Time for a new story!! Please take a second to review it once you've read the chapters. It gives me the motivation to keep going and, as anyone who has read my other stories knows, I don't tend to know where my stories are going until I get there...so advice and feedback is greatly appreciated.

Chapter One

It was nearly midnight and Gil Grissom stood from the hard plastic chair and stretched stiff muscles. He had been sitting in the waiting room of the Desert Palms emergency room for almost 6 hours and his back was complaining severely. Sighing, he did a lap of the waiting room, trying hard to ignore the many other potential patients who perched in varying states of unhealthiness on their respective plastic chairs.
Riffling through a stack of old and worn magazines - many missing their covers - he selected one and returned to his seat. Pursing his lips, he flicked through the pages, not really interested in the stories within.
Seven hours earlier...
The day had been relatively normal. Grissom, Sara and Nick had been processing a homicide scene in the basement of an older style house twenty minutes outside of Vegas. Sara had been processing the rest of the house while Grissom and Nick had finished off the basement. David Phillips had just left the scene with the body.
Nick straightened up from his crouched position and stretched his back as he looked around the basement, which was being lit by a combination of a watery, low watt, bare light bulb, and the high powered lanterns which the CSI team had brought with them. He could smell the mouldy, stale stench of neglect behind the sharp, metallic odour of fresh blood, and studied the discoloured walls. There were areas of severely cracked and crumbling plaster with mud insect nests cemented into corners and spiderwebs draped freely around the room. He glanced over at his boss and silently thanked having the quiet companion there with him. He had never been really fond of either small spaces or the dark and, since his abduction 6 months earlier, found even entering the bleak basement difficult. He doubted he would have lasted very long processing it by himself. He suspected Grissom was very much aware of his trepidation and was grateful for the respect he showed by staying close by but not advertising Nick's vulnerability to the police who still combed the scene...or to Sara.
He watched as Grissom fossicked among ancient furniture along the wall of the basement. There was a bookcase and chest of drawers, all covered with a deep layer of dust, and stacks of cardboard boxes, stuffed full of papers and documents, clearly discoloured and worn. A shelf, partway up the wall, held yet more containers. Grissom photographed the various areas of the room and examined the contents of the various boxes and containers. He had finished with one box and pulled a second one away from the wall when he noticed a small hole, partially covered by a third box, which had clearly been man-made as it was almost perfect in shape and very different from the various other misshapen cracks and holes which had appeared from age and neglect.
He squinted in thought as he pulled the third box away. the hole was partway up the wall and not the usual place for a hideyhole - it would have been in plain view were it not for the boxes. Pulling the boxes away, however, proved to be a mistake. A mud nest had been obscured behind the box - wasps had clearly constructed their home using the box and the hole for support. As the box was pulled away, the nest disintegrated, and a swarm of wasps poured from the hole.
Grissom gasped in shock and fell backwards on his heels. The wasps swarmed past him and through the room. Nick took a swipe as several flew past his face, which succeeded in aggravating the insects further. The more aggravated the wasps became, the more agitated Nick became and swatted harder through the air. He felt the sharp sting of one wasp on his arm and another on his hand.
"Nick!" called Grissom, getting the younger mans attention with the firmness in his voice. "Don't move! They won't sting you if you leave them alone."
As much as Nick hated doing it, he stopped waving his arms at them and stood still. The strategy worked after several long seconds and the wasps moved on.
Grissom pushed himself heavily to his feet and walked to Nick.
"Did you get stung?" he asked, concern clear in his voice.
Nick nodded and showed him his arm and hand. Frowning, Grissom peered at the sites and, with a quick but gentle flick of his finger, brushed the stings out of his skin. Still frowning he gave Nick another appraising look.
"Are you alright?" he asked
Nick gave a short nod and, almost instantaneously, felt his face flush. He could feel his heart rate increase. A burst of intense nausea hit him and he felt heat flooding right from his centre and flowing rapidly to every corner of his body. It all happened so quickly that Nick didn't have time to register what was happening. But then he felt the uvula at the back of his throat and he realised what was happening. He became aware of the fact that it was taking more effort each time to breath in and he was having to use his accessory muscles more and more.
A burst of panic flared as the reality of anaphylaxis set in. He had developed anaphylaxis 6 months earlier after his abduction and subsequent fireant exposure but had, thankfully, already arrived in the emergency department and, therefore, the symptoms had been treated rapidly and had not added significantly to his distress. Here, however, the symptoms were progressing frighteningly fast and help was not immediately at hand.
He heard, almost distantly, Grissom's calm voice calling for an ambulance, and felt strong hands take hold of his shoulders and guide him back wards until his back hit the wall. His knees buckled and he felt the hands quickly move to grab underneath his arms and support him the rest of the way to the floor. He ended up on his butt, his knees up in front of him and his back resting against the cool wall. He continued to struggle to breathe and felt the skin of his tongue, lips and eyelids begin to tingle. He felt the hands back on his shoulders, gently anchoring him to the present. Sweat was dripping into his eyes and making it difficult to see properly but he saw Sara's form drop to her knees beside him and felt the coolness of her palm rest against his hot cheek.
His chest was aching terribly with the effort of breathing. He had a sudden urge to try and stand upright again, hoping desperately that it would help the battle in any small way. But, the hands held tighter when he tried to push up and held him still. The panic which had been bubbling at the surface erupted. Nick started clawing desperately at his neck, tearing wildly at the T-shirt material, his throat too swollen to make any sound other than strained sobbing grunts. He started rocking, slamming his back against the wall before rocking forward again and repeating the movement. The sweat was almost blinding him.
He faintly heard Sara's soothing mantra, shushing him, while stroking his wet hair and trying desperately to calm him, knowing the agitation wasn't helping his respiratory effort.
The strong hands left his shoulders yet again and clamped onto either side of his head. Bringing his hands up suddenly, Nick swiped at his eyes, clearing the sweat enough to see outlines, but his vision still impacted by his swollen eyelids. Then he heard his boss' soft, calm voice.
"Nick?"
Nick stopped struggling quite so badly and settled just a little.
"Nick, you need to listen to me. We're getting an epipen. That will get us enough time for the ambulance to arrive. You need to relax as much as you can and concentrate on your breathing. We're going to do it together, alright? You're going to be fine, pal. Let's breathe together, alright? In.........Out........In.........Out."
Nick tried hard to follow his boss' instructions. He squashed his eyes as tightly shut as he could manage given the swelling and concentrated with all his might on deliberate breaths.
He didn't open his eyes when he heard the heavy steps of someone running to their side and slamming down next to them on the floor.
Nor did he open his eyes when he heard a deep male voice gruff out, "We found the epi, sir." and heard the rustling of plastic being pulled of the device. He even kept his eyes firmly shut when he heard Grissom's calm voice again.
"OK, pal. Relax. I'm going to inject the epipen now and you'll be OK, alright?"
He felt a punch to his thigh but didn't notice the sharp needle.
Again, he felt the strong hands go back to his shoulders and heard the calm voice counting out the breathing pattern for him again. It seemed to take hours, but finally, he felt the crushing weight against his chest start to lift ever so slightly and it wasn't such an intense battle to draw breath.
He could breathe again.