Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me.

Author's Notes: I cannot thank everyone enough for the amazing feedback! Just know that it is so very appreciated. Special thanks go out to Lisa and Cinco;)


A House is Not a Home

by Kristen Elizabeth


The coughing was worse when Grissom was gone. Lying in the hospital bed, all Sara could do was stare out the window while her body was wracked with coughs. Clouds were gathering in the sky; it was going to rain soon.

She hadn't seen rain since the night in the desert. Strangely, the coming storm didn't fill her with any additional anxiety. She was almost happy to see it, a break from the cheerful monotony of the sun.

Although she couldn't remember falling asleep, the first slap of lightning and rumble of thunder woke her up in a start. There was a very familiar shape at the window, watching the rain sliding down the glass outside as he talked on the phone.

"I don't know when we'll be back, Jim," he said to the man on the other end. "This Dr. House hasn't even examined her yet. I'm starting to doubt he actually exists." There was a long pause. "Ecklie can think whatever he wants to think. We both have too much vacation time on the books for him to complain about us taking a week or two off." Another pause. "I know that you knew. Your award for observation will be arriving in the mail any day now."

"Gil," Sara whispered.

"I have to go, Jim. Sure. I'll tell her." Closing up his phone, Grissom turned around. "Brass says to tell you hello and that you had better feel well soon." He slowly walked to the bed. "So. Just how are you feeling?" He paused. "And please tell me the truth."

Sara shook her head, stifling a cough. "I'm…surviving."

"That's not really an answer."

"I know."

"When did we start keeping secrets from each other?" he wondered out loud, without accusation.

Sara lifted her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure you started it."

He conceded with a nod. "I probably did."

"Gil, I'm sorry I…"

Grissom held up a hand, silently stopping her apology. "If I let myself be angry at you for having secrets, I'd be the worst kind of hypocrite." He paused. "It's impossible to know everything about someone. But Sara…you are the one person in the world who knows the most about me. And I want to be that person for you."

After a moment, she held out her hand to him. He needed no beckoning; he was at her side in seconds, entwining her fingers through his. "Let's try this again. How are you feeling?"

She blinked rapidly, forcing tears back. "Tired," she admitted. "Weak."

"That is the last thing you are, honey." He kissed the back of her hand, careful of her IV. "You're the strongest woman I know. Which is why I have no doubt that you're going to be walking out of here soon."

"Let's hope it's that easy." Sara waited a few seconds, gathering the strength he seemed so sure that she possessed. "I need to tell you something. Ever since the desert…"

There was a knock on the door and a second later, Dr. Cameron entered. "Excuse me," she apologized. A smile spread on her face when she saw them together. "I'm sorry to bother you, but Dr. House has ordered another test." She gestured to a nurse who followed behind her, wheeling in an ultrasound machine.

Sara coughed, frowning. "What's that for?"

"We're just going to take a look at your belly," Cameron assured her. "I'll be as gentle as possible, I promise."

Grissom was confused. "Why an ultrasound?"

Cameron glanced at Sara. "You haven't told him yet?"

"Told me what?"

Sara sighed. "I've been having some…pain." Her hand drifted down to her lower abdomen. "Here. I didn't say anything because…" Sara shook her head. "I don't like being weak."

Panic was written all over his face. "Honey, you're not. You beat impossible odds. You…"

"Please stop acting like I did something incredible by not dying," she snapped. "If Nick had found me five minutes later, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Grissom blinked and took a step back, unable to come up with anything to say.

Cameron hesitantly broke the silence that followed. "Sara…if you'd just lift your gown up a bit, we can get started." She paused. "Will Dr. Grissom be staying?"

"If he wants." Sara bunched the hem of her gown up just below her breasts and leaving her pale, flat abdomen exposed. She took a deep breath and coughed. "Are you looking for something specific?"

After squeezing cold gel onto Sara's belly, Cameron tugged on the cord that attached the probe to the machine. "Relax, Sara." She moved the probe over Sara's skin, aided by the slick gel. On the screen, a blurry image of Sara's uterus appeared.

Sara blinked. "You think I'm pregnant."

"We're ruling out everything," Cameron said. Adjusting the angle of the probe, she examined the screen closely, searching for any signs of life. "But…I don't see a baby."

"Because I'm not pregnant," Sara firmly stated.

Cameron squinted at the monitor. "Have you ever been pregnant?"

"No."

A moment passed. "Are you sure?"

"I think I would remember that," Sara said sourly. As Cameron moved the probe to a new area, pain stabbed her. She drew in a sharp breath.

"I'm sorry," Cameron murmured. "I just need to get a clearer picture."

Grissom swallowed heavily, nervously. "Clearer picture of what?"

Having captured the image she wanted, Cameron hit a few buttons on the machine, saving it. She removed the probe and handed Sara a couple of tissues for the gel. "I think there's some scarring on your uterus," she finally answered.

"Scarring?" Sara repeated. "How would I have gotten…"

"D&C, most likely."

Grissom and Sara turned their heads towards the door at the same time. A slightly unkempt man in a sports jacket and jeans leaned against the doorframe. He had a cane in his hand and a look of inconvenienced boredom on his unshaven face.

"Although they're not commonly used for abortions these days, if you had the dumb luck to get knocked up ten to fifteen years ago, you would have most likely had the little nuisance scraped off your uterine wall with a D&C, leaving only a few scars behind to mark the place where your unwanted spawn once grew."

Sara looked at Cameron. "Please tell me this isn't…"

"Dr. House." The young woman sighed with both regret and apology. "Sara Sidle and Dr. Gil Grissom," she introduced them.

Using his cane, the man limped into the room. "I already know ol' Gil here. I used his articles from the International Journal of Biological Sciences to cure my insomnia in medical school."

Grissom's brow crinkled. "Which ones?"

"Only the ones about bugs," House assured him.

"They were all about…"

"Excuse me!" Sara pointed a finger at the newcomer. "Let's get something straight right away. I've never had an abortion. I've never even been pregnant. And I deeply resent your implication that I'm lying."

"I deeply resent that you made me miss Passions," House shot back.

"I did what?"

Ignoring her, House made his way to the ultrasound machine. "There's pretty much only one way to get the kind of scarring that leaves you in acute pain." He examined the frozen image on the screen, looked back at Sara, then looked back at the screen.

Cameron frowned. "What? What do you see?"

With his pinky, House pointed out the darkest shaded areas on the ultrasound image. "That's not old scarring." Suddenly grave, he gave his colleague a few seconds to see what he was seeing. "Starts with an 'a'," he prompted.

"Asherman's syndrome," Cameron breathed a second later.

"The adhesions are fresh. Certainly not something that would have been missed in exploratory surgery." House looked at Sara. "Just what were your surgeons exploring for? Hidden silver?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I was mostly unconscious for a couple of days."

He turned his stare to Grissom, who was still quiet, but now a shade paler than before. "Which leaves you. Any insights?"

Grissom cleared his throat. "Sara was abducted by a woman who killed four people. She was drugged, stuck under a car and left in the desert. She nearly drowned in a flash flood. She freed herself and walked for miles in 100 degree heat with a broken arm."

"Passions tells a better story." House moved closer to Grissom. "While she was unconscious, who made all of her medical decisions?" Grissom glared at him. "I'll take that as, 'Dr. House, I admit it was me'."

Sara looked at Cameron. "I don't understand. What's Asherman's syndrome?"

"It basically means that you've formed some adhesions…internal fibrous bands…on your uterine wall. They've probably been the cause of your pain." Cameron hesitated. "They're not old. Which means…you've had some kind of surgery in your womb. Recently."

Sara tried to lick her lips, but her tongue was dry. "The exploratory…"

House cut her off. "Wouldn't cause this." He was still looking at Grissom. "Is there something you'd like to share with us?"

"Can I have minute alone with…"

Grissom was cut off by House. "Patient's unstable. It would be enormously unethical of me to leave her side and miss this show, too."

"Gil?" Sara's voice was tiny and worried.

"Sara." Grissom's hands were shaking. He gripped the metal frame of the bed to keep them steady. "I need you to know…your safety, your happiness, your life…are more important to me than anything else in the world. Please remember that, honey," he begged her. "Please."

She shook her head against her pillow, tears collecting in her eyes. "I don't want to hear you say…what I think you're about to say."

He looked down at the floor, still holding onto the bed. "The doctor said you were probably only a month or so along. You might not even have suspected for another week or so." When he looked back up at her, his eyes were wet. "You survived all of the trauma…but our baby didn't."

Sara made a tiny noise in the back of her throat, a whimper of pure heartbreak. Cameron looked away, but House watched the unfolding scene without blinking an eye.

Unaware or uncaring of their audience, Grissom went on, each word heavy and pain-filled. "You were so dehydrated, honey. They were worried about your…bleeding if you just lost…naturally, so they just…removed the…the…what there was of the…baby and…" He stopped for a long moment to collect himself. "It was my decision not to tell you, so you'd never have to know that you were…that you had been pregnant." He answered the question that burned in her watery stare, "I couldn't let Natalie take something else away from us."

Sara pressed her hand against her still-exposed belly. "Is this why you want to move past all of this so badly? You want to forget about our…" Her chin trembled. "…our child?"

"No!" He reached for her hand, but she jerked it away from him. "Sara, honey, please try to understand that I…"

She cut him off by addressing House, ignoring Grissom as though he was no longer in the room. It was the only way she could keep from breaking down entirely. "What do you have to do to make the pain stop?"

"I only know how to make physical pain go away," House told her.

"That's all I care about right now."

"It's a fairly simple surgical procedure to remove the adhesions," he continued after studying her for a second. "I'm obligated to inform you that there is a small risk of infertility, even if the surgeon manages to get them all." House glanced at Grissom. "But I somehow doubt that fertility is going to be an issue for awhile." He shook his head. "Hope you like your right hand, Doc. You're probably going to get to know it intimately."

"You know, I think it's refreshing to find a doctor who doesn't sugarcoat bad news," Sara said, her voice flat and lifeless. "But considering that we're talking about my odds of bearing children in the future, not to mention the dead child that was sucked out of me without my knowledge, could you maybe dial back the morbid comedy routine? At least until I'm under anesthesia and don't have to listen to it anymore."

Cameron's cheeks caved in as she fought a major internal battle to keep from smiling. The look on her boss's face wasn't one she'd ever seen before. "I'll go schedule the surgery," she said a moment later. One glimpse of the devastated look on Grissom's face was more than enough to sober her up. "Excuse me." With that, she slipped out of the room.

"As much as I love a good awkward silence, my Vicodin is wearing off. And your emotional agony's got nothing on my leg." Just as abruptly as he'd limped in, House limped out, leaving Grissom and Sara alone.

"Sara…" Grissom began. He let her name hang between them, unable to come up with any words to follow it for a long time. "I'm sorry," he finally finished.

Her hand shook as she lowered her hospital gown back into place. It was still raining outside, like the universe was shedding all the tears for her lost child that she couldn't yet bring herself to unleash.

"Would you have ever told me?" she asked.

Grissom cleared his throat. "If I'd known you were in pain, of course. But I didn't know. Did I?"

"You don't get to put this back on me, Gil. You've had a whole month to grieve for our baby. I just found out we were going to have one." She gripped the blanket that covered her legs. "Natalie took a lot away from me, yes, but you took something, too. Even though I know you thought you were protecting me, it doesn't matter. I had one person in this world that I trusted completely." She shook her head. "I don't have that anymore."

"Honey…"

"I'd really like to be alone right now."

After a moment, Grissom nodded slowly. "All right." He walked to the door. "But Sara…when you wake up, I'm going to be there. Just so you know."

As soon as he was gone, Sara began coughing again.


To Be Continued