Chapter Six
Jeff, having all but screamed at his poor Secretary, two in the morning be dammed, that he is taking time off for a family emergency and for her to cancel everything, walks into the infirmary, a good two and a half hours later, to find Brains quietly going over data in the corner of the room and all four of his sons huddled up to John's unconscious body like little pale penguin chicks, starved of their mother's heat. He has to chuckle lowly at the sight. They're curled around him, careful not to put any stress on any of their brother's tubes or wires, and they all seem to be deeply asleep, taking comfort from the steady bleep of John's heart monitor and the constant rasp of his breathing. His littlest brothers, Alan and Gordon are on the bed with him, tucked into his chest on either side, but careful not to put any weight on his ribs. One of Alan's arms is slung out over John's stomach and Gordon's hand is curled up, his fingers hooked into the soft fabric of the edge of the bandages, his nose pressed, small and warm, against John's upper arm. Virgil is curled up like a cat, all wound around Johnny's feet and sleeping like the proverbial dead. The soft strains of piano hang in the air and Jeff realises that the medical bay's speakers are thrumming out a recording of one of his second son's best concertos.
Ever his brothers guard dog, Scott has pulled his chair as physically close to the bed as possible, right up next to John's head and is bent over in an attempt to be close to him. He opens one bleary eye and mumbles out a soft "Hi Dad" as Jeff sinks down onto the edge of the bed, scooting Gordon back a bit and letting the mattress dip even further with the weight of five occupants. Scott's fingers, curiously, are woven into the soft fibres of John's hair and his attention skitters nervously over his brother's monitors, checking and re-checking his brother's vitals. He has a slightly bloody gauze patch taped over his forehead and he seems a little dizzy, blinking owlishly as he tries to focus on his brother's face. He's tense too; his whole body wrought with straight lines and strained sharp angles. The morphine has obviously left him a little out of it.
Cautiously, Jeff's arms reach out to wind themselves around his oldest, encircling Scott tightly and pressing him close, careful of Scott's own cannula and IV line. As he does so Scott makes a small, half-choked squeaky noise that tugs at something deep within Jeff's chest and his fingers scrabble at his Father's comforting arms, as if trying to return the gesture. With a low, heavy sigh, Jeff lets his lips graze the top of his eldest son's head, where the hair is fine and soft and a slightly sun-bleached lighter shade of the deep brown he has all over. Jeff lets his eyes close, taking a moment to just hold his boy as Scott lets him.
"Hey Scotty." He whispers eventually into his boy's crown and slowly Jeff feels all the tension go out of Scott's rigid frame, as his Father rubs his eldest's back in slow, broad circles until Scott relaxes against his Father, his body tired and heavy in his arms. At over thirty years old, Scotty is far too big for this; he outgrew his Father's knee what feels like a lifetime ago, but Scott holds on anyway, for Jeff's comfort as much as his concussed own. Jeff's wedding ring rolls on his finger as he rubs Scott's back, the little gold band as always a heavy presence on his weary soul, twirling on his finger in a way that makes Jeff briefly wonder if Lucille is trying to comfort the both of them too.
He'd thought he lost John tonight.
Resting his chin oh-so-lightly on the top of Scott's poor, knocked head, he looks over at his other boys once more. Huddled between them all, John looks surprisingly tiny; all swathed in white and drowned by tubes and bleeping machines. For as tall as he is, John appears small and a little too skinny when sized up to the other Tracy's – even Gordon who stands almost a foot shorter than him and little Alan, eighteen and still the baby of the group, suddenly seem to dwarf their brother. It looks like John's stay on Five has affected his muscle mass.
As well as that, John has always been the fairest, the lightest skinned, of the lot of them; attributing it to all that time in space and a lack of vitamin D. But he'd never been this pale. The white of the linens seems to bleach all colour from his skin and it leaves him looking washed out and grey, like a dirty cloth through a ringer. His mouth however, parted by the rude intrusion of the tracheal intube that's feeding him oxygen, still looks a little bluish even now.
"How is he?" Jeff asks, as Brains comes up to hang a new bag of saline and he checks the readouts of the monitor with a slight frown.
"V...Virgil w...would do better with that... quest...question." Brains stammers, scribbling something with his fingers on his holographic tablet screen. "It... It's hard to say, M...Mr Tracy." And then he passes Jeff the tablet, scrolling down though his recordings to the current data and how they're handling it. Scott struggles slightly in his arms, as if craning to see, but Jeff shushes him down for the moment with a gentle nudge and the press of a cheek to his hair like Scott is a misbehaving puppy. It worked when they were kids and it works now.
Depressurisation, hypothermia, dehydration, three broken ribs and multiple fractures, dislocated shoulder, oxygen deprivation, low blood pressure... Jeff sucks in a harsh breath, his hands fisting in Scott's dirty spacesuit, and his mind fills with the horror, once more, that they should have lost him. That John should be dead.
But he isn't.
Not without a fight. Jeff smiles, glancing up at his unconscious son. Like a true Tracy. One of his boy's through and through. Scott wriggles in his arms and quietly Jeff holds the tablet lower so he can try and read it too. Scott all but growls as his eyes fail him and Jeff kindly reads it out loud to quieten his boy down. Virgil has strapped John's injuries, fed him oxygen, kept him warm and drugged him up and it seems there's not much more they can do but monitor his boy, watching his vitals for changes, as he slumbers on.
"If... If you look a...at this X-ray, Mr. T...Tracy, you can see his ribs appear to have not dam...dam... injured any of his internal organs. It's a lit...little hard to tell, as soft tissues only show up min...minimally, but we're confident that we don't need to call in a spesh...specialist."
"The blood in his mouth was from damage to his lungs, trachea and oropharynx as a result of the depressurisation." And that's Virgil, now sitting up, his legs swung over the side of the bed and the guilty expression of a child caught napping where they shouldn't. He looks a little tired and sleep rumpled with his hair stuck up oddly at the back, but he's alert and professional and he pulls himself up to check John's IV. He seems worried though; his face grim and his teeth curl over and chew anxiously at his bottom lip, worrying the skin there. "We're pretty sure he's not ruptured anything and we should be clear to take him off the endotracheal intubation and put him on a nasal cannula instead as his breathing improves. His O2 levels are coming up slowly."
"He's going to be alright then?" Jeff asks quietly, his hand reaching out to gently take one of John's limp, slim cold ones and he swipes his big, warm fingers over the back of his son's hand, careful of the cannula needle taped into the back of his wrist. His fingers curl tighter as it takes a moment for Virgil to respond.
"I'm not sure, Father." His second eldest admits softly, worry scrunching his brow and Jeff feel's Scott's body go rigid in his arms at the admission. "Brains and I ran a CAT scan about half an hour ago; we're sending it off to some of his old colleagues for a second opinion, but..."
"But?" their Father presses urgently, Scotty is trembling in his grip.
"Gods Dad... I... There's a very real chance he could be brain damaged. The amount of time he was without oxygen is... unprecedented. No-one has ever survived that long without..."
"The world record for the longest amount of time a person has held their breath is held by a German free-diving expert with a PHD in Medicine." And that's Gordon, awake and pale, and ever the family goldfish. Alan, next to him, also awoken by the ruckus, is sitting up and rubbing blearily at his eyes, not quite with it enough to succumb to the wide eyed fear the rest of his family are sinking into. "His time underwater was twenty two minutes." Gordon rambles on. "Before that the record had been eleven. There's no way that John could have..."
"He wasn't breathing when I got to him." Scott's hoarse whisper is caught by all of them and they fall silent again. "But it was like he'd only stopped maybe three, four minutes before that but I don't know how... there wasn't any air..." Jeff can feel Scott's breathing, quick and clearly terrified and he can't seem to think of a single thing to do to calm him. It's so unlike Scott, he's off his game completely, but Jeff supposes that seeing your brother's dead body, floating in space, will do that to you. That or the knock he took to the head. Or the morphine. Gently, Jeff pushes Scott back in his chair and watches his grief-torn face with a tight frown.
"He should be dead." Virgil growls viciously and suddenly, his hackles up like an oversized angry house cat. They all jump as he slaps his hand hard against the monitor where John's blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, temperature, pulse rate, perspiration, adrenaline levels, and respiration all glow in various traffic light shades. "I don't know how he's not." It's as if he's trying to reassure himself that he's not wrong and that their little spaceman really is a miracle and that he is still here alive because he has to be. Unable to contain himself, Virgil is then stooping over their patient and pressing his fingers manually to his pulse point.
"Maybe he found another Oxy tank?" Alan suggests softly, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, after a few beats.
"His ribs are mashed, Allie." Virgil snarls like a mother cat over her kittens, "He so goddam" Jeff lets that one slide with only a sharp frown, "lucky not to have torn his lungs up. How the hell he'd have managed to... but if he did that would severely decrease his risk of brain damage... It's..." Virgil deflates slowly, "It's unlikely though, it's probably best you don't get your hopes up, kiddo. He... He might not even ever wake up I don't... I don't know... I don't know enough to... I'm not actually a Doctor, you know." And now his voice is trembling, "I patch you lot up all the time but there's only so much I can do... I..." and Virgil crumples, powerless and pale, his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking.
"It... It's not t...too late to call in a specialist, V...Virgil. If you... think... think you need assist...assist... help. T... There's a lot we don't know a...and..." Brains reaches out to place a warm, comforting hand on Virgil's shoulder and Jeff recognises that it's not just Scott whose off his game, but all of them.
"We could ask Doctor Caldwell." Gordon suggests quietly, "The one who helped me after my hydrofoil accident. He set Alan's elbow too, that time he broke it during that Dubai earthquake, remember? We told him Alan had been rock climbing."
"He fixed me up when I got that massive scrape across my thigh last year." Virgil adds, with a grim sigh. "Eleven stitches. Dad told him I'd fallen down the stairs, of all things, when really I'd fallen down a mineshaft." It's a good idea and Jeff considers it for a moment, closing his eyes and running his fingers gently through Scott's hair.
"We would be forced to explain about International Rescue." Jeff sighs, uneasy to let anyone else in on their secret. "John has injuries can't be explained away as falling down the stairs or rock climbing." And John's not been on the NASA registrar for years. Explaining away injuries caused in space was a lot harder than anything the boys could have done on Earth.
"We could say it was a scuba accident." Gordon chirps up suddenly, "They have many of the same problems. We could use that to explain the depressurisation and the oxygen problem." Gordon, who was never any good at staying still, is now pacing rapidly up and down. "I can get some damaged gear together; make it look plausible."
"That... That could work." Jeff muses gently. "If you think we need him, Virgil, I'll send out the call."
Virgil, tense, with his head hung low, nods slowly. He's clearly a little too out of his depth and if he's admitting defeat it must be bad.
"Do you think Scott needs his head looking at as well?" Alan's watching his eldest brother's glassy eyes and pale face.
"Scott has needed his head looking at for years." Virgil chuckles roughly, ducking as Scott tries to reach out and swat him around the head, before sobering, "But no, the swelling is minimal and he didn't need stitches." Their brother stoops down to Scott's level, assessing his weary face. "His eyes are focusing better now too. Plus it'd be even harder to explain away the both of them to Doc Caldwell. What you really need, Scotty boy, is rest."
Standing again Virgil scowls down at Scott, weak and pale in his filthy spacesuit. His hair that looks like its strands are on a drunken walk-a-bout, scatted in clumps all over his head and flattened oddly where their Dad had rested his cheek. He's still got blood smeared in the hollow of his throat, where Virgil had missed it during cleanup and his eyes are shadowed by dark rings.
"Scott?" Virgil is suddenly concerned about his elder brother's lack of response. Blearily, Scott raises his head to look and him and Virgil frowns at the lapse in reaction time. "Right then. You're going to be seeing a lot of Gordon for the next few days. Ah! Deal with it." He adds as Scott looks like he's trying to form some kind of protest. "Gordy, you're on neurone checks every hour, make sure this idiot keeps hydrated and that he rests. Try and get him to eat if he can, but I reckon he's probably still feeling nauseous. Oh, and as much as he really needs to shower, I'm reluctant to let him go in on his own with that head injury... No... Sorry Scotty I'm not gonna patch your sorry hide up again when you slip and fall." As he talks his fingers have reached in to check the gauze pad pressed to Scott's forehead and Virgil decides to change it for another clean one, quickly checking over his concussive symptoms before lets him go.
"Father," Jeff jumps as Virgil turns his wrath on him. "I want you to take Alan," Virgil's eyes flick across and he notes how the poor kid looks dead on his feet. Possibly in some kind of emotional shock as well. "...to change and shower and then to bed. Tuck him in if you have to." It's a testament to how exhausted Alan must be that he hardly even protests as his Father stands, unravelling himself from Scott, to place a wide palm on each of his littlest son's shoulders as he steers him out of the room. "You get some sleep too Dad. Just a couple of hours and then you can make that call to Caldwell in the morning. I can cope until then." Virgil commands, as an afterthought, and their Father smiles at him. "All of you had better see to it that you find Kyrano or our Grandmother and get them to make you something to eat."
"Grandma?" Gordon's face whites out "Has anyone actually told her?" he whispers and they all freeze because no, none of them have. The little old lady will be pottering around upstairs in blissful ignorance while her boy's are freaking out down here and John lays there unconscious. "Dibs not me!" Gordon crows and two brothers have to duck Virgil's fist as Alan echoes it.
"Fine I'll tell Grandma. Go on; off with the lot of you, stop cluttering up my med-bay!"Nurse Virgil growls and the Tracy boys scatter like bowling pins amidst muffled snickering, tripping out into the hall. Scott, suspended by Gordon is the last to stagger out, and only because Gordy had forgotten him in his scramble to leave and had had to rush back.
With a soft sigh, Virgil slumps down into the hard plastic chair Scott has abandoned and frowns at John's unconscious face.
"Yeah I know. If you we're awake you'd be laughing at me too. But it's for their own good, really."
...
Author Notes: yey! a new chapter! I hope you like it! Poor boy's, I'm not even sure who I feel most sorry for anymore XD
Next chapter will have John waking up! Sort of...
I got asked to draw some art for this fic, so, if you like to see it, that's at:
http (colon, forward slash, forward slash) lenleg . tumblr post / 118320907195 / lenleg-so-galaxy-the-girl-wonder-asked-for-art
Thankyou all so much for your lovely comments! You're all brilliant and keep me writing 3 x
- Lenle.G