1.

Day One – Sara.

Rehab.

I got here this afternoon and already I've learnt that 'residents' are divided into two categories: depressed, and addicted.

Usually the depressed are assigned their own rooms right away, while the addicted are made to sweat it out for a day or two in one of the 'observation rooms' – giant fish-tanks with beds that remind me of the offices at CSI Headquarters. I can only imagine the horrors that take place in these rooms, and thankfully all I have to do is imagine: since I was referred here after my one and only PEAP Counseling meeting rather than after a week-long bender, I get to skip observation and sleep in my own room. I'm grateful for this, but at the same time it leaves me in this weird kind of 'addictive-depressive' limbo. I'm not doing cold-turkey with the other drunks, but I'm also not doing group with the depressives.

When I was feeling less sickly than I do now, I can remember thinking that my room was quite nice. I guess that's one of the fringe benefits of being in the force: the healthcare rocks. Too bad it's going to take more than four cheery walls to make me better, and with that thought I can't help but feel my stomach lurch that little bit more when I consider what's ahead of me. Opening up, talking… these are things that I've aspired to on more than one occasion in my life, but each time I think I've gotten closer to achieving one of them I clam up worse than before. I don't know if I'm more scared of that happening again, or of the fact that this time I might actually spill.

I'm edgy for sure, and I wouldn't like to say what I'd be willing to do for some hard liquor right now. I'm definitely craving, and it's not like I can take my mind off it by going for a run, because – get this – I haven't been cleared for physical exercise. The only other thing I can think of to take the edge off doesn't seem appropriate in a secure facility, besides which, nausea isn't exactly putting me in the mood.

Flipping TV channels got old as soon as the people on them started to seriously piss me off, which took all of five seconds. Equally annoying though is having the TV off and listening to myself. The most ridiculous part is that I still have the audacity to feel self-pity; if only I hadn't gotten into my car that night, if only the cops hadn't pulled me over. Mot irrationally of all: if only Catherine had been the supervisor in charge that night and not Grissom.

I know, I know, Catherine Willows and I don't see eye to eye on much; on anything, I sometimes think. But Catherine would've been – cooler – about this. Ok, that would mainly be due to the fact that she doesn't care enough about me to give me hell like Gil did; it wouldn't even enter her head to enforce PEAP sessions – actually, it wouldn't even enter her head to give me a hug or ask me if I was ok, and that would be just fine with me. I could've carried on the way I was.

Except, deep down I know I couldn't have.

But this tiny part of me screams that maybe Catherine would've asked me if I was ok; would have given me that hug, and yes, maybe she would have made me attend the PEAP Counseling that led me to this place, but she would've been so much lovelier about it than Grissom. I've seen Catherine act maternal, not just to her kid but to everyone on the team apart from me. Somehow, even when she approaches me with caring it comes off cocky and self-assured, rather than soothing and gentle.

"Wanna get a beer?" confident blue eyes stare at me from confident facial features. I know this is her way of trying to make it ok that I just found out the guy I was seeing has a girlfriend.

"Drive." I know that this is her way of making it ok, and I know I want to let her. I'll take what I can get.

There's something deep down in my personality that makes me need Catherine's approval – I call it my 'puppy dog' syndrome - and that's what makes me so angry. I'm not really angry at her, but angry at myself for even caring what she thinks of me. I know, logically, that I am a grown woman and I don't need Catherine to validate me. And yet at the same time, my ultimate fantasy of Catherine is of her wrapping her arms around me and telling me that she's here for me. Hugging me as a friend and looking into my eyes as I stare into her azure blues with a degree of compassion. I know she has it in her; I just want it directed at me.

I allow myself a wry smile when I consider what Greg would make of that being my 'best' Catherine fantasy. After he'd first picked himself up off the floor from the very idea of me even having Catherine fantasies, he'd tell me that I was a disgrace to human kind and that he was disappointed in me: why couldn't I imagine Catherine in lingerie dancing up a storm around a pole, or spread on her desk with her chest heaving and her curls falling around her shoulders? There's no way I'd be able to explain to him that although, since I am only human and Catherine has Venus De Milo aesthetics, I do think about those things from time to time, and sometimes I do wish she could express her passion towards me in an entirely different way: fucking not fighting; more than all of that I'd like us to get past all this hostility and trust each other. When we work a case together, we're a fantastic team. Maybe it's our all-work-no-talk attitude that facilitates this, or maybe our compatibility at work is indicative of our potential compatibility as friends.

Fresh waves of nausea roll my stomach over, bringing me back to the reality of my situation. I could go round in circles thinking about Catherine and I and our dysfunctions, but it doesn't do me any good. Grissom was the one on shift that night; he sent me to the shrinks and the shrinks sent me here, to rehab.