(warnings: n/a)
[season 2, episode 2: bloodletting]

"YOU'RE SO lucky to be good at cooking," Marnie said as she watched Beth dump the dough out from her bowl.

Beth turned to Marnie with a wide smile across her face. Marnie felt she could almost compare her to an angel with the way the light hit her back, illuminating the golden wisps of her hair that stuck out from her long braid. Even while messy from her hard work, the joy that shone through her eyes was contagious. Marnie shared the smile too. "You wanna try?"

Marnie shook her head fiercely. "Oh, no. I'm really bad, trust me. I once burned water." This wasn't true, however, it was something that Marnie expected could happen to her.

Back at home, her granny had tried to teach her to bake strawberry shortcake, but no matter what Marnie seemed to do, it would fail every time. Still, she made sure to memorize the recipe so that someday she could pass it on.

Maybe she should mention it to Beth next time she wanted to cook.

Beth giggled, turning back to the dough, which she began to knead. She turned back to Marnie, "C'mon. It's easy."

"I can't!" Marnie exclaimed, but she was smiling as she got up from her seat at the dinning table.

"Okay, so first you flour your hands," Beth handed Marnie the flour, and she nervously shook a bit onto her hands until they were lightly dusted, like the snow that would occasionally powder the ground in late fall.

Marnie wondered what the farm would be like when it came to be wintertime, especially now that they had no electricity to power any heaters. She assumed they would light a fire. That would be nice, gathering around a warm fire and just relaxing. The thought comforted Marnie. Sometimes, when she was in the house, it was like there was no monsters outside. Like it was normal.

"There's someone hurt outside," Beth's boyfriend, Jimmy, rushed in, grabbing a baseball bat from the corner of the room.

"What?" Beth questioned.

"What's that for?" Marnie asked incredulously, staring at the bat in Jimmy's hand as the two girls followed Jimmy outside, where Beth's father, Hershel, and another farmhand, Patricia, stood.

"Was he bit?" Hershel shouted out.

Running towards the house was a man wearing a sheriff's uniform, and in his arms was a little boy who could have been no older than ten or eleven years old. The boy wasn't moving, and Marnie almost thought he could be dead, but if he were, there wouldn't be a need for the man to have such haste in getting help.

The situation reminded Marnie of when her little sister, Willow, or Willa, broke two of her ribs and an arm after being bounced too high on the trampoline. Marnie's mother, Danica, was at work, and Marnie had to be the one to call the hospital. They had gotten the trampoline off the side of the road a couple years before, so it had a bent pole as well as a missing net. It definitely wasn't the safest, but it was still fun. They got rid of the trampoline after Willa got hurt. Marnie wondered where the trampoline was today. She hoped some other kid got to enjoy it, and didn't get hurt.

"Shot." The man with the boy answered. "By your man."

"Otis?" Hershel asked.

"He said to find Hershel. Is that you?" The man questioned, not answering if it were Otis or not. Marnie assumed it had to be Otis, since he was the only one out at the moment.

She was actually supposed to be out there, helping Otis, but Hershel had given her the day off. She was glad, because if she'd been the one to accidentally shoot the boy, she would not only feel incredibly bad, but she also wouldn't know what to do. It would be The Camping Trip all over again.

"Get him inside," Hershel ordered. Jimmy, Beth and Marnie hurried out of the way as the man rushed through the door. "Patricia, I need my full kit," Hershel then turned to Beth's older sister, "Maggie, painkillers, coagulates— grab everything. Clean towels, sheets, alcohol."

"C'mon," Beth waved Marnie over hurriedly, placing a stack of sheets in her arms. Marnie quickly delivered them to the bedroom, where the boy now lay.

"Pillowcase, quick," Hershel said to the man.

"Is- is he alive?" The man asked, mindlessly grabbing the pillowcase. His worry was obvious in the way he spoke as if he were having an out of body experience.

"Fold it, make a pad," Hershel replied, not answering the man's question.

All around them, everyone was preparing for whatever was about to go down. Some kind of surgery, a stitching up of the wound, Marnie didn't know. All the same, everyone was helping. Maggie was dumping alcohol onto the towels to clean the wound, Patricia was handing Hershel his medical supplies, and Beth and Marnie were organizing the sheets. Marnie had no idea where Jimmy went, thought she didn't particularly care.

"Put pressure on the wound," Hershel said.

"Uh, sorry, won't that, like, jumble his organs?" Marnie questioned, biting her lip.

Allie had taught her about what to do in order to temporarily take care of a gunshot wound a couple years back, when they had gone to a protest and Allie thought it might get violent. Allie was good at that stuff. She was always protesting something or other, always finding a way to get into a fight she wouldn't finish. Marnie always thought she was rather performative with it, but never said anything.

Hershel nodded while putting on his stethoscope. "Not too much pressure." He placed the diaphragm of the stethoscope to the boy's chest. Marnie took a breath, nervous for the boy she didn't even know. "I've got a heartbeat."

The breath she was holding was released. But even Marnie knew that with the amount of blood the boy was loosing wasn't good.

"It's faint." Hershel said, confirming her suspicions.

"I've got it, step back," Patricia said to the man, taking over at putting pressure on the wound.

"Maggie, IV," Hershel said.

"We need some space," Maggie told the man.

"Your name?" Hershel asked the man, taking the stethoscope from the boy's chest.

"Rick." The man answered.

"Rick?"

"I'm- I'm Rick," he said, nodding. His voice still sounded very disoriented.

"Rick," Hershel said, "we're going to do everything we can, okay?"

"I feel bad for him. Both of them," Beth stated. She and Marnie were in Beth's room.

Normally, they'd put on some music through Beth's CD player, but that seemed too upbeat considering what was happening. Marnie had to admit though, without music, the situation seemed even worse. She supposed it was. There was a dying little boy downstairs, and his only hope was a retired veterinarian.

"Me too," Marnie replied softly. She stared up at the ceiling, almost upside down with her legs propped against the wall.

The ceiling was blue, with wispy clouds painted to look like the sky. It was pretty, Marnie thought, but didn't really fit the aesthetic of the rest of the house. Maybe, in a way, it reflected Beth.

She was different from her family— not drastically— but if you really payed attention to it, like Marnie often did, you could notice the small things. For instance, while her older sister, Maggie, was more likely to take leadership and a more up-front approach, Beth was more compassionate and could almost be considered the glue of the family. Not to say Maggie wasn't compassionate, but Beth often surprised Marnie with her kindness.

Marnie would always remember the day she was rescued from the forest, when she passed out from dehydration and foodborne illness and woke up in the Greene house.

She lay in the same bed the boy was in now, and the first sight she saw was Beth, looking down at her like some kind of divine guiding light.

Marnie was never very religious— and less so in wake of the era of monsters— but her grandmother was, and used to tell her stories of the Catholic Saints. They were all so tragic, and oftentimes, Marnie would find herself crying at the end of the stories.

In specific, she remembered one about a saint who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II. Her grandmother very much believed the strongest form of love was self-sacrifice for another, though Marnie wasn't sure she believed in that herself.

She hadn't lost that many people in her life, at least to her knowledge, and none of them were of self-sacrifice, but she still loved them all individually from the bottom of her heart. Whether or not they loved her back didn't matter. She didn't think she had to die in order to love them as hard as she could.

Marnie was snapped from her thoughts when indistinct shouting from outside arose.

The girls glanced at each other before jumping up from where they lay and peering out the window. Approaching the house was Otis and an unknown man, practically shoving Otis forward.

Marnie glanced at Beth again before they both rushed downstairs and out to the porch. Rick stood out there with the unknown man, who was currently murmuring something or other to Rick. Marnie's first thought were that they were lovers.

Not bothering to acknowledge Marnie or Beth's presence, the two men made their way inside, and so did the girls.

"You know his blood type?" Hershel questioned Rick as they made it into the room. The boy was still passed out, and looking rather pale.

"A-Positive, same as mine," Rick said.

"That's fortunate. Don't wander far. I'm gonna need you," Hershel said. "What happened?"

"I was tracking a buck. Bullet went through it. Went clean through." Otis said, sounding dumbfounded and then solemn. It seemed he was in shock as well. Marnie didn't blame him.

"The deer slowed the bullet down, which certainly saved his life," Hershel said, taking a breath. "But it did not go through clean. It broke up into pieces. If I can get the bullet fragments out...," Hershel trailed off.

"Will you have to cut him open?" Marnie questioned, wringing her hands in front of her. Her voice sounded rather frail too, at the thought of the bloody scene.

Marnie immediately regretted her words at seeing the horrified look Rick's face crumpled into.

"Lori doesn't know?" Rick asked weakly to the unknown man.

"No," the man said.

"My wife doesn't know. My wife doesn't know," Rick said, covering his face as he cried. The man next to him whispered some kind of consolation and then led him from the room with a hand on his shoulder— only further confirming Marnie's suspicions that they were lovers. But, maybe they were just close in friendship. Marnie wasn't very familiar with male friendships and how they functioned.

Then again, he mentioned a wife.

She wasn't around men all too often, considering the fact she attended a Catholic high school where they would separate the boys and the girls.

Although her grandmother was the only living person in their family that was actually Catholic, Marnie's mother didn't want her to attend the public school after hearing rumours of a kid being knifed there. Saint Gabriel's Catholic Academy was the closest she could get to a private school.

Marnie could argue though that Saint Gabriel's was no worse than the public school; they were just more able to keep the bad things that happened there quieter.

"Jesus Christ," Marnie whispered, horrified, as the boy seemed to wake up, at least slightly. He was crying, and it was almost painful how much his voice reminded Marnie of her sister.

Hershel didn't even have the chance to scold Marnie at the curse against his faith, like he usually would, because he was already rushing to action.

"He needs blood," Hershel said.

"I'll get Rick," Maggie said, only coming back a moment later with Rick and the unknown man.

"You, hold him down," Hershel said to the man, whose name Marnie was still unaware of.

"Dad!" The boy cried. He screamed as Hershel stuck the IV into him.

Marnie rushed to his side and grabbed his hand, hoping to provide at least a little bit of comfort. "It's okay, it's alright. You're going to be okay, alright?" she said to him, but even she didn't know if the words were true.

Her heart ached as he screamed more, but all she could do was hold his hand and hope for the best.

SYDNEY SPEAKS!
SORRY IF THIS CHAPTER WAS TOO LONG PLEASE STILL COMMENT AND STUFF I BEG OF YOU!!!!!

anyways sorry it was boring!! things will get a little more crazy and interesting next chapter 😈🙏 i think