Chapter Text
It’s okay at first.
Well, it’s not really, but it’s something resembling okay and that’s the best they can do right now. It’s the six of them against the world- or in this case a hospital- and much like certain times on the island when things would click perfectly into place, it feels like there’s nothing they can’t do.
(Darius likens it to coming up with the ‘save the dinosaurs at the watering hole’ plan. Kenji says it feels like when they got Ben back.)
That being said, it’s barely been a day since they got back to land, and it sort of feels like they’ve swapped one cage for another. Scarred and sick and malnourished kids don’t get to just waltz away from successful island escapes, even if they’ve proven they’re more than capable of holding their own. The news crews barely had time to stick cameras in their faces before a herd of ambulances arrived to usher them away. With no parents or guardians yet to arrive- kinda obvious considering they’re in Costa Rica and not like, California or something- the Camp Fam are each other’s ambassadors as doctors and nurses at the swanky private American hospital swarm them the way a hungry pack of Compys likes to swarm any unattended food. No camper is concerned about themselves. Rather, they each pick a friend (or something more) and campaign for them to receive top treatment.
“You gotta check Yaz’s foot!” Sammy scolds one nurse who keeps trying to stick a blood pressure cuff on her arm. The two girls hold hands even amongst the flood of staff trying to pull them apart. It makes it hard for any work to get done, which is kind of the point. The only reason they’re sitting down at all and being towered over by the workers is because Sammy had made a beeline for some chairs the second she’d spotted them.
“My foot’s fine,” Yaz says through gritted teeth. She’s close to kicking the prodding fingers of the doctor away. Only Sammy’s comforting grip keeps her from lashing out. “You need a serious checkup after all that venom.”
“Pshaw, I’m right as rain. Besides, that was ages ago. You got me the antidote.”
“You nearly died.”
In an opposite corner, Ben snarls at anyone who so much as glances in his direction, teeth bared in the most optimal way to intimidate a rouge dinosaur. A nervous Kenji plants himself in front of Ben and tries to offer a more friendly refusal of blood tests and thermometers.
“Really, we’re fine,” he says as cheerily as he can. The red raw scars and clear outline of bones says otherwise, but sometimes Kenji’s ‘I’m a posh prep kid’ is even more effective than Ben’s feral growls. Maybe it’s because he’s actually saying words instead of just hissing. Lot harder to ignore someone saying no when they’re explicit about it.
Brooklyn squeezes herself in next to Ben once it becomes clear Kenji’s going to be the most affective at denying the doctors and nurses access. Even with her signature pink hair mostly faded to brown, she’s still the easiest to recognise. Already a stray phone has been aimed in her direction. Her face is probably already making the rounds on social media- likely to be accompanied by a variety of clickbait-y titles. Brooklyn Sighted! Brooklyn Unboxes a Hospital. Brooklyn Not Actually Dead!
Darius appears to be the most composed of all as he allows a doctor (maybe the most senior, if the way everyone else addresses her) to ask him a series of quick, simple questions that assess his condition. To an outsider this makes him the most reasonable. To the Camp Fam, they see it for what it really is. Darius as the leader takes the biggest risks first. He won’t ask anyone to do something he isn’t comfortable doing himself. If they’re going to be properly treated, Darius is going to make sure it's safe.
It's only when the head doctor asks him how long they were on the island for that he hesitates.
“I don’t…I’m not sure,” he forces a smile even as his eyes dart to someone else for backup. “What’s the date today?”
When she tells him, the smile fades away. “Oh…that would make it…” he doesn’t finish the sentence. The doctor doesn’t ask again.
Yeah. Not really okay.
Better than an island of hungry dinosaurs, but not by much.
When it becomes clear (well, clearer) that there’s no progress to be made in the emergency department of the hospital, a private room is secured with six beds shoved in close together to allow the kids a chance to rest before the treatment starts up again. It’s a clear breaking of rules but this is an extreme circumstance that doesn’t really allow for proper protocol to be followed. The head doctor signs off on it, and the kids offer lacklustre thankyous as they sprawl out on beds not that much comfortable than their thinning mattress they’d had back on the island. The head doctor (whose name Darius asks for but forgets as soon as she says it) says they can have thirty minutes to themselves, and then they’ll need to be looked after. There’s no protesting that will convince her otherwise. Darius concedes, but it’s with the same resignation he’d had one the island when time and time again they’d been forced to make a life out of nothing. He’s only saying yes because he can’t say no.
When the head doctor leaves, she shuts the door.
Instantly the talking starts.
“Ben?” Darius only has to say his name before Ben is darting to the door, pressing his back against the wall, and keeping one perfectly attuned ear directed towards the corridor. Their lookout is in place.
“To trust or not to trust?” Kenji says. He’s flopped back on his bed in his usual carefree tangle of long limbs, but his eyes glint as they scan the room.
“It’s a hospital,” Sammy says. She scrambles onto Yaz’s bed and they lean into each other. “Trust.”
“They wanna stick needles in us,” Ben scowls. “Not trust.”
Darius perches on the end of Kenji’s chosen bed. Six beds is the normal amount of beds for six kids, but cramped as the room is, he can’t bring himself to be alone- even in such a small way. “I don’t think we have a choice,” he says carefully. He knows how they all feel about trusting adults. After getting their hopes up and watching them crash back down so many times, it seems stupid to try again.
The problem is they’re not on the island anymore. The freedom that had afforded them is gone. Back here in the real world, they’re just kids. And kids don’t get a say in shit. Especially in moments like these.
“We could break out,” Yaz suggests.
“And go where?” Brooklyn asks. “We’re home. We’re off the island. Isn’t that…”
Isn’t that everything we wanted?
It’s funny. Not in a ‘haha’ way. More like a ‘this is pretty messed up’ way. All they wanted to do was get off the island. And now they actually are, it’s like they’re stumped. They had always known what they wanted to do. It’s the after they didn’t have time to think about.
“Simple checkups,” Darius says, voice firm. It breaks through the fog of confusion that’s slowly been creeping in. “General assessments. Anything else, we work out on a case by case basis. We need to make sure we’re not dying of some tropical infection-”
Ben shudders.
“-or have any broken bones that healed wrong.”
Everyone carefully doesn’t look at Yaz.
“What happens when our parents get here?” Sammy asks. She looks nervous, but hopeful.
“If they get here,” Kenji mutters. He looks anything but.
Darius doesn’t bother forcing a smile with his friends. They know him too well for it to ever work. “We take that case by case too,” he says. “Just like we did on the island. Together.”
Ben shifts uncomfortably, ear still attuned to the door. “What’s easier to face. Dinosaurs, or parents?”
It should be a joke, but it isn’t. It’s just that ‘this is pretty messed up’ version of funny again.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Brooklyn says. She’s just rephrasing what Darius said but it’s still another reassurance that they have time. Besides, the more pressing issue is the imminent checkups on the horizon. Brooklyn is fine with doctors most of the time- she constantly had to get various immunisations for her frequent travelling- but that feels like a lifetime ago.
Doctors…just another guarantee of life they lost access to on the island.
“Don’t let them split us up,” Yaz says firmly. Darius is right- they got through Jurassic World because they were together. Even when Ben was separated from them, he had Bumpy. “Groups of two or more.”
The plan settles into place. Everything feels easier when they have a foundation to work from. Even if it is as simple as ‘keep together’. Once you have that in place, you can go from there. They’d gotten by on the island with less. And as uncomfortable as Ben’s question had been, there is a winner between dinosaurs and people.
It just might not be a very clear one.
“How long until they come back for us?” Kenji’s eyes are fluttering closed. He’s tired- they all are- but they won’t sleep until they know it’s safe. “Darius?”
Darius’ internal clock is the best out of any of them, so when he says roughly ten minutes before their allotted alone time is over, they all know they can trust it. Ben waits patiently by the door to alert them of incoming people, and the others fall into a tense silence as the seconds tick down.
The room they’re in appears to have some kind of sound proofing since the usual hustle and bustle of a hospital barely seems to reach them. The lack of noise should be comforting, but to a group used to surviving thanks to recognising even the tiniest of sounds as a potential threat it almost feels like they’ve lost on of their senses. Like they’re hiding underwater while the T-Rex prowls past. There’s no way to know if it’s okay to surface. They just have to keep holding their breath and hope the predator gives up before their lungs do. Only in this instance the predator is a bunch of probably well-meaning hospital staff. A lot less more dangerous, but just as scary in the right (wrong) circumstances.
It's not okay. Not yet. Darius’ hands shake as he waits anxiously for this game to start up all over again. Nobody relaxes- they all remain tense in anticipation. One ill-timed nap will get you killed.
“Is anyone else’s heart beating real fast?” Sammy asks in a whisper.
Yaz nods into Sammy’s shoulder. “I keep thinking I have to run,” she admits.
“Adrenaline,” Darius says. “It kept us safe on the island.”
“It’ll do the same here,” Ben says fiercely. “Don’t let your guard down for a second.” Perhaps the most wild out of them all- and that’s saying something- it isn’t surprising that he may be viewing this hospital as more of a threat than could be considered logical. But hey, it isn’t logical to leave kids on a dinosaur infested island to die. Logic got thrown out the window a long time ago, way before any of them even actually did any window falling.
“We can’t fight these people,” Sammy says. Ben hadn’t actually say anything about fighting but the implication is clearly there. “They’re healers, Ben. They have our best interest at heart.”
“A lot of people said the same and did they ever actually?”
“No fighting,” Darius says. The urgency in his tone indicates their time is nearly up. Ben tenses as if he’s heard something, and gives a nod. “Let’s see…we go pairs. Less easier to break up. Sammy and Yaz, you’re together. Brooklyn and Kenji can pair off. Ben, you’re with me.”
“So you can keep an eye on me?” Ben scoffs.
Darius beams. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
It’s the last thing they get to say in private as there’s a knock on the door and it swings open before any of them can actually react. The head doctor is there- alone. Her determined look softens somewhat, though none of the teens quite understand what over. They’ve had to learn to read dinosaurs, and so their ability to read humans has gone way down. They can easily manage each other, but that’s it.
“We need to look you over,” she says firmly.
“Easy,” Darius lies.
Brooklyn puts on a perfectly practiced smile to back him up. “We just needed some time to process. Thank you for letting us have it.”
There’s no immediate change in the head doctor’s face this time, but her shoulders do relax slightly. At least body language is still easy enough to work out- dinosaur or human. “You’re very welcome. Will you come with me?”
“Can we stay together?” Sammy asks. She puts her best puppy dog eyes on, which are pretty hard to say no to- Yaz can attest to that.
“I’m afraid not,” the doctor says.
“Two of us then?” Sammy presses. Her eyes get wider- more pleading. “Please? We just…we don’t want to be alone.”
They all know the doctor will relent before she even says she will. It’s the way her shoulders slump even further, like she’s giving up. What sort of a sacrifice is it to let them stay with each other? They should tell her a few stories of their time on the island. Then she’ll really know what it means to give something up.
“Pairs,” the doctor says, like they’d known she would. “We can manage that.”
If she’s surprised by the speed in which they get into their groups, the doctor doesn’t say it. She gestures for them to follow her back down the corridor. She stops at two different doors and ushers a pair through each. First Yaz and Sammy. Then Brooklyn and Kenji. She guides Darius and Ben to the last one and follows them inside. The room they end up in is small- barely big enough to fit the examination bed, a couple of chairs, and row of cupboards, let alone three people. Darius can sort of understand why they’ve been split up. If all the rooms are like this, then there’s no way they would have all fit.
The door swings shut behind them, and the room suddenly feels even smaller, if that’s even possible. Tight spaces mean bad things on the island. It means being trapped, with nowhere to go. It means you can’t see what’s coming. It means if the dinosaurs get in…well…there isn’t anywhere to hide.
A low growl builds up in the back of Ben’s throat. Darius can’t blame him for it. He sort of wants to do the same. Still, he forces himself to press a warning hand to Ben’s shoulder. The growl cuts off, like maybe Ben didn’t even know he was doing it until Darius pointed it out.
“Please, sit,” the head doctor (man, Darius wishes he could remember her name) gestures to the chairs. There’s only two. If she means for Darius and Ben to take them, then she’ll be left standing. She’ll tower over them.
Neither Darius nor Ben move.
“Is that okay?” she presses.
No, Darius thinks faintly. Not okay. He’s trying his hardest to be agreeable, damnit. But there are limits. He can only give in to so much. To give her this much power over them…it’s…it’s not in his nature anymore.
“We’re okay to stand,” he says.
Not really okay, again, but they take the little things as best they can.
“Suit yourself,” the doctor says. Her face is unreadable. Her body language is calm. Darius wants to know her name. He wants them on an equal level. “But this might take a while.”
Ben visibly blanches, but Darius keeps his face as still as the doctor’s. As still as the calm before the storm.
“Right,” the doctor says. She consults a file Darius can’t remember her having before. He might be losing his observational skills. Or maybe he just left them behind at Jurassic World. “Just to be sure I’m correct, you’re Darius Bowman and Benjamin Pincus?”
“Ben.” Ben says.
“Yeah, that’s us.”
The doctor makes a note on her file. “As I said before, I’m Jennifer Diece.”
Darius feels something under his skin settle into place. The name sparks a memory of a moment that took place barely an hour ago, as Jennifer introduced herself. They’re on equal terms now- as best as they can be when he’s a kid and she’s a top-notch doctor. His attention sharpens as the need to remember who she is fades away. He aims it all at the conversation she’s still partaking in- oblivious to his fade out.
“And you were part of Camp Cretaceous that took place on Isla Nublar in correlation with Jurassic World?”
“Lucky us, huh?” Darius leans back against a spare patch of wall. Ben remains ramrod straight.
“You’ve been missing for a year,” Jennifer says bluntly. “You were reported dead.”
“You can never believe the news these days,” Ben deadpans. His eyes stare the doctor down as though she’s a dinosaur Ben needs to show dominance over. It’s a trait he never really lost after his time alone in the jungle. Darius has been on the end of it many times. He hasn’t been bothered by it in a while.
“What I’m getting at,” says Jennifer. “Is that you were in the wild for a very long time. That’s not good for anyone’s body, especially yours.”
“Because we’re weak?” Ben asks.
“Because you’re kids.”
Darius shrugs slightly. He hasn’t felt like a kid in a long time. Constant near death experiences and an expectation that every adult will either leave you or betray you will do that to you.
“We need to go through things as best we can,” Jennifer says. “Every injury. Everything you ate and drank. Every hint of illness you can remember having. Just questions for now. Data, for our files. Then we can take it from there.”
“…we work out on a case by case basis…”
“Just questions for now?” Darius repeats- a question he needs confirmation on.
“Unless I think you’re in immediate danger, just questions,” Jennifer says. It doesn’t sound like a promise, but it’s probably the next best thing. Darius decides the only thing they can do is to trust her.
He takes a seat.
Ben stiffens. His eyes dart to Darius- wide open in alarm.
Do I have to, he seems to be asking.
Darius gives his head a slight shake. Ben doesn’t visibly relax, but Darius knows it’s a reassurance for the boy.
“How about you take the spare seat?” Darius offers. It’s not his to give, really, but he’s curious to see if Jennifer will go for it.
To his surprise, she does. She pulls it over to herself and sets in down across from Darius.
“First things first,” she says, like nothing’s happened and she hasn’t just put herself on Darius’ level in a way that makes him want to trust her. “Diet on the island. What did you eat?”
An easy enough first question. Darius is glad she didn’t outright start with injuries. He isn’t keen to start explaining all the things that earnt them their scars.
“Bugs. Berries.” Ben says.
“Stale junk food. Tinned fruit.” Darius chips in.
“You all ate these?” Jennifer jots what they say down.
“Only Ben ate the bugs,” Darius says. “But yeah, anything we got, we shared.”
“Any bad reactions to anything? The berries?”
“Nope.”
“Did you have to ration it, or did you have plenty?”
Darius glances down at his wrists. He’s always been a skinny kid, but he knows bones aren’t meant to press against your skin like that. He doesn’t even need to look at Ben to know it’s the same for him. And for Brooklyn and Kenji and Sammy and Yaz. Their cheeks are gaunt, their faces hollow. All of them are suffering the effects of lack of food.
“We had to be careful,” he says. That’s code for we were always hungry.
“I’ll need to weigh you later,” Jennifer says. The way she’s scribbling down notes even though Darius barely said anything means she most likely understood the code. “But that can wait.”
It seems she’s doing to stick to her sort-of promise of only asking questions. Darius is curious to see if it will last or not.
“What about water?” she asks.
Ben snorts. “Well, we’re alive, aren’t we?”
Jennifer gives Ben the kind of look Darius’ mum used to give him when he was trying to lie about not being up all-night playing video games. He wonders if she has kids. Then, he decides he doesn’t care. He has to stop following these little trains of thoughts wherever they may go. The priority right now is looking after his family. Ben is clearly unsettled by being here- trapped in this room with no clear exit and a doctor demanding answers. Darius owes it to him to take the heat. Just like Ben had time and time again on the island. Darius will fight with words. Ben will fight with his spear.
“We drank from a running stream mostly,” Darius says. He keeps his voice clear and steady. I’m normal, he hopes it says. I’m okay.
He’s not, but…you know…baby steps.
“Any bad reactions to the water?”
“No,” Darius says. “Not that I can remember. And we found bottled water sometimes as well.”
Jennifer takes more notes. Ben looks longingly at the door. Darius shifts in his seat and wonders how the others are going. Ben is the most obvious wildcard in this situation, but Yaz is also a worry. Hopefully Sammy is helping her stay calm.
“Did either of you get sick at all?”
“I had a few stomach aches,” Darius says. “But that could have just been because we were hungry. I never actually threw up or got-uh-diarrhea or anything.”
“Any fevers?”
“Not that we paid attention to.”
The thing is, there hadn’t been time to be sick on the island. If you woke up with a headache or anything like that, well too bad. There was a camp to fortify and supplies to find and dinosaurs to look out for. Even Yaz with her hurt ankle had rarely stopped moving once they’d been able to stabilise it. So maybe they had had fevers, and upset stomachs, and all that sort of stuff, but they’d never let it keep them down. Darius should tell Jennifer this, but what’s the point? There’s no changing it now.
“And you, Ben?”
Ben shrugs. “Not really.”
For the most part, Darius knows this is true. But he also can’t speak for the time when they were separated from Ben. Who knows what had happened to him out there. Ben has filled in some gaps over time- mostly about the temporary defeat of Toro- but other things he keeps close to his chest. All of them have moments like that. Things they simply can’t bring themselves to share.
“That’s good news, but we may have to do some tests anyway,” Jennifer says. Her hand is almost a blur as she writes. “A lot of diseases can pass for innocuous stomach aches and such.”
Darius hopes this isn’t the case. It would suck to survive hungry dinosaurs and then go out over some advanced cold.
“Now, the most pressing issue,” Jennifer says. Her hand stills around her pen. She draws a breath in, as though she’s considering how tactful to be. “Any injuries sustained during your time? Minor or major, it doesn’t matter. I need to know them all.”
Darius holds back a flinch. This is where things get tricky.
Much like with being sick, there usually wasn’t any time to stop and take stock of any injury you could just push through. Scrapes and cuts and bruises were ignored in favour of survival. Any brief periods of unconsciousness barely registered. Yaz’s ankle and Sammy’s poisoning were extreme outliers. Anything else was simply…business. A quick rinse with water and maybe the odd bandage, and that was it.
“Um…” Darius begins hesitantly. “I mean…”
Jennifer gives him the same unimpressed look she levelled at Ben when he got sarcastic with her. “You can’t try to tell me you weren’t hurt at all. You’re covered in scars.”
Darius hasn’t seen himself in anything that wasn’t a dirty puddle of water or a fast-flowing stream in way too long. Looks didn’t matter on Isla Nublar. If Jennifer says he’s covered in scars, then he has to take her word for it. Sure, he knows the others certainly are, but who cared? Also…
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Darius says. “It’s just…we didn’t really pay attention to them when they happened.”
“Didn’t pay attention?” Jennifer’s tone is incredulous. Darius concedes internally that he’d probably sound the same if some scar covered kid had said the same to him. He concedes this, and yet her tone still angers him. She has no idea what they’ve been through. Chances are she’ll never understand. They can sit here and tell her things all they like, and it will be meaningless.
“Yeah,” he snaps. “Didn’t pay attention. I had more important things to think about, like staying alive.”
“Forgive me,” she says in a voice that doesn’t sound very apologetic at all. “But ignoring injuries and trying to stay alive seem like contradictory statements.”
“They’re not,” Darius says as calmly as he can, which really isn’t all that calm. “Not when it’s a choice between stopping to look at a cut, and getting far enough away from a dinosaur that wants to eat you.”
Jennifer opens her mouth, then shuts it. Her eyes pin Darius in place, gaze harsh and considering. She’s sizing him up, and Darius has no idea what she’s getting from it. Does she see him for the leader he often is, fiercely defending his and his friends’ lives? No- probably (definitely) not. She most likely sees him as a kid, one stupid enough to ignore injuries. It’s not fair- she’s the stupid one! If she would just listen to him- really listen to him- then there would no confusion, no need to size him up. He’s simply telling the truth. Minor injuries that didn’t threaten your life mattered less than massive dinosaurs that did. It wasn’t as if she ignored the ones that mattered. They patched up Yaz’s foot. They got the cure for the Scorpius Rex’s poison for Sammy!
“I fell out of a monorail,” Ben’s voice breaks through the beginning of Darius’ spiral. He speaks flatly, and fast. It shocks Darius right out of his panic and straight into confusion. Darius is taking the heat of Ben- he doesn’t need to speak. “Took some heavy hits from some flying dinosaurs- Pteranodons if you’d like the technical terms. Then hit the ground pretty hard.”
Darius stares at Ben. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.
“Toro got me pretty good in the arm,” Ben flicks up a finger for each injury he lists. “Got knocked out a fair few times. Was in a helicopter crash. Rolled down some hills. Rolled down some more hills. Nearly drowned in a river. Got knocked over a bunch. Got cut up a bunch. Oh, and a lot of these scars are sunburn. Do I need to test for melanoma?”
Oh…oh, Darius gets it now. Ben is doing exactly what Darius had been trying to do for him. He’s taking the attention of Jennifer so Darius can compose himself. It’s not a fight with a spear, and it’s not even the kind of verbal takedown Brooklyn is so fond of. It’s just Ben running his mouth so Darius won’t have to say anything else until he’s ready to.
Darius loves him for it.
Jennifer doesn’t speak once during Ben’s rambling, which Darius begrudgingly respects. She takes notes, and blinks at him every time he says something particularly shocking, but that’s it. Perhaps if Darius had just tried to scour his memories a bit better and offer them up like Ben is, they wouldn’t have ended up in that tense back and forth. Except Ben does seem to remember every injury he’s gotten. Darius doesn’t. He can’t look at his scars and see the stories behind them. They’re lost in a mismatch of memories that overlap and blur and confuse him every time he falls asleep.
Ben trails off eventually. Even Jungle Boy has to run out of injuries to list. Jennifer finishes writing, and fixes her eyes on Darius again. It seems she still won’t see Darius’ answer as acceptable. Ben has taken the heat off him briefly, but in a way he’s also doomed Darius. Darius says he can’t remember his injuries. Ben proves he can. Now Jennifer will expect Darius to do what Ben did and start listing them. All Ben has been able to do is give Darius time- time he’s wasted by getting stuck in a useless train of thought about his own failures.
“I didn’t get any major injuries,” he says clearly. If he speaks slowly and reasonably, then she’ll have no reason to press him further, right? “I know I got banged up a bit. Cuts and bruises. Some gashes from dinosaurs. But it really did just blur together. If it wasn’t going to kill me, then there wasn’t time to linger on it.”
Jennifer sighs, and sets her pen down. “If you say so, then I’ll believe you,” she says. “But you’ll need a full examination to make sure you didn’t overlook anything serious. Adrenaline’s a funny thing. It can hide a lot from us.”
Darius hides a scowl. He knows exactly what adrenaline does to you. He saw it keep Yaz on her feet far longer than should have been possible. He saw it stop Sammy from realising the Scorpius Rex had gotten her until it was almost too late.
He saw it keep them alive.
“Just questions for now,” he reminds her. “Are we done?”
Jennifer pauses, and then nods. “We’re done.”