Chapter Text
“Boys do not long for fathers who will usher them through the gauntlet of psychological disconnect. They long for fathers who have themselves survived intact. Boys do not ache for their father’s masculinity—they ache for their fathers’ hearts.”
~Terrell “T. Real” Jones
Upstate New York isn’t such a bad place, if you’re a New Yorker.
The bar for comfort and retreat has to be low if you live in Manhattan. Too much smog, too much speed, rushing and racing all the time. Too much noise.
Alan watches trees sway from his place in a cushy hospital bed, the sojourn an insistence on Hammond’s part, that he pay for all of their medical bills and recovery until they get back out into the world. Real trees, like oak and maple. No exotic plants. No blood covered palm fronds. Also, hardly any tall buildings in sight. It’s peaceful and quiet and just what they need.
They flew in from Costa Rica this afternoon, after a stressful day and night in the hospital there, and this is worlds better, no matter how much Alan grumbles about not being able to get back to Montana yet.
The private hospital really is quite small—but its staff are the best. Alan has only to cough the wrong way and people come running. He almost argued against it on principle, after all that happened…
Ellie, in the next bed over, sleeps soundly.
…But she deserves the best care.
Alan took one look at Ellie’s shaking frame and swallowed his pride; he shook Hammond’s hand after the lawyers left and NDAs were signed. How John could think of such a thing three days after they escaped the Park with their lives—barely—Alan will never know.
“Thank you, Grant,” Hammond had said in a hushed tone. As if Alan cooped up in a hospital room is a hallowed, personal favour. “It’ll get better, you’ll see.”
Alan’s not so sure about this.
Ellie doesn’t snuffle in her sleep as she’s wont to. It’s strange to see her so still. Strong pain sedatives and one foot in traction keep her lying on her back, almost unconscious.
Alan is even more grateful for this.
Light sleep means dreams, the last thing they need right now. He’s already woken once, screaming. So has Ian, sequestered somewhere down the hall while they check for tetanus. Alan quickly discovered he hates the clicking of pens or something scratching on a metal surface, because they sound too much like…like…
Alan hits the call button before he’s even aware of it.
“Sorry, Dr. Grant.” Nurse Adams or Cheryl, as she insists he call her, bustles around with a deep crease between her eyes. “We’re a bit of a circus at the moment. You want me to unhook the IV again so you can go for a midnight stroll?”
“That would be great, thanks. And I thought nothing fazed the great head nurse Cheryl.”
“Ha.” She offers a quick smile. It’s gone right after it comes. “I wish. We’re trying to call Mr. Hammond now.”
“What? Why?” Alan sits up in bed. He’s the least injured out of all three adults, but he did the most hiking around, and fast movement is a dicey affair with how stiff he feels. Still, he holds out his elbow so she can remove the IV. “Is everyone okay?”
Cheryl’s lips pinch. “We’re not sure yet. Showed up right outta nowhere. A paramedic is attempting to check them over just to be sure, but no one can get close enough…”
She’s talking to herself at this point, distracted. Her hands make quick work of sliding out the needle. Now that Alan listens for it, he hears the trauma ward come to life, volume rising. Alarmed voices exchange information rapid fire, and somewhere far down the hall three phones ring in unison.
What’s going on? His mind is slow to piece these strange clues together, to see the greater pattern that would make highly trained medical professionals panic.
Them.
Them—
“Dr. Grant!”
Cheryl’s cries go unheeded when Alan bolts off his bed and out the door.
He nearly skids into the nurse’s station before racing to a visitor entrance. The hospital is only two floors tall and they’re on the ground level. He feels bad for all of two seconds about leaving Ellie, but Cheryl will watch out for her. Ellie needs the sleep too much to be woken for this.
Them. The word galvanizes Alan to life with a nauseous tsunami of anger. Fear flotsams around in there too, almost stronger than the disgust. Debris pieces of worry and regret knock against his stomach wall.
Somewhere in between Alan’s raging pulse and too-small scrubs, part of him understands that this is neither the first nor last time he’ll do this. Urgency has a new definition now. Running for your life sometimes means running for someone else’s too.
Muscles in his hip twinge when he pulls a sharp left at the intersection of two hallways. His socked feet are sore to the point of numbness, neck whiplashed both from a child’s arms and falling off skeletons wired to the ceiling. He hasn’t had a decent shower in days.
But none of it hinders him.
Alan is sprinting now, around breathy pants that are more from anguish than exertion.
A cloud of voices grows thicker the closer he gets. Nurses, specialists, and security personnel mill around the visitor lobby. The cacophony of arguing reaches a shrill pitch. And through it all, their posture is skittish, aborted, as if everyone is trying to not scare off a gazelle that materialized in the trauma ward.
Without an ounce of guilt or manners about it—Alan shoves every last one of them aside.
“Dr. Grant!”
It’s the second time in under a minute a female voice has shouted his name. This time, it turns Alan’s knees to putty.
“Lex! Tim!” He grates out the words in a sharp holler.
Alan stares at them, dumbstruck, even though a strange intuition told him who it was anyway. Tim and Lex stand by the entrance, looking very small against the backdrop of pitch black night outside, like the doorway might eat them. Their eyes are huge, haunted, skin pale to the point of illness. Their bright sweaters, red and sea foam green, only accent the lack of cheek colour.
A tear rolls down Lex’s jaw.
They haven’t gotten more than two feet inside the entrance’s sliding doors, eyeing all the adults with fear, but Tim gets one look at Alan hobbling through the melee and runs. Injured foot be damned.
Alan goes down on one knee just in time. Sixty pounds of little boy hurtle into his chest, shaking shaking shaking. His hands, bandaged to high heaven, scrabble to find purchase around Alan’s back.
Lex’s skinny fingers arrive seconds after her brother, wadded up in the chest of Alan’s scrubs. She crouches down and drapes herself across Alan’s shoulders so that her hot breaths puff puff against his neck. He loosens his right arm from its death grip around Tim to pull her close.
“I’ve got you, everything’s alright.” It’s like holding onto a bit drill. After a long moment, Alan realizes Tim isn’t the only one shaking. “Nothing can get us here. We’re safe.”
He can’t promise this, and by the look on their faces—well, he can’t see Tim’s right now, buried in Alan’s chest as it is—this isn’t the root of the issue anyway. They’re smart enough to know there are no dinosaurs in New York, just musty old skeletons in museums.
He recalibrates his response.
“No one is going to hurt you.” Alan plants two lightning-fast kisses to Lex’s hairline. It’s sweaty, pulled back into what was once an impressive braid. Both kids smell of cool nighttime air and smoke…not to mention they’re dressed in pajama pants. Tim wears grey flannel with penguins on it and Lex’s are cut offs, adorned with tiny turtles.
Alan kisses Tim next, right on the crown of his messy head. The children hesitate. Alan slowly comprehends that he’s still not quite on the money about why they’re here.
“You’re safe,” he says again, for good measure. Then, in a lighting bolt of epiphany, “We’re not going to abandon you.”
Jackpot—Tim sobs.
Even muffled against Alan’s scrub shirt, it’s loud. Very loud. The violent sounds of a child in distress supercharge the crowd into action. A sea of people flurry around them, hands on Alan’s pulse point, badgering the siblings with questions, until Cheryl marches in and barks everyone away.
“Children, did you…” Alan tries to still his own trembling so he can emit a sense of calm he doesn’t feel. After some mental math on how far away Hammond’s manor is from here, his heart misses a beat. “Did you walk all the way from your grandpa’s estate?”
“‘Course not,” Tim wails. “We took a cab. We’re not animals.”
That strange feeling pitted inside Alan’s stomach gets a lot stranger when a different sort of shake comes over him. It’s inside his lungs first, then his throat, and finally his smiling mouth. It bubbles up into a popcorn sound.
He’s so startled by the sensation that he can only blink for a second.
Then Lex mirrors it with a small laugh of her own. Which sets Alan off even more. They’re just breathy snickers, not even really a belly laugh, but they heal something raw inside Alan. Tim takes a minute longer, until the little ribcage under Alan’s hands hitches in a different rhythm than crying. It feels good to laugh together.
“Are either of you hurt?”
The kids dutifully shake their heads. Alan grits his teeth and gently tugs Tim away for a proper look at his face. He cups the ashen cheek, thumbing away a few tears.
Alan speaks low to ensure each word is firm and enunciated. “It’s over, Tim. Do you hear me? We are home.”
Tim’s eyes well again. “Can any of the dinosaurs swim to New York?”
“No,” says Alan, even though he has no idea whether InGen bred aquatic species. He glances around at curious medical staff. “And even if they did, I would shoot them.”
The ridiculous answer actually mollifies Tim a bit, reminding Alan that this is a nine year old. These are two children running away from home to find a man they just met last week all because he kept them alive through a scarring trip back in time. That tsunami wave crashes into the buildings of his thoughts, making it hard to swallow.
“Come on, up we get.” Alan swings Tim into his arms. The little boy immediately octopuses both legs around his waist, arms looped loosely around the man’s neck. “Let’s move this party someplace quieter, shall we?”
“Dr. Grant, please.”
Alan talks over a pesky doctor. “These children are staying with Dr. Sattler and I until someone from their next of kin retrieves them. Is that clear?”
The doctor blusters some more, but Alan is already striding past him for the trauma ward. Lex holds onto Alan’s free hand with astounding force. Then again, she nearly choked him to death. He supposes he should get used to clingy children surprising him.
Ellie sleeps through the whole thing: Cheryl bringing in an extra round of Jello for the kids, Alan helping Tim to the bathroom, Lex kissing Ellie’s forehead goodnight, Ian popping in to check on the ruckus, tucking Lex into Alan’s own hospital bed, Ian kissing her forehead goodnight…
In the visitor chair, Tim has long since made a nest in Alan’s lap. He’s wrapped in an orange blanket that the paramedics loaned. It’s normally used for shock patients, which in Alan’s mind the boy is. Tim’s breathing slows down after thirty minutes or so of this bizarre bedtime routine.
Together they watch Lex conk out. Her whole body seems to uncoil for the first time in days at just Alan and Ellie’s presence. Her eyes stay locked on Alan the whole time she drifts off.
“The house felt empty,” Tim whispers, when Lex’s eyes close for the last time. “Grandpa had to go into Manhattan to meet with the board. Guess he’s not coming back for a few days.”
“He left you alone?” Alan immediately checks if his harsh tone woke Lex, but she’s out. His grip on the boy tightens. “In that big house all by yourselves?”
Tim shakes his head. “Our housekeeper is looking after us, Mrs. Ranita, since Mom can’t get back from Chicago until Friday.”
Something about that tastes funny, a mother who isn’t frantic with desperation to get back to her offspring. Alan wants to ask, knows he very much should not. This is none of his business.
But…but it is. Alan kept these children alive in a life or death scenario and his mind—his gut—won’t let him forget it for a spare second. He may not have guardianship papers or share their DNA, but he bears the lacerations on his body, soon to be scars, to prove how far he’d go for them.
Tim says it for him. “I don’t think Mom understands what happened down there. She just knows we had to survive while lost in the jungle for a while. Grandpa hasn’t told her yet about the…the…”
“The dinosaurs,” Alan whispers.
Relief arcs across Tim’s face. “Yeah. Being alone it…it felt like when the lawyer left us.”
Abandoned. The word circles back. Alan’s angry, sure, but mostly just sad. Patterns are already emerging, the PTSD these kids will have to deal with in coming years.
“People are scarier than monsters sometimes, huh?” Maybe that’s the real loss of innocence in all this, the root of why they’re struggling so much.
“Yeah,” Tim says again.
His hands look like mittens, but he still palms at Alan’s face. It’s an unconscious thing, with Tim not even looking at him, but it crumbles Alan’s defences a bit more just the same. The boy’s hand is so tiny, so very small compared to Alan’s.
Then Tim moves to suck the tips of his fingers, likely an old childhood habit.
“Kind of unsanitary,” Alan points out. “Try not to get the bandages too wet.”
“Oh, right.” But Tim doesn’t stop and Alan doesn’t force him to. “Dr. Grant?”
“Timmy?”
“I hear ‘em when I close my eyes.”
This particular question Alan knows full well the answer to. He asks anyway. “Hear what?”
“When they were in the kitchen.” Tim sniffles some more. Where Alan’s hand rests against Tim’s stomach, he feels the boy’s heart speed up. “Their claws. The way they snorted.”
“You wanna know a secret?”
Tim mimics the breathy whisper. His big, chestnut eyes look up with implicit trust. “What?”
“I hear the raptors too.”
And suddenly Alan is shaking again, a soggy ball of yarn left out by the seaside.
There is absolutely no warning. It’s like flipping a switch—one minute he sits with a sleepy child on his lap and the next his hands tremor to rival an earthquake.
Alan keens out a long noise. Strangled, hoarse, it wrings out of him in one painful burst. He yanks Tim up into his arms and stands before the first of his own sobs comes out.
Somehow, by some miracle, he’s the last of the bunch to cry. And this isn’t even really crying. Alan just cinches his arms and cradles the back of Tim’s head while pacing around the room. The sobs stop within a minute, but Alan can’t still the quivers.
“We’re home,” he breathes, over and over. “We’re home. We really made it…”
Tim isn’t frightened by this abrupt, somewhat delayed reaction. In fact, he transfers his fingers from his mouth to Alan’s cheek for a gentle pat. It leaves a wet spot next to the other wet spots.
“‘S okay, Doc. There’re no dinosaurs here.”
Alan laughs, short. The laugh is more of a sob, but it makes Tim smile. He rests his cheek on Alan’s shoulder.
“Thanks, Timmy.”
When Tim pops his mitten fingers back in his mouth, he does so with a bird-like hum. A single note, it repeats with each exhale and lulls just long enough for Tim to take even breaths. In…hum…in…hummm…Alan has never heard this sound before, but some genetic instinct tells him it’s another childhood habit, like a sleepy toddler might do.
Alan hated kids a week ago. Well, hate might be a strong word…how about strongly disliked. Yes, that’s closer. They’re inconvenient and demanding and unpredictable.
Now Alan hears the hum and feels a deep tug behind his lungs.
Frantic pacing smooths into a waltzed sway around the room. Rocking Tim. Just feeling each breath in his lungs, the vibration of his humming. Alan’s never done this before but something in the recesses of his mind tells him what to do. Out the window, a waning moon bathes everything in rose gold. Tim’s lashes sheen bronze where they blink up at the older man.
Alan hated kids a week ago—
But now, in this one fragile moment…he understands how precious it is. That he’ll probably never get another quite like it.
“Alan, honey?”
The soft voice startles them both. Tim’s head lifts with a gasp. Adrenaline is still very much on the menu and probably will be for a while yet.
“Ssshhh, easy, Tim. We’re okay.” Then Alan glances at the other hospital bed and hurries over. “Ellie! Are you alright? Did we wake you?”
She ignores these questions to blink at the children, completely unfazed by their sudden presence. Then her eyes hone on Tim. Her hand, the one with the pulse oximeter, stretches up to brush against his flannel clad leg.
“Hey, baby.” The drugs bring out Ellie’s maternal side—it practically glows from her eyes. “You came a long way. Is your foot hurting?”
It also makes her much smarter than Alan, as usual. He wants to smack himself.
Should have checked that.
Tim’s whole body sags in Alan’s arms and he leans towards her. Alan and Ellie exchange a concerned look over his head. The sheer longing in that one move is heartbreaking.
Tim takes his fingers out of his mouth long enough to mumble, “I’m okay.”
Alan sinks into the mattress by Ellie’s hip. “You fractured it, I hear.”
“Mhmm.” Tim nods. “In three places.”
Another concerned look from both adults. Ellie’s hand shifts to Tim’s hair, smoothing it back. “You’re very brave.”
Tim shrugs. “Lex got us here. I just limped along, mostly, and snuck us out the back so Mrs. Ranita wouldn’t wake up.”
Ellie’s not talking about how they got to the hospital, but she wisely lets it go.
The elfin foot isn’t swollen any more than it was before, no blood, the plastic splint still snugly in place. Alan checks it over thoroughly after removing Tim’s sock, all while Ellie squeezes his hand. Alan makes sure to keep one arm seat-belted around the boy’s waist so he doesn’t fall.
“I’m proud of you, Timmy.” Ellie’s eyes grow heavy once more, but she beams. “You’re a special kid.”
Tim flushes all the way up to his roots—but he’s grinning too. “Thanks for saving us, Dr. Sattler.”
“Hey!” Alan mock scowls. “Where’s the love?”
Tim giggles. “You too, Dr. Grant.”
“Alan, please.”
“Thanks, Alan.”
If there was any resistance left in Alan, it promptly melts away at the gap toothed smile and how dwarfed Tim looks swallowed up in the blanket. “Are you going to give Ellie a goodnight kiss too?”
Tim blushes again and mutters about being too grown up for such things. He’s not even done speaking, however, before he leans down and kisses Ellie’s golden hair. “Night, Dr. Sattler. Hope you have nice dreams.”
His breath hitches again over the last words. Alan tucks him against his chest, so Tim’s ear is right over his heart.
“Tim, I have something very important to give you. You can keep it safe for me.”
“Really?” Tim knuckles his sternum. “Just for me?”
“That’s right, although you’re welcome to share it with your sister if you want.”
Alan reaches for his wallet on the bedside table. Removing a business card, he sets it in Tim’s palm. “This card has my personal cell on the back, along with work numbers. If you ever need me—for anything—I want you to call. Please.”
Tim stares at it like Alan just handed him the keys to a Maserati.
“You sure?”
“One hundred percent.” Alan leans in as if sharing a secret. “I might even need to hear your voice sometimes. It’s for me, honestly.”
A slight lie, but not as much of a lie as Alan wants it to be. Tim goes along with the charade.
“I’ll take good care of it,” he promises. “Give you a call, you know, when you’re scared.”
Alan hopes he’s wrong, that the boy will never have need of it.
“I appreciate that, Tim.”
…He knows he isn’t.