When the dead roam - (Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 33 - Breathe goddammit

Her heart hadn't beaten in fifteen seconds. Her chest didn't rise. Her lungs didn't fill. Her limbs didn't move. The skin wrapped around her slim body was a sickly shade of blue and although she was still warm, there was no life left. She was dead. Her last breath had been full of pain. The final moments of her life, nothing but shrieks of sheer agony.

Her body lay on the cold metal table, blood dripping from her fingertips and adding to a small crimson puddle beside the left leg. The clothes that hung from her lifeless figure were soaked in blood. Her blood.

Denise stood over the metal table that her friend resided on, pressing down on her chest and crying as she frantically begged her to wake up.  She could feel ribs breaking beneath her fists as she added pressure - she was hurting her even more. She counted to five. Quickly she swapped to Lou's mouth, pressing her nose shut and breathing harshly before brining her ear to Lou's blue lips and listening. Nothing.

"Come on Lou breathe!" she begged desperately "Don't die on me"

Shawn stood against the far wall, leaning against the dark oak wood frame and hugging himself as he cried silently for his dead sister. "Please Lou"

They were hoping for a miracle. That somehow she would start to breathe and they could focus on treating her wound but the thirty second mark was growing closer.

"Freakin breathe!" Denise yelled, now panicking more than helping.

"Denise - "

"Shawn shut up and - holy shit. Oh my god she's breathing. Shawn she's breathing, grab me that syringe now" she snapped slightly, pointing to a small plastic tube that sat on the medicines shelf. Shawn obliged quickly, passing it to her and rushing to his sisters side. "Hold her down"

"What why?"

"Because if she wakes up, her screams are gonna bring them straight to us. Now hold her down" she instructed, flushing Lou's wound with saline solution using her right hand and fumbling with medical instruments with her left. She cursed underneath her breath, her fingertips sliding between different pieces of metal. Once she retrieved the desired  tool she tossed the syringe to Shawn and inserted the cold type-C hemostat into Lou's arm and gripped either side of the charred bullet.

As it shifted in her bicep Louise shot upwards, screaming hysterically and begging them to stop. She had never made a sound like it. Her writhing caused Denise to loose the bullet and she jumped back as a fist swung at her face. "Shawn I said hold her down!"

"I'm trying. She's stronger than she looks"

"If I don't get the bullet out she's gonna die Shawn. Now hold her the hell down!"

Once Louise had returned to unconsciousness Denise pressed her arm back against the table, once again reaching into the wound and carefully pulling the bullet back through the flesh. She held back a gag as she felt the muscle release its hold. It was out.

Denise didn't waist time rejoicing. She didn't even take a second to compose herself. Instead, she used her trembling fingers to thread a small surgical needle and pierced the skin around Lou's wound. It took a total of seven stitches to seal the hole in her upper bicep, each one a little more precise than the last.

"She needs bloods. What's her blood type?"

"I-I don't, I don't know. I don't know" he rambled, running his hands through his hair.

"What? How do you not- Okay, well what's your blood type?"

"O negative"

She smirked slightly "Congratulations, you just volunteered yourself for a blood transfusion. Sit down" she stated, breathing heavily as she pushed the long haired male onto a chair and inserting a needle into the vein on his arm. He winced as it pierced his skin, shutting his eyelids tightly and waiting for the pain to subside. It didn't.

"Is she gonna be okay?" he mumbled, refusing to look at his sister. Instead he focused on the crimson liquid leaving his body and expelling air from the long tube attached to his cannula.

"I think so" Denise replied, now calmer and more composed.

Steadily she supplied Louise with a port of her own and attached the other end of Shawn's tube into it, steadily allowing his blood to mix with hers before threading a surgical needle.

This time Louise didn't wake up - she didn't even stir. Instead she remained unconscious on the table, her limp body being poked and prodded.

But at least she was alive.

What do you guys think of Shawn? You'll be reading a lot more about him soon enough.

- Al