"The sun rose pink today," he told her, after settling down into the molded plastic chair beside her bed, and twining his fingers around hers, just as he had done every day for the past two weeks. He grimaced, and tried to settle more comfortably into the chair, to no avail.
It was hard to believe it had been two weeks since the accident. Harder still to believe that he had been here every single day for visiting hours, usually for the entire time, only leaving the room when someone else came to see her.
Pretty much everyone from the lab had come to visit her, at least once. Catherine a few times, Nick, Warrick, Robbins, even Hodges stopped by once, bearing a bouquet of carnations. Most of the time they would stay for a few minutes, (except for Hodges; he put his bouquet on the table, told her he hoped to see her soon, and left. It was a nice gesture, however) tell her some of the interesting gossip at the lab, and talk about some of the interesting cases they had received since she had been in the hospital.
That was something he'd noticed a lot of. He'd be leaning on the doorframe or standing just outside the door, hearing pieces of the stories they told her as they held her hand (as he was doing now) or brushed the hair off her face (did they notice that while it was as soft as ever, it now lacked most of its natural shine? He thought not).
Cases. They all talked to her about cases. Cases they had either worked on together or new cases that occurred since her accident. Didn't they know that there was more to life than cases and work and evidence and violencerapedeathmurderbloodspatterDNA? Just because she was involved so heavily in her work before slept this dark, dreamless sleep didn't mean she wanted to hear about it now. Even though the doctors said she probably couldn't hear their stories, at best only sense she had visitors, it didn't feel right. He knew they probably were only trying to remind her of the good times they shared, but…still.
So that's why he told her stories about life. He knew how much of her life she lived at work, now it was time to remind her about life out of work, so even if she didn't remember anything when she woke up (it was going to be "when"; she was going to go out in a blaze of glory some thirty, forty, fifty years from now, not just whither away in this blank, dreamless sleep in a hospital) maybe some part of the things he told her would stay with her, being fully remembered only in dreams.
"Pink," he reinstated, as if she had refuted his claim. "Pink light everywhere for nearly ten minutes this morning. Ten minutes before turning to gold, and then just eventually fading into regular daylight. I've seen the sun set like that a few times but never rise. It was…really beautiful."
He did not tell her how, after being confronted with beautiful pink wonderlight, he'd leaned against the passenger door of his car and wept silent tears for nearly ten minutes. Didn't tell her he'd found a sort of bitter amusement in the faint pink cast of the tears he'd caught on his fingertips. Didn't tell her that after he'd composed himself and watched the pink fade to gold, then fade away, he'd driven home, made a breakfast he couldn't eat, slept a fitful three hours, and took a shower, that even though it left his skin a scalded lobster red, he hadn't felt a thing.
She didn't need to know all that.
So instead, he told her about simple, joyful things; a golden retriever puppy he'd seen in a pet store that wagged its tail as he passed, an old couple holding hands in the park he jogged in a few times a week, a cloud that looked exactly like an elephant he'd seen on his way to the hospital, Catherine tripping on her heels and nearly going down for the count as she left work that morning. He told her about the newborns he'd seen in the maternity wing he'd passed on the way to her room.
"I know they really aren't on the way to your room, but I like going there some times. It kind of reminds me that hospitals can be happy places, not just full of sickness and death and dying, but about life, too.
"Anyway, there was a little girl born today named Sarah, just like you. With an H at the end, though. But her hair was the exact same shade as yours."
Simple joys.
His voice faded away, and he watched her for a few minutes in silence (as silent as it can get in a hospital room, anyway) thinking darkly how this was already a ritual with him, how he had almost (but not quite) turned "looking for things to tell Sara" into a game.
Ritual. He hated that word. It sounded like gagging, or ineffectively trying to cough up something that was choking you. It sounded like death.
He removed his hand from her impassive one and wondered if she could even feel the difference. Shaking his head to remove that pessimistic thought (nothing but joy and optimism in Sara's room 403) and set about adjusting her pillow and tucking the blankets more securely around her, being careful not to disturb any of the tubes and wires attached to her.
The contrastingly cheerful yellow chair creaked slightly as he settled his weight down into it again, folding his hand around hers, and running his other through his already disheveled hair. When she woke up (when, dammit), he would ask her if she could feel him.
"When you get out of here, Sara, I'm taking you for a huge breakfast. There's a diner near my apartment that's got some really good vegetarian fare. I tried it out. Had an omelet. Cheese, peppers, onions…best omelet I've ever had."
This was mostly true; there was a vegetarian diner near his apartment, and he did go there to see if it was any good, but he left out the fact that while indeed it was a good omelet, he had only eaten half of it, and drank three quarters of a cup of coffee before being unable to eat any more. And food had always been one of his favorite vices.
"Or a nice dinner. How would that be? There's a restaurant that just opened nearby. It looks pretty fancy. I don't know if it's any good, but when you get out of here, we'll go try it together. How's that sound? If it's awful, we can go back to my place and order pizza. Any topping you want. Or- "
He stopped. Had she just twitched? He watched her intently for a few minutes, heart pounding, mouth dry. Nothing. His mind was just playing tricks on him. He always did this, thought she had moved, or tried to speak around the tube in her throat, a sound lost under the beeps and whirrs and sighs of the machinery around her. The first few times it had happened, he'd immediately called down to the nurses' station, positive she was waking up, and feeling elated that he was here to witness it, that he would be the first to know.
Each time, a nurse or two would hurry quickly into the room, bustle around sleeping Sara for a few minutes, and then look at him with pity so evident in their eyes, telling him no, she wasn't waking up, it was just a muscle twitch, that happened time to time, or sound carries in a hospital, or from outside, and it wasn't coming from her comatose throat.
He had to swallow down his anger every time they referred to her as that, as "comatose". He knew what it meant, had researched all kinds of statistics on comatose patients. But that didn't mean he accepted it, accepted the reality of it. He could go on day after day if he could just pretend she was sleeping, and that someday she would wake up. Hearing it put so bluntly made it harder to deny the facts; even though it was something he had gotten good at.
The nurses or the occasional doctor never made him feel guilty for pulling a "false alarm" on them…but that pity. She was going to wake up, dammit, and soon!
Once, just earlier that week, he had been telling her some silly stories about his frat in college, when her eyes opened. He stared at her, barely even breathing, sure that this time it was real. Five minutes staring at her, as her blank gaze regarded the tiled ceiling above her with rapt attention. Suddenly springing to attention, he had knocked the chair over reaching for the call button, pressing it so hard he nearly broke it.
A nurse and a doctor appeared a short time after, and he pointed to Sara.
"Her eyes…."
They both bent over her, doing some cursory exams while he stood in a shadowed corner of the room, gnawing anxiously at his thumbnail. The nurse and doctor finally looked at him, finally telling him that this happened with coma patients; that even though their eyes were open, they were essentially still asleep.
He nodded, thanked the nurse and doctor for their time, and settled uneasily back into the bedside plastic chair. He tried continuing the story about his drunken frat boy days, but even though her eyes were still the velvet chocolate brown he knew and loved, her sightless gaze disquieted him so much that he left early that day. It was the first time he'd left early since the day she was brought to the hospital.
When he'd returned the next day, her eyes were closed again. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, and hated himself for feeling unsure, so instead he told her a dirty joke about a blond, a traveling salesman, and seven gallons of green jell-o.
An almost non-existent squeak announced the presence of a nurse.
"Visiting hours are over in fifteen minutes," she said in a soft voice, nearly a whisper, as if Sara was really only sleeping, and anything said in a loud or harsh tone would instantly wake her.
If that were true, he'd come here every day and crash a pair of cymbals over her head.
The nurse left with as little fanfare as when she arrived, leaving them himself and Sara alone.
He looked down at their entwined hands and sighed, brushing his free hand across her face, tracing the contours with his fingertips.
"It's time for me to go, darlin'. I'll be back again tomorrow."
He stood up and stretched his chair-weary muscles, reluctantly letting go of her hand. He looked down and smiled at her unlined, unworn (but much too pale) countenance, as if she could see him.
"These chairs are so uncomfortable. One of these days, I'm just going to crawl right into that bed with you." He smiled again, although with a more then a touch of bitterness and sorrow in it.
He smoothed the sheets around her again, adjusted the pillow one last time, and balancing carefully on the edge of the bed, gently pressed a kiss to the side of the forehead.
He wasn't quite sure why that became part of the daily ritual. If she could feel him, even a little, he hoped it would comfort her. It always made him feel a little better, even though the skin beneath his lips felt papery and too dry.
When he stood up again, Nick was standing in the doorway.
"Hey man. I just wanted to stop by before hours were over. How is she?"
"She's the same."
Nick walked over and stood by the plastic chair, but paused before sitting.
"You should go home, maybe take a nap or something Greg. You look tired."
Greg shrugged halfheartedly. It was true; he felt tired. He was sleeping like shit these days, and eating even worse.
"Yeah. See you later, Nick," he said, trying on a smile and mostly failing. He jammed his hands into his pockets and shuffled out into the hallway.
The sounds of the hospital followed him as he left; the squeak of rubber-soled shoes, various beeps, blips, whirrs, whooshes and the occasional loudspeaker announcement calling for Doctor Kinan please, Doctor Kinan.
Every time Greg left Sara, he couldn't get out of the hospital fast enough. The walls seemed to close on him, the sounds and smells intensified until it was one big carnival funhouse of death, sickness and the stench of rubbing alcohol. He knew this was all in his head, and it always happened anyway. Just one more part of this daily ritual.
He burst out of the hospital into the warm twilight air, inhaling deeply, trying to get the reeking scent of death and illness out of his head.
Slowly his head cleared, and he looked up at the sky. It was clear, the sky a dark purple. There were no stars out, it was Las Vegas after all, and no moon. He remained staring up at the sky for some time, mind blissfully devoid of thoughts but the beauty of a Las Vegas night.
She was going to wake up. If there was even the slightest chance she was going to remember anything he said to her, he wanted her to know the world out here was good. So if he left out some important details from the stories he told her, no one but him would be the wiser. So what if she couldn't see how pale he was, or how little he slept, or how he couldn't eat. If she could hear him, and if he told her the unpleasant things about the world, maybe she'd never come back.
So he painted the world for her in pretty colors, in pink and purple and gold. While he told her that everyone had been to visit her, and they all were waiting for her to come back, he didn't tell her that out of the entire team, the entire lab, one person had yet to make a personal appearance in her room.
He always let her know that he was there, would be there the next day, and would continue to be there after she woke up, he didn't have the heart to tell her who wasn't there. While not knowing the depth of the relation she had had with her supervisor, everyone knew it was been something, at the least. He didn't have it in himself to tell her that in her two weeks of hospital stay, Grissom had not visited her. Not once.
Greg reluctantly tore his eyes away from the purple of the night sky, and slowly walked across the parking lot to his car. He paused a moment before getting in, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. It went reluctantly. Taking one last look at the untainted twilight, he slid into the car, pulling the door behind him with a thunk, and slowly drove off to work.