There seemed to be no science behind Ralph's ability to stay standing on his own two feet as he hurried through the emergency room doors at Anna Shaw Children's Institute in Dalton. His entire lower body was shaking erratically with worry and agony, but there wasn't a force in the world that could've knocked him down before he got to Jack.
"For Jack Merridew please" Ralph tapped his hand impatiently against the reception counter. His parents both came up behind him shortly after.
"Are you family?" the receptionist asked after she looked up the boy's file to confirm his admission.
Before Laurie or Jeffery could answer, Ralph said "yes" without missing a beat. Jeffery locked eyes with his wife as he struggled to wrap his head around Ralph's undeniable pattern of lying for Jack without even hesitating.
"He's in with the doctor right now, but they're just monitoring his post-surgical condition. You should be able to see him shortly, but only one at a time given that he got out of surgery just last night" the receptionist flatly informed them.
Laurie was put off by how desensitized the hospital staff seemed to be to such heart-wrenching situations. Naturally, they'd have to adjust to seeing these things everyday. But Laurie couldn't imagine she ever would get used to seeing kids with broken bones, terminal illnesses, or covered in blood after a near-fatal car accident.
"Ralph!" Paige's distressed but alert voice echoed loudly through the waiting room. Laurie watched her son turn abruptly in the direction of the girl's comfortingly familiar voice. A spilt second hadn't passed before Ralph was halfway to the other side of the room, throwing himself into her arms.
Both the boy's parents sighed as they watched the two kids embrace, bonded by the horrific shared heartache that came with loving someone as unlucky and unfortunate as Jack Merridew.
"I'm so sorry, Ralph" Paige whispered, her face pressed softly against the top of his head.
"It's not your fault" Ralph squeezed her tightly as he quietly spoke, allowing the tears to flow freely down his face again.
Paige let go of him, stepping back a little to get a look at his traumatized little face. She smiled weakly but warmly down at him, tussling his hair with a sisterly-like affection she'd grown to feel for him.
"Is Jack okay? Where's your dad?" Ralph finally composed himself to ask, his eyes locked desperately with hers.
"Jack's gonna be fine" Paige assured him, more confidently this time than last. "He's a little banged up, but nothing he won't spring back from... Hi Laurie, Jeffery, thanks for coming" she looked over Ralph's head to greet his parents.
"Of course" Laurie smiled warmly at the girl as Ralph turned to look at them too. Paige, Laurie thought, looked like she hadn't slept at all since Jack was admitted.
"Can I see 'im?" Ralph turned back to the Merridew girl, a hopeful light in his worried eyes.
"I think so" Paige nodded, "just wait until the doctor comes out and okay's it. He's in there with Jack now. My dad went to pick up some food from the restaurant across the street."
Laurie and Jeffery sat in a couple empty chairs in the waiting room, settling down with the prospect of being here awhile. Paige sat down beside them, leaving Ralph on his feet by himself in front of the three adults. The boy was too antsy to sit. He spent the following sixteen minutes waiting for the doctor to come out and give him the all clear to see Jack.
"Miss Merridew" the man in the long white lab-like coat said as he approached them. Paige stood from her chair to greet him. "You're clear to go back in with your brother if you'd like. I've recommended he be cleared for discharge, so it should be approved in the next hour or so. I've provided him with detailed steps on how to care for his injuries so regardless of what happens with Child Intervention Services, at least he knows what he needs to do in order to ensure his recovery is a smooth and quick one. I wrote it all out for him too, just in case."
"Thank you so much, Dr. Watkins" Paige graciously thanked him. "We're grateful that Jack has received such great care here."
He smiled knowingly and took off to attend to Jack's paperwork and then to his other patients. Paige informed Ralph of Jack's room number and provided him with simple directions to the private room at the end of the post-surgical recovery wing he was moved to last night.
"Aw bloody hell" Jack threw his head back, rolling his eyes in an annoyed manner when he found Ralph in the doorway of his private room. "My sister's a dead woman" he declared.
"Well I for one am glad she told me" Ralph said, sitting down on the edge of Jack's bed. "Why didn't you want me to know?" he asked sadly.
"Because" Jack sighed in frustration, throwing his head back again. Ralph studied the stitched up incision that trailed down from just above his left eyebrow, all the way down beside his eye.
"Because what?" Ralph pressed him, placing his hand firmly on Jack's upper thigh, gently stroking it for a mindless moment.
"Because you're here" Jack admitted, staring down at Ralph's hand on his leg. "The last thing I need is you worrying your head about nothing, driving all the way down here for no good reason. But of course you did, which is why my dumbass sister wasn't supposed to say anything."
"This is a damn good reason, Jack" Ralph countered. He gestured to Jack's injured body; the stitched up cut beside his eye, the sling around his right shoulder holding his arm, the black knee brace that encompassed most of his right leg.
"Not good enough" Jack dismissed him. "I'm fine. You worry like it's your day job, even when there's nothing to worry about."
"This isn't nothing" Ralph argued, sadness and frustration penetrating his voice a little. "Look at you" he coddled him, gesturing up and down at Jack's body again. "You're not fine."
"Don't be so dramatic" Jack scoffed, "like I said, you worry too much."
"You know that Child Intervention Services are coming to interview you, don't you? They're going to figure it out, you're going to be taken out of your house, Jack. I'm not overreacting, you're underreacting" Ralph carefully but inevitably informed him.
"You're wrong" Jack answered simply. "Nobody's coming to investigate shit."
"Paige called Child Intervention Services" Ralph tried to explain to him. "They're going to figure it out, all of it. She told them everything, Jack."
"I know that" Jack agreed with a simplicity that bugged Ralph. Here he was, freaking out, and Jack was just shrugging it off his back like no big deal.
Two nurses entered the room then, and both women walked to the opposite end of the room and began talking over a clipboard one had picked up off the counter.
"Your dad put you in the hospital" Ralph slowly pointed out. "They're going to take you aw—"
"No he didn't" Jack cut in, his eyes stuck on the two nurses standing at the sink and counter in the corner of the room. "It was my fault."
"What?" Ralph practically shouted. "It isn't your fault he hurt you, Jack. It's never been—"
"He didn't hurt me" Jack sharply turned his head and eyes back to Ralph. "I tripped going down the grand stairs. That's how this happened" he said slowly but with a steady confidence that made Ralph uneasy.
"That's bullshit" Ralph snapped, an angered expression forming on his reddening face. "Nobody's gonna believe that, Jack. Child Intervention Services is going to see right through it, and they will take you out of his house" Ralph attempted to get him to see and understand.
Jack didn't answer right away, his attention was captured by the nurses quietly talking in the corner. He stared intently at them as Ralph stared at him. Eventually, Ralph turned to see what had most of Jack's attention. Ralph looked back to him as the nurses finally walked back across the room, filing out the open doorway. Jack followed them with his eyes until they were out of sight.
"They'll believe it" Jack turned back to Ralph as he broke the silence. "They already do."
The two boys stared at each other for a few uncomfortably quiet moments as Ralph searched his overwhelmed mind for something, anything that made sense.
"You lied to them" he then figured out, his eyes widening a little with confliction and surprise. "To every staff member in this hospital you've seen since you got here... and they believe you."
"Not just them" Jack quietly expanded on Ralph's claim before waiting silently for him to clue in.
"Child Intervention Services was already here" Ralph finally concluded.
"And they've already gone" Jack added with certainty. "They're not taking me anywhere."
"How is that possible?" Ralph asked in a dramatic, baffled manner. "Paige told them everything."
"She's a liar" Jack continued deeper down the web of lies he'd spun, a freakish confidence, and believability about him. "She only said that cause she wants me gone. We fight all the time. Child services sees shit like this more often than you think. After all, siblings are more likely to fight with each other than with their parents. Don't you know? Or maybe not, you are an only child after all" he smugly proclaimed with a point blank expression on his face.
"This is crazy, Jack" Ralph shook his head in disbelief and disappointment.
"Ask my dad if you don't believe me" Jack countered, "Paige's story is the only one that doesn't line up with ours, she's the odd one out."
"How could you do that to her? She's done everything in her power to protect you. She's the one looking out for you, Jack, not your dad. He got you to tell some bullshit story that you and I both know isn't true. I don't know how he did it, but he did. I'm not that stupid, Jack, and I used to think you weren't either" Ralph frustratedly declared.
"Just let it go, alright? I'm going home, which is exactly what I want. Nobody manipulated me into doing shit. If you honestly think that I'm that goddamn impressionable, maybe you don't know me at all" Jack hotly defended.
Ralph stared silently at Jack, searching in his stubborn eyes for the truth he buried so deeply behind them. He rehearsed this, he and his dad both must've. What fucking insanity, Ralph thought. This is where Jack's dark side stems from; the horrific, manipulative, stop-at-nothing monster he turned into on the island. He could convince a bunch of lost little kids to follow his every vile demand, turn trained cadets into savage barbarians. Of course, he could convince a bunch of medical and social services personnel to believe his every rehearsed word. He's probably done this before, Ralph concluded, he and Evan both. This was where Jack learned it; learned how to recruit blind followers, how to obtain power by brainwashing people into believing that he was untouchable, invincible, that nobody could ever stand a chance against him. And perhaps, that was the bitter truth that had been born of it all.
"It was your idea" Ralph determined as the realization settled in his mind. "This lie, this scheme to get Child Intervention Services to look the other way. It was all you, wasn't it?"
Jack said nothing. He just stared intently into Ralph's pained eyes. There was no need for him to confirm the accusation because Ralph did know him. They battled each other with their stares, daring the other to look away first, to admit defeat. They'd been here before, maybe a hundred times. Fighting for power, fighting one another, at odds with each other.
Ralph dropped his head, fixating his gaze on his twiddling fingers in his lap. Perhaps, this was inevitable. He struggled with the lie, and the bitter truth that was born of it: Jack was going home with his father. Ralph thought about Paige sitting in the waiting room with his parents. She clearly had no idea the web that Jack and Evan had been spinning in her absence overnight. It was most likely the real reason Evan sent Paige home last night. What an unfair, cruel world they were living in. But Ralph already knew that. He'd known it since the island; since cruelty had set its sights upon him, stolen his friends, his innocence, his belief that evil would always be brought to justice in the end.
Though it wasn't evil or justice that consumed Ralph's beliefs now, but luck. He, Jack, the twins, and the others survived long enough to get rescued off the island only out of luck. Evan was about to get off scot-free out of luck. And Jack's chances of surviving the rest of his childhood in the Merridew house of horrors would too depend solely on luck; however much of it Jack had left.