Triad Tourists

Chapter 4

I run into the hospital and rip my tag off to show the receptionists my things. "You know who I am, I know where Kelan is."

She nods and gives me a visitors pass without signing anything on it. "He was moved to room 220."

I basically run to the room and watch as people enter and exit his room. "Kelan!" I find myself yelling.

I run to the entrance and see a nurse shining a flashlight into my brother's eyes. Another nurse squeezes his hand. Kelan shakes his head at one of them, but I can guess which one.

"Kelan?" I walk up to my brother and grab his hand. "What's up?"

He starts crying. "Ta-" he winces in pain.

"You've been in a coma for a year, you need PT and speech therapy." I tell him.

He tries to talk, but chokes. "Sch!"

I sigh. "School? School don't matter?." I hug him tight. "I waited so long for you to wake up. After you died-"

I gasp when I feel his hand on my lower back. "You can move?" I try to move, but he drops his head on my shoulder. As he cries, I feel my shoulder get wet with tears, slobber, and snot. He cries and coughs for that seems like forever, and on the other side of him, I try to hold myself back too.

That's where I spent my night: next to my little brother.

Over the next two weeks, we tried to figure out what happened to Kelan. At the same time, he was recovering fast when it came to movement. It was hard, but his PT, Tiki offered cheaper sessions because she was a friend. They say being nice gets you a lot, I didn't believe them until Kelan was healing.

I guess that's how Ketanji Brown got on the Supreme Court. (No she didn't 💀)

9 months later and my brother is mostly back. He can talk, at least. And he came to terms with Shanghai too. He's grown up a lot, but everyday I'm reminded of how strong humans are. When it's finally time for him to leave, he's walking crutches. He can walk, but it's like sometimes he can't move as fast as he wants. "Doing alright?" I ask.

"Fine." He answers, not caring about my words.

"Let me help you-"

"Get off me n-gga." He swats me away with the wrong hand.

I'll never get used to that

"Kelan, I'm not the reason for your anger."

"Oh, so I didn't hear you talking to him? Because Rylan- Rkky- Ri- aahh!" His groans turns into a cough.

"Look at you, coughing a fit mad at me. Should've drank the water I gave you earlier."

"You know what this ab-" he coughs again.

In and out of his coma, Kelan could hear mostly everything. He says he even knew where most of the stuff in his room was. I knew he could most times, but half the time he didn't react to anything.

9 months is a long time for Bullcrap too. He heard me explaining everything to him before he woke up. And he thinks it's my fault he ended up in the hospital. I was just talking, not realizing he heard me at those times. I didn't expect him to react- or even remember.

I explained everything to him again in PT, and that's when he told me he knew. That's when he revealed he was angry at me and Roland. That's when he started giving me the cold shoulder. This not about Ryder, he's stressing again and we can't push this down everyday for the sake of moving on.

"You can't be at me for that." I tell him. "I'm stressed too." I lost the case. I tried to sue the bank that let Roland take my cash, but we settled for 24k and the banks silence in the media. If anyone says anything about my case and puts their name in it I'm open to get sued. Me and Kiersten fought so hard while Kelan was learning to walk again, how can he be mad at me for anything now?!

"You didn't have to give him the access to the accounts in the first place. You knew he was a fruit anyways!"

Kelan also developed a hatred for the LGBT+. I can't say I'm surprised, or blame him for it. "That didn't make him a bad Dad at first. He was still our Dad."

"Your dad." He trips and falls forehead to floor. Instead of having a reaction, he just lies there and tries to get up on his own. "And I thought I was the blind one." He sighs.

I pick up his crutches, deciding to let Kelan do his own thing. He moves slow, he has to think about his next moves.

He turns over onto his back with a loud grunt. "Lulu, did you leave me?" He tries to look around for me, but he just relaxes when he realizes he won't be seeing anything.

After coming to the false conclusion that he is along, he sighs. "I go for a gar and wind up blind."

I listen to him think aloud until he stops talking. He resorts to singing horribly until I pretend to walk into the room.

"Kelan, why are you on the floor?" I ask, secretly holding back my tears.

"I fell, you know this." He says.

"I went to the bathroom. If you would've listened, you would've heard me say that it was a chair next to you." I grab his hand and put it on the bottom of a chair.

He grunts as he pulls up and sits down. "You should've stayed and helped me up."

"You didn't want it. You're acting like a kid."

"Tallulah, I'm still barely 14 in the head, I am a kid."

You didn't think that when you were 14

"You're about to be 17."

He smacks his lips and jerks away from the direction of my voice. "Let me be deaf so I don't have to hear you."

I'm tired of him. He's acting like all his misfortunes are my fault. His attitude is crap towards me for no reason.

I throw his crutches at him, catching him off guard. "Kelan, you're acting like it's my fault you snuck out. I told you to lay down and chill, but you was hardheaded and ended up dead, twice. You think this hard for you? I watched you die and come back plenty of times. I work here, dude. I had to work scared out of my mind that I would have to push you to the morgue myself! I had to watch Roland take my money, I went to court, I lost my fiance, I had to keep up with your bills after I went broke. I'm suing and suing to get us some justice and money but nah! I don't got time to hear you whine about problems that you put on yourself!"

"Myself? You had one job! To pick up the phone it took you forever to call me back! By the time I got to you I was on the way here!!"

Ryder comes into the room. "What's going on?"

I ignore him. "If you're going to rebel against me, then you can find your way to the car without me! I'll wait for you." I growl the last sentence, and storm out of the room.

After I'm out, I hear Kelan calling for me. "Craaap." I sigh. "This is too much for me."

Ryder comes after me. "Lulu, Lulu, what's-"

"I can't with him! He's blaming me! He so childish for that! He don't know I blame myself enough?"

"What's the issue now?"

"Uh- tuff- the same one! 9 months of this and it's finally boiling down! I told you he blamed me. Not just Roland but me! And now he thinks I'm baby-ing him! He's so childish like a 2 year old! I'm all the family he has and he's being rude to me. It's hard to smile at patients all day, I'm not dealing with him by myself anymore!"

"You're not by yourself." Ryder hugs me and I lie my head on his chest. "It's not your fault. You didn't know your Dad would do that."

I nod. "I know but I felt it. Uneasy. God was telling me something that night and I didn't listen."

"As subtle as God is, I'm surprised you even felt anything." He chuckles. "He here and gone."

"For real." I agree.

"I'll go back inside and grab your brother, and then we can go eat. Ok?"

I nod. "ok."

"Ok."