I Made It!

Chapter 7: Coda 2.0

Digging all the way to til the see the plaid blanket, Edwards, frantically pulls in back and tried to find a pulse.

"It's faint, but it's there! Help me get her inside quickly!"

"What do we do?" Shepherd asks as she assists getting Beth on the gurny. Rushing her inside, Edwards doesn't have time to explain the process, he just gets her into the operating room and gets her on different if drips, and finds the last bag of O+ blood. Much as he prognosticated, the bullet exited clean through the scalp, the brain untouched and in one piece is slightly visible.

"Get me medical thread and a needle. Gloves, perocide, and gauze. Stat!" The nyrses jump into action as Edwards demands things. He cleans her wounds and stitches her up, after having to cut her hair away from the exit wound.

Imagine the bullet entering through her forhead at just the right angle that it slims through the cranium bone , just slightly burning the top protected later of muscle around the brain itself and exiting clean through the back of the head lightly spraying blood- not brain matter- through the air. That's what happened and if Edwards wouldn't have thought about it, wth would've died from suffocation, not a bullet to the head. It truly was a lucky accident.

Sitting at camp, Daryl drops a few squirrels on the fire and walks back to the van. He notices Rick and Noah talking about something, but he doen't know what. Oh how he wishes it was Noah and not Beth. True one life isn't worth more than any other, but Noah really shouldn't have been with them in the first place anyway. So really, Daryl feels Noah shouldn't be allowed to be with the group, but that's just his angered opinion. Sitting under the van's hatch, Daryl stares at his hands and closes his eyes shortly, trying to remember her touch. He never held hands with anyone but his mother when he was a boy. Holding hands with Beth was like some supernatural occurannce. She was burning hot, but not like fire. It can only be described as having your first kiss with your soulmate. The burning passion that fuels the flame of want and desire, but with the warmth and clarity of safety and trust.

He never felt that way with anyone ever. Shaking, he feels more years spring into his eyes and drop to his clasped hands with a flood of pain in every drop. He lost his eternal soulmate- and what's worse is he didn't realize it until he lost her.

"I feel so bad for him..." Tara states as her and Rosita turn the squirrels over other fire, watching Daryl with eyes of pity. "Was she like, his girlfriend?"

"I...I don't think so." Rosita turns the squirrel over and over and wonders why Daryl and Maggie are taking this lose the hardest. She knows everyone is sad, but those two seen to be far gone.

"I just feel like she meant something deeply to him...more than just a friend."

"Well, Glenn did say they got out together. Who knows what happened when they were out there. Its kind of like Abraham and I. At first I kind of hated him, but being on our own- I don't know, we just connected spiritually." Tara stares at Rosita, she knows her and Abraham have sex whenever possible- she doubts it was spiritual in nature.

Carol, who was just in the woods getting more water, stops short of the camp and listens in on the women's conversation.

"You think they were intimate?" Tara, assuming by image, knows that there is quite an age gap between Beth and Daryl.

"Possibly. I seen him kiss her before he covered her up." Rosita gossips.

"That doesn't mean anything..."

"On the lips." nearly dropping the jugs of water, Carol turns away from the conversation and takes the water's to the back of the van where Daryl is hunkered.

He wouldn't have had any kind of intimate relationship with Beth...would he?