Santana stood glued to the floor at the foot of her mother's hospital bed. She couldn't seem to take her eyes off of her. The color was slowly returning to her mother's face, but Santana couldn't shake the image of her ghostlike skin and the bloodstained clothes and bathtub. Was it only three hours ago that she had returned home to that horrific sight? So much had happened since and Santana could apparently only focus on her mother's face and trying to ignore the weight of her father standing just behind her.
Their mother was still pale, but her eyes were open and she was alert and aware of her surroundings. Rachel was cuddled up into her side, half laying on the bed herself, while Quinn sat in a chair near the foot of bed seemingly very interested in the specks in the tile floor. Despite her current situation, their mother still wore that dazed smile, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
"Oh, my girls," she said. "You three are the best medicine there is." She patted Rachel's hair and gently closed her eyes though still awake, much like she had to Santana just the night before.
Santana wanted to scoff. The woman nearly died and yet she was hardly phased. Santana was desperate to find out what happened in their now destroyed home. No matter what drugs she was currently on to ease pain, there had to be some memory of how she ended up covered in blood in an overflowing bathtub. The tub that Santana had found her in. That Quinn had seen her laying next to.
"What happened, Mom?" she asked seriously. She felt a twinge of guilt for not asking how she felt or if she was okay, but this is what her life was. It was survival of the fittest and if Shelby wouldn't own up to the horrors she knew her own husband was guilty of, then Santana was damn well going to find out what she could do to protect herself and her sisters.
Shelby briefly glanced up at Leroy and shifted in her bed. Rachel cuddled closer. "Sh, Santana. I'm okay, and that's the important thing, right?" she asked rhetorically. "Quinn, baby, you're quiet." Santana felt it was very Quinn-like of her mother to change the subject so quickly. She made a mental note.
"I'm fine. Just glad you're okay," said the blonde with a quick glance to the woman in the bed. Santana felt her father shift behind her.
"Girls, I think your mother has had enough. She needs her rest, let's go." His voice was low and emotionless. Not for the first time in her life, Santana felt chills down her spine.
"No!" Shelby cried with little strength. For the first time in recent memory, Santana heard the energy, desire, and fear in her mother's voice, however weak. She met her husband's eyes to plead with him. "Let them stay just a bit longer, Leroy. I want to hear about school. Rachel, weren't you auditioning for a play, sweetheart?"
Santana watched as disappointment fell on Rachel's face. "Yeah, I got the butterfly, remember?" Rachel lifted her head from her mother's shoulder to look her more directly in the face. " I get to sing a solo and everything. I told you the other day and we talked all about it."
Shelby wore her dazed smile and closed her eyes while muttering something like 'yes, yes that's right,' but Leroy had enough. He barked at the girls to leave the room and within minutes, they were gone and Shelby was asleep.
The ride home was uncomfortable to say the least. Leroy sat in the front passenger seat of the cab with Rachel sandwiched between Quinn and Santana in the backseat. It was completely silent.
Santana had so many questions invading her head. Could this whole thing really just blow over? Would Leroy get away with an assault that he was surely to blame for? Where had he been all day? How was today still the same day as this morning when Quinn and Rachel were fighting in the bathroom? She needed sleep, but knew it wouldn't come for awhile.
The cab pulled up to their apartment building and the three girls got out. Quinn grabbed Rachel's hand and both girls hurried inside without so much as a glance back. Santana turned around to notice her father was still sitting in the taxi. He carefully eyed his eldest daughter. Santana knew the glare she was receiving was yet another warning. She felt her blood boil as it always did when Leroy was around, and then was shocked when the cab began to drive away, her father still inside.
She felt glued to the snowy ground. She wanted to chase the cab and scream at her father. She wanted to demand to know where he was going and why he'd done what he did. Instead, she stood staring blankly at the end of her street where the car had just rounded the corner out of sight. Her father was gone, yet again, to who knows where and Santana was left to pick up the pieces.
She trudged inside, relieved to feel the warmth emanating from the building. Quinn and Rachel stood waiting by the elevator, dodging questions from Joe. The friendly doorman was asking something about where their father was when Santana approached.
"He stayed with her at the hospital, Joe," she interrupted. "Hi. But yeah, he hung back with Mom. Once we saw that everything was alright and Mom was talking, they both thought we'd been through enough and should head home. We didn't want to but.. " Santana trailed off with a fake smile and an innocent shrug of the shoulder.
"Parents will be parents," Joe chuckled finishing her sentence. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, right?" Santana forced a giggle and felt Quinn do the same next to her. Rachel eyed the conversation with her usual intense curiosity. Santana thought she could most certainly live without her parents, she'd been doing it practically her whole life. "Well, I'm so relieved everything is going to be okay, girls. You know if you need anything at all you just give a holler, okay?"
Santana thanked the kind man they'd grown up with and ushered her sisters into the elevator when it finally arrived. She let out a breath she wasn't aware she was holding.
"San, where'd Daddy go? He's not really at the hospital with Mom.." asked Rachel. Her hat was nearly covering her large brown eyes. Santana pulled the hat off her sister's head and was honest.
"I have no idea. I just have a feeling he might not be back for awhile," she said. They got off the elevator and each of them paused before opening the door to 3H.
Rachel's next question died on her tongue upon seeing the inside of her home. Leroy always made sure the home was immaculate, to see it in such disarray was alarming. "What happened?!"
Quinn, who hadn't uttered a word since the hospital, finally spoke. "Your Dad is a psychopath, that's what happened." She shook her head and walked toward her bedroom, carefully stepping over pieces of broken glass as she did so.
"San-" Rachel started but was cut off by Santana. "Rachel, if you're going to say something mean about Quinn, this is the one time I'm going to tell you to drop it. Just let her be, okay? We're all scared and confused and we deal with it differently. Quinn likes to be mean."
Rachel took off her coat as Santana did the same. "You're scared, too?" she asked.
"Obviously. It's gonna take time to figure out what the hell happened here, but I promise that we will and I promise it'll be okay," Santana told her. She sometimes cursed the fact that she sugar-coated things for Rachel. True, Rachel was young, but she and Quinn often acted like she was a toddler because of the horrors they tried to keep from her. They wanted to keep Rachel's childhood as innocent as possible. On the other hand, Santana often treated Quinn as her equal. She acted much older than 14 and had been dealing with the abuse just as long as Santana had. As much as she tried to protect Quinn, her blonde sister was also her confidant. She couldn't hide things from Quinn like she could from Rachel. She desperately wished she could.
"Okay," Rachel said. Santana silently thanked whatever God there was for the resilience of young children. "I'm going to use the bathroom and go to bed."
Santana's heart stopped and the mention of the bathroom. She knew it was likely still covered in blood and Rachel would be scarred enough just from seeing the house in it's current state, she didn't need to see that too. "Wait! Let me uh... just clean up a little bit and make sure there's no glass okay? Just hold it for a few minutes."
Rachel didn't put up a fight. She carefully tiptoed around the glass, lifting up the coffee table to it's proper position on her way to the bedroom. Santana gave it five minutes max before some type of argument broke out between her two sisters, but she was determined to use it to clean the bathroom as best she could.
She walked in and her palms got sweaty, just as they did when she discovered their mother. The adrenaline that coursed through her body mere hours ago had prevented her from properly taking in the sight of the bathroom. There was blood in the tub and smeared marks on the wall. The shampoo bottles were askew and on the floor, while the toilet had one of Leroy's t-shirts floating in it. Santana took a breath before catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She had noticed the blood- my mother's blood- on the side of her neck. She could only imagine what the front of her winter coat must actually look like. She took off her Cheerio's top and skirt as to not get them filth, and did her best to wipe clean the bathroom in just her sports bra and booty shorts.
She turned on the shower and watched as the blood swirled around the drain. She took the small rub, also stained with blood and threw it in the tub to rinse. She'd properly wash it or throw it out later. After about a solid 15 minutes Santana was satisfied enough with the state of the bathroom for Rachel to use.
She went across the hall to the room she shared with her sisters and was surprised to find the two of them co-existing in silence. Rachel had changed into her pajamas and was solemnly sitting on her bed, clearly in her head. Quinn was also changed out of her Cheerios uniform and it looked to Santana like she was instead dressed in their red Cheerios hoodie, but it was hard to see. Quinn was completely covered up to her neck in the blankets from her bed. A quick glance at the clock told Santana it was nearly 11:00pm. What a fucking day.
"Can I use the bathroom now?" Rachel's voice was small and she looked exhausted. Santana couldn't blame her. "Yeah, go ahead. Grab something to eat too, Rach. Your system needs it."
Rachel turned around dramatically. "It's almost 11! I can't eat that late!"
Quinn sighed loudly. Santana rolled her eyes. "Rachel, it's fine. You need a little sugar, you literally passed out today. Grab a cookie or a banana or something."
Rachel left the room leaving Santana alone with Quinn's quiet figure.
"You okay?" Santana asked.
Quinn didn't move from her position on her side, facing the wall. "Sure."
Santana knew not to push Quinn. She knew her sister would open up in her own time, otherwise she'd snap, but at the same time, she couldn't let her bottle a day like this up. "Quinn..." she started.
"Santana, I'm fine."
"No, you aren't."
"STOP!"
Santana remained calm despite Quinn's sudden outburst. "Stop what?"
"Doing this! Talking! You've done it all day. Just leave me alone."
Santana moved from where she was standing by her own bed and sat on the edge of Quinn's. "I'm not going to leave you alone. It's going to be okay."
Finally, Quinn sat up and looked Santana in the eye. "How can you say that? How can you keep telling Rachel that? You have no idea what's going on! You just cam back here and cleaned up the house that was destroyed by a fight our parents had. You have Mom's blood on your face and you aren't even phased. So maybe you think it'll be okay, but I'll never get that image of Mom lying there out of my head! I'll see Rachel collapsing forever, and I'll feel him... just.. breathing down our backs all the time! I'm tired of it. And I swear to God, Santana, I might go to school tomorrow and never come back."
Rachel chose that moment to come back into the room, a sleeve of Ritz crackers in her hand. "Should I put my music on?" She had gotten into Quinn's habit whenever a fight broke out and was unsure what the current mood between her big sisters was.
Quinn muttered a 'no' and turned to face the wall again. She closed her eyes and prayed for sleep.
Santana helped Rachel into bed and said she'd come back in a minute. She went back into the living room and righted the couch cushions that had been strewn about. She felt a sob rise up in her throat at the truth in Quinn's words and fought to swallow it down.
She hated feeling so weak and being unable to find a lie or inaccuracy in Quinn's statement. What normal person comes home and cleans up her mother's blood like it's no big deal? Like it's just a mess they didn't get to cleaning before they left the house? She had held her mother's limp body a few hours ago and spent the rest of the time worrying about Quinn, Rachel, and Leroy.
Santana pulled her knees to her chest on the couch and pulled out her phone to dial a number she had memorized. She listened to the ring and the happy, yet concerned greeting at the other end of the late night call.
"I need you, Britt. I need you so bad."
As always, thank you so much for reading and I am SO sorry for the delay!
BSincerely- Sorry for the wait! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
beaner008- I'm back again! Hoping you enjoyed this chapter and will stick around for more!
Guest- Thank you!
rainbowbright108- I hope you're still reading! We'll be getting into Quinn and what's going on with her soon.
Addy- Thank you! I hope this chapter keeps you reading too!
.143- Thank you so much!
.it.13- I updated! Here ya go!
Guest- We'll be getting to that!
Guest- Here's an update!
clj7- My Spanish isn't great but I'm glad you like the story. We'll find out what's going on with Quinn soon. I love the relationship between Santana and Quinn soon. We'll have more of it coming!
Dark Nerdy Weirdo- I'm so sorry for the long wait! Please stay tuned for more!
Guest- Here's an update!