Chapter 116.
Sally smiled and stretched out luxuriously in the back of FAB 1.
It was good to be home, although she'd be lying if she said she hadn't thoroughly enjoyed her last two days with Kip in Atlantic City. She loved her grandsons more than anything, but it was definitely refreshing to spend time with someone who was from the same era as her and hadn't grown up with all of the gadgetry her grandboys had come to rely so heavily on.
"H'lmost there, Mrs Tracy," Parker reported from the front seat, "Tracy Island, dead a'head."
"Thank you for the ride, dear," Sally crooned, twisting to smile at Penelope, "I'll fix you both some lunch when we touch down. Asparagus risotto or sprout soup?"
Penelope hid her disgust under the trusty veil of politeness she'd had drummed into her, "That's very kind of you, Mrs Tracy, but I'm afraid Parker and myself are needed back home. Kayo has called an emergency cyber review meeting, and Bertie still hasn't had his walk."
Almost as if on cue, Thunderbird Shadow blasted past the airborne pink Rolls Royce with a sonic boom, the resulting shockwaves causing Parker to jerk off course slightly.
"Blimey!" the chauffer exclaimed, correcting the car's balance before descending towards Thunderbird Two's runway, "She sure is in a 'urry!"
"I'd call that timing almost perfect," Sally declared, moving to unbuckle her seatbelt, "The boys are all sick and Kayo called this morning to negotiate a hand over. By the time I get up there, they should have only been alone for five minutes. Ten maximum."
"Aren't they quite capable of taking care of themselves?" Penelope quizzed, one immaculately plucked eyebrow going skyward, "I understand that men in general lack the same level of resourcefulness as women, but surely five sets of hands would make light work of any situation?"
Sally responded with an epic eyeroll, "You'd like to think so, but make no mistake, those boys would be nothing without me there to take care of them."
Penelope inclined her head in delayed agreement before returning her attention to her compact communicator, which was transmitting a series of encoded messages, "We'd better dash, Parker. Kayo is reporting some inclement weather over the Indian Ocean that could extend our flight time and eat into our fuel."
"F.A.B, m'lady," Parker replied, bringing FAB 1 in for one of the smoothest landings Sally had ever experienced, before leaping out and scurrying around to open the passenger door.
"I need to get my own one of you," Sally joked, stepping out of the same car that had laid waste to her eldest grandson's feet not that long ago, "Enjoy your meeting, and tell Kayo that I'll take it from here with the boys."
Penelope smiled and hoisted Sherbert up so that he could peer out of the window, "Will do, Mrs Tracy. Do give all of them my best."
A neck was cracked.
"F.A.B."
-x-
In the fifty six years that she'd been a mother and thirty three that she'd been a grandmother, Sally liked to think that she'd seen it all.
Gordon with his hand rammed down the toilet after his beloved tetra had been sentenced to death by flushing by a vindictive teenage John.
Teenage John acquiring said vindictiveness after being accosted by brown water coming out of the shower one morning, only to find a bag of chocolate milk powder stashed in the handset with Gordon's fingerprints all over it.
Scott supercharging their ride-on lawnmower whilst trying to tame the tiny patch of grass out the back of Gran Roca's farmhouse, only to end up blasting across the desert at supersonic speed when he'd stamped on the accelerator.
Alan getting his head stuck in the banister, again at Gran Roca, and requiring the services of half a bottle of cooking oil to wriggle free.
And Virgil missing Two's monkey bars, courtesy of the wasp that had decided to keep him company during what should have been a mundane trip down his launch chute.
Yep, the Tracy matriarch had seen more than her fair share of stupid shit. Five snotty noses had nothing on rescuing your eldest grandson from the wreckage of a lawnmower brought about by the tree he'd been forced to crash into out of sheer desperation.
'You should have bailed, kid.'
"ACHOOOO!"
Grimacing at the sheer force of the sneeze that had just shredded the face of one of her grandbabies, Sally made her way up towards the lounge, armed with a face mask, gloves, and copious amounts of hand sanitiser.
As usual, she wasn't disappointed.
Five bodies were cast around the room in positions that ranged from undignified to outright bizarre. Gordon's head was dangling off one end of his bed, while Virgil and Alan were face down in their pillows and giving all the clinical signs of being dead.
"Alright you lot, get up," Sally commanded, breaking stride to snatch up a couple of discarded tissues, "Lying down and feeling sorry for yourselves won't get you anywhere."
Five collective groans sounded as blankets were forcibly ripped off bodies and mugs of tea confiscated. Though cruel looking to the outside eye, Sally knew from both professional and personal experience that cold symptoms didn't abate quickly when sleep was the only treatment. Her boys needed hot showers and baths, fresh air, regular feeding, and possibly several tonnes of Sudafed.
Good thing they'd stocked up on their last supply run.
-x-
"Ugh," Scott groaned, dropping his head into his hands and sniffing stuffily, "I feel like death warmed up."
On the other side of the kitchen table, Virgil nodded in agreement. He'd finished cooking himself in the shower, had changed into a fresh set of clothes, and was attempting to finish the pasta salad that MAX had made for all of them. His nose wasn't feeling quite as loose as it had in the steamy wonderland of the bathroom, but he was certainly feeling more human than he had since first falling victim to the infernal bug.
Gordon was sat at the head of the table, head on his hands and snoring softly. He'd managed two spoonful's of his lunch before pushing the plate away and complaining that his throat hurt too much to swallow. Their grandmother had substituted his pasta for a glass of milk in a bid to get him to ingest some calories, but that also lay untouched.
Out on the patio, Alan and John were engaged in a game of Scrabble, making good on the promise they'd made to Sally of keeping themselves occupied in an effort to distract from their blocked noses and sore throats. Unfortunately, they were at the climax of their fourth round, and Scott in particular knew from experience that it wouldn't be long before both space brothers threw in the towel and returned to coughing and moaning.
Of course, Sally knew this from experience as well.
"Alright, family meeting in the lounge in five!" the Tracy matriarch yelled, "Bring any unfinished food and drink with you. I don't want wastage."
Virgil felt his eyelids droop as fatigue began to sink into his bones one again. Abandoning his lunch and ignoring his grandmother's threat in the same action, he reached over and began to gently shake the slumbering Gordon.
"I hope this is a drug distribution meeting," Scott sniffed, forlornly shaking his empty packet of lozenges, "I can feel another sinus headache on the way."
Raspy coughs were the only replies on offer as brothers one through five trudged up the stairwell to the lounge, a couple of renegade sneezes breaking loose in the process.
"Sit yourselves down," Sally instructed, absently scrolling through one of their spare tablets, "I won't be a minute."
Ever predictable, Gordon used the brief interlude to curl up on the sofa he'd claimed in the name of Thunderbird Four and nod back off again.
"Right," Sally mused, tapping and swiping until a spreadsheet of sorts filled the screen she was looking at, "Let's see what training you're all due."
Groans of sickness rapidly turned into groans of despair. The brothers knew their grandmother loved each of them to the moon and back, but some days she did a damn good job of hiding it.
"Assessing a casualty, haemorrhaging, fractures, resuscitation, anaphylaxis, legal aspects," Sally muttered, noting the green ticks next to each box that confirmed that refresher training had been undertaken in the last six months, "Insect bites, heatstroke, dehydration, head trauma…"
Scott grinned and folded his hands behind his head smugly. He was a hard taskmaster and monitored both his own and his brother's training schedules like a hawk. He was forever asking Virgil to drill them on the number of chest compressions needed for an adult casualty, which gauze to put on electrical burns, where to place the AED pads when treating an infant for paediatric cardiac arrest, et cetera, et cetera.
He had everything covered.
"Emergency childbirth."
The shit-eating grin on Scott's face was wiped clean off and replaced with an expression of poorly masked horror.
Except for that.
"Emergency what?" Scott spat, striding over and checking the spreadsheet his grandmother was consulting, "That column wasn't there last time I checked. In fact, neither was the one on domestic abuse."
"That's because I just added them," Sally replied, holding the tablet out of Scott's reach when he tried to grab it, "If there's time for concern there's time to learn. You boys need a distraction, plus this is a golden opportunity for you all to get ahead with your training. I'm not tolerating your semi-feral behaviour in this house any longer. People get sick all the time, and I can assure you that there are much worse things out there than a measly old cold."
Alan begged to differ. He felt closer to the dead than the living in his current state.
"Virgil?" Sally glanced up at her second grandson and squinted at him endearingly, "Be a sweetheart and go down to the medical bay and retrieve the white box next to the ventilator, would you?"
Unable to resist his grandmother's charm, Virgil heaved himself to his feet and did as instructed, his pacifist nature coming back to bite him in the ass when he remembered that two flights stairs separated the lounge from the medical bay.
Two steep flights of stairs.
'I really must get into the habit of saying no more often.'
"As for the rest of you…" Sally continued, her gaze sweeping across the four remaining bodies before settling on a target, "John, give me five signs a female casualty might be in or approaching labour."
"Backache, breathlessness, nervousness, waters breaking, and of course contractions," the redhead replied, his tone deadpan as he ticked the symptoms off on his fingers.
"Correct," their grandmother replied, barely blinking when Virgil sneezed and nearly ended up on his backside, "Scott, what are some of the reasons why a woman might experience an early labour?"
The eldest thought for a moment before answering, "Stress, age, having a history of preterm labours, twins, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, autoimmune disease, poor mental health, and birth defects."
"Perfect. And which scenario is the one you'll all most likely come into contact with at some point?" Sally continued, switching her crosshairs onto Gordon.
"Stress brought about by an emergency situation," the aquanaut replied, "Such situations may include, but are not limited to: natural disasters, vehicular accidents, terrorism attacks, damaged infrastructure, including disruption to power lines and transport networks, and loss of loved ones."
Sally nodded and glanced at Alan, "Your first priority should always be to either call an ambulance or get the lady to a hospital as quickly as possible. In the event that neither are immediately available, it's important that you're all familiar with the basics to maximise your chances of saving more than just one life."
Alan felt himself shrink a little, "How do Scott and Gordon know so much already? The closest I've ever come to something being born was that time Virgil got a t-shirt stuck over his head."
Gordon gave a snort of laughter, however swiftly paid for it with a coughing fit.
"Don't forget that your brothers are military trained, Alan," Sally reminded, gesturing to one of the tables where framed pictures of Scott and Gordon at their respective Air Force and WASP graduations sat, "Virgil also took paramedic classes alongside his pilot training. It's just you and John who need bringing up to speed."
John wrinkled his nose, "Uh, Grandma? There aren't exactly a whole host of babies born in orbit. And female astronauts aren't given clearance to board spacecraft if they're pregnant."
"Doesn't matter," Sally replied firmly, "You still need to be prepared in case we need you for an earth-based rescue."
Any retorts John had planned were forced to retreat back into their holes when Virgil re-entered the lounge, his face grey from exertion. In his hands was the box his grandmother had requested.
"Ah, wonderful," Sally chirped, relieving Virgil of his load and patting him on the cheek, "Thank you, dear. I've already said that you, Gordon, and Scott are exempt from this exercise. I'd like you to still be present for it though, as it might act as a valuable refresher. How long has it been since you delivered your last baby?"
"Ten months, give or take," Virgil wheezed, "I was able to get the woman to a hospital just in time, but I still include it on my baby tally."
"Was that the one you rescued from that office fire in Jakarta?" Gordon queried, "You did good on that one, bro. Being stuck inside a burning building with no fire exits would probably have been enough to send me into labour too."
Virgil treated his wingman to a short but genuine laugh.
"What is that thing?" Alan asked, his eyebrows knitting together in curiosity as Sally extracted a small device of sorts from the box and began unwinding the layers of bubble wrap encasing it.
"A TENS machine," came the casual reply.
"And?" Alan probed, "What's it used for?"
A beat of silence.
"To simulate labour pains."