A/N: Just in case you are wondering after reading...A bronchoscopy is a procedure performed through a small scope to look directly at the degree of change done to the airways and to allow for suctioning of secretions and debris.
And remember I'm not a doctor, so I apologise for any mistakes in that respect. Thanks for reading and please leave a review. ;-)
The automatic doors opened and Grissom rushed into the ER making straight for the main desk. He didn't notice the crowded lobby and waiting area, or Brass suddenly looking up and straightening in his seat as he hurried past. He'd driven like a maniac to get there, parked in a handicapped spot. Brass's call had sent him into a spin, its lack of specific detail as to Sara's exact condition fuelling his anxiety.
The statistics didn't lie, he kept thinking. An estimated fifty to eighty percent of fire deaths are the result of smoke inhalation injuries rather than burns. What if he was already too late? What if she wasn't to make it?
A couple of doctors stood behind the desk conferring over a file, a nurse was on the phone, while another was updating patients' details on the wall-mounted board behind the counter. Sara's name didn't feature, but he figured that was because she'd only just come in. He came to a sudden halt and leaning over the counter breathlessly addressed the nurse. His panic and worry were undisguised, palpable.
"Sara Sidle," he said without preamble, and paused to catch his breath.
The nurse turned toward him.
"She was brought in about a half-hour ago? House fire."
The nurse pursed her lips. "Let me see. Several people were brought in at the same time. Are you her next of kin?"
"Yes," he replied without hesitation. Whether he legally was, or not, was of no importance.
The nurse nodded, then searched through a stack of clipboards piled up high on one corner of the desk and pulled one out. "She's stable," she said at last, as her eyes scanned Sara's medical notes, and looked up. "She was brought in with a diagnosis of severe smoke inhalation and burns to her right hand."
Grissom remembered Brass telling him that the fire department had found her in the staircase and he could well imagine she'd burned her hand while letting herself out of her locked apartment. The heat, the smoke, would have been so intense and disorienting. Thank God she'd woken up and made it out of bed, he thought suddenly. The alternative didn't bear thinking about. The thought of her in that fire, panicked and suffering, tore at his heart.
He blew a calming breath, nodded his head. "How severe?" he asked, fearful.
"You'll have to ask the doctor that, I'm afraid."
"When she was…found, she was unconscious." His voice broke with emotion, and he cleared his throat. "Has she…hum…regained consciousness at all?"
The nurse consulted the chart. "She hadn't when she was brought in. She's been assessed and tests have been ordered. We'll know more when her blood cultures come back, but according to this she's on a hundred percent oxygen at the moment. I can't tell you more than that, I'm afraid. Dr Winslade is the attending. I'll track her down, let her know you're here. She'll explain everything in more detail."
"Can I see her?"
The nurse gave a well-practised, appeasing smile. "I'm sure you can, very soon." She reached over, patting him on the arm, and Grissom mustered a weak smile back. The nurse then reached down below the counter, produced a sheet she clipped to a new clipboard with a pen on a string attached to it, and held both out to him. "I need you to fill this in, please, Sir, while you're waiting?"
Grissom looked down, nodded his head and wordlessly took the clipboard and pen from her.
"Try to fill in as much as you can, as accurately as you can, and then just drop it back here when you're done. There's a waiting room over there," she said, pointing, and Grissom numbly followed where she was indicating, only now noticing Brass watching, a small, crooked smile slowly forming as he met Grissom's gaze. "Dr Winslade won't be long, I'm sure."
Grissom turned back to the nurse and nodded his head. "Thank you."
The nurse flashed a smile before turning to address the next person, and with a sigh Grissom walked over to where Brass was sitting. He felt flushed and sweaty despite the air conditioning, while Brass looked downright tired and anxious. He stood up, briefly taking in Grissom's appearance before lifting his eyes to his, a question in them. "Any news?"
Grissom shrugged. "The nurse only confirmed what you'd already told me and that she was stable. I'm waiting to hear from the doctor that's treating her."
Brass nodded, and they sat down side by side. Grissom tried to reign in his emotion for the sake of appearances, put his professional mask on his face, but it was hard. A television showing the latest sporting results hung in one corner of the room with the sound turned down low. Idly he lifted his eyes to it, thinking it would give him something to focus his mind on. It didn't work.
"God, I hate hospitals," Brass said, as a message went out over the PA system. "All that waiting around..." his words faded and he sighed.
Remembering that not that long ago it had been Brass in the ER with a bullet through the chest, Grissom flashed an awkward smile, nodded his head. "Thanks for staying with her, Jim," he added after a while.
Brass's shoulder lifted. "This is the closest they'd let me be, you know?"
"Still, it means a lot she wasn't alone."
Nodding, Brass watched Grissom, seemingly waiting, maybe suspecting, but Grissom wasn't ready to tell the world just yet. Brass's eyes lowered to the clipboard Grissom was clutching in his hand. "You got any means of contacting her family?" he asked. "I know her father died but…" his words trailed off uncertainly.
Grissom blew a long breath; he'd not even thought about it. He chose his words carefully. "I don't think that's what Sara would want. Not yet anyway. Let's just…wait till we know more."
"I'm sure the doc will be over soon."
Grissom gave a pallid nod. Another message played over the PA system, and glancing toward the main desk Grissom shifted impatiently. "How long would you ascertain she'd been unconscious for? I mean, before they found her."
"I don't know," Brass said quietly. "But they treated her real quick once she was out."
Grissom swallowed, nodded his head and looked down at the clipboard in his hand. He grabbed the pen, but his hand shook too much for him to be able to write legibly. "You said the fire department had the fire under control?" he said, slowly closing his hand in a fist to stop the tremor, and looked over Brass. "How bad was it?"
Brass shook his head. "It was bad, Gil, spreading and burning very quickly. I don't think there'll be much left they can salvage."
"What the fire hasn't destroyed, the smoke or water will have," Grissom remarked quietly, and sighed. Then his gaze narrowed at Brass's words. "You think the fire was started deliberately? That some sort of accelerant was used maybe?"
Brass opened his hands in a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine gesture. "That, or someone was storing stuff they shouldn't have. FD will tell us."
The two men fell silent. An old man sat down across from them, nodded his head. A woman paced nearby, trying to soothe a fractious baby. Grissom rubbed at his face, then looked up to the TV before sitting up at the images on the screen, live aerial shots showing the blaze itself and fire crews perched on the end of ladders holding hoses as they tried to control it, then its aftermath, the still smouldering remains and more damping down efforts. Night was beginning to fall.
His heartbeat quickened again. It was strange seeing the familiar neighbourhood from the sky, heart-breaking to witness its desolation and the charred mess of what was left Sara's apartment building. He tapped Brass on the arm, indicated the muted images and together they watched the action make way to a reporter standing outside the cordoned off area against a backdrop of fire trucks.
He was interviewing a balding man with an expressive face and who gestured a lot, a witness presumably – a neighbour or resident maybe, someone Grissom didn't recognise – that had seen it all happen and was now regaling the reporter of the finer details. The man's name flashed on the screen, and without even realising Grissom made a mental note of it. When the footage ended and the news programme cut to commercials, he looked over to the front desk again and to the nurse he'd spoken to before, now on the phone, silently pleading with her to hurry. He checked his watch; the wait was excruciating.
"Does Sara know how you feel about her?"
Grissom's head snapped up, Brass's question catching him totally off guard. He thought about playing dumb, but was far too anxious and worried to bother denying it. "Is it that obvious?"
Brass shrugged his reply.
"Yes, she does," he answered at last.
Brass gave a slow nod. "It figures. I mean, I always knew you two had…how can I put it…affinities. Sara, bless her, she wears her heart on her sleeve, but you? I never thought you'd act on your feelings for her."
"Well, I did," Grissom stated, a little smugly, or was it proudly?
Brass smiled warmly. "How long?"
Grissom's smile was soft and contemplative. "A little under a year." He eased a look at his friend, waiting for his reaction.
Brass's brow rose in surprise, then he gave a wry chuckle. "And no one knows?"
Grissom shook his head. "And it must stay that way. Too much is at stake."
Turning in his seat Brass patted his hand to Grissom's leg. "Your secret's safe with me, but you might want to…play it cooler than you've been doing so far."
Before Grissom could respond a small woman dressed in blue scrubs came into the waiting area, scanned the many faces and called, "Family of Sara Sidle?"
Grissom set the clipboard down on the next chair. "That's me," he replied, pushing to his feet abruptly with Brass flowing suit more sedately.
"I'm Dr Winslade. I treated Sara when she was brought in."
"Gil Grissom," Grissom said, "and this is my friend Jim Brass. How is she?"
"She's stable, already showing signs of responding to treatment. Her skin colour is a little better as a consequence." Sharing a look with Brass, Grissom blew a breath of relief. "She briefly regained consciousness and gave positive responses to stimuli. The EMTs acted fast, immediately administering one hundred percent oxygen in the setting of hypoxia―"
"Hypoxia?" Brass interrupted.
"It's when not enough oxygen gets to the body," Grissom provided with a sideways glance at his friend before refocusing on the doctor and silently urging her to carry on.
"Hence treating the likely carbon monoxide inhalation, which is what we're carrying on with until we get the results of the blood cultures we've sent for and know more about level of poisoning."
Brass's phone chose this moment to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket, checked the screen and after giving a quick apology stepped aside to take the call.
"What about damage to her lungs and airways?" Grissom asked.
The doctor's shoulder lifted. "Without looking at chest X-rays it's hard to tell. We're waiting for a slot in radiology, it shouldn't be much longer. All we can see for now is that her nostrils, nasal passages and throat all show some degree of exposure to heat and signs of swelling, which is what we'd expect."
"Are you going to do a bronchoscopy?"
"Not at present. We're monitoring her closely and if she fails to demonstrate enough clinical improvement within the next few hours we will."
Grissom nodded. "And her hand?"
"She suffered some second degree burns to the inside of her right hand, but that's all." The doctor opened her hand flat, palm up toward him, and showed him where. "Think of it as bad oven burns. It'll heal, and in time she should regain full function of her hand."
Grissom blew out a breath of relief. "Can I see her?"
The doctor patted him on the arm and smiled. "Give me five minutes, and I'll take you to her."
Grissom nodded, then watched the doctor go and turned toward Brass, still on the phone.
"Thanks, Catherine," Brass said, before disconnecting and looking over at Grissom.
"So?" they asked in unison.
"You first," Brass said, slipping his phone back in his pocket.
"She's doing okay. They're waiting to take her to X-ray to check her lungs, but she's responding to treatment."
"Oh, that's good," Brass said, clearly relieved, before he sighed and his expression darkened."Fire department appears to have found…evidence of accelerant. Petrol most probably, and a lot of it. They found some badly burned cans among the rubble."
A chill ran through Grissom. "So we are looking at arson."
"It would appear so," Brass said, nodding. "But that's not the worst of it. Catherine said they found a body."
"A body?"
Brass nodded. "Female, by the looks of it, and inside apartment 1B according to the building plans. They're trying to contact the owner, see who lived there. The coroner's on his way."
Looking off into the middle distance, Grissom gave a nod and tried to put a face to the woman who lived in 1B, whose path he may have crossed, and even said a polite "Hello" to, but conjured up nothing. Someone had started that fire deliberately, killing an innocent victim and seriously injuring Sara.
"Gil?"
Grissom gave his head a shake, refocusing.
"Catherine says not to worry about shift," Brass went on, "that she and the guys have got it covered. They were all very shocked when they heard and wanted to come to the hospital, but Catherine convinced them that they'd be more useful at work."
"I'll call her when I've seen Sara."
"That'll be good." Brass looked around the waiting room while restlessly swaying on the ball of his feet. He clapped Grissom on the shoulder. "I can see she's in good hands, so I'm going to make tracks now. Head back to the scene. You call as soon as you get more news, all right?"
"I will."
Grissom watched Brass leave through the automatic doors, then heavily sat back down on the hard plastic chair and rubbed the weariness from his face. Then he picked up the clipboard and filled in Sara's details as well as his, her next of kin.
"Sir?"
Grissom looked up at Doctor Winslade with a start.
"She's awake."