'Virgil, deploy!'
Bleep
'Man, this is a lot worse than I thought….'
Bleep
'FAB Mister Virgil, sir. G-huiding FAB One in now.'
Bleep
'Forget the island, you need to get that boy to a hospital, now!'
'John!'
'On it, there's a GDF medical facility not far from you, I'm alerting them now.'
Every moment was a collection of stills flipping past Virgil faster than he could register and separating his brother from the medical alarms now reverberating through Thunderbird 2 was a battle and, he was losing. However, Gordon needed medical attention and now was not the time to let the dividers slide from the boxes. 'Scott, you'll have to fly us there.'
Scott silently nodded and disappeared to the cockpit.
Virgil felt as though he was wading through molasses, he only now noticed Alan, pale and vacant, clutching Gordon's hand. Virgil tried to swerve the gut punch of the scene before him, but the technicolour realness of it was embossed into his mind. He closed his eyes against it momentarily and instead focussed on the list building in the part of his brain that remembered his training, the part yet to be consumed by the fog of unrelenting fear.
IV, line, needle, scissors.
It wasn't quite in the right order, but it was a start. He kept repeating it over and over until all of the items were in his hands or on the tray beside the bed. Sweat was building between his palm and the IV bag in his hand.
'Hey Allie?'
The youngest failed to move, or apparently register that he was being spoken to.
Virgil flicked a glance at Lady Penelope, the ends of her hair had begun to frizz a little from the contact with her wetsuit. She bit her bottom lip and moved towards Alan.
'Alan. Alan? Come now, Virgil just need to put an IV in.' Her voice had a gleam of composure, but it was transparent at best.
Virgil could hear the torrent underneath the surface, the same torrent that was no doubt raging through each of them in turn.
She managed to lead Alan away and Virgil delicately started to cut open Gordon's uniform at the sleeve. Smatterings of purple were starting to spread outwards from the middle of his forearm.
Broken, maybe two places.
Virgil began the second list, injuries. He was determined and of he was honest, desperate, not to miss anything.
The IV line had taken care of one of the alarms, but Gordon's blog pressure was fluctuating. Knowing Alan would hate being idle as much as any of them would in the current situation, Virgil called him over.
Alan appeared at his side fast, like a glitch in a video game.
'Alan, I need you to keep an eye on those numbers and let me know if they…' The rest of the words tumbled into oblivion as a fresh alarm, accompanied by a pulsing image of a lung, hung in the air in front of him. 'Shit!' In automation, he ran to the supply cupboard. Bits of tubing and bandages tumbled through his shaking hands as he fumbled for the correct scalpel, gloves and width of tube.
'Virgil?'
'What is it? What's happening?'
Alan and Penelope's questions bounced around Virgil.
'His lung has collapsed, I need to try and rebalance the pressure before he suffocates. Get back!'
Alan and Penelope moved swiftly back.
Virgil had not meant to bark the order at them, but the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears was almost enough to mask the ever increasing roar of Thunderbird Two's engines.
The list of injuries had crumbled and the only words doing a loop around his mind were the all too simple instructions for what was to come next. Virgil dug his elbow into his own ribcage to steady himself and, with a silent apology, cut into Gordon's, whose rasping breaths were slowly cutting through him.
Incision, tubing, rebalance pressure.
Blood. Dark blood. It ran in slow motion over Virgil's latex gloves. He realised the internal recitation of the steps were playing to the tune of Nuvole Bianche by Ludovico Einaudi — he had been playing it that morning.
The tubing was next. He slid the clear piping into the slit in Gordon's chest, but with renewed horror, he realised his hand was still shaking. Virgil needed assistance, preferably from someone with a rock steady grip that stayed that way no matter the situation — fortunately the one person he knew with such qualifications was standing directly behind him.
If there had been time, to consider, to reflect, he may have hesitated in exposing his youngest brother to the sight of Gordon with a tube in his chest or the burden of keeping steady the one thing that was preventing his imminent suffocation, but there was no time and, no one Virgil trusted more.
'Alan! I need you to come here and hold this.' The wobble in Virgil's voice was lost to the alarms still rattling through the medbay.
'Scott, how long till we get there?'
'Just a couple of minutes.'
Two minutes. They could do this.
The medbay was swallowed in bright light.
'We've been following the medscan — tell us what happened exactly.' A woman was suddenly beside Virgil, she had long black hair but her face was obscured by the dots dancing across Virgil's vision from the abrupt change of brightness in the medbay.
'His sub was crushed,' Virgil explained as he started to unclip the evac-stretcher. 'We pulled him out but he has multiple fractures and a recently collapsed but somewhat stabilised lung. Heart rate is one-twelve, blood pressure is ninety over fifty.' Acrid bile tickled the back of Virgil's throat and he swallowed hard.
'It's okay, we'll take that now.'
Virgil was aware of another medic and, whether by his own hands or not, he would never be sure, the evac-stretcher was detached and away.
The adrenaline was starting to wear off as he followed the gaggle of doctors and nurses out of the pod and his tongue felt like a terse sponge.
Scott appeared at his side, his fingers catching Virgil's elbow.
'What happened?' Scott's voice was a fractured component of itself.
Virgil steadied his voice as best he could, Scott had no doubt surpassed his worry threshold three times over.
'His lung collapsed, probably from a broken rib. We just managed to get the pressure back under control when we landed.' The words tumbled from him in a distant, calm automation.
The voices of the medics ahead of them were a mess of stats and instructions.
The sun was searing and Virgil wanted to be out of it, so he was grateful as they entered the low building, the sun burning it to a silhouette; inside the flat, white light sapped the colour from the world.
Scott had started to jog to keep up with the medical team who were blocking Gordon from his sight and Virgil followed suit, partly to try and stop Scott interfering and asking questions.
The swarm, rounded a corner and passed through a set of double doors. Virgil registered the 'No Unauthorised Access' sign and knew Scott would ignore it, even if he had seen it.
One of the medics remained on the nearside of the doors, a woman about Virgil's age. She adjusted her tortoise shell glasses over her pale eyes.
'I'm sorry, medical personnel only beyond this point.' Her voice was caring, sympathetic — but there was a minor chord dancing underneath it. Virgil recognised it as the voice that had approached him in the medbay only moments ago. She had a tablet in front of her, no doubt with Gordon's medical scan details.
Virgil was broken from his musings by Scott who, naturally, tried to argue his way in.
'No, you don't understand, he's our brother, you have to…'
'Scott.' Virgil cut him off, his hand landing heavily on Scott's chest. 'They need to assess him, it's — it's best to let them.' Virgil tried his best to contort his face into a stern but understanding you need to cooperate face.
Scott took a resigned step back.
'We'll keep you updated as soon as we have a more detailed picture of what's going on.' She disappeared behind the door with a sympathetic nod, the exact one that Virgil had honed over the years to reassure those whose situation was not promising. He subtly took a long breath through his nose in a futile effort to calm the hammering in his chest.
The room was crackling. Static tension was prickling through the corridor as Scott questioned the time it had taken for John to go from orbit to earth-side. Between John's prolific sarcasm and Scott's smothering, the friction was ready to spark and Virgil was starting to wish he had followed Penny when she had excused herself only moments ago.
He would have to step in soon before John and Scott got too close to each other; he took a deep breath to muster all the power of his deep rooted voice which had brought many sibling squabbles to a screeching halt, but another voice ripped through the air before his was required to.
The relief that washed over him at the sight of his grandmother was like cool sea water on a summer's day and the breath he had taken in rushed out of him.
'Now, I don't know what this is all about, but it stops now. Your brother is badly hurt in there and the last thing he needs is for you all to start falling out.' His grandmother's presence was the lightning bolt that dissipated the heavy air in the corridor.
Scott and John apologised and, with one layer of tension stripped from his body, Virgil slid down into one of the clinically white chairs and quietly surveyed his surroundings and was suddenly overwhelmed by a stabbing realisation that someone was missing.
Virgil stood suddenly, pressure rushing to his forehead, and scanned the room again just to be sure. 'Hey guys, where's Alan?'
John had left to find Alan less than three minutes ago and Virgil could already feel the kinetic energy radiating from Scott. The eldest was pacing in abrupt squares so fast that Virgil had to keep looking at the floor so as not to lose his balance.
'You're going to wear a hole in the floor Scooter.' It was a feeble attempt to calm his older brother, but Virgil really didn't have the energy for a more strategic approach, his whole body felt like a wet sandbag.
It stopped Scott from pacing momentarily though, 'He should have found him by now.' Scott's hands were on his hips, fingers tapping his belt. 'Why did he have to wander off?' He started pacing again, in triangles this time.
The words Virgil wanted to say, probably because he hates it when people fight and you and John weren't helping, were, he judged, too jagged for the moment. His wrist comm bleeped, Scott side stepped his next pace and was at Virgil's side.
'I've found him.' John's voice was unusually tentative, even for him.
'Where is he?' Scott questioned.
'Is he okay?' Virgil tagged on.
'He's in one of the briefing rooms, towards the back of the building but,' John hesitated.
Virgil's throat tightened.
'Just give me a minute.' It was as though he was psyching himself for something.
'What's wrong?' Scott all but barked into the comm.
Virgil clamped his lips shut and wished that his brother would learn some tact one of these days — but in truth, Virgil knew it was the growing concern of having the two youngest out of sight, in an unknown state, that would have been stoking the coals of Scott's frustration, rather than outright anger.
'Just, give me a minute.' John's staccato signalled a rising temper.
They were not going to argue over the comms while in the same building. 'FAB John.' Virgil flaked his comm off before Scott could enquire further.
'Back of the building…' Scott muttered under his breath. The kinetic energy emanating from him almost doubled.
'Hey,' Virgil looked Scott directly in his ice blue eyes and held his gaze. 'We are going to wait here a whole two minutes before we go and find them.'
The two minutes passed at an itchingly slow pace, even for Virgil. He and Scott were now jogging through corridors, the fluorescent lights cast odd grey shadows in the angular building, with the occasional burst of sunlight from intermittent windows assaulting Virgil's vision.
They were following the pulsing red dot on Virgil's wrist display — John had pointedly sent the location to him rather than Scott, who was following Virgil with near impossible closeness.
Virgil halted as his own green location beacon overplayed the red one. Through the golden glow spilling from the window of the door to his right, he caught a snapshot that cracked his pounding heart.
He gathered himself just in time to stop Scott bursting through the door. 'Stop!' he hissed, not wanting to disturb the haunting silence of the corridor.
John approached, a backlit shadow until he opened the door, his finger pressed to his lips until the door clicked shut behind him.
Virgil let Scott question John, his attention was occupied by the framed scene of Alan, sitting on his hands, head bowed. A mess of upset and guilt swept through him.
'He's got it into his head that this is somehow his fault.' John's tone was matter of fact, but emotion battled under the surface.
'That's ridiculous.' Virgil snapped away from watching Alan through the window, black spots once again danced over his vision momentarily.
'Obviously.' Most of the sarcasm in John's voice had faded, but there remained a faint afterglow around the edges. 'He said he kept getting in the way and that he didn't have the pods ready fast enough.'
Virgil reluctantly began to replay the day's events in his mind, but was quickly interrupted by Scott cursing under his breath.
'What did you say to him?' John's low, dark gaze zeroed in on Scott and the tense static fizzed between them once again.
However, they would have to sort themselves out this time. 'I'll think I'll go and sit with Alan, he shouldn't be on his own.' He flicked them both a harsh sort this out, quickly look before stepping round John and entering the briefing room.
Virgil could see Alan's eyes flit in his direction momentarily as he entered, but his gaze quickly returned to a fixed point on the polished floor.
Virgil joined him and they sat silently, caught in the thin rays of pale gold light streaming lazily through the narrow windows set high in the wall. The redness of Alan's cheeks and eyes were painfully evident.
'Hey kiddo.'
'Hey.' Alan croaked, his legs slowly swinging under him, the soles of his boots whispering against the floor.
Virgil fought the torrent of words that threatened to escape, filtering them into what he knew to be true, 'You know, I wouldn't have been able to help Gordon today without you.'
Alan's feet ceased their clockwork susurrations. 'Really?' He shifted in his chair, rubbing the end of his nose with the back of his glove, as he used to with his sleeve when he was little.
'Sure.' Virgil hesitated for a moment before revealing why, but this was not a time for fear or obscured perspectives. 'Do you know why I asked you to hold that tube?'
Alan shook his head, facing Virgil properly for the first time since he entered.
'Because my hand was shaking too much.' The adrenaline spiked in him with the admission.
Alan's eyes widened. 'Oh.'
'Yeah, and I knew I needed someone with super steady hands — someone that can fly through an asteroid field single handed, or get through level seventeen of Cavern Quest on the first try.' Virgil breathed a little easier as the corner of Alan's mouth tugged upwards a little.
'Really?'
'Definitely. We would never have got the pressure under control without you holding the tube so steady.' Virgil reassuringly nudged Alan's arm with his elbow, but Alan's expression suddenly dropped again.
'But if I'd have finished the pods faster…'
'Allie.' Virgil halted the thought in its tracks. He also made a mental note to have a discussion with Scott at some point about positive reinforcement in the workplace but, the last thing he wanted was to make Scott out to be the bad guy, it had not exactly been a routine rescue after all. Virgil considered his words carefully, 'You know, despite how great a leader and field commander Scott is, he spends a lot of his time being terrified.'
'He does?'
'Sure. You know how scared you've felt today?'
Alan bowed his head with a quick nod.
'Well, I think, in a way, Scott feels that scared everyday, each time any of us goes out on a mission. He always blames himself, thinks he's responsible for everything that happens, even things that are beyond his or anyone's control.' Virgil made a point of looking at Alan directly for that last observation.
'But, this isn't his fault.' A mix of thoughtful shock and realisation began to cross Alan's face.
'Exactly.' Virgil wrapped his arm around Alan's narrow shoulders and gently squeezed.
Alan and Scott were so alike, aside from their ice blue eyes. Virgil had lost count of the looks and expressions that had come from Alan recently, that could have easily been Scott's only a few years ago.
Virgil could hear the muffle of low voices on the other side of the door before it glided open; Scott entered, followed by John. Virgil noted the guilt ridden expression of the former, but it was quickly obscured by Alan jumping up and leaping at Scott in an embrace, wrapping both of his thin arms around Scott's neck, burying his blonde head in the the eldest's shoulder.
Eyes blurring, Virgil found that emotions and sunlight were synced and he had no quarrel with the warm sunlight hitting his back, at least for the moment.