CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | s t u n t

12/08/22

"It's the baby, I think I lost it." Lori said, sitting on the cell bed with Adira and Hershel crouched down in front of her.

"You haven't felt it move?" Hershel asked, sharing a look with Adira. They'd known Lori's pregnancy would be hard, and the closer it got to Lori's due date, the more frightening the prospect of delivering a baby in this world was. Adira had done rotations in the NICU and OB/GYN, and Hershel had delivered hundreds of animals during his life on the farm. But neither of them had ever experienced delivering a human baby without any tools or meds at all.

Lori sniffed, but continued on with determination for her baby. "Nothing. And no Braxton-Hicks. At first, I thought it was exhaustion and malnutrition."

Adira's head tilted at that. "You're anemic?"

Lori nodded, barely holding it together. "If we're all infected, then so is the baby. So what if it's stillborn? What if it's dead inside me right now, what if it rips me apart?"

Hershel cut her off. "Stop. Don't let your fear take control of you."

Lori continued anyways, her worry evident. "Okay. Let's say it lives, and I die during childbirth."

Hershel didn't want to think about that, and quickly responded. "That's not going to happen."

Adira grasped Lori's hand, willing the woman to feel better as tears began to wet her eyes. "Why not? How many women died in childbirth before modern medicine? If I come back, what if I attack it? Or you? Or Rick? Or Carl?" She took a pause, shaking her head. Her voice dropped into a pained whisper as she continued. "If I do, if there is any chance, you two put me down immediately, you don't hesitate. Me, the baby, if we're walkers, you don't hesitate, and you don't try to save us! Okay?"

Hershel and Adira nodded, seeing no other way to placate the mother. Adira had to admit, she had stayed up many late nights thinking of the same scenarios. She didn't see any path forward leading to any easy birth, and knew that the fact was that either Lori, the baby, or both were going to die. But telling Lori that now wouldn't solve anything. She had to be calm for the birth, or it would be even more difficult.

 Lori's breath hitched. "It might have been better if..."

 "If what?" Adira asked, shifting her weight to sit cross-legged on the bed and facing Lori fully.

"If I'd never made it off the farm." Lori admitted.

Adira knew she'd been having a hard time, but the road hadn't allowed them to sit still long enough to have these deep conversations. Every spare second was talking about what the plan was for the next day, and getting rest. Her eyes widened, but she found she wasn't surprised that Lori felt this way. All of the stress she was under in tandem with the pregnancy hormones were likely exacerbating her worries. Adira had been in the same spot for the entirety of the world's end just due to stress; she could not imagine how the thought of having a baby so soon would affect her feelings.

She wasted no time looking Lori straight in the eyes, and saying with as much certainty in her voice as she could project, "You're exhausted, frightened."

Lori breathed heavily. "Yeah, that's true. My son can't stand me. And my husband, after what I put him through."

Hershel interjected, "We've all been carrying that weight. All winter." Adira nodded, knowing what he meant. No one had come out of the situation on the farm coming to terms with what had happened. Beth had filled her in, and Adira was well aware that everyone left alive had a similar story to tell. Humans had changed since the world fell, and no one remained who hadn't had to deal with others turning on them.

Lori cried even more, thinking about the family she loved so much. "I tried to talk to him. He-"

"He'll come around." Hershel finished her sentence for her. Adira wasn't so sure how to help with this. She'd joined them in the cell to talk about the medical side of things. She wasn't exactly the best person to help with the emotional side. It's not like she had the best track record of maintaining relationships with people.

Focusing on Hershel, Lori quavered, "He hates me. He's too good a man to say it, but...I know. I put him and Shane at odds, I put that knife in his hands!"

Hershel just barrelled on, the wisdom he'd gained throughout his life shining through as he accepted none of what Lori was saying. "You know who doesn't give a shit about that? This baby. Now let's make sure everything's alright."

Adira nodded, and the two worked together to check out Lori. But the little voice inside of her head distracted her the entire time, providing no answers to Lori's what ifs. The one consolation she had was that they now had the prison. But how long would they hold onto that for?

Hopefully, long enough.

Adira lay back on her bed, staring at the bottom of the bunk above her. She'd stayed behind while most of the group moved out to clear more of the prison. Just Lori, Carl, Beth, and Carol were with her in the cell block. They sat in one of the bottom cells talking in a circle, but Adira was too drained to sit with them.

She was still puzzling over the interaction with Daryl. She'd almost died, and he'd told her to stay behind. She almost thought that meant something, but knowing Daryl as well as she did at that point, he was likely just being a dick as usual. Still, it was the most he'd said to her in months. And she hadn't missed the quick look he'd given her when she had announced to the group she would stay back while they moved out. There was no emotion that slipped through the cracks of his icy gaze, but he'd not once looked at her since their fight in the parking lot. At least, not that she had noticed.

She was shaken out of her thoughts by a door slamming open in the distance and voices in a panic. "Open the door! It's Hershel! Carl, come on! Get Adira!"

Springing off of the bed, she sprinted out as the group ran in screaming, Carl having opened the door. She wasn't downstairs yet, but could hear each of the members reacting to the situation.

Carol. "Oh my god."

Beth. "Daddy!"

Rick. "Go, go, go, go! In there!"

Glenn. "Turn it, turn it, turn it! Where's Adira?"

By the time Adira reached the bottom of the stairs, they had already wheeled a bed into one of the cells, the group squeezing in to all fit in the room. Someone was hurt - who?

She rushed in, weaving between people to reach the front of the crowd. As she rounded the doorway, she had seen Rick, Glenn, and Maggie, leaving T-Dog, Daryl, and Hershel as the potential members of the group who it could be.

Oh, god.

Hershel lay on the bed, bleeding profusely from his lower leg. Or- wait- where his lower leg used to be.

Holy shit, his leg was gone.

"What the hell happened out there?" she breathed, shock locking her muscles up.

Rick was knelt on the floor, helping Carol hold Hershel on the bed. "He got bit, had to amputate. You think you can stabilize him?"

At that, Adira broke out of her freeze and rushed to help, as Carol got out of her way. This was just like her time in the trauma unit - nothing new. Crazy things happened to people every day, it was just her job to make sure they got through them."I need to keep his leg elevated. Get some pillows!"

Maggie, shaking, gasped "He's already bled through the sheets!"

Glenn, standing on the other side of the room, suggested, "We can burn the wound to clot the blood. I can start a fire."

At that, Beth's terror quickened her breathing. "Oh, god, no please don't do this!"

Adira knew that these people had likely never seen a situation like this, at least not before everything. She had to take point. "No, the shock could kill him. It's not gonna stop the arteries from bleeding. We need to keep it dressed and let it heal on its own."

As she worked, she heard clanging and voices just outside of the cells. So did everyone else in the room, who turned towards the noise. "What was that?" Beth asked the question on everyone's minds.

Rick, the sheriff coming into him as he prepared to step out, said, "Prisoners, survivors. It's alright, everybody stay put. " He walked out, Glenn and Carl close behind.

Adira had to focus on Hershel's leg, but a small part of her paid attention to what she heard. Daryl's voice rang out across the cell block. He was alive. She hadn't even realized that when she walked in and didn't see him, she was worried.

Worried? Was she? About him? Maybe she couldn't call it that. But something had been nagging at her mind, distracting her as she took in the scene, and it had disappeared when she heard his voice.

She took a deep breath, and got back to work. That wasn't what was important right now.

"It has to stop eventually, right?" asked Carol, who Adira had left in charge of holding the towels up to Hershel's leg. She'd trained her a bit medically over the winter, and trusted her to keep the right pressure to stop the bleeding.

Lori helped change a towel. "It slowed down quite a bit already."

Adira stood in the doorway, trying to think. Her arms were covered in blood, and her muscles ached from trying to stop the bleeding. She had to switch out with Carol because she couldn't maintain the pressure herself. "Right now, we could use some antibiotics and painkillers, some sterile gauze. There's gotta be an infirmary here," she sighed.

Lori and Carol kept on Hershel, while Adira stared off through the cell block's windows. Hershel wasn't going to survive without supplies. But she couldn't leave him. That's when she realized, someone else could make a run to the infirmary. Noting the two women working together were lost in discussion about the baby, she turned to Carl, who stood on the other side of the doorway.

She beckoned him a little further away and kept her voice low. "You think you can find the infirmary? Glenn needs to be here for Maggie and Beth, and I need Lori and Carol to help me."

He nodded, glad to be able to do something. As a kid, he was always kept to the sidelines, and always felt like he could've done something. Here was something he could do. "But what about my mom? She won't be happy."

Adira gave him a half-smile, all she could muster in the moment. "Don't worry about it, I'll keep her hard at work. She won't notice. Slip out when you can."

With that, Carl leaned back against the doorway, and she slipped back into the room to take over for Carol.

She hoped he could find something. Hershel didn't have much longer.

Rick and the rest returned from dealing with the prisoners, arms full of food. As they came in, Rick beelined for Adira, who was in the cell with Glenn and Lori. "Any change?"

She didn't take her eyes off of Hershel, terrified he was going to wake up and try to bite someone. "Bleeding is under control and no fever, but his breath is labored, his pulse is way down and he hasn't opened his eyes yet." She wished she had gotten at least a little bit into her residency at this point. Med school knowledge helped, but she lacked the experience to adequately deal with this.

"Take my cuffs, put them on him. I'm not taking any chances." Rick handed Glenn the cuffs, and they clicked into place between Hershel and the bed. Adira couldn't stop staring at them. Before, she was able to pretend she was just back at the hospital. Now, there was a visual reminder that if she failed, he would become one of them.

The rest of the group filtered out, and she continued to fight the mental battle of staying focused on the injury and not the fear that fed into her, poising her to run out the second she heard a groan. It was a thin line they were treading here, and it was one she was scared to cross. In the corner of her eye, she saw Carl slip away from the group.

When she could do nothing more than wait, she stepped back and slid down to sit against the opposite wall. She wasn't even listening when Maggie came in to talk to her dad, too busy crying to hear anything. She didn't know if she could do this. And if Hershel didn't make it, not only might people blame her, but she would blame herself. All she could do was hope Carl made it back soon.

When she heard a door swing open, Adira nearly collapsed with relief. Carl was back. The rest of the group startled, though, since they didn't realize he had left, and it was eerily silent for it to be the big group coming back. The rest had gone to clear out a different cell block for the prisoners.

Carl walked in with a bag. As he walked through the doorway, Glenn poked his head out, trying to see what was in it. "Thought you were organizing the food."

Carl smiled. "Even better, check it out." He opened the bag, letting Lori and Carol pick stuff up out of it. It was full of medical supplies. Adira's smile reached from ear to ear. She could do something with this.

Then she heard Lori. "Where did you get this?"

When he replied, Carl sounded proud of himself. As he should be, thought Adira. "Found the infirmary. Wasn't much left, but I cleared it out."

Adira smiled again, but Lori turned stern. "You went by yourself?"

"Yeah," said Carl.

"Are you crazy?" the mother breathed, looking between Carl and Hershel.

Carl seemed confused. "No big deal, I killed two walkers." He knew he could hold his own. He'd just proved it.

Lori just shook her head. "Alright, do you see this? This was with the whole group." She was visibly shaking.

"We needed supplies, so I got them!"

"I appreciate that, but-"

"Then get off my back!"

"Carl!" Beth interrupted. "She's your mother, you can't talk to her like that." Adira looked at her, knowing what the girl was thinking. She was just a kid herself, and had told the doctor all about what had happened to her own mother just months prior. With her dad in the state he was in, she couldn't bear to see the defiance against a parent.

Lori tried to calm her voice down. "Listen, I think it's great that you want to help, but-"

Carl ran out before she could finish. 

After a moment of silence, Adira knew she had to say something. She'd sent him out there. She couldn't be the reason their family broke more than it already had. She knew from Carl's personality that he probably would've come up with the idea on his own anyways, but she didn't want him to have to deal with the fallout. "I told him to go. We needed supplies, or it wouldn't matter what I tried to do with Hershel. There was no other choice," she whispered, eyes trained on Hershel to avoid Lori's gaze.

She thought the mother would be mad, but she stayed quiet, grabbing tools and medicine as Adira requested them, and they worked in silence.

They were at the point where no supplies would make a difference. It was a waiting game. Adira sat out in the hall by the window, watching the clouds drift through the sky. Her lips twitched up ever so slightly when she saw one shaped like a flower. She'd always loved finding shapes in the clouds. It let her mind get off of other things, especially during the months she was fighting her own mind on the road.

"Somebody help! Somebody! Please help!" Beth's voice rang throughout the block. Adira sprinted back to the cell to see Lori crouched over Hershel's chest. He wasn't breathing.

Adira went into doctor mode. "Move," she commanded, and Lori was happy to oblige. Beth was crying in the background. She immediately started CPR, singing in her head to stay on beat. "Come on, come on."

All of a sudden, she heard a gasp and an arm wrapped around her neck, clutching her tightly with its fingernails. Hershel.

She stumbled backwards into Beth, Maggie, and Lori, and they all cowered against the wall. Carl held his gun up, pointed at the elderly man. He'd turned.

But as they waited for Hershel's body to stumble up and attack, nothing happened. He just kept breathing on the bed, and his arm had fallen back to his side.

It was a false alarm. They stood there for many moments after, taking it in.

Adira let her breath out. She'd saved him. But they weren't out of the woods yet.

It turned out they were. Hershel was alive. Adira had seen the heartwarming reunion between him and his daughters just hours earlier. The rest of the group was down in the common room eating dinner. She stayed up in her cell, too exhausted to do anything else but lie down.

A smile made its way across her face. She'd done it. For all of these months, she'd felt so useless. No matter what she did, things never got better. She'd been on a spiral going down and down, over and over. Her actions only led to pain.

But today? She'd done something. She'd saved someone. She made a difference. She was proud of that.

She allowed herself to be happy, truly happy for just this moment. Shared laughs over a joke or conversation didn't count - that was just making the best of the worst. This? She felt it in her soul. Something had shifted. So not caring how stupid she looked, she laid there in the dark and smiled to herself.

But her smile died when she heard footsteps outside her doorway, and saw Rick standing there. At the sight of the heated look on his face, she quickly sat up, her fatigue disappearing. What did he want?

"Lori tells me you asked Carl to run to the infirmary?"

Oh. Rick wasn't asking about what she did. The quiver of anger in his voice indicated to her that the real question he was posing was why the hell did she feel like she could do what she did.

"I...we needed supplies. I needed supplies. I couldn't do anything without them, and he was the only one who could go. He wanted to. Probably couldn't have stopped him, he would've come up with it on his own."

Rick's eyes narrowed, and he took a long pause. He made one deliberate step forward, and stared straight into her eyes. "You don't send my kid into danger. That's what he is, a kid. You did a great thing today, and you did great when you saved my leg a few months ago. But if you pull another stunt like the one you pulled today...you're out."

She just stared back at him, too stunned to respond. Her fire had died out. The self-confidence she'd regained today wasn't enough to defy Rick. She'd long known that this was no democracy, and if there was one person she knew not to cross, it was him.

He stepped back, took one last lingering look at her, and exited the cell.

(A/N)

Y'all! I'm back! I hope you enjoyed this extra long chapter as a welcome back to this book. I had a lot of fun writing it. It's mostly just dialogue from the show, but I like writing Adira into the established plotline and now she has a little bit of character development going on.

Let me know what you thought!

-Julia <3