Page 12 of Dissension

She’s not sure how long her mother has been bleeding. During the attack she’d hid under her bed, only coming out after she heard the front door of their home slam, angry footsteps thundering away.

Nurses and doctors race out with a stretcher, getting her mother aboard it.

One of the women examines the wound quickly, triaging fast. She says a few fast words to her counterparts and then asks Kara, “What happened?”

They are hurrying back inside, out of the deluge. It’s easier for Kara to hear her own thoughts inside the hospital; the rain is so loud. Deafening. She needs a clear mind; she needs to think fast.

The truth isn’t acceptable, so Kara lets the lies slip from her lips. She’s learned to be a good liar when it comes to protecting others. “She- she tripped while in the kitchen. She was using the cutting board and…and she’s had a bit to drink…” Employing some more very real tears, fueled by her frantic mind, Kara finishes, “It just happened so fast. Please. Please help her!”

The blood is so red. It’s sticky on her hands, heavy with an awful scent. Crimson. It’s much thicker than Kara imagined it would be, imprinting itself in her mind. Her mother can’t die. She can’t leave Kara withhim.

The idea of having Charlie Hayes to herself for all eternity is a nightmare of the highest order.

The ER nurses are taking her mother away quickly, away on a stretcher. Ready to operate on the bleeding knife wound arching across her side like a filthy red grin.

“Where’s your father, honey?”

Her mother makes a pained sort of groan and Kara feels frozen, if only for a moment. Then, a cool sort of blankness falls over her. Her mother would want her to lie. Her father would want her to lie. Lies are what protect them all.

They aren’t good parents, but they are all Kara has. They’re the ones she’sgot. Even though her mother continually disappoints her, even though she fears her father, even though she loves him despite it all. They are the bad hand she’s been dealt.

“I…I think he’s out drinking. He’s not home.” Not anymore, anyway. “That’s…that’s why I brought her.” Tries to deflect. “Am I in trouble for driving her? I don’t have a license-”

The nurse is giving her an odd look. Pitying. The look people give Kara so often. She hates being looked at this way.

“No. You’re not in trouble. You may have saved her life. She’s lost a lot of blood. Any longer and she may have bled out. The wound has been bleeding for…some time. She should have been brought sooner.” It almost sounds like an accusation.

They leave her to sit in the waiting room while they patch her mother up. They leave Kara with her wretched thoughts.

If she were any sort of decent daughter, she would spend some time trying to convince herself that it was an accident, that her father hadn’t meant to do this at all. She would be lying to herself, of course. Her parents had been drinking profusely, cursing each other out. Yelling so terribly that she was almost certain they wanted to murder each other.

Well. About that.

She’d heard the scream, bloodcurdling, unlike anything she’d heard before. It had come after her mother had started accusing him of fooling around, of being a worthless bastard, of being the singular most regretted fuck of her life.

It had sounded like a horror movie, the way her mother’s vocal cords rang up the walls, careening into a terrifying pitch. She’d known then, that something terrible, worse than usual, had happened. Kara had been too afraid to leave her room, an absolute coward. She’d been shaking, ready to piss herself out of terror that her father would come for her next.

Instead, he’d left out the front door. He’d gotten in his car and drove off onto the rural roads.

A better daughter would have left her room immediately to help their mother. Wouldn’t they? They would have run to her side and taken care of her. Kara had been too shaken, too afraid, so she sat, hiding under her bed for nearly five minutes before her mother’s cries of pain finally brought her from her frozen state of terror.

Nothing had prepared her for the sight of her mother lying on her back, blood beginning to pool beside her like a murderous spilled ink.

Regardless of how cowardly she had been, Kara came through in the end. She pushed past her fear. Her terror. Her despair. She fought to overcome it, like fingernails breaking against a stone wall in a precarious climb.

Kara has always taken care of others, even though so many have never been there for her.

Most of her nights are spent in a book. Or rather, many books. Pouring over old cases, trying to understand the fine differences between all types of defenses and litigations. Ever since being brow-beaten into taking the mantle ‘she’s a Bittinger Lawyer’, Kara has been cramming like never before.

Not drinking like a drowned fish certainly helps keep her from spiraling, even though her client likes to torment her by drinking when he sees her. Dieter likes topush.

Experience is always valued in the world of law. However, having the right knowledge and understanding of precedent certainly helps. In these last few months, she’s almost certain she’s learned more working for Dieter than she ever learned while in college. Even more than what she learned at Derrick’s firm, where she mostly prepared casework for the senior associates. The Debra Mills trial had been her first one ever- and look how that turned out.

Flipping through another tome, Kara cradles her phone between her shoulder and ear. “Gale, I’ve been told to bring him to the station for an interview.”

Her mentor’s voice dips precariously. “Rotten timing. About theDark Mirage?”

“Yes. Though, I wouldn’t put it past them to bring up anything else on their laundry list. I have no idea what that laundry list may be, by the way.”I’m at a disadvantage here, Gale, if you didn’t deduce that.

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