MEA CULPA by JAIMI-SAM RATED FRT

Sequel to Black Friday by Boomercat. Scott is forced to face what could be the dire consequences of Grandma's gift to him.

Author's Notes: This is all Boomercat's fault. Or Claudette's, if you want to go back one further link in the chain of infamy.

Rosie (Boomercat) and I were talking away before one of the bimonthly Tracy Island Writers Forum chats (considerably before, actually, since I goofed and showed up at the wrong time!), and she told me that Claudette had recently thrown her for a loop after reading her (Boomercat's) story Black Friday. Claudette wanted to know which member of the family now had in their possession a certain very special family heirloom that's mentioned in that story, now that IR is up and running. (Black Friday takes place about four years before IR goes operational.)

So there I was, innocently attempting to help, and she stuck it to me. "You have four hours before the chat...what say you write a story?" she said. "I hereby challenge you to write a nice little angst story as a followup to Black Friday. Before the chat."

"Ulp," I said, eloquently; not being, as everybody knows, the fastest writer in the world.
But she wouldn't let me off the hook, although I wriggled mightily -- and "Mea Culpa" was the result.

(I'd recommend reading Black Friday before you read this story, if you haven't already done so. It will all make a lot more sense then.)

He didn't think he'd breathed once since his cell phone had rung that morning and he had heard Virgil's voice, stumbling over those terrible words. The muscles under his diaphragm ached as if he'd been clenching them for hours. He felt like a man alone in a dark and terrible storm, walking hunched against the wind and the rain, compelled to keep struggling his way through it until he absorbed what was happening, until he understood.

All he knew was this: Gordon was in an operating room halfway across the world, and he wasn't expected to live.

Scott didn't remember his wingman appearing in front of him on that frigid Russian runway, beside the sixty two foot bulk of his F-22, all fueled and ready to go. Didn't remember the man shaking him gently, trying to talk to him, find out what was wrong. They'd been scheduled to fly the border of the NATO No Aggression Zone between the small Russian state that was playing host to NATO forces and Bereznik, the rogue military dictatorship that was threatening to erupt in violence at any moment. Scott normally couldn't wait to get into the cockpit, feeling his most alive when he was up there, slicing through the sky at 30,000 feet, the thunder of jet engines howling free behind him.

None of that mattered now.

He didn't remember making the arrangements for an immediate flight out to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the USAF headquarters in Europe, just that for once, he was very glad of the doors that the Tracy name could open. He didn't remember changing planes there, couldn't hold on to the pale blur of faces, the echo of words that made no sense. He did remember trying to call for an update on Gordon's condition while he was waiting for his flight from Ramstein to Nellis AFB, Arizona, from where he would go the rest of the way to San Diego by helijet. Virgil's cell phone went immediately to voicemail.

He didn't want to think about what that might mean.

On the long flight back to the States, he sat amongst other air force personnel, chilled and alone amongst the laughter and chatter, the exchange of family photographs. A smartly uniformed young woman paused in front of his seat, offering him coffee. When he stared at her dumbly for a moment, unable to find the words to respond, she asked him what was wrong.

My brother, he said, his voice sounding rough and broken to his own ears, forced past the vise of his throat. My kid brother.

He didn't have to say any more.

He called Virgil again, standing on the tarmac at Nellis, waiting to board the helijet. It had been...how long had it been, since that first phone call in Russia? His mind, usually so quick and agile with numbers, couldn't even make the simple time zone conversions that would give him the answer. Gordon's out of the first surgery, Virgil said. They have him in ICU. We haven't been allowed up there yet. A pause, then: They still have him listed as critical, Scott. They still don't think he...

Scott stopped him, unable to hear those unthinkable words again. He wanted to ask about their father, how he was holding up. But he was too afraid of having to live alone with the answer, all the way to San Diego.

He watched numbly through the side window as the helijet finally began its approach to the pale concrete buildings of the NMCSD, the Naval Medical Center complex right on the edge of Balboa Park. As soon as they were on the ground the pilot turned to Scott and said through the headphones, "Captain Tracy, I'm sorry to hear about your brother. I sure hope he makes it."

Scott nodded, the stranger's kindness almost more than he could take. He shook the man's hand in lieu of the words that wouldn't come to him, and climbed down out of the helijet.

There was a white coated intern on the roof, waiting for him. Scott flinched at the look on the young man's face, reading there that Gordon's condition was every bit as bad as Virgil had said it was. He felt his heart sink even further into his aching chest, although he didn't really know what he'd been expecting...had he thought that it was going to be like Gordon's beloved Star Trek, when Scotty the engineer always exaggerated the damage to the Enterprise so he'd look like a hero when he pulled off the miracle repair that inevitably followed?

Real life wasn't like that. He'd learned that bitter lesson a week after his ninth birthday, in the darkness and rain of the worst tornado storm that Florida had seen in fifty years.

The lighting inside the medical center building made him blink, the overheads giving off a blue-white, actinic glare. Scott followed the intern's lead out of the elevator, swerving left to avoid a tasteful seating area shrouded in dark green ferns, then down a short corridor that dead-ended in a T-junction. At the center of the T was the nurses' desk, its long white surface covered in papers and charts between two bracketing computer screens. He noticed, incongruously, a small can of chicken noodle soup being used as a paperweight.

The nurse behind the desk had the name "Malaika" on the badge she carried around her neck. "Captain Tracy?"

He nodded, shaking hands. "Let me take you to your family, sir. They're in the ICU waiting area."

She came out from behind the desk. Scott almost balked. He had a sudden wild fantasy that if he didn't go down there, didn't follow her to that ICU waiting area, then maybe time would roll back. Maybe all of this wouldn't be true, would never have happened.

"Are you all right, sir?" Malaika asked.

Scott made himself focus on her face. He nodded. "I'll bring you some coffee, sir," she said, her eyes telling him she didn't believe him for a moment.

He followed her down the corridor.

Virgil saw him the moment he entered the waiting area. He walked straight up to him and hugged him tightly, and Scott could release a little of the fear, a tiny bit of the dread, now that his best friend in the world was here with him again.

He stood back and looked at his brother, taking in the somber eyes and the dark smudges underneath them. He noticed that Virgil didn't let him go right away, one hand lingering on his upper arm as if he was anchoring himself to the reality of Scott's presence. "Where's Dad?" Scott said, to avoid asking the question that was screaming at him, gouging his brain with its jagged edges.

"They just came down and got him and Grandma. They said we can see Gordon, just for a minute, but only two of us at a time. I said I'd wait here for you. He's still unconscious," Virgil added, pre-empting what he knew had been coming next. "They're not sure when he's going to come around."

Footsteps made Scott turn, and he saw his youngest brother enter the waiting area. Alan looked rough, the fine blond stubble and bloodshot eyes making him look as if he'd been up for days. He and Scott exchanged a bear hug, Scott feeling the younger man's body tremble with emotion and fatigue. "Hey, Al," he said, sliding into the role of eldest brother/caretaker with the ease of long practice. "You look like shit."

Alan's face broke into a shaky grin. "You should talk. Did you sleep in that uniform?"

Scott rolled his eyes. The humor between them was good, reinforcing. "Is Johnny coming?"

"They put him on a shuttle the minute they heard," Alan said. "It's still going to take a while, though."

Scott nodded, running a hand through his hair. John was doing a year at the main NASA base on the moon as part of his degree program. Even if all conditions were ideal, just the flight time alone would take at least two days. He just hoped Johnny made it back to Earth before...

He stamped on that thought ruthlessly, shoving it down deep inside where he couldn't hear it anymore. He didn't want to think about the what ifs, not now. Not yet. "Well," he said. "What now?"

He looked up in time to see the uncertain look in Alan's eyes. The younger man was shifting from foot to foot, giving the appearance that he was hovering, poised for action, waiting...for what? Scott glanced at Virgil, saw the same expression on his face...and realized with a sinking feeling that they were waiting for him.

Good old Scott, always on the ball, always knows what to do in a crisis. What would we do without him?

How often had he heard that from one of them or another, over the past seventeen years?

It stuck in his throat, now. He thought of trying to tell them the truth, that he had nothing inside him now but wreckage, blasted out by the nuclear explosion of that phone call all those hours ago. That he had nothing to give them. But he looked at their faces again and knew he couldn't do that to them, couldn't let them down like that.

The words of his OTS survival instructor came to him like a lifeline in a dark ocean, and he reached out with both hands, gripping one brother's shoulder with each. "Now listen, guys. We've gotta keep it together here, for Gordo. Starve the imagination and feed the will. He needs all the strength we can send his way, right now." He looked from one to the other. "This is about him, not us. We can deal with this later, but Gordon's got to deal with it now, and we have to be there for him."

It was the right thing to say. Alan relaxed visibly, coming down on both feet and staying there, and the rigid line of Virgil's shoulders softened. But neither of them showed any sign of moving any further away.

And that was just fine with him, Scott decided, managing to take a small amount of comfort from being able to give it.

The nurse brought him his coffee, and the three brothers waited, together.

The noise from the machines was overpowering at first -- the beeps and whirs of the monitoring equipment, the steady click-click-click of the intravenous drip, the heavy wheeze of the respiration pump. Gordon was swathed in bandages and plastic casts, the oxygen tube distorting the line of his mouth. What little Scott could see of his face was bruised and swollen almost beyond recognition. If he hadn't known this stricken wreck of a man was his brother, he would never have been able to tell.

"Gordo, I'm sorry," he whispered.

He had stood just a few minutes earlier with Jeff, trying to lend some strength as his father reviewed Gordon's situation with the surgeons, discussing what slender hopes there were for the young man's survival. He'd watched his father's skin turn gray as it sank in that they were slim indeed. Gordon's first ten hour operation had only served to save his life, to achieve enough stability that they could wait to see if he could possibly make it through the next surgery, and the next. And now they were in a Catch 22, caught between what they knew he needed and what they knew his shattered body probably couldn't endure.

Bottom line, he needed to go back into surgery within two hours or he wouldn't make it through the night. But the surgeons were reluctant to take the risk, knowing that the same procedure that was so vitally necessary stood a very good chance of stressing his body to the point where he would die on the table. No good options, here.

There hadn't been any choice, really, although Jeff had consulted the family and made it sound as if each of them had the option to say yea or nay. He needn't have worried, because the vote was solemn but overwhelming...go for broke. Better to be in control of the timetable than do nothing but sit and wait for their son, brother and grandson to die.

Scott had asked for some time alone in Gordon's room, then, and the rest of the family had granted his request.

He need to talk to his brother. He needed to beg his forgiveness. He needed to atone to God for letting his mother down.

It had been her last request, the last time she'd spoken to him, when they'd been trapped in their truck halfway down that embankment in the darkness and the howling rain. As the barely nine year old Scott held the messy, blood-covered form of his newest baby brother in his arms, the precious bundle his mother had just entrusted him with, Lucille Tracy had managed to open her beautiful eyes one last time. Promise me...you won't go to... sleep now, Scott. I'm...trusting you... to take care of... your brothers. Don't... let anything happen... to them.

And he had promised.

He had never told anyone else, ever. He was pretty sure Virgil hadn't heard, and Johnny and Gordon were too young to remember anything that had happened that night. And his father hadn't been there, en route from Houston but too late to prevent the disaster that was about to befall their little family.

And now the life of one of those he had sworn to protect was hanging on a knife edge, and the stench of failure was thick in his nostrils. With shaking hands, Scott unbuttoned the collar of his uniform shirt and reached inside, pulling out a tiny ring suspended on a silver chain. Great-Great-Grandma Ettie's ring. The family charm that Grandma had given him before he'd left for his first overseas duty station in Turkey, telling him that as long as he wore it around his neck on a chain and never put it on his finger, it would ensure that he returned to the family safe and sound. It had protected four generations of Tracy fighting men, she had said, and it would do its job again with him.

"I tried to get you to take it instead of me, Gordo," he whispered, the words tasting like ashes in his mouth. "Why wouldn't you listen to me? Why didn't I make you listen?"

There was no answer, only the heavy exhalation of the respirator pump, the regular beeping of the cardiac monitor. Scott stared at his brother for a long moment, then took the ring and its chain from his neck. He reached down and laid it in the center of Gordon's bandaged chest. "You'll make it now, Gordo," he said, vibrating with effort as though he could force his will through his words, force life and hope into his brother's broken body. "You'll make it through. I promise."

He didn't realize he was crying until a hand touched his shoulder and he turned, startled, to see his grandmother. Tears were streaming down her face, too, and she reached for him without a word. They hugged there for a long time, in the middle of that terrible place, letting out the fear and the pain and the guilt in the safety of each others' arms.