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Disoriented was an understatement for the way that Daryl Dixon felt after waking up in that field with his knife in one hand and a handmade arrow in the other. His thoughts were so scattered that he found it impossible to form a complete idea. It was like he was thinking in another language entirely, and it made him lightheaded and dizzy. Anger bubbled up from his gut to his jaw, which he clenched tightly as he went back to sharpening his arrow, but he couldn’t find any reason for his rage. The rough redneck’s chest felt tight, too; the way that it had when he rounded that corner as a child and found his house up in flames with his mother trapped inside. Daryl didn’t face much heartbreak in his life, but he knew what it felt like to have something he loved dearly taken from him. The only problem now was that he didn’t understand what he’d lost.
Daryl didn’t remember falling asleep or the ‘dream’ he had before waking up, but he did remember why he’d taken himself so far away from the group he’d come to call family: he was upset over spending so much time looking for Carol’s daughter only to find her reanimated and locked away in a barn. He attributed his anger to that and the fact that old man Hershel probably knew Sophia was in the barn the entire time. Needless to say, his confusion and anger made him very irritable, so it was a good thing he secluded himself from the rest of the group for awhile.
“Moving to the suburbs?” Lori Grimes had asked while Daryl was still in a perplexed state of mind. He’d heard her, but he chose to ignore her. The woman had a knack for putting him on edge and she was at it again by intruding on his me-time. Couldn’t she see that he was busy?
She was persistent though, as most women were when they needed something done. She stopped in front of Daryl and squatted down so that she could speak face-to-face with him. “Listen, Beth’s in some kind of catatonic shock,” she began, grabbing Daryl’s attention instantly.
Beth. The name churned his stomach, twisting it anxiously until a lump formed in the back of his throat. “We need Hershel,” Lori went on without noticing Daryl’s struggle to make sense of his emotions.
Keeping his eyes focused on his arrow, he replied, “Yeah? So what?”
“So…I need you to run into town real quick,” answered Lori, her annoyance at Daryl’s indifference obvious in her tone, “and bring him and Rick back.”
Of course, that’s what she wanted. She needed the only person that gave a damn about finding Sophia to go out and find her husband and the old man now. No, Daryl was through with searching for people because all that ever came from it was death.
He gripped the arrow tighter and ran his knife along the tip of it to chip off another uneven piece. The end was finally coming to a clean point. “Daryl?”
Looking up, Daryl caught Lori’s eye and for a moment his anger simmered. This wasn’t about him or Lori or Rick, it was about Beth and her need for medical attention; and so he simply nodded in response. “I’ll go, but I wanna see Beth first.”
Daryl quickly chipped off two more pieces of his arrow, blew on the tip in order to clear away excess wood shavings, and slid the arrow into the last empty space in his quiver. With a satisfied grunt, he got to his feet, slung his crossbow over his shoulder, and nodded once for Lori to lead the way back to the farmhouse.
Again, his mind was reeling through foggy thoughts, like he was trying to fit together two corner pieces of a jumbo puzzle. And his emotions rocked him back and forth, from anger to concern and back again. He felt like he was ten years old on the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair just after eating his weight in cotton candy and funnel cake. The most confusing feeling of all was his sudden interest in Beth Greene. He was worried about her, from her whereabouts to her general safety. He wanted her by his side, singing their fears away, climbing up on his back as he carried her, and smiling at him as she spoke of the beautiful things that remained in this desolate world. Daryl didn’t know where this was coming from because as far as he knew, they hadn’t spoken a word to each other since he and his group arrived at their farm. Beth Greene was obsolete when he put things into perspective, yet she pulled on his heartstrings like they had pulled several all-nighters, blood vessels pumping booze and their mouths spilling secrets.
The walk back to the farmhouse was short, and Daryl actually had a difficult time keeping up with Lori’s pace as she half-jogged her way back to Beth’s side. She hopped the porch steps with Daryl at her heels; entered the house; and crossed the foyer in two long strides. He dropped his crossbow at the foot of the staircase and took the steps two at a time to the second floor, where Andrea waited just outside of Beth’s bedroom door.
“How is she?” Lori asked as she walked across the threshold into Beth’s bedroom.
Daryl followed hesitantly, taking in the scene as he entered the room behind Lori. Beth was lying in the bed, her pallor clear as day between Patricia’s and Maggie’s sun-kissed skin and her lifeless eyes set on the ceiling ahead of her. He didn’t understand what was happening, but it distressed him to see her like this. Patricia knelt down beside the bed and placed her stethoscope against Beth’s antecubital space before pumping up the cuff around her upper arm.
“Her pulse is slow,” Maggie started to explain as she looked up from her watch and let go of Beth’s wrist. The older sister caught Daryl’s eye and held his gaze for a moment before looking back at Beth. “And her BP’s been low, too.”
The blood pressure cuff hissed softly as Patricia released the rest of the air and removed the earpieces from her ears, “Eighty-four over forty-six. And she’s still not very responsive.”
Daryl shifted his weight from one foot to the other anxiously, his eyes glued to the wooden floor beneath him. Seeing the teenager in this state really made him want to find her father and bring him back to her as soon as possible. “Is she in some kinda shock?” his voice quiet and dry with his question, which went unanswered as the women exchanged looks. Finally, Maggie shrugged her shoulders and let out a defeated sigh.
“We don’t know,” she said truthfully. “’S’why I want Dad here.”
He nodded once and glanced between Maggie and Patricia. “I’m gonna go get ‘im,” he muttered, and then stepped forward with his hands raised slightly. Reaching around Maggie, he presented the group with two unused pillows. “Ya gotta elevate her feet. Blood ain’t reachin’ her head all flat like that.”
Daryl handed the pillows to Beth’s sister so that she could place them under her feet once he’d exited the room, and then turned to leave. On his way out, Andrea followed him downstairs and rocket-fired a string of questions at him.
“How’d you know to do that?” He answered with silence as he veered off into the kitchen for some water. “What do you need for the trip?” Again, he ignored her as he dropped a few bottles of water into a backpack and filled the bag with snacks for himself and the group already out in the town. “Want me to come along? I’m a good shot.”
Daryl stopped and turned to look at Andrea, a smirk appearing on his face as he stifled a chuckle. “If you were a good shot, you wouldn’av missed and I’da been dead.” He raised his eyebrows as if asking her to prove him wrong, and then made his way toward the front door. He picked up his crossbow and slipped the strap over his head and across his chest, pulled the bookbag over his shoulders, and secured his knife and gun in their holsters on his belt.
~*~*~*~
It didn’t take Daryl long to find the familiar red and white truck parked outside the town’s bar. He figured that Glenn and Rick had arrived in that, and because another vehicle wasn’t in sight, that Hershel had walked. The idea originally seemed insane to him, but walking helped him blow off steam, too. Maybe the old man needed to walk off his grief over losing the walkers in the barn. After all, they were people of his family, and even though it was stupid in Daryl’s opinion, he understood why Hershel had kept them locked away. He had hope for a cure, hoped to have his wife and son back, hoped to restore their lives and carry on like the outbreak hadn’t happened. Shane took that from him, even though they all knew a cure wasn’t coming.
Daryl parked his brother’s bike next to the truck, removed the key, and started toward the bar. He found the front door unlocked as he turned the knob and stepped into a dusty room, making three shadows turn to see who’d joined them. Silence followed for a few moments before Hershel looked back at Rick and continued.
“Beth needs her mother,” the man said, his voice sad and strained, “or rather to mourn, like she should've done weeks ago. I robbed her of that. I see that now.”
Rick’s frustration was obvious to Daryl as he moved closer to the trio. Hershel’s head tipped back as he finished off his drink and set the glass down on the counter heavily. “You thought there was a cure,” Rick responded slowly, looking to Daryl as he stopped behind Hershel’s chair. Daryl held a hand up to Rick to keep him from saying anything more. Shifting around in front of his friend, he looked Hershel in the eye and felt his anger begin to bubble up again.
Beth needed her father by her side, not only to treat her through her shock, but to comfort her as she mourned the loss of her mother and brother. Sure, she needed her mother, but all she had was her father now and that’s who she needed most. Instead of being there, though, Hershel was drinking his pain away. Daryl felt betrayed on behalf of Beth. It reminded him of his own mother, drinking herself to sleep instead of stepping in between her children and their father as he used them like human punching bags.
“You’re gonna lose your little girl,” Daryl started in a bitter tone. “You’re just gonna sit here an’ drink away your goddamn sorrows while Beth slips away. ‘Least you still got your family, some of us ain’t that lucky.”
As he spoke, Hershel’s facial expression softened and he nudged his glass further away from him. He nodded a few times and sat up a little, shifting his eyes from Daryl to Rick and Glenn, then back again. “You’re right,” the oldest of the four admitted, defeat woven in his words. He got up from the barstool and clapped both Rick and Daryl on the shoulders, a sign of thanks for snapping him out of his own form of shock. With a long gaze at Glenn followed by a single nod, Hershel shuffled around them and led the way toward the door, eager to get back home to his daughter.
On the way out, Daryl passed out a few bottles of water and gave Glenn the backpack so that the three of them could eat on the drive back to the farm. He swung his leg over his bike and started it, idling until Rick backed the truck out of its parking spot, and then following it back to Hershel’s property.