It happens with such subtlety and with so little outward indication. If she hadn't been watching him so intently, she would've missed it happening. She'd watched his chest slowly rise, and then slowly fall—and then nothing. For second after torturous second. Penelope freezes up entirely at the realization—aware in the suddenly infinite depth of the moment that she should do something; say something; beg someone to help him—but she finds herself somehow unable to do anything but just stare at him, fixated but helpless.

And then he moves, for the first time she's seen, twisting his head beneath her frozen hand as his entire body seizes, a last gasping burst of exertion as his lungs stubbornly refuse to give up the ghost. He draws the sort of desperate breath that's hoarse and raw with the memory of his voice, but this falters almost immediately. His eyes open—bright and fixed and unseeing—but flicker closed again with a laboured sigh that fades once more into nothing, as he goes limp and deathly still again. At the far end of the gurney the comm shrieks a new alarm.

Of course this changes everything.

"Fuck—Alan!" Scott's icy calm evaporates in an instant, and Penelope finds herself swiftly and bodily removed from the side of the gurney by Parker, as Alan takes her place, stepping out from his eldest brother's shadow, into her place and up to the task at hand.

Dimly she registers that Parker's pulled her away and yet hasn't let her go, his hands steadying and firm on her shoulders. Hers have come up to clasp desperately together over her heart, holding her breath without meaning to, as she watches the boys work. She finds her gaze drawn to Scott, but it's clearly Alan who takes the lead, and Scott starts unpacking assorted equipment from the medbay, laying it out as quickly as his little brother needs it; medical instruments that seem as though they'd be out of place in the hands of someone Penelope still perceives as a child.

There are twelve years between Scott and Alan, but the exchange that fires between them is between professionals, and Scott is entirely deferential—

"Intubate?"

Alan shakes his head, grim. "Too risky midflight. He could do it, I might just make things worse. We can ventilate without tubing him. He's still got a pulse, but his airway's bad and his O2 sats are trash. Shouldn't be lying flat. Need to turn his head back to neutral."

Scott winces. "What's the medscan got on his c-spine?"

Alan doesn't bother to look at it, focused intently on his brother, as he gently places gloved hands on either side of his face, and slowly turns Gordon's head, until the back of his skull lies flat on the gurney. "Inconclusive. Always is, vertebrae are too irregular for the sensor to get a clear read in the field. Feels okay, but I don't wanna chance it. Collarbone's for sure broken."

"Brace?"

A shake of a bowed blond head. "After, let the medics do it. Harder to get an ETT placed with it on. Come around, I need manual stability while I do that jaw thing."

Scott obeys immediately, taking the order and taking Alan's place with a deference that Penelope doesn't think she's seen since his father was still alive. There's an incredible synchronicity to the pair of them, working in tandem, but there's an eerie, clinical competence about Alan that seems like it shouldn't be possible when he's doing something so desperately intense as finding a way to make his brother start breathing again.

Whatever Alan does requires placing his hands on his brother's face from the head of the gurney, and applying deliberate, upward pressure to the squarish curve of his jawbone. "C'mon, Gordon," Alan mutters, almost angrily, and after another agonizing stretch of very little time at all, there's finally a broken draw of breath as bluish lips part slightly, the compromise of his airway resolves, and he starts to breathe again, albeit in feeble, catching little gasps.

The breath Penelope hadn't meant to hold explodes out of her, and she feels Parker's hands tighten slightly against her shoulders as she sways on her feet. It's been only seconds, but she still feels almost lightheaded with relief, as Alan cracks a grin and Scott's posture loses some of its rigidity, though he snaps back into action as Alan promptly takes charge again, "Okay. I want him closer to upright. Keep his back straight, but tilt about thirty-degrees, then we just gotta get a mask on. Grab me an NRB."

Whatever this is, Scott's already reaching for it, as Alan keys a command into a console at the side of the medbay, and there's a soft hydraulic whirr as the gurney tilts slowly upward—just enough to ease the downward force of gravity on struggling lungs that need all the help they can get. He's rested a hand almost absently against Gordon's chest as he does this, as though reassuring his brother that he's still safe, still taken care of.

There's an O2 tank at the foot of the gurney, and Scott's connected a winding thread of plastic tubing to its outlet. He offers Alan the associated mask; a clear, rubbery plastic thing that Alan reaches for, and then takes without looking away from Gordon.

"Flow?"

"Fifteen litres. More, even, it'll go higher past the indicator."

Oxygen hisses on, and Alan presses a fingertip over the one way valve inside the mask, and the attached plastic reservoir inflates in his hand. Satisfied, he carefully presses the mask over Gordon's nose and mouth, secures the elastic strap behind his head, and then just watches, one hand lightly on his shoulder.

"…Okay," he says again, after a long few seconds of watching pure oxygen flow into his brother's lungs, as his breathing slowly stabilizes. "Yeah, okay."

Scott's still hovering at his elbow, head and shoulders taller than his youngest brother, and when Penelope catches a glimpse of his face, there's a brightness in his eyes as his gaze flits between his siblings. He steps closer to his little brother and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him halfway into a quick, fierce little embrace. His voice is hushed, but chokes only slightly as he says, "Good job."

Alan just nods, and his fingers against Gordon's shoulder clench slightly, clinging to him. "He taught me everything I know."

"You did good. He's gonna be so goddamn proud of you."

Alan takes an audibly shaky deep breath, his hand leaving Gordon's shoulder, just to come up and wipe briefly at his eyes as he leans wearily, automatically against his big brother. "He always said when he was training me—'do it like it's one of us'." Alan coughs, clearing a sudden break in his voice and a tightness from his throat before concluding, "Guess that's why."

Scott's arm around Alan's shoulders tightens briefly for one more moment, and then he lets go, steps away to lean over the gurney again. "What's next?"

"Just keep him stable. Should be six minutes out."

"Five," corrects Virgil's disembodied voice, loud over the cargo hold PA, a sudden reminder that he's heard everything happening below and had to fly implacably through it. There's an immeasurable depth of pride in his voice, as he adds, "Good job, Al."

At the end of the gurney the comm chimes softly, the first non-urgent noise it's made in the course of the whole horrible process, and John appears, adding, "Medics are ready and waiting on the runway. I've sent the Med scan ahead to their trauma center and authorized a feed of current telemetry from his suit." He hesitates briefly, and Penelope wonders at how helpless he must feel as he asks, "What else can I do?"

Scott's answer is immediate, almost more of an order. "Go home."

John is unaccustomed to taking orders from Scott, even in the circumstances, and he pauses. "Kayo's still…"

"Kayo's always taken care of herself. Go home, get Grandma. Come to the hospital. We need you both. Can you take TB1?"

John hesitates again, but nods. "Been awhile," he cautions.

"Well, you let him fly it yesterday and he nearly dropped it in the Pacific. At least today I'm giving you permission."

Yesterday seems a lifetime ago. Yesterday was the last time she spoken to Gordon, and that the last time she spoke to Gordon might very well become the last time she ever speaks to Gordon. She can't even clearly remember what she'd said, just that it was as airily dismissive as ever; that she'd told him he shouldn't have come, shouldn't have stolen his brother's Thunderbird and flown halfway around the world in an effort to spare her even the possibility of losing someone important.

Her eyes were already damp with unshed tears, emotion welling up unbidden as she'd watched Scott and Alan work on their brother, and now they begin to trail down her cheeks. Her breath catches, but she still has her helmet on, and until her shoulders start to shake and her knees buckle slightly, no one notices that she's started to cry.