Chapter 4

Fear of the Unknown

After Eric had changed positions with Natalia, he settled himself in and watched Calleigh's pale features shift as she dreamed. The dim lighting and soft noises of the monitors soon lulled him into a light doze. He laid his head on the edge of Calleigh's bed and closed his eyes.

"Eric?"

Calleigh's soft voice woke him instantly. "I'm here. Do you need anything?"

"Where are you?" she asked.

Eric realised that she couldn't see him from where he was reclined at the foot of her bed. He rose and sat at her side, taking her hand in his. "I'm right here. How did you know I was here?"

She struggled to focus her eyes on him, but the light from the hall was searingly bright. "Your after shave; I can barely see you. The light from the hall is too bright."

"Then close your eyes, Querida" he said soothingly, glancing over his shoulder at the soft lighting with concern. He scooted up a little closer to her head and gently stroked her cheek and effectively blocking out the nighttime lighting. "Is there anything you need?"

"No," she breathed. "Where's my dad?"

"H took him home on the way to a crime scene. I would have gone too, but we thought it was better that I stay with you in case you woke up all confused," Eric said, watching her brow wrinkle. She seemed to be fighting with something. "What is it? You know you can tell me anything and it'll stay between us."

She opened eyes damp with the moisture of unshed tears. "The last time I was this sick I almost died. I know I was very little, but it was like this. My head feels like it's going to explode and every inch of my body hurts like I'm being pulled apart. I know I have meningitis and that it can be fatal. I know it's a swelling of the brain. What if my body isn't strong enough to fight it off? Even if it is, I know what can happen to me; Alexx told me and I know it's the truth because I know she'd never lie to me. I can go blind or deaf. I can come out of this permanently paralyzed or have seizures for the rest of my life. I don't know if I'm strong enough for that; to live with that. Eric, I'm scared of dying and just as scared of living. You probably think I'm a coward and-"

Eric wiped the tears that were rolling down her cheeks and towards her ears. The monitors attached to her were beeping faster and harder, signaling that her heart rate and blood pressure were beginning to rise. He desperately wanted to calm her down, calm her fears. "Sh-h-h. I don't think you're a coward and you have every right to be scared. Querida, calm down; it's only going to make you feel worse. You have to calm down; please."

Suddenly she began to shake uncontrollably and little choking sounds came from her throat. Terrified, Eric shot off the bed and into the hall. "Hey, she's-"

He needn't have even moved. The nurses were already on their feet and brushing past him. "She's seizing; get the clorazepate. We've got to stop this."

The second nurse disappeared briefly and returned with a syringe and injected it into Calleigh's IV line. Within moments that felt more like hours to Eric, Calleigh relaxed and lapsed into a deep, hopefully healing, sleep.

The nurse turned to Eric, who was doing a quite a bit of shaking of his own. He couldn't take his eyes off of Calleigh and felt sick to his stomach and slightly dizzy. He could barely hear the nurse when she spoke.

"Sir, you need to sit down," she said, assisting him into a chair and then lifting a glass of cool water to his lips. He drank and she could see that his eyes had begun to refocus. "She had a seizure; what was going on right before it happened? Please be specific so we can keep this from happening again."

Eric struggled to make his mind work for Calleigh's sake. "She, uhm, she woke up and we were talking She knows what's wrong with her and is very aware of what could happen as she recovers. She got extremely upset and was crying. She's scared. I saw the monitors start to go crazy and I tried to calm her down, but then she just started shaking. Is she going to be alright?"

"Dr. Louis will need to examine her to see if there's any damage done. Why don't you go on home and let her sleep it off?" the first nurse said kindly.

Eric shook his head. He knew that couldn't leave her side; it would tear him apart with worry. "No, I'd rather stay. I don't want to be away from her. She means too much to me."

"Are you her husband?"

"No, no nothing like that. I'm her partner; we're CSI's. Calleigh has had my back for the last ten years. I'd lay down my life for her and she'd do the same for me. I can't leave her side; I need to be here for her," Eric said, emotion making his voice thick.

The second nurse, a blonde, pat his shoulder. "You two must be very close."

Eric nodded, his eyes still on Calleigh's sleeping form."Yeah, we are. I can't just up and leave her after that. I don't want her to panic and make things worse when she wakes up. She knows that seizures can be part of the rest of her life. She's going to need someone that she trusts to reassure her that this could have been an isolated event. It is isolated, right?" When the blonde nurse nodded, he continued, "she's going to need me."

The nurses shared a knowing look. It wasn't just a work partnership or even a close friendship he was talking about. He loved this seriously ill woman. The blonde nurse spoke. "If you can help us keep her calm when she wakes up then we'd really appreciate it if you'd stay."

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"H, she had a seizure," Eric told his brother-in-law over the phone. "It scared the hell out of the both of us."

"How is she now?" Horatio asked, his voice overflowing with concern. Unless it involved a current investigation and couldn't wait until morning, Eric never called him this late at night.

"She's still sleeping it off. They gave her some anti-seizure medication and it knocked her out. The nurses don't expect her to wake up before morning. Hopefully by then the antibiotics will have done something," Eric said, sounding equally as worried. "How's the murder case going?"

"The usual. Guy kills another guy over a girl," Horatio replied, sounding uncharacteristically bland about it. His stomach turned in both guilt and worry for the millionth time in less than 24 hours. This situation was worse, in some respects, than when Eric had been shot. This was Calleigh. This was his rock solid, second in command, always there and dependable Calleigh. He ran his hand over his sleep deprived features before saying, "Eric, I want you to stay the night over there. Call me if there are any changes. I'm going to be keeping my eye on Mr. Duquesne. Calleigh does not need her father falling apart right now."

Eric didn't want to sound like a scared little boy, but he certainly felt like one. She might not know it, but she was the love of his life and watching her suffer through the illness was killing him. What could happen to her as she recovered could kill her. "What are we going to do if she comes out of this changed? How are we going to handle her? You know she'll be shattered."

Horatio was silent for a long time, contemplating the information that Eric gave him. The same questions had ricocheted around in his mind for hours before he voiced them to the only one that had even a tiny idea of his fears. He repeated to Eric what Alexx had told him. "Just be patient and support her and let her know that we will love her no matter what. But let's leave that for if it happens. Right now let's just focus on her beating this thing."

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Dr. Louis gently shook Eric's shoulder to wake him. As Eric raised his head and opened his eyes he was greeted by the sight of an angel. No, a very beautiful woman, to be exact. She had shoulder length dark caramel colored hair, golden skin and enormous dark chocolate eyes set in a lovely heart shaped face. If his heart hadn't already been owned lock, stock and barrel by the woman in the hospital bed he would have been very taken with the beauty in front of him. As it was, he noted her beauty and appreciated it, wondering what she could do to help the love of his life.

"Mr. Delko, this is Dr. Maria Santos. She's a former medical school classmate of mine and Alexx's. I've called her in from Pennsylvania to consult in Ms. Duquesne's case," Gabe said in his soothing Jamaican lilt. "She's a skilled neurosurgeon and can give better insight into the complexities of this illness."

"Gabe called me last night with the diagnosis and I have to admit, I've never seen a case of PAM, but I am very familiar with meningitis and am interested in your friend's case."

"She's not a case, Dr. Santos, she's a person," Eric said hotly.

She ducked her head, giving all the signs of being entirely apologetic. "Forgive me, Mr. Delko, I didn't mean any disrespect or mean to dehumanize her. I just meant that I'm interested in the disease and want to know what will give her and any future sufferers the best chance to recover. She's an important case. She was sent to seek medical treatment far earlier than any other victim of PAM that has been recorded. She has been positively diagnosed with it a full two days earlier than any known case. The fact that she had two doses of a broad spectrum antibiotic has no relevance here because they are not known to be effective against PAM. And, although, at all times, it will be utmost in my mind that she is a person with thoughts and feelings and fears, I am most interested in the bacteria that infected her and how to beat it. It's a killer, Mr. Delko and Ms. Duquesne could hold the key to catching it."

Without knowing it, the doctor used the exact terminology that Eric couldn't refute. "Then, by all means, Dr. Santos, please examine her. I want her to recover as much as anyone."

She graced him with a very sweet smile, then moved to Calleigh's bedside and and began to run a series of sensory tests on her while the woman slept. Only when Calleigh appeared to become slightly agitated did she stop, concluding that the rest of the simple tests needed to be concluded while the patient was awake and coherent.

"Has she been awake at all, Mr. Delko?" Dr. Santos asked.

"Yeah. She was for a little while yesterday with her dad and a bit last night with me. She's really scared, Doctor. She knows what can happen to her and she let those fears get the best of her last night and she had a seizure. The nurses knew what to do to stop it, but it scared me to death. I know when she wakes up she's going to want answers," Eric said honestly. If he was to be of any help to Calleigh, he had to be her voice while she couldn't speak.

Dr. Santos frowned. "Tell me what happened."

"We talked and she admitted her fears to me and then she got very agitated and began to cry and then she seized," Eric said, although the part about Calleigh crying just about tore his heart in two. She would never have admitted to it herself, but he felt it was in her best interest to have everything in the open if this Dr. Santos was going to help her.

"Alright, that tells me something. It tells me that emotional upheaval, at least right now when her system is overrun by the bacteria, goes into overload and her brain short circuits and she has a seizure. For now, until the bacteria have retreated to non-alarming levels, she needs to be kept completely calm. Otherwise her neural pathways could rewrite themselves into a pattern of dealing with severe stress by seizing and that could spell a very bleak future for her. Gabe filled me in with what she does for a living."

"Alright, how do we do that," Eric asked, clearly at a loss. "You can't lie to Calleigh and expect anything other that utter distrust from then on out, so truthful answers will only be accepted. Before you even say anything, Calleigh can smell a lie, even a little white one, a mile off. You can't bluff around her. She could teach professional poker players a thing or two about bluffing."

Dr. Santos's eyes widened in surprise. "You can't calm her with just hopeful words? She's tougher than anyone I have ever had as a patient."

Eric smiled ruefully, yet entirely proud of Calleigh. "Calleigh Duquesne is a true steel magnolia. She looks pretty and delicate but there is a hard edge of steel beneath the surface. This doesn't mean that she's a complete bad ass without human emotion, it's just that she's learned to compartmentalize away things that aren't useful at times. She has feelings, Doctor, but they're always elusive, like fish darting in a pond. You just need to know how to look beneath her still surface to see what's going on under the water's edge. Right now she's completely terrified of dying and of living because of the lasting effects that can happen to her. She's fiercely independent and any lessening of that independence, any extra dependence on anyone, will be devastating."

Maria's face was set in grim determination. "Then we'll just have to make certain that she keeps her independence."