too harsh, "not with your ear... Denise figures it'll affect your balance... your aim... everything. You need to adjust before you even think about getting out there again."
I say that I understand, nodding even. Feeling self-conscious about my ear, I go to tug on it, feeling like an idiot when it's not there.
"There's something you're not saying," I push.
"Rhys..." Maggie breathes, "I'm pregnant."
I don't really know why Maggie and I didn't argue after that. She told me she would go to find Glenn on her own. I wanted to scream at her for being selfish... because she'd leave me, put everything we just fought for at risk. I didn't scream at her, though. I didn't shout. I didn't make a sound. I forced a smile when I found it hard to make one, and she left.
Carl came by the infirmary about an hour after Maggie left. He'd stopped in the doorway, staring at me, staring for a long moment, full of no words and few expressions. Then he was holding me, holding me so tightly I could have burst, trying to tell me that it's okay, that everything would be fine, even though he was the one crying. Carl fell asleep in the chair beside me, only resorting to it after Rosita told him off for climbing into my recovery bed. -And Rosita, who hasn't left me alone since I woke up, has been silently watching every interaction I've had since. The only time she left was when Maggie spoke to me, breaking the news about her pregnancy privately. Glenn and I are the only ones that know so far. I might be the only one now.
Rosita is staring at me right now.
"Maggie didn't shout at me," I tell her, twisting my head on the comfy pillows to watch her in turn.
"She didn't," Rosita agrees.
"-she didn't tell me I was an idiot..." I add.
Rosita sucks her teeth, "Nope."
"-but something tells me that you're going t-"
"How could you be so estúpido!?" She finally bursts, storming across the room and stopping at the foot of my bed, keeping her voice down as not to wake Carl. Her silent yelling still, somehow, piercing.
"I'm sorry, I-"
"I mean, come on, Rhys!" She hisses. "Idiota!" she adds.
I go quiet.
So does she.
We remain in that quiet and stare at each other, and Rosita's fuming calms down after a while of being subdued by the quiet.
"Where's Denise?" I ask.
"Sent her to get some sleep," Rosita tells me, still scowling. "Today was a lot for her."
I can tell Rosita's worried, and I feel sick with myself... sick that I made her worried- her, Maggie, and Carl, all worried because of me. I think of something amusing and chuckle at it, hoping to lighten both our moods. It doesn't get the intended result. Instead, I receive a death-like stare from her.
"Qué?" Rosita grumbles. "What's funny?"
"Did you threaten Denise into fixing me?" I ask. "When Mikey got me here, I mean."
She shakes her head, walking back into the kitchen area, jotting something down on a clipboard and refusing to look at me. "Maybe," she mutters.
Carl wakes up a little later, and I can move almost normally by then, sitting up so he and I can sit with each other in a safe silence.
We can faintly hear Rick giving a speech outside, and Rosita cracks a window when I can't make it out, the voice coming from my earless side.
"Some of you saw it... they got back here, half of them. Still enough to surround us twenty deep."
Rick's speech booms over the faint sounds of the walls rattling. The distant growls of the dead.
"Look, I know you're all scared. You haven't seen anything like this. You haven't been through anything like this. But we're safe... for now."
A question suddenly comes to my head, so I ask Carl. "Did anyone else die?" It's sad and bleak, but I'd rather know now.
He looks at me, almost looking disappointed- catching himself. "Bobby... from guard post three," he nods. "Charlyne, Erin, and Mrs Neudermeyer... they all cooked with Carol," Carl adds. "Some others too."
"Do you know about Dani?" I gulp.
Carl nods somberly.
"I was looking forward to going back to class," I tell him.
"I know."
"The truck they drove into the wall," Rick goes on outside, "It seems intact. We reinforced it just in case." Rick goes quiet for a moment, letting a small amount of worrisome chatter spread through the crowd he's addressing. Then he quashes it. "Either way, the wall's gonna hold together... can you?"
Those last words cut me as deep as a thousand wolf knives. I hold my arms and pretend like I'm not bleeding from a thousand grisly slices.
The speech went on, and we stopped listening after a while. I did hear Aaron talking about how he thinks he led the wolves here. How they found a backpack that he lost, one with photos of this place inside it. Rosita shut the window when Rick went on to talk about the people in the infirmary.
Scott is lying in a bed across the room from me.
Rick put together a diversion group after the horde separated. Glenn was part of the group. I want to ask Scott what happened, but he's out cold. Michonne and Heath were part of the group too, they made it back, but the others- Annie and David-weren't so lucky. Nicholas is still missing, Maggie said he was with Glenn, and I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.
Now that news of my ear has spread, the room has become way too crowded with people showing concern for me.
"Dude, we can totally get you an eye patch... but like, for your ear!" Tara jokes.
"On a scale of fine to decline, how would you rate your hearing?" Eugene quizzes me.
"Proud of you," Michonne gives one of her brilliant toothy, and shaking, smiles.
"Glad you're okay, son," Rick pats my shoulder.
All the caring faces and kind words make me suffocate inside myself, all of them feeling about as real as the smile I give back. I can see everyone's pretending not to be tired, pretending that they're fine just because they're all worried about me. I manage to keep that stupid, fake smile, keeping it going for them, forcing myself not to sink into a hundred bad thoughts. Thoughts that keep making somewhere in my chest tight, and my breaths short.
I look around with a slither of hope, only feeling that familiar drop in my stomach, my chest getting even tighter. "Where's Sasha? Abraham- Daryl? Shouldn't they be back from diverting the horde?" I ask my question very quietly to Rick, not wanting any more attention than I'm already drowning in.
"They should," Rick nods. "They will be."
I keep smiling at them all, thanking them. The last thing I want to do now is smile. But I know I owe them that smile, the confirmation that I'm not dead yet.
Where my ear should be is itching under the dressings.
Rosita shows everyone out, telling them I need rest. In reality, I think she can just see me cracking beneath the bandages.
Rick takes Carl, insisting even when he wants to stay.
I want to go for a walk, my phantom ear still itching. Rosita thinks it's a bad idea, even telling me I'm an idiot in Spanish again, but she doesn't try to stop me when I get up, nor when I change into some clean clothes that Maggie had brought by. Rosita doesn't say anything as I leave the infirmary.
I wobble at first. Everything sounds odd... like it's all coming from the same direction. The bandage over my ear leaves my left side muffled.
People are looking at me as I shuffle down the street, staring at the side of my head, and it makes me itch more, my skin getting hot, that stupid feeling in my chest getting tighter. I stray off the streets and round the lake to avoid those people and their eyes, still feeling them from unseen places. Bodies have been moved to the graveyard, but there are bloodstains in the grass I walk on.
Walking is less peaceful than I imagined, so I go home. Hiding behind a tree when I see Aaron leaving my house, I don't know why I hide. I just feel like not being seen.
No one is on the porch of 99, so I go inside, shocked when I find Maggie sitting at the kitchen island, crying quietly.
"Maggie?"
She wipes her face, sitting straight and trying to look normal.
"I thought you were going..." I say sheepishly.
"I couldn't," she sniffs.
"Why?"
She's covered in dirt, mud, and dripping with foul-smelling water.
She gives up trying to look normal, knowing it's impossible today, tears coming back to her. "Glenn would have shown me if he was alive by now... Michonne said he'd find a way to send a sign..."
I smile, trying so damn hard to keep it up. Using up what little I have left in me. "Maybe Glenn just got stuck somewhere..."
"I just want to see his face, but I can't," she whimpers. "I don't get to know what will happen. I don't get to know why it happened, what I did right or wrong... not now. I have to live with that. We all do."
There's nothing to say. Nothing I can think of saying. I always think about what I would want to say in situations like these. I plan out long-winded speeches in my head and think about how I'd say them, what cadence I'd use. But now, I don't know what to say, so I just watch Maggie as she cries, that feeling in my chest strangling me.
Maggie goes next door to shower off what she tells me is sewer water.
I don't ask.
She tells me to change my bandages, the water getting on them when we hug. Maggie says she put some clean ones and medicine in the upstairs bathroom.
I find them.
I lock the bathroom door.
I'm alone for the first time.
I decide to take off all my clothes, my skin feeling hot and bothered at the idea of finally seeing beneath the bandage that's managed to keep me together in more than one way today.
I glance at myself in the mirror, taking deep breaths as I just look at it. The thought of seeing it hurts that certain somewhere in my chest, a tight, suffocating feeling. I decide it has to be worse in my mind, so I slowly unwrap the bandage, round and round my head, letting it fall past my shoulder and over my bare feet on the cold, tiled floor.
The feeling in my chest is burning now.
I still can't see it, my hair getting in the way. I try moving it, but my hand brushes my ear and I shriek at the pain. I get angry at it now. Furious with panic and fear... furious at the panic and fear. Enraged at every emotion making me want to collapse. I grab scissors from the sink and cut it away, slicing my hair on the left side of my head until I can see under it. And I do. I gag. Reaching out to touch it. A hole in the side of my head, dark and gaping, purple skin stitched and stained with dried blood and a pinkish puss that makes me throw up all over the toilet seat. The salty taste of tears finds its way to my mouth as I keep vomiting, running out of food, dry heaving over and over. Gasping for air. My mouth tastes vile.
"Rhys?" A quiet knock comes at the door. Carl's voice is there.
"Not now," I choke, trying really fucking hard not to sound like I'm dying in here.
"It's me," he tells me.
"I know... Just- don't. Please? I'll only be a minute!" I try to sound normal, knowing I don't. Knowing he knows when I'm not.
"Rhys..." Carl whispers.
My stomach hurts, and I think my ear is bleeding.
"Don't..."
"Just open-"
"Fuck off!" I scream at the door, "Justfuckingfuckoff!" I throw my t-shirt at the door with a pathetic thud. "Go away," I beg.
The door goes quiet. I know he's still there, though.
A minute passes before I crawl to the door, reaching up and unlocking it.
Carl comes in, shutting the door gently behind him, locking it again. I'm naked and covered in vomit, holding my ear with my hand, not letting him see no matter how much it's hurting.
I'm not looking at him. I hear him grab something, a towel being put over my bare shoulders after.
"I'm sorry," I stutter, covering myself with the towel, my stomach aching.
"It's fine," he tells me, meaning it too much.
"It's not," I whine. "I shouldn't have-"
"It is," he cuts me off, his voice calming and forgiving. Too forgiving for me. More than I deserve from him.
Carl doesn't touch me, and I appreciate it, knowing he knows.
"If I got mad at you every time you cussed," Carl snickers, "I would have cut you off the first time we spoke."
I try to laugh at him, only I'm sick again. Not near the toilet this time, splattering the floor instead, streams of puke between the tiles.
"I'm sorry..." I rasp, my throat burning from the taste.
"It's fine," he says again, moving to grab a cloth.
"Don't," I urge, feeling embarrassed now.
"Okay," he stops- freezes actually, crouched beside me and trying not to set me off.
Neither of us knows what to do, so we sit there.
"Can I see?" Carl asks, so quiet I could have chosen to miss it.
"No," I cover my head tighter, wincing at how much it hurts.
"Why?"
"It's not-" I hesitate. "It's disgusting."
He touches my wrist lightly, and I don't pull away.
"I know," he nods. "I know. I'm sorry."
My ear throbs, or lack thereof.
"It's ugly..."
"I don't care," he tells me.
I want to smile, but fear of being sick again stops me, so I take my hand down instead.
He's looking at it, his lack of reaction scaring me more than anything else could. Then he gets up, taking the medical stuff maggie left out from the sink to the floor.
"Know what to do?" he asks softly.
I nod. "Rosita said that I have to clean it with one of the gauze pads... with the saline solution on it."
Carl dampens one of the pads with saline, lifting it to my head. I pull away at first but let him on his second attempt. He's so gentle with it, taking his time and making sure to do it right.
"Okay," he tells me. "Next?"
"The, um, cream stuff."
My breathing is slowing to something almost resembling normal as I watch Carl pick up the pot of antibiotic cream, using a swab to apply it.
"Then the new bandages," I tell him, the pain in my chest less noticeable now.
He lets me do that bit, waiting patiently as I cover my head. Getting me a glass of water from the bathroom sink when I ask for it. My throat is scratchy and burns from the vomit, but the water helps a little.
"What happened to your hair?" he asks, looking at it lying above the bandage, roughly shaped, lopsided, and awkward.
"I cut it off," I shake my head.
Carl chuckles, but I manage to make the conversation gloomy again.
"I killed someone today..." I tell him, wrapping the towel around myself tighter.
Carl nods, "So did I."
"I didn't want to..."
"Me neither."
"I don't want to be a murderer..."
"I know," Carl tells me.
There's vomit on my clothes, the sweat from what I'm realising might have been my first panic attack is now cold on my skin.
"I should clean this up," I tell Carl, nodding to the contents of my stomach on the floor.
"I'll help," he tells me.
"No, it's fine," I smile queasily.
"I don't mind."
"I know, I just want to do it myself. I need to. Please?"
Carl understands that I'm still somewhat ashamed, leaving the bathroom and waiting for me outside.
Next Time: With more people missing, Carl and Rhys devise a plan.