𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐋 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄¹ ⸻ hawk

𝟬𝟬𝟯 commotion

CHAPTER THREE,
commotion

꧁꧂

NIGHT HAD FALLEN quicker than Scarlett would have liked. After her frantic 911 call, an ambulance and several cop cars showed up outside her apartment complex in minutes, and before she knew it, night had fallen, and the on-call EMTs tended to her mother.

Scarlett never thought the night before the first day of school would end as it did, but it had. It had all happened so fast. She knew of her mother's usage of drugs, but she never thought it would get so bad. It was her mother. She was like a forest fire you couldn't extinguish but had to wait out.

"Scarlett,"

The redhead turned her head, her eyes sweeping over a police officer with a notepad and a pen. "We know this must be hard, but we need you to answer some questions." The deputy continued, propping the boot of his foot onto the back of the ambulance.

She nodded in response, mentally preparing herself for the question the deputy was about to ask.

The officer cleared his throat, "Did your mother ━ always use hard drugs?" He asked, clicking the top of his pen, ready to write down the answer to his question.

"Um ━ yeah, sometimes." She answered, her voice soft-spoken with a slight quiver to it. The deputy nodded, beginning to scribble the answer down into his notepad.

His head turned back towards Scarlett, "And what do you mean by sometimes?" He quizzed, looking back and forth between Scarlett and the police officers trailing in and out of the girl's home.

Scarlett hugged herself with her arms, growing cold by the slight breeze. "That I know of she only used drugs sometimes. She was more into alcohol."

The officer hummed in response, again scribbling the answer into his notepad. "Where's your father?" He asked unexpectedly, staring down at the redheaded girl with tears spilling beneath her eyes.

Scarlett found herself growing hot. Any mention of her father seemed to set her off, and she hadn't known why. He had left years ago, making her mother fall off the bandwagon, and that's when both of their lives seemed to go downhill. "Gone. Are we done?" She asked the officer bitterly, using her sleeve to wipe her tears.

His mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. He hadn't meant to touch a part of the girl's heart, yet he had. Scarlett took the deputy's silence as an answer and nodded, hopping off the back of the ambulance.

From afar, Scarlett watched her mother be wheeled past on a stretcher, an IV bag pushing liquids into her body. Two EMTs rolled her mother toward the ambulance where she sat just moments ago, answering the questions the officer seemed to have.

The redhead broke into a slight jog, trying to catch answers from the EMTs before they took her mother. "Wait, where are you taking her?" She asked, reaching for the stretcher her mother laid on top of, but only silence followed her question.

The EMTs ignored the girl staring at her unconscious mother and continued to wheel her to the ambulance, wanting nothing more than to save her life rather than take it. But one of the two EMTs was kind enough to stop, "We are taking her into the hospital's care, where she will stay until further notice."

The EMT answered, immediately rushing back over to the ambulance and hopping into the passenger side of the ambulance. Nearby officers closed the ambulance doors, hitting the side of it, signaling they were clear to drive to the hospital.