By the time the sun set that night and rose again in the morning, at least 12 more people joined Rosie in cell block A. Rosie ended up moving to a cell on the second floor because a lot of the people who were coming in could barely walk, let alone climb up a set of stairs. Some people were shaking constantly and others had started to cough up blood. Rosie was getting worse, too. She began coughing much more and was overwhelmed with tiredness. She couldn't stop sweating, but she felt like she was freezing. Her head was pounding and she was sure that someone on the lower level had died and turned, due to the faint growling noise from below.
Dr. S was sick now, too. And Sasha. Even Glenn had come to join them in cell block A. He was just about as sick as Rosie was, maybe even worse. When he came in, he ended up in the next cell over from Rosie's. He told her that Daryl was going on a run with Michonne and some others to get them medicine.
"Rosie?" a small voice said from the doorway. Looking up from her arms, Rosie could see that it was Lizzie, standing there with a fearful expression on her face. "Can I stay in here with you?" she asked.
"Um, sure," Rosie answered, sitting up in bed. Lizzie came into the cell and sat down on one of the chairs, pulling her knees up to her chest. "You're sick now, too?" Rosie asked.
"Yeah," Lizzie said solemnly. "Carol said I had to come in here. She said Glenn's in here now, too."
"He is. He's real sick. So is Dr. S," Rosie said, furrowing her eyebrows. The more time she spent in there and the more people that came in, the more worried she became. She wasn't sure if they would all survive. One person had already died, and others were coughing up so much blood that they were damn near close to dying. "Do you think we're gonna die?" Rosie asked.
"No," Lizzie said, a small smile appearing on her face. "Even if we did, we'd come back. The sickness doesn't hurt our brains."
"What? You mean as walkers?" Rosie asked, her eyebrows pinched together.
"Like Nick," Lizzie said, nodding in confirmation.
Rosie sighed and shook her head. "Lizzie, that's not the same. We'd be dead," she said. Lizzie's inability to understand that the walkers were dead frustrated Rosie endlessly. She worried that if Lizzie were to get face to face with a walker, she wouldn't be able to kill it. She wondered what happened before Lizzie got to the prison- what she was like out there, on the road.
"We're not gonna die, anyway," Lizzie said. She seemed so confident about the fact, and Rosie didn't understand why.
"How do ya know?" Rosie asked.
"Because your dad's gonna come back with the medicine and it'll make us better," Lizzie said, shrugging her shoulders a little.
"What?" Rosie asked, her face scrunched up with confusion. My dad?
"They're going to get medicine. I thought you already knew," Lizzie said.
"No, who are ya talkin' about?" Rosie asked. Lizzie had said that Rosie's dad was going out to get medicine, but that didn't make sense because her dad was dead. And even if he weren't dead, there was no way in hell he'd go out and risk his life for the people at this prison.
"What do you mean?" Lizzie asked, her eyebrows now scrunched together with confusion, too.
"Who do you think my dad is?" Rosie clarified her question.
"Daryl," Lizzie said, as if it were obvious. She raised her eyebrows. "He's not your dad?"
"No," Rosie said, shaking her head. The fact that Lizzie thought Daryl was her dad made no sense. She looked nothing like him! "My dad's dead," Rosie added, just to further prove her point.
"You're not related to him at all?" Lizzie asked. She had a surprised and confused expression on her face, like she couldn't believe what she was being told. Rosie shook her head, confirming that she was not, in fact, related to Daryl in any way. "Mika and Luke said he was your dad," Lizzie said.
"That's weird," Rosie said, pulling her knees up to her chest.
"Not really," Lizzie said, shrugging her shoulders again.
"It is."
"Whatever. They're gonna bring back medicine and we're gonna be ok," Lizzie assured her.
Then Rosie broke out into a fit of coughs and their conversation was over.
•
"Rosie, are you awake?" Hershel's calm voice asked. Rosie looked up from her pillow to see Hershel walking into her cell. He sat down on the chair Lizzie was sitting in before and he held a washcloth in his hands.
"I thought ya weren't s'posed to come in here," Rosie said, rubbing her eyes as she sat up in the bed. Her headache had gotten worse and so had her coughing fits, which made it so her voice was low and scratchy.
"I'm supposed to help, that's my job. In order to help, I have to be in here," Hershel said. He scooted the chair closer to Rosie's side. "How are you feeling?"
"Aren't you gonna get sick, though?" Rosie asked.
"If I do, I do. Now, I asked you how you were feeling," Hershel responded, raising his eyebrows a little bit. He had a way of going about things that made Rosie feel like she had to do what he said, even if he didn't yell at her or order her around. He was always nice when he asked her things, but she always felt like she had to answer anyway.
"I feel sick," Rosie said.
"Well, I could have guessed that," Hershel chuckled. "Sick how?"
"My head hurts real bad and I keep coughin' and I'm real cold," Rosie explained.
"Cold?"
"Freezin'."
"You must have quite the fever, then," Hershel said. He pressed his hand up against her forehead for a moment and nodded, confirming it. He was about to say more, but they were interrupted by a loud, violent coughing from a few cells over. Rosie looked out the cell door, then back at Hershel. Hershel put the washcloth he was holding in her hands. "You put this on your head and stay here. That's your job," Hershel said. Rosie nodded and Hershel quickly made his way down to the cell that the coughing was coming from.
•
Rosie's hope was fading. People were dying. She could tell. Hershel was trying to hide it- trying to pretend that people were getting better, but they weren't. They were only getting worse. Glenn and Sasha could barely stand, Dr. S was nearly dead, and Daryl still wasn't back with the medicine.
Lizzie had come in again to read Tom Sawyer. She seemed less sick than Rosie was. Rosie could barely keep her eyes open anymore. She spent hours on end, laying there on that bed. Lizzie's distraction helped. Rosie hadn't read any fiction novels in a long, long time. She always read the non-fiction books, about dinosaurs and bugs. She liked the story, though.
She was on the verge of falling asleep when Lizzie suddenly stopped reading. Rosie opened her eyes again to see Lizzie sitting on the chair in her cell, looking out the door.
"What's wrong?" Rosie rasped, sitting up a little to try and see out the cell. There was a loud, painful sounding coughing coming from outside of the cell, but that wasn't anything new. People had been coughing like that all day. This cough, though, it just kept going. The person was struggling to breathe.
"I think that's Glenn," Lizzie said, her eyebrows pinched together with concern. Rosie instantly got up off of the bed, ignoring the way the world spun when she stood up. The two girls got to the cell as quickly as they could. It was Henry's cell, but Henry wasn't the one wheezing. On the floor, next to a puddle of blood, was Glenn.
"Stay here," Rosie said, looking Lizzie in the eye. "I'll go get Hershel." As quickly as she could, Rosie stumbled her way down the stairs, using the railing for support. "Hershel! Glenn-" she started, but broke out into another fit of coughs. "Glenn's coughin'-" she stopped to cough again, "blood."
When Hershel turned to look at Rosie, a woman stumbled out of the cell behind her and grabbed onto her shoulders, pushing her down to the ground. Rosie shouted in surprise and struggled to keep the walker from snapping its teeth into her flesh. She tried to reach for her knife with one hand, but the moment she let go, the walker was able to get itself even closer to her face, so Rosie quickly put her hand back to keep it away.
The man Hershel was talking to before came out of his cell with a gun in his hand, aiming it at the woman's head. Before he could pull the trigger, another walker stumbled out behind him and bit into his arm, making the gun go off in his hand and hit the wall rather than the walker. Hershel managed to pull the walker off of Rosie and she stumbled up to her feet, pulling her knife out of the sheath instantly. As she stuck the knife into the walker's head, a loud, high-pitched scream came from above them.
"Lizzie and Glenn," Rosie said, pointing up the stairs. "Henry's cell."
Hershel made his way up the stairs as quickly as he could. Rosie managed to stumble her way over to the other walker that was chewing on his own father's arm and stuck her knife into that one's skull, too. As her dizziness took over, Rosie leaned up against the wall, coughing as she tried to catch her breath. There was a loud banging coming from the door to the cell block, and when Rosie looked up to try and see what is was, she only saw another walker.
It was a man. A tall one. Rosie tried to keep quiet, hoping it wouldn't notice her, but she just couldn't stop coughing. The walker locked its eyes on her and started stumbling towards her. Rosie tried to stand up, to be able to stick her knife into its brain, but she couldn't. She couldn't breathe and she was overwhelmed with exhaustion. Just as the walker got within one foot of Rosie, a bullet went through its head.
Looking up, Rosie could see Maggie, standing there with her gun raised. "Are you ok, honey?" Maggie asked, rushing to Rosie's sighed.
"Your dad," Rosie managed to say in between coughs. She pointed up to where Hershel was now fighting Henry's walker.
"Daddy!" Maggie called out to him. She raised her gun again, aiming it through the fence, at Henry's head.
"No!" Hershel shouted down to her. "You could hit the bag. We need it for Glenn!"
Despite Hershel's warnings, Maggie didn't lower her weapon. She focused in, her face going blank as she perfected her aim on the walker's head. When she fired the shot, Henry's body went limp and the bag remained unharmed.
"Where is he?" Maggie asked.
"He's up here. Cell 100," Hershel responded, taking the bag off of Henry.
Maggie ran up the stairs as Hershel climbed off of the fencing. "He's turnin' blue!" Rosie could hear Maggie shout.
"Rosie! Are you ok?" Lizzie's voice said. Rosie kept her eyes shut as she coughed, but she could feel Lizzie's hands on her. "Come on," she said, pulling Rosie's arm around her shoulders to help her stand up. With Lizzie's help, Rosie was able to make it back up to her cell. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she was out cold, and Lizzie put the washcloth back on her forehead before continuing on reading Tom Sawyer to her.
•
"She's in here," Lizzie said as she led Daryl to the cell Rosie was still passed out in.
"Thanks, kid," Daryl said, patting the girl on the back. Lizzie nodded and left the cell, heading to her own cell to get some much needed rest. After pulling the chair in the cell closer to the bed, Daryl sat down on it. He took the washcloth off of Rosie's forehead and gently pushed her blonde hair back, out of her face. She was sound asleep, a neutral expression on her face as she slept- unlike the hardened expression she used to have every time she slept when they first got to the prison. "Rose," he said, lightly shaking her shoulder to wake her up. When Rosie's eyes fluttered open, she quickly squeezed them back shut, the light hurting her eyes. "Ya gotta take this medicine, kid."
"Is Glenn ok?" Rosie asked, peaking her eyes open again.
"He's ok. Maggie and Bob are in there with him right now. You gotta take this medicine," Daryl said. He handed Rosie a bottle of water and dropped a small pill into her hand.
"What is it?" Rosie asked, scrunching her face up a little as she looked down at the pill in her hand.
"Nothin' bad. It'll make ya better. Take it," Daryl said, nodding his head a little towards the bottle of water. Rosie put the pill in her mouth and took a sip of the water to wash it down. She held the bottle back out to Daryl, but he shook his head. "Finish it. Ya need it. And I ain't drinkin' your germy backwash."
"I don't leave backwash," Rosie argued, furrowing her eyebrows.
Daryl scoffed out a laugh, but didn't argue any further. "Hershel said ya helped him in here last night. Said ya killed some walkers," he said, changing the subject. It had been a long time since Rosie killed any walkers- 6 months, give or take. Rick didn't want any of the kids to, and that included Rosie and Carl. But things had gone bad the night before, so both of the kids ended up killing walkers.
"Had to," Rosie said before taking another sip of water. "People were dyin'... is Sasha ok, too?"
"Yeah, Sasha's fine. She's got the meds, too. Everyone does," Daryl assured her.
"How long until I can help Rick with farmin' again?" Rosie asked.
"Hershel said ya need to rest for at least another day," Daryl answered. Rosie huffed and laid back down, crossing her arms over her chest. "Quit complainin'. Glenn's gonna be in here, too. It ain't only you." Daryl tossed the washcloth on her face and stood up to leave.
Furrowing her eyebrows, Rosie pulled the washcloth off and threw it at him. It hit his back and fell onto the floor. "Where're ya goin'?" Rosie asked as Daryl picked the washcloth back up and tossed it onto the chair.
"Rick wants to talk to me. I'll be back in a lil' bit, bring ya somethin' to eat," Daryl said. Rosie nodded and drank some more water as Daryl left her cell to go find Rick.