The family of four spent the night on Kelsie’s king-sized bed with the boys lying by Keira’s side.
Kelsie woke up by 4 that morning. She did a checkup on Keira’s breathing and pupils before leaving the room to the kitchen to make breakfast.
Jesse woke up an hour later and the first thing he did was to check up on his sister before he scurried off to the bathroom.
Zade woke up shortly after. As he stretched and yawned on his bed, he raised his eye to see Keira rubbing her eyes gently as she sat up as well.
His eyes lit up and he inched closer to her.
He held her face in his palms, his brows knitting together worriedly as he moved around in her face.
"Do you see me, Keira? You’re fine now, right?"
Keira hummed and flashed him a bright smile, but he wasn’t convinced and held out two fingers.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
He did this every three months that she already knew what he would do before he did it.
She held down his hand and hopped off the bed.
"Two fingers. I know it’s two fingers. Stop testing me with this every three months or at least come with something not so obvious."
The boy scoffed lightly and got out of the bed as well.
As he arranged the bed with her, he held up his nose and said arrogantly, "I just want to be sure. Can’t have you saying the reason you lost to me in Free Fire after today is because you’re seeing the game double."
Keira stopped what she was doing, feeling the need to brag.
"Zade Sutton, even if I were seeing double, you still won’t be able to beat me in Free Fire now!"
Zade folded his hands across his chest and intoned condescendingly.
"Are you daring me? Don’t think I’ll take it easy on you simply because you had problem with your eyes yesterday."
"You wish. Dare to play with me today?"
"Absolutely not! I refuse to bully a blind girl."
"B-blind? Mommy, Zade called me a blind girl!"
"Hey, don’t do that. What if she hears you?"
"I’m sorry, Keira! I didn’t know when that slipped out."
The little boy ran into the bathroom and slammed it shut behind him while Keira fell on the bed laughing.
Kelsie was in the kitchen and didn’t hear a word of what just happened.
As she waited for them, she browsed through the numerous CVs in her emails which she had gotten for the babysitter’s ad she placed just before she went to bed last night.
When the triplets came out, Kelsie took a careful look at Keira again before exhaling silently in relief seeing there was no visible swelling in her eyes.
"I’ll be enrolling you three in school next week. If I don’t, you will have to repeat the same class next school year."
"We should’ve moved to Silicon Valley at the beginning of the school year. I apologize for that."
Keira was munching through her food when she heard her and said dismissively between mouthful, "Mommy, it’s the middle of the school year."
"There’s really nothing wrong with repeating the same class. After all, we’re all ahead of our classes and..."
She was subtly interrupted by Jesse who flashed Kelsie a charming smile. "Okay, mommy!"
Keira quickly chewed the food in her mouth and laughed nervously, "O-okay? What are you saying? Why would you say okay? Do you have any idea the exercises we have to cover to meet up with the rest of the class?"
Unlike Jesse and Zade who knew they had no choice but to go to schooll, Keira refused to be like them.
She always complained of how she had to stare at words and numbers all day which often made her dizzy.
Furthermore, she also claimed she found it hard to concentrate in classes which stressed her out.
To make it worse, there was no one her age besides her brothers who could play Free Fire to her level to ease the stress of schooling.
Kelsie knew none of what she complained about was serious as she had taken her to a few doctors the first time Kelsie began schooling and had gone long enough to know her very young daughter was faking all those symptoms after reading articles on the internet.
Everything was a ploy to get out of school. It was all too familiar to Kelsie.
Jesse picked up his serviette and wiped his lips clean, pretending not to know the obvious meaning behind his sister’s disgruntled look.
Then he raised his eyes to look at her and said cluelessly, "You just said we’re way ahead of our agemates. So it’s really no problem that we’ll be joining them in the middle of the school year."
Without raising his head, Zade hummed in agreement and chipped in, "Besides, didn’t we spend the first school year abroad? It’s not like we don’t have a knowledge of what the people here have learnt."
Keira faked a cough and threw a glare at them realizing she wouldn’t be getting her way.
But she still tried to convince Kelsie. "That still doesn’t mean we should register for late entry."
"Mommy, think about it. If you don’t enroll us into a school this semester, you’ll save money. Didn’t you say you’re running short on money?"
Kelsie pretended not to know what she was going on about and raised three fingers.
"I have three separate bank accounts set up for your schooling up until college. You really don’t have to worry about me."
Realizing it wasn’t going the way she wanted, Keira lowered her eyes to the floor and mumbled bitterly.
"There’ll be a lot of schoolwork. I’ll barely have time to game. How am I supposed to go live and catch up with my colleagues?"
"At this rate, I’ll lose my rank and get demoted. What to do. Sigh."
The rest of her family pretended not to hear her mumbling to herself and just ate their food in silence.
When they finished breakfast, Kelsie made sure her children had everything they would need for the few hours she would be out before proceeding to step out of the house.
She went straight to the hospital and joined in the research like she said she would.
As soon as she left, Daniel Adler got into the elevator and went straight to the 49th floor.
But as soon as Zade found out it was him, he refused to open the door.
"Mommy almost caught you yesterday and I kept having a feeling I’d be grounded. Stay away!"
Daniel pressed his eyes into the camera in front of the door and sighed heavily.
"I promise to be more quiet today and I’ll let you order whatever you want with my account. And aren’t you home alone? I’ll stay with you until your mommy comes."
"Is that Uncle Daniel? Don’t keep him outside. I need someone to play Free Fire with!" Keira shouted from where she sat, her eyes not leaving her phone.
Keira was naturally jovial. And as the last child, she mostly left all the worries and consequences to her elder siblings.
The offer of him being able to order the herbs he wanted was already tempting. Upon hearing his sister, Zade immediately gave in and opened the door.
At the hospital, Kelsie worked with Callum Shaw and lost track of time.
When she returned to the present and glanced at the time, she immediately jumped out of her seat.
Callum Shaw, whom she thought was with her, was nowhere to be found. In fact, she was the only one in the lab.
She mentally facepalmed herself at having lost track of time and slipped out her phone from her labcoat’s pocket.
She checked her phone and frowned slightly.
No missed calls from either of her children. Not even a single one.
No matter how carried away they got, they would get bored and call her to ask when she would be home.
As she looked at her phone, she forgot to take off her labcoat and walked into the corridor.
She had just walked past a ward when she heard someone call out to her irritatedly.
"You’re not the only one in this hospital, young lady. Do you not know you can push down an old feeble man like me by mistake because you’re not looking at where you’re going?"