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“Dixon, your hypochondriac is back. Get up.”
He'd know that voice anywhere. Deep, low, Georgia-bred, vanity seeping out of every word, fakely authoritative undertones, misplaced pride and impatience all tangled in and rolling out the tip of the man's tongue anytime he addressed someone designated as an inferior.
Daryl didn't need to see him to know it was Walsh, Dr. Walsh . He actually barely looked up from his food, the sad hospital tray staring back at him without offering any escape route even as he uncharacteristically prayed for one. Anything to prevent the guy from seeing the flush painting his cheeks. Anything to make Chambler's snickers go away.
“C'mon man, dude’s been blocking a spot in my E.R. and you know he'll only respond to you so get up, your patient is a-waiting .” Walsh continued and if Daryl hadn't already been blushing hard, now was the time to bring in the firefighters. Anything to keep his face from flaming up in front of that jerk.
He knew he should have come up with a retort, something snappy enough for the man to understand who he was dealing with Goddamnit . He really should have, just a little Dixon-bark to get the other man to drop it already but, “I'm goin’, Chief” is what came out in the end. And the others laughed around him, an echoing circle of gossipy nurse giggles.
Fine, he could deal with these assholes later. For now, Mr. Grimes, Rick , was back again.
Daryl rose from his chair, his back to Walsh, his head facing down, looking at his feet as he walked out of the cafeteria with an imperceptible thrill to his steps.
These people's opinions didn't matter, they would never matter. And if they wanted to laugh at him, so be it. It wouldn't change how he felt about the man he was about to see. It wouldn't change just how moved he was each time he met the guy’s blue eyes. Nor would it tarnish how his whole body tingled when, inexplicably, he managed to bring the smallest light back into them.
So he made his way down to the emergency room with a speed he normally only managed in extreme situations. He was still cursing himself for not shaving that day when he passed the double doors of the E.R. but then again, he'd only had a few hours to himself before he was called back in because of a staff shortage.
It wasn't difficult to spot Mr. Grimes once Daryl walked further into the buzzing pit of medical chaos. The man was sitting on one of the beds, staring down at his twitching knees with wide eyes. The nurse made his way to him, slow and steady so as to not startle the patient, all the while studying him to determine what kind of visit this time would be.
And then the guy looked up and straight into Daryl's eyes, making his breathing hitch. Not professional, Dixon, get a grip .
Rick Grimes’ face lost a bit of its hopelessness as he met Daryl's eyes and that was already a good sign. Good day then.
“Well well well, Mr. Grimes, it’s been a while, I's starting to miss ya, what's bringin’ you in today?” Daryl began, and the glint in the other man's glassy eyes made for the mandatory reassuring smile he plastered on his face with patients to feel truer than ever.
“Hi,” the man's voice had that same croaky feel it always had, like he'd been crying himself to sleep, or shouting till muteness ensued. Not for the first time, Daryl wished he could bring a laugh out of him, a radiant smile that would compliment his lovely blue eyes, something happy and pretty to bring out the joyful man that was somewhere in there--
“Dr. Dixon? You listening?”
“Mm, yeah, sorry,” Daryl cleared his throat, drew the privacy curtain back and picked up a patient board before he came to stand right in front of the other man, as steady as he could when his heart tried to go overboard inside its cage, “And I told ya already, I ain't a doctor, I'm a nurse.”
The man gave a small nod and a sheepish corner-of-the-lips twitch in lieu of a smile. “I know, sorry, s’just a reflex I guess. But I do know, I don't get my usual white coat stress with you.” he continued, his voice going smaller and smaller as he did, his lips back to their slight downward curve.
Daryl’s grin was missed by the other man as he once again bowed his head down. Not acceptable in the least. “Well that would be the pink scrubs. I guess you can't feel bad ‘round something made for kids to feel safe, huh?”
“Guess not,” and the man blushed as his eyes went back and forth between Daryl's and his still jumping knees. It made Daryl want to call him sweetheart in the middle of the night.
Daryl looked up as Mr. Grimes cleared his throat, undoubtedly trying to get back to the reason he was here in the first place. The man's mouth opened and closed around unborn words and Daryl gave him time, a safe space to gather his strengths--
“I NEED A CRASH CART IN HERE!” Walsh's holler echoed from wall to wall.
“Shit.” Daryl muttered under his breath. He knew his coworkers had this, someone else was going to take care of whoever was having a heart failure over there but damn, he could already see his own patient tensing up, brow knitted and jaw tight, eyes forcibly closed.
Daryl went to pass his head behind the curtain to make sure someone was indeed taking charge back there and turned right back once he spotted Peletier and Ford hard at work.
Only, Mr. Grimes was nowhere to be seen.
A quick check around the open space of the E.R. showed he wasn't there. Not hiding in any of the other beds, not hidden behind busy caretakers, not huddled in any corner of the large room.
Nowhere down there. The hallways then.
Daryl walked briskly, body tense as he avoided all obstacles, all the people swarming around. He looked everywhere around, opened every door - disturbed sleeping patients and faced confused looks from his coworkers.
He had to find the poor guy before he went into full tachycardia.
Daryl could feel his own pulse throbbing at his temples as blood burst through his every veins, all his senses attuned to one task and one task only: sight - spotting messy, soaked curls; hearing - discern the pattern of a hyperventilating man over all the other hospital noises echoing around him; touch - push brancards and wheelchairs and maybe, people, out of his way; smell - part the cloudlike effluvium of industrial sanitizer to grasp a whiff of cologne; taste - shut down the bitter aftertaste of fear. Moving, always moving.
One door, a flight of stairs and then another and then one more door and there he was, a bundle of trembling limbs, a shaking head and mindless curls flying wildly with each tremble.
Daryl could not have kept the full-body sigh that escaped him from doing just that. Relief washed over him as he closed the door behind him and stepped farther inside the staff room his patient had elected as his refuge. The man's back was to him as he hid behind the couch there and Daryl tried to go slow but when he found the man hadn't even noticed his presence, he couldn't help but rush to him.
The nurse kneeled down in front of the other man and started humming gently, the way his mother used to do for him when he hid under his bed as a child - a soothing pattern of low, rumbling notes. Slowly, Daryl leaned down and put his hands at the man’s elbows, he pressed down equally slowly before he started moving up and down the man’s biceps.
They stayed that way for a while, Daryl massaging and his patient snail-pace-ly recovering a normal breathing rhythm. After some time, he’d no idea how long, the arms in Daryl’s hands stopped shaking so violently, the taut bands of muscles stopped twitching under his palms and he decided it was time he tried getting the man to look at him.
He ducked his head a little, shaking his hair out of his eyes a few times without taking his hands off the other man's strong arms. “Mr. Grimes, Rick , can I call you that?” the man didn’t raise his head just yet but he nodded against his forearms where they rested, crossed over his knees, some of his curls brushing Daryl’s knuckles in the process. A deep breath in and Daryl continued, “Can ya look at me? Whenever yer ready, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
It took a few more dreadful minutes for the man to comply and look up. And Daryl was not ready for what he saw there.
An ocean. The waves of a furiously scared ocean crashing against the fringe of the sea, flowing over the edge of Rick’s lashes. His cheeks drenched in panic. The look in his eyes, his blinks, morse code for a lighthouse far far away from the drowning man he was.
Transfixed. For a few seconds Daryl stayed completely still, kneeled down in front of his patient, frozen until he remembered he was to be the sailor here. The one man who knows the way out of this mess of sheer Neptunian force. “You ready to take a deep breath for me?”
Watery eyes blinked some more and then, following Daryl's example of in, and then out, and then in, all slow and deep, Rick Grimes regained his breathing. By the end of their little exercise, the man had his own hands clasped around Daryl's biceps and they stayed this way for a long, long moment. Breaths mingled in their makeshift haven and eyes never parted. Rick's were still imbued with remnants of his panic attack, no other way to call it, but there was a new glimmer of hope there as well. A glimmer that felt as though they'd both jumped off a cliff with how small their previous steps towards each other had been. A glimmer that, in turn, put a full-face smile on Daryl's face.
“Feeling better, Rick?” the nurse asked, and his own voice felt raspy with emotions, raw.
“Yeah,” the man blushed a little, squeezed Daryl's arms where his hands rested still, “I...sorry I'm such mess…”
“Ya ain't ever gonna say that again, ok? Ya ain't ever gonna tell me yer sorry for anything you feel, because that's just why I'm here, helpin’ you out of that and…” it was Daryl's turn to breathe deep, “hopefully, you'll let me put a smile on yer face by takin’ you out? What d'you say?”
As if on cue, and surprising them both, Rick's lips chose that moment to stretch just that tiny, timid, trembling inch of a first smile. And that was Daryl's answer.
Weeks later, after going on date after date, avoiding anything medical to not set off his newly found boyfriend, Daryl agreed to let Rick meet him back at the desk of the pediatric service, literally, in the middle of the hospital. Part of my therapy the man had said, and who was he to deny Rick that.
He was hard at work going from room to room, tending to tiny human after tiny human and their worried parents and he tried to stay professional. He really did. But he kept glancing at the main doors of the service, and at the elevators, too.
Rick coming back here as a visitor and not a patient was a big thing and for once, Daryl didn't stop himself from praying to a God he didn't even believe in to please let this be a good thing. For the both of them.
Daryl was to finish his shift by lunchtime and they had agreed to meet at that exact time so the closer the clock got to say midday, the more jittery and excited Daryl got.
He was stuck trying to reassure a crying mom that yes, her daughter would be perfectly fine if only she took her antibiotics for the full amount of time the doctor advised this time around when Rick arrived. The door to his left opened and Daryl, hunter-skills-Daryl couldn't not have spotted the curls of him, and the gait of him, and even the shaky smile of the man as he advanced toward the desk Maggie was currently running.
So Daryl tried to make quick work of calming the freaked out mother. He tried with every weapon he had: gentle smiles and bowed down shoulders, comforting words and even some of his outwardly hypocrite praise on how good a parent she clearly was. But it still took him over a half-hour and by the time she finally took his hand in hers to thank him, Daryl was almost forty minutes late and Rick had disappeared from the front desk.
Daryl quickly went to his colleague and Greene told him she'd just saw him turn around the corner to the right hallway so he followed that path, a heavy feeling of déjà-vu sinking in his gut.
He passed a few rooms, empty of any Rick Grimes and each time, his steps were a little faster, his head going left and right and again looking for the man.
Until he heard him laugh, an actual throat-enveloping laugh that sounded like dripping honey and warmed Daryl from the nape of his neck to his wiggling toes inside his hospital shoes.
The nurse pushed an ajar door slightly more open and found Rick smiling with his every teeth showing out to the world. He was sitting on the edge of a little girl's bed and was seemingly absorbed in the story she was telling him.
Daryl smiled to himself looking at the two of them talking so animatedly. God knew Rick had had a lot to deal with lately, but that girl...she was admitted after having been in a car accident that robbed her of both her parents on the spot. And still, after nearly a month of coma and two more months of recovery, she managed to be this strong and to gift everyone around her with the sun shining bright in her eyes.
Daryl cleared his throat as he entered the room, hands on his hips in fake reprimand, “Judith, ya can't go off and steal my boyfriend like that, nuh huh.” he shook his head for emphasis and smiled bright when she stuck her tongue out at him.
Until she slammed her cup of hospital jelly back on her tray and threw her spoon right to his forehead. He caught it, last minute, but, “Did you seriously just throw a plastic spoon at me?!”
Daryl's eyes were wide as he waved the fragile, white plastic object in the air. “You interrupted my story, Dare-Dare!” the little girl answered before winking at Rick. Unbelievable.
The other two people in the room burst out laughing though, so he couldn't be mad, not for real.