Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 28 - F and a U

The doctor's office is in chaos. There are multiple guards running around to tell their version of what happened to Martinez and Merle since from what she had gathered during her eavesdropping, one of them had screwed up with the restraints which was the reason the prisoner managed to get close enough to bite that man's nose off.

Apparently, the two men are the soldier's go-to people with the Governor busy at the moment, which means that neither knows what to do with the girl who they had stashed in a random room as they sort out this mess.

Tessa had heard a random man with a gun tell another random man with a gun that he needed to go and stand guard outside the building the prisoner was at along with a handful of other guards. They are trying to stop another incident happen by having multiple people there in case the prisoner gets out again — which she had almost managed from what the girl has heard.

With all the conversations she has listened in on the last two hours, the one thing she knows for certain is that she is severely rooting for this prisoner woman. From what the child has gathered, this isn't the first time the prisoner has injured someone or almost escaped, and Merle is raging about how they could let this happen 'again'.

Doctor Stevens has had a very hectic few hours, from the man with the mutilated nose to other guards showing up with broken bones or bleeding slashes caused by the same culprit, it has just been one person after another. Between each patient, she has tried to get someone to find the child that she knows is still in the building, or to bring Martinez to her so she can inform him of the possible abuse, but there is just an endless wave of wounded people today or soldiers that don't have time to do as she asks.

The woman only caught a break once the only other person with a medical background finally showed up; a seventy-year-old man who was once a doctor during the war, but age has made his hands so shaky that people are afraid to have him suture their bleeding cuts but desperate times call for desperate measures.

With all the emergency patients taken care of and Harold there to hold down the fort long enough for the woman to go to the bathroom, she quickly searches the building for the child who she has caught glimpses of wandering around.

Most of the soldiers were useless having not noticed a small girl walk past, but there were a few who saw her and pointed the grateful woman in her direction.

Tessa is trying to find some food, with Merle dragging her away without breakfast then two hours of this madness, the girl is hungry, thirsty, and her head hurts from all the guards trying to talk over each other.

She has thought of trying to slip out and just forget the plan and run since a lot of the guards are in this building, but there is only one way to leave and Martinez is standing outside the door talking to multiple people in a spot that had somehow become the place for the soldiers to find him so he can give them orders on what next to do.

"Vega!" Doctor Stevens shouts upon seeing the girl's messy hair dodging between the tall bodies, the child at first doesn't register that she is being called and keeps walking, only turning when the woman puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh hey Doctor Stevens," Tessa greets with a small smile. The woman releases a worried sigh, thinking that maybe the girl had gotten trampled by how long it took to find her.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"I'm hungry," she complains as the doctor nods sympathetically at how long she's been held up in the building.

"Let's find someone to take you away from here, okay?" The girl echoes back an "okay" and lets the woman hold her hand so they won't lose each other in the crowd.