Three: Solidarity

Two hours in, Gordon and Alan had arrived in civvies, bringing Virgil's duffel bag from 'Two so he could get out of the neoprene monkey suit. A quiet word with a nurse, and he'd even been able to snag a quick shower in a staff locker room. By the time he came back to the waiting area, John was there, also in civvies and talking quietly with Kayo and Grandma. As one, they moved to surround him in a tight, warm knot of silent support.

"Any news?" he asked, seeing the answer on their faces but still feeling the need to ask.

"No," said Ruth, sinking down into a chair beside Alan, who laid his head on her shoulder. "I suppose no news is good news, for now."

And so they waited. Virgil wandered to the window, watching the flow of traffic without really seeing it. The sun began to dip lower and lower in the sky, and still they waited.

Kayo came to give him a brief hug and press a kiss to his temple, but she left him with his thoughts and the burden he'd been entrusted with. Gordon walked over, making a restless circuit of the space, and let his hand rest on Virgil's shoulder as he moved past. Ruth brought him a cup of machine coffee that smelled much better than it tasted, but at least it banished the urge to curl up and hope that this was all just a bad dream.

As the last rays of the sun left the sky, Virgil sat and thumbed the beads in his hand, vague shadows of the prayers he'd learned as a child flitting through his mind. He'd known them by heart once, but now the motion was more a way to call back his mother's presence, rather than any ritual of his own. Over and over the smooth gems passed through his fingers, and with every brush of the crucifix at the end of the circuit, he renewed his plea: Let me give this job back to the one it belongs to.

At long last, the surgical team appeared, looking grey and gaunt with fatigue. Virgil stood and reached out to Kayo, who rose from her seat and walked with him. To their credit, the rest of the family didn't move forward to pounce on the surgeons, but stayed at his back in a wall of Tracy solidarity.

"Virgil Tracy?" The lead surgeon, a fifty-something woman, swept the group with her dusty-green eyes. Her gaze settled on Virgil, and she extended her hand to him. "I'm Dr. Vera Stuart, I'm the head thoracic surgeon here at Auckland Memorial. This is Dr. Charles Morton, he's our head neurosurgeon." She gestured to a man with bronzed skin and a thick tail of curly hair falling down his back, who gave a tired smile.

"How do you do?" Dr. Morton stepped forward to shake Virgil's hand, then let out a sigh. "It was a difficult surgery, but Scott came through it better than we expected."

"Thank God," said Ruth, as the family sagged in relief. "He's a tough cookie."

Dr. Morton smiled. "He's resilient," he agreed. "It helps that he's young, healthy, and in perfect shape, which will assist in his recovery. However, our scan showed that he does indeed have a skull fracture that was pressing on his brain. I lifted the bone and set it back in place, and reinforced it with a material that will graft onto the bone as it heals." He waited for a moment as the family absorbed this information, then continued. "His brain had begun to swell underneath the fracture, so we are keeping him in a medicated coma in hopes of keeping the swelling down, and to encourage his brain to begin healing."

Virgil found his voice after a few tries. "Will he be all right?"

Dr. Stuart folded her arms over her sea-green scrubs. "He sustained lacerations to his liver, and we had to remove his spleen and gallbladder," she explained. "I was glad to find that his heart was unaffected, which is most definitely in our favor, and his lungs are sound, if bruised. With the induced coma, he's been placed on a ventilator, so his lungs will have the opportunity to rest and heal."

Kayo curled against Virgil's side, her face buried in his shoulder. Behind him, he heard someone emit a quiet sob, and the hushed words of comfort that answered.

"His kidneys were bruised, so when you're allowed to see him, don't be alarmed by what you see coming from the catheter," Dr. Stuart cautioned. "We checked them thoroughly, and the good news is that he'll get to keep them both."

"Definitely good news," John put in from Virgil's left. "How long will you keep him in the coma?"

"It's our goal to bring him out in a week's time," said Dr. Morton, sharing a glance with Dr. Stuart. "We want to keep him under as little as possible, so we'll check him daily to see how he's doing. If the swelling is going down and he's responding well, then we'll bring him out of it."

Gordon's voice from Kayo's right was softer than Virgil had ever heard it, bringing back memories of another bedside with another young life hanging in the balance. "What happens if...if he doesn't get better?"

"If his body heals, but his brain remains damaged, we will assess the extent of his impairment and move forward," said Dr. Morton. "He'll have to show us what he's capable of and what may be a struggle."

Virgil felt the nausea roll over him again, all sorts of nightmare images flitting through his mind of Scott alive, but never again to be the strong, vital man he was just hours earlier. He forced the images back into their dark cupboard of horrors and slammed the door. "When will you know that he's out of danger?"

Dr. Stuart took a deep breath. "We'll know more in the next twenty-four hours, as we manage his sedation and keep an eye on his brain activity." She gave them all a gentle smile. "I know it's not much to go on, but like you said, Mrs. Tracy: Scott is tough, and I think he'll put everything he has into getting well."

Virgil put out his hand again to both doctors. "Thank you," he rasped through a dry throat. "I know you did everything you could." He glanced behind him at his family, then turned back to the doctors. "When can we see him?"