Secrets

Chapter 13

"You can look now, Kid." Ryan laughs, nearly doubling over when I turn back and peek through my fingers with a whimper.

"D-don't laugh at me! You know I hate needles!"

"But I'm the one who had to get the shot!"

Gasping between laughs, Ryan leans back against his thick white pillows and examines the white bandage that was placed over the spot of his latest shot.

"Well, you seem to be in much better health when Miss. Rose comes to visit." Nurse Elion giggles, her short red curls bouncing with the movement. "I'd say this time tomorrow, you should be all set to go home, Ryan."

For a moment, my brother's smile falls, and something like anger flashes through his eyes, but before I can analyze it further, it's gone and he's back to smiling.

"Yeah well, of course I'd get better with my little sister around. I mean, she's a better nurse than any of the quacks around here!"

"Ryan!" I gasp, dropping my hands to offer Nurse Elion an apologetic smile. "He didn't mean that!"

"Oh, I'm sure it was just the medicine talking!" The nurse laughs stiffly.

It's obvious that she doesn't like my brother.

No one in this hospital does.

Every day for the past three days, three long...long days since I first ran in here with Dave and the other's only to be rejected from seeing Ryan because he was in the ICU for observation, I've noticed the way the doctors and nurses look at Vanessa and Noah, and anyone who's come with me to visit over the last two days.

Heck, some of the nurses even give me dirty looks...and for the first time it actually hurts.

I'd always been able to ignore the few rare people who treated me as badly as they do my siblings, but now that I know the reasons behind these looks...it's just awful.

"They think I'm a gangster too." I'd realized, a moment after I'd broken down in Noah's arms when the doctors gave the absolute no on my going to Ryan's side that day, and a nurse had lashed out at me for my reaction.

As Vanessa pulled her aside, I'd pulled away from my eldest brother to look at the nurse with wide eyes.

I was just so astonished!

How could she be so cruel?

I mean, it was my brother in there!

But then, as I'd glanced slowly to the three doctors who still stood at the thick brown doors that blocked the path between Ryan and the rest of us, I found the same looks of disgust on their faces, and many of the nurses who were passing from room to room in the step down ward behind us shared the look as well.

None of them had any pity for me, and why should they?

All the Star's in Rose City are gangsters except for me, but they didn't know that.

What finally shut me down, and left Noah with no choice but to pick me up and carry me to the car, before taking me to his house, was the question of just how many times one of my siblings had ended up in this very hospital from gang related injuries.

How many of their friends that they said had just moved away for family reasons or new jobs...had actually died?

"...and how close did my brother...my dorky, funny, amazing brother...how close did he come to joining them...?"

The next day, Noah dropped me off here, and I walked in with Rick to find Ryan in the step down ward.

He has a broken arm, four broken fingers, a twisted ankle, three broken ribs, bruises all over, and thirty-six stiches from four large lacerations and two minor ones.