Disclaimer: I do not own CSI.

When the visiting hour was over, Sara returned to the waiting room to find everyone still there. Nick had joined them, and grabbed her up in a huge hug. The emotion of seeing Grissom in that condition coupled with seeing her friend brought more tears. Nick just held on until she cried it out. "You can't believe what he looks like," she sobbed. "He's just laying there, no response at all, it's so frightening."

"Now Sara, you heard the doctor, that's what they want for him right now."

"It's just so hard to see him like that. And all that stuff attached to him, it's scary."

"Well, now you two are even, because you scared the piss out of all of us when we found you in the desert, you were unresponsive, too," he said smiling, but realized maybe he shouldn't have brought that up. That was confirmed when he saw the looks on the other's faces.

"I'm sorry, Sara, I shouldn't have…."

"Don't worry Nick; I know what you're trying to say," she smiled, "It's OK."

"So, you just happened to come back to Vegas for a visit when all this happened?" Nick had to ask.

"Yes," she shrugged, "but, not the visit I had in mind."

"Well, so this is your first time back?" he continued.

"No, I came a couple of weeks ago, I had to see Gil."

He nodded, looking a bit hurt that she hadn't wanted to see the rest of them, but didn't press the issue. It was time for them to get ready for work; Greg elected to stay with Sara. It would be a long night of waiting.

Shortly after they were gone, at precisely 9:05 PM, Vincent Lurie and his team walked past Sara and Greg into the ICU. Greg straightened up. "Don't worry, Greg," Sara reassured him, "Lurie's got a real sick one in there, so they tell me, he's been going in a lot," she smiled at him, recalling Greg standing tall to Lurie, throwing him out of her hospital room.

Not long after that, around 9:20, a page over the hospital PA system, "Code Blue, SICU." Sara's heartbeat quickened.

"Sara, there's a lot of people in there, sicker than Griss, no way it's him."

The next page, "Dr. Kramer, SICU, stat." Now, she was really frightened.

"That's his doctor!" she was trying to hold it together, but she could feel herself hyperventilating.

Meanwhile, inside the ICU, Martha had noticed the start of some irregular heart beats. She put in a routine call to Kramer, but hadn't heard back when all of a sudden, the heart beat changed into a more ominous rhythm. She ran in to assess him, but could find nothing wrong, nothing to explain it. She immediately called a code sensing that a cardiac arrest was immanent, and put in a stat page for Kramer.

Vincent Lurie was at the bedside in six. One of the nurses asked him to step into two, something was happening and nobody knew what. "He's a patient of Dr. Kramer's, but can you look in on him until Kramer arrives, he looks like he might arrest."

In his outwardly calm manner, he politely obliged, and entered the room. Staring down at Grissom, he realized that he alone had ultimate power over the man. Much has been written throughout history about what power does to men. Lurie was drawn to it obsessively. He knew he could save Grissom, or watch him die; not unlike a Roman emperor, thumbs up or thumbs down. His goal hadn't just been to murder the man, but to be in control of him. He played along, "What's his history?" Martha recited the injury, the surgery, and the current status. He wasn't listening. He already knew it. He was only sorry Grissom wasn't alert enough to see the control he was under.

Martha called out, "Would somebody please get the code cart and defibrillator in here." She was terrified. She knew how to handle emergencies, but what was scaring her was the fact that she knew they were missing something. It just wasn't adding up. She thrust strips of EKG's in front of Lurie. "Here is his normal tracing, then he started to do this," she said holding another strip with just a few abnormal beats, "now," she put down a strip of the current rhythm, "it's V-Tach." Ventricular tachycardia is a rhythm where each beat widens and occurs faster, sometimes to the point where the blood pressure drops severely or even goes away, in that case it's fatal. The problem is the causes are innumerable, but finding the reason for the rhythm can be even more important than just fixing the rhythm. "Should we get ready to shock him, Doctor?"

"Yes, get the pads on him." he replied. That's when he figured it all out. His hand was being forced. The way Martha had recorded the EKG strips, the diagnosis was obvious in the early strips. He might fall under suspicion if he didn't act. At that moment he knew he would have to go about saving him. Besides, he also knew Walt Kramer was still at the hospital; he would probably make it in time to save Grissom himself. If he would live anyway, then Lurie wanted the credit for it, the glory of it. He would save him, and hold that over him from then on. The doctor in him took over; he glanced over the EKG strip one more time, and then shouted out "calcium one gram, IV push, stat!"

A nurse immediately pulled a box of calcium out of the code cart, assembled the syringe in a flash, and passed it to Martha who injected it, followed by a saline bolus for an immediate effect.

"Now an amp of Bicarb, and get an amp of D 50 ready, draw up ten units of regular insulin!" Lurie continued to bark our orders, as the nurses responded with lightening efficiency. "Put the defibrillator on stand by, get ready to do chest compressions!" At the rate his blood pressure was falling, Lurie knew if the first round of drugs didn't do it, they would need to start performing CPR and shock him, so he got everyone ready to do just that.

Just then Kramer blew in, seeing a nurse readying the glucose injection of D 50, "You can't give my head patient glucose!" he countered, slightly winded after having jogged to get there.

"Are the calcium and Bicarb in yet?!" Lurie continued, "Walt, you make the final call, but look at those complexes on this early strip, they are classic for high levels of potassium." Then to Martha, "Send blood for electrolytes, glucose, and send some gases while you're at it."

She replied, "I sent off everything the second this started."

"But, Vince, this guy has no reason to have an elevated potassium level, it has to be something else," he said, confusion on his face, as he was frantically examining Grissom, looking for something else amiss, but not finding anything, he was at a loss to explain recent events any other way.

"That may be, but he's responding," Lurie remarked, smiling, smirking almost. Gesturing at the monitor, "I don't think we'll be pushing on his chest today."

Sure enough, the emergency treatment for an elevated potassium level was calcium and sodium bicarbonate intravenously, followed by glucose and insulin; the heart beats were returning to normal, the blood pressure was coming up, everything was improving. The strip Martha had printed up at the start of the trouble had very subtle changes, but nevertheless displayed tell tale signs that the potassium was rising. "I'll leave you to it, Walt; you can figure out why it's up!" he laughed as he walked out. "Holler if you need a hand, I've got my hands full with this guy over here," and he wandered back toward bed six. Feeling rather God-like, he was trying to picture Grissom and Sara hearing how he had saved Gil's life.

Kramer blew out, "Thanks," in the direction of Lurie. He was fully focused on his patient; already processing the situation, deciding the best course of action to take next. "I need those electrolyte levels yesterday, somebody make sure they are getting a priority down in the lab!" he yelled. Next he turned to Martha, "Talk to me Martha, what happened here," his eyebrows rose.

Martha was very precise in her retelling of the sequence of events. The strips she printed and timed really told the story; the potassium must have risen quickly. You could see the effect more with each strip. They both wondered about the antibiotic. Everything started when the bag was a little over halfway in, and then turned really bad fairly quickly after that. "Well, stop the damn thing then," Kramer said in frustration.

"It's already all in," Martha shrugged.

"It's hard not to wonder about that. Do you think the pharmacy made an error mixing it up?"

"I guess anything is possible. The only other thing that went into the IV was a dose of morphine and ativan for sedation, but those were given earlier, and I drew them up myself, straight out of the vials. Of course, his maintenance fluids have been running continuously."

"I think that's going in way too slow to explain the changes we've got on these strips," he remarked, scratching his head. "OK, well change that bag anyway just to be safe, and I'll give you further orders once I see the actual potassium level. Let's get some other tests," he said as he scribbled orders to check conditions which could explain the potassium, unlikely as they were. "I'll be in the waiting room trying to explain this to his girlfriend." He started out, and then abruptly turned around, "Have you seen her by the way?"

Martha knew exactly what he meant by that, "Yes, a little spooky the resemblance."

"No kidding!" he was shaking his head as he walked out. He had finally figured out that Sara's familiarity was her striking resemblance to Debbie Marlin.

TBC…