Chapter Eleven: Placing the Blame

Silence was a rare commodity in the Tracy household. With five boisterous young men and their millionaire father – not to mention the Hackenbacker and Kyrano families – there had been few times since the island had earned the name 'Tracy' that utter silence had reigned. Even back before International Rescue had been established, the island had only been a peaceful, quiet haven when the five Tracy sons had been at their respective schools and universities.

At this moment however, one room on the island was far from unoccupied. The multi-purpose breakfast and lounge room that overlooked the twin pools of the villa was playing host to four of the island denizens. Through the huge glass windows the sunset was truly spectacular but despite the room's occupants, no one was paying the slightest attention.

Scott Tracy was sprawled uncomfortably on the sofa. His plastered leg was elevated on a pile of cushions and the crutches the Welsh Hospital had provided for him were lying on the floor.

Sitting opposite him was his younger brother Gordon. Well, sitting was a rather loose term; Gordon was shifting so often it looked like he was doing some kind of bizarre dance. The more tolerant side of Scott recognised that out of all of his brothers, Gordon was the closest to Alan. Unfortunately, Gordon had also found an old-fashioned ballpoint pen from somewhere and after an hour or more of constant clicking, Scott was on edge.

"Do you have to do that?" he growled abruptly.

Gordon looked up at him, his face curiously blank. "Do what?"

"Click the pen."

Gordon looked down at the pen in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Then he threw it onto the sofa beside him and stared down at his empty hand.

After a few moments of tense silence, the shifting started again. Every time Gordon moved, the coach creaked unpleasantly. Scott gritted his teeth as he felt his temper rising rapidly to the surface. Why did Gordon always have to be so incredibly irritating? Couldn't he see that he wasn't helping the situation?

Creak, creak, creak.

Scott couldn't keep his mouth shut any longer. "For God's sake Gordon, can you just sit still?"

This time when Gordon looked up, his face was marked by anger. "Anything else you want me to do, Scott? Get you a soda? Peel you a bloody grape?"

Scott was unaccustomed to hearing such venom in his younger brother's voice. "Hey, I just meant –"

"You don't have a monopoly on worrying, you know. So stop telling me what to do. You're not my Field Commander now."

Bad-temper and Gordon were not normally two things that Scott though of in the same sentence. Bad-temper and Alan however … he shoved that tendril of thought aside swiftly. It would do none of them any good of he let his fear about his little brother's condition overwhelm him. With their dad away everyone would look to him for some kind of guidance – broken leg or no broken leg. And if there was one time you don't want to let Jeff Tracy down, it was when one of his sons was hurt or in danger.

Alan's in both …

Scott took a deep breath. As aggravating as Gordon was being, the last thing anyone needed right now was for World War III to break out in the middle of the living room.

"Has there been any news?"

Whatever reply Scott might have made was stifled when Tin-Tin stepped into the room, Fermat hurrying after her. Inwardly Scott blessed Tin-Tin's intervention, despite the fact that it brought two more anxious people into an already volatile situation. The Malaysian girl could always be counted on to keep her head in difficult circumstances – maybe she could help him keep a handle on Gordon.

"Nothing," Scott replied as Fermat perched at a stool by the counter and Tin-Tin hovered beside him. Her dark eyes widened at his response and for a moment she looked stricken.

Fermat must have caught the look because he reached out and awkwardly patted her on the shoulder. "N-No news is g-good news," he ventured.

"No news, is no news," Gordon contradicted flatly, not even looking up.

Fermat and Scott shared an awkward glance. Tin-Tin barely seemed to notice. Wrapping her arms around herself, she wandered across the room to the windows and stared out at the dying sun. Scott watched her movements, his worry escalating. Although he couldn't see her face, the muscles in her back were tense and her arms were shaking. All thoughts of having an ally in the girl faded; she seemed to be taking it even harder than Gordon, which was a little surprising when you considered the volatile nature of Alan and Tin-Tin's relationship. Most of the time they didn't appear to even like each other.

"How long does it take to run a couple of tests?"

Gordon was running his mouth off again. His tone was belligerent and Scott felt his tenuous control over his temper slipping.

"H-head injuries are co-com-com-com serious. They have t-to run lots of t-t-tests."

The look Gordon gave Fermat was scathing. "It was a rhetorical question!"

As the younger boy's cheeks flamed, Scott grip on his temper began to fail. No matter the current situation and the stress they were all under, Gordon's behaviour was way out of line.

"Alright Gordon, that's enough."

"Get off my back, Scott."

"Then stop acting like such a jerk. I know you're worried about Alan – we all are! – but that doesn't give you the right to start taking it out on other people."

There was a strained silence. At the breakfast bar, Fermat looked mortified to be caught in the centre of the argument. Over by the window, Tin-Tin was still looking out at the sunset. Gordon was staring at the floor. Watching him, Scott wondered just what was going through his little brother's head to make him act so irrationally. What Scott had said was true – they were all worried sick about Alan – but surely Gordon knew his behaviour wasn't helping anyone? He was twenty-one for God's sake – not twelve!

Finally, Gordon raised his head. "Screw you, Scott," he said quietly.

Scott was shocked. "What did you say?"

"You heard me."

Scott stared at his brother in disbelief. Any residual sympathy he had been feeling for Gordon rapidly gave way to anger. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Gordon's laugh was short and ugly. "What's wrong with me? Hello? We're all trapped on this damn island while our little brother lies unconscious in a hospital bed! What the hell do you think is wrong with me? I'm sick of being left out of the loop – Alan could have died for all we know!"

"That's enough!" Scott wished bitterly that his leg wasn't broken and that then he could use his superior height to make Gordon back down. It was a tactic that had worked well when they had been children – but one he'd rarely had to use against this brother. "You are way out of line, Gordon."

"Why? You think everyone else in this room's not thinking the same thing? They are. The only difference is, I'm tired of keeping my mouth shut."

"This is not the time or the place –"

"Never supposed to talk about our emotions, are we Scott? Never supposed to admit to things. Keep quiet and sweep everything under the carpet – that's the Tracy way!"

Scott's temper snapped completely. "You want me to say I'm worried about Alan? You want me to admit I'm scared he's not going to be able to come back from this? Fine. I'm scared. I'm upset. And I hate feeling so helpless. But, Gordon, there's nothing we can do right now –"

"Except sit around like good little children and think happy, healing thoughts?"

"It can't be any worse than shooting your mouth off and upsetting everyone else!"

"What, so I'm not allowed to express an opinion now? Gee and here I was thinking we lived in a democracy."

"Stop it! Just stop it!"

He'd got so wrapped up in the argument with Gordon that Scott had almost forgotten the other two people in the room. Fermat was still hovering by the kitchen, his head darting back and forth between Scott and Gordon like a referee in a tennis match. However it was Tin-Tin who really caught Scott's attention. She'd whirled around from the window, her hands clenched in front of her. They were shaking visibly and her knuckles were white with tension.

Scott was so startled by her unusual outburst that for a moment he just stared at her. While Tin-Tin might occasionally blow up at Alan, or even Gordon, she'd never looked at him like that before. In fact, in all the time he'd known her, Scott had never seen her looking so utterly devastated as she did now. Once again he got the uncomfortable feeling that he was missing something.

Gordon seemed as taken aback as Scott. "Tin-Tin," he began.

"No!" She turned on him like a feral tiger, her dark eyes glittering furiously. "Just – just don't say anything else. Don't you think you've both done enough already? All this – this senseless arguing … yelling at each other … do you really think any of it is helping? It's not. It's just making everything ten times harder!"

"Tin-Tin –" It was Scott's turn to try and cut her off but like Gordon, she didn't give him the chance.

"No – I don't want to hear it!" Tin-Tin took a step forward, hugging her trembling arms about her waist. She was blinking furiously. "I can't believe you would act like this after everything that's happened. You're supposed to be the ones that hold everything together. You're supposed to be adults. You're the Thunderbirds for God's sake, not a pair of – a pair of bickering ten year olds! Honestly, you're acting just as immature as you're always claiming Alan is …" Her voice broke and she looked down at the ground. Beneath her curtain of dark hair, Scott couldn't see her face but from the choked note in her voice he guessed that she was crying. "I'm sorry," she whispered suddenly, swaying slightly. "I shouldn't have – I can't do this right now."

And before anyone could say anything else, Tin-Tin weaved through the sofas and fled the room.

Scott stared after her in shock. Fermat wavered for a few seconds and then followed her. Gordon looked sideways at Scott, his expression faintly guilty but when his older brother met his gaze, his face hardened again.

Waiting was not one of Jeff Tracy's strong points. He was a man of action. He made phone calls; he wrote reports; he made decisions and then passed them onto his subordinates who carried them out. That was how he had built Tracy Enterprises up from a small farm in Kansas to a billion dollar company. That was how he had conceived and established International Rescue.

Contrary to the opinion of those who knew he had his own private island, he was not a man of leisure. Therefore sitting on one of the hospital's horribly uncomfortable plastic chairs and awaiting word of his son's condition was one of the nearest things to torture that he'd ever experienced.

The urge to jump up and grill each passing staff member was growing stronger with each minute that ticked by. Doctor Makura, hadn't returned after taking Alan upstairs and Jeff was rapidly reaching the end of his patience.

The voice came as if on cue.

"Mr Tracy?"

Jeff turned to see the woman herself approaching, as if his thoughts had summoned. She was accompanied by a tall, thin man with greying hair. By the white coat and medical chart this man was sporting, Jeff assumed that he was another doctor of some kind, although not one that had worked on Alan in the Trauma Room.

"Mr Tracy, this is Doctor Michael Gibson. He's Alan's neurologist."

Jeff shook the older man's hand distractedly. Doctor Gibson had a firm grip and the lines on his face spoke of his experience, but he lacked the kindly aura that Tamati Makura projected.

"I asked him to come down and speak to you regarding Alan's condition," Doctor Makura continued.

Jeff frowned; her words weren't very reassuring.

"Why don't we all sit down?" Doctor Gibson suggested. He led Jeff over to a line of nearby chairs and the doctors sat, one either side of him. Gibson glanced down at the chart in his hands before he turned back to Jeff.

"As you know, Mr Tracy, we took your son for an MRI scan early today. Now the results of this scan show what we had suspected: Alan has a subdural hematoma – bleeding within his brain."

Jeff stiffened and though he longed to demand what the doctors were going to do about Alan's condition, he held his tongue and forced himself to listen to the rest of Doctor Gibson's explanation.

"Once we had identified your son's condition, we took him to the OR and inserted an ICP Monitor. This allows us to keep track of Alan's intracranial pressure and move to prevent further brain damage should the pressure become to great."

The words struck Jeff like a blow in the gut and he could keep silent no longer. "Further brain damage? What are you telling me, Doctor?"

Gibson put Alan's chart down in his lap and folded his hands on top of it. The look he fixed Jeff with was very direct. "Mr Tracy, although we will not be able to tell for certain until Alan wakes up, there is a possibility that he has suffered some degree of brain damage from the head injury he sustained."

"How strong a possibility?"

"At this moment in time it is impossible to say. I'm afraid there's simply no way of telling until your son awakens from his coma."

The words seem to reach Jeff's ears from a great distance away. His eyes noted that both doctors were looking at him sympathetically but all his mind could focus on were the two words he'd not even entertained before Doctor Gibson had raised them.

Brain damage. His son – his youngest child – could have brain damage.

It was almost too much for him to take in and the sheer unfairness of it all threatened to overwhelm him. Alan was only eighteen years old. He had only recently become a fully-fledged member of International Rescue. He had so much potential; so many lives to save. He was supposed to have years ahead of him. And now a sentence hung over his head that could change his life forever.

That could change all of their lives forever.

There was a moment of silence after Tin-Tin ran out of the room and then all hell broke loose.

"Now look what you've done!" Scott shouted, knowing that blaming Gordon was rather illogical but for once allowing his emotions to overwhelm his judgement.

"Me? Oh I'm sorry – was I having that argument with myself?" The expression on Gordon's face was ugly. "Or is this your guilty conscience lashing out?"

Scott stiffened. "Shut up, Gordon. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I? Isn't that what you always do in this kind of situation? Even when what happened had nothing to do with you, somehow it always comes around to being Scott's fault!"

If it hadn't been for the fact that the whole of his right leg was encased in plaster, Scott would have hit his brother at that point. It wasn't just Gordon's words that were so disturbing – and so unerringly accurate – it was the bitter, twisted, almost tortured expression on his little brother's face. If he hadn't been so angry, he probably would have realised that Gordon's words could easily have been self-prophetic, but he wasn't really looking to empathise with his brother at that moment.

"I don't have to sit around here and listen to this."

"What are you going to do?" Gordon sneered. "Run away?"

It was such a thoughtless comment that it actually hurt Scott more than most of Gordon's earlier ranting. In any normal context, there would have been a mischievous grin on his younger brother's face, a teasing lilt in his tone. Now there was just spite.

He stared his brother down and felt a surge of satisfaction when Gordon looked away first. "You're damn lucky Dad isn't here to hear this or you'd be looking at spending the next five years up on Thunderbird 5." Scott's voice was low and held an edge of menace. Broken leg or not, he was the oldest one here. He was the Field Commander of International Rescue and hewasn't going to let Gordon take out his frustration and helplessness over Alan on him any longer.

"That'd be right," Gordon retorted disgustedly. "Pack the troubled Tracy sons off to the four corners of the world – that'll sort all their problems out!"

Scott opened his mouth to growl back but paused as his brother's words fully registered. What the hell did Gordon mean by that? Not for the first time, Scott wished he could see into his brother's mind and find out what was going on in there. Gordon's reaction was so wildly out of character that it surely had to be something more than simply worry over Alan's condition.

He decided to try one more time. "What are you talking about Gordon?"

Gordon shifted his dislocated shoulder uncomfortably but didn't speak. His sudden silence was more disturbing than his angry torrents of moments before.

"Gordon?"

"Has there been any news?"

For the second time within ten minutes, Scott and Gordon's argument was interrupted by the worried question. Scott turned to tell Tin-Tin that he would let her know when they had been contacted from the hospital, but stopped when he realised that it wasn't the Malaysian girl who had spoken.

"Virgil!"

His chestnut-haired brother strode into the room, still in his flight uniform. Scott struggled into a more upright seating position and even Gordon looked up.

"I didn't hear you come back."

Virgil cocked his eyebrow. "How could you have missed that?" He looked between them, suspicion dawning over his face. "What's going on?"

"Where's John?" Scott bypassed the question quickly.

"Here."

Over Virgil's shoulder, Scott saw John leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded over his chest. Like Virgil he was still wearing his uniform but that was where the similarities ended. Where Virgil looked visibly anxious, John's face was carefully blank and he seemed completely calm. Only someone who knew him as well as Scott did would recognise the minute signs of tension that showed that John was as worried about their youngest brother as all the other Tracy's in the room.

His tone betrayed no hint of this as he repeated Virgil's question. "Has there been any news?"

"Nothing," Gordon answered before Scott could. "Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing."

Virgil gave Scott a look that clearly said he wanted an explanation. When none were forthcoming, he sighed and sank down on the sofa next to Gordon. Behind them, John pushed away from the doorway and crossed the room. Scott shifted his position on the sofa to give his brother room to sit down but John shook his head and opted for pulling a chair over instead.

An uncomfortable silence fell. Virgil was still looking from Scott to Gordon and back again, a slight frown creasing his forehead. John appeared to be gazing out of the window, lost in a world of his own. Gordon had picked up the pen again, although this time he was twirling it between his fingers rather than clicking it on and off. Scott watched all of them in turn and tried not to think about how much John reminded him of Alan.

Alan … We're all probably thinking about him in one way or another, Scott thought, his gaze drifting about the room. But we won't talk about it because that makes it too real …

Maybe it would be better if they actually did. What was it that Gordon had said? "Never supposed to talk about our emotions, are we Scott? Never supposed to admit to things. Keep quiet and sweep everything under the carpet – that's the Tracy way!"

Even thought the comment had been shouted in anger, his younger brother had shown unusual insight. Living in the Tracy family was like that – although most of the time it didn't matter. It was only at times such as this that Scott began to wish their father hadn't instilled such a stoic attitude in his sons. It made the waiting that much more unbearable.

When the sharp chiming of the vid-phone finally broke the silence, it made them all jump. Virgil, being the closest, scrammed across to the room and almost ripped the receiver from its base.

"Dad?"

There was a moment of silence and then Virgil's face drained of all colour.