Chapter 3: Second String
Five days had passed since their ill-fated rescue. Over the doctors' protests, Scott had been discharged the following day, and Virgil two days later. The doctors—Virgil's surgeon in particular—had lodged protests about the early discharge, pointing out how extensive the injuries were and how much better it would be to recover in a hospital. Virgil secretly agreed with them, but understood why it was necessary to spend as little time in the hospital as possible, particularly with the speculation about how they sustained their injuries. They dared not risk having someone connect them with the International Rescue mission. Although there had been no photographs, as usual, the rescue had made international news, since it was the first—and hopefully last—time that local emergency workers had helped rescue the rescuers.
Now, both brothers were convalescing in the medical quarters on Tracy Island. Virgil had been very hazy since he had come out of surgery, but today he was finally feeling alert enough to notice how much it hurt to…to…well, to pretty much everything. But the pain distracted him from thinking too much, which was a good thing.
"How you doing, Virg?" Scott asked from the next bed over, concern in his eyes.
Virgil grimaced. "I'm ok," he said, although that was obviously untrue. "I will be, at any rate," he amended. "How's your leg?"
"Healing," Scott said with a grimace. "It'll be a while before I can go out on any rescues, though."
Virgil didn't even want to think about going out on any rescues at the moment. "They're ok, right?" he asked suddenly. He had heard Gordon say that all the people trapped under the building were ok, but he had to be sure. Had to be sure International Rescue hadn't failed them.
"They're fine, Virgil," Scott said, and Virgil realized he had said it before. Virgil, in his post-trauma fog, must have asked his poor brother that question dozens of times over the last several days.
He grimaced. "Sorry, Scott. I'm still a bit…fuzzy."
"It's ok, Virgil," Scott said, and he obviously meant it. "I'm just glad you're doing better. You had us all worried."
"I had me worried," Virgil admitted.
Scott opened his mouth to say something, but they were interrupted by the arrival of Tin-Tin and Kyrano, the latter bearing a tray of food. "Oh, Virgil, you're awake!" Tin-Tin exclaimed, underscoring how out-of-it he had been since arriving back at the island. Clearly he had been awake before, but he must not have been very responsive. "How are you feeling?" she rushed to his side and placed a hand tenderly on his shoulder.
He smiled up at her, putting on the bravest face he could muster. "I'm feeling ok, Tin-Tin," he lied. He was already royally sick of this question. "Hi, Kyrano."
"Hello," Kyrano responded. "It is good to see you awake."
"I was awake," Virgil protested. True, he was kind of out-of-it, but technically awake. Still, the concern was kind of nice.
"It is good to see you better, then," Tin-Tin amended, smiling at him and stroking his hair. Virgil shot a quelling look at Scott, who was beginning to snicker.
Kyrano set the tray between them. "I thought you might be hungry," he said, mostly to Scott, but including Virgil in his look.
"Starved!" Scott confirmed. "It smells wonderful, Kyrano."
Virgil didn't feel like eating anything, but he had no intentions of offending Kyrano. So he just smiled agreeably. They chatted for a few minutes longer, then Tin-Tin and Kyrano left. Scott had already dug into the food. He shot a look at Virgil as soon as the door closed. "You feel up to eating?"
"Not really," Virgil said. It smelled good, but he had no appetite at all, which was very unusual for him.
"It's probably the meds," Scott said understandingly. "I didn't have much appetite either until today."
Virgil relaxed, relieved. "Yeah, that's probably it." That, and the abdominal surgery.
"The doctor will be stopping by to take a look at you today," Scott commented. "She can adjust your medication if you want her to."
Virgil thought about it. On the one hand, a lower dosage would make him hurt more. On the other hand, he didn't really like the way he was feeling right now. "She's coming here? Doesn't that kind of compromise our security?" he asked instead.
Scott shrugged. "Not like we haven't had guests before. If there's an emergency we'll just distract her or something. Get Tin-Tin to take her Scuba diving."
Virgil nodded, smiling at the memory of how Tin-Tin had kept their father's friend down in the underwater caves for literally hours while they had performed a rescue. So far, neither he nor any of their other guests had left suspecting anything. Of course, it would be a little hard to explain a big, green craft with 'Thunderbird 2' painted on it launching out from the side of the island. Hopefully, nothing like that would be necessary while the doctor was here. "Thoracic surgeons don't normally make house calls," he said.
"No, no they don't," Scott agreed. "Unless, of course, the patient happens to be the son of one of the richest men in the world."
"She'll know where our island is," Virgil said, still worrying.
As it happened, that wasn't a problem. When Doctor Lowry arrived several hours later, she was grumbling and out-of-sorts. "Anything wrong, doc?" Scott asked her when she slammed her bag down on the table next to Virgil and started pulling equipment out angrily.
"I am fine," she said. "But the blindfold was hardly necessary. And with the wind out there, causing turbulence, the blindfold was just cruel." She did look a little bit green.
Virgil bit back a snicker. Trying to compose his face he said, "Sorry, Doctor. But you have to understand that Father is concerned about paparazzi finding us."
"The pilot was not blindfolded." They all let that statement hang for a moment. "Oh, that was a stupid thing to say." She smiled a little and relaxed. "I'm sorry. Of course the Tracy private jet would know where to find the home of the Tracy family. I just don't like to feel so…so…untrusted. And currently, a little queasy." She set about examining Virgil with a much more calm demeanor than before. "How are you, Virgil?"
"I'm getting tired of people asking me that," he admitted.
She looked at him. "I'm sure you are. However, this is your doctor asking. How are you feeling? And no 'I'm ok,' because I know that isn't true."
Virgil sighed, glanced briefly at his brother, who looked far too interested in the answer to this question, and launched into his list of complaints. "I'm not in much pain. This is the first time I've been really alert since I got here. I don't have an appetite. I think that I'm overmedicated, doc."
She nodded, poking and prodding gently at this abdomen. He felt a little pain when she examined the stitches and his ribs, but it was definitely dulled by the medication. "I can give you something less strong, but I don't recommend it yet. With your recent surgery and the antibiotics you are on, you're not going to want to eat too much for a while anyway. Just soup, light food like that. And if you don't eat anything for a day or two more, that's alright as well."
"I just want to feel normal again," Virgil complained.
"It will be a long time before you feel normal, I'm afraid. You sustained severe injuries from your accident," she said. She turned her attention to his IV bag and line, checking fluid levels and the needle where it went into his hand. She nodded approvingly, then turned back to him. "But I will leave the other pain medication with whomever it is who maintains this, and you may decide which one to take. They both must be administered only once every six hours, but you can decide each time which you want; they can be mixed."
"Thanks, Doctor Lowry," Virgil said.
"You have a nurse or a doctor here?" she asked, indicating the IV bag again. I was not under that impression, but someone has been taking good care of you."
"We have some people with medical training," Virgil said. What they had was an island full of people with medical training. Anyone working for International Rescue had to be a fully-trained EMT, and he knew that Brains, Kyrano, and Tin-Tin had also taken additional classes in the event that they needed to put any Tracy brothers back together again after a rescue. "You can talk to Father's manservant, Kyrano."
"Your father's manservant has medical training?" she asked, looking surprised, then chagrined. "I'm sorry. That is none of my business."
"He's had an interesting life," Scott commented. "But Virgil's right. Kyrano's been the one changing the IV bags and administering the medications."
"Then I will talk to him on my way out," she said. She gave Virgil's arm a little pat. "You are healing well, Virgil. I am going to leave my private number with your father, and if you have any questions or concerns please call me, day or night. Otherwise, I probably will not be back until it's time to remove your stiches."
"When will that be?"
"Another week." She turned her attention now to Scott. "And how are you today, Scott?"
"I'm fine," Scott said automatically.
Doctor Lowry tut-tutted. "What did I say about lying to the doctor?"
Virgil gave his brother a 'payback's a bitch' smirk and waited for the report on how his brother really was. "My head's fine," Scott started. Virgil hadn't ever really had problems being honest about his injuries, but Scott was so used to being stoic that this was apparently hard for him. "My leg's…been painful."
She moved over to his leg, flipping off the blanket and gently probing it. "In what way?"
"I've been having muscle cramps, and it hurts to move it," Scott admitted.
"Well, the 'hurts to move it' would be normal," she said, "and unfortunately so are the muscle cramps. I recommend trying not to move it."
Scott gave her a dirty look. "Thanks, Doc."
She smiled at his expression. "I know that is easier said than done, but primarily I mean do not get up. Stay in bed. And what have you been taking for the pain?" she asked, no doubt noticing the lack of an IV in Scott.
"Aspirin," he admitted.
"That is a bad idea," she told him. "You should be on the same medication as your brother, although since you don't have an IV to inject it into that would be uncomfortable. I have a pill form that I will leave with your mister Kyrano. Do not take aspirin, though, as it will thin your blood and make clotting more difficult. Right now you need nice clots to help heal your leg."
Scott sighed heavily. "Yes, Doctor."
"Is there anything else I can do for you? For either of you?" she asked, sweeping her gaze over both brothers.
"No," Scott said.
"No, but thank you," Virgil said, one-upping his brother in the politeness category.
"Then I will see this Mister Kyrano, and I will see you both next week," she said.
"Hope the wind is dying," Virgil said, sympathetic to her apparent motion sickness problems. It didn't sound like it was, though. He could hear it gusting around outside.
"Thank you," Doctor Lowry said. As she turned to go, Kyrano materialized. As they walked out together Virgil could hear her giving him instructions on medication.
"Well, that went well," Virgil said after she was out of earshot.
Scott gave him a look, self-consciously covering his leg again. "You thought so?"
"I meant about any suspicions she may have," Virgil said.
"Oh, that."
"She almost seems too accepting of our story," their father said, materializing in the doorway and making both brothers jump.
"How long have you been there?" Scott demanded, then had the grace to look ashamed for using that tone with his father.
Their father didn't seem to mind. "For a while," he said comfortably, sitting on a chair positioned between the two beds. "It doesn't do to leave the guests unsupervised, after all."
"What did you mean she seemed too accepting?" Scott asked.
"I don't know," their father admitted. "It's just that…unlike the other doctor, Lowry hasn't asked about the accident. At all. And she seems to accept that it occurred in a cave in England, which I'll admit is a little weak. Also, she didn't look around at all while she was here, which most guests do. I mean, the secret home of one of the richest families, and she's not at all curious?"
"Perhaps she was being polite," Virgil said, although his father's concern worried him.
"Or maybe she was worried about her patient," Scott said.
"Patients," Virgil corrected, refusing to be singled out.
"I suppose you're right," their father said. "She's very concerned about you both. You know she chewed me out for five minutes about getting you discharged from the hospital so soon?"
"Somebody has an admirer," Scott teased.
Virgil blushed slightly. "I doubt that's it. She's my doctor, Scott! In truth, he hadn't even thought of her as a woman, per se. Just a very good doctor who had saved his life. He didn't think she thought of him as anything more than a patient, either. At least he hoped not.
"Well, I'm going to see our guest off," their father said. He stood up. "You two remember what the doctor told you, and get some rest." With that he left.
"He heard everything we told the doctor," Scott said unhappily as soon as their father had gone.
"Yep," Virgil agreed. "He's just worried about us, Scott."
Scott sighed. "I know. Hey. When she told me not to get out of bed, you don't think she meant at all, do you?" Scott said, looking suddenly worried.
Virgil, who had been having to suffer through the indignity of a bedpan for five days, grinned evilly. "You heard the doctor."
"I will drag myself to be bathroom by my lips before I agree to that!" Scott said with feeling. Virgil snickered. "Sorry, Virg. But I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from on this."
"Oh, I do," Virgil said. "And believe me, as soon as I can walk again, I'll be glad to get a little shred of my dignity back." He yawned. "Sorry."
"You should get some rest," Scott said kindly.
Virgil was sleepy. He'd been getting a lot of rest, but not much sleep. Even with the fuzziness from the medications, he kept dreaming, and that kept waking him up. He just hoped Scott hadn't caught on to that yet.
Thinking of that brought him back to the earthquake. He hated how vulnerable it made him feel thinking about it. He had been scared. Terrified. Perhaps for the first time in his life. He had been afraid of dying, but more than that, when the dust had first settled, he had been afraid Scott was dead. He had been sure the people beneath the building had been killed. He still couldn't believe that they had managed to survive, much as Scott and he had, by a freak arrangement of the falling debris leaving them enough space.
"Virgil, you ok?" Scott asked. Virgil jerked, realizing that his brother had been trying to talk to him.
"Sorry, Scott. I was thinking, I guess."
"About the building collapse?" Scott asked.
Virgil made a face. "Yeah."
Scott sighed. "Me too. But Virg, we all made it out, ok?"
Virgil forced a smile. "I know, Scott. It's not that, really." It was partly that, of course. But he wasn't ready to talk about that yet. "It's just that we came really close on this one, Scott. We almost lost them. And I realized that someday, International Rescue won't be able to save somebody. I don't like that feeling, Scott!"
Scott reached across the night stand separating their beds and gripped Virgil's shoulder. "I don't like that feeling either, Virgil. But it's the reality of what we do. It's a risk we take every time. And even if we do lose someone—when we lose someone—just remember all the people we've saved. It's all we can do."
Virgil nodded, knowing Scott was right. "Ok, Scott. I'll try."
Scott patted his shoulder. "Now get some rest."
"Only if you do," Virgil said, but he could already feel himself falling asleep. Maybe he would get a good rest this time.
As it turned out, that didn't happen. It was barely an hour later when their father came in. He stepped in with such tense energy that it woke Virgil. He wasn't sorry, since he had been dreaming again. His father had just gripped Scott's shoulder to wake him.
"What's wrong, Father?" Virgil asked, yawning and trying to force his mind alert. Scott was awake now too, looking worried.
"There's been a call for International Rescue," their father said.
"Oh dammit," Scott said. "We knew this would happen."
"It's a pretty bad situation," their father said. "It looks like a submarine ran into a cruise ship."
Scott sucked in his breath. "Many casualties?"
"Maybe not. The ship's still floating, and they're helijetting them off now. They need us to rescue the sub. Apparently its radar malfunctioned—which is why it hit the ship, and some other systems as well. It's sunk into a trench, and local rescue can't go that deep."
"So it's a job for Gordon," Scott said. He sounded a little relieved. Virgil didn't blame him. It was fortuitous that the rescue was tailored to one of the people still able-bodied enough to carry it out.
"Yes," their father agreed. "I'm taking Thunderbird 1 to coordinate the rescue. Alan will pilot 2, and Gordon 4, obviously. Scott, that leaves you in charge here until I get back, although I don't want to hear about you being out of bed unless it's an emergency. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Father," Scott said meekly. Their father nodded and left. The brothers exchanged a look. "Father hasn't ever been out on a rescue before," Scott commented.
"I do wonder why he didn't send Tin-Tin or Brains," Virgil agreed. "Maybe he's just been looking for an excuse."
Scott grinned at that. "Maybe." The grin faded. "Still, he's not as young as he used to be…"
"He'll be fine," Virgil said. "He's mobile control on this one. Gordon'll be doing all the dangerous stuff." He tried not to think about how it had worked out for mobile control the last rescue.
"Dad in Thunderbird 1, Alan in 2…this rescue has a bit of a second-string quality to it," Scott mused. "Don't tell Father I said that!" he hurriedly added.
Virgil grinned. "F.A.B., Scott."
"So I'm in charge, but I'm not allowed out of bed," Scott mused, staring at the door. "How's that supposed to work, exactly?"
"I think it's mostly an honorary title," Virgil said.
"Yeah," Scott agreed glumly. "Tin-Tin and Brains are in charge. You and I are stuck here in these damned beds."
There was a knock on their door and then Tin-Tin stuck her head in. "Scott, Virgil? May I come in?"
Scott waved her in. "What's on your mind, Tin-Tin?"
She sat down between them. "Mister Tracy has just appraised me of the situation. Brains is manning the command center. Shall I join him?" she asked, deferring to Scott. She handed him his wrist communicator. "If anything should need to be decided, we will let you know immediately."
"Sounds good, Tin-Tin," Scott agreed. "Go help Brains, then."
Thus dismissed, she left to man her post. Scott watched her go. "That was nice," he commented.
"I don't think she was doing it to be tactful," Virgil said. "You are in charge here, Scott, injury or no. And let's face it, when it comes to tough decision-making, you're the one to do it."
Scott looked over at him. "Thanks."
They lapsed into silence, Virgil staring at the door and Scott staring at his wrist communicator, both waiting for something to happen.
OOO
Hours had passed since Father and the others had left. Or actually, thirty minutes, if Scott was to go by the clock. But he was using a different scale of time, and at least a forever or so had passed. And now news yet. He glanced at the communicator for the millionth time, then at the door, then at his brother. Then at the communicator again.
"How many months does it take a bone to heal?" Virgil asked suddenly, looking longingly at the door once again.
Scott looked over to see his own frustration reflected in his brother's face, and was glad for it. He was a little worried at first that Virgil might find it hard to get back on the horse, as it were, but he seemed just as anxious to get back out there as Scott was. "Three months," he replied dismally, looking down at his leg.
"I can't stand this," Virgil commented.
Scott looked back at his brother, propped up on pillows, glowering at the door. Virgil still looked bad. He had lost weight, even though he was getting some nutrients from the IV. In addition, Scott knew he wasn't sleeping well. Since they were sharing a room, Scott was very aware that Virgil tossed and turned most of the night. When he did sleep he often awoke abruptly, as if from nightmares. Scott understood this because he was having the same problem. Every time he tried to sleep he was trapped in the collapsed subway tunnels again. Virgil also still looked pale, and Scott could tell his ribs bothered him whenever he laughed (which wasn't often) or got agitated (which was now). "Calm down," Scott told him, ribs hurting in sympathy.
Virgil gave him a dark look, but amended it with a smile and a sigh. "Like you're doing so much better, big brother. They've been gone for thirty minutes, and how many times have you looked at the door? Repeatedly and persistently, I might add."
Scott sighed too, and tried to relax. He felt so wound up he was surprised he wasn't vibrating. "True," he conceded. "It's not that I don't think they can handle it…"
"…But it should be us," Virgil finished. "I know."
"They could at least check in," Scott said.
"Scott. It's been half an hour. They're not even to the danger zone yet," Virgil chided gently. "Seriously. Get a hobby."
Scott looked over at Virgil, and burst out laughing. Virgil joined in, although in a more subdued way in deference to his ribs. When he could speak again, Scott said, "I guess I am a little bit bored."
"Want to watch TV?" Virgil asked.
"Not especially."
"Want to read a book?"
"No."
"Want to keep staring at the door and your communicator, waiting for news from Tin-Tin?"
Scott sighed. "Probably will, Virg. But I'll try to be quiet about it if you feel like sleeping."
"Not really. Feel like doing a bit of door-staring myself, actually." Virgil gave him a lopsided grin. "We're hopeless, aren't we?"
Scott smiled back, but his eyes drifted to his injured leg, and then to the communicator again. "Three more months," he said disgustedly.
They lapsed into silence, listening to the wind howling outside and the voices in their own heads. "Quite a storm brewing," Virgil said finally, breaking the silence.
"Yeah," Scott agreed. "The wind's getting worse. I wonder if it's started to rain yet?"
"I think it's just wind," Virgil said. "No pitter-patter of raindrops. As far as I know there wasn't a major storm heading our way. Although considering how out-of-the-loop I currently am…" he let the sentence hang, but Scott knew he was feeling frustrated and helpless again. Three months of forced inactivity. Would either of them survive?