The next 24 hours changed nothing. The ventilator continued to pump life-saving breath into Grissom. He was able to draw only three breaths a minute on his own. The ventilator was doing the rest.
Score: Ventilator 9, Grissom 3.
Sara stared at the readout, willing it to shift.
"It's the bottom of the ninth, Gil," she whispered. "Time to get back in the game."
She started to say, "do or die," and bit it off.
"Please, honey, you need to start getting better." She held his right hand in both of hers and touched her forehead to his knuckles. "Come back to me."
She raised her head when she heard someone come into the room behind her. It was Bly. He was scanning Grissom's chart and scowling.
"Hi, Sara," he said when he looked up. "You getting along okay?" He nodded at the cot.
"Yes, thank you," she said. "It was nice of you to do that."
"Captain Brass made it abundantly clear that when it comes to your husband's welfare, or perhaps I should say your perception of his welfare, arguing with you was a losing proposition."
Sara smiled a little. "That sounds like Jim."
"What sounds like me?" Brass asked as he rolled up at the door. "Never mind. I probably don't want to know." He glanced at the monitors. "How's he doing?"
"That's what I just came to talk to Sara about," Bly said. "Basically, not much changed. The good news is he's still alive. The better news is his temperature has dropped to 102.3."
"Does the lower temperature mean he stands a better chance to survive?" Sara asked.
"Not really," Bly said. "The fact that there's a temperature at all means there's still a serious infection. And you need to know, Sara, that even if he wakes up, there's a chance of heart and brain damage, and it could be severe. All his organs could have been adversely affected."
"Because of the infection?" she said.
"That and the hyperthermia the infection caused. I don't know how long he ran the very high fever, but basically it cooked him from the inside out."
"I might be able to help you a little bit there," Brass said. "I just met with the FBI. They're taking over the case as an interstate kidnapping. Cassandra Firth told them Gil had been running a fever when the Blout brothers brought him to her house. It began to spike about three days later, though her father didn't seem really concerned until it got over 103. She said that happened the day before we got to him."
Bly ran his hand through his hair. "So it was up there a good two days," he said. "That's, uh, unfortunate."
"They did have him packed in bags of ice for the final 10 or 12 hours, so his temperature might have come down marginally and then gone up again," Brass said. "Or is that wishful thinking?"
"Maybe. Not necessarily," Bly said. "It might have helped temporarily. But the infection wasn't slaked because he wasn't getting the right antibiotics."
Sara stood up to stretch her legs. She continued to hold Grissom's hand in hers.
"So the bottom line is, you don't really know," she said.
"Right," Bly said. "I thought you should be aware of the possibilities. Which raises another question. Does Dr. Grissom have a living will?"
"Yes," Sara said. "And I have his power of attorney. But not with me. It's all back in Las Vegas."
"I'll need them," Bly said.
"He specified 'no heroic measures,' no resuscitation if there was no hope for improvement," she said, and she felt her eyes burn. She didn't want to be having this conversation.
"We can't follow his wishes if we don't have the documents," Bly said.
"There's one other thing," Brass said. "Cassandra said Grissom completely lost his memory. He couldn't remember anything before waking up in the back seat of her cousin's truck well after the accident."
"He remembered me," Sara said. "When we found him I heard him say my name right before he collapsed."
"That might be a good sign, or it might be temporary," Bly said, "It's one more thing we'll have to deal with down the road. I hope we get to that point."
Sara felt lost.
"What I came to tell you, Sara, is the rest of us have to go back to Vegas," Brass said. "But Catherine plans on coming back. If you tell me how to get my hands on those documents, I'll give them to Catherine to bring down in the morning."
"Thanks," she said. "I'll write it out for you."
Her breath caught in her throat. Why did she suddenly feel that once the documents were in Dr. Bly's hands, Grissom's fate was sealed?
The conversations about his death would cease to be hypothetical.
All it would take is one hand reaching out to turn off one machine.
A few final breaths from the bed, and then … nothing.
Once the mechanism of Grissom's death was in place, it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sara pushed past the two men then and went out to the monitoring area where she sagged back against a wall and began to cry.
Brass moved to wrap his arms around her, but she moved away. The feeling of being lost compounded itself. She had no clean clothes beyond two changes of underwear she'd brought down with some toiletries. No place to shower. Her closest friends were leaving. Nothing about this city, this hospital was familiar to her. And the next time she saw home, it would be to bury her husband.
She felt as if she would strangle on her own tears. The despair simply overwhelmed her.
She started when she felt a new hand on her arm. It was Catherine.
"I'm only going back to get some clothes for me and to make arrangements for Lindsey," she said. "I have every intention of coming right back down here. I've already informed Ecklie. It's no problem at all to stop by your place and pick up some things for you. I'll have a motel room, here, and you're welcome to shower there, change there, even sleep there when you feel you need a break from here. We'll just swap off. One of us will always be at his side, you or me. We will get through this Sara, and no one will tell you to let him go until you decide it's time."
Sara let herself sag into a chair and fought for composure.
"It was one of the things he insisted on when we got married," she said. "He wouldn't do it until the living will and power of attorney were finished. He was so afraid about the difference in our ages, that he would get old and infirm or sick, and become a burden on me. That I would somehow become emotionally and financially saddled with caring for his … his shell. That's how he put it. 'I don't want you ever tied down to my shell.' I hated even talking about it. He forced me to."
"He was right, honey," Catherine said. "Gil Grissom is a very wise man."
Sara managed to calm herself enough to ask, "How will the lab function with you and Gil all gone at the same time?"
She heard Catherine chuckle. "Ecklie might actually have to get back in the field."
She realized Catherine's hand still rested on her arm. She patted it.
"I need to write out some things for Jim, then I've got to get back to Gil," she said. "Thank you for everything."
Sara wrote down the security code to the house so Brass could get in and noted the location of their living wills and powers of attorney in Grissom's desk. She let Brass hug her before he left.
"You know if you need me, I'm a phone call away," he said. "I can be here in two hours or less. And I'll call you often."
xxxxxxx
The next day Grissom's temperature dropped below 100.
And he made some small headway in his contest with the respirator.
Ventilator 8, Grissom 4.
When the lab technician arrived to draw her daily round of blood, Sara saw that she took twice the amount she had on previous days.
When Sara asked why, the technician told her some additional tests had been ordered.
"What kind of tests?" Sara asked.
"I don't know, ma'am," the tech said. "Best if you talk to his doctor."
Sara did exactly that when Bly came in 90 minutes later.
"We're running additional work on his liver and kidney function, among other things, to help us assess the extent of damage," he said.
"If any," Sara added.
"Yes, if any," he replied.
The way he looked at her told Sara he suspected she might be in denial.
"What?" she said. "You're not going to try to tell me nothing has changed, right? His temperature is dropping toward normal, he's taking one more breath a minute on his own than he was yesterday. The fever isn't killing him any more."
"No, that's true," Bly said. "But cascading organ failure is still a distinct possibility. Breathing, along with other basic life functions like heartbeat and blood pressure, are the job of the brain stem. Your husband can't survive taking four breaths a minute on his own. If he doesn't get a lot better, and soon, it means the brain stem has been compromised, and he won't get any better. Ever. Then it's only a matter of time until he suffers heart failure."
Bly put his hands on Sara's shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.
"Once your friend gets back with his living will, you'll have to make a decision on how long he would want you to wait for his condition to improve."
Sara felt the tears well in her eyes.
"It's not time," she said, more of a prayer than a statement.
"No, Sara, it isn't," Bly said. "Not yet. But you have to prepare yourself."
Bly removed himself from Sara and bent over Grissom. Sara didn't see what the doctor did, but she started and her eyes went wide when Grissom suddenly moved his legs.
"Oh my God, look what he did," she said, ready to rejoice.
Bly straightened up. "He didn't do that. I did. Just a test."
"What does it mean?
"There's still brain stem activity."
"Hi." Catherine's voice. Bly and Sara both turned. She held a white, heavy paper envelope. Sara could see the phrase, "Living Will," printed in gothic type on the face. Catherine held it out to Sara. Sara didn't want to touch it. She inclined her head toward Bly, and Catherine moved her hand in front of the doctor. He took the envelope and checked the contents.
"It's pretty straight-forward," he said. "I'll have someone put it in his records."
He glanced at Sara. "You okay with this?"
"Not really," she said.
He nodded.
"I know."
xxxxxxx
A/N: That was the next-to-last chapter. Chapter 12 is long and final. I shall post it sometime before the end of my day. I just want to tell all of you how much I appreciate you reading it and all of your comments. j