Scene 16

May 2019 Married 8 years

CJ(Cooper Junior) 7 years old

Ella (Charlotte Elizabeth) almost 6

Carter King Freedman 3 years old.

Setting Living room.

Cooper wakes up at 3 am and finds Charlotte's side of the bed empty. The sheets are cold. He pads his way into the living room and finds her laying on the couch eyes closed with her book on top of her chest. He covers her with a blanket. Her eyes open. "I'm not sleeping."

"Oh," He picks up her legs and sits down on the couch, placing her legs back on top of him. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really." She sits up next to him.

"We could watch a movie." Cooper suggests.

"Coop, why don't you go back to bed?"

"I can't sleep, either." Cooper scrolls down the list of movies with the remote. "What do you want to watch?"

"Anything."

"We could always move." Cooper throws the option out there.

"HE should move." Charlotte says with venom in her voice. "We're doctor's. We both have established careers. We can't just pick up and move. He's just got out of jail. He should be the one to move!"

Cooper agrees. "If he had a shred of decency in him, he would move away."

"Don't count on that. He doesn't have a shred of decency in him." Charlotte says again with venom and anger.

"If you really want to move we can try...-"

"I don't want to move, Cooper. St. Ambrose is my life, well, besides you and the kids. St. Ambrose is my hospital. I've been running it for years and I'm not giving it up because of him."

Cooper agrees. "I know how much you love being the boss. I'd never want you to give that up." Charlotte finally smiles and gives him a playful slap on the elbow.

Charlotte answers. "Besides, you've had your practice here for 15 years, you couldn't just up and leave and start a new one somewhere else."

Cooper sighs, "I wouldn't even want to. If anything, I'd retire before starting up a new practice."

"You'd miss your patients in LA just as much as I'd miss St. Ambrose." Charlotte sighs.

"So what do we do? How do we co-exist in the same city as that horrible man?" Cooper asks.

"I don't know." Charlotte grabs Cooper's hand.

"Look at us. We're not sleeping. We're constantly looking over our shoulders." Cooper tells her.

"He won't come after me again. I scared him when he was in the hospital, before he was arrested." Charlotte tells Cooper.

Cooper puts his hand on her knee. "I don't trust him and I don't want us to live looking over our shoulders, that's why I suggested moving out of here."

Charlotte says firmly, "we're not moving, not an option. He ruined my life enough, already, that night. He's not taking my career away from me too."

"I agree with you, Charlotte, but how long can we live like this? He's only been free one week and neither one of us has been sleeping."

"We don't have a choice." Charlotte leans her head on Cooper's shoulder and they watch the movie. "It'll get easier, Coop," she hopes.

END OF SCENE 16