Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. The main characters belong to CBS and other entities. The plot is mine though, I'm not sharing.

A/N: To Sylvie, with gratitude and apology. Sensei, I'm sorry I kept the phrase.


WHITE ROOM

=== Day One: Helicopter, Memory and Tears ===



I can't remember how I got here. It felt like somehow I just popped into this room, trapped inside the sickening white hall with stark white ceiling and equally stark white linoleum floor. I wish that there were some stains on the ceiling or dirt on the floor, just to make the place less…. unbearable.

I remember the rain; I remember feeling scared as I processed the miniature of the mustang. I remember the heat of desert sun and the dust in my shoes. I remember Natalie. I just don't remember how I got here. Did Nick drive me here? Or was it Brass? I can't tell.

My memories are always working like TV screens; flashing in front of me every time I close my eyes. Some of them are in living color, some gray, and some others just plain black and white. Whichever they were now, they help me remember nothing about how I got here. How I got trapped in this boring white room.

I close my eyes for the umpteenth time, feeling the cold wall against the back of my head. This time my mind brings me back to an ER room with the same white tiles and ceiling around me. Nurses and doctors were scattered inside the room; shouting orders, reciting medical terms, moving efficiently around Sara.

Sara, yes Sara. She is the sole reason I'm here. My beautiful Sara seemed so lifeless and frail beneath the white ceiling. I dread to say this, but she was like a doll; a broken doll with an oxygen mask, needles, and tubes as accessories. Sara, the very beat of my heart, was counting on a machine to monitor her heart beat.

"Bring her to the OR, Dr. Bradley is ready," one of the doctor ordered.

Then the screen on my mind faded, replaced by another image of Sara. She was clad in those boring overalls; smiling to me hesitantly while wiping something off my cheek.

"Chalk?" I whispered.

"Gil, are you okay?"

I opened my eyes. Catherine was looking at me with her usual full of concern yet nosy gaze. I rubbed my cheeks, feeling the cold of my hands against my equally cold skin.

"You need some sleep," she suggested.

"What is taking them so long?" I glanced at the red light above the door. It had been an hour since they took her in. There was no way I would sleep if Sara was still inside.

"You heard the doctor; they need to re-set her broken bone and stop the internal bleeding. It will take hours." She squeezed my hand. "She'll be fine Gil."

"She has to." I closed my eyes again. This time the memory appeared in black and white. I smiled thinking of our first kiss. We were sheltering from a heavy downpour under the canopy outside CozyBench in San Francisco. Rainwater was dripping from the rooftops but we didn't care, standing there, our hands entwined, our lips pressed against each others'.

When I opened my eyes again, Catherine had left my side to join Nick and Warrick's conversation near the vending machine. Greg missed the action; he was sleeping on a chair beside me. His feet were retracted to his chest, his head tilted to one side. There was an unmistakable sign of fatigue beneath his eyes.

"You should all go home," I spoke hoarsely, looking up to the ceiling.

"We're fine Boss," Nick nodded to me.

"When she wakes up, the doctor won't allow us all in the room. Go get some rest. The lab will need you in the next…" I glanced at the clock on the wall. "….five hours."

Warrick was about to say something to defy me, but his yawn betrayed him.

"I'll keep you updated." I closed my eyes and dismissed their chance to argue. I wanted to see a new memory about Sara, but colorful images of bleeding bisque dolls were dancing in my mind. Along with a weird song about some pain in someone's sawdust. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run and hide, but something held me still on the chair.

"Okay, if there is no news in a few minutes we'll go. Just keep us in touch." Warrick put his hand on my shoulder. I did that a lot to him in the past; put my hand on his shoulder, a gesture meaning to comfort. However I felt no comfort this time.

"I will," was the only answer I could manage.

A few minutes later, Catherine woke Greg up and they left me, but not before Warrick shoved a cup of hot coffee in my hands.

The cup was half empty and I had just finished reminiscing the first day Sara came to this Sin City when a doctor emerged from the OR.

"Are you Gilbert Arthur Grissom, Sara Sidle's medical proxy?" He gestured to the closed door behind him and I nodded while getting up from my chair.

His next words were mostly ignored by me. The only time I fully listened to him was when he told me that Sara would be fine. There would come a time when I would need to listen about all the details. There would be precautions to follow, prescriptions to fill, and papers to sign. They could wait, the whole world could wait. At this very moment I only wanted to see Sara, to be at her side and make sure that she was truly okay.

The doctor took a long time to finish his technical speech. I politely asked him if I could see Sara. He politely answered that I would have to wait until they put her in a recovery room. I politely nodded and tried my best not to bash him with the chair. I had been waiting too long

I had to wait for another hour before the nurses wheeled Sara out. The trip to recovery room 304 is also lost from my memories. Before I realized it, they had finished settling her on a bed. Tubes, machines, needles, seemed like they were everywhere around her body. It pained me to watch, so I averted my eyes, gazing around the room. Almost every other thing in the room was also stark white. The stems and leaves of the lilies and the curtain were fairly welcomed shades of green. Sara loves green.

There was a stool close to the window and I took it to sit beside her bed. I traced Sara's outline with my fingertips, careful not to touch the sunburned or bandaged parts. Her chest was graced with a lingering touch. I had to make sure that it was Sara's breath that rose and fell under my skin. I had to make sure that she was alive.

I moved to her hair, reveling the sticky and rough feeling on my fingers. The tips of the hair brushed against my palm as I closed my eyes again. Just three days ago, I had run the same palm against Sara's sweet-scented smooth hair. I sighed knowing that her hair wasn't the only thing had been damaged by the desert.

Sara's lips were parched. I could not see them clearly through the oxygen mask, but I knew they were parched. How could they not be? It probably was one hundreds and ten out there when she was walking under the searing sun.

"How are you?" I murmured to her sleeping form, taking her hand in mine and caressing the back of it. "Everything is okay now. They have caught Natalie. She can't hurt you anymore."

I moved her hand to my cheek and kept it there as I remembered Sara's fondness for the coarse feel of my beard.

"The doctors said you'll be fine; a couple of months for the broken bone, and a couple of weeks for the abrasions and scratches."

I set her hand back on the bed and started scrutinizing her eyelids. The lashes were curled up; Sara once told me she hated them, too short and rare, unlike Catherine's or Sophia's. It's funny but I remember Warrick once commented on them, telling me she had a pair of bed eyes. The eyes that would make her look sleepy and make men want to invite her to bed. I scowled at Warrick all day for his inappropriate yet truthful remark.

"Open your eyes sweetheart." I kissed each of the lids. They were fluttering as if she was trying hard to open them. "Open them and let me know you're fine." I begged but to no avail.

There were steady beeps of a machine, and I looked around to find the source. A heartbeat monitor was on the right side of the bed. The zigzag line on its screen was familiar. I had seen that line so many times. In movies, in real life, but it had never been as substantial as it was right now. I hated to count on the machine to know her condition. I hated myself for letting this happen to her. I hated Natalie, but I hated me more.

Another memory crashed on me. Behind my closed lids I could see Sara's eyes; opened for me. I remember peering over an EMT to get a better view of those brown orbs. I also saw Sara's hands in mine and the thumping of the helicopter blades as well as the roar of the engine.

And then all of a sudden it dawned on me. "I…," I gulped hard, "I got here by helicopter."

I saw the landing pad on top of the hospital. I saw the EMTs and nurses load Sara to a stretcher, the wind whisked her hair away from her pale face.

The next images passed in front of me in the speed of a light; Nick crouching beside Sara, Sophia talking to the EMT, and Catherine running beside me.

"We got here by helicopter Sara. We were carried here from the desert. Natalie kidnapped you and Nick found you first" I whispered my ramble to her, more to revive my own memory. "You had walked nine miles before collapsing. You're strong. You're strong and you'll wake up and you'll be alright." I rested my head on the crook of her neck; closing my eyes and letting the memories of her abduction flood back. It felt like an eternity before the screen in my mind turned black; it felt like an eternity before she woke up.

I was half asleep when she stirred. "Gil," she called for me.

I rose to see those beautiful eyes look up to me. Their brown haze somehow lit up the white room and my heart burst out with hope.

"Hi, I'm here." I smiled to her, feeling her cold hand in mine. "You'll be fine. You'll be fine," I told her when really all I was doing was trying to convince myself.

"hmm mmm," Sara brushed her fingers against my cheek, wiping a tear I hadn't realized was there.

For the first time since the helicopter had brought us here, I voluntarily averted my eyes to the white ceiling, nailing my gaze to the boring color just so she couldn't see another teardrop escape.

End of chapter 1


I have a plan of testing my writing endurance by posting this in chapters. Any kind of input will be greatly appreciated:)