United We Fall

Chapter Thirteen// Broken

When Rick and Shane returned from their trip without abandoning Randall, Maggie was reasonably pissed off. There was another danger on the farm, and just when they thought they had gotten rid of it, too. It turns out that Hershel also shared in Maggie's irritation.

"Leya," He had told her when the group were eating supper. "I want you to stay away from the generator shed. No going over there, not even if it's just for a second."

"That goes for you, too," Lori said to Carl. "No playing by it, no going by it. Carl- is Leya wearing your sweater?"

Leya was still wearing the navy-blue hoodie Carl had given her when they were still outside, and the sleeves were pushed up past her elbows while she ate mashed potatoes with her fingers and Maggie tried to help her hold her fork.

"You hold it like a pencil- wait, you've never held a pencil. You put your fingers here, like this." She had been instructing, but the moment those words left Lori's mouth, everything went silent.

Leya, of course, didn't pick up on this and proceeded to continue to attempt using a fork.

"It was cold out," Carl said defensively. "She was shivering."

Maggie had to resist rolling her eyes. They were just kids.

"She'll give it back." Maggie said. "And you listen to your grandpa about that, okay? No going to the generator shed."

"Si, Mama," Leya answered as she dropped her fork and went back to picking up more mashed potatoes with her fingers.

"You adopted her?" Dale asked, trying not to be impolite.

"A child like her needs a mother," Hershel said nonchalantly. "And Maggie stepped up to the plate."

After supper, Glenn tapped Maggie on the shoulder.

"Hey, can we talk for a minute?" He said, hoping she'd say yes despite the fact that the two hadn't really interacted for the past week outside of forlornly staring at the other when they weren't looking.

"Sure," Maggie replied, stuffing her hands in her back pockets. "What's up?"

Glenn pulled the small, white circle that Leya had literally coughed up earlier that day out of his pocket and held it out in his hand. "So I was trying to teach Leya her numbers and stuff, but then she starts coughing. I thought it was just normal coughing, right? Then she starts choking, and this thing flies out of her mouth!"

"You were teaching her numbers?" Maggie asked.

"Maggie, that's not the point, she coughed something up!"

Maggie took the circular object out of Glenn's hands and held it up to the porch light. "I've seen one of these before- are you sure she coughed it up?"

"A hundred percent sure," Glenn confirmed.

"It's a prototype of something I saw in one of my classmates' textbooks in college. It's a breathing implant, designed for those with asthma, like the really severe kind. It's implanted in the trachea to keep the swelling from happening and to promote steroid production." Maggie said, peering at the item. "The people at the CDC would have given her one if she had asthma, right?"

"That's where we were before here, actually." He told her. "We were at a camp outside of Atlanta, but it got dangerous- too many walkers. We went to CDC to look for a cure, and the guy there, Jenner, he was crazy! He let us in, but then was going to let all of us die with him when the CDC exploded."

"The CDC exploded?"

"Um, yeah, but that's not the point- so if they were looking for a use and going to blow up after who knows how long, and if they tattooed a kid, it'd be reasonable for them to test this on her, wouldn't it?"