So lost was he in his own thoughts that Grissom did not notice at first when they reached the hospital. The doors of the ambulance bursting open were the only thing that alerted him to the fact that the vehicle had stopped at all.

He clambered out quickly, watching as they pulled Nick out on the stretcher. He walked next to them, staring at Nick, at the bruises and blood that covered his body, wondering how he hadn't seen them before.

They pushed Nick through some doors marked "Employees only," so he stopped. He stood at those doors for a long time, still picturing his CSI.

"Grissom?" Sara's voice said softly from his left. He looked at her without saying anything.

"How is he?" she asked breathlessly. He just stared at her, words failing him as they so often had in the past. He thought wistfully of his bugs.

"Grissom? Grissom, you're scaring me," Sara said, her voice breaking.

And still, no words. Only pictures, pictures flashing through his mind like a horrifying slideshow.

The contradiction of a neatly dressed woman holding the gun, that thing that had the ability to make a total mess of a person. Nick staring at her, scared and shaking, but remarkably solid at the same time.

The contradiction of Nick, bandaged, broken, weak, staring through the glass at the man who tried to take his life, the only one of them standing, the only one strong enough to face it.

The contradiction of kneeling on a glass box, telling Nick not to move or they'd all blow up, telling him to save their lives, when they were the ones who should have been rescuing him.

The contradiction of feeling his own heart skip a beat in fear, just as Nick's heart started beating again.

"Grissom, please, please tell me something!" Sara begged him, jolting him back to the antiseptic hallway of a hospital they had been to much too often.

"He's Nick," he finally managed, the only explanation he could make as to how things were.


His hand shook, rubbing the cold metal against his skin as he fought with himself.

He was going to die, he knew it. But did he die because of whoever put him in this hell without a guide to help him out, or did he do it on his own terms?

His friends would feel guilty, finding him, knowing they were too late. It wasn't fair to them.

His parents would be devastated if he killed himself because he couldn't wait any longer. He couldn't do that to them, either.

THUMP. Still shaking, still considering, he opened his eyes to look one last time at his prison, to see his last few seconds of life.

Instead of the dirt he was expecting, he saw a blurred form. "Hey! Hey! We got you man! Hey, Nicky!" Another hallucination? Probably. That probably meant he had to see what it was. Nick put a shaking hand up to the top of his box, letting the gun lay on his chest for a moment.

The condensation wiped away easily and he found himself staring at his best friend. "Nicky! Yeah. Hey, hold on there!" His voice was muffled, far away, and Nick wasn't sure if it was real. He wanted it to be, so badly that he was afraid to believe it, afraid because he didn't have any hope left in him to be crushed. He was afraid if there was no hope to be crushed, something else would be crushed instead.

"Hey, put that down! Put that down! Put that down. We got you!" But did they really? "We're gonna get you out of there."

He wanted to believe it, but how could he know? How could he know that they weren't fooling him? What if he really was still alone, still battling everything himself, just like always? Could they save him from it all, when he couldn't save himself?


Catherine sat with Warrick in an exam room, holding his hand tightly, guarding him. Warrick still shook, tapping the fingers of his free hand on his leg, as he repeatedly banged on the table with his foot.

"I'm scared." His low voice was rough from so much yelling, weak from overuse.

"I know," she said softly, unable to reassure him.

"He can't die," Warrick whispered. Catherine didn't argue. "He can't die after all this stuff. He can't have made it through all of it just to let the memories ruin him."

"What?"

"Are the memories worse for him? Does he realize that he was alone?" It suddenly dawned on her exactly what he was saying.

"But he wasn't alone, Warrick. We were there," she said.

"No, we weren't. We left him alone to figure it out, but we didn't come back. He was alone."

Warrick turned to look at her, his green eyes guilt-stricken and scared, like a little boy who didn't know how to admit to doing something wrong.

"Cath…we can't make it without him. So, why does he have to without us?"


Sara sat in the waiting room next to Grissom. She had pulled him over to a chair and forced him to sit down, for fear that their blocking the door might interfere with the inner workings of the hospital.

So now they sat, silently, feeling the crushing pressure of all the tensions in the room, though Sara was sure that the apprehension she felt far outweighed that of the other people here. Probably most of them were waiting for a relative to get stitches, or get a broken leg set.

"They had to shock him back," Grissom said suddenly.

"W-what?" she faltered, turning to look at him, only to find him staring straight ahead as though he wasn't even talking to her.

"He had no pulse. He was dead." His words were harsh, rough as sandpaper on the surface, but underneath soft and scared, like words from a small child.

Maybe that's what they all were, deep down. They all felt small and helpless like children when things like this happened. She could only imagine what it would be like when these things were actually happening to her.

Grissom didn't say anything more. Sara stared at the floor between her feet for a long moment.

"It – it's like he gave up on us," she whispered. After all the times when it seemed they would be too late…maybe this time they were.

She watched a drop of water fall to splash on the carpet, the tiniest bit of the ocean that threatened to take over her body and wash her away.

She thought about the way he looked when they had finally pulled him out of that grave. How he lay on the ground, trembling, and everyone was afraid to go near him. Could you get that close to sorrow without it swallowing you, too?

Sara suddenly realized that tears flowed from her eyes like a river now, that her shoulders shook and her breath came too fast.

A warm hand covered hers, and she clung to Grissom, letting him be her lifeline.


A/N: Flashbacks in this chapter are from "Who Are You?" in season 1, "Stalker" in season 2, and "Grave Danger" in season 5.