BIA Ch. 55

Guests continued to pour in. There were so many people that by the time the service was about to start, there wasn’t even a place to sit. Cedric and Grace, who had been greeting mourners non-stop, finally entered the chapel just before the service and sat in the front row with Chester. Hailey was next to Chester, and Vice President Cornwell was next to Hailey.

At first, Hailey seemed to maintain a fairly indifferent attitude and focus on the service, but as time passed, she started looking back more and more often. Especially when the prayers were being recited or hymns were being sung, she would often stare at Bran with an expression that seemed to say, ‘Is that really his voice I’m hearing? This bass-baritone? A guy this good-looking has a voice like that too? Really?’ The Vice President Cornwell, sitting next to her, had to nudge her with his elbow several times to get her to stop.

Chester, surprisingly, didn’t react much. That’s because he had fallen into a deep non-REM sleep as soon as the service started. He was sleeping so soundly that it seemed like he wouldn’t notice if the person next to him’s neck or eyes were rolling. Bran, from the start, was the type who didn’t care about other people’s gazes.

Isaiah… at first, he watched with some interest. Since he was sitting directly behind Hailey and next to Bran, he had a good view. But as time passed, his interest waned, and eventually, he reached a point where he didn’t care about Hailey or Bran.

He was too out of it to care about anyone else. He thought he felt a little better after making Chester spend $28,000, but it seemed that it was just a fleeting feeling. He had to sit and stand repeatedly during the service, and his fever seemed to have gotten worse. By the middle of the service, he could even see Aunt Angelina, whom he barely knew, waving at him from over there.

In the end, as the pastor’s sermon finished and everyone stood up to sing ‘On the Other Side of Jordan,’ he almost lost consciousness and crossed the Jordan River. Fortunately, Bran caught him, so he didn’t fall, but his knees buckled, and he couldn’t stand.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay…”

Isaiah managed to say.

“Sit down.”

“But…”

Isaiah was panting, clinging to Bran’s arm. He could hear people murmuring, wondering what was happening. Chester, as if finally woken up by the commotion, turned around. Then, with a surprised expression, he shouted,

“Hey, you, what’s wrong? You look like a ghost.”

Chester, clearly still half-asleep, had no idea what was going on. He didn’t even realize that his own mother was glaring at him with a truly ghostly expression. Bran stopped Chester from jumping over the chairs, and before Chester could even open his mouth, he said to Grace,

“I’ll take him to the hospital.”

“Oh, would you, Bran?”

Grace said, as if she had been waiting for it.

“Mom!”

Chester cried out, as if it were unbelievable. Grace held her son’s arm tightly with one hand and smiled at Bran.

“We have some things to do with the family for my sister-in-law after the funeral.”

“Yes. Please don’t worry about us and continue with the service.”

Bran picked up Isaiah, who was slumped in the chair. The murmuring of the crowd was even louder than before, and the sound echoed in Isaiah’s ears. Isaiah wanted to ask him to just sling him over his shoulder, but he couldn’t speak. As Bran carried him out of the chapel, he could feel Chester and Hailey watching them until the very end, their eyes shining with different meanings.

When they left the church, it was already dark outside. He thought they must have been in the service for hours, but when he got in the car, he saw that it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.

“Put on your seatbelt.”

Bran said, closing the car door after seating Isaiah in the passenger seat. Isaiah tried to do as he was told, but the belt kept slipping from his hands. He tried to fasten it again, but he didn’t have the strength to pull it all the way.

“Move your hand.”

As soon as Bran got into the driver’s seat, he fastened the seatbelt for him.

“Where’s your phone?”

“In my pants pocket…”

Bran took the smartphone out of Isaiah’s pants pocket, turned it off, and tossed it carelessly into the back seat. As he started the car and backed out of the parking lot, he saw Manny running out of the church’s main entrance in the rearview mirror.

“Bran! Wait! Bran!”

Manny shouted urgently as he ran. Bran ignored him and turned the steering wheel.

“Bran! Please wait! I’ll take him to the hospital…!”

Just as Manny’s hand touched the trunk, Bran stepped on the gas. The car sped straight ahead and out of the church grounds. Isaiah briefly looked at Manny’s distraught face in the rearview mirror before closing his eyes.

And then, he seemed to have fallen asleep for a little while, a very short while.

─Vvvvvvvv

Isaiah opened his eyes slightly at the sudden, faint vibration. The source of the vibration seemed to be Bran’s jacket pocket.

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah…”

Isaiah answered, rubbing his forehead.

“It seems like you’re getting a call.”

Instead of answering, Bran took out his phone from his pocket. He rejected the call, then put the phone on silent and tossed it into the cup holder in the console box. He said,

“Open the glove box there.”

“Here?”

Isaiah opened the glove box on the passenger side.

“There’s a pill bottle, right? Take it if you need it.”

“This…”

Before he could ask what kind of pill it was, Bran spoke first.

“It’s Vicodin^[1], though.”

“Hmm……”

“If you don’t want to, then don’t.”

Isaiah pretended to hesitate out of courtesy, then closed the glove compartment.

“Thanks, but I’ll try to hold out.”

Bran chuckled as if he knew that would be the answer.

“Still, thanks for telling me.”

When he said it was genuine, Bran looked at the distant traffic light changing and slowed down the car a little as he spoke.

“I was going to ask you during the day, but I didn’t. What happened to the medicine you got from the psychiatrist?”

Isaiah didn’t answer.

“You didn’t take it.”

“It’s not that I didn’t take it on purpose, it’s just that……”

“I know.”

Bran replied curtly. Isaiah felt inexplicably uncomfortable at his dry tone. Just what did he know? It was just stubbornness that anyone could see was hard to understand, with no proper logic. It was just a vague fear that even he couldn’t understand.

Why did I hate medicine so much? Isaiah himself couldn’t understand. One pill of Vicodin wouldn’t be enough to get addicted, and if I took it, my body would feel better right away. It’s weirder that I’m suffering this much and not taking it.

But I hated it. Not just Vicodin, but all prescription medicine. It was okay with Tylenol or Advil that I could easily buy at the mart, but I didn’t want to take any medicine that I had to get from the hospital. It was scary. I didn’t know how this medicine would change my body, my head. When I looked at the pills in my palm, a strange, vague fear rose up.

Suddenly, the car stopped on the side of the road. When Isaiah looked at him with a questioning expression, Bran unbuckled his seatbelt and said,

“Wait here.”

Bran got out of the car and headed to a large CVS store. A little while later, he came out of the store and got back into the car, immediately handing Isaiah a small paper bag. Inside the bag were Tylenol and water.

“Tylenol’s okay, right?”

“Ah, yeah. Thanks.”

“Eat the soup first before you take the medicine.”

Soup? Isaiah rummaged through the paper bag. Under the 500ml water bottle, there were two cans of soup. One was chicken soup and the other was vegetable soup, and both were still warm.

“Thanks, Bran. I’ll eat well.”

He didn’t have any appetite, but he was grateful for Bran’s thoughtfulness in buying it for him, so he ate the chicken soup right away. Surprisingly, when something warm went into his stomach, he felt much better. The constant nausea and dizziness might have been because he hadn’t been able to eat anything all day, he thought belatedly.

After drinking the soup and taking two Tylenol, Isaiah finally came to his senses and looked out the window. It was dark, so he couldn’t tell where he was at all.

“By the way, where are we?”

“Liberty Port.”

“What?”

Isaiah asked back in surprise. Bran said as if he was surprised by Isaiah’s reaction.

“Why? We were going to come here tomorrow morning anyway.”

“No, it’s just that… is it okay?”

“We just left a little early, that’s all.”

Bran said nonchalantly and stepped on the accelerator. The car began to pick up speed in the darkness.