Zedler, M.D. // Daryl Dixon

Chapter Twenty-Three: Happy Days

•twenty-three•

Beatrix

It's been two weeks since Daryl's incident with O'Donnel, and honestly, things are going a lot better. Last night was his last day with all three shifts, and Dawn is being nice enough to let him off all day to sleep and make up for all of the sleep he's lost in the past two weeks. O'Donnel hasn't been a problem again either, though I think that Beth is starting to have trouble with Gordon. She'll tell Maggie and Glenn about it and it'll all be okay. If she doesn't, then I will.

Daryl also promised that he'd take me out tomorrow and give me a lesson on shooting and killing walkers in general. Though my body count is still higher than it was when I first came across this group, it's still pretty sad. I rely on other people to kill them for me, and I have to stop doing that. There's going to come a time when I'll have to woman up and kill walkers for myself, and I need to be prepared for when that happens.

"Lori, are you feeling better?" I ask her as I sit down beside of the drier. Today is Lori and Carol's day on laundry rotation, so I'm up here visiting.

"Yeah. I think it was just morning sickness," she smiles and places a hand on her stomach.

"That's good. Did you and Carol get the cake baked?" I question.

"It's still in Merle and Glenn's homemade oven," she laughs. "But it should be done in a couple of hours. Definitely in time for her party."

"Thank you so much!" I smile, "Tell Carol that I'll make Daryl take me out on a run tomorrow to get her clothes, and I can take you out now for your ultrasound."

"Beatrix, I already told you that I'd do this without anything in return," Lori sighs and wipes the beads of sweat off of her forehead.

"I know you did, but I wanted to do this for you anyway. You're about four months now, right? I'm sure you want to know what the sex of your baby is," I shrug and stand up to walk out the door. "Dawn will want a cop to go with us outside the gates though. I can get Rick if you think he'll want to be there?"

"He hates me," she frowns as she runs her hand through her hair. "But you can get him. The other cops can't know about the trailer, right?"

"Right," I nod and begin looking for Dawn and Rick as Lori follows me. "What makes you think that he hates you?"

"He won't sleep with me, and he barely talks to me. He's been sleeping with Carl in one bed and I'm in the other one," she explains. "It's like he won't even look at me. I think he's still pissed about the Shane thing, but I don't know what else I can do about it."

"I wish I could tell you what to say," I shake my head in frustration. "There's Dawn. Let me just tell her where we're going."

"Okay," she nods and stands back as I go to talk to Dawn.

"What do you want, Doctor Zedler?" Dawn says, not looking up from her clipboard.

"I want to take Lori outside. She needs some fresh air," I explain. "I'll get Rick to go with us and everything, if that's fine with you."

"Go ahead," she mumbles, still not looking up.

After another few minutes of looking around, we find Rick sitting in the break room, not doing anything. I explain to him what we're going to do, and he agrees to head out with us. It takes a while to get Lori down the stairs, but we eveuntally make it into my trailer and get her on a bed.

"The thing about these portable ultrasounds is that the screens are incredibly tiny," I sigh as I raise her shirt up to reveal her growing stomach. "I mean I can obviously tell what I'm looking at, but it's just harder for you to tell. I'll do my best to explain it though."