crooked heart → the walking dead ⁵

[ 028 ] purgatory.

CROOKED HEART.

chapter twenty-eight, purgatory.
[ season ten, original epiosde ]

THE NIGHT IS NOT young, but it's calm. The cicadas chirp in the trees and the wind whistles. There is a unknown peace of the Hilltop tonight. All is well.

"Help!"

All is not well.

All of her medical training, all sense, everything leaves the mind of Odessa Grimes as she rushes inside the gates of the Hilltop. Her daughter, her baby girl, is draped across her arms, unconscious with blood covering her entire body. Her right arm is missing.

"Help me!" Odessa screams.

A light comes on inside a trailer. Then another. And soon lights are coming on inside Barrington House and people are sleepily emerging from their homes.

Daryl is the first the realize what is actually happening. He gives no one an explanation as he basically takes three long strides to reach his girls. "Let me have her." He says as soon as he reaches them. Odessa trembles as Daryl takes her daughter from her arms.

"Brielle!" Comes the horrified scream of the young girl's other mother. Cori is there in seconds. She brings a hand to cover her mouth when she sees what's happened. "Oh, my God."

"Come on," Daryl grunts. He turns, rushing towards the medical trailer where Alden is already waiting with the door open.

When he's inside, he gently lays the girl on one of the beds. As soon as she's down, Alden attaches the heart monitor to Brielle's chest. Cori stands back, eyes full of tears.

"Des," Daryl says, looking over his shoulder at woman; tears steadily fall down her face as she stares at her baby.

Daryl moves over to her, grabbing her shoulders. Her eyes move to meet his. "I know you want Siddiq here but there ain't time. She won't make it that long. It's just us. You're Hilltop's doctor and you're their leader. But you're her mother, too. It's time to be all three at one time. I'm gone be right here the whole time. I ain't gone leave either one of you."

His words hit a nerve inside Odessa.

She gets to work.

After Daryl ushers everyone outside the medical trailer, only himself, Cori, and Alden remain with Odessa and Brielle. He instructs Yumiko to go to the radio and sound for Siddiq, tell him that Odessa might need his help.

Odessa is fast to undo Brielle's belt from around her arm. Blood continues to seep from Brielle's amputated arm. She replaces it with a real tourniquet, fastening it as tight as possible around what is left of her daughter's arm. Shes quick to clean it with alcohol to keep it from getting infected.

"Hey," Odessa says to no one in particular as she wraps clean gauze around her daughter's wound. Everyone looks to her. "Someone stick an I.V. in her arm. And who has A Positive blood? She's lost too much blood. She needs a transfusion."

"You do." Daryl informs her as Alden hastily sticks the I.V. needle into Brielle's left arm. Odessa's eyes dart to Daryl.

Silently, she wonders how he know this but out loud, she states, "I have to keep working on her, Daryl."