Sorry for the delay; been very busy with real life, as it were!
Catherine took a deep breath and straightened up, trying to present the image of a professional who was in full control of her emotions
"Excuse me," she flashed her ID card to a nurse behind the desk. "I'm with the crime lab, I'm looking for Sara Sidle – she was ... she was brought in earlier."
The nurse scanned down a list of names of recent inpatients, stopping on the one she wanted.
"The rape victim?"
Catherine winced, her stomach knotting. She had deliberately avoided saying it herself, but hearing it wasn't any easier.
"She's in room 17; round that corner, on your left."
Catherine nodded gratefully and set off in the direction of the room.
She has spent the whole drive trying to gear herself up for this; but the sight of Sara in a hospital bed – again – was too much and she had to take a minute to re-compose herself before sneaking inside.
The brunette was asleep, her head turned to one side and her gentle curls fanning across the pillow. The nurse had already carried out a sex assault kit, but they still needed to retrieve any trace evidence they could from her hair and under her fingernails.
Catherine sank into the seat beside her and opened her kit. Sliding a sheet of paper under Sara's hand, she carefully set about her work. She knew that Sara would have fought her attacker like a tiger, so she was confident that the feisty young woman would have got a piece of him.
Moving to the other side of the bed, she began to repeat the process when she was startled by a gentle touch on her face.
She had been so focussed on her work, she hadn't even noticed that she was being watched.
Sara was staring at her with a quizzical look, her fingertips dancing over Catherine's cheek.
Catherine mimicked her movements, tracing a small mark under her eye. Suddenly the events of the night come flooding back – the bar, the guy. She had forgotten all about it.
"It's nothing." She muttered softly, pushing Sara's hand away.
"You're hurt."
Catherine couldn't help but smile at the irony that Sara's first words after being raped were an expression of concern for someone else.
"I walked into a door."
Sara dropped her gaze.
"I don't suppose I could steal that excuse?" She asked quietly. It was her own way of admitting that she remember what had happened to herself, and that she didn't believe Catherine for one minute.
Unsure what else to say, Catherine peeled her latex gloves off and leant across Sara to wrap her into a hug.
It was against procedure, but right now she didn't give a damn about protocol.
She opened the door a crack, relief flooding her whole body at the sight of her sister peering through the gap at her.
"Nancy, hey." She greeted warmly, gladly accepting the offered embrace.
"How's she doing?" The nurse asked, shedding her jacket and draping it over the stair rail.
"Sleeping." Cath sighed, leading the younger female into the kitchen and pouring her a cup of coffee. She was acting autonomously, playing a part she had played a thousand times before: coffee, milk, two sugars ...
"The best thing for her right now." Nancy nodded pensively, accepting the drink and taking a slow mouthful. "Is it alright for her to be here with you, if you're running the investigation?"
"What else could I do?" Cath shrugged pitifully. "I couldn't let her go home alone and I could hardly send her home with one of the boys; not after what happened to her."
"I'm sure it'll be a big help to her knowing that you're here." Nancy offered helpfully, frowning when Catherine failed to acknowledge her support.
Sensing that she was being scrutinised, Cath looked up and sighed.
"She's seeing Belinda again – professionally."
There was a beat of silence while Catherine sipped her coffee and let this register.
"Why?" Nancy asked at last, doing a reasonably good job of reigning in her shock.
"Grissom made her go back, after she got herself shot."
"What's she said about it?" The nurse pressed.
"Nothing much. I tried to get her to talk about it, but she's never been the most open of people." Catherine emitted a dry laugh, shaking her golden waves out. "She did say that it's strictly professional this time."
"Yeah, for how long?" Nancy scoffed. "You need to sit her down and have a proper talk with her about it."
"She was raped yesterday, Nancy. I can't exactly dive into this conversation head first."
"Okay," Nancy drawled, sitting forwards. "And what do you think Belinda's going to do when she hears about that?"
Catherine pointed to a cell phone sat innocuously on the edge of the kitchen counter.
"She's been calling her all night."
"Did you answer?"
"No. I put the phone on silent." She rolled her eyes. "She works for the police and the hospital; it won't take her long to find out all the details. I just hope she doesn't expect Sara to talk about it – she's not exactly in a talking mood right now."
"Belinda's her counsellor." Nancy pointed out. "She won't take no for an answer."
"Yeah, well, tonight it isn't up to her." Catherine pushed herself wearily out of her chair and made a half-hearted effort to straighten out her clothes. "Nance, can you do me a favour and just stay here with her and Lindsey."
"Sure, where are you going?"
"I'm going to her flat; she's going to need a few things in the morning."
Gathering her keys and cell phone, she paused for a second to make sure she had everything, before spinning on her heel and scampering out of the room. Nancy cocked her head to the side, listening for the front door closing, before standing up and sauntering over to the counter, where Sara's phone was still sitting on the side.
It was locked, but she didn't need to know the passcode. The messages were lined up on the screen, in the order received. All nine of them.
Scrolling through, Nancy found herself getting increasingly annoyed by their content. They were not messages of concern from a counsellor to a patient; they were the desperate messages of a panicked lover.
Slamming the phone onto the counter, Nancy drummed her fingertips on it for a second in thought.
It took her a whole minute of trying before she worked out that Sara's front door wasn't unlocking because she was trying to use her own key. Shaking her head at her own stupidity, she extracted Sara's keys from her coat pocket and tried again.
Still, the latch didn't move.
As the familiar feeling of cold dread started to settle in the pit of her stomach, she carefully tried the handle and felt the door give with little effort.
Sara was not the kind of girl who left her door unlocked, which could only mean one thing...
Cursing herself for not bringing her gun with her, she pushed the door open as quietly as she could and slid through the gap.
However, if she was thinking that she could sneak up on the intruder, she was sorely mistaken.
"You?" She snapped, her eyes widening in shock. "What the hell are you doing in here?"
"I could ask the same of you." Belinda retorted coolly.
"I have a key." Cath raised an eyebrow, placing her hands on her hips. "Why are you here?"
"Where's Sara?" The nurse asked, refusing to answer. Catherine, equally stubborn, pursed her lips as she ambled further into the apartment.
"She's somewhere safe."
"At your house?" Bel pressed. "I need to see her."
"No, I don't think so."
"No, you don't understand, I need to talk to her." Belinda insisted frantically, clawing both hands through her hair. "Sara bottles this sort of thing up, she needs to talk about it..."
"She will." Catherine answered bluntly. "With me."
There was a beat of challenging silence, an obstinate standoff. Finally, Catherine's willpower won out. Belinda snatched her bag off the counter and stormed past the fiery blonde. Catherine didn't move out of her way, forcing her to slide around her to get out of the tiny flat.
In her rush to leave, something fell out of her open bag.
The little box skittered across the wooden floor and came to rest against Catherine's boot-clad foot.
She didn't even need to open it. Her gut instinct told her that she would find Sara's mother's wedding ring inside.