Hello all! I hope you're all doing well. RL has been a bit trying the past little while, just gotta tell yah, if you're ever trying to get a Spanish visa, they tell you 3-4 weeks, but no, not for me…it's been over three months…grrr…anywho…there's my venting ; ) and here's the latest chapter.

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Someone was yelling outside her bedroom door.

Sara gingerly shifted her shoulder, wincing as her mending wound stretched slightly. Glancing at the clock on her bedside she grimaced. Damn. She'd only been asleep for an hour. Sara lay still for a few moments, trying to grasp the escaping tendrils of sleep. She groaned as the door to the bedroom next to hers slammed; the sound echoing throughout the house. Admitting defeat, Sara sighed and sat up. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and stretching her good arm she reached for her sling.

I had been two weeks since she'd been shot. And it has been just over a week since she had been approved to leave the hospital. Before she left, her doctor had strongly advised her to have family, or a friend stay with her until her shoulder healed enough to be of use. Sara had smiled and nodded, but all the while she'd been determined to tough it out on her own. However, alone in her apartment she found herself greatly disabled. Trying to undress for bed, Sara found completing the task near impossible. Feeling helpless, and with her pregnancy hormones on full tilt, she soon had tears streaming down her face. After another pitiful attempt to get undressed, she called the first female she could think of.

"'Ello?"

"C-Cath?"

"Sara?"

"Yeah…"

"Are you alright?" Concern coated Catherine's voice.

A choked sob.

"I…I can't get my shirt off."

Silence.

A giggle.

"Are you laughing at me!?"

"No…" Another giggle. "Of course not, Sara." A laugh.

"Obviously this was a mistake." Sara huffed. "Goodbye, Cath."

"Wait! Sara wait! I'm sorry!" Catherine had stopped laughing, but Sara could still detect mirth under her tone. "I'll be there in twenty minutes, okay?"

"…okay."

After finding Sara close to sobbing in her apartment, Catherine insisted she come stay with her. Sara adamantly refused, but Catherine had already started packing Sara's bags, completely ignoring the brunette.

She had been living with Catherine and Lindsey for a week. One long, exhausting week. Not that her hosts had been horrible to her, Catherine was certainly a help with Sara's dressing issues, but having lived alone since University, Sara had forgotten what it was like to actually live with another person. Not just another person, but another person and a teenager.

A teenager who was a major handful.

Lindsey was a good kid, most of the time. Sara thought Lindsey really liked to pull at her mother's strings. Doing things Catherine disapproved of just to get a rise out of her. Sara usually found this amusing, but when she was trying to sleep…not so much.

Sara softly opened her bedroom door; she could hear Catherine loading the dishwasher. Sara followed the kitchen light, stopping to study the blonde. Catherine turned, hearing Sara's footsteps.

"We woke you up, didn't we?"

"No." Sara lied. She shifted uncomfortably under Catherine's scrutiny. "Well, maybe sort of. It's alright."

Catherine sighed, pressed a palm to her forehead. "I just don't know what to do with that child sometimes. An hour past curfew and she acts like it doesn't matter…" Catherine grabbed a washcloth from the sink and began to scrub the counters viciously.

Sara sat on a stool at the breakfast bar and watched her silently.

"She's a good kid, Cath." Sara said eventually breaking the quiet, repeating her thought from earlier.

Catherine stopped scrubbing, tossing the cloth back into the sink. Again she sighed, taking a seat by Sara. "I know…but sometimes she can be so difficult."

Sara nodded, as though she understood, but feeling like a fraud. What did she know about raising children?

Sara noted the fatigue set around Catherine's eyes. She knew Catherine was working on a large case, but so far had been unable to convince the blonde to let her help out. Lost in her thoughts, Sara started when Catherine began to speak.

"Sometime…sometimes I feel so lost…being a parent," Catherine's voice took on a softer tone. "Sometimes I have absolutely no fucking idea what I'm doing…and it scares me that I could be screwing her up with my ignorance…y'know…maybe if Eddie were alive…" She trailed off, her eyes a bit unfocused. Suddenly she looked at Sara as though she had forgotten who she was talking to. Catherine stood quickly, "Can I get you anything…tea?"

Sara stared at Catherine for a moment, and then stood shaking her head. "No thanks. I think I'll go back to bed." Sara watched Catherine return to the sink and pick up the washcloth.

Back in her room, Sara crawled under the covers with only minor jarring of her injured shoulder. Laying back she stared at the ceiling.

Catherine's admission of fear was somehow liberating for Sara. Ever since she had decided to have the baby, Sara had been plagued with a gut wrenching fear that she'd be a terrible parent…she hadn't had the greatest examples from her own. But now, knowing Catherine had her own fears in the parenting department, made Sara feel better in an odd way. Sara chuckled to herself, misery loves company.

From what Sara had seen in the past week, Catherine was a good parent to Lindsey. They constantly bickered, but Sara could see the affection they held for each other. Maybe being a single parent wouldn't be so bad…

Sara shifted, sighing as she tried to fight the path of her thoughts. But they always reached their goal, every night…

She hadn't seen Grissom in thirteen days. Sara rolled her eyes, she was actually counting the days, how friggin' pathetic was she?

She could understand his absence. Telling him that the fetus in her belly wasn't his probably filled him with indescribable relief. Sara had seen how pale and haunted he looked in her hospital room before he told her what the doctor had said…

Well, it's perfectly obvious Grissom didn't want any part of her baby, she thought. He wouldn't have been so distant and cold at the hospital before he asked her about the baby if he had wanted the child, he would have been happier.

Yes, she rationalized, this was good. If he didn't want her baby, well, she didn't want him.

And Grissom had made it very clear he didn't want her.

Sara laid a hand on her belly, stroking the tiny swell, wiping an errant tear from her cheek.

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tbc

a/n- I'm not an expert of the procedures dealing with how hospitals discharge patients who have been shot (the internet has not been very forthcoming)...so if the facts aren't correct, I'm sorry. But I guess this is my own little world, so let's say this is the way it actually goes : ) If you do know, you can tell me, I am interested in knowing.

Ant thanks for reading!