CSI--Living Dead Girl (3 of 4)
Mar. 31st, 2007 06:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
kosmickway.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
csi_fictionTitle: Living Dead Girl
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kosmickway
Category: CSI Vegas; character back-story; romance; episode-related
Rating: R for violence, drug use, and sexuality.
Pairing: GSR
Complete or WiP: Complete
Author’s Note: This is my interpretation of Sara’s back story. It is by no means definitive. In writing this I attempted to shed some light on Sara’s father’s murder (see “Nesting Dolls,” fifth season, for the complete story). This fic takes place immediately after the fifth season episode “Committed” and focuses on the after-effects of Adam Trent’s attack on Sara during that episode.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. I make no profit from them. I just worship at the altar of Zuiker and Mendelsohn. All songs are property of Rob Zombie.
“Dead I am the dog, hound of hell you cry. Devil on your back, I can never die.”
Rob Zombie, “Dragula”
Somehow or another they ended up lying on their backs on the living room floor, staring at the ceiling as “Carmen” played on his formidable stereo system.
The lights in the apartment were off, the better to see the solar system that Grissom had meticulously recreated using florescent paint. It wasn’t just a handful of stars thrown slap-dash on the ceiling-- Grissom had taken the time to create constellations, star clusters, supernova remnants, and all the beautiful details of life in the galactic arena. Sara had never had an inkling that she’d been sharing the living room with such a wonderful work of art.
“How did you ever find time to do this?” Sara took another sip of wine and folded her arms behind her head, staring up in wonder.
“Here and there. Bit by bit.” Grissom inched closer to her and twisted his torso so that he could point in the direction of the upper lefthand corner of the room. “I still have a lot left to do. I’m going to paint the Horsehead Nebula over there once I get a free weekend.”
Sara laughed. “You just reaffirmed your geek status, Gris. All kidding aside, it really is beautiful.”
“Thank you.” He rolled toward her and turned onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “How do you feel?”
“Less edgy.” She sipped her wine. “I’m just glad it’s over with. If Ecklie doesn’t make me testify, that is.”
She could tell by his expression that he was thinking hard about something. She waited for him to speak. Finally he said, very abruptly, “What happened to her?”
By “her” Sara knew that Grissom meant her mother. She hesitated.
“If you don’t want to talk about it–“
”No, I– I started it. I may as well finish it, right?” Sara sat up and leaned against the legs of the couch, drawing her knees close to her chest. “She went to a hospital to be evaluated and I went into the foster care system. They found her competent to stand trial and the state started building a case against her for my father’s murder with secondary charges of child abuse and neglect for what she’d done to me. I lived with a foster family, a couple named the Siegels. I was their first kid and they didn’t quite know what to make of me, a genius 13 year-old with a murdered father and a criminal mother.”
Sara rested her chin on her up drawn knees. “It isn’t anything like the movies, you know. Foster care, I mean. Yeah, the system’s rough and there are a fair share of people who do it for the checks and the tax write off. And yes, there are people in the system who shouldn’t be let within a hundred miles of a child.
“But it wasn’t all bad. I was never abused or starved, I was never beaten or locked in the cellar. I can’t say I ever really fit into a family all that well and I never found that ideal couple who wanted to adopt me– every foster kid’s fantasy, you know. But I didn’t come away from it poetically scarred or artistically inspired. I came out of it as me.”
Grissom was peering at her with those wide, guileless eyes. “I’m glad. You’re one of the best people I know.”
Sara blushed again, unsure how to take Grissom’s direct compliments. “Eventually my mother was found guilty of one count of first degree murder, several counts of felony child neglect, and numerous misdemeanor and felony drug charges. She was given a 50 year sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility, ten years suspended, no parole. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since she went in. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I can’t really say that I care.”
***
Dead I am the knife, dig into the skin, knuckle crack the bone, twenty-one to win.” Rob Zombie, “Dragula.”
She’d forgotten to feed Arroway.
Her conscience smote her all day long. She’d completely forgotten about her turtle in all the excitement of having her father home. Worse, she hadn’t mentioned to her father that he should feed Arroway.
She thought of the small turtle waiting patiently for food and a change of water and felt horrible. She’d go pick up Arroway right after school. It didn’t matter that her mother might be home– she had to have her turtle. There were plenty of ways to sneak in and out of the house– she’d use one of her escape routes to get in if her mother was home and high.
Sara ran all the way back to her mother’s house, her book bag thudding against the small of her back. Though it was the first of June, the trees whipped in a cool breeze. Clouds raced across the sky, darkening the afternoon. There would be a storm soon and she looked forward to sitting on the balcony of her father’s town home, watching the lightning play across the Bay. She’d call him from the house, she decided, and ask him to pick her up. That way she could bring Arroway’s terrarium home.
She could tell something wasn’t right as soon as she rounded the corner onto Jacaranda Circle. Neighbors were gathered on porches and lawns, gawking at police cars that had been pulled up to the curb outside her house.
Her first thought was that her father had made good on his threat to call child services on her mother. There was his car in the driveway. He had come to talk to her about the divorce. Perhaps he’d had to threaten her with CPS to get Sara away from her. When she balked, he’d made the call.
But there was an ambulance, too, and that couldn’t be right. Why would an ambulance come to the sight of a CPS visit?
It’s funny the things you remember and the things that you don’t.
Her heart thudding, Sara ran up to the foot of the driveway. She walked up the drive and past her father’s car, heading for the front door, which was standing open.
As she drew nearer to the porch she heard the horrid, wet sounds of someone throwing up. Bent in the dried jacaranda bushes was a young policeman, coughing and spitting weakly. What the hell was going on?
There was a smell of iron in the air, cast off on the bed and wall. There was this young cop, puking his guts.
The back of her neck was tingling. It was the same feeling she got when she snuck downstairs to watch late-night horror films. The same impulse that made her want to yell, “Don’t go in the house!” to the main character was slaloming through her gut right now.
There was no one to stop her– the young policeman was bent over, heaving again, and he hadn’t noticed her. Still wearing her book bag, she crept swiftly inside.
As she climbed the stairs she could hear noise from the second floor– voices, police radios chittering away. There was a strange smell in the air, something she couldn’t place until she realized that it smelled exactly like the advanced Biology classroom on dissection day.
Why did her house smell like blood?
I don’t remember the woman who took me to foster care. I can’t remember her name. Which is strange, you know, because I couldn’t let go of her hand.
Her mother’s bedroom was next door to her own and the noise was all centered there. The door was open and light spilled into the corridor. The patch of light had a decidedly rusty cast to it and pooled in weird, blotchy patterns on the carpet.
As she came nearer to the room, the smell of blood intensified. The voices were all a buzz in her brain as the tingling in the back of her neck increased.
I do remember the looks. I became ‘the girl whose father was stabbed to death.’
Sara peered around the doorframe and a scream bottled itself in her throat.
The bed was awash in blood, so much it appeared black. There was horrid red spatter on the walls, on the light fixture overhead. There were policemen all over the room, several men in jumpsuits, a man in a lab coat, a silver gurney, a black plastic body bag.
In the middle of the bed was her father. He was wearing his underwear and nothing else, his clothes folded on the chair next to the bed. His chest had been ripped open. His face and arms and legs were splashed with blood. White rib glinted in the light.
Do you think there’s a murder gene?
A tiny squeak dislodged from her throat. The squeak gave way to a strangled sob and the sob gave way to a scream. Sara shrieked and barreled forward toward her father.
Several strong pairs of arms closed around her and she screamed again, then sobbed, huge wrenching sobs that shook her body and threatened to turn her inside out. Someone lifted her, carried her out of the room, down the stairs, and onto the lawn where she collapsed, trembling, into the arms of strangers, the only thing in the world that kept her from falling completely apart.
The fights, the yelling, the trips to the hospital. I thought it was the way everyone lived. When my mother killed my father, I found out that it wasn’t.
***
“Destroy the things you love and see if I remember.” Rob Zombie, “Return of the Phantom Stranger”
Sara shut her eyes against the flood of memories that came welling up.
The glint of white rib glimpsed in the ruin of her father’s chest.
The funeral, closed casket, with no family or friends, just herself, the minister, and the Siegels, her foster parents.
The stares and whispers up and down the hallways at Three Palms Middle, where she spent her mornings. The whispers of “freak” from the students at Palmetto High, where she took her afternoon science and math courses.
The psychology session that ended with a hole kicked in the self-righteous therapists’ office wall.
The hearing in a dingy courtroom to determine her mother’s competency to stand trial.
The trial itself and the media surrounding it, all of which the Siegels worked to shield her from.
Unwilling visits on the closed ward of the mental hospital, watching her mother pretend to be blank and crazy.
Years of being shifted from foster home to foster home, high school to high school, until she finally graduated early and left for Berkeley, wanting nothing more than to escape the whispers and the stares.
“Sara?” Grissom’s quiet inquiry brought her back. His concerned expression reflected just how anguished her face must have been.
“I hate thinking about it.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Sara shook her head. “You should have. Of all the people in my life, you’re the one who has the most right to know.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m just afraid that–“ Sara frowned, then broke off. “I’m afraid that there really is–“
”A murder gene?” Grissom supplied quietly. “A crazy gene?”
“I don’t want to be like her,” Sara whispered harshly. “God, I don’t want to be what she was. I couldn’t stand it.”
“Sara.” Grissom sat up and moved closer to her. “There’s no way you could become your mother. You’re completely different from her.”
“Am I? I lose my temper, I get drunk, I’m this self-destructive maniac–“
”None of which means you’re going to turn around tomorrow and commit homicide. You become the person you are based on the influences of your family, your peers, your life experiences, and society in general. Genetics is only a tiny factor, and an insignificant one at best. Can a woman help it if she inherits depression from her mother or high blood pressure from her father? No. But she can control it with medications, with informed decisions, by choosing not to let her genetics control her fate. Even if there were a murder gene, Sara, you’re too compassionate to ever let it take you over.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Yes, I can. If there’s one thing I know with certainty about you it’s that you’d never intentionally hurt someone else. The only person you hurt intentionally is yourself.”
Sara laughed sardonically. “How is it you can think better of me than I can of myself?”
“Because we rarely see ourselves as we really are. And because I happen to know quite a lot about butterflies.”
“I’m a butterfly?” Sara raised her eyebrows. “What, hardy and adaptive?”
Grissom’s grin was enigmatic. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
***
“Gris, I don’t think I can do this.”
Sara’s voice was so thick with panic that Grissom stopped the Tahoe on the side of the road and turned to look at her.
“Well, we don’t have to go. We can always turn around.”
“And drive six hours back to Vegas?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Sara’s capable fingers were trembling like Aspen leaves. “I don’t know if I can stand to see her. Even after all this time I still can’t–“
”Forgive her?” Grissom supplied. “Or is it that you can’t stop being afraid of her?”
“Both,” Sara mumbled, looking out the window at the lushly irrigated farmland surrounding the prison.
“Like I said, we can turn around.” Grissom sat with his hands folded, letting Sara wrestle with her decision.
“I feel like I’m still 13 and terrified.”
“At the risk of torturing a cliche, the only thing we have to fear–“
”Yeah, well, Winston Churchill didn’t have an abusive mother,” Sara replied, cutting him off. She fell into fretful silence then finally said, “Let’s get this over with.”
The parking lot of the Central California Women’s Facility shimmered in the heat. Her shoes made sticky sucking sounds on the asphalt. Grissom walked close behind, support without pressure. Without him, Sara was sure she’d turn around and bolt.
She passed through security in a fog, mechanically handing over her purse, her stainless steel Breitling watch, submitting to the pat down and the sweep with hand-held metal detectors. She didn’t even pay attention to Grissom as he went through security– she could only concentrate on what felt like an entire block of butterflies in her stomach and her rapidly beating heart.
Grissom came up behind her, having passed successfully through security. He could feel tension radiating from her in waves, could hear the hitch in her breathing as she took in the trappings of what must have felt like her own personal hell. Though not one to casually touch, he placed a comforting hand on her rigid shoulders.
“You don’t have to stay long,” he reminded her.
“Sara Sidle.” The guard stood in front of the door to the visitor’s room. “Are you ready?”
Sara drew in a shallow, shaking breath. “I’m ready.”
Author:
kosmickwayCategory: CSI Vegas; character back-story; romance; episode-related
Rating: R for violence, drug use, and sexuality.
Pairing: GSR
Complete or WiP: Complete
Author’s Note: This is my interpretation of Sara’s back story. It is by no means definitive. In writing this I attempted to shed some light on Sara’s father’s murder (see “Nesting Dolls,” fifth season, for the complete story). This fic takes place immediately after the fifth season episode “Committed” and focuses on the after-effects of Adam Trent’s attack on Sara during that episode.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. I make no profit from them. I just worship at the altar of Zuiker and Mendelsohn. All songs are property of Rob Zombie.
“Dead I am the dog, hound of hell you cry. Devil on your back, I can never die.”
Rob Zombie, “Dragula”
Somehow or another they ended up lying on their backs on the living room floor, staring at the ceiling as “Carmen” played on his formidable stereo system.
The lights in the apartment were off, the better to see the solar system that Grissom had meticulously recreated using florescent paint. It wasn’t just a handful of stars thrown slap-dash on the ceiling-- Grissom had taken the time to create constellations, star clusters, supernova remnants, and all the beautiful details of life in the galactic arena. Sara had never had an inkling that she’d been sharing the living room with such a wonderful work of art.
“How did you ever find time to do this?” Sara took another sip of wine and folded her arms behind her head, staring up in wonder.
“Here and there. Bit by bit.” Grissom inched closer to her and twisted his torso so that he could point in the direction of the upper lefthand corner of the room. “I still have a lot left to do. I’m going to paint the Horsehead Nebula over there once I get a free weekend.”
Sara laughed. “You just reaffirmed your geek status, Gris. All kidding aside, it really is beautiful.”
“Thank you.” He rolled toward her and turned onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “How do you feel?”
“Less edgy.” She sipped her wine. “I’m just glad it’s over with. If Ecklie doesn’t make me testify, that is.”
She could tell by his expression that he was thinking hard about something. She waited for him to speak. Finally he said, very abruptly, “What happened to her?”
By “her” Sara knew that Grissom meant her mother. She hesitated.
“If you don’t want to talk about it–“
”No, I– I started it. I may as well finish it, right?” Sara sat up and leaned against the legs of the couch, drawing her knees close to her chest. “She went to a hospital to be evaluated and I went into the foster care system. They found her competent to stand trial and the state started building a case against her for my father’s murder with secondary charges of child abuse and neglect for what she’d done to me. I lived with a foster family, a couple named the Siegels. I was their first kid and they didn’t quite know what to make of me, a genius 13 year-old with a murdered father and a criminal mother.”
Sara rested her chin on her up drawn knees. “It isn’t anything like the movies, you know. Foster care, I mean. Yeah, the system’s rough and there are a fair share of people who do it for the checks and the tax write off. And yes, there are people in the system who shouldn’t be let within a hundred miles of a child.
“But it wasn’t all bad. I was never abused or starved, I was never beaten or locked in the cellar. I can’t say I ever really fit into a family all that well and I never found that ideal couple who wanted to adopt me– every foster kid’s fantasy, you know. But I didn’t come away from it poetically scarred or artistically inspired. I came out of it as me.”
Grissom was peering at her with those wide, guileless eyes. “I’m glad. You’re one of the best people I know.”
Sara blushed again, unsure how to take Grissom’s direct compliments. “Eventually my mother was found guilty of one count of first degree murder, several counts of felony child neglect, and numerous misdemeanor and felony drug charges. She was given a 50 year sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility, ten years suspended, no parole. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since she went in. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I can’t really say that I care.”
***
Dead I am the knife, dig into the skin, knuckle crack the bone, twenty-one to win.” Rob Zombie, “Dragula.”
She’d forgotten to feed Arroway.
Her conscience smote her all day long. She’d completely forgotten about her turtle in all the excitement of having her father home. Worse, she hadn’t mentioned to her father that he should feed Arroway.
She thought of the small turtle waiting patiently for food and a change of water and felt horrible. She’d go pick up Arroway right after school. It didn’t matter that her mother might be home– she had to have her turtle. There were plenty of ways to sneak in and out of the house– she’d use one of her escape routes to get in if her mother was home and high.
Sara ran all the way back to her mother’s house, her book bag thudding against the small of her back. Though it was the first of June, the trees whipped in a cool breeze. Clouds raced across the sky, darkening the afternoon. There would be a storm soon and she looked forward to sitting on the balcony of her father’s town home, watching the lightning play across the Bay. She’d call him from the house, she decided, and ask him to pick her up. That way she could bring Arroway’s terrarium home.
She could tell something wasn’t right as soon as she rounded the corner onto Jacaranda Circle. Neighbors were gathered on porches and lawns, gawking at police cars that had been pulled up to the curb outside her house.
Her first thought was that her father had made good on his threat to call child services on her mother. There was his car in the driveway. He had come to talk to her about the divorce. Perhaps he’d had to threaten her with CPS to get Sara away from her. When she balked, he’d made the call.
But there was an ambulance, too, and that couldn’t be right. Why would an ambulance come to the sight of a CPS visit?
It’s funny the things you remember and the things that you don’t.
Her heart thudding, Sara ran up to the foot of the driveway. She walked up the drive and past her father’s car, heading for the front door, which was standing open.
As she drew nearer to the porch she heard the horrid, wet sounds of someone throwing up. Bent in the dried jacaranda bushes was a young policeman, coughing and spitting weakly. What the hell was going on?
There was a smell of iron in the air, cast off on the bed and wall. There was this young cop, puking his guts.
The back of her neck was tingling. It was the same feeling she got when she snuck downstairs to watch late-night horror films. The same impulse that made her want to yell, “Don’t go in the house!” to the main character was slaloming through her gut right now.
There was no one to stop her– the young policeman was bent over, heaving again, and he hadn’t noticed her. Still wearing her book bag, she crept swiftly inside.
As she climbed the stairs she could hear noise from the second floor– voices, police radios chittering away. There was a strange smell in the air, something she couldn’t place until she realized that it smelled exactly like the advanced Biology classroom on dissection day.
Why did her house smell like blood?
I don’t remember the woman who took me to foster care. I can’t remember her name. Which is strange, you know, because I couldn’t let go of her hand.
Her mother’s bedroom was next door to her own and the noise was all centered there. The door was open and light spilled into the corridor. The patch of light had a decidedly rusty cast to it and pooled in weird, blotchy patterns on the carpet.
As she came nearer to the room, the smell of blood intensified. The voices were all a buzz in her brain as the tingling in the back of her neck increased.
I do remember the looks. I became ‘the girl whose father was stabbed to death.’
Sara peered around the doorframe and a scream bottled itself in her throat.
The bed was awash in blood, so much it appeared black. There was horrid red spatter on the walls, on the light fixture overhead. There were policemen all over the room, several men in jumpsuits, a man in a lab coat, a silver gurney, a black plastic body bag.
In the middle of the bed was her father. He was wearing his underwear and nothing else, his clothes folded on the chair next to the bed. His chest had been ripped open. His face and arms and legs were splashed with blood. White rib glinted in the light.
Do you think there’s a murder gene?
A tiny squeak dislodged from her throat. The squeak gave way to a strangled sob and the sob gave way to a scream. Sara shrieked and barreled forward toward her father.
Several strong pairs of arms closed around her and she screamed again, then sobbed, huge wrenching sobs that shook her body and threatened to turn her inside out. Someone lifted her, carried her out of the room, down the stairs, and onto the lawn where she collapsed, trembling, into the arms of strangers, the only thing in the world that kept her from falling completely apart.
The fights, the yelling, the trips to the hospital. I thought it was the way everyone lived. When my mother killed my father, I found out that it wasn’t.
***
“Destroy the things you love and see if I remember.” Rob Zombie, “Return of the Phantom Stranger”
Sara shut her eyes against the flood of memories that came welling up.
The glint of white rib glimpsed in the ruin of her father’s chest.
The funeral, closed casket, with no family or friends, just herself, the minister, and the Siegels, her foster parents.
The stares and whispers up and down the hallways at Three Palms Middle, where she spent her mornings. The whispers of “freak” from the students at Palmetto High, where she took her afternoon science and math courses.
The psychology session that ended with a hole kicked in the self-righteous therapists’ office wall.
The hearing in a dingy courtroom to determine her mother’s competency to stand trial.
The trial itself and the media surrounding it, all of which the Siegels worked to shield her from.
Unwilling visits on the closed ward of the mental hospital, watching her mother pretend to be blank and crazy.
Years of being shifted from foster home to foster home, high school to high school, until she finally graduated early and left for Berkeley, wanting nothing more than to escape the whispers and the stares.
“Sara?” Grissom’s quiet inquiry brought her back. His concerned expression reflected just how anguished her face must have been.
“I hate thinking about it.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Sara shook her head. “You should have. Of all the people in my life, you’re the one who has the most right to know.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m just afraid that–“ Sara frowned, then broke off. “I’m afraid that there really is–“
”A murder gene?” Grissom supplied quietly. “A crazy gene?”
“I don’t want to be like her,” Sara whispered harshly. “God, I don’t want to be what she was. I couldn’t stand it.”
“Sara.” Grissom sat up and moved closer to her. “There’s no way you could become your mother. You’re completely different from her.”
“Am I? I lose my temper, I get drunk, I’m this self-destructive maniac–“
”None of which means you’re going to turn around tomorrow and commit homicide. You become the person you are based on the influences of your family, your peers, your life experiences, and society in general. Genetics is only a tiny factor, and an insignificant one at best. Can a woman help it if she inherits depression from her mother or high blood pressure from her father? No. But she can control it with medications, with informed decisions, by choosing not to let her genetics control her fate. Even if there were a murder gene, Sara, you’re too compassionate to ever let it take you over.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Yes, I can. If there’s one thing I know with certainty about you it’s that you’d never intentionally hurt someone else. The only person you hurt intentionally is yourself.”
Sara laughed sardonically. “How is it you can think better of me than I can of myself?”
“Because we rarely see ourselves as we really are. And because I happen to know quite a lot about butterflies.”
“I’m a butterfly?” Sara raised her eyebrows. “What, hardy and adaptive?”
Grissom’s grin was enigmatic. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
***
“Gris, I don’t think I can do this.”
Sara’s voice was so thick with panic that Grissom stopped the Tahoe on the side of the road and turned to look at her.
“Well, we don’t have to go. We can always turn around.”
“And drive six hours back to Vegas?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Sara’s capable fingers were trembling like Aspen leaves. “I don’t know if I can stand to see her. Even after all this time I still can’t–“
”Forgive her?” Grissom supplied. “Or is it that you can’t stop being afraid of her?”
“Both,” Sara mumbled, looking out the window at the lushly irrigated farmland surrounding the prison.
“Like I said, we can turn around.” Grissom sat with his hands folded, letting Sara wrestle with her decision.
“I feel like I’m still 13 and terrified.”
“At the risk of torturing a cliche, the only thing we have to fear–“
”Yeah, well, Winston Churchill didn’t have an abusive mother,” Sara replied, cutting him off. She fell into fretful silence then finally said, “Let’s get this over with.”
The parking lot of the Central California Women’s Facility shimmered in the heat. Her shoes made sticky sucking sounds on the asphalt. Grissom walked close behind, support without pressure. Without him, Sara was sure she’d turn around and bolt.
She passed through security in a fog, mechanically handing over her purse, her stainless steel Breitling watch, submitting to the pat down and the sweep with hand-held metal detectors. She didn’t even pay attention to Grissom as he went through security– she could only concentrate on what felt like an entire block of butterflies in her stomach and her rapidly beating heart.
Grissom came up behind her, having passed successfully through security. He could feel tension radiating from her in waves, could hear the hitch in her breathing as she took in the trappings of what must have felt like her own personal hell. Though not one to casually touch, he placed a comforting hand on her rigid shoulders.
“You don’t have to stay long,” he reminded her.
“Sara Sidle.” The guard stood in front of the door to the visitor’s room. “Are you ready?”
Sara drew in a shallow, shaking breath. “I’m ready.”
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