Lynn walks out the front door, a shovel in hand, and begins to get to work. Under normal circumstances, she would clear the driveway, sidewalk, and walkway to help Francisco, but she has something else planned today. After seeing how surprised Nick and Tom were about real snow, she decided that for Christmas she would send them a cooler full of the stuff. It probably wasn't the smartest idea to do so, but mailing services deliver frozen food all the time, she can't imagine that it would different for frozen water.

With the snow cleared and the cooler filled, Lynn goes into the house. She shakes off the extra snow from her jacket and drops the shovel as she drags the cooler into house.

Francisco, who just woke up, sees the small pile of melting snow in front of the front door, "Are you serious?"

"Don't worry, I'll clean it up, just give me a minute to look for some stamps."

"What about the shovel?"

Lynn looks at it, "Right. Hold on." She says as she abandons the cooler and grabs the shovel to place it back in the garage.

"So why do you need stamps?"

"To send the cooler," she answers.

Francisco looks inside of the cooler, "Lynn, why do you have a cooler full of snow?"

"Because it's fresh snow," she answers.

He can't figure out what that is supposed to mean, or why she bothered to pack away snow when winter is still a long way from ending, but rather than go into an unnecessary conversation with Lynn's fleeting focus, he decides to let the issue go.

"I'm gonna go to the post office or maybe I can convince Lisa to let me borrow a drone and send it straight to Margo," she suggests to herself, "but then she'll complain that she doesn't have time or say that it can't fly…" Lynn stops to count how far she presumes the drone will fly to send the cooler. "Maybe one thousand or fifteen hundred miles, but I'll find a way. After I send the snow, I'm gonna go shopping for Christmas presents, so I may be gone for a little while."

As he watches her grab her things to go out again, he looks up from the couch, "Wait, before you go, do you want your Christmas present to be a surprise, or do you just want to skip the disappointment and tell me exactly what you want?"

Lynn thinks about it. Usually, Francisco's track record of picking out good gifts was decent at best, and she had learned to live with it, however, the opportunity to pick out her own gift is tempting, even if it did take the fun of Christmas away.

"You could decorate the outside of the house," she suggests. "And not just lights on the edges, I'm talking snowmen and light-up candy canes and huge Santa Claus on the roof kind of set-up."

He doesn't have any of those kinds of decorations to come close to what she was suggesting, "Okay…I'll see what I can do."

"Oh! And a surprise present wouldn't be that bad either," she says with a playful smile before giving him a kiss goodbye and heading to her car.

"Then why do you need the decorations?" he asks as he follows behind her.

Lynn packs the cooler into the backseat, "'cause you and Elena deserve some Christmas magic that you only find in those cheesy movies!" she happily says before getting in the car and pulling out of the driveway.

Francisco sighs, "Well I guess I have no choice…I do, but…it's not like it's a bad thing," he tells himself. He is lost in thought as he tries to think of what sort of decorations he could get quickly without breaking the bank. As he approached the front door, he slipped on a patch of ice and crashes into the snow. He gets up, yawns, and looks for any sign of cuts; after not finding anything he gets up and goes back inside.


Francisco ties his laces, his game is about to start and he is excited to get back on the ice to play hockey. It was only a few weeks since his last game, but winter break and being stuck at home, only made to itch to play worse.

"Did you finally get the new skates that you been eyeing?" a teammate asks.

Francisco shakes his head, "No, if I bring up the word 'new' all I'll hear is my dad saying how my gear is still fine."

His teammate chuckles; Francisco has made that complaint before, but he is always able to get the necessary gear come game day, even if it is used and he still complains.

As the boys step onto the ice, Francisco looks up at the stands; he doesn't know why he does it, he knows that no one in his family is there to see him play, but it never stops him from doing so. The fifteen-year-old knows that his mom hates the temperature in the arena, his dad is usually tired or busy doing something else, Chuy is just as busy and Kiké, well, he can't bothered to attend.

He skates to his position and looks over as the other team; the referee drops the puck and the game starts. The sound of cheers and the blades on ice overtake Francisco as he begins to skate after the puck. He knows the plays, his abilities, and his weaknesses, and he won't let himself be brought down by what he knows about his opponents.

He knows how aggressive the other team can be; newspaper and magazine articles mention the team's numerous penalties and how they aren't afraid to get them in an effort to weaken their opponents, but he isn't going to let that get into his head.

Francisco gets control of the puck and heads towards the goal. He skates past the opposing team in an effort to score a point, but as he nears the net, a player from the opposing team rams into Francisco and he crashes into the plexiglas and his whole world goes silent, except for a crunching sound. He knows what happened, he dislocated his shoulder, but he isn't planning on stopping.

Unfortunately, the referee and his coach notice him holding onto his shoulder and call Francisco back to the stands.

"I'm fine," he tells the referee. "I can still play," he lies.

It doesn't work.

The team trainer meets Francisco; he knows what is about to happen, but a short jolt of pain to pop his shoulder back in is worth it to get him back on the ice. He takes a deep breath and the trainer grabs his arm and places it on the glass above his head. The trainer pushed him forward a bit and Francisco bites down on his bottom lip to keep himself quiet, but his shoulder is back in place.

He takes a seat and waits; neither the coach nor the trainer are going to let him go back onto the ice immediately. As he watches his teammates play, the trainer takes a seat next to him, "I'm going to show you some exercises that you can do at home to treat your shoulder."

Francisco watches the man; he already knows what he's going to say, he's learned these exercises before, but he lets the man talk. He understands why he's concerned; Francisco barely turned fifteen, and this is the third time that he's received the same injury, and it's starting to concern him and his family.

"Has this happened before?"

"Yeah, a few times."

"Have you gone to the doctor about this?"

The teen shakes his head; excluding the annual physical and a major injury, he rarely goes to the doctor, he knows as an athlete that he shouldn't take his physical health lightly, but he hates wasting his time waiting to see someone.

"I think that you might want to talk with a doctor and see what they say; they can probably recommend you to see a physical therapist or someone else."

Francisco knows that someone else is really a surgeon. After he got hurt the first time, he did some research on what he was going to expect and one of the entries did mention surgery. It isn't common, but after so many times, he's going to have to admit that he should see someone before his arm gets worse.

"I'll tell my parents after the game."


Lisa reads through her textbook when the sound of her phone interrupts her, she picks up and is immediately met with, "We found it!" Liam yells into the phone. "We found it!"

She distances her ear from the phone and asks, "Found what?"

"The similarities between the patients with hypersomnia, they have a point mutation on the twelfth chromosome. That little change means that Fencotab isn't being metabolized properly by the ones with it, and it's accumulating in their bodies."

Lisa pulls up the patient files on her computer, "This mutation wasn't found on anyone else from the other groups?"

"Nuh-uh. Everyone else's didn' have the mutation, and I checked Muriel's work too."

Lisa sighs. She finds it difficult to believe that a man of his intellect would use a common goat to determine these important findings, but he insists that the Capra aegagrus hircus was capable of determining genetic mutations based on the animal's 'supposed' synesthesia. To date, Muriel hasn't been wrong, but she isn't fond of the idea of using a common barn animal for such delicate work.

"We went through every chromosome from smallest to largest to find any abnormalities and compared them to the control group and the others who were doin' well; they're the only ones with it."

"That would explain why the group was as small as it was, now we need to determine how much of our medication is in their bodies and determine possible solutions."

"And if any other patients may also be strugglin' with it." A notification on Lisa's computer grabs her attention, and Liam explains, "You may need to run a blood test or sometin' and see what may be going on."

"I'll notify the subjects and have them report to my laboratory post haste to run the blood work."

"Alright, just send me the info and I can get to checkin' it."

"Of course."

Before Lisa hangs up, Liam asks, "By the way, did your dad make a mistake on his egg and milk order form? It looks different from his last order?"

Lisa rolls her eyes, she isn't concerned with matters regarding the restaurant, "I'll ask father when I have free time."

"Alright, and if it needs correctin' let me know, I don't think your dad has ever needed two hundred dozen eggs and nine thousand gallons of milk in a single week," he tells her.

"I'll inquire later this evening, good day."

Lisa hangs up and calls the three subjects that are having the negative reaction to Fencotab. As she looks through their files, she begins looking through the dates when they started showing side effects of the medication. All of them took months before they began having issues, so Lisa is sure that she will have to contact her more recent patients to catch this issue before anything happens.

"How long did it take?" she asks herself as she quickly scans through the documents of the confirmed point mutation subjects, "Six months."

Lisa goes to her chalkboard to write down a plan for how to treat the current and the potential patients – first, she'll have to determine if there are any patients that are currently not displaying symptoms that may in the future, next she'll have to run a blood test to see how much of the medicine in said patients to adjust the dosage as needed, and finally, she'll have to determine the mistakes in father's food order – simple.

She grabs the files of the patients that are suffering from hypersomnia and all of the patients that have been part of the study for the shortest time; she grabs her phone and starts to make the calls.


Alicia opens the front door and Francisco walks in as he drags his gear into the house. The trainer, in his best combination of Spanish and charades, mentioned what happened to Francisco and he recommended that he be seen by a medical professional.

His mom was not happy to hear that he is injured again, but it isn't new; in any sport he played, at some point he was going to suffer through an injury, but she rarely took it easy. He understands that like any mother, she's worried to see her child injured, but it isn't something that they haven't dealt with before.

In all the years that he's played sports, Francisco has suffered from dislocations, sprains, breaks, cuts, bruises, and his unfortunate chipped tooth; and each time he is able to bounce back, and get back on the field. He's sure that she would rather he take on a less dangerous hobby, but Francisco is persistent.

"No sé por qué sigues queriendo jugar al hockey, siempre te estás lastimando," Alicia says, concerned about her son's latest injury.

"Me gusta jugar," is all Francisco can say.

She shakes her head at her son's insistence; as much as she wishes that her son wouldn't play such a dangerous game, she knows that he loves playing, ever since those boys in his elementary school asked him to play.

"¿Cuándo comienza la temporada de béisbol?" she asks.

He gives her a smile to remind her that he can get hurt playing baseball, "En unos cuantos meses," he reminds her.

Unfortunately for Francisco, he never could find that missing chip after someone hit him in the face during a baseball game, and his family was tight on money to get the dentist to fix it properly; how he wished that at the time his mom didn't listen to his dad about how pointless getting on her job's medical plan was.

"¿Qué te dijo el entrenador?"

Francisco tries to think of what the trainer told him after he popped his shoulder back in, "Que tengo que hacer los ejercicios que me dijo de después de que me quite el, um…" he points to his shoulder brace.

"¿Es todo?" she asks, assuming that Francisco may be leaving out something.

"Si," he tells her.

"Voy hacer una cita para ir al doctor," she tells him.

He groans, "Fine…"

In accented English, she mimics him, "Fine…tu sabes muy bien que tienes que ver al doctor, el entrenador lo dice, y dudo que quieres perder la capacidad de tu brazo," she loudly lectures him.

He can't blame her, and he doesn't want to hear a loud lecture about how he's not taking his injury seriously, "Bueno, esta bien, ¿puedo ir a mi cuarto? Tengo que hacer tarea."

She lets him leave, "Ve y descansa mejor," when she's sure that Francisco isn't nearby, "¿Por qué dejé que empezara a jugar ese fregado deporte?"


Francisco looks around at his handiwork, "Garlands on the door frames, check…Stockings on the fireplace, check…Tree decorated, check…Now, the outside…." This is the part that he was looking forward to the least. The idea of heights plus a slippery roof and his general sleepiness is a terrible combination, but how can anyone say that they've decorated a house properly for Christmas without lights?

He heads into the garage to grab his ladder and box of lights, "Lynn can get the rest of the decorations," he yawns.

Francisco grabs his jacket and gloves, and as he walks out the door, he hears the sound of his medicine bottle falling to the ground, "Stupid pockets…I need to get one with a button or zipper…" he reminds himself as he picks up the bottle.

As he steps outside, Francisco looks up at the roof; its covered in snow, "Well, a little more work…but whatever…" He secures the ladder and heads up to the roof. He's nervous, but it's not like he hasn't done so before, "Just be careful and everything will be fine," he tells himself. Francisco slowly steps up and when he is on the roof, his phone rings.

"Good afternoon, former laboratory assistant, how are you doing today?"

"Now's not a…good time…Lisa," he yawns as he clears some snow off of the roof.

"Then I'll make this brief. I'm calling to check if there has been changes in your physical health since you have starting taking Fencotab." He hasn't mentioned anything yet, but most of the patients that had issues took some time before the side effects appeared. Francisco closes his eyes, he can feel another yawn about to come, "I see that you're suffering from fatigue. Are you available tomorrow morning to come to my lab?" she asks through the phone.

"Sure…but, I don't think that…I've got anything else…It's working great…"

The excessive yawning has Lisa concerned; that was the first symptom that patients began to experience, and while it isn't odd, she does want him to come see her.

Francisco puts the phone on loud speaker to begin hammering nails onto the roof, "Look…I'm fine…and the medicine…works great…"

Lisa hears the pounding of the hammer, "What is that?"

"Putting up some Christmas lights," he yawns. "Trust me…you have nothing to worry about."

Lisa knows not to believe him; she knows that he can be prone to lying, "Have you been consuming any other pain medication?"

"No, just the pills that you've given me…and you can give me a blood test if you want to prove it," he offers.

"I shall take you up on your offer," she warns him before hanging up.

Francisco grabs him phone, "I shouldn't have given her that idea…" he continues pounding away and hanging the lights. "I guess one damn prick in the arm will do if it's the only way to get her to believe that I'm fine."

He's a little curious about why she has a sudden interest; in the last couple of months, Lisa has taken his information and called it a day; now he's supposed to believe that she wants him to see her without being a bit concerned about the reason – he doesn't buy it.

Francisco pounds on a nail, but it falls to the ground, "What the?" he pulls out another one and his thumb isn't being cooperative, "Okay, that's weird," he tells himself, as he grabs the nail with his other fingers.

The lights are placed around the roof, "Good, that took longer than it needed to, but at least it's done. Now all we have to do is buy the other decorations and get presents."

He spots Dutch, and waves over to Lynn as he turns the lights on to show her before surprising her with the decorations in the house.

Lynn spots the lights as she pulls into the house, "Hey! Looking good so far."

"Thanks, we age well in my family," he jokes.

She playfully rolls her eyes, "So do you need help with the rest of the decorations?"

He shakes his head, "I haven't bought them yet," he yawns, "We can go tomorrow to see what we can find."

Lynn notices his yawning, "How are you still tired?"

"I didn't sleep well last night, cut me a little slack," he says.

Francisco takes a step back and steps on the patch of exposed ice, he loses his footing and falls to the ground; taking Lynn by surprise as she rushes in an effort to catch him. Unfortunately, he lands on the ground before she is able to reach him. The sound of cracking grabs her attention and she runs to him. However, she is taken aback when he gets up without complaining of any pain.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Yeah, why?"

"You just fell off the roof, this is normally the part where a person screams or says that they might be hurt."

He shrugs one of his shoulders and Lynn notices the abnormality. While this isn't the first time that he's fallen off of the roof, normally, he would show that he was in some sort of pain; now it appears that he's fine despite the tumble to the ground.

She unzips his jacket and notices that he dislocated his shoulder, "Doesn't that hurt?"

Francisco looks over to where she is touching and notices that his shoulder popped out again, "I'll be fine. It's not the first time that it's happened."

Lynn isn't accepting that answer. Rather than letting him go back inside, she helps him up and leads him to her car to get him looked at by a doctor.


Francisco looks through his textbook as he studies the material to type his report on his laptop. He's sure that he won't be playing in the next few games, and that he'll have some free time, unfortunately that means he's going to be hanging around the house more often than normal, which always gets more tense in the winter months.

"Stupid shoulder," he mutters to himself.

He knows that the trainer makes a good point about going to see the doctor; this isn't the first time that he's received a dislocation, but they aren't common either. However, just thinking about going to the doctor is already giving him a headache; the crowded lobbies, the sick people, and all that time wasted on something that could be looked at and treated quickly.

"I'm fine…three times isn't the end of the world, and I'm not going to need surgery" he tries to convince himself.

Before he is able to turn to the next page, he hears the front door open; Francisco looks at his watch and he is surprised by how late it is in the afternoon, but considering that it's Saturday and his dad has a day off, he shouldn't be.

Francisco knows what his mom is going to talk to him about; despite him not bringing it up, the trainer did his best to tell his mom to take him to see a doctor to determine if he'll need surgery after suffering from his latest dislocation.

However, the teen knows how this conversation is really going to go down – his mom is going to bring up what the trainer recommended, his dad will say that it's unnecessary, and they'll go back and forth until his dad walks away and silently ignores her for the next few days.

For years, she has brought up that he should enroll in the job's health insurance plan, but he refuses; citing that he doesn't need it, the family is fine, and that her job offers her a plan and that she doesn't need to worry. Of course, his dad is wrong; his mom's plan just covers dental and vision, and she has been trying to convince him otherwise, but he's too stubborn.

From his room, and without any other noise to drown out the arguing, Francisco can hear his parents.

"No sé por qué tú lo dejas jugar, sigue lastimándose y ese maldito equipo se está volviendo caro," Juan complains.

Francisco can't figure out why his dad is complaining; he rarely gets hurt when he plays and it isn't like playing is so darn expensive if his mom can afford it on her meager salary. Francisco even remembers the last time he asked his dad to help him buy a new baseball bat and his face and tone made it seem like he asked for a million dollars.

As Francisco listens to his parents argue, he wishes that he had excuse to leave the house, but his game was over and he was sure that he wouldn't be playing until he was better, and now he's stuck with his parents who are bickering back and forth.

Alicia complains, "¡No sé cuántas veces tengo que decirte que hagas algo! Lo juro, si no digo nada, no se hará."

"Pues bien, dime cuando vas a morir para que no tenga que escucharte mas."

When Francisco heard that, he could feel his heart racing; he isn't sure what to do, except grab his headphones and do his best to ignore the argument that his parents are having.


Lynn paces back and forth in the waiting room. It is hell to wait. What felt like minutes was only seconds according to the clocks, and her constant checking isn't making things any better. She keeps thinking that if she didn't tell him to fix up the house for Christmas then he would have been fine, they would be home drinking hot chocolate and watching tv, but she wanted a more festive holiday.

The sound of a man interrupts her thoughts, "Do you plan on ever sitting down, or do you just want to walk a hole into the ground?"

Lynn scowls and turns towards the voice that said that, "Excuse me for worrying about my boyfriend who fell off the roof."

The man scoffs, "Did he fall on his head?" Lynn shakes her head, "Then he'll be fine. Worst case he ends up in a wheelchair paralyzed, best case, the boy has a–"

"What do you mean worst case he ends up in a wheelchair?!"

"Don't interrupt. Now is it really the end of the world if he ends up in a wheelchair? Lots of people do it."

Lynn walks right in front of the man, "Don't try to cheer me up with your bull."

"I'm not. I'm just sick of seeing you pacing yourself and staring at that damn clock like you're waiting for the Reaper himself," he clears his throat, "and frankly, you look like you need a damn talking to before you jump over that damn nurse's station," he jokes.

"Ha ha," she says sarcastically before she takes a seat next to him. "So why are you here?"

The man sucks on his dentures, "My wife needs her appendix removed. If she wasn't so hardheaded like you, I would have said she was fine and gone out. Boy am I glad I listened."

"I bet she is too," Lynn says as she stares at the door, hoping that she will hear from someone so that she can go see Francisco.

"So your boyfriend fell off the roof, huh? Two-story or one story?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah, because a one-story drop isn't as bad a two-story one. I remember I fell off the roof once, worst thing that happened to me was a broken arm."

"It was a one story house. I came home from the post office and saw him before he fell, but he took it like a champ, didn't even complain about being in pain."

"Then why the hell did you bring him here?"

"He fell off the roof. What am I supposed to do, say that he was fine and just go about my business?"

He scoffs, "It sounds like you wasted time for nothing, if he's not hurt all the doctors are gonna do is look at him, give him an x-ray, and give you a bill."

Lynn rolls her eyes, "Yeah, well I'd rather pay and know that he's fine than just assume that he is. I know he won't tell me if something is wrong so better to let the doctors tell me than wait for it to get worse."

"So he's stubborn," the man jokes, "birds of a feather, I see."

She turns to the man, "Yeah, I seem to draw them in like a magnet."

He laughs when he realizes what she means, and soon Lynn joins him. A nurse calls Lynn to meet with the doctor and she follows behind. When she sees the doctor, he introduces himself, however, Lynn is more interested in Francisco, "Wow," she says looking at her boyfriend sleeping on the bed, "You guys had to conk him out for a shoulder injury?"

"Actually, he fell asleep on his own," the doctor corrects her. "We were able to get his shoulder back in place, however, when we removed his jacket and gloves, we noticed some bruising on his right thumb, which turned out to be broken–"

"Broken?" she asks, "What do you mean broken? He never complained about that."

The doctor pulls out his x-ray, which showed that Francisco fractured his thumb, "He also sprained his ankle, we put a brace on it, but I suggest placing an ice pack when he gets home, elevat–"

Lynn interrupts the doctor, "Yeah, yeah, I'm no stranger to sprains and aches. So how long until he wakes up?"

"We aren't sure, he was falling asleep as we were treating him," the doctor informs her. "May I ask you something?" he as he leads her away from Francisco and pulls out an amber bottle that he hands to her, "These also fell out of his jacket. We didn't recognize the name or the pills inside."

Lynn reads the label and sees Lisa's name on it, 'Of course…'

"Do you happen to know anything about them?"

Lynn shakes her head, "No, I've never seen it before."

The doctor is a bit concerned, and begins to ask Lynn a few more questions about Francisco, from family history to any recent ailments, "I also have one more question – does Francisco happen to show any signs of confusion, anxiety or any other psychological problems recently? Maybe he sees multiple doctors after running through his prescription…"

For a minute, Lynn isn't sure why he's asking such questions, but then it hits her, "You think that he's abusing these?! What the hell?! I live with him and I think that I would notice if my boyfriend has a problem! Yes, he uses pain meds, but I saw him only take one every six or so hours, but he's part of some focus group, study, or whatever it's called with a doctor and tests. So I think that they could spot abuse!"

Nurses and other staff gather around Lynn and the doctor; worried about what may happen, however, after Lynn's outburst, she calms down and assures him that Francisco isn't abusing his pills. However, Lynn is just guessing, and as soon as Francisco wakes up, she has questions to ask.


Francisco slowly steps out of his room; he doesn't hear anything, but he is still cautious in the event that he runs into his mom, who may be in a foul mood. After hearing their fight, he can't imagine that either one of his parents are going to be talking to one another, and unfortunately for him, that means that he's going to be the one stuck in the middle as he relays messages from one parent to another.

'Freaking wish that Chuy or Kiké were still home,' he thinks to himself, at least then he could have someone to help him out.

He steps out of the hallway and looks out to see if his parents are nearby; his mom is getting her purse ready to go out, when she turns to him, "Voy a la casa de Erica, ¿quieres venir?"

Francisco shakes his head, not wanting to go to his cousin's house, "Tengo que hacer tarea…voy con un amigo para garrar mis notas que le preste, y alamejor garro algo de comer," he says. He's sure that his mom knows that he eavesdropped on the fight that his parents had, and both of them are ignoring the awkwardness by making an excuse.

Alicia nods, "Está bien, pero no te quedes fuera demasiado tarde."

He nods and watches her walk to her car. Francisco sees that his dad's truck is missing and he figures that he probably went out again. He heads to the party store with some change to grab a crappy fried dinner of chicken and egg rolls while he passes the time.

As he kicks a little stone down the sidewalk, he thinks about what his parents said and how it could have escalated to his dad asking such a question. He wasn't surprised; a few years ago, his mom accused him of cheating and broke his phone in anger. Francisco can't recall if it was true, just that his mom walked into his room and told him that they might break up; it never happened, but he remembers not caring so much if it did occur. Since then, he could always feel the tension in their relationship.

Francisco walks inside of the store, orders his food, grabs a pop, and walks back home to the empty house. He grabs his laptop and looks through his assignment to take his mind off of the tension, despite being alone in the house.

Juan walks through the door; he notices how dark the house is and calls out to hear if anyone is home. Francisco responds from his room, and his dad walks to his son's room. He spots the box of food and grabs a piece of chicken, "¿Donde esta tu mamá?"

He looks up from his laptop, and notices his dad's red eyes and the smell of beer on his breath, "Fue a la casa de Erica," he answers.

"¿Y por qué no fuiste con ella?"

His dad always asks that whenever his mom went anywhere alone; for some reason, and for as long as Francisco could remember, Juan believes that Alicia should always be escorted everywhere by her sons and shouldn't be out in public without them, because she's going to meet her secret lover. Francisco doesn't know how that idea got into his dad's head, which unfortunately he wasn't shy about admitting it, even to his once-elementary school aged son.

"Porque es una adulta y puede salir sola," Francisco tells him, "y tengo tarea que hacer."

"Bueno," Juan says as he leaves the chicken that he bit into in the box. "No deberías comer tanta comida frita," he warns his son.

"Says the man who drinks and drives…" mutters Francisco. Regardless, he nods his head, despite being annoyed that his dad grabbed his food and left it the way he did.

"¿Como esta tu hombro?"

The teen stops looking at his book, "¿Mi qué?" Juan points to his shoulder, "Oh, it's fine…"

Juan nods and leaves him alone without saying another word. Francisco looks down at his laptop, thinking about what happened earlier. Unlike his mom, Francisco isn't sure if his dad knew that he was eavesdropping, since he acted as if nothing happened.

However, he can't forget what he heard; he doesn't even know how he's supposed to.

Francisco sighs. He closes his assignment and decides to deal with everything another day…he has plenty of time.


The words that the doctor said run through Lynn's head. She can't believe the allegations that he was making, granted, she knew that Francisco takes pills for his back, but he's never shown signs of abusing them and she would know the signs. Since the start of their relationship, Francisco has always seemed to have control, but she can see why the doctor is concerned; he fell off the roof, and felt nothing, he sprained his ankle, and said nothing, and broke his thumb without making a peep.

"I knew that if you started being one of Lisa's guinea pigs something bad would happen," she tells the sleeping man.

Lynn grabs a chair from nearby and takes a seat next to his bed. She looks at the container; she is able to count fifteen white pills, the instructions say to take them once a day and the 'prescription' was filled on the first of the month.

'Well you're taking them like you need to…' Lynn shakes her head; she knows that he's fine and that he's not some drug addict. 'It's probably just a side effect or something; that's what all of Lisa's experiments usually do.'

Francisco begins to wake up and Lynn calls out to him with a smile on his face, "Morning, sleeping beauty."

He smiles, "What happened?" he asks as he looks at the cast on his thumb and brace on his ankle.

"You broke your thumb and the doctor's think that you might have sprained your ankle…Hey Francisco, can I ask you something?" he nods, "Why didn't you tell me that you were taking Lisa's experimental medicines?" she asks, taking out the bottle to show it to him.

He reads Lisa's name and takes a deep breath, "Because you warned me not to do it…"

"So why'd you do it?"

"My back was getting worse, then my knee, and my medicine didn't feel like it was working anymore…I thought…that maybe she would have something that could help before things get worse."

Lynn can't blame him if that's the reason; he's lived more than half of his life in pain, "So that's the only reason?"

"Yes Lynn," he groans, "I don't even take my old pills and Lisa monitors me every week. I promise that this is under control."

"Everything?"

"As much as we can help it. Look, I know that you didn't want me to be a lab rat for Lisa, and I'm sorry for not telling you, but please understand why I did it," he pleads with her.

Lynn nods her head, "Alright, so long as you're getting better and Lisa isn't forcing you into taking more weird drugs and whatnot."

"She isn't," he chuckles. "Can we go home now?"

Lynn helps him up as they walk down the halls of the hospital and to the car.

As he leans his head against the car, he asks, "Lynn, are you ever afraid of what'll happen when you get older? When your body can't keep up with you and starts to fall apart."

She is surprised by the question; she hasn't really thought that far in the future, she knows that some of her old injuries will probably come back to haunt her, but she figures that she'll be able to handle a little ache here and there.

"Not really. Why?"

With a somber voice, he asks, "Do you ever think that one day you won't be able to walk?"

"What are you talking about? Are you worried about that?"

He nods. His back aches to walk, his knees are starting to go, and he's sure that in a few years, he's going to struggle more to move around; if this is already happening in his thirties, he can't imagine what life will be like in another thirty years.

Lynn places her arm on his shoulder and pulls him; startling Francisco, who is worried as he watches her drive with one arm, "You can get through it and I'm gonna help. I mean, I learned kinesiology in school and doctors keep bragging about medical breakthroughs, I doubt that they can't find a way to help you out."

Despite her words, she is afraid of the same thing happening to her; all her life, she was an athlete on the move, who would bounce back after injuries, but whenever she was out of commission, Lynn remembers how much she itched to move onto her next sports adventure. She doesn't like thinking about that or how the future could turn out that way, not that she ever thinks too far to begin with, but for both of their sakes, she's going to take his mind off of it and think about the good things.

Francisco smiles and gets up so that she can drive properly.

As they walk into the house, and Lynn is surprised by the decorations in the house. Francisco forgot about the work he did earlier, "Surprise," he yawns as heads to the bedroom to rest up after wasting so much time in the emergency room.

"Are you serious? Wait, you were sleeping at the hospital less than a few minutes ago."

He doesn't listen and slowly limps until he hits the bed.

Lynn follows him and watches him snore, "What am I supposed to do now? Sit in the decorated living room?"

The decorations are nice, and she appreciates it, but she feels a little guilty since it is the reason that he went up on the roof and got hurt. "Well, thanks for decorating the house," she tells him.

He snores.

She laughs and gets up to think about what she can do to kill time, but can't find anything to do, "I guess I could use a bath after hauling you back and forth. Maybe a bubble bath."

She grabs her things and heads into the bathroom. Lynn searches through the bathroom for the bubble soap, when an amber bottle filled with his old medicine grabs her attention, "Why did you keep this?" she asks out loud. She removes the bottle and curiosity begins to get the best of her, as she looks around bathroom.

As Lynn digs through every nook and cranny she finds months worth of the pills all over the room; each bottle claiming to be expired years ago, and all with a different doctors names, "He said something about this once, but what did he say?"

She can't remember; the doctor's words are scaring her a bit, she's sure that she would recognize if Francisco had a problem, "Then why the pills…"

'He said that he's no long taking them,' she remembers, 'then he won't mind if I get rid of them.'

Lynn empties the bottles into the toilet and flushes the pills; she isn't sure if there are more, but if he's being honest, then it won't matter if he's missing a few months worth of pills.


How the little things that we see and hear impact us for life

If you haven't translated the Spanish, it may be worth it a little more this time around

Sorry for the wait, and thank you for reading