A/N This was originally published on Geekfiction in May 2008

Cottonwood House

I felt like I was coming home when I arrived at McCarran airport.

Las Vegas, the place I knew I could always come back to. Having that knowledge is what allowed me to take the plunge and start working on the problems caused by my past. The certainty that Gil was here, steady and constant, kept me grounded through the worst times. Even when he stopped answering my phone calls I knew he was just trying to protect himself. He found the situation difficult to deal with, so he coped the only way he knows how, by withdrawing for a while. I couldn't blame him, after all, even when we talked face to face we didn't always actually communicate.

Once I had dealt with my problems my first instinct was to come running straight back to him, but I realised I owed Gil more than that. I had to find out who the 'new' Sara was so that we could begin again properly, so I took a year out, went to Africa, and ended up doing some volunteer work at a giraffe rescue centre outside Nairobi. Then, for my birthday, a couple of my fellow volunteers arranged a camping trip to the Rift Valley. As the sun set and I took in the beauty of the place all I could think of was how much Gil would have enjoyed seeing what I was seeing and all I could hear was his gentle voice talking about how that place is believed to be the birthplace of mankind. As the stars came out I imagined Gil pointing the constellations out to me; and all I could think of as I listened to the insects chirping through the night was the eager look that would appear on his face at the prospect of discovering the entomology of a completely different continent. That's when I knew it was time to come home, time to come back to Gil Grissom.

But there were strangers in the old townhouse, the new owners it turns out.

I asked if they knew where Gil is living now, how to contact him, but they said they'd only ever dealt with Dr. Grissom's lawyer, and the only forwarding address they had turned out to be Catherine's. Has he moved in with her? In my absence has their friendship moved on to another level?

It seems I'm about to find out.

After I left our old house the only place I could think of coming to was the Crime Lab. It's late afternoon and swing shift are here, not graveyard, but people don't stay on the same shift forever except, possibly, Gil. I'm hoping I'll find someone who knows where he lives now. The man himself may even be in his office, he never did stick exclusively to his shift hours.

Thankfully, the swing shift receptionist remembered me. I chatted just long enough to persuade her to bend the rules and issue me with a 'no escort' visitors pass, and then I hurried here to Gil's office.

Except it's not.

Most of the shelves are gone now and those that remain hold only books and files, no specimens, except, I'm relieved to see, 'Miss Piggy' is still in residence. The old couch that Gil used to nap on has vanished too. It's lighter, brighter, more soulless than I remember it and I suddenly realise how enormous this room is for one man's office. Except it's no longer one man's office. There are three desks in here now.

"It's a pretty good idea, with the shift system there are rarely more than a couple of us here at any time, so it actually feels like we each have a larger office, even though all three supervisors are sharing." my former boss from swing shift explains, "Anyway, if you're here to see Catherine you're in luck, she's due in court soon and she'll need those files on her desk, so if you wait here you'll catch her."

He stands and, after offering me a quick smile, heads for the door.

I'm still taking in the changes when Catherine arrives, I've read the name plates on the desks three times now, and not one of them says "Gil Grissom". Surely he hasn't been promoted to replace Ecklie as Deputy Director? He always told me he wasn't interested in further promotions, "too much politics and too little science" I think were his exact words.

"Sara!"

Catherine sounds shocked, but I can't blame her, I did just turn up unannounced after over two years away but, beneath the surprise, is there also a hint of panic?

"I was looking for Gil." I know, not the politest of greetings, but I'm becoming concerned by his absence.

"Oh, Sara, you never heard?" Catherine seems uncertain.

"I've been out of the country for a while and only got back this morning. What should I have heard? Where is he?"

"Sara, I..." She pauses, then continues, "...Gil doesn't work here any more."

For the second time since my flight touched down the world rocks under my feet. Moving house, giving up his job, Gil never liked change, why so much now? Is it my fault? Did my leaving make him do this?

I try and stay calm. "I need to get in touch with him; can you let me have his number, his forwarding address?" She must have it, how else does she pass on his mail?

"Look, I need to be going," Catherine says, "have you decided where you're going to stay?" I shake my head confused by the sudden change of track. I'd pretty much been hoping to stay at the townhouse, even if it had to be the guest room for a little while.

"Well, in that case why don't you try out the Eclipse? It just opened six months ago. Tell the desk I sent you, and I'll call and let them know you don't have to pay for anything."

"That's great of you, but I..."

"Gil's new place is a bit out of the way, I'm going to visit him on Thursday so how about I pick you up in the foyer at about eleven a.m. and give you a ride? In the mean time you can relax a bit and get rid of any jet lag before you see him. Sorry I can't talk, I really do need to run, see you Thursday, OK?"

I just have time to nod weakly before she's gone.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Although I felt steamrollered and not a little pissed by Catherine's behaviour, it's hard to stay angry for long when someone's arranged for you to stay, fully comp., in the Strip's newest hotel. And she was right about the jet lag, at least this way I won't be facing Gil looking like a panda bear or yawning uncontrollably. Having Catherine drive me out might be better on my nerves than trying to find my own way too, I'm just not sure I want a witness when I finally see him again. I need to know how he feels about me after this time apart and another person being there will change what he's prepared to reveal.

It's too late to worry about that now though, Catherine will be here soon.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
I don't remember Catherine being this interested in my life before. She keeps asking me questions about what I've been doing, I'm so busy answering I haven't had the chance to ask the questions I have.

We're out by Lake Mead now. I guess if Gil has decided to retire this is one of the places he'd be likely to choose, a nice quiet cabin away from the touristy part of the lake where he can spend time in nature.

Now Catherine's indicating a turn. As we pass between wrought iron gates set into a high, stone wall I just manage to read the plaque on the gatepost. "Cottonwood House" it says.

The driveway is broad, sweeping up to a grand three storey house built of stone. It's way beyond anything Gil could afford to live in, unless it's divided into apartments, and I'm sure he'd never have moved from his townhouse to something like that. The sides of the driveway are lined with tall shrubs and there are many of the cottonwood trees that the house is named after scattered behind them. Occasionally it's possible to spot people or other, smaller, one storey, buildings between the plants. Perhaps Gil owns one of those, but it still seems out of character for him to have chosen to live in a community like this, he's not exactly the sociable type.

We pull off the driveway through a gap in the bushes and onto a small parking lot. Here we stop. I get out and turn to Catherine, expecting her to lead me to wherever Gil is.

She's waving to someone, perhaps this guy, who is using a wheelchair, is a neighbour of Gil's.

No, not a neighbour. Yet again the ground beneath my feet shifts as I realise that the man who is now trundling across the parking lot towards us bears the face I have loved for years.

I concentrate on the familiar face, his beard has returned since I last saw him, and he's smiling that charming boyish smile of his, the one I learned to value for its rarity. Today though, it stays in place far longer than I am used to seeing it. It's still there as the chair comes to a halt. He's clearly familiar with the electric wheelchair as he stops precisely in front of me, despite the fact he's steering with his left hand on the control stick.

Now he's stopped I realise that the slight wobble of his head is not due to the chair's movement. In fact it appears to get worse as he tilts his head to look up at me. Now the smile does disappear and his mouth contorts a couple of times before he finally manages to produce an utterance.

"'Ara," he greets me cheerfully, "ugg?"

He reaches his arms out to me like a toddler.

Involuntarily I step backwards before he can touch me.

"'Ara?" he forces out again, both his expression and the tone a question now as his arms begin to drop.

I lose control, I can't deal with this, this isn't the man I was expecting to see. Ashamed of my reaction, but unable to stop myself, I turn away from the man in the wheelchair and begin to walk away. Tears blur my vision and I don't know where I'm headed, I just have to get away.

"'Ara" comes from behind me one more time, and the sadness in the sound makes my heart ache, but I still can't bring myself to stop. I can hear the sound of the wheelchair's motor now, but I just speed up and even that is left behind as I keep going. I'm vaguely aware of someone hurrying towards me, but whoever it is only looks at me briefly before passing me and carrying on.

I survived the last two years because I could always imagine Gil relaxing in the townhouse we shared for a while or sitting at his office desk, engrossed in the minutiae of some case. He was the still point in my changing world. Now I see a new reality and it's dreadful. I am in shock, yet I'm also horribly aware that I've just caused him a great deal of pain. Why didn't Catherine warn me? How could she just bring me here unprepared?

Finally I come to a halt. I stand before one of the cottonwood trees and reach towards it, trying to ground myself through the sensation of its thick, rough, bark under my fingertips. Hot tears are running down my cheeks. I'm trying to assess what I've seen but all I can think of is the irony of the man who was so concerned about being a few years older than me greeting me like he's a preschooler.

What the hell happened while I was away?

My first urge is just to leave, but I can't. My ride is with Catherine, I either have to wait for her, or ask some stranger if I can use their 'phone to call a cab, and then wait around until it arrives. I'm not sure I can bear to even look at Gil again, but I need to see what Catherine is doing, so I force myself to turn around.

Catherine is standing beside Gil, chewing on her thumb. She's watching another woman, possibly the person who went past me a few moments ago. This woman is crouching beside Gil's chair, talking to him. As I watch, Gil leans forward and rests his forehead on her shoulder. She casually caresses his hair as she turns her own head in Catherine's direction.

They seem to exchange a few words, and then the woman returns her full attention to Gil, while Catherine appears to take a deep breath before turning and walking in my direction.

I dash away my tears with the heel of my hand.

At least the first words out of her mouth are "I'm sorry."

"How could you do this to me? To him?" I'm yelling, not just because of my anger towards Catherine, but because of my own anger with myself for reacting the way I did.

"I'm sorry," she says again, "I really didn't have time to talk on Monday, when you showed up at the lab, I was due in court and I knew I couldn't just blurt this out in a few sentences and then walk out on you. I meant to catch you at the hotel and talk to you there, but something always got in the way. Looking back I know some of it was avoidance, I find what happened hard to talk about, even now. Then, suddenly, it was this morning. I'd called Lucy on Tuesday so she could prepare Gil and she offered to talk to you and answer any questions you might have about Gil's condition. It's part of her job and she'll be better at it than me, so I kind of told myself she would deal with the whole thing. I didn't allow for Gil being so eager to see you that he was waiting here for us when we arrived. I won't deny it, Sara, this is all my fault."

"Lucy?"

Catherine indicates the woman with Gil; she's now fiddling with something connected to the arm of his chair.

"Lucy is Gil's primary carer."

I bet he hates that.

"What happened to him, Catherine?"

"It was a vicious attack, Sara. Thankfully, Gil doesn't remember anything between going to bed after work that morning and waking up in the hospital. He hasn't asked to see the CCTV footage. I hope he never does."

"Were any of you there?"

"No, and none of us was allowed to work the case either. We first saw the footage at the trial of the men who did it, you know, up on the big screen? Gil was too ill to attend, but we all went, the team, Jim, Al Robbins and Dave, even most of the lab techs. We all sat there in the public seats and watched the video as they showed it to the jurors. It was from the courthouse parking lot cameras, good quality and in colour. It was sickening." Catherine shudders, and CSIs with her experience don't often do that.

"The Courthouse? Surely the place was swarming with security and police officers? How could he be attacked there?"

"It was fast, Sara, they timed it and there was less than a minute from the moment Gil realised something was wrong and yelled to the time his assailants were pulled off him. Two of them held him while their father hit him around the head with a tyre iron. The three blows he got in nearly killed Gil. One more definitely would have done."

I look back towards Grissom, whose head is wobbling gently as he listens to something this Lucy person is saying to him. I'm wondering if death is what he would have preferred, if someone had asked him before all this happened. I return my attention to Catherine as she continues.

"Gil had been in court giving evidence, it turned out that the sentencing hearing for another of his cases was happening at the same time. The perp. got life, and his father and brothers had recognised Grissom going into the other courtroom. They decided to wait in the parking lot to get their revenge. The three men tried to plea bargain for GBH, but the DA refused. In the end they went down for attempted murder."

Catherine looks at me, her eyes hollow. "We tried to contact you. When the doctors didn't think he'd make it, and afterwards when he was in a coma for three weeks and we thought hearing your voice might help him. We checked everywhere for a contact number."

I'm about to remind her that I was in Africa for the last year. I would have given a contact number to Gil once I was settled, but he'd stopped answering my calls months before. The last time I tried to ring I got 'number unobtainable'. Wait, no, please don't tell me...

"Catherine, when did it happen?"

"About four months after you left."

I lean against the tree for support.

"Gil didn't have a contact number for me at that point." I tell her. "My e-mail and cell 'phone were both provided by the Lab. and got cut off when I left. I was too busy sorting myself out to arrange replacements, so I just checked in every so often from a pay 'phone or whichever hotel I was at. I could tell Gil found it difficult to deal with my calls, so when I kept getting voice mail I just thought he was avoiding me and didn't leave any messages. You know what he's like." or should that be 'he was like'?

Catherine is still remembering.

"We kept a round the clock vigil while he was unconscious. I was there when he woke up. I was overjoyed at first, to see his eyes open and recognition there, but I'll never forget what happened next. I saw the way his expression changed from mild confusion at my presence, when the last thing he could remember he'd been in his own bedroom, to panic and absolute terror when he realised he couldn't move or speak. All he could move were his eyes. His heart and respiration monitors started bleeping like crazy. It took ages for the nurses to calm him down. You can imagine that the last thing they wanted right then was to have to sedate him. Everything he's achieved since then is amazing. You might be having problems seeing him like this and I understand that, but, Sara, please try and understand how very much worse it could have been."

She falls silent, but I don't push. There are tears on her cheeks now too. Seeing how she looks is helping me to understand why she couldn't tell me these things before. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to forgive her yet, but there are other things on my mind right now.

Lucy is approaching us; she's shorter than me, with fair hair drawn back in a pony tail and maybe a year or two older than I am. I don't know how I feel about her. I hope she's good for Gil and it's clear that they get on, but there's a part of me that's jealous about another woman having an important place in Gil's life. It's unfair of me I know, but we can't always control how we feel.

Lucy nods at me with a friendly smile before addressing Catherine.

"I think Gil's getting ready to have a yell at you, maybe you should let him. Then, unless he decides to have one of his little sulks, you can keep him company while I chat to Ms. Sidle."

Meanwhile, Gil, his glasses now perched on his nose, is poking determinedly at something on the tray which has been swung into position over his lap.

As Catherine sets off towards him Lucy calls after her.

"If he gets too loud remind him that he needs to save his batteries for later!"

Batteries?

"Hello, Ms. Sidle, I'm Lucy Holt. I've been Gil's primary carer since he came to Cottonwood House about fourteen months ago. Would you mind if we have a chat? Since I passed on Catherine's message about bringing you today Gil's been working really hard at putting together what he wants to say to you, and I hope you'll feel able to spend some time with him so he can get his message across. I will do everything I can to make that easier for you both."

She's looking at me, her grey eyes scanning my face.

"This really has hit you like a bolt from the blue, hasn't it? How about we start by sitting down? Try not to make any assumptions about Gil's condition until you have all the facts."

She indicates a table and chairs set beneath the canopy of the tree. I walk over with her and we sit, but I don't even know where to start.

"Would it help if I told you his intellect is unimpaired?"

I find that hard to believe; he was talking and acting like a child.

"Gil has several impairments which affect his ability to move and communicate and, in combination, they might give the impression he's 'not all there' but, I assure you, the doctor is definitely 'in'. You wouldn't have to spend much time with him to realise that."

God I hope she's right; Gil's essence and his intelligence were always closely entwined.

"How did you know that was worrying me?"

"Well, it's about the first thing friends and family ask about for most people with head injuries. Plus every time I meet someone who knew Gil before he was hurt they always tell some story about how smart he was. I always make sure they know not to use the past tense when Gil's around, he is incredibly intelligent now. There's no 'was' about it."

"Do his friends also tell you he generally prefers people to call him Grissom?" I know I sound a little waspish, but this woman keeps saying 'Gil this' and 'Gil that' and if she hasn't bothered to get that preference of his right, she can't be much of a 'carer'.

"Oh yes," she responds as if it's some kind of joke, "every time. And that's what I called him, until he told me otherwise. I was really pleased that he felt we'd connected that well, it showed I was doing my job."

I try and focus my thoughts, I'm still processing everything I've been told, it's not like me not to know which questions I want to ask.

OK, start with what I know, and then add in the evidence I've seen so far and work from there.

"So, Gil can't use his legs now?"

"Gil's legs work fine, his right is still slightly weaker than his left, but he uses the therapy pool here almost every day, so it won't be for much longer."

"But the wheelchair? And Catherine said he was totally paralysed at first."

"At first he probably was, but by the time I came into contact with him the general brain swelling had abated and while he was still largely paralysed on his right side, that was improving too. Now the undamaged parts of his brain are pretty much back to normal and the only part of his body which won't respond when he tries to move it is his right hand."

Come to think of it his hand did look a little odd as he reached out to me and it would explain him steering his chair with the 'wrong' hand too. But what about that chair?

"He uses the chair as a kind of preventative measure, because of the damage to his ear." Lucy continues.

"His ear?" I ask, confused.

"One of the blows he received severely damaged the inner part of his left ear, destroying not just his ability to hear on that side, but seriously affecting his balance. Even standing still Gil has a tendency just to slowly keel over sideways and if he tries to walk he rarely manages three steps before he falls over. Even if he doesn't hurt himself the balance problem makes it hard for him to get up again without help. In the end I finally persuaded him that the chair was both easier and safer."

"OK, so what else do I need to know? What is it that affects Gil the most severely?"

"Well, Gil's biggest problem is severe expressive aphasia, he's functionally mute."

That can't be right.

"But he spoke to me when I arrived. I admit that it wasn't very clear, but he did speak." Gil cannot be mute.

"Did he call you by name, or did he ask you for a hug?"

"Both." I confirm.

"Then you've heard everything he can say. He manages to use most people's first names unless they're very unusual, but other than that the only word in his spoken vocabulary seems to be 'hug'. He also tends to miss the first sound of words"

"That's strange."

"A little, expressive aphasia affects every sufferer differently though."

"No, I meant strange in that 'hug' is his only other word, Gil's not exactly demonstrative."

"I think you'll find that he is, now. He has had some minor personality changes, so I'm told, I'm afraid I can't really judge, as I've only known Gil since this happened. Personally, I think he's a real sweetheart."

A 'sweetheart'? The old Gil would either have cringed or been highly amused. Lucy may be right about him becoming more demonstrative. He did ask me for a hug as soon as he saw me.

Which reminds me how badly I treated him.

Lucy spots the change in my expression.

"He understands. Catherine told him that you didn't know what had happened to him. I'm certain that he forgives you."

"But it looked like he was crying on your shoulder."

"He was, and a few moments later he was mad at Catherine. Gil can't control his emotions very well, but the negative ones tend to be fleeting, by the time we've finished talking he'll be back to normal."

I'm still trying to grasp what 'normal' is for Gil.

"You said something about him sulking? He always did have a tendency to go silent and pout for a while."

"Maybe things have changed for the better then. The sulks don't usually last long, he doesn't have the patience to brood, and the silent treatment isn't very effective when you can't talk much anyway." Lucy is grinning, I guess this stuff is easier to joke about when you're used to it, but it doesn't seem funny to me.

"So how does Gil communicate? It must be pretty hard for him to write or sign if only his left hand works properly."

"He can't do either I'm afraid. Gil's aphasia affects all his language use regardless of his mobility. Most of the time I have to look at his expressions and body language together with informal gestures he uses to work out what he means, together with knowing him well enough to anticipate what he might want to say, that's why I was so pleased when he felt we knew each other well enough for me to start calling him Gil.

"Sometimes he will sign things like please and thank you, but only if his mind is on something else, it's like the gestures were second nature at one time."

"His mother was deaf, and a stickler for manners." I tell her.

"Ah, now that explains a lot.

"Anyway, Gil also uses a voice synthesizer, which helps, but even with that he has trouble putting more than a few words together in a sensible way. That's why I've been helping him over the past few days. I helped put what he wants to say in a more understandable form, but I promise you that the meaning is all his."

Well, at least I know what Lucy meant about batteries.

Lucy and I talk for a little while longer, she briefs me on what to expect and how to give Gil the best chance to communicate, like stopping talking if he starts to work with his synthesizer. Some of that is to stop the conversation getting too far past the point where he wanted to interject, but mostly it's to let him concentrate, getting the right words in a sensible order is hard enough for him and doing it left handed makes it harder still. Lucy warns me that Gil could tire quickly. To keep that from happening she has been helping Gil pre-prepare a lot of what he wants to say and store it for the synthesizer to play back on demand. Lucy tells me that Gil sometimes quotes from on-line encyclopaedias and Shakespeare this way, which at least is a sign that the old Gil hasn't disappeared.

"So, shall I get Gil to come over?"

I nod, trying to feel confident. Lucy waves at Gil and Catherine and Gil starts to drive towards us. Lucy gets up to leave, but I stop her. It's just an excuse to stop her leaving me on my own to wait for Gil, but I ask her what she meant about him being a 'sweetheart'.

"Well, he's always polite, and even though he can't control his emotions very well, we've been working on how he can feel them creeping up on him. Now he warns me when he's getting frustrated so that I can duck before he has a tantrum and starts throwing things." Lucy has an affectionate smile on her face as she tells me this. I'm not sure the idea of Gil throwing stuff makes me feel any braver though.

Gil's nearly here now and Lucy heads back to keep Catherine company. The wheelchair comes to a stop, in front of me and just a little to my right, I suppose he's allowing for his damaged hearing. Gil smiles at me and I see the old dance of intelligence in his denim blue eyes, but there's also a cautiousness which wasn't there when I first arrived. I hurt him by leaving, and the first thing I did on my return was hurt him again, no wonder he's wary of me.

As the silence grows between us Gil tilts his gently swaying head to one side and raises a questioning eyebrow. The signals are very familiar even after being apart for so long. He's telling me he's waiting for me to say something.

"I don't know what to say." I tell him.

His smile spreads into a grin and he jabs at the gadget on the tray in front of him a few times.

Me either, says a voice.

I'd half expected Gil's new voice to sound like Stephen Hawking, but it doesn't. While it's still obviously artificial with slightly odd inflections, it is quite natural sounding and someone seems to have made an effort to find a voice similar to Gil's in tone although the accent is more neutral than his was.

Did you lay your ghosts to rest?

Is that what I wrote in my note? It's funny, I can barely remember. It seems it's different for Gil, did my leaving like that hurt so much that every word was seared into his heart? Gil's waiting for an answer. I tell him yes, and a little of what I did, and why I didn't come back straight away.

"'Ara." Gil's real voice interrupts me and I realise I've been stopping him going on with what he wants to say.

I'm glad, the synthesiser continues for him and I suddenly realise that putting all this together must have been even harder than I first thought, for every question Gil asks, he's had to come up with a response to every possible answer.

I am sure that means you have changed as a person since I last saw you. I certainly have. Even if it had only happened to one of us, it would be silly to think we could just pick up right where we left off. I assumed your letter meant the end of our engagement, if it did not, then I must end it now.

Gil is watching my face as the machine speaks for him. Seeing my response to the last phrase he reaches out with his right arm and clumsily rests his hand on top of mine, keeping his more useful hand free to operate the synthesizer. Even though he can't grip my fingers his hand is warm and familiar as it rests on top of mine. He's trying to comfort me.

Another movement from Gil's left hand and the artificial voice resumes. What kind of marriage would we have had anyway? Within days of our engagement you found you could not come to me with your problems and I could not find the words to persuade you that you could. We weren't communicating properly then. What has happened to me will not make that any easier.

I half open my mouth to interrupt, Gil sees I want to speak and makes another motion with his fingers, the voice stops. "Do you just want me to get out of your life?" I ask. Gil appears horrified and shakes his head vehemently. He points at the machine; I think he's drawing my attention back to what he's trying to say. At my nod the pointing finger taps the screen and the voice continues as though I hadn't interrupted.

I would like us to start again, not from scratch, but from simple friendship.

Again I try to speak, but this time Gil just raises his hand in a 'stop' gesture.

I have more to say, but first I need two promises.

I nod, right now I'd agree to anything Gil asks.

First, promise me you will listen carefully to what I say today and think about it carefully for a few days at least before you choose what you want to do.

Second, promise me that, whatever you decide, you will come back at least once more. Talk to me to my face this time.

That last bit hurts, but it's no more than I deserve.

Gil is looking at me with serious eyes as he waits for my response. I stroke the hand which rests on mine with the fingers of my other hand, hoping that the lack of movement doesn't mean total lack of sensation.

"I promise." I say and I meet his serious gaze with one of my own.

Gil nods and once again the words resume.

If you want to keep visiting me you may have to be prepared for friendship and nothing more. That did not work well for us in the past, it may not again. If you want to try to make it more there are things you need to be aware of.

If you think you might want kids of your own, you need to find someone else. I will never be a father now.

Is he infertile? How could being hit on the head do that?

Before I met you I had never considered the idea of children. By the time we got together I was older than my father was when he died and that gave me strong doubts about the idea of having kids, it may have been part of why I made such a thing of our age gap. My injuries may or may not affect my life-span, the doctors cannot tell. Even if they do not there is no guarantee that I would see any child born in the next few years reach adulthood. It is pretty certain I would not see my grandchildren do so. We both lost our fathers when we were young; I am not prepared to have my kids deal with that.

Even if I lived long enough, what kid wants to bring their first boy or girlfriend home and have them meet some weird old guy in a wheelchair?

This brings up the matter of home. Cottonwood House is my home now, Sara, or at least the unit over there is.

Gil points at one of the one storey buildings nearby.

I like being here.

He does?

I have all the facilities, therapists and other medical support I need to achieve what I want to achieve. I thought my life would end if I could not work any more. It has not, I have just moved from should and ought to need and want. I have not got the time or energy to be any other way, but it is actually liberating.

"You're telling me that, if we were to live together again, we'd never be alone and I'd see even less of you than I did when we were working different shifts."

Gil is nodding.

"What if I became your carer?"

Gil shakes his head so hard I think his glasses might fly off. When he stops he uses a finger to push them back into place and then starts poking away at the synthesizers touch screen. It takes longer this time; I think I've moved off script. Is it possible he didn't realise I'd want to take care of him?

No way! Both bad for.

Now I see what Lucy meant about his problems with word order.

No way!

He repeats, it seems these two words are stored as a single phrase.

Won't let.

"OK you win! I won't argue. It was just a suggestion. Please Gil, don't be upset with me." He looks over his glasses at me almost in surprise, then removes them, drops them on the tray in front of him and leans back in his chair, just like he used to after a strenuous round of paperwork.

"Finished?"

He nods.

"OK, I promise I'll think about everything you've said, and then tell you what I've decided properly this time. I do have one question though." Gil starts to sit up and reach for the synthesizer again. "It's OK," I stop him, "it's a yes or no answer. I just want to know if it's OK to keep visiting you while I'm thinking. I won't use it as an excuse to avoid answering, it's just that this is new to me and I may need to speak to you and Lucy again to help me decide.

Gil gives me his old 'teacher approves' look, a good CSI always gathers as much information as possible.

"Now," I ask, "is that hug you offered still available?"

Gil grins and nods. Carefully he picks up the speech synthesiser and hands it to me. I look at it briefly as I transfer it to the table beside us. The screen is divided into squares with different words, symbols and pictures in each. I notice that one is a picture of me; someone must have scanned it in from an old photo.

Gil meanwhile has managed to swing the tray which was a barrier between us out of the way, but he isn't waiting for me to lean in to him.

Slowly, carefully, he's manoeuvring himself into a standing position. It's a relief to see that he really can stand, but then I notice him wobble slightly, reminding me a little of the baby giraffes I used to work with, which is funny, because the people I used to work with at the sanctuary said I was a bit like a young giraffe myself.

Damn, he's going over! Quickly I put a hand on each side of Gil's waist offering him support.

"It's OK, you can lean on me."

Gil looks into my face and his eyes narrow like they always did when someone said something which could be taken more than one way. I'm beginning to understand what Lucy said about knowing Gil well making it easier to understand what he wants to say.

"Take it any way you want, Gil, we're friends aren't we?"

He nods and his smile broadens, he moves his arms around me and I let mine encircle his waist.

I will keep the promises I have made and think hard about what I want to do before coming back and telling Gil directly to his face. For now though I'm happy just to absorb his scent and warmth, because now, at last, I know I'm home.

Fin