Saving Alan Chapter 7
Trigger warning: Discussion of self-harm and suicidal ideation
Back at Tracy Island the residents walked around in a state that warred between exhaustion and disbelief. As Thunderbirds they had seen disaster and destruction far worse than this, but this was their family home. Destruction wasn't meant to reach them here. This was personal. Command and control was a mess, but that was nothing compared to the rest of the house. As far as the eye could see there was overturned furniture and broken glass. They had wanted to get started on it right away, but Jeff was insistent they follow protocol.
Standard Thunderbirds protocol meant that there must be a debriefing by everybody who was involved in the mission. But most importantly, before anything else happened everybody had to be medically cleared by either Brains or Virgil. In a situation where many of them had been injured that could take a while.
Virgil was exhausted, but he would not let himself rest until the whole crew had been carefully checked out and cleared. Brains had given Virgil the all-clear, and likewise Virgil had declared Brains fit for duty. Between them they had to face the rest of the extended Tracy Island family.
Most of the family passed with flying colors. It was stunning, considering how close all of them had come to dying that day. John had a broken collar bone and a broken arm from landing on it in T5 at the time of the blast. He also had a mild concussion. Scott would be mother henning him in the medical bay for at least a day or two while Virgil observed his concussion. Virgil was too dignified to classify himself in the mother hen category with Scott; he was a doctor, and doctors doctored people. What he did was necessary, no matter if his other brothers made clucking noises at him whenever he went into full on Dr. Virgil mode. No matter, with John comfortably settled into a bed in the med bay, it was time to move onto the last member of the family. Ah, Virgil was almost done. He figured Alan would be easy.
Alan, however, was being stubborn and an all-around pain in the butt. Virgil just wanted to be done. He was tired and crabby and simply didn't have any more patience left for his little brother's stubborn antics. Luckily, Virgil didn't have to rely on his own methods of persuasion. The whole family was either in the waiting area of the med bay or in the med bay itself. It was his father who convinced Alan by telling him that part of being a Thunderbird meant following health check protocols. Alan finally relented, though with tears of fury in his eyes. Oh well, he could have his teenage moody fit all he liked, Virgil was just happy to be nearly done.
Alan slipped into the private checkup room of the med bay. His whole family was waiting outside. While the others were being checked over, his father had admitted to him that he needed to have some tests run for their psychology appointment later in the week. His father had made an appointment with the pediatrician in New York, but he figured it may be easier to just get the tests done now so that Alan didn't have to have two exams. Jeff had seemed to think that Alan would appreciate this news. But all Alan could think was that all of his secrets were about to be exposed to the whole family. He waited for Virgil to come in with a growing sense of impending doom.
He had made up his mind that he was going to play things as cool as possible. He wasn't exactly sure how this was going to work, but his ribs really did need to be attended to. His mind was spinning trying to figure out a good excuse for the state his abdomen was in. He could hardly move, he was nauseous all the time, and all he wanted was to feel well for once. He could pass the rib injury off as a result of The Hood's attacks. The problem was that Alan had a lot of excess bruising, some of it had begun to heal and some was still fresh. Alan knew from first aid training that a person could determine a general age of a bruise. And Alan had many bruises in many different stages. Virgil wouldn't be fooled, he would know that these bruises came from something else. And Alan couldn't even think about what Virgil would do when he saw the cuts that littered his body. No, maybe it was best for Alan to play it cool and try to deny any injury at all.
Unfortunately, the very first thing Virgil did was attempt to take Alan's blood pressure. Alan was wearing a long sleeved baggy shirt, so Virgil pushed the sleeve back out of habit. Alan jerked back and tried to lower his sleeve again, but Virgil had a grip on his arm, and it was too late anyhow, Virgil took in the state of his marred flesh and stared in horror. It all happened so fast, Virgil had looked up at Alan's face as if to confirm he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing. Alan had visibly paled, which was a feat in and of itself because the kid had been so ashen looking lately. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but only for the briefest moments.
"Leave me alone! Let go of me!" All at once Alan was screaming at him, pulling his arm out of Virgil's grasp, jumping off the exam table, and making a break for it. The confusion of movement caused him to stumble just a bit, but Virgil was still so shocked that it hardly made a difference in Alan's getaway. In the seconds it took for Virgil to shake out off his stupor, Alan had made a dash out past the waiting area and into the hallway. Virgil tore after him, pausing in the waiting area only long enough to frantically explain what had happened. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he was joined in the chase by Gordon, Scott, and Jeff (who had a solid lead on all of them).
They didn't manage to catch up to him until they reached the beach, as he had run directly to the edge of the island and found himself trapped between the water and his quickly approaching family, the four of them somehow had managed to come from all directions effectively closing him in. He was cornered with nowhere else to go.
With his entire family (minus John who was still stuck in the observation area of the med bay) watching his every move he felt anguished and trapped, like his world was crashing down around him. Surely they would all see exactly how worthless he was; how he couldn't even keep up with his life, which he already saw as so inadequate compared to each of theirs. He couldn't even form a coherent thought, his mind was reeling and he was at the end of his rope.
An agonized scream tore through the air. It was a wordless cry that somehow encapsulated all of his feelings at once-frustration, fear, sadness, hopelessness, exhaustion. He dropped to his knees in the sand as the tide mocked him by washing up over his lap. He just wanted to give up on life and on everything. But his father had dropped down right beside him, was cradling him in his strong arms, holding him tight and hugging him to his chest. Just behind them his brothers stood by, ready to help in case Alan decided to make another break for it. But Alan was done, all the fight had drained out of him. And there in his father's arms, with his head nestled against his chest, hearing the steady and soothing rhythm of his beating heart, Alan let all his worry and pain from the past few months flow out of him. There were no words exchanged on the shore, only tortured sobs.
Time seemed to be lost to them. Each of them were so wrapped up in their own thoughts. They had known Alan was struggling, known something was seriously wrong. But none of them had expected this. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but the moments passed by and Jeff held Alan in there in the rising and falling tide until he cried himself out.
As Alan began to regain his composure, his thoughts became more defined and less emotional. He was suddenly bombarded with an onslaught of worries about what was to come. Was this the calm before the storm? What would his father and brothers think of him and how would they respond to this new revelation? His tears and screams had subsided, but his heartrate was steadily increasing. His father's calm and fortifying voice cut through the silence, "I don't know why this happened, I don't know what you're experiencing or what you're feeling. I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know how we need to approach this. But what I do know is that I love you, and no matter what, we are going to face this together as a family, and we are going to heal together and beat this."
Alan took a deep breath as he carefully mulled over the words. He didn't know how to respond. He was terrified. But he was saved from having to form words of his own when his father stood, offering a hand to help his son up. As Alan stood Jeff draped an arm over his shoulder and they began to walk back toward the house. When they passed the other boys, Scott put an arm over the other shoulder.
They went directly back to the medbay, as Alan hadn't even started his checkup before he had run off. This time Jeff opted to be present inside the room. The first step would be to finish the actual checkup, then they would tend to the wounds. Now prepared for the horrifying sight of Alan's arms, Virgil asked Alan to remove his shirt. He was not, however, prepared for the myriad of bruises all over Alan's torso, front and back. It was sickeningly obvious that Alan had been self-harming, which caused the gashes across his arms and even on his stomach. But Virgil knew the bruising on Alan's back could not have been self-inflicted. It was extensive and looked as though it had happened over a long period of time. The room was dead silent, and Virgil didn't break that silence, but rather stood back in what was a new type of exhaustion (different from the exhaustion he had been experiencing before; heavier). He raised his hand to cover his mouth in a mixture of sadness, tiredness, and resignation. His eyes closed and he took a long moment to choose his next point of action. He had to ask some questions, but he dreaded doing so. There was something of an unspoken truce within the silence. To speak could throw off the precarious balance, could set Alan off again. They needed him calm and safe. But the words had to come.
"Has somebody been hurting you?" He shouldn't have feared breaking that unspoken truce of silence, because it seemed that Alan had begun silently crying before the words were even out of Virgil's mouth. Confirmation.
And then the silence changed from a peaceful truce to a suffocating and poisonous quiet.
Alan didn't say a word, didn't make a sound, but his tears flowed harder.
Jeff imagined the room was so quiet that you could hear his heart trying to violently beat its way out of his chest.
The moments passed, Alan said nothing, but Jeff and Virgil were unrelenting. Finally a negative shake of the so subtle that they almost missed it. He was lying and they all knew it.
"Alan," Jeff tried again, "Who? Who has been hurting you?"
The silence didn't last nearly as long this time. Alan couldn't meet their eyes as he quietly insisted, "Nobody."
More silence. Jeff's piercing stare was a force to be reckoned with. They weren't going to back down, Alan was beginning to panic again. "I can't talk about it, please!"
Virgil looked as though he was going to argue, but Jeff stopped him with a look. They weren't going to get it from him at this moment. Too much was happening. They would find out, but for now Alan was safe with them on Tracy Island, no harm would come to him here. They had to get through this exam and focus on keeping Alan safe from himself first and foremost. It nearly made Jeff sick to his stomach to think somebody was hurting his child, it went against all his instincts to let the matter drop, but at that particular moment it was for the best.
Virgil was worried about the severe bruising around Alan's ribcage. When he gently prodded the area Alan let out a hiss of pain. With some x-rays he discovered three broken ribs. Virgil set to work dressing Alan's many wounds. Physically he was going to be fine. Mentally, well that was another story.
Virgil and Jeff had decided that Alan would need to be on a psych watch until they could consult with the psychiatric team that Jeff had been planning to take Alan to see. They would be keeping him in medbay until they had a chance to search his room for dangerous objects, they would be keeping watch over him for his own safety. Alan bristled at the boundaries they were setting. They tried to tell him it was for his safety, but he looked so lost and forlorn.
That night Jeff spent the night in medbay with Alan. John was also there, as he needed to be easily accessible for Virgil to wake him and keep an eye on his concussion. They had called a family meeting in the medbay to discuss what the next day or so would look like. John had been updated on the situation by Gordon and Scott while Alan was receiving his checkup. The family meeting got everybody else on the same page as far as what was considered safe and unsafe behavior from Alan during the psych watch. Alan had felt a bit like a bug under a microscope during the meeting, but he had to know what was happening just as much (if not more) than everybody else. Jeff was going to consult with Alan's psych team the next morning to try and work out further details. Alan was released to shower and get ready for bed, but Jeff held his other sons back. He dropped a major bomb when he asked them to begin investigating the students and staff at Wharton's Academy. After filling them in on the very few details they had to go off of, they agreed that somebody was hurting their brother. They had all experienced a veritable firestorm of emotions at discovering Alan's cutting problem, but the discovery that somebody else was hurting him too left them with chills running up their spines. It was almost too much to comprehend.
The boys were on the warpath. Nobody, absolutely nobody would hurt Alan and get away with it.
They dispersed from medbay, leaving Jeff and John behind. Jeff fussed over John for a bit, fluffing pillows and offering him some water to drink. And John fussed right back, asking if Jeff was okay. The man had held himself together, just like on every disastrous mission and emotional storm they had ever faced. But tonight he looked so tired and old, and even a bit vulnerable.
"No, I'm not okay. I've never been more terrified in my life. I can't lose him. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm way out of my depth here. How could I not have seen?" Jeff felt the bile trying to surface, but he valiantly kept it down and the words kept spilling from his soul, "I knew, I just knew that he wasn't okay, that he needed help. But I had no idea he was hurting so desperately. And my God, somebody is attacking him and we have no idea what kind of a threat that is. John, I could have lost him already. He could have cut to deep, he could have bled out and I wouldn't have known how desperate he was until it was too late. He's my SON. I could have lost my child! I still could! I don't know how to help him, I don't know how to protect him. I can't lose my boy." And at that, Jeff really did need to be sick. He grabbed a garbage can from nearby and emptied his stomach.
John had seen his father cry over Lucy's death. But John had never watched the man lose his composure quite like this. The man was a rock in the most trying times. But this was too much for all of them.
After that Jeff forced himself to regain his composure. He emptied the receptacle, checked his watch, and gave a sharp knock on the bathroom door. Alan had been left alone for long enough, it was time for him to come out. He wasn't going to like it, but Jeff was damn well not going to lose his child.
That night Jeff, Alan, and John stayed side by side by side in the medbay. None of them got very much sleep. They hadn't processed the attack on Thunderbird Five, The Hood's infiltration of their home, the fact that all of them had nearly died that day, the fact that Alan was desperately hurting himself, or the fact that some unknown psychopath was inflicting pain on Alan. It was all too much to make sense of, and each of their minds circled over and over through the trials they had just endured and taunted them with the fears and uncertainties they were soon to face. But at the same time, they each had a ray of hope to cling to: John was glad to be home. Jeff was grateful to have all his boys with him safe on Tracy Island. And Alan hadn't felt this relieved or safe or cared about in months.