Kiss
TEASER: He would never be the same. GSR. Angst, but not about them. Companion piece to "Touch"; please read it first.
RATING: T for violence and some sexual content.
SPOILERS: Through Season 5.
DISCLAIMERS: In my dreams, I'm wealthy enough to make Bruckheimer, et al., an offer they can't refuse. Alas, this dream has not yet come true, so nothing except what little plot there may be here belongs to me, and I'm not making any money from that, either.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Reviews appreciated, archived at my site, and this isn't a challenge response, so I really don't care how many words MSWord 2003 tells me I've used.
CSI CSI CSI
"Hellish" only scratched the surface of the week the night shift had experienced.
Sofia's last night at the lab before her departure for Phoenix landed her in the emergency room with second degree burns on her hands. Grissom saw her take two Tylenol #4 from her prescription while she waited for Greg to come back from another scene he was working with Sara. An hour later, Sofia was feeling no pain, to the point that Greg got a kiss that blistered the paint on the wall for his quick actions in extinguishing the fire before she could be more seriously hurt. A few minutes later, just before she walked out the door, she did it to Greg again. He ran for the bathroom as fast as he could the second time, screaming about sexual harassment and threatening a lawsuit if Grissom didn't reprimand her on the spot.
The next night, Grissom had only two teams for assignment, himself or Sara, with Greg tagging along with one of them. The temptation for Grissom was to send Greg with Sara whether her cases warranted it or not, just so she would not be out alone in a world where sick and twisted people took CSIs hostage and buried them alive in retribution for the conviction of loved ones.
One look at Sara's face when he reminded Greg of his continuing probationary status, however, convinced him that he had better distribute Greg's presence evenly, or even spend more time with him himself, if he didn't want Sara angry and unhappy with him.
So it was that he assigned Sara to an apparent suicide while he took Greg with him to an apparent murder-suicide scene in West Las Vegas. He wasn't happy about sending her alone, and neither was his gut, which kept warning him of impending danger.
The decision to call the crime a "murder-suicide" had come from the captain of the Homicide division in the West Las Vegas precinct, whose assurances of a secure scene evaporated as he ducked for cover behind his sedan when someone started shooting at them. Grissom felt at least three bullets whiz by him before he found adequate cover behind a cruiser with two street cops. He recognized Greg's scream only because he had walked into the young man's laboratory domain so often while he was screeching at the top of his lungs to what he called music. Grissom's gut had been right, though his interpretation had left something to be desired in accuracy.
Only after he had been to the hospital to check on Greg, who was out of surgery and sleeping soundly, did he go back to the lab to finish his investigation. Sara, who had in the mean time dealt with the suicide and gone chasing after what turned out to be a false report, came back to the lab just as Brass came in with six senior officers from the West Vegas precinct to get their statements on why scene security had been so badly managed.
Never one to yell and scream, Grissom took tremendous satisfaction from the way the six men cowered at his growling tone when he threatened them with great bodily harm should they ever screw up that way again. He took even more satisfaction when they kowtowed to Brass after he finished his tirade, which multiplied the volume of Grissom's own by a factor of at least seven, maybe ten, and was twice as long.
Sara, too, looked pleased when he passed her in the corridor. He could see the pain in her eyes even so, and knew that she was worried about Greg. He admired that compassion more than he could ever say and dreaded the day when it might disappear, leaving her eyes without a sparkle that so signified her as a woman.
Tuesday turned out to be a quiet but frustrating night. Short-handed without Sofia anyway and down Greg besides, Grissom and Sara ran their butts off trying to solve some of the outstanding cases. They managed to get 2 completed and sent off to the DA for grand jury hearings, but six cases still hung over their heads when they gave up at noon to try to get some sleep.
The next night, Greg was back on limited lab duty. With a sigh of frustration, Grissom sent Sara to an accident site on at Exit 12 on I-15 while he took the bar fight for himself, figuring that he needed to be closer to the lab in case Greg had a problem. Greg was fine, much to Grissom's relief.
However, a suspect in the double murder at the bar pulled a knife on him in the interrogation room. The guard, who had not been responsible for making sure the man had no weapon, crushed him to the ground so fast that Grissom wasn't entirely sure what had happened until afterward. When he told Sara about it later over a full pot of Greg's special stash, he thought it made her shake even harder than her own life-threatening encounter with a rattlesnake in full strike. He was never so happy she had earned a sharp-shooter medallion several times over as he was that night.
At 4:30 Friday morning, Grissom realized that not only had the shift been quiet, it had been eerily so. Tuesday's shift had at least seen two calls, both simple assault cases in which the perps confessed before either he or Sara had to do more than examine the cuts and bruises. But there had been nothing since midway through swing shift, and though that involved a murder, it was, according to Warrick, fairly open and shut. Catherine, Warrick, and Nick had gone out to celebrate the end of Nick's first week back at work right on time at the end of their shift.
His gut started churning even as his team closed 10 open cases, clearing 2 old cases from the previous week, five of the six remaining from Tuesday, and both from the night before. Grissom's stomach did a flip-flop when a call for 3 victims at a building collapse came in at 6:30 Friday morning. Parents and a young child, according to the dispatcher, with the possibility of more victims in the rubble.
Grissom and Sara started at opposite corners of the sub-basement and worked clockwise around the room, searching for any evidence of structural failure in the outer walls that could help them determine a cause. When they had each completed the circuit in silence, they turned and repeated the process with the debris pile.
He heard a noise just before Sara called to him.
"Grissom?"
"Yeah, I heard it, too. Do whatever you did again." He saw her light move through the open spaces of the rubble, then a human of indeterminate age cried out.
"I'll get the paramedics," he said as he made his way around to her over treacherous piles of brick, steel, and wood.
The sweep of her light elicited another response from the person buried in the pile. "Can you talk? The paramedics are coming. My name is Sara, we can help you."
He admired the calm tone of her voice, but said nothing as she waited for another sound.
"Grissom! I think it's an infant. Where are those paramedics?"
He could tell that his proximity startled her when he said into her ear, "About seven minutes out. The rescue crew is on its way down, though."
Something shifted in the rubble and the child screamed. Sara flinched before she wrapped the strap of her light around her wrist and hoisted herself through a small opening.
"What the hell are you doing?" He shuddered when his voice rose an octave, but he was damned scared and his gut clamored for him to keep her safe because no good could possibly come of this.
"Saving a life."
His stomach clenched so hard that he almost vomited. "Sara . . ."
He heard an indistinct answer from her, then nothing for what seemed like hours before the child's whimpering resumed. It sounded like the poor thing was having an asthma attack while trying to cry for its mother.
Sara's sweet voice cut through the disaster site. He heaved a sigh of relief as she called out, "I found the baby, Grissom!"
He heard an awful crash and called out to Sara. "Don't move!"
Then he heard nothing except an intermittent wheeze and the shifting of debris which he hoped was Sara moving rather than things shifting dangerously.
Finally, after more silence than he could take, he called to her with noticeable and unrepentant terror in his voice. "Sara?"
"CPR!"
He sagged against the wall with relief and stayed there for a couple of minutes before the rescue crew made it down the stairs. He looked at them, intending to ask what the hell had kept them, but the lieutenant in charge cut him off.
"We anchored some of the remaining supports up above in hopes that we can keep anything else from collapsing."
Grissom nodded and let them do their work, even though he wanted nothing more than to help them dig Sara and the baby out. It only took the rescue crew five minutes to reach the two deep inside the debris pile, by which time the paramedics were on scene waiting to receive the child. Grissom held his breath again as one man crawled into the shored up tunnel, exhaling only a little when the unmoving baby was passed to the medics.
He still needed to see Sara come out of that pile, alive and pissed that the rescue crew and paramedics had taken so long, before he could breathe again. The crash inside the tunnel startled him just as her blackened, frustrated face appeared in the light. Her scream dropped him to his knees.
After a moment, her voice became more distinct. "My foot's caught!"
Two men in the rescue crew went to work, making quick repairs to the small tunnel and extracting Sara carefully an inch at a time. When she was out all the way, one of the men, an EMT, looked her over with a practiced eye.
"That ankle looks bad, Miss Sidle. You're going to need to go to the hospital."
"Broken?"
Grissom could hear the exhaustion in her voice and wanted nothing more than to cradle her in his arms to comfort her.
The EMT shook his head. "A deep cut, possibly to the bone. Definitely not something a band aid will take care of."
"Oh. Okay. What's your name?"
It wasn't Hank, that much Grissom knew.
"Jack. Anything else hurt?"
"Sara. My hands, but only from the CPR. I didn't hit my head."
"There's no evidence of a concussion," Jack agreed, shooting Grissom a look. "Are you okay, Dr. Grissom?"
He realized then that he was still on his knees. He pushed himself up and dusted off his pants. "I am now."
Sara's eyes flashed up to him. "You were worried?"
"After the week we've had, how could I not be?" he said, and hoped that she could see in his eyes that he had something that he needed to say in private.
"Speaking of the week we've had, better call Greg."
A stretcher bounced down the stairs just as Grissom pulled out his phone. Sara told him to follow her ambulance in the Denali rather than to ride with her.
"I have every intention of needing a ride home."
"I hope so. I'll be there as soon as they let me in." He would rather have ridden with her, but she had a good point. And since he planned to stay with her for as long as she would let him this afternoon and evening, he thought it wise to accede to her wishes.
Greg wanted to meet them at the hospital, but Grissom heard pain and exhaustion in his young voice and ordered him home for a weekend of rest. That the youngest of his team didn't argue even a little said volumes about the stress of this horrible week.
It seemed Grissom that he had just settled into a chair in the waiting room of Desert Palms Hospital with a cup of coffee from the local Vegas "don't wannabe Starbucks" when a nurse was shaking his shoulder lightly.
"Dr. Grissom? You can see Miss Sidle now. She's in the Day Surgery PAC-U."
He wiped the grit from his eyes and lifted his coffee cup to his lips. It was lukewarm, but since it was good coffee to start with, it was better than what he usually drank piping hot at the lab, save Greg's special stash. He finished it in three more swallows and tossed it with unerring accuracy and momentum into a flip-top trashcan.
The action made him think about his first "date" with Sara, over coffee at Pete's in Harvard Square almost fifteen years ago, where he watched her do that same thing five times with five different objects. At his look of wonderment, she had shrugged and said, "Physics," expecting him to understand.
He hadn't until last Wednesday, when, unable to sleep because of nightmares in which Nick died, he practiced on his own flip-top trashcan until he could sink whatever he threw every time. And then he understood so much more than he ever had about the metaphysics of his relationship with Sara that it was all he could do to keep himself from interrupting her sleep with a phone call to ask her if it were too late.
For now, Sara slept peacefully in a regular bed, curtains on each side of the bed separating her from the other patients in the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit but not blocking the view of the on-duty nurse. The nurse waved Grissom to a chair beside Sara's bed with a smile even as he talked on the phone in what sounded like a hushed but aggravating conversation.
"Sorry about that, Dr. Grissom," the man said once he'd hung up. He picked up a chart from the desk and came over to sit in a second chair at Sara's bedside.
"It's okay, Larry. I have had more than my share of days like that this week."
"How's Nick? You said Monday he was back at work?"
"He's fine. His first week back went well, according to him and to my sources watching out for him."
"And Greg?"
"Anxious to get back in the field, but happy to have been allowed to work even in the lab on light duty." Grissom smiled a little. "I'm worried that you know so many of my staff by name, Larry."
"Frankly, Dr. Grissom, so am I. So, would you like to know about Miss Sara here?"
"Sure. She's obviously been awake." Hospital policy was for staff to use formal means of address until patients gave them permission to use first names. It was quaint, in a way, but highly professional.
"Yes. She doesn't remember the immediate aftermath of her injury or the ride here, but she gave me a pretty good synopsis of everything up to the point the baby was rescued and she put her foot through a hole in the debris."
Grissom nodded. "Good. So there really wasn't any concussion?"
Larry shook his head. "Nothing the doctors could find. They did a whole body CT scan just in case, but it's clean. Her wrists are liable to be sore from the CPR and the crutches won't help that, but if you can keep her off her feet, everything will feel better anyway."
"What about work?"
"Dr. Cortez will have to tell you that. It's not in the orders yet. Can I get you anything?"
"No, thanks. I'll probably nap a while if it's okay."
"Be our guest." He pushed himself out of his chair. "Just don't take that literally, okay?"
"Not if I can help it. Thanks, Larry."
Something beeped in another part of the room, forcing Larry to leave off any final words as he hurried over to deal with his patient. Grissom settled in the chair, feeling the stress of the week bleed off a bit as he watched the even rise and fall of Sara's chest.
When he woke up, Dr. Cortez was saying to Sara, ". . .-neal muscle, but it wasn't severed. We can give you another shot of lidocaine before you leave."
He groaned, wiping his hands across his eyes, and cocked an eyebrow at the doctor. "What about work?"
Dr. Cortez shrugged. "I'm suggesting crutches for a couple of days to keep the strain off that muscle, but I don't see why Miss Sidle can't go back to the lab on limited duty on Monday night. You'll need to see your primary care to be released to full duty, though."
Sara nodded. He could read the waves of pleasure from her at the thought of not being stuck at home recuperating. He and Greg could manage without her for a night so she could have their Monday shift, which started Sunday night, off.
The other woman turned to him with a smile. "Dr. Grissom, if you don't mind me saying so, I'm getting kind of tired of seeing you around here."
"It's mutual, Dr. Cortez." He tried to smile back, but couldn't get his muscles to lift his lips that way.
Dr. Cortez gave Sara another lidocaine shot along with the discharge orders. She slept for half an hour as they waited out the obligatory post-injection potential reaction window, and again in the car as he drove her home.
He couldn't help wanting to smooth the hair out of her eyes as she dozed against the door, but he held back. It wasn't his right to do that yet.
She surprised him after he helped her into the apartment. She handed him a key to her apartment. "Thank you for checking for me," she said, obviously referring to the baby.
He would have to go down to Sunrise Children's Hospital to find out the baby's status, since they didn't have a name or even a gender. He looked at her, loving her more with each passing moment and reeling from that sensation even as he tried to stay focused on her immediate needs. "You're welcome, but I wish I didn't have to leave you alone to do this."
"I'll be fine, Gris. I'm going to sleep while you're gone, and you're going home to sleep after you bring me news and groceries."
The groceries were easy with the cooler and instant ice packs he kept in the back for evidence. She needed milk, juice, eggs, bread, and fruit, though while he was at the store, he picked up some cheese he knew she really enjoyed, salad makings, and the ingredients for a vegetarian lasagna he had wanted to try for a while, as well. It also kept him from finding out for a while longer whether or not the one worst-case scenario left for the day had happened. Sara would be crushed if the baby had died despite her best heroic efforts. So, truthfully, would he.
He sat in the parking lot of the hospital for a few minutes before he could bring himself to go inside. He went right to the Emergency Room and showed his ID. "I'm following up on a house collapse," he told the desk clerk.
The young woman nodded. "Just a moment, sir. I'll get the doctor."
A moment later, a tired looking man about his age pushed through the double doors. The man's surgical scrubs were wrinkled and blood spattered and his eyes crinkled in the corners as though he were trying to avoid looking at awful things for just a few moments. Grissom recognized him from several Public Service Announcements he had done about child safety.
"Dr. Hernandes?"
The man's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Yes. You're Gil Grissom, right?"
"Yes."
"You're here about the baby from the house?"
"Yes. I have an injured team member who won't rest until she knows how the baby is."
Instead of an answer, Dr. Hernandes waved him to follow. Grissom did so silently, dread building as he realized they were going toward the chapel at the end of one long hallway.
"Tell your team member she saved a number of lives," Dr. Hernandes told him as he pushed open the chapel doors. "Just not the one she thought."
Confused, Grissom started to ask what he meant, but a woman's voice stopped him.
"Are you the one who did CPR on Richie?" The tall, elegant woman had been crying, and a man Grissom assumed was her husband stood with his arm around her. Grissom wasn't sure which one held up the other.
"Um, no, ma'am. My friend Sara did that."
Before he could start the truck half an hour later, he had to wipe tears from his eyes. He had no idea how he could tell Sara the news, or how she would take it, but he knew she had been alone for long enough and, if nothing else, he needed to be with her.
She was sleeping peacefully in her bed when he got to her apartment. He put the groceries away before he went in to sit beside her on the edge of the bed.
When she opened her eyes, he was clenching his teeth and wringing his hands as he watched her through tears that wouldn't fall.
Without a word, he reached out to take her hands between his, holding them as if they were precious jewels to be treasured. Something in that simple contact changed everything. Maybe she gave him strength to tell her, maybe he gave her strength to hear him. But they would never be the same after this.
"His name was Richard Dale Loring. He was 8 months old. They couldn't save him, Sara."
She moved over on the bed and pulled him down to her. He went into her arms gratefully, finding in her embrace solace he hadn't known he needed.
He touched her hair and found his hands moving of their own accord to finger the silken strands. "But you did a good thing, Sara. A very good thing. I talked to his grandparents. They wanted me to tell you that thanks to you, his heart will beat in another child's chest and two other children will be able to live and breathe."
"It's not fair," she whispered into his chest. "Why did I live and he die?"
"Oh, honey, you can't ask that question and get a good answer." He felt his chest tighten at the thought of losing her and made himself stroke her hair with the lightest of touches to counter the anxiety in his soul. "He had a severe subdural hematoma that bled out in the ER. Everybody did everything right from the moment we realized he was in that pile of debris. It was just . . . I don't know, his time to go? You made it possible for three other children to live even though he died, and if you hadn't risked your life to go in there . . ."
They were silent for a time as he lengthened his caresses along her spine.
When she spoke, her voice sounded as though she were far away. "Were you mad at me for going in?"
"No," he huffed, and pulled her closer to him with less force than his fear wanted, sure he would suffocate her otherwise. "But I was terrified."
"Like you were with Nick?"
He stilled his hands on her shoulders. He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes, seeing her devastated soul and her courage and something else that he hoped was for him and him alone. "If Nick had died . . ." He swallowed and blinked tears away, not because he was ashamed of them but because he wanted to look at Sara as he spoke.
"If Nick had died, I would have been devastated at the loss of a friend and colleague. I'd have known a part of our family was missing, and I'd have missed him in the lab, but I'd have dedicated my work to everything that he stands for – compassion, thoroughness, professionalism."
He watched emotions swirl through her eyes, first anger, then sorrow, and then that look he so hoped was meant for him and him alone. He could lose himself in that look and be happy, truly happy, for the rest of his life.
"If I had lost you . . ." His voice trembled and his lips quivered but he didn't give a damn. He was going to say what he had been too terrified to say for far too long. "Sara, if I had lost you, if I lose you, I will die."
"Gil?"
He had never known how the spoken word could be more like heaven than the music of Mozart or Bach until the moment he heard his name on her lips. It wasn't the first time, but it was different now, a new moment in their history as they lay intertwined in grief and sorrow.
He held those deep brown eyes, pouring his soul into his gaze and his words. "I can't keep you at arm's length anymore, Sara. I can't pretend that I don't worship the ground on which you walk and savor the air you breathe as ambrosia worthy of royalty. Without you, my life is nothing."
He saw tears forming in her eyes and brushed them away with his thumbs, tracing her cheeks as he did so.
She took his hands in hers and lifted them in turn to her lips, planting kisses in his palms that rocked him to his core in their declaration of belonging. "That's why I've stayed so long. As bad as it was, being here with you was so much better than being anywhere without you."
He let her words wash over him, cleansing him with their forgiveness and their hope. He settled her in his arms as he stretched out on the bed. Together, they could hold back each other's nightmares, if only for a night.
Grissom had a vision when he awoke. The setting sun streamed into the bedroom, casting its golden red rays across Sara's body. Her skin glowed as though lit from within and a halo of hair made her look more angelic than ever before. All he could do was watch as the sun took its light from her, but no matter how hard it tried, it could not take her beauty.
She opened her eyes. "Hi," she whispered. Her fingers brushed through the curls on the back of his head, raising goosebumps on his arms.
He smiled down into those chocolate eyes, glazed with sleep yet bright with that look again. "Hi."
"Gil?"
That sound of heaven. "Sara?"
"Don't leave."
It was neither a plea nor a command, but something all together different. A call, a caress, an acknowledgement of the change in their relationship in the events of this traumatic day, any of these, all of these, uncomplicated, undeniable, unalterable. "I won't." His voice sounded raspy and thin in his ears.
He felt the pull of her hands on his neck. "Kiss me, please."
Another call, a siren call to his very soul; in the simple, sweet touching of his lips to hers, he knew he had finally come home.
--FIN--