Charlie showed rapid signs of improvement, so much that Diablo's initial fears faded by the third day of administering intravenous antibiotics. With the help of the group, they had done well to gather a generous amount of medication and medical supplies from the coast guard safezone... most importantly, it was medication he was familiar with, and equipment he could work with.
Making a sterile saline solution was the most difficult bit, really. The years old bags of IV fluids had long since expired, but the vessels they were in were still useful and they had access to not only clean water, but heat and items to distill.
He did his best to keep her comfortable. The fear that she would succumb to her affliction and the next time he saw her she'd be a snarling, snapping cannibalistic monster was a heavy one, and so he reluctantly requested solid binds from Oz to tie her to the bed frame, should the worst become reality.
Her memory of the day they left for the safe zone was a foggy haze of voices, and panic, and pain... she spent more time battling fever demons than being a reactive member of the group. The group's medic was far more capable than his companions anticipated, though. In the dim lit aura of her suite, she saw a real effort from the few good souls among them.
Diablo slept in the corner of the room in the wide chair meant for the small dining table in her suite. Her eyes brushed over the dim settings, to see not only had they reset the furniture but they'd done their best to tidy her space.
She didn't know it yet, but Diablo had watched over her for the duration of her recovery, monitoring her vitals and shifting her position so that she wouldn't return to the world of the living with bedsores and bruises.
She exhaled softly, and slowly moved beneath the heavy comforter to rise to sit. She felt an incredible soreness even with his efforts to her entire slender frame, and even with the fog of troubling memories coming back to her, there was a certain sense of gratitude that she was still alive. There was nothing quite like a near death experience to make you realize you truly wanted to live...
"...hey, Diablo..." Her voice sounded foreign to her ears, now. He stirred, a light sleeper, and stretched his arms over his head gently until the realization dawned on him that she was awake and he flinched quite visibly, with his dark eyes going wide.
"Oh shit,
hey
--you're awake!"
"... yeah... can you?" She shifted the hand cuffed to the bedpost, watching as he all but tripped over himself as he moved to the side of the bed, fumbling for the key. "I just.. need to use the restroom..."
"R-right, my bad--it was just a precaution you know? Just in case you--"
"Yeah... I get it. I've seen what happens... when people die, these days." She nodded gently as the handcuff dropped from her wrist, not wanting to admit she felt a bit more at ease not tied to anything. Diablo stepped back to give her space as she rubbed the previously cuffed wrist tenderly, and slowly moved to slide her legs from the blankets, and drape them over the edge of the bed.
"Not gonna lie.. we, uh... we weren't sure if you were gonna make it. You were in and out for nearly six days."
"Guess that explains the jello legs..." Charlie's quiet murmur inspired Diablo to come to her side and offer her an arm, and she gently moved to stand with his assistance. They made their way to the restroom at the back of her suite, and he let her move inside without him, closing the door quietly behind her.
She started the shower almost instinctively, and found herself examining the long blue and white print hospital gown she was suited in. She felt dreadfully frail, and felt very much as if she was starving. She let her hands sweep the thin material of disposable underwear she had been suited with beneath the gown with bemused realization.
"...Were you the one who dressed me?" She called out, amusement still lacing her tone of voice as she carefully stripped bare and moved to stand beneath the warm rush of water.
"Yeah. I mean, you're my patient, only seemed right--Dog and Ruthless stood by, even helped, every now and then--no funny business. A gown and disposables seemed a lot more practical than leaving you nude and risking a catheter... I figured you'd come around once your fever broke."
"So... what, you're a whole nurse?" She took the bar soap from the dish, rinsing away days worth of sweat and stagnant energy as she called out just loudly enough to be heard.
"I was a CNA out of high school, for a while... ended up as an EMT after flunking out of med school. So, yeah... something like that, I guess."
It was quiet afterwards. She stood beneath the rushing water, letting it soak into her tender muscles and aching bones, drenching her long dark hair. Her eyes closed and she felt a calmness and peace, almost forgetting the world, until Diablo called out to her from beyond the bathroom door. She rinsed soap from her body and coconut scented conditioner from her hair hurriedly before stepping out and wrapping herself in an oversized white towel.
"I'll be back... gonna find you something to eat and let the guys know you're awake--"
"...Thank you." She poked her head from the restroom with a shy smile on her lips. "Seriously, thank you, for everything."
"All good, Charlie... we're... we're not all bad guys. Just want you to know that."
His parting words settled in her mind and weighed on her thoughts, heavily. In his absence, she slipped from the restroom and began digging through her drawers. The wound at her shoulder had finally scabbed over and was now well beyond uncomfortable, and itchy, and still just as tender as ever. The pangs of pain from cauterization had gone almost entirely, at least.
It wasn't all bad.
Charlie took great joy in the fact that she could finally feel the fingers of her right hand, wriggling them every now and then as she fished a snug sports bra and black panties from within the depths of her dresser. She would have been happy to curl the binding wrap around her chest now, but with it no longer available to her, she simply made due with what she had.
A fresh pair of dark jeans suited her legs. She layered oversized t-shirts not particularly caring for their design, and set her mind to cleaning the blood from Matt's old bike jacket once she had a bit more mobility. For now, she rummaged through his side of the small closet for something acceptable to further bury herself into, and suited herself in a thick black wool blazer.
It felt like it took ages brushing the tangles from her hair. Diablo had tried his best but when it came to it, hair was far less important than changing the dressings of her wounds, mixing and administering intravenous antibiotics, and keeping her as clean and comfortable as he could with what he had to work with.
She braided her hair once she could finally get her hands through it, and hunted through the room for something to stuff her hair beneath, finally finding an old knitted beanie with a visor edge among Matthew's side of the dresser.
It was a bit oversized for her head but she didn't mind, tucking her braid into the depths as she placed it upon her head and melted seamlessly back into the role she had played among the group for so long. She might have looked the part of a scrappy young lad once again... but everyone in the group knew better, now.
The truth of the matter was, she didn't feel even the slightest bit comfortable
not
dressing and pretending that she was a young man. As her memories of the week before trickled back to her and she was met with the brutal realization that, yes, being discovered as female had shifted the dynamics of things dramatically.
She felt a certain icy defensiveness lingering in the depths of her soul. The tense anxiety surrounding it could no longer be dismissed or ignored... but it wouldn't be as simple as running away anymore.
No... she didn't believe all of them were bad. But she knew for a fact which of them were, and that was more than enough to cause her reserved panic.
She would have to do everything in her power to make allies of the men in this group who weren't slowly unraveling in the middle of the end of days, before her greatest tormentors took the liberty of swaying them to their own lascivious causes. With a deep, anxious breath she departed the room and started down the hall toward the lift, unable to tear her thoughts from her only real friend among them.
Where had Dog gone to? Surely his punishment had ended by now...
The group seemed so happy to see her when she finally came down to the lobby... though they were also quite visibly distracted. It was hard to shake the nervous anticipation that Skully or Slash were lurking somewhere near, just waiting for a moment to catch her wandering off by herself.
The men of the group kept to a distance, and were careful not to hold Charlie in their line of vision for too long, perhaps hoping to make her more at ease. Among those settled in the lobby, Skully was not among them, and Slash only cast a lazy grin at her as he welcomed her back to the world of the living before he made his way through the adjacent halls and out into the courtyard.
Oz departed not long after him, having few words an expression that seemed stressed, troubled even. Ruthless and Diablo had settled before the main television, one of various DVDs playing over the screen. They busied themselves with weapons--most especially sorting the rounds of ammunition that had been recovered from the supply run the week prior. She wasn't certain why, but they seemed in lesser spirits, and she didn't think to press for details.
Still no Dog.
She frowned thoughtfully and made her way into the courtyard, but not before Ruthless insisted she take a radio along with her. Her eyes flickered up the functional tower of the resort, pondering if he had holed up somewhere..: she knew that to go looking for him would inevitably end badly for them both if she were found out, and so she frowned gently and sought a distraction.
The way the men had told of their relationships with each other, she wanted to believe that they wouldn't be so quick to murder one another over petty differences or acts of insubordination... but after seeing what Skully was truly capable of she found her faith in his civility minuscule at best.
Charlie stubbornly pushed the group's second-in-command from her mind as she paced the courtyard, finding herself easily winded and still rather weak from her entire ordeal for the last few weeks. There was something else, as well... a heavy craving she couldn't quite place her finger on, a neediness that forced her to find something more suitable to distract herself with if only to help ignore the churning craving.
She accepted that she was sore, stiff, and uncomfortable, but being also incredibly thirsty with spells of hot flashes and her mood dipping from sorrowful lows to red hot anger at a moment's notice did not strike her as something she should be experiencing.
She didn't linger toward the gated end of the courtyard, nor cross the sparkling salt water pools to start down the sand dunes toward the sea. Instead, she turned her back to them, and set her attention on her greenhouse. It would be a wonder, she thought grimly, if any of the animals were still alive.
The air was fragrant and warm inside of the enclosed space of glass panes and irrigation.
Even as the days tilted toward frosty mornings and chill afternoons, the sun bore heavily from above, and it felt mockingly like spring inside of the greenhouse without the cool wind whipping in from the Atlantic. It was not at all uncommon for a Georgia winter.
Inside the last crops of summer had not fared well at all. The goats had devoured most of the greens and absolutely decimated the tall stalks of corn in her absence. Before things went poorly with the group, she hadn't any time to tend to the cabbage or beets, or plant lettuce, squash or pumpkin for the cool months coming. The group would need to forage with determination to make it through to spring, if they were to stay here.
She checked the young apple trees, frowning at the scarred bark at their bases. The fruit had slowed to half sizes and she didn't doubt they were the last before the frost--she ran her fingertips gingerly over the scarred trunks. More damage from the goats she was certain. With a heavy sigh she found herself questioning now where the hell the animals had gone to.
