This is my distraction to keep my mind of my exam results that arrive next week. Eek! It was suggested by Twisted Puppy, thanks for the idea. Please review. And be careful as it is possibly triggering for self harmers. Set sometime before Nesting Dolls. I might do a second part with Sara talking to Grissom about her childhood if people want it. Please review.

Distraction

It had been a bad case. Everyone has something that they struggle with. Catherine hates anything to do with kids. Nick has problems with sexual abuse. I can't handle domestic abuse.

I can remember my first domestic abuse case, it was back when I was a CSI in San Francisco, before Grissom called me to Vegas. I'd only been a CSI a few weeks. I was still full of unrealistic idealisms. It was a classic case – alcoholic husband uses wife as punching bag for years and one day goes too far.

Compared to most of the things we see it wasn't too bad. It wasn't a horrific scene with blood splattered up the walls. No disfiguring wounds. No crying children. Just one bruise on her temple. But, Hell, the case floored me. I don't remember going home that night. But I do remember sitting on the floor in my bathroom with a razor blade in front of me. And a half empty bottle of vodka.

I don't remember when I started self harming. But I was pretty young when I realised that the physical pain caused by my father's beatings hurt less than the emotional pain caused by the other things he did. When he beat me, burnt me, broke my bones, it was a distraction.

The first time I actually cut was when I was ten. My dad had been screaming at me, doing the most horrific things to me, beating my mum but for some reason, that night, he wouldn't actually hit me. I'd locked myself in the bathroom to get away from him. I could hear my mum scream and all I wanted was for it to be over. I associated pain with him stopping.

I saw his razor blade lying on the side of the bath and I didn't even think about it. I picked it up and I used it to cut my arm. It wasn't deep, didn't even bleed immediately. After a few seconds beads of blood appeared along the graze. I felt calm, for the first time, I felt truly calm.

That's how I came to be sat on my bathroom floor again. Tonight's case had been a bit too close to home. Except tonight it was the wife that was stabbed to death, not the husband as it had been in my parents case. But there was still a little girl watching as her mother died, just as I had witnessed my father's death.

I was still working my way through the traditional bottle of vodka as I picked up the razor blade and held it tightly in my right hand. I hooked my little finger around the bottom of my sleeve and pulled it up to reveal my scarred forearm. The scars had increased in number and severity so much recently that I had taken to wearing long sleeves even in the hot Nevada sun, keeping the scars away from my prying colleagues eyes.

With a shaking hand I held the razor against my skin and, in one swift movement, cut deeply through the flesh. I looked at the wound through alcohol confused eyes as the blood immediately started to pour, soaking into my trousers and shirt. I knew that I had gone too far but I didn't do anything about it.

I dropped the razor on the tiled floor and picked up the bottle of vodka. Clumsily knocking it over before catching it again and lifting it to my mouth. The anger and fear was draining away with every beat of my heart. I was becoming numb, my dream has always been to become numb.

I vaguely heard someone knocking on the door as I slid down the side of the bath and onto the floor.

---

Gil looked back down at the report he was attempting and shut the file again. The case hadn't affected him much, it was no worse than anything else they saw day in day out but he'd anxiously watched Sara throughout. He hadn't wanted her anywhere near the case but it was all hands on deck and he knew she would fight him if he even suggested removing her from it.

He'd watched her leave the lab, shoulders sagging from the strain and, after seeing the defeat in her eyes as she said good bye, hadn't been able to concentrate on anything since.

Eventually he gave up and left the lab. Thinking about having a glass of whiskey and watching a documentary before bed.

He stopped at a red light and looked around. Sara lived only minutes away. Maybe he would just drive by. Check she'd gone home rather than stopping at a bar.

He saw her car immediately as he pulled into the parking lot in front of her building. He didn't feel relieved, for all he know she had picked up a six pack of beer from a shop and was drinking in there now. Or she had come home and gone back out, leaving her car there. He sat there for ten minutes staring at her window, hoping that maybe she would appear in it and let him know that she was safe.

Suddenly he found himself, jumping out of his car and running up the stairs to her front door. He just needed to see her, and he was here now so he might as well check.

He knocked once, twice, three times and still no answer. So he tried calling her cell phone, he could hear it ringing somewhere in her apartment. He knew Sara would never go out without her phone.

He took his keys out of his pocket and selected the spare key Sara had given him a few years ago when she'd gone away for a forensic conference and needed him to water the lily that he had given her. He'd forgotten to give it back to her and she'd never asked. Right now he was glad for their lapse of memory.

After knocking once more he let himself into her apartment and quickly searched the living room, kitchen and bedroom. Drawing a blank he opened the last door, the bathroom.

The pool of blood was growing by the second, eating up more floor as it went. And lying in the middle was Sara, her skin was so pale and her eyes half closed.

He knelt down beside her and grabbed her left arm, wrapping a towel tightly around the wound.

"Sara?" He said shaking her slightly. "Come on Sara, look at me."

"Grissom?" She said in a quiet voice, confused as to how he was suddenly in her bathroom.

"Yeah, I'm here. It's ok, honey, just keep your eyes open, stay with me."

"Sorry." She whispered, her voice slightly slurred from alcohol and blood loss.

"Shit Sara." He took his phone out of his pocket and called for an ambulance.

"Don't do this to me Sara. Please, don't die on me." He begged while waiting for the ambulance to come.

---

Consciousness returned slowly to Sara, then she realised that Grissom was sat beside her, looking terrified. He held her hand tightly as though she would disappear if he let go.

"Sara? Sweetheart? It's ok, you're at the hospital, you're ok."

Sara looked around the room in a daze. She had no recollection of coming here. The last thing she remembered was the case ... and sitting on her bathroom floor ... with a razor blade. Then it all came flooding back. She had cut too deeply, and then Grissom had appeared beside her as if by magic. She had no idea how he had got the or why he was there but she realised that he had saved her life.

"Why Sara?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you do that? After all the suicide cases we see? All the families we watch destroyed by it? Why would you try to kill yourself?"

"I didn't." She muttered, closing her eyes from the white sterile light and Grissom's accusing gaze.

"You didn't what?"

"I didn't try to kill myself."

"Sara, I was there, I walked into your bathroom and you'd slit your wrist open. You tried to kill yourself."

"No, I didn't." Sara said slightly louder. "Grissom, I'm not suicidal. I'm a self harmer. I cut myself. I, I just went too far." It was true, even at her lowest points, she had never tried to kill herself. It had been on her mind once or twice, she'd thought about how easy it would be to just end it all. But her want to live had always out-weighed her pain and distress. In truth, she self harmed so she could go on living. She'd had to find some way of easing the pain so that she wouldn't go crazy.

"You self harm?" Gil asked shocked, he'd never noticed the scars, at least, he had never thought them suspicious. Sara didn't answer. "Since when?" He continued slightly more sensitively.

"Since I was a kid."

"But, why?"

"Please, I can't talk about this."

"Sweetheart," he began in a gentle voice, "I think you need to. And I think you're going to have to."

"No, no I can't."

"Sara, the doctors think you tried to commit suicide, they want you to talk to a psychiatrist. I don't think they're going release you until a psychiatrist is happy that you aren't a danger to yourself."

"Do you think I'm a danger to myself?" Sara asked in a strangely emotionless voice. She refused to meet his gaze fearing that she would see only pity or even disgust there.

"Honestly Sara, right now I just don't know. I had no idea that you were this, this unhappy. And I'm scared. You could have died. I could have lost you. I, I, it scares me to think about what might have happened if I hadn't come around to see you, or if I didn't still have a key to your apartment. Even if it wasn't your intention to kill yourself, you nearly did and you need help to ensure that it never happens again."

Sara heard the fear and concern in his voice and risked looking up at him. She was shocked to see only love in his eyes. "Ok." She whispered holding his hand as tightly as he was holding hers. "I'll try, I'll talk to someone. I'm sorry I scared you."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "That's ok, as long as you're safe, that's all I care about."