Author's Notes: Thanks again to my amazing betas/friends, PhDelicious and mingsmommy. And I'm so grateful for all the great feedback you all gave for the last chapter. Believe me, I've heard the concerns that some people have expressed, and I bear them all in mind as I proceed:) Thanks for coming back to read more, and I hope you enjoy.
Unconditional
by Kristen Elizabeth
The first time Claire had seen her mother in the hospital had been after she got sick at Claire's fifth birthday party. Back then she'd been told that it was a bad stomachache. She didn't learn it was a miscarriage until the first trimester of her own pregnancy, when Catherine told her so she could fill out an accurate family medical history for her doctor. Her mother had been forty-one at the time, and they'd never tried to give her a sibling again after that.
She remembered visiting her mother while she recovered. It had confused her. Mothers weren't supposed to get sick. She'd clung her father's neck, but he'd peeled her off and set her on the bed. Her mother had hugged her and cried, telling her not to be scared and that she was going to be just fine. Her father hadn't told her anything except to be careful not to bump the IV needle in her mother's hand. And he hadn't cried.
He never did.
Even now, sitting at his wife's side as she recovered from the trauma of the shooting and the surgery, his expression was fixed and steady. He held her mother's hand between his, keeping it warm. If he couldn't cry for her, at least he wasn't leaving her alone.
"Dad?" He just barely turned his head to acknowledge her presence. "Has she woken up at all?"
"Not yet," he replied. "Where's Ashley?"
"Catherine took her home." Claire moved closer to her mother's bed. "I bet she fell asleep in the car."
"Sara can't sleep in the car," her father said suddenly. "All the motion…she's never been able to."
It was a strange conversation, but at least they were talking. "I know. I'm the same way."
He nodded. "Yes."
Claire looked down at her mother. In her mid-fifties, Sara Grissom was still a captivating woman. Any hint of grey in her hair was kept at bay by a good colorist, although she had cut it short on her forty-sixth birthday, claiming that she was too old for a lengthy style. She was aging with grace, but she was still far too young to die.
"I don't know why she had to be at a scene that was so dangerous," Claire thought out loud. "Isn't she supposed to leave that up to…other people?"
"You mean younger people."
She shrugged. "Mom got you to retire for a reason."
His response was weary. "She'll stop working when she's ready, and not a moment sooner."
There was a second chair on the other side of the bed, and Claire sank into it with a silent sigh. Her mother's right hand lay by her side, pale and limp. She reached for it with trembling fingers.
"Come on, Mom," she whispered. "Wake up."
They sat there, holding each of her hands, for what seemed like hours. Long enough, at least, for a nurse to come by and change the saline bag that ran into her mother's IV. After taking her vitals, she left them to their awkward silence.
Claire gazed across the bed at her father. She was rarely afforded an opportunity to really study him. More often than not when she dropped by her parents' house these days, he was holed up in his office, working on one of his books. And now that Ashley was in pre-school, and Claire was taking more classes, those times were few and far between. If not for the occasional family dinners that her mother planned, Claire would probably never see him at all.
Her father was a handsome man, there wasn't any denying that. On any other day, his seventy-something years looked good on him. But in his wife's hospital room, he looked much older, run down by stress and worry. And disappointment. Claire was fairly certain she was responsible for much of the baggage around his eyes.
"Are you hungry?" Claire asked suddenly. "Thirsty?"
"I'm fine." He looked at her. "Have you eaten?"
The question shouldn't have surprised her. For the first seventeen years of her life, he had sheltered, clothed and fed her. It was nice to know that he hadn't abandoned that all together. "I had some coffee."
"That was your mother's idea of dinner a long time ago." His voice was almost wistful as he brought his wife's fingers up to his lips. Lowering them again, he cleared his throat, adopting a sterner tone. "You should eat."
"I'll eat when you eat." Her father sighed. "What? I think that's only fair." Claire paused. "I'm not a kid anymore. I have as much right not to eat as you do."
There didn't seem to be anything more for either of them to say about that, and silence cloaked the room once again. Claire bit the inside of her cheek. If her mother were awake, she would be so unhappy with them.
Midnight brought no change to her mother's condition, but it did bring them a visitor.
"I come bearing coffee." Greg Sanders held out two cups that smelled delicious, a far cry from the oily sludge she'd downed in the cafeteria. Although his tone was appropriately somber, he gave Claire a little wink behind his wire-framed glasses. She accepted the cup with a smile.
He was old enough to be her father, but for her whole life, Greg had been more like the super-cool uncle she'd never had. He was a constant presence in her life, sometimes an even more stabilizing one than Catherine. It had been his shoulder Claire had cried on when, in the fifth month of her pregnancy, Ashley's father had dumped her for a cheerleader.
Greg was one of the only people besides her mother and Catherine who wasn't intimidated by her father. More than once, he'd made Claire laugh with the faces he made behind her father's back as she received a lecture about sitting still in the break room and being a good girl while she waited for one of her parents to finish an experiment or an interview and take her home.
"How's she doing, Gris?" Greg asked.
"She's resting," her father answered. He had taken his cup, but immediately set it aside. "She'll wake soon."
"Of course she will. She's Sara." Patting her father's shoulder, Greg looked at Claire. "How are you holding up?" She shrugged. "Well, Brooke's at her mother's," he said, referring to his ten year-old daughter and his ex-wife. "So I can stay if you need me." He glanced around the room. "Where's the wiggle worm?"
Claire smiled at his pet name for her daughter. "At home. With Cath..."
Her father interrupted her to ask, "How's Sara's scene?"
Greg shot a look at Claire, who couldn't keep from rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "It's being taken care of," he assured his former boss. "When Sara wakes up and asks, you can tell her I've got our best people on it."
A faint smile momentarily alighted on her father's face. "You know her almost as well as I do."
Greg pulled up a third chair next to Claire's and sat down. "Did I ever tell you about the time your mom dropped a 280 pound dummy on top of me?" Claire had heard the story, but she let him go on. He was a welcome distraction. "I have to tell you, it's not as fun as it sounds." He chuckled. "Your mom's a force to be reckoned with, Claire. She won't let this keep her down for long."
"Yeah. You know, I keep remembering things, too," Claire said, tears welling up. "But I can't remember the last time I talked to her, or what I said." She bit her lip. "I don't think I told her I loved her." She tried not to look at her father, but her eyes landed on him anyway, needing him to look back at her. "That's horrible, isn't it?"
"No," Greg said when Grissom said nothing. "It's not. We get caught up in the daily grind. Happens to everyone."
"Mom always says it." She paused. "Doesn't she, Dad?"
Her father brushed a kiss across her mother's knuckles. "We should be quiet," he told Greg and Claire. "She needs to rest."
Claire swallowed. When Greg put his arm around her, she gave in and rested her cheek on the shoulder of his tweed jacket. She closed her eyes, wishing that it was her father holding her instead.
"We should be quiet. She needs to rest."
Even with Sara pulling on his arm, Grissom couldn't seem to make his feet move. They were firmly planted on the pale pink carpet of his four year-old daughter's room. He felt like if he didn't leave, if he just kept watching her fretful sleep, nothing bad would happen to her. He could take her sickness away, make the itching stop, make everything all right again.
"She's fine, Gil," Sara insisted. "The doctor said so. As far as chicken pox goes, this wasn't too bad."
"Is this the way it's always going to be?" Grissom asked. "Utter helplessness? Complete futility?" He paused. "I thought it would start getting easier. But every year she gets older…and the fears just double."
His wife smiled. "What…you didn't read that clause in your contract?"
He was just distracted enough by the angry red bumps all over Claire's face and arms that he missed the joke entirely. "What contract?"
"You know…" Sara slipped her arm around his waist. "The one you signed the day she was born that said your heart was about to be taken hostage by someone who couldn't even hold their own head up."
"Oh." Grissom smiled because it was what she wanted him to do. "I should have paid attention to the fine print."
Claire stirred just then, letting out a small and pitiful, "Daddy?"
By the time he reached her, she was asleep again, her face scrunched up in unconscious discomfort. Grissom brushed her dark, tangled bangs back and kissed her too-warm forehead.
"I'm here," he whispered. "Daddy's here."
To Be Continued