On Deaf Ears

By Crystal Wimmer

A/N: This story begins during the events of Play with Fire and diverges from there with an added element. Expect spoilers through the end of the third season, and beyond that an alternate universe.

Chapter 1

Ironically, she didn't hear the explosion at first. Sara saw Greg lean sideways and wondered what the hell was going on, and then she saw the glass coming towards her. It wasn't until she'd hit the wall that the overpowering sound rang through her head. Once she'd heard it, she found that it echoed and reverberated in the air, never entirely going away. At some point the sound was replaced by the roar of flames and the muted calls of her friends and coworkers. She saw Greg lift his head, and then drop it once more, and she wished more than anything that she could get to him to help him.

When someone grabbed her and pulled her from her place on the floor, her first thought was that they shouldn't move her. Weren't you supposed to leave people with head and back injuries still? Her head was throbbing, her ears were ringing, and her back hurt like hell. Still, there did seem to be more threat from the encroaching flames than the arms tugging her up, so she went willingly enough, allowing them to drag her through the halls and out onto the lawn.

Outside, the lab was in chaos. It looked like every disaster scene that Sara had ever witnessed on CNN. She rarely saw this immediate chaos in her job, as the CSIs were not often first on the scene. Usually, the police and emergency crews took care of the victims and then they came in to do their thing. She had never thought that her own world could become the crime scene. She had never thought that she could have been hurt simply walking down the hall after Grissom.

Grissom.

Where was he? Despite the ringing in her head, she made a frantic scan to see if she could find him. As someone deposited her safely on the curb, she didn't even have the presence of mind to thank them. Her mind was in one place, and that was a destroyed hallway in which her boss had passed through and to the office beyond. Was he safe? Had he made it out?

Then she saw him. He was walking alongside a stretcher which carried Greg, carefully propped on his side. Absently it occurred to her that they hadn't moved him from his fallen position. She shook her aching head, trying to clear the vision that periodically blurred as she watched the door close on the helicopter. She thought it was oddly quiet; didn't they normally slam the door to secure it? Weren't helicopters normally loud? It was a random thought. She knew she was dazed, and probably in shock. It was a hazard of being a scientist; she knew just enough to worry herself.

Realizing that she didn't really have the strength to stand or the desire to do so, she remained seated on the curb with her legs folded beneath her as she watched the chaos around her. Triage was going on at many levels, and it looked as much like a war zone as it did a parking lot. But the movement wasn't… normal. It was in slow motion, and slightly fuzzy, and none of the sounds seemed to penetrate the buzz that remained in her ears. She felt like she had after she'd left the Rush concert the summer before; as though the world were on the other side of a bubble, and she was listening through it.

The same vagueness accompanied Grissom's arrival. She looked up at him, registering that he was okay, and that he was looking concerned. As much as she wanted him to notice her, pity wasn't the way she wanted to gain his attention. In addition, she couldn't really hear what he was saying. He had mumbled something, his expression earnest, but it wasn't entirely clear. It was that buzz, she decided. The ringing that had begun with the explosion simply hadn't had time to clear. He was talking to her, and the expression on his face was becoming increasingly concerned. She didn't want that. She didn't want him to worry.

She assured him that she was okay, and tried to divert him to work. That had always worked in the past when she had been unsure of what to say to him. When she was sure that she was about to make an emotional fool out of herself – again – she simply went back to the subject of work.

She had already told him that she was fine, or at least she thought she had. Still, he was holding her hand. His voice echoed through the auditory bubble that she seemed to be in.

"Honey, this doesn't look good."

She knew that she wasn't hearing things correctly then. After all, he'd never used an endearment with anyone on his staff, even Catherine, let alone her. She shook her head, as much to clear it as to negate what he had said. "It's fine," she finally got out.

Work, she reminded herself; back to work. She looked up to meet his eyes, but her glance didn't stay there. "Cleanup's going to be something," she pondered aloud as she looked past Grissom to the insanity around her. Her voice sounded odd, vibrating and muffled rather than clear. She ignored it. "We should get started…"

Grissom got a determined look on his face that was just shy of a glare, tempered only by an obvious concern. If she had been able to get her head clear, she would have appreciated the TLC; as it was, she didn't know what to do with it. "You need to get stitches," he insisted.

"I'm okay," she said again, once more hearing the muffled words echoing through her mind as though she hadn't spoken them at all. She just wanted time to sort it all out, and to clear her head. She always thought better when she was working. It didn't look like she was going to get it, though.

Grissom had turned to a nearby EMT, and waved him over. "Would you take care of her hand, please?" he requested. He pulled her up by both hands, passed her physically into the hands of the EMT, and then went off talking to someone else. She couldn't hear a word he was saying now that he was more than a yard away.

Before Sara could argue, she had been escorted to an ambulance and was being looked over quite thoroughly. She thought it was overkill, and she would have much rather sat on the curb with Grissom holding her hand, but nobody had asked her opinion. Her hand was wiped clean, had gauze placed over it, and then she was handed an ice pack with the muffled orders to stay where she was and to hold her hand above her heart. She thought the entire situation was blown entirely out of proportion, but then that was the problem. The lab had been blown up, and she had been essentially at ground zero.

Moments later, she was shooed towards the inside of the ambulance and the doors once more closed with an oddly muffled thump. The paramedic held pressure on the ice pack that was in her hand, and that was the way she stayed until they arrived at Desert Palm Hospital. Once there, she was faced with the indignity of filling out forms with one incapacitated hand and waiting while everyone who was more seriously injured was treated first.

It was frightening to see so many of her coworkers sitting around her with the same glazed expression that she knew she must be wearing. They appeared to be talking among themselves, and she couldn't understand how they could manage it in the rumble of the room. The high-pitched hum that had been present since the explosion was still making it difficult for her to hear, and she was in no mood for discussion anyway. Fortunately, outside her immediate team, she wasn't the most friendly of women, so she wasn't assaulted with inquiries as to how she felt or what had happened. She simply sat in the whining room and stared at the television, which emitted no sound.

Three hours later, she was finally nursing a well-stitched hand and wondering how the hell she was going to get home. Just about the time she decided that she would need to call a cab, she saw Nick walking through the sliding double doors with a cautious smile.

"Looks like my timing's perfect," he told her with a smile that looked more than a little forced.

"Huh?" She had heard about every other word, and when combined with the odd expression on his face it caused the entire sentence to make no sense.

"Your chariot awaits," he said with a flourish and a gesture to the double doors. "Griss sent me to take you home. He knew you wouldn't have your car, and getting a cab from this place requires an act of God. When the doc called and said you were done here, he sent me right out."

She had definitely heard that, although it still retained the muffled quality that everything else seemed to have. She had thought about mentioning her hearing to the doctor when he'd been working on her hand, but she hadn't wanted to sound like she was complaining. There were too many people waiting for her to want him to waste his time reassuring her that she'd heard a loud noise and her ears would take a while to get back to normal. She had been on the shooting range without ear protection enough times to know that was what the problem was. She was going to be fine. And if the ringing was lasting longer and was more distracting this time around, it was just that the boom had been louder.

"I don't need to go home," she told him as he took one elbow and steered her towards the doors.

"That's where you're going," he said simply.

She shook her head adamantly once more. "Nick, I'm okay. And besides, I want to find out what happened. I almost got turned into toast, and I think I have a right to see how the investigation's going. Then there's Jesus Gardenes; we can't just let the case go, and it's not fair for you to do it all alone."

Nick looked undecided, and his words confirmed it. "Grissom was pretty clear about where he wanted you to be."

"Grissom worries too much," she muttered. "Nicky, I'm fine," she said as the reached the door to his Tahoe. "I have six stitches and a headache; that's all. Let me go try to get what's left of our case back together and see if I can still get my job done." When he cocked his head sideways in continued indecision, she added, "Nicky, please?" in her most convincing voice. "I know my limits, and I'm not there. I won't sleep anyway; I have to get this done."

With a sigh, he finally nodded and opened the door of the SUV for her. She released a grateful breath as he began the drive back to the lab. The last thing she wanted was to be alone in her apartment with her head ringing; she might as well be miserable at work as well as anywhere.

"Okay," he told her. "I'll drive you to the lab. But you don't do anything until Grissom clears you. I'll bet you a week's pay that he'll send you home, whatever you want."

"Take your bets to Warrick," she muttered with what was almost a smile, relieved when Nick did no more than grin in return. Then she just stayed quiet, praying that he wouldn't change his mind before they got to the lab. Truthfully, she had absolutely no intention of speaking to Grissom, but Nick didn't need to know that. In fact, she decided that it was better if he didn't.

Gil Grissom was doing all that he could to process something that was unthinkable. The one place that had always felt safe to him, where he was accepted and actually needed, was now evacuated pending an investigation that he might not even be allowed to take part in. Well, it certainly wasn't likely. God, he just hoped they didn't give it to Ecklie. He wanted to actually know what had gone wrong.

He hadn't known what the hell had been going on when the building had rocked around him. He had felt, rather than heard, the explosion. His hearing was just this side of undependable, and it seemed to be going in and out on him at the damnedest times. He couldn't carry on a conversation with confidence, he couldn't hear evidence described to process, and even the utter chaos around him was fading in and out with – if anything – consistent inconsistency. He was going to have to do something about the situation, but he was still reluctant to admit that there was one.

Regardless of his hearing, his vision was all he needed to tell him that it would be a while before they would be getting back into the lab. There were crews going in to check for structural stability, and with as much glass as the building held it would be a tedious process. Even when that was done, and the Bomb Squads and EOD personnel would have to inspect the building to see if there was anything else waiting to go boom. The sad fact was that this lab, just like all those belonging to the police departments, were designed to put criminals behind bars. These labs contained evidence that any number of people could want to destroy. The labs also housed a number of CSIs that more than one criminal held a grudge against. The possibilities as to what had happened – exactly – and why it had happened were mind boggling.

So rather than concentrating on the elements he couldn't control – which at this point was nearly everything – he tried his best to be useful. He had checked on a few members of the lab crews, most of whom were standing or sitting in a daze. They would be held there until they were questioned or taken to the hospital, depending on their condition. None of them looked like they were handling the situation well, and that gave him some hope. No, he wasn't keeping himself together as well as he might have liked, but neither were they. Emotionally, he was a basket case of questions and fears and inadequacy. Everyone else appeared to be in the same, rocking boat. And physically, he was doing a hell of a lot better than most of them.

He had been dead set on going into the building when he'd realized that it had been his lab – and his tech – that had taken the worst of the damage. He had demanded to be allowed into the building to check on the boy after the initial confusion of the evacuation and his own personal head count to see where his team was. They had allowed him in with the med crews, in part thanks to reasoning, arguing, and finally yelling that he had bombarded them with. They held their ground well; he had to give them that. But he could be formidable when he had to be, and when one of his kids was in danger, he was willing to fight. And truly, as brilliant as he was, Greg was only a child. A vastly intelligent and capable child – yes – but still a child.

As soon as Greg had been brought from the building, he had watched the crews only long enough to know that he was being evacuated by helicopter rather than by ambulance, and then he had been able to focus on the rest of the people around him. One of those people had been Sara.

She had looked so small sitting on the edge of the curb, her legs crossed and her hands curled protectively. There had been something dazed in her expression that had frightened him, so he'd gone over to check.

He could have lost her.

That had been the foremost thought in his mind. Looking at the scratches on her face and the cut on her hand, combined with the glassy expression, he realized that Sara was a hell of a long way from indestructible. It was a sobering reality.

Frankly, it had been one reality more than he had been able to handle at that moment. He knew it had been wrong – had been the coward's way out – but he had passed her off to the nearest medical professional as much for his own peace of mind as for her health. By the time he had allowed himself to acknowledge her again, she had been behind the closed door of an ambulance and headed for Desert Palm.

Now, he was focused on all that he could manage to cope with. He was on his case, doing his best to be sure that the right man went to jail for his crimes. They still weren't sure who that was, and part of the evidence that might have told them was now obliterated, but at the very least he had someplace besides that curb to focus his mind, someplace away from Sara.

He had sent Nick to get her, using the excuse that they were partnered, and it was the younger man's responsibility. The truth was, he was terrified to see her when he was this emotionally unstable. He might not look it, but the outward appearance of sanity was an illusion. In truth, he was barely holding himself together, and if he were to be exposed to one trauma too many – such as seeing Sara injured – he just might do something that he'd spent the last thirteen years trying to avoid. He just might admit that he wanted to be more than her professor, more than her boss, and a hell of a lot more than a friend. None of those were options, so he was deliberately going to keep his distance until his emotions were less volatile.

Besides, he decided, Nick was far better to be comforting Sara or seeing to her well being. He was young, good looking, very intelligent, and could offer her so much more than a graying old man with failing hearing. If that fact also made him a little nauseous because he knew very well that Sara and Nick were closer to siblings than to romantic interests, then he just tried to block it out. After all, it was easy to fool one's self.

So Gil Grissom worked: examining fingerprints, comparing bruises, and trying to see in his mind's eye just exactly what had occurred in that small room at the top of a high school stadium. He wasn't getting anywhere, but at least it was keeping his mind occupied. Mostly.

TBC...