Lisa looks through all of her patient's files and progress reports; she pulls out Francisco's file and reads through it. His blood work came back and unfortunately for him, he is struggling to metabolize Fencotab. However, Lisa cannot determine how much his symptoms are afflicting him compared to the others in the group.
She looks over at him and notices that he is staring at the ground, ready to close his eyes. She pulls out a ball and calls out to him before throwing the ball at him.
He is surprised when the ball bounces against his torso, but before the ball falls to the ground, he is able to catch it. However shortly, he drops it when he sets his arm down.
Lisa makes a mental note of what she is witnessing, and moves onto to examine if he is suffering from another side effect.
She grabs a pair of heat-resistant gloves and hands him a probe, "Can you hold this?" Francisco does as he is told, and a stunned Lisa asks, "Do you not feel that?" He shakes his head, and Lisa takes the probe from him. She grabs some burn ointment for his hand and takes down some notes before turning to him, "This just confirmed that I will need to change how often you take Fencotab."
"What do you mean? I'm feeling fine…"
"You're lethargic, your fine motor skills are decreasing, and it appears that you cannot feel pain; The probe was set to fifty degrees Celsius and you didn't react at all. My colleague and I agreed that you and others who are also experiencing these symptoms will change your medication schedule from once every twenty-four hours to once every thirty-six hours. However, before we start we need your body to metabolize the medication already in your body and that means that you must go without it for the next fourteen days."
Francisco stares at her, "Are you serious?" she nods, "so that means I'll feel everything again?"
"Not necessarily, since there are traces of the medication that you haven't metabolized, it is possible that you won't feel anything until the final days before you start your new schedule."
He sighs in relief, "Good…for a minute I was worried."
"What about?" she inquires.
"My back, my knee; the pain was intense and I don't exactly want to go back to that."
"I understand, however, you should be fine for at least a fortnight, if you are still experiencing side effects from Fencotab you can hold off on returning. However, upon your return to the experiment, I will be conducting another blood test to determine how much of the medication you have metabolized."
Francisco nods, "Wait…how much…is a…is a…"
Rather than wait for him to finish his question, she answers, "Two weeks. That's when I request that you return so that I may conduct another blood test and determine if I should start you back on Fencotab."
He nods his head, "Wait…what if my, um, my…pain comes back?"
"It's an unlikely scenario, but in the event that you are experiencing soreness before the two weeks elapses, you may temporarily return to your previous medicine, but please reserve that option for extreme cases," she warns him.
Lynn walks into the tutoring room where she usually meets Cesar and notices that it's empty. Unlike her, he's always on time, but when she looks at the clock, Lynn realizes that running late.
"Look at that, it finally happened!"
She hears a muttering sound and sees Cesar walking towards the room. His nose is buried in a book as he walks towards the room where they usually meet."
Lynn waves to him, "There you are!"
He looks up at her and gives her a short wave before going back to reading his book.
"What are you doing?"
Cesar looks up from his book again, "I'm sorry, what?"
She repeats herself, "What are you doing? I thought that you used today to relax by drilling my head with science facts."
"I'm just studying for a test. I have to make sure that I get a good grade–"
"You always make good grades, I think," she interrupts. "So why are you worrying? It's your senior year, relax."
He sighs loudly, "Lynn, I still have to study and I still want to keep my GPA where it is so that I can go to grad school."
She takes his book, "I doubt that you won't be able to…" she stares at the book and immediately gives it back to him when she realizes that she's struggling to look at the words. "Okay, so your stuff is tough, but it's not like you can't take a day off."
"Speaking of day off," Cesar starts, "Do you mind if I take a rain check on today's lesson? I know that its last minute, but I have a test this week to study for."
Lynn stumbles a bit with her words; while she doesn't like to admit it, she does enjoy these Sunday sessions with him, especially since they don't always have time to hang out between the week, "Yeah, I get it…do I just, you know, leave?"
He grabs his things, "Um, yeah, unless you want to get another tutor."
She shakes her head, "Nah, I figure one Sunday off isn't going to kill me."
Cesar nods and heads out the door to let the staff at the tutoring center know of the last minute change in scheduling. Lynn follows behind him and he's surprised that she's walking alongside him.
"Why are you following me?" he asks.
"You know that we live near each other, is it really that weird that I'm walking beside you?"
"I guess not," he tells her as he walks down the path while reading his book.
Cesar walks quietly, but he is distracted from his reading when he notices that Lynn is purposely kicking small leaf piles as they walk back to their dorms.
"Can you please stop that?" he asks.
Lynn complies and the two quietly continue their trek. She stares at the buildings as the sun begins to set and the night sky begins to appear; the lights are turning on, the wind blows between the buildings and the leaves are falling from the trees.
Neither student is paying too much attention to the path as they walk until Lynn notices that Cesar, who is reading his book, is about to hit a light post. She takes his arm and pulls him away, "Maybe you should stop reading your book and look out in front of you."
He blushes in embarrassment, "Yeah, I guess I should."
The two walk in silence. While Lynn is occupied with the sights of falling leaves and every nearby noise, all Cesar could focus on is his test and his applications.
He opens his book again, but Lynn takes it from him, "Pay attention, you don't want to fall and look stupid, do you?"
Cesar takes his book back, "I think I'll be fine."
"Then don't open your book, besides, we're almost there, you can read this boring junk later."
"It's not junk," Cesar corrects her.
"So you admit it's boring," Lynn jokes.
He does, but he isn't going to give her the satisfaction.
Greg looks at the order slip, "One order of mac and cheese bites, one order of jalapeno poppers, and two Lynn-sagnas," he calls out to the crew.
The sounds of knife chopping, bubbling oil, and footsteps begin to overtake the kitchen as the crew begins to make the order. When Lynn first joined, things were a little rocky as the crew tried to get used to their new teammate, but she eventually managed to flourish, despite having to constantly remind her not to slip in occasional bites of food.
Greg turns around and sees Lynn about to eat a popper, "Lynn!" he calls out, "stop eating the jalapeno poppers!"
She immediately drops the appetizer, and turns to him, "I just picked it up and I didn't put them on the plate! And there's one more than in the usual order!"
"That doesn't mean you eat it! The food is for the customers, not us – eat later when you're on your break," he tells her.
"Fine!" she complains.
As Rob takes the plate of poppers and places it for the waitress to take, when he looks over and sees Lynn Sr. walking through the entrance. He leans over to Lynn and whispers, "I think you have company."
"What?" she asks, confused by what he's talking about.
The elder Loud walks into the restaurant's kitchen, and calls out to Lynn, "Can you come here a minute?"
Lynn sighs. She sees her dad and sees the papers in his hands; she knows what he wants to talk about. The last time that she was placed to do office work, she randomly placed numbers on the order forms, and she's sure that he noticed.
The rest of the kitchen crew goes back to work to complete a new order, and Lynn looks back, hoping that her dad's talk with her isn't going to take too long.
The two walk to his office and each of them take a seat as Lynn Sr. shows his daughter an order slip with obscenely high numbers on each line.
"Lynn, why did you place an order for 2400 eggs?" he asks.
Like a child that is being punished, Lynn looks away from her dad's gaze and says, "I thought that I was ordering two hundred eggs."
"Was that how many eggs you needed?"
She mutters under her breath, "I don't know."
He sighs; this has been going on for too long, he knows that she managed to take to the kitchen, but he can't get through to her in terms of the office work. He doesn't blame her, he hated it too, but told her that this was going to be part of the job and she can't just shirk it.
"Why can't I hire someone to do it? It'll probably be easier."
"We don't have the money for that, not unless you want to take a pay cut to hire the office manager."
Lynn groans, "Fine, I will try again when we have to make another order."
Lynn knocks on the door. She has a bag of a variety of sports equipment and she does not plan on going down easily with the day she has planned. All week, he has ignored her attempts to reach him, and while Lynn is used to him taking his studies seriously, she knows that he is stressed and she didn't like seeing him look like he is going to fall apart.
When no one answered the door, Lynn pressed her ear on the door, "C'mon Cesar! I know you're in there!"
He opens the door and spots her with a bag of balls, "Lynn, what are you doing?"
"I thought that I'd be nice and get you out of your room for a bit; maybe we can go play, get something to eat, or something fun that isn't boring graduate school stuff."
Cesar attempts to close the door, but Lynn blocks him with her foot. He pretends to open the door to let her guard down, in hopes of getting her to leave him alone, but Lynn manages to muscle her way in regardless.
"You aren't getting rid of me that easy," she warns him as she nudges her shoulder through the opening and into his dorm. "Do you want to go to Palmer Field? You look like you could use a break."
He shakes his head, "Not really, I still have to study."
She takes his hand, "C'mon! You told me that studying does no good if you don't take a break every once in a while."
"That doesn't apply in this situation, and I know you, Lynn. We go out and play and next thing I know, we've been gone for hours."
"That's not true!"
He doesn't believe her. While Lynn is good at taking a break from studying, she's terrible at getting back to it, especially if sports get in her way.
"No," he firmly tells her. "I can create my own breaks," he says as he shows her a timer.
Lynn grabs the timer and tosses it to the wall, "Now, we can go play."
Cesar pushes her towards the door, "Goodbye, Lynn."
"C'mon! A change of scenery will be good for you, and the fresh air, and a healthy brain needs a healthy body, right?"
He rolls his eyes. He knows that Lynn isn't going to leave him alone until he gives in, but he doesn't want to waste time playing around.
He sighs, "One hour, and no telling me to keep going, or saying that an hour hasn't passed, or anything; one hour from the moment we step out of this room."
"Deal!" she says as she grabs his hand and pulls him towards Palmer Field.
With midterms underway, the field was mostly empty, except for a few students who are reading or presumably taking a break from their studies. Lynn pulls out a soccer ball from her bag and kicks it towards him. Cesar goes along with it, but Lynn, in the spirit of making things more interesting, dribbles the ball around and kicks it from further away; meanwhile, Cesar stays put and kicks it from the same location.
She tries again to get him into the spirit of the game, but once again, he stays put. Lynn approaches him and gently kicks the ball towards him, and as he makes an attempt at the ball, she steals the ball in hopes of bringing out the competitor in him.
It doesn't work.
Lynn kicks the ball away and she looks at him, hoping that he would start running after the ball, but he doesn't move.
She runs towards the ball and kicks it back to him, "You know, if you didn't want to be here, you could've said so," she complains.
Cesar opens his mouth, and quickly closes it before he lets out his true feelings, "I did say so, but…" he starts, but he feels his frustrations releasing, "Lynn, you are so stubborn, everything has to be your way and if I so much as speak up, I'm the bad guy!" he closes his eyes. "If I want to do something, I can't! Because someone else has to win and I have to be the one that understands because I can!" he complains before kicking the ball into the street.
Lynn looks over at the ball, and watches as the cars narrowly miss the ball.
"I'm sorry," he says after finishing his rant. "That wasn't about you, even if it did start that way."
She turns to him and nods her head in agreement, "I-It's okay, I should probably leave you alone to get back to your studying and stuff," she says as she steps towards the street.
Cesar nods his head, "Yeah, I should."
Francisco buries himself in his sheets. For the past week, he has been off of Fencotab and off of his own medication and it feels like his body is trying to make up for everything that he numbed with the medication. His back radiates more pain and it feels as though it was extending all around his body. Minor bumps are becoming more painful than before and he's sure that if he doesn't find relief that he's going to go mad.
The nerves in his legs feel like they are jittering more than he is used to, and he kicks his legs in an attempt to get them to stop.
"Hey!" Lynn snaps, as she kicks Francisco back, "What was that for?"
He shakes his head and buries himself under his blanket. Lynn glares at him. For the last couple of days, she has ignored him tossing and turning in bed, groaning, and being more irritable than normal, but now he is getting into the habit of kicking in his sleep and she's getting sick of it.
She pulls the blanket from him, "Hey! I asked what was that for?"
Francisco takes the blanket, "My legs are bugging me and I needed to move them."
Lynn rolls her eyes, "Then walk! You've kicked me enough times and I'm getting sick of it."
He gets out of bed. Lisa warned him that it would probably take weeks before he would feel pain again, but he has been going without medicine for less than a week, and he feels terrible.
'She said that I could take my medicine…I should do that…'
Francisco quietly walks to the bathroom and he opens the medicine cabinet, "She said that I can take it under extreme circumstance, so I'm sure that one…little…pill won't be so bad…"
He can't find the amber bottle.
He looks around, shuffling containers, but he can't it. Francisco remembers that he has another bottle under the sink, he slowly bends down, "I know that I have one here…"
It isn't there either.
"What the?"
Francisco moves things around, and he begins to silently panic, "Where is it?" he asks himself.
He lets himself slowly fall to the ground and he holds back a scream of pain; he is determined to find his medicine and alleviate this nightmare. However, he can't find any of the pills that he had hidden around the bathroom.
'Did I really use them all up?'
He closes the door under the sink, "Lynn!" he calls out. "Lynn!"
The bathroom door opens, "What?" Lynn asks before seeing Francisco laying the floor in pain. "Are you okay?" she asks, worried about him.
"I fell. Can you help me up?"
She helps him to his feet, "What happened?"
"I just got dizzy," he lies. "Can you, um, can you…get me a glass of water?"
"Yeah," before she goes, "Do you want a massage? It could help."
He nods, "Sure, but first the water."
When Lynn is gone, Francisco reaches over to the medicine cabinet; all he can find to help him is an over-the-counter pain reliever, it's not the best, but it'll have to do. Before she returns, he pops two under his tongue, and places the container back in its place.
"Here you go," Lynn offers.
Francisco takes the glass, "Thanks," he says, swallowing the water and pills.
She places her arm around his shoulder, "Now let's go loosen you up so that we can go back to sleep."
"Just go easy on me," he playfully pleads.
As Cesar writes on the whiteboard, Lynn looks over at him and wonders what happened with his test and what is going on with his grad school application. Normally, he's calm, but seeing him the way she did last week, made her curious about what really is going on with him.
He turns around, and before he is able to say anything, "How'd your test go?" she asks.
He sighs, "Lynn, we're not here to talk about me, we're here to help you with class."
She shrugs her shoulders, "I wanna know."
"It went fine," He turns back to the whiteboard, "Now–"
"Are you sure? Because it sounds like it didn't."
He stresses to her, "I don't want to talk about it. Can we please get through this lesson so that I can work on my applications?!"
Lynn is surprised by his outburst, "I was just trying to be nice," she complains, "but if you're going to be like that, maybe I'm better off just leaving you alone for another week."
"You can just get another tutor, you know," he reminds her.
"I don't want another tutor, I like you," she tells him before realizing what she said, "I mean, I like you as a tutor, not a boyfriend, I'm sure that you like me…as a tutee! Wait, is that a word?"
He didn't catch the double meaning immediately, but he can see that she's getting flustered, "Yes, that's a word, and yes, that is correct. Um…look, I'm just exhausted from everything going on in my head." Cesar takes a seat in front of her, "I'm thinking about how I want to keep my record of being on the dean's list," she smiles at that, "I'm thinking about what schools to apply to when I do grad school applications, I'm thinking about how one bad grade ruins everything. The closer we get to finals, the harder my heart races, and I'm sure I wouldn't know what a heart attack feels like," he jokes.
Lynn chuckles, "Is that, um, everything that's stressing you out?"
"Not really," he says, but he doesn't elaborate.
"Then what's bugging you?"
"It's not important," Cesar says. "Anyway, let's get back to your lesson."
"It'll probably help," she mentions. "I mean, I don't know what a heart attack feels like either, but maybe letting out some steam can help you so neither one of us find out for decades to come."
He can tell that she's not going to stop, "Fine, I'll tell you later, but can we can please get back on track?"
"Can you tell me over dinner?"
Cesar stays quiet, "Um…sure. We can go get something to eat after…after our lesson, er, yeah…" he turns to the whiteboard and continues their session.
Lynn hardly pays attention as he talks, and this time it isn't just because she's bored and wants to play with the tennis ball in her backpack. She looks over at him, but she doesn't listen to a word he's saying. She can't put her finger on what's going on, all she knows is that she has felt this longing feeling before.
He turns around, "Lynn, open your textbook."
She snaps from her thoughts and digs out the book from her backpack; she feels the felt on the tennis ball, and pulls out the ball. Cesar quickly takes it from her and hides it away from her; she knows that look – play after studying for a few minutes.
"I'm gonna want it back."
"I know, you can have it back when we go out to get dinner."
She blushes and quickly opens her book to look for the section that he's going over.
Lynn looks through all of the paperwork, but despite reading the first page over and over again all she can do was concentrate on the ticking of the wall clock. She begins to stare at it and is focused on each hand, before settling on the second hand as it moves all around the face of the clock.
"Lynn, how's it going?" interrupts her father.
She snaps out of her trance and makes a mental note of how many seconds she counted before she was interrupted, "Uhh…fine," she says as she tries to tidy up her father's desk.
He takes the paper from the desk, "LJ, you haven't finished one of the order sheets. This needs to get done soon so we can get the truck here with our supplies."
"I know."
He looks through all of the sheets and nothing was done, "You've been in here for over half an hour, what have you been doing?"
Since she has been left alone in the office, all Lynn could recall doing was scribbling on printer paper, playing basketball with the scribbled paper, making paper airplanes, and counting over one thousand seconds on the clock.
Lynn sheepishly says, "Thinking about how to get back into the kitchen."
He sighs. For months, he has wanted her to learn the office side of owning the restaurant, but unlike the kitchen, Lynn has shown absolutely no interest in doing so. Every time that he tries to explain something to her, she dozes off or she gets distracted by something else.
Lynn Sr. takes the chair in front of the desk and places it next to her, he pulls up the inventory sheets from the computer and shows her how much was ordered the week before and how much was used since the last inventory.
"How much do we need to order for the restaurant?"
Despite the gentle tone in her dad's voice, Lynn can tell that he's disappointed in her for being as hardheaded and not learning the simple skill as quickly as he wants her to. However, every time that she looks at the empty sheets, she is reminded of being school and how much she struggled with her homework, especially if she is left alone. She's sure that the only reason she succeeded was just because someone looked over her, but she can't count on her dad to visit every week to help her get it done.
Lynn fills out the first form well enough, and her dad walks away from computer and let's her do it on her own, "I'm going to go get a cup of coffee, I'll be right back. Please have the next sheet filled out when I get back," he pleads with her.
She nods her head, but as soon as the door closes, Lynn can feel her mind drifting from the 'assignment' in front of her. As she looks down, the letters become blurry and her eyes immediately gaze over at the red collar of her chef's coat hanging on the hook of the door.
Lynn doesn't move and stares, unaware of the passage of time.
Her dad opens the door and sees her shaking her head after being brought back to the order forms, "LJ," he calls out to her. Lynn Sr. looks at the sheet; it's the same one that he left her with before leaving to get his coffee. "Why haven't you done anything? We've gone over this multiple times."
She groans, "I don't know. I'm not interested, I just want to go back to cooking in the kitchen!" she complains.
He takes a deep breath; the work isn't difficult, but somehow she manages to make it harder than necessary. He would understand if she didn't know how to do the work, but he has gone over it with her multiple times, but she's still being stubborn.
"Just go," he sighs, "but you're getting this paperwork done before tomorrow morning. I mean it."
With a large smile, Lynn grabs her chef's coat and runs back to the kitchen.
Cesar takes a seat as Lynn goes to get some food; he knows that he shouldn't be taking out his frustrations on the people around him, but he can't help but feel the mounting pressure as applications are due.
Lynn returns with bags of food and she begins to set it out for dinner. When he is sure that she's done, Cesar reaches for a fry and is startled by Lynn's complaint, "Hey! You didn't tell me that you wanted something to eat."
As he looks at the spread that he assumed was for the two of them, he apologizes, "I'm sorry, but I thought that it was for the two of us."
She sighs, "Fine, you can have some."
As the two silently eat, Cesar contemplates telling her about his home life; up until now, he's done a good job to not bring it up to anyone, but he knew that at some point it was going to come out, but at least he can say that he did a good job for the first three years.
"My brother…he gets all the attention, meanwhile, I have to help my parents with him. You know, for the longest time, I was so used to thinking about how any of my decisions will affect my brother and my parents that I rarely ever thought about myself."
"Why? I mean, you're an adult," she asks. "I guess not then, although you seem like you'd be the type of guy who would be old from birth."
Almost by instinct, Cesar was about to say why, but he shakes his head, "Nope, I told myself that college was going to be for me to be a little greedy, and yet, my decisions are still with them in mind," he reminds himself.
Lynn is confused by what he is saying, "What? What are you talking about?"
"When I was deciding on what schools to apply for college, my counselor, who knew me and my family situation for a while, told me to leave the city, maybe even the state, so that I can grow without worrying about them. He thought that I was placing too much pressure on myself–"
"That still doesn't–"
"I'm getting to it. Anyway, I don't think that anything changed. I'm still worrying myself about my future, and all I can think about is how I'm going to be responsible for him when my parents are gone."
"Why do you think that is? Why can't your brother live alone?"
Cesar takes a deep breath, "He can't live alone."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to say, that's why," he sighs, "Look, all my life, everyone in family would tell me, 'You're so lucky that you're smart, you can be successful and take care of your family' or 'You better study hard Cesar, because when your parents are gone, you'll have to take care of your brother' over and over again. You know, sometimes, I felt like no one knew a thing about me except for my brother."
Lynn takes a bite from her sandwich; she doesn't know what to say, and she's sure that she'll blurt out something stupid that he doesn't want to hear.
Cesar breaks the silence, "I know that we haven't known each other for long, but what's something you know about me?"
She swallows her food, "Umm…you're smart…and umm…hold on."
"Great," he sighs, "Just like everyone else."
"C'mon! You said it yourself, we haven't known each other for long," she defends. "How much do you know about me?"
"You're the fifth of eleven children, you're here on a scholarship and on the softball team, you live in a city just outside of Detroit, you like sports, and you aren't much of a scholar unless you have a fire lit under you."
She shrugs her shoulders, "I paint a colorful picture."
"No, I listen when you talk. Unlike you, who is more caught up in herself than others." Both are surprised by the sudden outburst, "Lynn, I'm–"
"You play piano…" she pauses to think, "You have never gone to a football game, you really like school, so much that you have two majors, you're from New York City, and you want to run a hospital – see! I can pay attention to you."
Cesar smiles; it felt nice to have someone at least remember his career goal.
"In all my time here, I don't think that I ever made a real friend," Cesar admits, "maybe an acquaintance that I can greet if we see each other, but I wouldn't ever call them an actual friend."
Upon hearing that Lynn is surprised; while he doesn't seem overly social, she always assumed that he had a group of close friends since he always claimed to be busy. Of course, she was surprised that he didn't consider her a friend.
"Wait!" Lynn exclaims, "You didn't think we were friends?!"
Cesar shrugs his shoulders, "We typically interact on Sundays, and we rarely hang out outside our tutoring sessions. I thought that you didn't see us as nothing more than that."
"Then we're hanging out more often!" she declares, "We'll get dinner, or go watch a game, maybe tailgate, or hang out at the library reading or whatever else you want to do."
"I'd like that."
"Was it like that back home? You know, friends wise?"
"No, but I still didn't have a lot of people that I talked to; I was shy, bookish, and everyone wanted to know about…not the point…"
Lynn took another bite of her sandwich to keep herself from asking anything, but curiosity was eating away at her, "What's wrong with your brother?"
"It's not important," he reminds her.
"I think it is."
"I don't. I don't want to repeat the cycle where all people do is ask me about him, so please drop it."
To break the silence, she speaks up, "I sometimes felt like I was overlooked, I guess that's expected when you have ten siblings, but I always felt like my older sisters didn't want me around because I was annoying and my younger siblings thought that I was too rough. And when it came to my friends, I always felt like I was behind, like I had to work harder just to barely keep up with them."
He nods his head to let her know that she understands.
"I guess that isn't a problem for you," she says.
"No, it wasn't…I had to grow up a little quicker than my peers–"
"So you weren't an old man from birth," Lynn jokes.
Cesar laughs sarcastically, "No, I just had a lot of responsibilities placed on me as a kid. I had to think about my future, but I didn't have a lot of people to help me – the curse of being the first person in your family to go to college," he jokes.
She smiles. Lynn doesn't know what that's like, she's been able to be a little childish and no one batted an eye, but at the same time it sucked that people didn't take her seriously, especially when she was hoping to prove herself.
"Have you talked with the counselor to help you out with everything?" she asks.
He nods, "Yeah, got letters of recommendation and I'm trying to think of what schools I'm going narrow it down to."
Lynn looks at him, "Do you know where you're going to apply?"
"I have some schools in mind, I might even stick around here," he says with a smile, which she returns.
Francisco peeks out of the curtains as he watches the cars that are passing by, "C'mon where the hell are you?" he asks as he looks around. It's early in the day, but he feels strange peeking around the near empty neighborhood waiting for his brother to arrive.
He thought that he was over having to do this, but he's desperate to relieve his pain and get back to some sense of normalcy. After finding out that his medicine was gone, possibly after telling Lynn that he was no longer taking them, he made a call to his brother and begged for him to visit so that he can get something to treat his pain until he can go back on Fencotab.
Francisco soon feels a vibration in his pocket. He answers the phone and his brother begins talking.
"Man, I thought that you were quitting on me," Kiké jokes, "What happened? Were you thinking about going straight?"
Francisco rolls his eyes, he has been suffering for days and he couldn't take it anymore; every bump, every step, every sudden movement became hell and he had to do something about it.
"Does it matter?"
"Maybe I miss my little brother," he teases. "It's not often that I'm in Royal Woods."
"That's your own fault," Francisco tells him, "Are you nearby or are you planning on making me wait all day?"
"What's the rush? I doubt you're that busy that if you're at home this early in the morning. Besides, you know that I don't come for free."
"What do you want?" the younger brother sighs.
"A place to stay," he answers.
"That's it?" Francisco asks, not believing his brother.
"I rarely ask for more."
Aside from his younger brother's food, tv, and sometimes money.
"How long?"
"A week or so."
"What's a 'week or so'?"
"It doesn't matter. I'll be there before you know it," Kiké tells him before hanging up the phone.
Francisco sighs and takes a seat as he waits, but minutes turn to hours and he is growing more frustrated as he waits around for his brother. Kiké isn't answering his phone and while this is giving Francisco time to think of what he's going to tell Lynn, he wants to rid himself of his back and knee pain as soon as possible.
A knock at the front door grabs Francisco's attention and he slowly walks towards the door to let his brother in.
"Hey, sorry I'm–"
Francisco doesn't hear his brother out before he takes Kiké's bags away from the entrance and takes then inside to search through them for the medicine that his brother typically brings. When he finds the large plastic bag full of medicine, he pulls out an amber bottle and consumes two pills to finally put an end to his suffering.
"Jeez, nice to see you too," the older brother complains, as he closes the door and walks towards his younger brother. When he notices that his brother consumed two pills instead of his usual one, he calls him out, "Hey!" Kiké slaps Francisco's shoulder, "What happened to just one every six hours?"
The younger brother bites down on his lower lip, "I'm in pain and it's getting worse, sue me."
"Great…if your damn habit keeps going like this, I'm gonna end up having to show up more."
For years, Kiké has brought him medicine, and while Francisco isn't happy to have him stick around for an undetermined period of time, but if hearing his older brother's keeps him from shopping arousing suspicion and possibly worse, he can endure it.
"This is the first time since you started this that I've had to go up to two pills. If I keep going at this rate–"
"I'm gonna have to bring stronger stuff," Kiké interrupts.
Francisco rolls his eyes, "No you aren't, so where have you been this time around?"
Kiké shakes his head, "Nowhere you need to know." He checks through his pockets and pulls out a small box, "By the way, I brought something for Elena from her dear old tío Kiké."
Francisco takes the box; inside are a pair of ruby earrings, "Thanks, I guess…"
"I guess? I'm being nice to my niece and you can't even be more appreciative, you're an ass, Pancho."
"Well excuse me for being wary of where you got them, I don't exactly want my daughter to be wearing stolen jewelry just because tío Kiké wants to be nice," Francisco retorts.
Kiké scoffs and takes the earrings back, "Fine, be that way, but don't ever say that I don't do nice things for your girl. So anyway, where's the miniature troll you call a girlfriend? "
Francisco glares at his older brother, "Would you stop that already?! I am so sick and tired of hearing you insult her over and over again like its nothing – it's been years, so stop making fun of her for something you probably can't remember!"
"Hey, she's not exactly blameless either. She insults me, and I just have to take it. She punches me, I have to take it. You're being a fucking hypocrite, baby brother. What does she wrap you around her little finger by doing freaky stuff for you?"
Francisco punches Kiké in the arm and walks away to hide the medicine from Lynn. When he returns he asks, "Since you're staying here for a week, can you at least not pick a fight with her every chance you get?"
Kiké crosses his arms, "Only if she agrees to sleep in the damn basement."
The younger brother punches him in the arm.
"Son of a bitch!" he yells, as he holds onto his shoulder.
In a mocking tone, Francisco mimics, "Son of a bitch!" he looks back to Kiké, "Don't pretend that you didn't deserve it.
The older brother sticks his tongue out. For the sake of tonight, he would at least be a little more civil, but he wasn't making any promises for tomorrow or even the next encounter that the two have another day.
Lynn opens the front door, "I'm home. Hey Francisco, why is there a car without license plates in the driveway?"
Kiké answers, "Probably because I'm taking a vacation and visiting my brother here in Royal Woods. You know the last thing I want is for the cops to find me."
"Seriously? Why the hell are you here, you–"
"I was invited," Kiké interrupts.
"Yeah, right!" she turns to Francisco, who is nodding his head, "What the hell, why did you say that he could stay here?!"
"He's in town and Chuy and mom don't have enough room for him and I at least have the spare room."
"So why can't he stay in a motel or under a bridge or something?"
Francisco sighs, "Lynn, I get that this isn't ideal, but it's not going to be for long and then he'll be out of our hair," he assures her.
Lynn groans, "Fine!" she turns to Kiké, "So…how long are you staying?"
With a coy smile, he says, "A week."
Lynn feels her blood boiling and sirens go off in her head. A whole week of being stuck with him! She can't believe it. Luckily, there is work, but with her dad making her do paperwork more than cooking, she was beginning to hate it more.
Kiké places a hand on her shoulder, "Since you're dressed for it, I'd like a fancy dinner out of you. Oh, and actually try to make something other than the cheap frozen crap you eat."
"Oh that does it!" she tackles him to the ground and both of them began to grip each other in an attempt at keeping the other from escaping. Lynn tries to throw some punches but eventually Kiké pins her to the floor to keep her down.
Francisco sighs as he sees them both fighting on the ground. He cautiously approaches them and tries to pry his brother off of Lynn, "Would you two stop fighting like a bunch of children?! Just give me a week of peace, and then everything goes back to normal."
Both of them turn away from each other and murmur in agreement under their breath.
We finally have a little progress into Lynn and Cesar's relationship, the not-so-hidden reason that Kiké comes to visit Francisco is revealed, and yes, even those excuses that Francisco mentioned in the previous chapters were Kiké. We'll get to the whole why eventually, but for now we can enjoy the effects, especially after Lynn was so insistent that he was fine
Thank you everyone for reading and see you next time
