Title: Realizations
Author: Battus philenor
Disclaimer: Really, they're not mine.
A/N: I had the urge to write this today. This is a little scene that exists only in my head… all alone in my head. Due to my impulsiveness, this is unbetad. I apologize for that up front.
Posed like The Thinker in a molded plastic chair, he waits along with the rest of his family. Dressed still in his blue scrubs, there's blood and other tissue smeared on his chest, below that beats a frantic heart still in disbelief of what has just happened.
Others straggle in now also unable to believe this morning's events. Wide eyed and pale are the faces that sit there with him. A hospital employee walks by pushing a cart filled with flowers and he finds himself wondering briefly when flowers became a token for the dead or dying. Colorful and fragrant flora taken before their time only in an attempt to lift spirits. He contemplated the reasoning behind cutting down those fragrant flowers before their prime. The sole purpose to somehow comfort those who were left behind after someone they loved was cut down before theirs.
He was suddenly thankful he had showered her with an array of adulation and gifts over the last two years. Things, tokens as small as hidden winks shot at her in the midst of the complete chaos that could sometimes be their job. Compliments that he'd tried to deliver in an offhand way while others stood there unsure of the true meaning behind those words. She always caught on, even before they had started seeing each other quietly almost two years prior to this day.
While he was the master of subtlety and intentionally obtuse prose, she always deciphered correctly, sometimes before even he realized what he was really trying to say. So the smile adorning his face now is for the memories of those items not so hard to figure out. The ones in which he had truly rendered the magnificent Sara Sidle speechless. Always a rare occasion and absolutely worth any amount of money he'd spent to make her that way.
The many plants he'd given her, just because she needed color in her house. The spa passes because she deserved to be pampered and fussed over. The countless vegetarian meals he went to great pains to learn how to prepare for her. The diamond tennis bracelet specifically picked out for a very special evening he'd planned for them. The size of the smile that broke out on her face when he told her that any wrist as beautiful as hers needed some shiny adornment to draw the eye to that perfect form. When he confessed to having had multiple dreams about only that part of her body, tears nearly spilled out over her eyelids.
He loved her for years, but that was the moment in which he knew for certain he could not live without her. And now here they were. Surrounded by those who had become their family. Having gone through months of struggling with what had brought them here last night and carried them through to this morning; the sickness, the restrictions and limitations, and the erratic behavior that was caused by it all.
There were times when he wondered if it was worth it, if the risk was anywhere near the reward. In the many lists he'd made over the previous months it just didn't add up for him. All the complications and the jeopardy she was put in didn't seem to come close to anything they could possibly gain. But that was then.
This morning it had all become so clear. Suddenly as he held Addison Gray Grissom in his arms, the previous nine months had been nothing to endure. All eight pounds two ounces of their son made everything worthwhile. Addison Gray.
The great debate for a name turned out to not be such a great debate after all. They had briefly discussed paying homage to their forensic forefathers, but decided early on against it. When Sara brought up the idea of naming a boy after him he balked. Obviously flattered, he tried to find the words to explain exactly how he felt about that. His eyes water now thinking how he didn't need to find those words, she found them for him.
Offering up in her confident voice, trying hard to soften what she knew would hurt him. Voicing the peripheral reasons, how their son could make his own name with no stigma of being Doctor Gil Grissom's heir apparent. Free to choose his own path without those around him thinking he would follow in those entomological footsteps. Turning pain into a joke while musing about their son being an artist or a writer; their son being a creative sort instead of an analytical prodigy. He loved her for that and he loved his son for whoever he would be. If he would be.
Having the baby ripped from his arms and being pushed out of the room only moments after having been placed there nearly killed him. The hole inside his chest gaping as they forced tiny puffs of oxygen into Addison's puckered mouth. His skin blue and wrinkled as his tiny chest rose jerkily from the manipulation; that was the last image before they led him back to the waiting room.
The double doors push open now as the doctor relays again that both mother and son are doing fine. The small crowd closes ranks around Gil Grissom with smiles, pats on the back and blue bubble gum cigars for all. A sweat breaks out over his body as he rises shakily, realizing how close he was to loosing it all; his family that he didn't know he needed until this morning.
End
Battus philenor