The hallway was long and quiet, lined with half-open doors that allowed strips of afternoon sunlight to spill across the floor. Rick followed Lucien and Felipe past them, but what he saw inside slowed his steps.
Elderly people were everywhere.
Some sat in wheelchairs by the windows, watching the light creep across the floor. Others leaned on walkers or canes, shuffling between rooms. A few gathered in small groups, playing cards or chess. One woman took her medication with the help of a younger man who looked like he might have been her grandson.
They were tired. That much was obvious. But their eyes were calm. Peaceful, even.
"Old, weak, sick, and useless," Merle muttered from somewhere behind him, loud enough for half the hallway to hear.
Several of Guillermo's crew turned to glare at him. One of them took a step forward like he was about to do something about it.
"Merle," Rick said, not turning around.
"What? I'm just stating facts. Sue me."
"Shut it," Daryl said from behind Merle, and Rick heard a sharp tug. "You're not helping."
The hostile looks from Guillermo's crew lingered for a moment longer before they turned back to their business.
By the time Rick caught up, Lucien had already guided Felipe to the room where Mr. Gilbert was sitting. The old man was still breathing heavily. Lucien crouched beside the wheelchair. Gone was the bright kid who'd been chattering and herding people five minutes ago.
"Felipe. I listened to Mr. Gilbert's breathing when I was with him earlier. There's a lot of abnormal sound in his lungs. Crackling, mostly on the left side. I've read that some asthma patients develop a tolerance if they use the same rescue inhaler for too long. The medication stops being as effective. We might need to check if there's an alternative in your supplies, something with a different active ingredient."
He paused, glancing back at the old man. "And his oxygen levels don't look great. If you've got anything we can use to monitor that, even something basic, it would help."
Felipe was nodding along, already thinking. "I think we've got a pulse oximeter somewhere in the supply closet. And there might be some salbutamol left over from—"
"That would be perfect," Lucien said. "Thank you."
Rick stood in the doorway, watching this exchange, and felt like he'd stepped into another dimension entirely.
He knew Lucien had picked up some medical knowledge. He'd been there, after all, when Lucien had spent time learning from Gale back at Harrison Memorial Hospital. He'd watched the kid ask questions, take notes, study with an intensity that had seemed unusual for someone so young.
At the time, when Gale had called Lucien "exceptionally sharp," he had assumed she was just being encouraging. Doctors did that. They built up their patients, especially the young ones.
He was starting to think she'd meant it literally.
"Rick!"
Glenn's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. He turned and spotted him standing near the far end of the hall, baseball cap slightly askew, looking like he'd just been rescued from something considerably less dangerous than what Rick had been imagining.
He was holding a hand of playing cards.
"Glenn." Rick crossed the distance quickly. "Are you alright? Did they..."
"I'm fine." Glenn glanced down at his cards, then back at Rick with a sheepish expression. "Mrs. Patterson's been teaching me gin rummy. I think she's hustling me."
An elderly woman in a floral cardigan peered up at them from her wheelchair. "He's terrible at it, dear," she informed Rick cheerfully.
Rick opened his mouth, closed it, and decided not to comment.
T-Dog appeared at his elbow, having spotted Glenn at the same time. "Oh, thank God. You're alive. We thought... That guy said he was gonna slice you up and feed you to the three most vicious creatures in the place."
He looked around the hallway. His eyes landed on a small basket near one of the rooms, where three chihuahuas were lounging in a pile of blankets. One of them lifted its head, spotted T-Dog staring, and let out two sharp barks.
T-Dog blinked.
Glenn started laughing. "Yeah. Those are the three most vicious creatures."
"You're kidding me."
Rick left them to it. He needed to talk to Guillermo, properly this time, without guns pointed at each other's heads. He found him near the entrance, arms crossed, watching his crew.
He pulled him aside, out of earshot of the others.
"Can we talk?"
Guillermo studied him for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure. Why not. The cat's out of the bag anyway."
They stepped into a small office off the main hallway. Inside were filing cabinets, a desk buried under paperwork, and a motivational poster on the wall. Now, it felt like the cruelest joke in the world. Rick closed the door behind them.
"So," Rick said. "This is a nursing home."
"Yes," Guillermo confirmed.
"Walk me through it."
Guillermo leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. "When everything went to hell, the staff here cleared out. Every single one of them. They left overnight without telling anyone, and by morning they were just gone."
He gestured vaguely toward the hallway.
"They left these people alone."
He shook his head. "Felipe was the last one still working here. As for me, I was just security. Night shift. That was it." He let out a slow breath. "But we couldn't just walk away."
"So you stayed."
"Yes, we stayed. Most of the others are family. Grandsons, daughters, one guy's still caring for his ninety-two-year-old mother. They stayed because they had nowhere else to go, or because they couldn't leave their people behind."
Rick understood that.
"The tough guy act..."
"It works." Guillermo's expression hardened. "You think raiders are gonna bother raiding a place if the people guarding it look like they'll cut your throat for looking at them wrong? We've got maybe thirty people here, half of them can't walk without help. We can't fight off a real attack. So we don't let anyone get close enough to try."
He met Rick's eyes. "It's what's kept them alive."
Rick was quiet for a moment, turning that over.
"Do you have any idea how close we came to shooting each other?"
Guillermo let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Yeah. I noticed."
"We almost killed all of you over a misunderstanding."
"And we would've killed all of you if we thought you were a real threat." Guillermo's voice was steady. "That's where we are now, isn't it? Everyone's a threat until they prove otherwise."
He looked at Rick and something in his expression shifted.
"And do you think we weren't the same?" he asked. "Scared shitless and making it up as we go?"
Rick held his gaze. Then he nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "I think we were exactly the same."
---
While Rick and Guillermo were sorting out the wreckage of their misunderstanding, Lucien had already moved on to his next task.
He found Felipe in the supply room and leaned against the doorframe. "Could I trouble you for some more alcohol, suturing needles and thread, and clean gauze? Merle's wrist needs proper treatment."
Felipe didn't hesitate. He was already pulling open a cabinet, scanning the shelves. "Of course. Anything else?"
"Not for now. Thank you."
He handed over the supplies in a neat stack. He had been running this place on scraps for weeks. He knew exactly what they had and what they couldn't afford to waste.
Merle, who had been leaning against the wall pretending not to eavesdrop, raised an eyebrow as Lucien walked past with the supplies.
Medical supplies were worth more than gold these days. You could not eat them, and you could not shoot walkers with them. Still, without them, people died from infections that would have been trivial before the world ended. Every roll of gauze and every bottle of antiseptic had become a form of currency.
And this kid had just asked for them like he was requesting a glass of water. And gotten them.
Lucien crouched down in front of Merle and set the supplies out in a neat row on the floor. Scissors, alcohol swabs, suturing needle and thread, fresh gauze, medical tape.
"Alright," he said, reaching for the bandages on Merle's wrist. "Let's have a look."
Merle watched the scissors in Lucien's hand as he cut away the old dressing. "Hold on. You already patched this up once. Why do it again?"
"That was emergency treatment." Lucien's eyes didn't leave his work as he peeled back the gauze, revealing the wound beneath. "Your wound is deep. It needs proper cleaning and stitches, or you're going to get an infection. And trust me, you do not want an infection right now."
Merle looked at the wound, then back at the kid examining it. He didn't argue. Just held his hand out and waited to see what the brat could do.
Daryl had positioned himself nearby. He couldn't help it. Watching an eleven-year-old kid prepare to stitch up a wound was the kind of thing that demanded attention, like watching someone juggle chainsaws.
He caught Glenn's eye and jerked his head toward Lucien. "Hey. What the hell is going on here? I thought you two got kidnapped. How'd he end up playing doctor?"
Glenn glanced around to make sure no one important was listening, then leaned in. "Honestly? I think I'm the only one who was actually a hostage."
"What do you mean?"
"When they brought me in, Lucien was already here. And already..." Glenn searched for the right word. "Popular isn't quite right. More like... essential."
He lowered his voice further. "Word is, when he first woke up after the fever broke, he wasn't even fully recovered himself. But there was a guy in the next bed who couldn't lift his arm. His shoulder was jammed up, maybe dislocated. Lucien figured it out and fixed it. Then there was a man with a leg infection. It was bad, the kind that would turn septic if it wasn't caught in time. Lucien spotted it, treated it, and saved the man's life. After that, whenever someone had a medical problem, they went to him."
Daryl stared at the kid, who was now using an alcohol swab to clean the wound. He was just a kid, and yet here he was, stitching up Merle's hand in a nursing home during the apocalypse. His understanding of what kids were capable of was being quietly dismantled.
"Hey, kid." Merle's voice broke through his thoughts as he watched Lucien thread the suturing needle. "Weren't you running a fever earlier? You looked like death warmed over. You're not going to give me whatever you had, are you?"
Lucien didn't look up. He was examining the needle, making sure the thread was secure. "Don't worry about it. Felipe put me on an IV when I got back. I'm almost completely better."
He glanced up, and there was something almost playful in his expression.
"Besides, you're my third patient today. The first two are doing fine. So statistically speaking, you've got nothing to worry about."
Merle opened his mouth, presumably to point out that statistics meant fuck-all when you were the one getting stitched up by a child, but Lucien had already turned back to the wound and was threading the needle through skin.
The first stitch went in clean. Merle's jaw clenched, but he didn't make a sound.
The second stitch. His fingers curled into a fist with his good hand.
The third. A sharp hiss through his teeth, but still no words.
Lucien worked in silence. He tied each knot firmly before moving to the next, pulling the edges of the wound together.
T-Dog had drifted over to watch. He stood there with his arms crossed, wincing every time the needle went in, comparing what he was seeing to every kid he'd ever met.
None of them came close.
When Lucien tied the final knot and snipped the thread with the scissors, he sat back on his heels and examined his work. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied, and reached for the fresh gauze.
He dressed the wound, layering gauze, cleaning the edges with antiseptic, adding more padding, and securing everything with medical tape.
Merle flexed his fingers, testing the range of motion.
"Kid. What were you doing before all this?"
It was the thing everyone had been thinking since Lucien had started talking medical terminology with Felipe like it was casual conversation. Glenn had been wondering it. Daryl had been wondering it. Even Felipe had given Lucien a curious look or two.
Lucien wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and looked up, puzzled by the question. "I was just a normal primary school student. Why, is something wrong?"
Merle stared at him. "They teaching stitches in primary school now?"
"Oh, this? No. I learned it after everything that happened at Harrison Memorial Hospital. There was a doctor there, Dr. Gale. She taught me. She said I had a bit of a knack for it."
A bit of a knack. Merle looked down at his neatly stitched, professionally dressed wound and let out a breath through his nose.
He clearly wasn't buying it and looked like he was about to press the issue when a voice cut across the room.
"Lucien's telling the truth."
Everyone turned. Rick was standing in the doorway, having just finished his conversation with Guillermo. He walked over and stopped beside Lucien, one hand resting briefly on the kid's shoulder.
"Dr. Gale said he had a talent for it. She wasn't exaggerating."
He looked down at Lucien.
"Alright. You've been on your feet all day. Go get some rest. We'll be heading back to camp soon enough."
"Okay." Lucien nodded, handing the remaining supplies over to Felipe. He stood, brushed off his knees, and headed for the hallway.
He paused at the door, glanced back once, and then disappeared into the corridor.
The next room was empty. It was a small storage space, filled with folded blankets and cleaning supplies. He stepped inside, pulled the door mostly shut behind him, and leaned back against the wall.
For a moment, he did nothing but breathe.
Slowly, a smile spread across his face.