Drowning Chapter Thirty-Seven

Fast forward a little bit…

Kara's life was fuller and busier than it had ever been. Over the previous two months, she'd moved in with Cat and Carter, bought a building, started working more closely with the lawyers on the rapists' prosecutions and met all her responsibilities at Breathe. She'd even managed to set aside an hour a week for therapy.

She was sitting on a box in the administration office at the New Beginnings building, waiting for the guys to finish installing internet, phones and cable TV. There was a lot going on around her. The board had worked with an architect and decided on the final plans for the building before completing the purchase. Now construction was underway. The inspection had revealed that the building was up to code and that it would be mostly cosmetic work so now, a month after purchase, the office space was complete and the bedrooms were about eighty percent there.

After further discussion, Winn and Kara had agreed that the large main floor area could be divided into two smaller rooms, which would allow more than one class to run at the same time. Cat had already secured a volunteer, a local artist in fact, to give free painting classes, while Winn had already reviewed the floor plan and put in the order for mats for his self-defense classes.

Kara's eyes were glued to her Macbook. She was making a list of everything they needed to buy and she was investigating suppliers but right at that moment, she was looking at the foundation's bank accounts. The overall balance was astounding to her. They had received a lot of money after the charity event a few months previously, but Cat had secured more money from her business contacts, citing that they could use the donation as a tax write-off, and had also donated a portion of her own considerable fortune to get everything up and running.

"Desks and chairs," she muttered to herself. "Two small conference tables and chairs." She pushed her blonde hair back behind her ear absently. "Six laptops. Two multi-function printers." She clicked to another tab in her spreadsheet. "Thirty-six full-sized beds, dressers and wardrobes, thirty-six nightstands. Hmmm… I think I need to take a trip to IKEA." She chuckled to herself. "Cat would shudder at the thought. But oh well. It's a good bulk-buy spot."

"Um… Miss Danvers?"

Kara looked up from her screen and smiled at the nervous looking young man who was twisting a baseball cap in his hands. "Hi. Can I help?"

"Yeah… I… I'm George from High Tech. Now that your fiber lines are in, I'm here to configure the routers and stuff for whole building wireless access."

"Oh great!" Kara grinned. "Do you need anything from me, George?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied shyly. "I'll need access to all the rooms in the building for signal testing."

"Ok, cool. Everything is unlocked right now. Just be careful of the construction going on, ok?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I'll also be coming back at some point to install the keycard system. Have to have all the doors installed before I can install the system."

"Makes sense. Thanks, George. I'll be around if you need anything." With a smile and a nod, George disappeared off to begin work. "Heh. Cute guy," Kara said to herself as she looked back down at her spreadsheet.

"Do I need to be worried?" Cat said from the doorway. She was holding up a box, from which the heavenly aroma of pizza was wafting. "If you're ever thinking of cheating on me, just remember, I'm the one that brings pizza."

Kara laughed and got up, trotting to the door to kiss her girlfriend and take the box. "Firstly, you know you're the only person I want, pizza or not. And secondly, yum, I'm starving. Thanks for bringing this, Honey."

"More than welcome," the CEO replied. She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with a pair of sneakers.

"You look cute," Kara said, setting the pizza down on the box she'd been sitting on and went back to Cat to kiss her again. "New sneaks?"

"Yeah," Cat replied with a self-deprecating chuckle. "My other pair was getting old." She joined her girlfriend for a slice of pizza. "So, how are the lists going?"

"Pretty well actually," Kara replied. "The communications guys are almost done and the guy from the IT company just got here before you to set up the wireless internet. I also talked to Charlie this morning. He said that construction should be done in about another two weeks but we can start painting and getting the furniture into the bedrooms on the second floor right now. He just needs to know the colors and he'll send his guys to get the paint and get started."

"Good," Cat nodded. "Are you still happy with that light green?"

"Yeah," Kara replied as she grabbed a second slice. "We should get washable paint too since the rooms will have to be deep-cleaned between tenants."

"Agreed," the CEO smiled. "Anything you need help with right now?"

"Yes, please actually," Kara replied, wiping her fingers off on a napkin. "I need to step out for a while this afternoon for my therapy session. Can you hang here?"

"Sure," Cat agreed amiably. "I'll go through your lists and add anything else I can think of."

"Oh," Kara interjected. "Meals. I need to hire a catering company."

"A catering company?"

"Right," Kara giggled. "Unless you plan to cook for thirty-six people every day yourself?"

Cat shook her head. "Most certainly not. Ok, Darling. I'll leave that with you. By the way, I was thinking IKEA for the furniture. We need about six sofas for the living room area and they have some nice big ones."

Kara blinked. "Really?"

"Really. Want to go by there tomorrow and look?" Cat's head was tilted in that hopeful, adorable way that Kara loved.

"Sure, I'd love to."

Xx

Alex was wandering down a corridor, her nose stuck in a chart when she almost collided with her girlfriend who was waiting for her to go to lunch. "Oh, hey," the doctor smiled. Then she realized the look she was getting. "I'm late, aren't I," she stated. When there was no answer she winced. "Very late?"

"Thirty minutes," Brie replied, crossing her arms.

"Shit. I'm sorry, Briana. I got caught up in this case and I…" She stopped suddenly. "You know what? I don't want to talk about the patient. Let's just eat. I'm starving."

A short time later, they were sitting at an outside table, salads and coffee in front of them as they chatted about their day.

"Oh hey," Brie said with a smile. "Kara called me earlier. She's working on supply lists for NB and she wanted to know if we'd finished with ours for the clinic. Did you get everything you need added?"

"I think so," Alex replied, chewing a cherry tomato thoughtfully. "Let me just run over it one more time after lunch."

"Sure, if you let me know when you're done, I'll send it over to Kara with some names of good suppliers."

Alex's phone dinged. "That would be my new patient," she sighed, looking at the text message. "I'm sorry, Babe."

The nurse chuckled. "Part of the job. See you later." She began to wrap up Alex's lunch. I'll keep this on ice for you in my locker."

"Thanks," she kissed Brie's forehead and headed off to check on her patient.

Xx

"Tell me how you feel right now?" Maggie asked softly as she passed a box of Kleenex to her patient.

"Guilty," Kara replied as she wiped her eyes. "And angry. I'm so angry at those monsters for not only ruining part of my life, but for completely destroying Andrea. The woman I knew was sweet and kind. She was a good person."

Maggie frowned. "And you don't think she was a good person when she died?"

Kara considered that for a long moment. "I do think she was a good person. I just think that her goodness was tainted by anger and pain."

"You know," the therapist said with a little smile. "If you think about it, what Andrea did was just a more extreme version of when we yell at people for stupid little things when there's something else bothering us."

Kara shook her head. "I don't... understand."

Maggie leaned forward in her chair. "What I'm saying is that Andrea needed somewhere to direct her pain and anger. She needed someone to blame so, she chose you. A rational part of her knew that it wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault at all, Kara. She was lashing out because hurting others sometimes helps us feel better because we know we're not alone in our misery. She wanted to hurt you the way she was hurt and she knew that Cat is your greatest weakness..."

"Weakness?" Kara interrupted, bristling a little.

"And strength," Maggie added with a smile. "The people we love are always both, Kara."

The blonde nodded and relaxed back into her chair. "I just wish that she'd come to me. If she'd just talked with me, I may have been able to help her."

"Maybe," the therapist replied. "But don't let what-ifs haunt you. Andrea made her choices. You have to remember that."

"Yeah," Kara replied, gazing through the window at a blackbird perched on a tree branch right outside. It was gazing back at her. "Yeah."