topic 162 "I never thought I'd say this, but... *locked so tight from everyone*

[not_a_eunuch]

I never thought I'd say this, but maybe I should have made another deal with Wolfram and Hart and got Kara a mindwipe and a new life. I know, I should know better. I should be able to look at how that went with Connor, and how no deal with the firm will end well. But then I look at Connor and how he is able to handle things better now than he used

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[tm_darla]

*Darla gets Angel's phonecall at the opening of the "Faces of Isabella" exhibition which her boss at the Gardner insisted she had to attend. She had tried to persuade Kara to come along as part of her attempt to try and persuade Kara to take an internship at the museum where she could keep an eye on her, but in vain. As Darla and Angel are not in the habit of making casual phonecalls, she excuses herself to a donator she has been talking to, knowing this has to be something important, then takes the call while walking away from the crowd.*

"What happened?" she asks crisply.

[not_a_eunuch]

"Lex and Kara broke up," He says tonelessly. That obviously isn't all there is to it, but Darla knows as well as Angel does that Kara has been spiraling toward a meltdown for some time now.

"I tried to get to her, but she locked herself in the room. Dresser in front of a door, so I used the neighbors ladders. I found her in the bathroom and she had consumed whatever she could find in the medicine cabinet. We're at the emergency room." He's just spitting out details fast. This is how he and Darla work. They delegate and divide up responsibilities. It's why they made such an efficient and lethal team back in the day.

"I'll call Cordy, you should call Alan, and we shouldn't call anyone else." Unless you know how to get a hold of Tucker and Warren. But he doesn't say that.

[tm_darla]

Of all the things, she remembers Catherine Manners in Kara's body, slashing her wrists before leaving that body because Darla was forcing her to, using Dru and Catherine's daughter as leverage. She remembers endless hours of waiting while Kara was at another hospital somewhere in the wilderness of Maine, after the Wells boy had gotten himself attacked by a demonic bear or something similar. Kara hadn't wanted her there but in the end had changed her mind.

"I'll call him," she says, just as toneless and matter-of-factly. "Which hospital?"

She'll stop at the house before going there. Because Kara will want her pyjamas and Doug when she wakes up. Because that's a more useful thing to think about than anything else. Details. Keep it with the details.

She doesn't think about Lex Luthor at all. That will come later.

[not_a_eunuch]

He tells her the name of the hospital. All he can think about is watching the doors to see when the doctors will have an update. Why couldn't he just stay with her? He would have stepped back and given them room? Procedure.

"I don't know if they have diet coke here," he says, and it's a strange thing to bring up, but he knows Darla will understand. Kara will want Diet Coke. The nurses will have to make room in their fridge for it.

Of course if he looked around the hospital he would see plenty of Coke machines, but he isn't looking around the hospital. Just at those doors. And he can't help but think about how light she felt in his arms, and how big that hospital bed looked when they laid her on it.

"I'm in the Emergency Room waiting room. I'll see you when you get here." He'll remember later that he should have told her to drive carefully. Kara would want her to drive carefully.

[alan_shore]

When you have all of a car ride--even if it's a short car ride--to think about it, "Kara tried to kill herself" is an extraordinarily vague sentence. Never one for panic, Alan's excused himself from the office for the night, obeyed traffic lights and used appropriate turn signals in driving to the hospital. He's also spent the trip conceiving of every possible means by which Kara might've attempted to end her life. (Why doesn't come up. At the moment, it seems irrelevant.)

He gives Kara's name to one of the nurses. It sounds more like a question than a statement.

"Thank you for calling me," he says upon locating Angel and Darla. He doesn't offer a smile; if he did it would only be tight and perfunctory. "How's she doing?"

Belatedly, Alan notices he's brought his briefcase along with him. He sets it down.

[tm_darla]

"She'll be moved soon," Darla says and repeats Angel's information from the doctors for him. She doesn't smile, either. He can't have seen her this way very often, utterly without flirtatiousness or poise - perhaps two or three times, and it usually involved either Connor or Kara, or that recent brush of an old illness. But she does look grateful when he sits down. "So, out of danger." She sighs. "Out of physical danger."

Nobody who tries to kill themselves is really out of danger. There's always another way, depending on the motivation. But Alan knows that.

[alan_shore]

He takes the information in with a grave nod and a sigh of his own. No more than two weeks ago, Kara had been the drunken and effusive hostess of one of the most insane birthday parties Alan'd ever had the pleasure to attend.

"Thank goodness for that," he says, not content to take one thing at a time, but resigned to it. "What happened?"

He knows Kara well enough that this doesn't mean 'what could have driven that cheerful young girl, so enamored of exclamation points, to do such a thing?' It means he's looking for a precipitating factor.

[not_a_eunuch]

What happened? Angel has been trying to put that together. It's not just one event, that much he is sure of, but he isn't sure what the exact trigger was either.

"I think she just hasn't been able to catch a break. She had the stuff with her dad blow up, and then the Connor and Harry stuff, and Cordy's presumed death twice with the second time including Harry, Tucker and Warren left, Todd, Harmony and Dru disappeared, and now she and Lex have broke up. I think...I think she thinks she makes people leave her."

He is no shrink, but he was a predator for a couple of centuries. He's tried to play champion for awhile too. He dated a teenager for a few years. He's tried raising a couple too. Angel is no Doctor Phil, but he watches the show sometimes. Mostly he just feels like he's guessing in the dark here.

[queen_c_tm]

The flight from California felt like it took a year, but finally Cordelia's back in Boston. In reality, it's only been about five hours, but that was five very long hours to sit alone in the jet and worry about every horrible thing that could be happening while she was thousands of feet in the air.

Since her car is still back at the Four Seasons, she gets a cab to rush her to the hospital (Kara would be happy, she thinks, if she knew she wasn't trying to drive herself). One good thing about arriving in the middle of the night is there's nearly no traffic to get in their way.

She gets to the emergency room and rushes through the doors, searching the waiting area for a familiar face. They might have moved Kara to a room by now, so she's not even sure anyone will still be down there. If not, she'll just have to badger a nurse until she finds out where they are.

[not_a_eunuch]

They haven't moved Kara yet. Apparently there is a room shortage and they want to put her in a private room. Another hour or so they promise. Someone is being released soon and once the room is ready they will move her.

Angel stands up when he spots Cordelia enter. She looks as worried as he feels.

"Hi. They should be moving her soon."

[queen_c_tm]

Relieved to see him, she rushed over and tugs at her scarf so she can breathe a little better.

"How is she? Have they told you anything yet? What happened?"

It's a lot of questions at once, but she's had a lot of time for them to all accumulate in her head. Now that she's here, they're kind of just spilling out in a wave.

[not_a_eunuch]

Alan and Darla have stepped out for coffee and will be back soon so it's just Angel who greets her for now.

"Physically she'll be fine. They want to keep her for a few days for observation and to have her speak with a psychologist."

He sits down and knows she will probably join him unless she is restless from the flight and decides to pace.

"I think it all got to her. Everything that has been happening for the last few years, and then with the break up with Lex she just lost it."

... Later.

[kara_marie]

She wakes up with the feeling that comes with an unnaturally long sleep, that feeling where somehow sleep has made you even more tired than when you started, as if the act of sleeping has been more than you could stand.

Kara smells the room before she wakes up. Somewhere in her dreams she can smell that specific scent of constant disinfecting, such a viligiant scent. In the dream she says,

"This place smells like a hospital."

She laughs.

Then she wakes up.

It's dark, but then rooms like this are designed to be dark at any time of the day, it seems, and this one doesn't even have a window. She wonders if Angel requested that and how you could possibly word it (No window, I have a sun allergy. No window, she might jump out) or if he just got lucky.

"Hey,"

She says, softly, not sure if he is awake.

"I totally need to pee."

Which is, given the circumstances, as good an ice breaker as any.

... Later.

[not_a_eunuch]

He's awake. It turns out that it's not hard to get a room without a window if the patient had a suicide attempt. This works out well since Angel was going to have to figure out how to stay in the room no matter if there sunlight to deal with or not.

He and Darla will be taking turns, of course, but others will probably want to see her too. For now Angel is the one at her side and he doesn't think he wants to leave it any time soon.

"You feel okay to make it to the bathroom or do you need some help?" he asks quietly, relieved she is awake.

... Later.

[kara_marie]

Kara, in her own special way, would be taking exception to the phrase 'suicide attempt'. That makes her sound, well, crazy! And suicidal! And she's not any of those things. In fact, she will take deep exception to it as soon as someone decides to use that phrase. She was upset. She was emotional. She was even stupid. But suicide, well, that makes it sound all too serious.

"My head hurts."

She says, which isn't an answer.

"And my stomach."

She pulls herself up, which takes more effort than it should, her body taking its time to get used to the concept of holding itself upright.

"And pretty much everything, yeah."

Re: ... Later.

[not_a_eunuch]

He stands up and walks over to the side of the bed to offer his hand so he can help her up. She looks very tired despite having slept for some time. He thinks they gave her something to make her sleep. Maybe. He isn't sure.

"Let me help you," he says, waiting for her to take his hand.

As for taking exception to the use of suicide attempt he wouldn't know what to say to that. All he knows is she scared the hell out of him. So much so he is still planning to ask her if the two of them should take off for awhile. He plans to be her shadow because he's convinced if he had just gotten into that room faster instead of talking to her via the computer maybe they wouldn't be in a hospital room now.