You Are The Wilderness

Chapter 9 - I Would Do Anything For Him

Kiara's POV

I was shaken out of my thoughts by Maggie rushing into the living room: "Rick! He needs blood!" we ran back to the room to find Hershel trying to remove one of the bullet fragments and Carl conscious and crying in pain.

"You!" he gestured towards Shane. "Hold him down!" I stood there; ready to do whatever I'm told, Carl's blood curdling screams echoing in my ears, making me cry along with him. I wanted to do something to stop it, to ease his pain but there was nothing I could do. I never felt so helpless in my life. Well the last time when I felt something remotely similar was when Rick got shot.

"STOP!!! You're killing him!" Rick yelled as he freed his hand from Patricia's grip clearly not able to stand his son's pained cries anymore.

"Rick! You want him to live?!" Hershel yelled back.

"Just let him do his job Rick, he knows what he's doing!" I tried to calm him down.

"He needs blood!" said Patricia, grabbing hold of Rick's arm again.

"Do it now!" Shane shouted.

Carl cried and screamed and then just passed out from pain scarring the hell out of us. Hershel finally managed to pull the damned fragment out. "One down, five to go," he said and dropped it into a bowl.

"Pressure's stable," Hershel announced. Rick was sitting in a chair next to Carl's bed doing his transfusion. I sat on the ground next to him, holding his right hand in mine and rubbing it with my thumb soothingly.

"Lori needs to be here. She doesn't even know what's goin' on." Rick muttered still in kind of a panicked daze. "I gotta go find her. Bring her back."

"You can't do that," Hershel shot him down.

"She's his mother!" he retorted angrily. "She needs to know what's happened. Her son's lying here shot."

"And he's going to need more blood," Hershel reasoned with him. "He can't go more than fifty feet from this bed," he instructed.

Rick stood up abruptly and his head spun from the blood loss. I caught him and helped him walk back to the living room and then went back to the bedroom to do the transfusion. I heard voices from the other room, Shane and Rick having a heated discussion no doubt about Lori's absence. Rick was right though. She was his mother and she should be here.

I heard the door open and saw Maggie entering from the corner of my eye. She waited with me while her father was draining me of my blood and we had a little time to catch up. I always liked her. She was kind and compassionate and just awesome. We were great friends back at college and I always regretted we hadn't had enough time to stay in touch properly after we finished our studies and now I was here, back at her father's house where she took me once to spend the spring break with her and her family.

"This place hasn't changed a bit," I said. "It's good to be back here even though the circumstances are less than ideal."

"I still can't believe you're here," Maggie retorted. "I missed you."

"I missed you too, I can't believe it took a zombie apocalypse for us to reconnect," I cracked.

"Hey Maggs, I have a favor to ask," I started.

"What is it Kiara?" she asked.

"Please. Can anybody go get Rick's ex-wife? Carl's mom, she needs to be here." I begged.

"All right. I'll go get her. You rest, I'll have Patricia bring you some food," Maggie said. "Kiara?" she continued making me lift up my head in her direction. "I'm glad we got to see each other again, in spite of everything going on."