infection | D. Dixon

chapter two

father

Two weeks after the world ended, I returned to the hospital where my best friend died. The building was falling apart, and I knew it was because the military had rolled through and tried to take out all the departed. That's what I called them, departed. My father and Tessa were clearing out the lobby while I gathered everything I thought we would need to take care of ourselves and put it in a suitcase. My gun was cold against my waistline.

I was quiet, listening for any noise that could be coming from a departed. The hospital was quiet, and occasionally I could hear the walls pop under the heat of the hot Georgia sun.

The body of my friend was reduced to nothing in the parking lot, but I knew it was her because of the hair that was on her head. It had taken me awhile to get over myself and start killing the dead.

"Clear!" I heard Tessa call from one of the rooms. I zipped up the bag and propped it up on its wheels.

After a short pause, I heard my dad repeat what Tessa has said. "Clear! Can you get Ana in here?" he called to Tessa. I quickly changed my pants from bloody scrubs to jeans and followed their voices.

"I'm right here!" I called, pinning my hair back in a twist. I walked into the main entrance leading into the lobby and left the suitcase there. The lobby was destroyed. There were bodies scattered everywhere, trails of blood, papers, and bullet holes all around the room. My eyes settled on my father's face and I sighed. "Are we setting up here?" I asked, picking up some of the paper as I said it.

My father nodded and slowly walked closer towards me. "There is a patient in one of the rooms, he's unconscious but alive," he explained, handing me his bag. "I'm going to clear out the bodies and Tessa is going to board up the windows and lock the doors," he said with a grunt, moving past me. As he walked away he turned back to me, "Oh, Anastasia." he called.

I turned around with my eyebrows raised, shifting the bag up on my back. "Yeah?" I responded.

He smiled at me and handed me a small item covered in cloth. "Just in case," he said, pressing my other hand over the object. As he walked away I uncovered his hunting knife.

I smiled down at the small weapon. My father never left this knife behind. He used it to protect us on the first night before we found all our guns. He used it every day, to carve sticks into arrows, to kill the dead, and to hunt.

I put the knife onto the police belt we had taken off a departed and continued my way towards the patient rooms.

I knew the patient as soon as I saw the room door open. I had worked this trauma case the night it had come in, it was my first solo surgery. His name was Rick Grimes, and he was shot multiple times in the chest. He was placed into a medically induced coma so he could heal, but he slipped too far away.

I knew he was going to be in the coma even after I try to wake him up, but I couldn't take him off the ventilator without trying what I could to help him. I laid my hand on his chest and sighed, "I'm not going to promise that you'll like what you're waking up to, but I am going to give you the chance to survive in this world." I said with my voice barely above a whisper.

Tessa came into the room with a board in her hand. "Dad said we are going to set up shop close to the cafeteria because this place might still have food. Everything okay here?" she asked, looking at the man on the bed.

Tess had heard all about Rick. I had poured my heart out to her about how devastated I was that my first case was a loss, but she had risen my spirits when she reminded me that it wasn't a loss until he was dead. That night, I spent hours going over the recording of the surgery, viewing the charts, gathering family history, and checking his vitals. I had run myself into the ground trying to find an answer, but I had never found one. I nodded to Tessa and forced a smile to my face.