Saving Alan Chapter 16

Jeff had hardly slept at all. He really did try to shut his eyes for a while. He knew his body couldn't keep up much longer with constantly staying awake and living off of nothing but coffee. But how could he sleep when his son was lying in a bed fighting for his life? Sure, they had stabilized him, but anything could still happen. He wouldn't be happy until his boy opened his eyes.

Jeff had a world of decisions ahead of him. It was blaringly clear that Alan was not out of the woods with his mental health struggles either. The day program had been a blessing, Alan could get the treatment he needed while still keeping up with his schoolwork and spending time with the family. It was the best of all worlds. But now things had changed. Would Alan be okay leaving the safety of home every day? He couldn't attend the day program forever; the program generally lasted one to two months, and he had been attending for pretty much exactly one month. He would eventually have to build up his tool set so that he could safely approach his depression in daily life without the program. Maybe he had enough tools in his mental health belt to be able to continue his mental health journey at home on Tracy Island? Was that a dangerous choice, what if he wasn't ready and he had a major setback? Jeff thought they could probably count on a setback with the kidnapping. What if he started self-harming again, what if he became suicidal? But after this debacle with Smith, Jeff wanted Alan closer than ever. He wanted more than anything for Alan to be home with them.

That meant that Alan would leave Wharton's for good and become home schooled. At one point that is what Alan had wanted, but that was before, back when he was being actively tortured by Smith. It was before all the stuff with the Hood. Jeff thought Alan probably understood more that he was sent to school for his own good, so that he could have healthy socialization and a top notch education, and be kept safe while his family operated as the Thunderbirds. But his son was smart, this top notch education may not be enough much longer. Certainly Fermat would benefit more from being educated by Brains. And as for safety, well, Jeff would never feel safe again having Alan schooled anywhere but the island. The thing was, without Smith there, Jeff had a sinking feeling that Alan would finally WANT to be at Wharton's. He had made some friends and had become involved in clubs and activities that he loved. Jeff didn't want to take him away from all that.

He had to decide, how was he going to best help Alan to get through his depression and finish his education? He couldn't make these decisions on his own. He would talk to all of his sons. The son he especially wanted to talk to was Alan, but he remained motionless, pale, and unresponsive in front of Jeff. He longed to hear his son's voice, to see his beautiful blue eyes, but he had no choice but to settle for holding his hand. He drifted in and out of sleep in between talking to his unconscious boy.

Gordon found Jeff asleep in the chair as he stepped into the room. It was nearly lunch time, but their time tables were all out of whack, they hadn't gotten to the hotel until about three in the morning. It was 11:00 now. Gordon felt lost as he pulled up a chair on Alan's other side. He supposed that looking at his brother in this state had made him nostalgic, so he began talking to Alan about all the pranks he had suckered him into. Alan had always been his partner in crime, even if sometimes he had been hesitant to join in. Gordon couldn't blame him, their brothers were never too happy with the pranks they joined forces in. But they always seemed to know that Gordon was the instigator and saved the lions' share of their wrath for him.

"Do you remember when you helped me program the entire house to refuse Scott's orders?" Ah, the benefits of living in a smart-house. "He was so patient until the coffee maker refused to prepare his coffee."

Gordon was lost in the memory, and almost thought he'd imagined the quiet response, "I gave him a cup as a peace offering so that he'd go after you and not me." Alan hadn't opened his eyes, but there was a small and slightly pained smile on his face.

"Alan?" The word came out as a breath. And all at once Gordon was overcome with emotion.

Jeff had woken as Alan's hand twitched in his own. He registered Gordon's presence first, but snapped to attention when Gordon said Alan's name.

"Yeah, I'm here." Alan didn't really know what else to respond with. He was trying to come to terms with what had happened and exactly why he was here and where here was, exactly. All that was hard since he hadn't opened his eyes yet. He was in incredible pain.

Jeff jumped to his feet and called for a doctor. A number of personnel rushed in to give Alan a check over and make sure he was comfortable. The hardest part was the chest tube that was inserted to keep Alan's lung from collapsing again, it was strange and uncomfortable. He couldn't move his arm, his eyes were swollen nearly shut. But they performed a neurological check on him. His concussion seemed relatively mild.

When they asked him if he remembered what had happened he went quiet for several long moments. His breathing became uneven, which was concerning because of the previous pneumothorax. But he managed to regather himself and ask, "Is Smith in jail?"

Jeff wasn't sure how Alan would take the news, there would certainly be no love lost over the man, but Jeff didn't want to scare Alan with the violence that had taken place with him so close to the action, "He didn't make it son, he's dead."

That wasn't the part that had frightened Alan, though. In a matter of seconds everything that had happened over the past couple days caught up to him. He remembered the fear of waking in the car trunk, he remembered waking multiple times, groggy from drugs, he remembered every beating and every hit. He remembered thinking his family would or should leave him for dead, and feeling so desperately alone at the thought. It all rushed back to him. The fear and pain and loneliness caught up to him all at once, but he didn't care that Smith was dead. He found that he had so many thoughts and emotions in his head that he had no room left to care about Smith's fate.

He did need to clarify, though, because the end had happened so fast, "Did he shoot me?"

Jeff didn't want to remember the moment when his son had been hit, and he was dreading the conversation regarding what Alan had said immediately before passing out. But his son needed answers.

"Yeah. The FBI came, it must have spooked him, or cornered him into action, because he shot you in the shoulder. You went down, I've never been so scared, Alan. I love you so much." And here Jeff was holding him as closely as he could without disturbing the various tubes, machines, and injuries.

Jeff had deliberately left out what Alan had said before he passed out. It was part of a larger conversation that he wanted to have when the whole family was around later. It was a critical conversation that he wanted to make sure Alan was fully aware of and ready for. But Gordon didn't have as much restraint or tact when it came to things like this and he never had been known for his patience and delicate approach to life. It wasn't that he intended harm, he was just so passionate that he didn't think this kind of situation through before charging in.

"You told Dad and Scott that you didn't think we would come for you. Why would you think that?" And he said it with so much conviction and pure hurt that Alan couldn't help but meet his pained gaze. But he had no words. He had to process this. He remembered wishing he was important enough to them, he remembered his desperation, his feeling of knowing he would die alone. But he didn't remember voicing any of it when his salvation had actually come. He was dumbfounded.

No, Alan wasn't ready for the conversation at all. "Gordon," Jeff interjected, "Give your brothers a call, tell them Alan's awake. They'll want to be here." While he hadn't approached the topic very delicately, he was aware enough to recognize the dismissal for what it was.

When Gordon left the room to make the call, Jeff turned back to Alan, "Hey, don't think about it right now. You have a big job of getting better. I just want you to rest. We'll talk about it, Al, we have to. And your brothers aren't going to let it go for very long. But right now you need to use your energy to heal up."

Alan felt both relieved to let the subject pass and guilty for causing his family distress over it in the first place. They talked about lighter things for the next few moments. They didn't have to wait long before there was a multitude of brothers flooding the room.

There was a substantial amount of fussing and flapping over Alan, as mother hens are wont to do. They fluffed his pillows and pushed his hair out of his face, they offered him sips of water and asked him repeatedly if he was comfortable or if he needed this or that. Though it got old fast, Alan had missed them. He had been scared he'd never see them again. And though he had not wanted them to put themselves in jeopardy by saving him, and he even became unsure that they would want to come for him at all, he was certainly glad they had. He knew that it was the darkness in his mind that made him think those things. Here, among his family, his thinking was much more clear and realistic; he was wanted and loved. He wished that he could always remember that and feel this secure in those convictions and safe from the darkness of the world, but the fact was that he couldn't. His counselors had told him to give himself some leniency, being hard on oneself for negative thinking would only spur on more negative thinking. Instead he should try to enjoy the moments of healthy thinking when they came. So Alan tried to ease himself into the positive feelings of the moment, enjoying being close to his family.

After lunch Alan was exhausted. He tried valiantly to keep his eyes open, but it just wasn't working. Scott was the first to speak up, "Hey Sprout, why don't you get some sleep. We'll be here when you wake."

That was all the coaxing Alan needed; he really was too tired to object. He drifted off to the welcome sounds of his brothers and dad talking and joking around quietly.

A couple hours later Alan found himself alone in the darkness of his hospital room. He couldn't help but feel abandoned, Scott had promised somebody would be there with him. There was a shadow watching him from the corner, but he knew it was not his dad or any of his brothers. He was terrified to move, he couldn't even twitch. The heat was getting to him, and he could feel the sweat gathering on his forehead. Where was his family, when were they coming back? He couldn't keep still much longer. What if they were gone? What if they'd abandoned him, or what if the figure in the shadows had killed them. He was all alone, trapped against the bed. At last he had to risk a movement, a simple swipe of his wrist across his face, but before he could raise his hand all the way to his head the figure darted from the shadows and grabbed his arm, pinning it above his head. In a split second he was trapped. He screamed as the sinister face of Dr. Smith forced itself into his line of vision.

As the scream echoed from his lips he heard voices in the distance calling his name. The darkness began to morph into a brightly lit hospital room, Dr. Smith faded out of existence, the worried faces of his family swam into view. It took him a good while to get a handle on what was happening. He searched the room frantically for a sign that Dr. Smith hadn't truly left, his uninjured arm waved in a frenzy to push away his brothers from his side. Slowly it dawned on him that it had been a nightmare. His terror dwindled down until he was washed with relief, only to embrace the humiliation that his whole family had witnessed his panic. But he was at war within himself, he wasn't proud that he had screamed out loud from a mere dream, but waking to see his family took the fear right from the situation and he was glad that they were there.

When his breathing evened out and the terror was over he began to hang his head in embarrassment. Virgil wiped his hair off of his forehead as he comforted Alan, "Nightmares are part of the healing. They're never easy, but this is the mind's way of working through trauma." He spoke with an air of clinical matter-of-fact dismissal, as he often did when he tried to get his brothers to see reason.

John piped up with more of a personal anecdote to help drive the point home, "I had nightmares for the first two weeks after Five was attacked. I had nightmares of being trapped alone up in space and never seeing you guys again. It helped a little each time I woke up to be in my own bed, knowing that everybody was home with me and safe. I haven't had a nightmare in a couple weeks."

Gordon joined in, "After my hydrofoil accident I had nightmares for a couple of months. They started out pretty terrifying, I was back in the freezing waters all alone fighting for my life. But they got better over time. After a while they were still bad, but they had lessened, like I was safe but I would never be able to walk again. They eventually stopped altogether. But it took a couple of months, it didn't just stop right away."

Jeff spoke up from right beside Alan's head, "Do you want to talk about it? That might help." Alan shook his head, it seemed his family had an idea of what he dreamt about anyhow, and it helped that they were all there beside him. He wasn't ready to confront the reality of what Smith had done to him, the fact that Smith was gone for good, or the dreams that had been left in Smith's place. He just wanted to push it all to the back of his mind for now.

They allowed him a moment to compose himself, then they turned the subject to creating a rotation so that somebody was always with Alan and everybody else could properly sleep and refresh at the hotel. Alan would probably be in the hospital just over a week and they didn't want anybody burning out. They all had dinner together at the hospital, but after dinner Jeff, John, Scott, and Gordon left to go back to the hotel. Virgil stayed with Alan for the night, first reading through Alan's chart thoroughly, but eventually falling asleep in the chair near the bed.

The next few days continued in a similar fashion. Alan became stronger and healthier with each passing day. He had been moved from the ICU to a more private area of the hospital, as his body had truly become stable and he just needed to recover a bit more from the surgery and general trauma.

On the fifth day John and Jeff woke early at the hotel. Gordon had spent the night at the hospital and they were going to grab breakfast and then relieve him so he could get some rest in an actual bed. They had found a coffee shop just down the block from the hotel on the second day and had been frequenting it ever since. That morning they popped in and gathered some yogurt, pastries, and coffee for themselves and for Gordon, then trekked back for another day at the hospital. They were all pleased with the progress Alan had been making and were hoping for the good news that he could be released in the next day or two. Jeff knew that he would have to have a conversation with Alan and the other boys soon about where Alan would go when he was out of the hospital, would he go back to the day program for a few more weeks, or would he be ready to go to the island? One thing Jeff felt pretty certain of, he didn't want Alan to return to Wharton's that semester, he would revisit the matter in a couple months when fall classes started back up.

Lost in thought, Jeff made the trip from the coffee shop back to the hospital absentmindedly and was slightly surprised when he found himself entering Alan's room so quickly. Alan was still asleep, no doubt having been woken several times in the night by doctors and nurses checking in on him. Gordon was awake, which would have been surprising at this time in the morning, were it not for the fact that the chair was not a comfortable place to sleep by any means.

The three ate their breakfast in a companionable silence. They were just finishing up when Alan began to stir across the room. He gave a pained whimper that grew into a broken cry. Jeff stood and tried to wake him, but Alan was deep in his dream and couldn't snap out of it. For a few moments all of them tried calling his name and gently shaking his shoulder, but the crying only strengthened until he woke himself with a heavy sob. Jeff massaged his hand through Alan's hair and whispered soothing words until Alan seemed to come back to himself.

He had been having nightmares off and on about Dr. Smith. Sometimes they centered around the kidnapping, other times they were about things that had happened at Wharton's. The dreams didn't seem to be easing up any, but they had all dealt with trauma and knew that there was no formula for how grief and healing ran its course. They hated to see him have to go through it, though, and they had all done their best to be there for him each time.

He had been fairly tightlipped about the dreams so far. They didn't want to push him to talk about anything that he wasn't ready for, but they reminded him each time that they were there if he wanted to get it off his chest. It was a surprise, then, when Jeff asked him if he wanted to talk about it and he meekly nodded his head.

Jeff, John, and Gordon pulled up chairs around the bed so that they could settle in and give him their undivided attention.

Alan struggled a bit a the beginning, but he slowly gained speed as the words began tumbling out, "It was Dr. Smith again, he had held me after class and everybody else had left for the dorms. He had told me that he wasn't going to accept my homework, when I tried to argue he knocked me across the mouth." So far this sounded like what they knew of his other dreams, obviously it was different to have caused him to dissolve into sobs as he had, so they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Alan faltered, he seemed to be rethinking whether or not to continue.

"He started yelling at me, it was nothing unusual. He was telling me that I was unwanted, that you would never care if anything happened to me. He said he could kill me right then and nobody would even notice. I said that you would know, that you would come looking for me and he would never get away with it." Now Alan lowered his head, his good shoulder hunched into his torso, and his voice became so soft they had to strain to hear it, "He said that you all wished I had died in her place." And with that, the sobs had returned.

He tried but failed to collect himself several times before he was able to continue, and when he picked it back up his words were hard to make out because they were broken by erratic breathing and sobs. "He said…you all hate me…because I lived and Mom died…. You wouldn't come looking for me if I disappeared…. And I believed him because I think it myself sometimes, that you wish she was here instead of me…." And then he couldn't keep himself together any longer, but he didn't need to. He had finally said what had been bothering him for weeks. No, not weeks. If he was honest with himself, it had been bothering him for months.

It was the default thought that his mind turned to in the darkest moments of his depression and in the most frantic moments of his anxiety. It was at the crux of his need for self-harm, it made him want, no need, to self-destruct. It made him despise himself and wish for death. It made him feel a million miles away from his family. No matter what his family said just now, it wasn't a topic that could be easily smoothed over with a few loving words. This was ingrained deep within his soul. But he had finally said it out loud. He wasn't sure if he was glad it was finally out, or if he wished desperately that he could take it back, but what was done was done. And that made the tears fall faster.

"Alan, I've always thought of you and your brothers as the gifts that your mom gave to me. Your mom and I knew from the moment we became parents that we would give our lives for any of you in an instant. A part of me died right alongside your mom. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss her. But I would never trade your life for hers. She wouldn't have either. She loved you more than anything in the world. I love you more than anything in the world. You and your brothers are everything to me." Jeff's voice caught in his throat. There weren't enough words in the world to tell his son how much he meant. It floored him that he could think for a moment that Jeff would have traded Lucy's life for Alan's.

When it was obvious that Jeff could no longer speak, John picked up where he left off, "You're irreplaceable, Sprout. I don't think the family would have survived without you, we certainly wouldn't be who we are. We don't just love you, we need you."

Alan hadn't ever thought of himself as needed by his family. He looked at each of their faces and saw such an urgency of love that he was overwhelmed. There was no malice, there was no wish to be rid of him, there was no sense of burden when they looked at him. There was only love. It wasn't a magical switch that made the bad thoughts and depression suddenly vanish, but with this weight lifted off his chest he knew that he could make it through.