Chapter 8; Old Ghosts
1349 Words
Scarlett's POV
My apartment didn't look like a place where two nine-year-olds lived.
It looked like a place where someone had very specific taste and had executed it without compromise, clean lines, colorful walls, expensive art works on the walls. Then the twins had arrived and left soccer shoes by the door and a half-finished science project on the dinning table.
Aiden hit me first at the door, with full speed, no warning and arms around my waist. I caught him and squeezed him once, hard.
"Mom." He pulled back, already talking. "Val told Uncle Spence about the math test before I could explain the context..."
"There was no context," Valeria said from the couch, not looking up from the journal in her lap. "It was an A minus and you cried."
"I had something in my eye..."
"Both eyes?" Valeria asked, clearly not convinced.
"Val." I said, my tone carrying warning.
Spencer appeared from the kitchen doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder and the expression of a man who had referred this specific argument twice already tonight. His eyes found mine and without words, I could tell, he was very glad I was home.
I handed him my bag and he took it without being asked.
"That was a pretty long surgery" he said quietly."How's your back doing?"
"It's fine."
He looked at me the way he looked at patients who said they were fine, then he disappeared back into the kitchen and heard the quiet sound of him opening the cabinet.
He came back and set the glass of water and two tablets on the counter beside me without saying a word and I took them.
"I said I was fine."
"You also said that this morning," he said.
I took the table.
Aiden's math test was on the counter. He climbed onto the stool beside me while Spence served the dessert.
"Walk me through what you got wrong," I said.
"I knew question seven." He said. "I just.... I rushed it."
"So it wasn't that you didn't know it?" I asked.
"I should've caught it." He said quietly.
Spencer leaned against the opposite counter, arms crossed. "An A minus is a strong grade, Aiden."
"It should've been an A." He paused. "An A plus, like Val."
The table went quiet.
"We're twins," he said, not looking up. "We're supposed to be the same."
I felt something sharp move through my chest. "Aiden...."
"She got an A plus and I got an A minus and we literally share DNA, so..."
"That's enough." The words came out sharper than I meant it to, It made Aiden's head come up and Val went still beside him.
"I'm sorry." I exhaled and reached over and covered his hand with mine. "I'm sorry that came out wrong." I waited until he looked at me. "You are not your sister and Val is not you. You share DNA and a bedroom you're both too old to still be sharing...."
"We like it like that," Valeria said.
"I know you do." I kept my eyes on Aiden. "You're my little fire. You came into this world loud, early and furious and you have been yourself, completely and without apology every single day since. That is not a lesser version of anything." I squeezed his hand once. "An A minus on the test you rushed means next time you don't rush. That's the whole lesson, It has nothing to do with Val.'
Aiden looked at my hand over his, and then looked up at me.
"She's still smarter than me." He said quietly.
"In some things." I held his gaze. "You read a room better than anyone I've ever met. You walked into your new school last year and had three friends by lunch, It took Val three weeks." I felt Valeria open her mouth and held up one finger without looking at her. "I love you both. You're not the same person and you're not supposed to be."
Aiden looked at the grade for a moment then picked up his fork. Valeria, without a word, slid her remaining chocolate from dessert across the counter to his side.
Aiden looked at it, then looked at her. "You never give me your chocolate."
"I'm being supportive." She said quietly.
"Since when?" Aiden asked.
"Since right now." Her voice was sharp. "Accept it before I change my mind."
He took it. Spencer sat down across from us and caught my eye over both their heads and the look that passed between us was warm and quiet and I looked back at my plate.
Dessert stretched the way it always did when nobody was ready for the day to end. Aiden had moved on to a detailed account of something that happened at soccer practice involving a cone, a puddle, and a series of decisions he maintained were reasonable. Valeria interrupted two of the three. Spencer asked questions that made Aiden's story longer, which I was certain was intentional.
"Bedtime," I said. "It's past nine already."
"I'm not tired." Aiden groaned.
"Your face disagrees."
He looked at Spencer and Spencer looked back with an expression that offered him zero assistance. He looked at Valeria and she had already closed her journal and was standing up.
"I hate when you're both reasonable," he said, and slid off his stool.
Aiden needed one glass of water that was water and four more minutes of the dinosaur feelings conversation before his eyes started losing the argument with gravity. I sat on the edge of his bed until his breathing evened out, then stood slowly.
Valeria's light was already off. I pushed her door open an inch, she was on her side, journal on the nightstand, lamp off at exactly the angle she preferred.
Spencer was finishing the last of the dishes when I came back downstairs. I picked up the towel from the counter without a word and dried what he handed me and for a while there was just the sound of water.
"You went somewhere during the test conversation," he said.
"Old ghost." I said quietly.
He handed me another glass without pushing it. That was Spencer, he never pushed. Just stayed close enough that it wasn't necessary.
"You should sleep," he said.
"I have emails." I said firmly.
"You always have emails."
"And yet, they don't answer themselves."
He turned the tap off and reached past me for the towel and his hand grazed mine on the counter, just briefly, and neither of us moved for one breath too long.
He stepped back and picked up his jacket.
"I'll be here nine AM on Saturday," He said, voice perfectly controlled. "You sleep you."
"Spence."
He stopped.
"Thank you." I said gently.
He came back across the kitchen and kissed my cheek, the same way he always did and then pulled back.
Neither of us moved for exactly four seconds.
"Goodnight, Scarlett.". He said with a smile.
"Night, Spence." I said.
He left, leaving me in the kitchen listening to the front door close and didn't about the graze of his hand or the usual kiss on the cheek.
I went to my office and opened my laptop.
Moved through emails until one subject line sat differently than everything else.
URGENT: Consultation Request, VIP Patient, Dr. Scarlett Fox Specifically Requested.
I opened it, Read it. The hospital administrator's message was professional and brief. Critical cardiac condition, patient deteriorating, family had specifically requested me by name. Had in fact, refused any other surgeon. Would Dr. Fox accept the case?
The patient file was attached, I clicked on it.
Emma Cruz
I sat very still for a long time with my sleeping children down the hall and the city lights coming through the window and the sound of my own breathing the only thing in the room.
Emma Cruz. Sixty-one. Critical aortic stenosis. Prognosis without intervention: three months.
The woman who had slid divorce papers across her dining room table and told me I had never been their first choice was dying.
Now she was asking for me.
- Writer
