Aphelion ⎜ The Walking Dead

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"Matt from radiology is nice."

"Oh, yes! He just got out of this crazy long relationship and oh my God is he delicious."

Leia raised a brow at her fellow nurses on the other side of the reception desk. "By crazy long do you mean the girl he was engaged to for two years?"

June shrugged and continued to sort through the charts in front of her. "Two years, two months, who cares? I'm just trying to get you laid."

"Wait, do we really want her sleeping with someone from radiology?"Clarice popped up from where she was trying to get the ancient computer reconnected to the even older internet.

June oohed and they jumped into another search, this time considering Doug the cardiologist and Clark in pediatrics.

Leia rolled her eyes and picked up the tray she had gotten from the cafeteria. On it was two jello cups - one green and one blue - and two cokes. "Well, if y'all will excuse me, I've got something better to be doing."

The two nurses waved her off, not even coming up for air as they spoke rapidly to each other. 

Once Leia was securely in the elevator alone she sagged against the wall behind her. It was hard enough having to work normal shifts just a few floors away from her brother, but having to pretend that everything was alright to keep the others off her back was nearly impossible.

Leia nodded to Jason the security guard as she exited the elevator. She had never had much of a relationship with Jason - she still didn't to be perfectly honest - but now they saw each other every day.

The ICU had always been Leia's least favorite part of the hospital, save for the morgue. Granted, no part of Harrison Memorial - or any hospital for that matter - was especially cheery, but Leia much preferred the ER where she had made her home as a nurse. The emergency room was instense and chaotic and it wasn't entirely uncommon to lose a patient, but everything moved quickly and patients were typically in and out or moved to a different floor within hours. Up here in the ICU it was the world's worst waiting game: these patients would either fully recover or take a turn for the worst and be lost in minutes.

Thinking of Rick as a patient made it somewhat easier to see him like this, hooked up to monitors with a nasal cannula sitting above his upper lip. The bandages covering most of his torso were still white which was a slight comfort to Leia, knowing that he hadn't started bleeding again. She set the tray down on the table next to the bed as if it were made of lead. 

She had seen her older brother in the hospital before but that was when he fell out of a tree and broke his leg, or when he decided it would be a good idea to try and ride the foal their grandather hadn't broken yet and almost took out his eye when the thing bucked him off into barbed wire. It had never been anything like this. He had never been shot before. He had never been fighting for his life.

Leia wished she had Lori's strength. She couldn't fathom seeing her husband in the hospital and having to tell their son that daddy might not come home. Lori somehow managed to do it and stay upright while Leia could hardly keep it together. The only things keeping her going right now were these little visits.

Each time she left that elevator she was stupidly hopeful that maybe he had woken up, and each time she got to his room she felt a stab of disappointment. But Leia knew that stimulation could help people to come out of comas. Whether he could actually hear anything she was saying or not Leia didn't know and she really didn't care. She told herself she was doing this to help Rick, but really it was to help her feel like the man that had always been her protector and cheerleader and confidant wasn't standing on the edge of a cliff and having to fight between giving into the pull of the abyss below and the urge to turn around and come back to them.