The Ransom (Part 7)

By Jenny Taylor

Where - where am I? Is this heaven? If so, why am I warm and dry? Why is it dark? What's with this warm air I'm breathing? Why can't I move? And what's with that noise? Questions ran through Virgil's mind as he begins to stir from his slumber, he couldn't understand what is happening to him.

He groaned and moves his head, but as he did, he can feel the slight movement of fabric across his ears, head and his neck. He tries to move his hands and fingers, but as he did, he can feel some sort of clip on his left index finger and his can feel his bare-skinned thigh with his right.

He tries to move his feet and toes, but he can feel some dry, warm fabric wrapping his bare feet and ankles tightly together. He tries to move his bare legs, but they too are bound tightly together. He tries to move his bare arms, but they are bound tightly to his bare sides again by this dry, warm fabric.

As he breathes, he can feel warm air filling his lungs, the warm air flowing up and down his throat, the warm air flowing in and out of his nose and mouth, making his lips and nose dry, he can also feel what feels like a mask over his nose and mouth. Also he can feel some wires across his chest as well as the dry, warm and tight fabric.

His hearing is starting to become clear; the noise sounded like that it is beeping in a regular pattern.

Suddenly, the realisation hits him. The realisation that's he's alive! Alive, yes. But where is he? He listens again to the noise of the beeps as its pattern becomes faster as his breathing and heart rate too becomes faster.

He realises where he is, as the noise from the machines are becoming familiar to him once again. He's in some sort of medical room, but as he tries to open his eyes to see where he is, some sort of fabric across his eyes are preventing them from opening.

Then it dawns on him. The tight fabric wrapping his bare body and a possible blindfold across his eyes can only mean one thing. He's trapped! He's still onboard the Hood's ship! He's still a prisoner!

Confusion and fear sets into Virgil. Fear of the fact that he's alive on the Hood's ship and that he's still being used as a bargaining chip to his family, so the villain can get his evil hands on Thunderbirds. And then there's confusion.

He's confused as to why this has happened. First he recalls is that the Hood wants him alive as a bargaining chip, then from nowhere and without warning, two of the villain's henchmen came into his prison and poured freezing, ice-cold, ice-filled buckets of water onto him, causing him to go hypothermic, shock and worse, falling unconscious, almost to the point of death. And then he's alive in a medical room.

It doesn't make any sense? What's the Hood's game? Why's he's doing this to me? Virgil's mind races once again, filled with questions, questions that can only be answered by his scheming, evil-minded captor, the Hood.

She turns to look at Joe, still wrapped in the emergency blanket, his head leaning against her chest and his back is being supported by her left arm. She uses her free hand to grab an IV catheter so she can get Joe ready to receive the necessary medication when required.

"Joe, I'm going to put a needle into your hand so you can have some medicine to make you feel better. It won't hurt I promise." She said calmly and gently as she single-handily inserted the catheter into his hand.

Joe winced as the needle was inserted into his cold, pale hand. He slowly looks up at her; his eyelids are becoming tired and heavy from the cold water he then slowly starts to speak. "Rescue Girl?"

"Yes Joe?"

"Where's my mom?" He asks.

He's scared. And he wants his mom. Jaycee thought as she looks down at her young patient. She knows that feeling all too well. She's been through this all her life. Well, nearly all her life. The feeling of wanting a parent to take away all the nightmares that a traumatised child in order to make things better and to be together again with family for comfort.

For Jaycee, it wasn't a parent who gave her comfort when she was a child; it was a school friend, a friend who, alongside with his four brothers, lost their mother in an avalanche. She comforted him at his loss of a parent, with that of her own loss of parents, parents she never met nor knew, but desperate for them at the time.

After that encounter of comfort, she and he became what started as friends, and then as time passed they grew closer to each other, so close that they became unofficial brother and sister, yet she was seven months older than he, but they felt like twins and that they knew each other for years.

Those were the happiest days of her life for the very first time, through him, she became at first friends to his brothers and then being treated as a sister. She remembers that he asked his dad if could adopt her as their sister and the father said yes, but sadly that adoption never came, for that one fateful night, she was taken away from them and her nightmares began again, leaving her in fear, fear that she would never see the friend that she became so close to love again.

Sadness filled her eyes and she was deep in thought as memories of her traumatised past resurfaces again in her mind. It always happens without fail when she's involved with a child as a patient. Then she is snapped back into reality when Joe asks her a question.

"Rescue Girl?"

"Yes Joe?" She responds kindly, trying to be professional.

"Is my mom okay?" He asks, frightened by the lack of response from the doctor.

"Yes, your mom is fine. She's just worried about you and she's waiting for you outside. She couldn't be in here with you, because she might get in the way of International Rescue when they come with their tools to free you." She reassures him as she gives him a simple explanation to why his mother is not with him.

Joe's pale face lit up when hearing the name of International Rescue and that they're coming to free him. He tries to turn around to look for them but he cries out in pain, which got Jaycee's attention and she starts to ask him simple, but vital questions, calmly and kindly.

"Are you okay Joe?"

"No." Joe sobs painfully.

"Are you hurt?"

"Yes." Joe nods.

"Okay, where does it hurt Joe?"

"My legs." Then he looks at his submerged legs and catches sight of blood, seeping out of the cuts flowing and dissolving into the water. He screams at the sight, that Jaycee has to quickly calm him down.

"Shh…It's okay, it's okay." She gently hugs and assures him, and then she continues with the simple questions.

"Is it painful?" He nods in response as his face is in Jaycee's chest. "Right Joe, I'll give you a scale of 0 to 10. 0 means there's no pain and 10 means the worst pain in your life. Where on the scale do you think you are Joe?"

"Eight." He responds, teary-eyed.

"Okay then," She moves her left hand from Joe's back, reaches for her bag and pulls it to her side. She then puts her hand into the bag and retrieves a small bottle of 5mg morphine and then she looks at Joe. "Joe, I'm going to give you some medicine which will take some of the pain away. So I want you to be a brave boy okay."

She shifted her position carefully until Joe's head and back is leaning against her chest, then with her right hand, she picked out a 10 ml needle from her belt, removed its protective covering, sticks the needle into the bottle and withdraws a full needle of liquid then inserts the needle into the IV catheter and then injects the pain killer into the child.

"Good boy, Joe." Jaycee congratulates and reassures the boy. "You're being very brave boy, almost as brave as International Rescue." Joe looks up at her, smiling.

"Really?" He asks. The doctor nodded, smiling.

"Who's as brave as us?" Jaycee and Joe look towards the direction of the voice. Joe smiled while Jaycee frowned.