orphans. //bobs burgers

louise

Car crash
Louise's pov

"Hey Louise I thought your family was coming at 9 to get you, it's 9:30 where are they?" Rudy's dad asked. "I don't know call them." I told him. "I have been they aren't answering. Do you need me to take you home? You know we have yoga in the morning." He asked me. "Sure, maybe they just forgot or something, let's go." I wish I hadn't had said that so I wouldn't have had to see what happened next. "Ok are you two buckled up?" Rudy's dad said while starting to back out of the drive way. "Yup." Me and rudy replied. We get two streets away from Rudy's car before I see "it". My parents and siblings mangled from a car accident. Cops and ambulances everywhere. They never found who did it, labeled it as a hit and run and never really looked more into it. I see them being taken away in the red and white vehicles. "Louise honey do you want me to take you to the hospital?" Rudy's dad asked trying to get my attention. "Uhm yea take me." The tears have already started falling down my cheeks. "Could I use your phone? I need to make a call." I asked. "Sure." I dial in teddys number. "Teddy?" "Oh hey louise what's going on?" "You need to go to the hospital... it's everyone. Please come." I remember saying that. Saying please, begging for support. I was almost in denial of what I had seen. "Louise? What's wrong? What happened?" "Just... come to the hospital teddy." I hung up on him and returned the phone. Rudy and his dad walked in with me silently. I asked the desk "Are they here? My family? The belchers?" "They are but you cant see them yet... I'm so sorry I promise we'll let you in soon." The three of us sat down. "I'm sorry Louise.." Rudy told me. "Thanks Rudy when teddy gets you guys can go if you'd like I know you have things to do." "Are you sure because we can cancel it's ok." "I'm sure." Teddy arrived frantically awhile later. "Louise?!? What's happening?!?" I couldn't even get a word out before I started bawling. Everyone was looking at me. But I didn't care because I couldn't focus on them. "Louise you have to calm down you have to breathe." I kept hearing but I couldn't. How was I supposed to calm down when I was the only one of the family not there? "Belcher family?" I hear a doctor call. I take teddy with me. "Can i ask how you are related to the family?" "Uhm.. I'm her uncle and she's their daughter." I hear teddy say in order to come in with me. The doctor leads us to a door, "We Couldnt save them. The damage was too severe from the crash. I'm so sorry, but you can say goodbye if you'd like." There's no reply from me or teddy but We walk in, mom and dad are in the same room but gene and tina aren't here. I touch dad with my hand but he's cold. "I'm sorry, dad." I whispered next to him as I gave him another hug for the last time. Mom was already cold as well. And I see her glasses next to her, I pick them up and take them with me. Seeing gene and tina somehow felt worse because my siblings and my best friends had died, And I witnessed it. "I'm sorry tina I'm sorry I'm so so sorry." I kept repeating as I hugged her for the final time. I took her glasses too, atleast it was something. "Oh Gene.." his hand was freezing and stiff, he must have been dead before they arrived... Teddy had been crying too but he respectfully kept his distant. A doctor came in "I'm sorry we need you to leave now so we can prepare them." "I'll see you guys soon ok?" I whisper to their bodies before I walk out with teddy. Teddy drove me home, MY home. I fell into my bed still crying over what happened. Teddy slept on the couch that night. The next was as horrible as the first. "Louise, I know you don't wanna get out of bed.. but it's 1pm please come eat." I couldn't reply. I couldn't even get up. Not even moving. "Here, I brought you a grilled cheese. Please eat it. I'll be back in a bit." Teddy had told me. How can I eat when my family's dead, suddenly this place went from a home to house. My stomach had been growling at me for ages but i still couldn't move. How can they be dead? I need them. Why did they leave me? What did I do wrong? Guiltily, I eat the sandwich and make a trip to the bathroom. I can hear teddy make phones calls in the kitchen. I wish I didn't, just hearing him talk about it confirms how real it is. I make sure to take the plate back out so he knows I ate and go back to my room. I pick up moms glasses from the night stand. "Please come back mom. Please." I already started crying again. "I miss you." The next time teddy comes in its night time. "Louise I need you to shower and then you can back to sleep." I still can't answer him, but my stomach can, by growling more at him. "Look I'll order some pizza and you shower ok?" I appreciate him trying and I know some person has to stay here but I wish he wouldn't. Reluctantly I go shower, which just makes me cry again. Why won't they come back? I miss them and they left me, but why? Was it all a lie? Everything they told me? How could they do this. I hate them. How can you hate someone who's dead? I'm so confused, i miss my family, my friends I wish they didn't leave me. Teddy knocks on the door letting me know the pizzas here. I go out to eat it but it just makes me cry. This was the last meal we ate together. The night before I went to Rudy's we agreed to get pizza, with the classic Gene and dad fighting over pepperoni and settling on half and half. It wasn't anything special just a classic and easy dinner. I can't even finish the pizza and teddy starts crying too. So here we are crying over our family who decided it was time to leave us. And the stupid police can't even serve us justice. As teddy calms down he starts to tell me "louise i have to go to morts tomorrow... i know it seems early but I gave him a call and he said he would do the funeral for free. Do you want to come with me? You don't have to see them again you could give input maybe." I agreed to go, but I have no idea what's gonna happen, I've never been to a funeral before, let alone plan one. I hope it's fitting, I don't want any of that cuddly crap it needs to match them. I'll make sure to visit them everyday even if I become homeless. Well am I gonna be homeless? Is teddy gonna leave too right after the funeral? And what about the restaurant, will we close it? We can't close the restaurant it's all I have left of them. How will I make money for rent? Will i be sent off to another family? I don't want a new family I want mine. All this over thinking led me to not being able to sleep until 1AM, I hope we don't have to go early tomorrow. I actually hope we don't have to go at all. I woke up at 10AM but i couldn't manage to get out of bed for another hour. Teddy asked me if I wanted breakfast but i denied. We walked one door over soon later. "This meeting is going to be... very hard to say the least if you need a break you can just ask me to stop ok, both of you." Mort told us while we stood in his door way, his eyes almost looked teary themselves. I stopped making eye contact when he said that, and just walked in. "Before we start, would you like to see them, they only have blankets on right now though so be aware." Mort offered. I shook my head. I can't, I can't see them like that. Would they be angry I didn't want to see them, dead? Would they understand? He took us too his offer, "let's start with some... easy questions." He said. "Open or closed casket?" I have to do this for them. I can't stay silent forever I have to say what they can't. "Open." I said. "Ok, I will need you to bring me back some clothes so I can prep them is that ok?" Mort asked. "Yes." Teddy answered for me. "Is there a day you would prefer to have the funeral?" Mort asked. "Well, what's today?" I really didn't know what day it was, I've lost all sense of time. "Todays Tuesday." He told me. "We should do it on a Saturday then." I told him, my eyes staring themselves. "Very well, would you prefer morning, afternoon, or night?" I look to teddy to answer this one. "Afternoon." He answers for me. "Ok louise did your parents have a will, or maybe a safe they could have kept it in?" Mort asks me. "I'm.. not sure." I was confused when he asked this. Hes a mortician not a lawyer. "Ok well youll need to check. If they do you can give it to a lawyer who will exam it and proceed with what it says, if you don't find one then everything will be left to you, to do with as please. This isn't relevant to the funeral, but I've heard that some people find it easier to deal with at the same time of the funeral." He finished. "Thank you Mort." Teddy said, clearly overwhelmed. Mort started asking actual planning questions like, how many people would come, and if we wanted catering. I stopped listening after that, and I guess teddy took over. That doesn't matter, not what food they'd want. They aren't here anymore. They left. "Louise? Are you sure you don't wanna see them one more time before we go?" Teddy asked. "Yes, we can bring over the clothes later, thanks mort." And as soon as we left the office, I started bawling again. "I'm sorry louise, I know, I know. Let it out." Teddy kept saying, with a hand behind my back. "Here, I have an idea." He pulls out dads keys, which he must've gotten from mort. He unlocks the restaurant and has me sit at the bar, still crying. "Here." He serves me some ice cream from the machine and himself some too. So we both sit at the bar, eating ice cream and crying over them. This is the first time we've been down here sense the accident. "Teddy.. what do we do about the restaurant?" I ask him trying to breathe. "Well, what do you wanna do? I don't think selling its an option, but you could keep it open. It just... wouldn't be the same." He said. "Teddy how would I keep a restaurant open im 9 and most of the crew quit on us." I say hoping to get a chuckle. I did. "Well do you know some of the recipes?" I did, I've seen dads board enough times to know some of his burgers. "Yea I do." "Well since you can't really cook yet, I could make the Patties and fries, and you could prepare the burgers and wait on costumers." "But it's so soon, and it's dads restaurant what would he want?" "Louise I think he'd want you to carry on what he started. But only if that's what you want." "Yea, i think so. But that's not really what I meant, dad still owns the restaurant how do we transfer it and deal with the money?" "Don't worry about that, that's boring legal stuff I'll do it." What he really did was call fishoeder, ask the rent, and tell him that he and I runs it now. Which, fishoeder already being sketchy, was fine with. "We should... go get their clothes now." I tell teddy. When we were upstairs I was hesitant about walking into there rooms. It felt like it's been so long. Teddy waited for me as I picked out the outfit that would perfectly match Gene and keep him comfortable where he is now. I got his favorite yellow shirt and some long blue pants. Next was tina. She was harder but i settled on a blue frilly shirt and black leggings. When i go to give it to teddy I say "I think you should help me find something for dad. He'd probably be happy to know you were helping." Dad like wearing white, but we decided to give him a gray shirt for a touch of flare and one of his many sweatpants. Mom was the hardest of all; she had so many outfits and she wore them all, which one was her favorite? She had mostly red clothes so we gave her a red v neck with black leggings. While we dug in the closet teddy asked "Do your parents really have a safe?" "No they keep important paperwork in a box under the bed." I dug it out since I knew he couldn't. "Here, you can look, I don't wanna know." "Let's keep that for later and deliver these clothes, then we need too eat." "Alright." We delivered the clothes without me sobbing which was nice for once. "What cereal do you want? we can't order out again but you also have no food." Teddy asked me in the kitchen. "The kind with the marshmallows in them." I answered. So that's what I ended up eating, marshmallow cereal, it was though because the milk was expired. "Teddy, are you gonna like? Live here with me now? What about your house?" "Do you want me to live here with you? I know we aren't really related and you also have your aunt gayle." "I mean yeah, and aunt gayle is a little insane." "Well i have my house payed off so I could rent it out for extra money." "That's nice." "Hey I need you to shower and do hygienic stuff tonight ok?" "Alright, I'll get it done." I appreciate that teddy is taking more of a uncle approach than a father approach, maybe he knows he could never be what dad was. Or that I wouldn't want a new dad, but atleast he understood what was going on. How I felt, on some level. After I showered he asked what time I normally go to bed. I told him ten. Which wasn't true but it's not like I've been sleeping well anyway. "What do you wanna watch then?" He asked referring to the tv. We ended up watching a compilation show until he told me to go to sleep. "Teddy, if you're gonna stay here, you know you could sleep in mom and dads bed right? It's ok if you do." I told him as he got ready to sleep on the couch once again. "I know, but it feels wrong to do that. The couch is fine." "If you say so." And i left to bed, I tried not to think to much as I fell asleep.  I didn't wake up until late once again but when I woke up good news awaited me. "Good morning louise, I found the numbers of your dads supply guys and let them know, they agreed to keep delivering to us after I told them the new situation." Teddy told me. "That's nice." Was all I said. "What do you want from the store? I've already started making a list." He asked. This was my chance to get stuff we weren't allowed to have before, so I asked for those freezy pops and cheeze itz. We were always more of a goldfish family. The trip to the store was easy breezy and good distraction, especially since only a few people were there. Teddy got some paper and markers from the clearance section which I thought was weird because it wasn't on the list. I found out what they were for back at home. "I know you don't really wanna think about it, but we need to invite people to the service. If you can write out a list of everyone you want to come, I can do the rest." Making the list was hard. I mostly made it based off of who each person would want to come. Dad would want teddy, clearly, mort, big bob, marshmallow, and maybe calvin fishoeder. Mom would want aunt gayle, Gretchen, ginger, mudflap, critter, and mickey. Tina would want, susmita, Darryl, Zeke, Tammy, Jimmy junior, josh and Jocelyn. Gene would want alex, I don't think he'd want Courtney but I'll invite her just in case, and peter pescadero. I decided to invite rudy and his dad because they were there when it happened, for some reason it took me an hour to make that list, but teddy go it done. He wrote down there names and the invite, and we delivered the letters in their mailboxes to make sure they got there in time. This took my whole day which left me with two days until the funeral. Would I need to make a speech? Will people be mad? Well, atleast they'll be together. And I'll be with them again, one day. But after sending out the invites and planning the funeral there was nothing left to do ok my end, so for Thursday and Friday I watched tv, cried and watched more tv while teddy was working through paper work with the restaurant and renting out his house. He also had to go to the bank and do some sort of money transfer thing. But Saturday was different. Teddy had gotten a tux from mort but what would I wear? Can I still wear my ears or would that be rude? This is about them so what do I do? And what if something goes wrong, what if they lost the bodies or something? I pretty much spent up until the actually funeral worrying about the funeral. It seemed respective though, I made sure to say good bye to each of them so I wouldn't regret it. I started with dad, "hey dad. I miss you. I promise I'll keep the restaurant open for you, and visit you always. I'll see you soon I promise." He was the first to be buried with mom, tina, and Gene next. I felt like I couldn't even depart from him before I spoke to mom. "Hi mom. I'm sorry I didn't say I love you more, because I do. I hope you knew that. I'll make you proud ok? I swear." She was buried without her glasses because I kept them with me, but she was still the same. I saw tina next. "Hey T, all your friends came to see you. They miss you. I wish you could have lived longer, maybe you could have been a writer, or I could've looked up to you longer. I'm sorry it had to be this way. But I'll come see you, I love you." When I got to Gene my goodbye sounded more like a jumbled up word puzzle. But if he were here he would understand. "Gene, I'm sorry you didn't get to live your dream but you were the best brother if that's any constellation. Don't tell anyone but you gave the best hugs. I love you, and I won't forget you." And that was it. They were gone. Underground. I choose to give a speech, but I went last. Teddy went first "as most of you know I met the belcher family by being a regular in their restaurant, and soon a regular in their adventures. The belcher family went on many adventures and have many more to go on in another life. I'll miss them all and I'll never forget them." Big bob gave a shorter speech "I missed out on being a father to bob, but I got to see him become a wonderful father, he was taken too soon from his job, but his ideas will always be here." Aunt gayle gave a speech that turned into being about her cats and her poetry it was so bad it almost stopped me from crying. Then i had to go, I had to wing it. "My family died in a car crash. They all died and left me here alone. Without them. And no words or speeches can describe how much I hate them for that. Or how much I miss them. I will never not miss my family. I won't not miss dads tiny obsessions, I won't not miss moms boarderline hoarding, I won't not miss Tina's passion for writing and I won't not miss genes ideas for putting words to music. But I can't wait for them, i have to finish what they started. We all do, if you're here then you somehow contributed to them in you're own way. I don't want my family to be remembered for what they were in the past but who they became now and what they did for all of us. And I know I'll see them again one day." And for the third time today I was bawling over my dead family. On the car ride home teddy started talking. "Louise you did a great job up there, and just that speech alone would have made them proud. I'm proud, and with the restaurant you get to choose how you honor them." "Hm thanks teddy. I'm glad you're here." I told him. "Of course, you ready for the next step?" He asked. "Yeah. I am."

End part 1