Red ~ TWD (Daryl Dixon)

So It Begins

Three days later I was having second thoughts about saving the ungrateful, bedridden redneck I was currently standing next to. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I felt the pain in my head expanding exponentially with each string of word vomit pouring out of his mouth.

"Merida, we've been over this. You – Are – Sick. In fact, you came close to walking through the pearly gates and getting a little one-on-one time with the man upstairs so do me a favor...take it easy."

I'd have better luck convincing him to inseminate a Minotaur, but a girl could hope.

"That's bullshit and I ain't gonna tell ya again to stop with the fuckin' names!" he roared, pointing at me as he sat up in bed, his face murderous. It might have passed for semi-scary if it didn't look like he was about to keel over. "Ain't never been sick a day in my life! I ain't no bitch!"

Ah, my favorite phrase. Shaking my head I groaned in exasperation. Suddenly the pain I was feeling wasn't so much in my head as my ass.

"I'm well aware you aren't a bitch. I even wrote it down the last time you told me so I wouldn't forget, but the 'I don't get sick part' doesn't hold water considering you can barely sit up." My air quotes really riled him up.

They say ignorance was bliss. So was ignoring all evidence clearly confirming you were, in fact, sick. Daryl refused to acknowledge the medication pumping through his veins was assisting in his recovery because according to him "that shit don't work on me". I guess his plan was to bitch slap the illness into submission.

He stated 10,000 times he was fine, but the makeshift hospital we created out of a storage unit said otherwise. Ignorance wasn't so much bliss as it was just dumb. The man was a real life incarnation of the proverbial ostrich walking around with its head in the sand. Except this ostrich was a redneck with a foul mouth.

We were all so worried about him initially we hadn't even considered the consequences once he began to recover. "Normal Daryl" was difficult to deal with, but "sick Daryl" played on a level just shy of the wrath of God. They said doctors made the worst patients. Not true. Sick, pissed off, surly hillbilly's made the worst patients.

Poor Carl was getting quiet the education. Daryl was putting together such creative cursing combinations even I was impressed. He was going to have a huge toll to pay when he was finally released back into the wild. Lori was keeping track of every word not suitable for children, and let me tell you that woman thought suck was inappropriate. She was going to need a swear jar the size of an Olympic pool to handle Daryl's outbursts.

"Can you just try and corporate?"

He continued to rant, curse, and threaten like I never spoke. Sigh. It was going to be a long day.

Once he regained consciousness no one dared ventured within 50 feet of the storage unit housing the recovering demon. Actually going inside, yeah, you could forget about that.

I tried to rustle up some volunteers in my stead but everyone I talked to would sooner clean the bathroom floor with their toothbrush. I suggested drawing straws, coming up some kind of rotation, even leaving him and running away, but they all laughed, patting me on the shoulder with sympathetic smiles.

Hershel handed me prefilled injections of antibiotics at specified time periods, handfuls of brightly colored pills, and wished me luck with a grim smile. I tried to bribe Rick into giving him this dose, but he told me to put on a helmet and some pads and get in there while laughing hysterically.

"Man, fuck this!"

He tried to stand up, hell bent on proving my statement wrong, but was stopped by a coughing fit that made his whole body rattle. He fell back against the pillow, his face red from anger and lack of oxygen. Just in case I wasn't clear he was frustrated he grabbed a pillow and tossed it across the room to emphasize his point. I watched the fluffy bag of feathers sail towards the wall then fall to the ground without so much as a sound.