Chapter 117.
Gordon was a good brother.
No, not good.
The best.
Sure, he enjoyed pushing his brother's buttons and occasionally ventured onto thin ice in the chores department, but nothing could take away from the fact that he was the kindest, funniest, gentlest, and most laid back member of his sibling pool.
He was also one of, if not the, bravest member of the family. Others may have begged to differ, but it took a special kind of courage to descend to the darkest, most remote recesses of the ocean in a pressurised tin-can with nothing but plankton and jellyfish for company. His run-in with the Chaos Crew had only served to underline the unique set of risks he took every time he launched Thunderbird Four into the briny deep.
But his bravery extended far beyond his duties as Head Aquanaut.
Gordon could vividly recall an occasion where a young Alan had toddled off looking for lizards during one of their summer vacations at Gran Roca, only to end up stumbling upon a nest of rattlesnakes instead. Scared and unable to call for help, the youngest had stashed his butt up a tree and been forced to wait until one of his brothers noticed his absence and came looking for him.
On this particular occasion, Gordon had taken up the torch.
In keeping with the bravery that would go on to accompany him through his careers with both WASP and International Rescue, Gordon had taken one look at his baby brother's situation, weighed up the risks, grabbed a handful of pebbles, and gently tossed them at some of the largest snakes in a bid to redirect the reptile's attention onto him. After buying Alan enough time to vacate the tree, and incurring the wrath of several generations of rattlesnakes in the process, he'd given the instruction to flee, closely followed by the recommendation to not run in a straight line, lest they became easy targets for their scaly pursuers.
Needless to say, the sight of both blond brothers zig-zagging their way towards the farmhouse at breakneck speed with absolutely nothing following them had been bemusing and hilarious.
"I'm going to need a volunteer to act as our labouring woman," Sally declared, arranging some cushions so that one of the sofas resembled a bed, "Any volunteers, or will I have to pick someone?"
Calling the same bravery that had gotten him out of numerous life-or-death situations (and a couple of rattlesnake rodeos) to the forefront of his mind, Gordon stuck his hand in the air and detached himself from his brothers.
"Thank you, dear," Sally crooned, patting her fourth grandson on the arm as he made himself quite comfortable on the makeshift bed, "Be sure to prop yourself up and-"
"Hold on a second," Gordon interrupted, holding up a finger and zipping towards the kitchen staircase. Twenty seconds (and two coughing fits later), he returned with a watermelon that was promptly stuffed up his shirt, "Gotta look the part."
Alan nearly choked on his drink at the sight of his newly pregnant brother.
Sally's eyes practically went into orbit, "Very funny, kid. I need to affix these self-adhesive pads to your abdomen, so you'll have to lose both the shirt and the watermelon until I've positioned them correctly."
More than happy at the prospect of losing his shirt, Gordon did as instructed, flinching at the temperature shock brought about by the cold electrodes his grandmother was placing on his stomach.
"On average, labour can last from five to twenty four hours," Sally informed, motioning for Gordon to redress his torso, "Women who've had children before usually have shorter ones than first-time mothers. What are the five most essential things to have to hand during any childbirth that isn't taking place inside a hospital?"
Scott's hand was up before Sally had even finished the question, "Hot water, towels, gloves, drinking water, and a thermometer."
"Show off," Alan muttered.
"Indeed," came the raspy reply, accompanied by a smile that made Sally's eyes crease, "I'll ask Brains to make sure all of the Thunderbirds contain such items in their medical bays. Remember, the most important thing you can give during labour is comfort and reassurance. Giving birth is a frightening experience, and having someone there to hold your hand and offer you a drink is worth more than all the fancy equipment in the world."
"Oh, and whatever you do, don't ask about the person's family situation," Virgil interjected, "I made the mistake of asking a woman where her partner was on one particular occasion. Turned out he'd been cheating on her and the stress of finding out had sent her into preterm labour. It did nothing for her cause, or mine for that matter."
Scott nodded in agreement, "Definitely err on the side of caution. I turned a woman over to paramedics a few years ago who'd lost her husband to the same gas explosion I rescued her from. Just focus on being sympathetic and supportive. No person or parent is defined by whether they're in a relationship or not."
"Very well said, boys," Sally praised, nodding proudly at her eldest grandsons, "Now, labour pain is very difficult to describe. For women, it can almost be likened to extreme period cramps, but for men, it's a little harder. I've heard some people say it's similar to being kicked in the crown jewels, but there's no way of confirming or denying this for certain."
Five pairs of legs were instinctively crossed.
"We'll start out low," Sally announced, her eyes sparkling with the tiniest trace of humour as she fussed needlessly with the cushion behind Gordon's head, "Just to get you warmed up."
Gordon seemed unperturbed as he proudly readjusted his watermelon.
"Initiating current," Sally warned, "This should feel similar to what a very mild period cramp is like."
The dial was turned.
Gordon screamed.
-x-
Two storeys down in a lab devoid of any natural light, Brains sighed.
Though watertight in the event of a flood and completely self-contained, his workshop was, regrettably, not one hundred percent soundproof. With the exception of the noise dampening foam designed to muffle the launches of Thunderbirds One, Two, Three, and Five (when she was planetside), he'd reasoned that there was little need to cut himself off acoustically from the rest of the island.
After all, how much noise could one pensioner, five adults, one teenager, and a dog make?
Apparently, quite a lot.
Someone was screaming. Brains couldn't tell who from the frequency and pitch alone, but his best guess was probably one of the boys. They had a nasty habit of shrieking and bellowing when on the safety of their home turf, primarily at each other, and Scott and Gordon in particular had little concept of volume.
Brains felt his eyes do one of their signature rolls. He loved the Tracys like family, but sometimes found himself wishing that their behaviour was a little more…refined. Not in the Lady Penelope sense, but maybe a bit more in the Tycho Reeves sense. Oh sure, the boys donned their professional personas when they were on the job, but Brains couldn't help but wonder how the world would react if they knew what happened behind closed doors.
Still, he had no grounds to complain. He lived a comfortable life on Tracy Island, reported to no one, and had access to a nine figure piggybank to finance his portfolio of projects. His own personal bank account also benefitted hugely from the arrangement, and would no doubt divorce him if he dared to even contemplate looking for work elsewhere.
Another scream tore through the walls, this time slightly louder.
Brains sighed and returned his attention to the adjustments he was making to Virgil's exo-suit. Sometimes being asocial had its advantages.
People were, in his opinion, like planes.
Fun to look at, but from forty thousand feet away.
-x-
Alan felt his stomach curdle as he watched Gordon yell out something nonsensical and return to screaming.
He had no idea why his grandmother was insisting on performing this little exercise, let alone on one of her grandsons. Surely it made more sense to kidnap a real pregnant woman and practise on her?
As if somehow reading his mind, Scott glanced over and frowned disapprovingly. Though no words passed between them, Alan could tell that such thinking would render his chances of eventually inheriting leadership of International Rescue slimmer than an anorexic stick insect.
The youngest felt himself shudder. It always unnerved him whenever Scott got in touch with his psychic side.
"Okay, who's going to be the medic in charge of supervising this scenario?" Sally asked, catching Gordon's hand in her own when he went to rip one of the electrodes off his stomach.
Alan barely had time to suppress the sneeze he was in the middle of battling before he was pushed forwards by John like a sacrificial goat.
"Well done, dear," Sally smiled, patting the section of floor immediately to her right and motioning for Alan to come and kneel next to her, "Take off your shoes and roll up your sleeves."
A snort managed to work its way out of Virgil as Alan glanced dubiously down at his top. His sleeves were already three-quarter length, so he settled for pushing them up to his elbows, his mind already racing ahead to try and anticipate what the hell his grandmother had in store for him.
"Okay, now the first thing you should do in a situation like this is introduce yourself," Sally instructed, scooting backwards so that Alan could take her place by Gordon's side, "Then slowly and clearly explain what you're going to do to help. If the patient resists, try talking to them about something completely unrelated to calm them down. The weather, local news, or the worst restaurant they've ever eaten at are usually safe topics."
"But he's my brother," Alan argued, his snot-infused brain blocking all attempts at imaginative interpretation.
Sally shook her head, "Within the parameters of this exercise, he's Kelly Graham. A newly single first-time mother-to-be who lives in downtown Toronto with a pet gerbil and works as an accounts assistant at a prominent hotel chain."
Gordon, who was relishing the pain-free interlude, frowned in mock outrage, "I don't want a gerbil. I want my Celery."
"For the sake of this exercise, we're giving you a new identity," Sally countered, her tone shifting to the one she'd once used on patients of her own.
Gordon, however, was having none of it, "I don't care. Where I go, she goes. If I'm transcending the gender divide and moving to the Great White North, she's coming with me."
"Very well," Sally capitulated, "A gerbil named Celery. Virgil? Turn the dial to thirty five hertz, would you? Let's get this show on the road."
Virgil did as instructed, his face twitching in sympathy as electricity began to stimulate the nerves in his brother's abdominal muscles.
Gordon clenched his jaw and slapped a hand across his eyes, moaning as tendrils of pain spread from his stomach around to his back. He had the highest pain tolerance of all of his brothers, and had already survived two rounds of being glued back together, both after his hydrofoil crash, and after his run-in with the Chaos Crew. If anyone could endure the agony of giving birth to an imaginary baby, it was him.
Sally bit back a snort as Gordon groped for Alan's hand and gripped it tight. While her motivation for running the current exercise was grounded in humour, she also knew how important it was for her grandsons to be prepared for, quite literally, anything. The eldest three were self-starters when it came to keeping on top of their training, however the youngest duo, though organised, sometimes required a little more prompting when it came to certain subjects.
"Initiating another contraction," Sally warned, motioning for Virgil to increase the current slightly.
Gordon screwed his eyes shut and squeezed Alan's hand, barely noticing when the youngest honked in pain.
"Now would probably be a good time to ask a few basic questions about the patient's situation," Sally advised, "Be sure to keep your tone conversational and use open-ended phrasing."
Alan didn't think the conditions he was being forced to work under were conducive to a conversational atmosphere. He was fairly certain one of his knuckles had just popped clean out of alignment, and the sight of one of his brothers in pain, artificial or not, was frightening to say the least.
"What are you gonna to name it?" Alan tried, the fake enthusiasm in his voice failing to mask it's reluctant undertone.
In the background, Scott elbowed Virgil in the ribs and masked a giggle with a sneeze.
Sally shook her head, "Too personal. Try again."
Alan could feel himself start to panic, "Um…are you having a boy?"
"Again."
"A girl?"
"Again."
"A surprise?"
"Again."
John, who had yet to comment on the situation, stepped forward and laid a hand on their grandmother's shoulder, deliberately ignoring the barrage of questions EOS was pumping into his ear about how babies were made and where they came from, "Cut him some slack, Grandma. There's no universal rule as to what's considered personal or not during labour, with the exception of a person's relationship status as Virgil mentioned earlier."
Sally swivelled her crosshairs onto the congested redhead, "You're welcome to take his place and lead by example if you like."
John shook his head and paid for it with a bout of coughing, "Can't. Someone has to keep watch and make sure the surrounding area is as risk-free as possible while Alan works. This is supposed to be the scene of an emergency, remember?"
Scott nodded, "They're at the foot of Mt Etna and lava is approaching their position at a record-breaking fifty kilometres an hour. It's already scorched through several uninhabited dwellings and is laying siege local to farmland. Alan, you'd better hurry."
Battling aside the fog in his brain in favour of his Cavern Quest mindset, Alan shifted his weight so that his feet weren't devoid of blood and motioned at Gordon's torso.
"Take off your shirt," he instructed, "I can't take you seriously with that watermelon belly."
Gordon, who spent most of his non-working life sashaying around in nothing but swimming trunks, balked and looked at Alan as if he'd just been asked to strip naked.
"Fine, I'll help you," Alan grouched, misinterpreting his brother's silent reluctance and unbuttoning the coveted Hawaiian garment, "Are you okay? Do you need a drink or maybe a cold flannel?"
"Do I look okay?" Gordon hissed, keening when another bout of pain radiated through him, courtesy of the bastard Virgil.
Alan swallowed thickly, "Sit tight. I can probably find an online video that will do a much better job at explaining everything than me."
Buoyed by a combination of his own ingenuity and the relief at not having to talk about something he knew squat about, Alan grappled for his phone with sweaty hands. He'd just freed it from his pocket when Sally reached over and plucked the electronic lifeline out of his hands.
"The eruption has cut power and signal to your location," the Tracy matriarch informed, smirking inwardly when Alan wilted under the expectant gazes of his three non-labouring brothers, "You'll have to make do with the greatest piece of technology ever invented: your brain."
As if inspired by the absurdity of the situation, Virgil chose that precise moment to induce another contraction, this one more intense than the others combined.
"Holy hell on a Thunderbird!" Gordon cried, his grip on Alan's hand turning vice-like as he tried to distract himself by yelling out the names of random bits of furniture he could see, "Table! Footstool! Cushion! Portrait! Piano! Gyah, make it stop!"
"Okay Gordo, I think you might be crowning," Alan lied, his voice deceivingly calm, "Try and take lots of short breaths, and don't push until I tell you."
Virgil inched the dial up some more as Scott and John bit their knuckles in silent amusement.
Gordon writhed in agony, his blond hair stuck to his sweaty forehead, "Urgh! I need an epidural, or a brick to the head!"
"Just a little bit longer," Alan soothed, falling back on what their father had always said about providing emotional support to a rescue victim above all else, "You'll soon be able to hold your little miracle."
The hilarity of the situation suddenly proved too much for Scott, who scrambled to his feet and scurried out of the lounge. Alan didn't care for his eldest brother's behaviour, however swore he could hear bursts of uncontrollable laughter interspersed by the occasional cough and brother número uno extracted himself from the situation.
The interlocked hands of the youngest two tightened as Gordon rode another wave of near indescribable pain. Inspection of the hertz rating by Sally revealed that the discomfort rating technically equalled that of a severe period cramp, however Gordon begged to differ.
He was dying.
"Your poor mother went through this five times," Sally reminded, barely flinching when Gordon's screams reached glass-shattering level, "Never underestimate the power of a woman."
Gordon opened his mouth to defend himself, however was forced to abort his counterargument when a brief wave of sickness engulfed him, brought about by his knotted stomach muscles, "Mom, I'm so sorry. Forgive me!"
"Oh, you have nothing to apologise for," Sally divulged, wringing out a cold cloth and motioning for Alan to grab the blood pressure cuff, "It was Virgil who gave her the toughest time. Ten pounds and six ounces. They couldn't even get him with the forceps."
Virgil himself looked nothing short of horrified at the latest of his grandmother's unwelcome revelations.
"Eight hours," Sally carried on, gently wiping the sweat from Gordon's brow, "Imagine going through eight hours of this. At one point your father and I thought they were going for a tow truck and some rope."
Abandoning his post as dial monitor, Virgil decided to copy Scott and vacate the room while his dignity still had the equivalent of a pulse (albeit a weak one), leaving John and Celery as the sole remaining spectators.
"Caesarean!" Gordon panted, his eyelids fluttering as exhaustion began to seep into his bones, "I need a caesarean!"
Sally shook her head, "I would strongly advise against that. Caesareans should only be performed by trained medical staff using sterilised tools in a secure environment and as an absolute last resort. You boys aren't trained for such procedures."
Gordon's eyes nearly ejected themselves clean out of his skull at his grandmother's reply. He'd crossed the border into last resort territory fifteen hertz ago.
Speaking of hertz…
"Holy halibut!" Gordon roared, spasming as John wordlessly picked up the discarded TENS machine and ratcheted the current up slightly, "Giving birth should be illegal!"
"Keep going, Gords," Alan encouraged, squeezing his brother's hand and beaming when his grandmother rewarded his ministrations with a thumbs up, "You're doing amazing. Fast flowing lava ain't got nothin' on you."
Too absorbed by the pain to notice anything else, Gordon ignored Alan's cheerleading and gave a series of long exhales, rationalising inside his head that erratic breathing was probably making his discomfort worse. The steady inflation and deflation of his lungs served as a consistent distraction for several seconds, until another wave of pain picked him up and slammed him into the rocks.
"Oh, you must be having twins," Alan unhelpfully announced, gritting his teeth as his hand was subjected to all the strength Gordon's toned arm had to offer, "Will I be allowed to look after them when you're out of the house? I promise I'll be the best babysitter that ever sat."
Gordon gave a wail of exertion as one last pulse ripped through his abdomen. Satisfied that her youngest grandsons were now suitably educated on the unpredictability and general trauma of childbirth, Sally motioned for John to dial back the current as she moved to unstick the electrodes from Gordon's stomach.
"Thank goodness," John muttered, the back of his nose tickling as a sneeze threatened to break loose, "I was worried we were going to have to chemically restrain him. Alan? Are you okay?"
As if summoned by the unspoken need for comfort, Celery padded over and sniffed curiously at Alan's feet as he cradled his tortured hand. It was sore and would no doubt play host to one hell of a bruise in the morning, but his earlier diagnosis of a possible fractured knuckle appeared to be inaccurate.
"I'm fine," Alan replied, grimacing as the adrenalin in his system began to abate, "How did I do, Grandma?"
"Oh, you did great," Sally enthused, ripping the last electrode off Gordon's stomach like a wax strip, "You stayed calm and excelled on the emotional support side of things. I'll sign you off in a minute."
Alan exchanged a self-satisfied fist pump with John before turning to face Gordon, who seemed to be teetering on the brink of consciousness. He may have lived through more reconstructive surgeries than the rest of them combined, but labour pains were apparently a step too far, even for him.
"Where are my babies?" Gordon croaked, peering around the room with a slightly glazed expression, "What have you done with them?"
Neither Sally nor Alan could tell if Gordon's query was genuine, or a weak attempt at humour. In the end it mattered little, since John chose that precise moment to wade in and take control over what remained of the situation.
"Stay still and I'll go and fetch them for you," the redhead offered, returning the TENS machine to its box and gliding off in the direction of the kitchen staircase, "Try and drink something as well. You've sweated enough to fill two buckets."
Gordon didn't answer, his attention absorbed by the sensation of the blood pressure cuff Sally was attaching to his upper arm. Five minutes and a quick examination with the stethoscope later, and John returned to the lounge, two bundles cradled in his arms.
"Here they are," the redhead announced, his long legs covering the length of the room in three strides, "Two healthy little girls. Congratulations, Mr Tracy."
Gordon cooed in excitement and opened and closed his hands expectantly, oblivious to the confused frowns stapled to the faces of his grandmother and youngest brother.
John smiled and deposited both bundles, which were wrapped in tea towels, into Gordon's waiting arms. Unable to read the enigmatic expression on the redhead's face, Alan scrambled to his feet and scampered behind Gordon's head, his eyes on stalks as he peered into his brother's lap.
"Uh, Gords? Those are eggplants."
Gordon nodded proudly and cuddled both vegetables to his chest.
"They have my eyes."