The Return

Chapter Nine

Scarlett

Night crawled slowly over the Leighton home and with it came a darkness that threatened more than Scarlett was prepared to handle. She didn't once bring up the incident in the pool. How could she when he played it off as normal?

It wasn't normal...

Nothing about them was...

Getting everyone out after her near-death experience wasn't too hard. One by one, they all got bored watching her catch her breath. The ones that bothered, took pictures. The ones that didn't, pointed, and laughed. And when it was clear the DJ wasn't going to try and revive the party, they scattered, calling her every name in the book and scouting to trade up.

As for cleaning... she had her parents to thank for the walk-in living room closet. Whatever was littered on the floor she shoved inside, whatever was broken or ripped, placed out of sight.

Groggy and weary, she wriggled out of her wet clothes and slipped into a warm pair of pajamas. And when her mother drove her Lexus SUV into the driveway, Scarlett was already on the porch.

"How did it go?" She asked impatiently by the door like a puppy long deprived of affection.

"What did we talk about ambushing me before I can get inside?" Jenna-Sue-Leighton said tugging two bright yellow grocery bags from the car and shutting the door with her hip.

Scarlett wasn't a spitting image of her mother. Jenna-Sue passed down the squinting brown eyes and the button nose from her side of the family. The sun touched clay skin and thick short curls were all Ruben Leighton's handwork. Although Scarlett hardly wore her natural hair, she was known for the waist-length messy locks she insisted on keeping.

Jenna-Sue shuffled past Scarlett, somehow clicking the lock on the car. It beeped and flashed. 

Scarlett followed her mother down the hall and into the kitchen. She placed the grocery bags on the counter and began unloading them.

"I don't like not knowing." Scarlett leaned against the archway. She was dreading to admit it; her mother looked older. And even though Scarlett wanted to chuck it up to a busy day at the hospital, she knew it was more than the role of a NICU nurse that was taking its toll on Jenna-Sue.

"You're a kid, you don't have to know everything. That's one of the perks of being young." Scarlett would beg to differ.

She pushed off the wall and joined her mother with the groceries.

They worked in a systematic silence. Scarlett unloaded the perishables and Jenna-Sue handled the canned produce. "They're letting him go..." Jenna-Sue said, lost in her own recollections. "The board found that he's been negligent with his patients and we have to..." She paused. "...Buckle up for the worst."

One of the things Scarlett Leighton's parents shared in common was that they were both medical practitioners. Where Ruben Leighton was a radiologist, Jenna-Sue was a NICU nurse.

"And how's he handling it?"

For now, the only thing the Leighton's had to worry about were the speculations that were getting out of hand.

At St. Connelly hospital, Ruben Leighton's alleged negligence was all anyone could talk about, nurses and doctors betting on how soon the hospital would let him go.

Jenna-Sue blew out her cheeks.

There was only so much overpriced counseling could solve in a couple that was preparing to face legal action after countless patients were misdiagnosed. 

"He's not ready to be unemployed." Jenna-Sue bit the inside of her cheek.

Scarlett dropped her voice to a whisper. "Do you blame him? He's spent years at that hospital."

Jenna-Sue shoved a milk carton into the fridge and didn't close it. She stood there, looking into it as if it held the secrets to the universe.

Sniffling.

"He wasn't like this before... He wasn't careless." Scarlett winced.

When she first overheard her parents bickering on the patio, she convinced herself that the hospital was racist. Taking the easiest way out and blaming the dark-skinned radiologist. Forgetting that he was a father, a husband, a person. "When we met, he was known for his talent. He could read X-rays and CT scans faster and more accurately than anyone." Jenna-Sue shut the fridge and reached into the grocery bag.

"Maybe that's what happened?" Scarlett took a step closer to her mother. "Maybe he wanted to keep up that reputation and he misdiagnosed those people."

"One of them is dead, Scarlett. He knew what was on the line." Jenna-Sue placed the cans of beans in the cabinet. "A dumb reputation wasn't worth killing a man." She paused. "I want to be by his side. I want to believe that it was a mistake."

"Then why don't you believe it?"

His car hummed in the driveway. His headlights hurried up the walls from the living room windows.

"Because nobody makes the same mistake three times in a row." Jenna-Sue scrunched up the grocery bags and tossed them in the trash. She pushed past Scarlett and made her way upstairs.

They couldn't fix what was broken from the start.