thirteen. painkillers

thirteen˚༺⋆♱⋆༻˚↳ painkillers ↲

I PUSHED A CHAIR AGAINST MY DOOR, BEFORE BED. Pulled the curtains back to allow the moon in. The only comfort of light I could find. Before lying down, I pressed myself against the glass and took in the landscape.

Instead of finding it frightening, I decided it was beautiful. A melancholic tragedy it was, yet still, I found it to be engrossing. Like when you got a cut, and couldn't help but watch it bleed. Without the sun, the scene below didn't look too bad. I couldn't see the lick of fire, or the shadows of napalm.

It almost looked like before. From so high up, everything below seemed minuscule. I pressed harder against the glass. The right side of my face became cold with the contact. My insides rolled at the thought of the free-fall from this height. I stepped away, and crawled into the patient bed.

The flowers were back in the vase.

I took the pill Doctor Edwards had given me while making rounds for nighttime meds. It calmed the ache in my temple, and softened the beating in my chest. And as I drifted into a dreamless sleep, I thought I heard someone try the door, though I was too tired to be sure of it.

In the morning, it was apparent no-one had been in or out of my room. The chair was propped in the same place, and the sheet I had strewn up to make a trip was still in tact. Rick had taught me that, after Terminus—on the road. He'd shown Carl and I how to make snares, which always started with a trip wire.

I wondered if they'd run into more trouble with Gareth and were forced to flee, or if they were still at the church. I thought about the morning dew that would be on the grass, and leaves. The dandelions that had been bursting up from the cracks in the pavement of the parking lot. The way the stained glass would likely reflect against the interior at sunrise.

Two days ago, I would've claimed I'd never want to be inside a church again. But now. . . now, I think I'd give up a lot to be there. To be back with the others.

I didn't even know if they were alive or not. The possibility was low. They'd been so off guard when I'd gone outside. Not a worry in the world. Everyone had been smiling, and playing card games. Feasting on their first real meal in months. There was a big chance Gareth had brought others, and stormed the church.

That all of them were gone, and I had just barely escaped the same fate.

I thought about everyone, all morning. The possibilities stole my appetite away. My anxiety became one-thousand times more intense after being introduced to the famous 'Officer Dawn Lerner' over lunch. What I did manage to eat came back up within minutes. Noah found me hastily making way from the dining hall, and worriedly followed me into the restrooms, watching me empty my meal right back out. He'd been able to pull back my hair before it fell in front of my face, and was still holding it as I shakily leaned over the toilet.

"I met Dawn." I told him, bowing back down to throw up some more.

"There, there," He attempted to comfort me, a small smile on his face. "She has that effect."

I pulled my face away from the bowl, wiping my mouth. "She saw how little I was trying to eat. Kept forcing food onto my plate. Told me to not treat this place like a Jewish internment camp."

He managed a laugh now. "That's ironic coming from her. People literally call her the 'Nazi'. She walks these damn halls like she's handling prisoners."

I leaned onto my knees, and took a stand. Noah let go of my hair and backed away to give me space as I flushed away my vomit.

"Aren't we?" I asked him, going to the sink and bending over to rise out my mouth.

"What?" He asked, handing me a rag.

"Prisoners," I stated, nodding a thanks as I wiped my face, "Aren't we prisoners?"

Noah now shook his head. "No. At least, not for long."

I wiped at the water on the collar of my scrubs. "You said you had a plan—what is it?"

"I'm getting out of here." He explained, quietly.

I cleared my throat. "When? Who are you taking?"

"Whenever the time is right. And, whoever wants to come. For the time being, though—the initial escape—as few as possible. You, and maybe one other. We have to keep things quiet. When we're out, we can decide how to go about everything else."

I nodded, looking to the ceiling.

God, if you're out there, please let his word be true.

▬ ▬ ▬

Doctor Edwards taught me to suture. And, not the messy survival kind that we'd used on the road. The clean-cut, neat way. With disinfectant, and extremely sharp hooked needles.

It hadn't taken me long to catch on. The motion was easy enough. Tying knots in the string proved to be my weakest point. However, it got easier. He moved me from minor cuts to bigger lacerations, until I had fully gotten the hang of it.

I was suturing a bullet wound, trying to hide my nervousness when Dawn entered the room to supervise. I could feel her eyes following each motion I took. Her mouth was in a firm line, fingers tapping the leather seat she sat in. She was impatiently waiting for the job to be done, yet she didn't bother to help.

It seemed like she did a lot of that. Of watching, and not acting. From the sounds of it, she could've had total control over the hospital. But she didn't, and I gathered it was because was afraid to be the one to mess up. She left that job for others. The punishing was her strong-suit. That was something she indulged in.

I used a pair of surgical pliers, carefully tightening a final knot into the wound I attended to. I then gently placed the metal tools back onto the tray, though they still clattered loud enough to pull the officer from her seat.

"It's getting late." Dawn told me as I peeled off my gloves. "Get something to eat, then head back to your room."

"But, I need to wrap his leg with gauze." I told her, reaching for the wound dressings.

She hastily grabbed onto my hand, looking me in the face. "I'll take care of it. You've worked enough today." 

I nodded, leaving the bedside at once. On my way down the hall, I ran into a familiar boy, who was leaned up against the doorframe of a room. He had a mop in his hand, but he wasn't doing much cleaning. Instead, Noah was talking with whoever was inside. He shifted his weight, and I observed the way his injured leg briefly buckled under the pressure.

When I approached him, he gave me a wave. I greeted him back, and stopped on the opposing frame. My eyes averted to the room, landing upon a girl at least a couple years older than I.

She was perfect in her ways, natural strands of spun gold growing from her scalp into a high ponytail. As she turned, I was met with the glow of her bright gaze. An instant magnifying aura surrounded her, a smile spreading across her face.

"Hey," She spoke softly, a gentle southern drawl on her tongue.

"Hi." I responded, my voice tired and weak.

Noah's shoulder pushed against mine. "This is Cyn."

"I know." The blonde nodded, a certain tenderness being present of her face. "I'm Beth. I helped fix you up when they brought you in."

Beth, the name was something of familiarity. I questioned myself for moments, before realizing that it was only a familiar name, and I'd heard it many times before. Yet, somehow it itched my brain, scratching in all the wrong places like a broken record.

"Thank you." I responded, hugging my arms into my chest. This building was cold.

"How is your head?" She asked, injecting a small syringe into a patients arm.

My fingers traveled to my temple. "The gash is healing. Edwards says I'm really concussed though. I will be for a while."

She smiled at me. Not even a moment of silence could pass before The monitors let off a rapid beeping. The man Beth had been attending to began seizing violently. Convulsing.

"No." She questioned, panic being obvious on her face. "What?"

I rushed forward when the monitor stopped beeping all together. Noah took off the man's respirator, and I tried to remember Edward's instructions for CPR. I placed my hands together against his chest, and started giving compressions. I didn't want to chance giving him breaths, on the chance that he would reanimate and sink his teeth into me, so I only pushed into his chest.

Beth stopped me after a minute. Told me not to chance it. My hands slipped off the vacant body in front of me.

"He's," I began, being cut off by Noah's quiet hum of confirmation, pulling me away from the still body before I had a chance to move on my own.

The sheets he laid on had become stained. The once white, flattened pillows were splattered with the only proof that he was real, and that now he was gone. His skin had already taken an unlively shade of muffled grey, meaning he didn't have much longer to stay here.

The three of us couldn't even go past the point of exchanging quick glances at one another, before the head officer was entering past the doorframe, a radio in her hands. Gorman and the doctor were following close behind.

"Jeffries told me the computers pinged a flatline." She said, looking at Beth in the eyes, before noticing the rest of our small gathering.

The boy moved away from the bed, unblocking the patient from Dawns view. Her jaw clenched as she pushed past Noah, grabbing a pair of surgical scissors, and stopping the man's reawakening.

Her expression was plagued with fury when she turned around, holding the scissors up. "What did you do to him?"

Beth stuttered, though the officer interrupted her mess of words. "He was fine, until the three of you were alone with him. Something happened. I want you to tell me."

Punishment. It was coming, no matter what any of us said. It was obvious that it was all she wanted. She didn't really care about the patient.

This time, Noah was the one to speak up, pushing Beths unspoken words back into her throat. "It was an accident. Beth left to get some gauze, took Cyn with her to show where the medical supplies were. I was mopping, must have unplugged the ventilator somehow."

The soft blonde girl tried to get in a statement of disagreement, but he continued, louder. I didn't understand Dawn's look. It was only death, and death happened a lot these days.

"It only stopped for a minute. I got it working again."

The woman looked to Gorman, placing the scissors back onto the table. "Take him to my office."

With that, the boy in blue scrubs was aggressively pulled from his place.

"Dawn, it was an accident." The doctor said, trying to step in her path as she walked past. "It was an accident!"

Dawn disappeared into the hallway.

Beth pushed past me, facing Edwards. "That's not what happened, he just—he just started seizing."

"We tried to bring him back." I added, looking back to the corpses

"Seizing?" Edwards went back to Beth's statement. "You gave him Clonazepam, right?"

She stopped, taking a step back. "Clozapine. You said Clozapine."

His mouth pursed in something like sorrow, eyelashes brushing against his glasses while he blinked.

"No. I didn't."

I watched as the girl was brought back from his statement, face dulling of color.

"Why is Dawn taking Noah?" I asked, attempting to get past the man, though his hands stopped me. "What's going to happen to him?"

My question was answered, when the sound of hits landing on the boy echoed. Then came his pleading voice. As Beth panicked at the sound, I could only remain still, frozen in place. My shoes were glued to the tiles beneath me.

Jesus, he sounded like my mother. His pleads sounded just like her.

The ghost of my father was present again. He was gone by now, his body scattered like ashes, but his soul still remained in my shadows. It was his way of payback. For the gruesome death I had given him. I would suffer for as long as I lived because of it.

Rick had never truly asked me the three questions.

How many walkers? How many people? Why?

He'd asked me how many I killed at the prison. But not how many I'd killed in total. That answer would've been different. And I would have had to explain how I'd watched my father die—how I could have stopped it, but I hadn't.

How I took pleasure in watching the red stain his skin.

When the shouting stopped, he let Beth go and departed the room with the body, himself. We took a seat on the empty bed, Beth admiring the simplicity of the room, while I stared to a stage of dissociation at the wall.

The texture looked like wet paint drippings, never fully dried with a mixture of what appeared to be globby orange peels embedded into the paint.

"They think we're weak, but they're wrong." She said. "Weak don't make it this far out there. We did."

I brought my foot up, pulling up my red boots.

"They take without thinkin'. Brought me away from a group, my sister. But they cant have me." The girl continued.

I twisted the remaining ends of the string, creating a double looped tie.

"They won't." I spoke, moving to the next set oflaces. "We're leaving, and they don't get to stop us."

She stayed quiet, folding her hands in front of her and picking at the skin between her cuticles. "Noah says his family is in Richmond. That's where he wants to go. Are you coming?"

I dropped my legs back down to the floor, inspecting the permanent line where my shoes had created a pink, rubbed scar just above my achilles' tendon.

"I don't know. I was with people. I'm not sure they're alive anymore, but I need to find out before I take off anywhere." I said.

She gave me a look. "Whoever they are, they're holdin' on. They gotta' be. We can find them—bring them with us. Everythin' works out in the end, just like my Daddy used to say."

▬ ▬ ▬

Noahs face was bruised and battered. Cuts were on his lip, and eyebrow. His undereye was beginning to darken into a deep purple and blue.

"It's not as bad as it looks." Noah smiled at the two of us. "I'm okay, watch."

He flicked the bruise, and I let out an empathetic hiss. I felt the ghostly pain on my own skin just by watching this action. Beth was obviously bothered by this action, too.

"Painkillers, it barely even hurts." He told us. "Dawn needed that patient for something. That's what it was about. We all just got trapped in a bad situation."

Beth swallowed, holding one hand onto the storage cabinet. "We're not trapped. We're goin' with you."

"You said we'd leave when the time is right." I spoke to Noah. "I have a feeling the time is only going to get more wrong, the longer we wait."

Noah's demeanor changed. He agreed. "Basement's the fastest way out. Any noise, and we got rotters."

"So we won't make noise." Beth said. "Edwards told me there's walkers on the ground level—but we can get through them. We can be smart about it."

Walkers. Odd. Beth had said walkers. I only knew a select few who used that term for the dead. My own group. Maybe it hadn't been something they came up with—maybe they'd heard it from somewhere else.

"I can keep an eye on Dawn. She keeps a spare key to the elevator banks somewhere in her office. Think you guys can find it?" Noah asked.

"Yes." Beth and I both assured him.

He gave us a quick nod of luck, and headed back into the halls. This left the both of us wait for many minutes, until we heard Dawn and Noah's voice travel through the hall. After it passed the supply room door and quieted, we took off in the opposite direction.

Beth led us. I'd only been here a few days. She seemed to know this place much better, obviously being here longer than I. I wondered just how long. The cut on her face was still stitched, but knowing Dawn and her ways with Noah, it could have been re-opened because of her. Who knew how long the initial cut had been on Beth's face for.

The tremor rose in my fingers as we approached the hall which led to Dawn's office, spreading like wildfire up my arms. I felt like I was doing something very awful, something that would either liberate me, or cause immense regret.

"Ready?" She whispered, placing her hands against the knob as she tried to get a look at the office through the windows, blinds blocking the view. "Let's make this quick."

"Ready."

When I set my eyes on the room, I was not surprised to discover it was neat, much like the rest of the hospital. It held a sickening bleached lemon scent. Her desk was the only sign of life here—It had a jar of lollipops, a few loose pens, and documents.

Noah had been stealing the suckers from her office. That was a bit comical to me; and brave.

As Beth began to rustle through the filing cabinets, I lifted the papers and shuffled through the first few cabinets. I shakily breathed out, then made my way around the desk. As I bent down to my knees, I was instantly taken aback.

Blood. There was so much of it, staining the tiles and carpet. Then a lifeless girl laying on her stomach. Her arm was sawed off. There were bandages on it, but it appeared she'd ripped them off. They were sprawled on the floor, along with a pair of scissors still in her hands.

'Fuck you' was freshly carved into the floor with the sharp object.

"Christ." I remarked, looking to Beth as she took a kneel beside me.

"It's Joan." Her brows lowered, and her eyes filled with remorse.

I looked closely to the woman on the floor. "This is Joan? The Joan that Gorman was in charge of?"

"That Joan." She said.

"She killed herself." I said, though that was painfully obvious. I wasn't revealing anything. Just stating, out of my own shock.

Beth eyes traveled to her own lower wrist. "You shouldn't look at her. We need to get the key."

I stepped over the blood, pulling on the furthest drawer down. It clicked against a lock, making me try again, ultimately failing.

"Here." She said, handing me a sturdy ruler.

I slid it in the small wedge between the spaces, shoving it downwards until the ruler reached the bottom, pulling it back as the lock snapped.

There were a few different colored keys placed in a certain order along the inside. She reached for the blue one. I closed the drawer as she stood.

Before I could stand up, I heard the door hinges creak. Out of instinct, I concealed myself in the chair space of the desk, folding myself as small as possible to remain unnoticed. One person in Dawns office was suspicious. Two were nearly criminal.

Heavy footsteps then occupied to room, coming to a short stop. "Hey there."

I dropped my head to the floor, recognizing the voice, and the shoes, to be none other than Gorman.

"I hope I'm not interrupting." He said.

Beth backed away in an attempt to keep me hidden."Dawn was just asking for her key."

Her shoelaces laces drug themselves through the darkened coating of blood on the floor. The soles of her shoes squeaked ever so slightly.

"Was she now? See, I was just with Dawn, and I don't seem to remember that."

His voice was low and coaxing, stepping closer to Beth. "It's okay. Maybe she doesn't have to know, maybe there's another solution. You know?"

I was pressed into the table, eyeing the woman on the floor. Underneath her lids, I could see her eyes fluttering as her brain switched itself back on again. I wondered, for a moment, if she was dreaming,

"A little win-win for both of us." Gorman continued, backing her up into the desk.

I found now as my only opportunity to crawl over her limp body, and pull the scissors from her hand. Gorman—distracted enough with Beth—didn't see me come to a stand behind him. He certainly didn't expect to take his next breath, and cough on his own blood. The scissors were already plunged into his neck, and I was pushing him onto the ground. A reanimated Joan grabbed hold of his hair, and dug her teeth into his neck.

I hurriedly grabbed the gun from his waist holster, and led the two of us out, sealing the door shut behind us.

"You okay?" I asked her.

Her shallow breathing came to a slow. "Just fine, because of you."

I looked back to the door. "I hope Joan was still in there, when she did it. I hope she knows she got revenge."

Beth nodded. "Yeah—I do too. Let's go get Noah."

We masked our fear with a calm front, walking at a forced slow pace. We then stopped for a moment as we approached officers, one being Lerner. Noah was walking alongside them.

"Everything going okay?" Dawn asked us both.

I locked eyes with Noah, Beth being silent until seconds later she began, "Oh, Joan was lookin' for you. We saw her and Gorman headed towards your office."

Dawn sighed, walking past with the cop. "Thank you."

Beth smiled, turning back to Noah and tapping her pocket to show we had the key. Noah inconspicuously turned and followed, me not far behind as they approached the elevator bank, using the key to get us past the double doors. As soon as we all entered, Beth locked it up again, leading us to the opened elevator.

Then came shouting and gunfire from Dawn's wing of the hospital. Not the woman herself, but a man, most likely the officer she had been with, Jeffries.

Noah carried a bundle of rags knotted together, quickly fastening it on the closest pipeline to the elevator.

My heart sped at the plan, coming to terms with the fact that a pile of rags was his idea of an escape plan. Either way, it was the only thing we got as he fastened me into a makeshift cloth harness.

I grabbed hold of the flashlight Beth handed me, and faced it to the large drop in front of me. It had to have been at least 40 feet, making it impossible to see what lied at the bottom.

"You ready?" He asked.

I turned, placing my hands on the fabric to make sure it was secured enough.

"Lower me." I nodded.

He nodded, both of us sitting near the ledge. "Once you get down safe, we'll climb."

"Okay. Don't be stupid." I told the two, placing my hands at the edge. I hoisted myself off, instantly feeling the pull of the harness against my body as he began to lower it.

The feeling of my feet dangling in midair. . . the bottom still remaining invisible—I didn't like it. The ground was one of the things that reminded me I was still alive. Without it, I felt dreamlike. Disoriented.

All said, when I finally reached the bottom, my feet tested the metal of the grounded elevator holding me up. I let myself fully relax, stepping away from the hole in the top, exposing the inside of the elevator.

Next came Beth, making little error while she slid herself down, grabbing extra tight on the knots for support. She made her way around to me, then stopped at my side to wait for Noah.

I let my eyes avert back upwards to the boy, who was now climbing down. He did just as we had done, but was stopped just above the second level by one of the dead reaching through a broken door. Noah's arm was grabbed, and the walker pushed its face through the crevice, snapping its jaw at him. The action caused his hold to weaken and his body to drop all the way down.

"Noah?" Beth quietly pleaded. "Noah?"

An extremely pained groan came from below, leading us to lean our heads inwards, discovering the pile of bodies that had acted as a pillow for his fall. Beth jumped straight down with not even a second of hesitation. I followed suit, accompanying them in the squelching pile of death and guts.

We used the walls to stand ourselves. We moved forward as silent as possible, Noah's flashlight being the only directional help. When the dead came at us from behind each dark crevice, I raised my gun, and fired off as many rounds as I could. The quick zips of light from each bullet guided us right to the door.

Beth pushed it open.

Genesis 1:3 — "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

So much of it. It was warm, and it enveloped us like we had joined hands with the sun. Each blink allowed a little more of the real world to come into sight. I only noticed then that my hearing had dulled away to nothing but an intense ringing.

Atlanta was kissed by death. Walkers poured from every direction. Fallen angels, returning for the atonement I owed them. Their empty eyes brought misery forth. The vengeful things just kept coming at as we made an effort to get past the fences.

An effort, I did make, indeed. I didn't stop firing. When my gun finally clicked, the bullets didn't stop flying. I knew we had been caught, so I didn't turn back Noah was squeeze himself through the fences.

There were at least four officers. One was gaining on Beth. Noah pulled the chains further apart to allow me through. When I made it, he let go of them, and pulled me from the dead piling against the barrier. I didn't understand why he wasn't holding it for Beth, until I saw her.

She laid out on the ground. An officer had brought her down. He held her wrists together, leaving no possibility of escape. Though, despite her position, she gave us a small smile, like everything we had done to get out, was a success.

Her eyes spoke.

They told us to run.

So we did.

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·4,588 words • 1:27 pm

beth my love ;(

honestly not much to say after writing this, so i'll leave you with that.

sincerely yours,𝓜 ᥫ᭡.