Murder without Guilt Chapter 29
The next few days sapped and exhausted Sara more than she thought possible but she had spent enough time recovering to know that health would return. This was more like a case of the flu than childbirth, she supposed. At times, she was shaky and cramped, aching and unable to eat, but, except when she slept, she held her babies. The first time she witnessed Grissom picking up one of the babies, her mouth opened in astonishment at the easy way he brought the bundle across the room and carefully placed it in her arms.
He said, "Aimee, meet your mom." The smile on his face was a mixture of awe and happiness. As if on cue, the dark haired baby opened her eyes and seemed to study her mother's face with the intensity of a much older child.
"Oh, Gil," was all Sara managed to say as her fingertip traced along a tiny chin to an ear and into the fringe of hair around her face. She folded the soft blanket back to reveal a fist not much larger than the end of her thumb. Little fingers uncurled and wrapped around her finger. She looked at her husband and tried to keep tears from spilling onto her cheeks.
"It's pretty overwhelming—she was born first. Her tiny foot popped out before the doctor finished your incision."
Sara unwrapped the blanket so a skinny little foot appeared. She brought the baby to her face and breathed deeply. "She smells like us," she said with a smile.
He brought their son to her bed, handling him in the same way, one hand cradling his head with the other along the infant's back. "He's a bit quieter, but the nurses say it might be a couple of weeks before either one really gets a good cry going."
They managed to swap babies by placing Aimee between Sara's legs as she took the boy from Grissom. "I've called him 'little Grissom' so you can give him his name," he said.
Again, Sara was quiet as she opened the blanket for an inspection of hands and feet, arms and legs. She peeked inside the diaper and grinned. "He's a Grissom, isn't he," and she laughed as she looked at her husband. She continued her examination of the small baby, freeing both feet from his blanket. "He also has your feet!" She wrapped thumb and finger around a tiny ankle and kissed the bottom of the foot. Her delight in discovering this caused relief to flood through Grissom. Her expression changed to one of serious thoughtfulness. "I thought I had decided on his name—but now that he's here, I want him to be William." She laughed, "I'll have to take the other name off the wall."
She was wobbly as she took her first steps away from the bed and Grissom kept a steady hand on her back as she bent over the clear hospital bassinets.
"This is a monitor for their hearts," he explained, "and a temperature monitor—both built into the unit." He pointed to the silent blips on the small screens. "The nurses can see and hear this in the nursery—we push this button when we pick one up." He pulled one of two rocking chairs in the room to Sara. When she was settled with a pillow under her arm, he picked up William and placed him on her chest.
Grissom had learned so much in the hours of her unconsciousness; amazed, Sara watched him, and then she realized how familiar his actions were. He handled a baby the same way he handled a butterfly. He changed a diaper as easily and carefully as he caught an insect in a net. He read the cardio-monitor and temperature charts, showing Sara how to reset the controls when placing a baby in the small bed. He demonstrated how to wrap a baby in a cocooned blanket.
"A little warm bug," he said as he cradled little Aimee in his arm while Sara held William and stroked her fingers over the baby's head. She smiled and realized her head no longer ached as it had for hours.
The nurses showed Sara how to feed the babies; she had thought she would breast feed, especially after seeing women in Costa Rica with their nursing infants, and she had spent hours reading about it. However, after benzene exposure, her babies nursed from little bottles of formula. And her husband was delighted to hold and fed one while she fed the other baby.
And between sleeping, holding and feeding babies, Grissom told of his night in the desert without mentioning his recklessness of walking nearly ten miles after losing his cell phone. His story began with the chemical spill.
The infants had been born by caesarean within hours of her arrival at the hospital. Grissom had barely made it in time, and only because Catherine Willows ranted at the sheriff and questioned the team of physicians until they agreed to her demands. While the mother was going to miss the birth of her children, Catherine insisted the father would not. Meanwhile, everyone from the university's research team to off-duty deputies and the county's rescue squad turned out to hunt for Grissom once his vehicle and phone were located in the western desert.
Grissom laughed as he related his "rescue" by none other than Undersheriff Conrad Ecklie. "The helicopter came in low, never landed, and I looked up to see Ecklie's face and his arm extending to me." He could laugh now that it was over. "I knew something had happened for Conrad to be in a helicopter looking for me!"
Sara had never been near death—not that anyone would admit—due to the fast action of Greg and Sean putting a respirator over her face once she was out of the room. Nick had wrapped her in blankets as a paramedic cut off her clothes that prevented chemical burns. Along with unconsciousness she had been confused, had tremors, and at times had become extremely agitated. A tube had been inserted to aid her breathing—and not one person in the hospital or the lab or the national poison control center could determine the consequences, short or long term, when a woman who was eight months pregnant had a one-time exposure to benzene and Drano drain crystals.
After his 'rescue' Grissom had gotten to the hospital in time to make the next decision and sat at Sara's head while doctors and nurses strapped Sara to an operating table. He almost cried when he saw their babies the first time—a tiny foot had appeared as the doctor completed the incision and everyone in the room had laughed. The physician's hand scooped in and lifted a dark haired baby and in seconds the infant was placed in Grissom's arms. Just as quickly, the second baby was born and placed on Sara's chest. A sob escaped his lungs when she gave no indication of knowing what was happening.
One of the doctors seemed to recognize the reason for his moment of anguish. "Don't worry—most of us were born to mother's who were put in deep sleep. She'll be fine—the babies are fine."
The hospital staff checked and assessed and rechecked and reassessed the Grissom twins, keeping them in the newborn nursery for hours. Grissom was so anxious about Sara's health that only Catherine could persuade him to leave her bedside to check on the infants. When they were fifteen hours old, the twins were declared healthy and strong, appearing unaffected by their mother's exposure, and if the father wanted them in the room with their mother, they would be moved. Grissom chased away their friends. "Sara needs quiet—rest," he said. And he was selfish; he wanted Sara to meet her babies without others watching her reaction. He wanted to be the one to show her their miracles.
Her case could be followed and written up for research, one physician said as he tested baby William's reflexes as they were preparing for discharge. She signed papers agreeing to monthly assessments for herself and her twins. Grissom learned to set up breathing monitors at home. Both infants were small, scrawny rather than plump, but otherwise healthy, and almost disappeared in the baby seats Nick had placed in Grissom's vehicle.
Catherine crawled in the rear seat to sit next to baby William; Sara sat beside Aimee while Grissom drove and Nick and Greg followed in their cars. Sara had not realized how a short ride home could exhaust her, but she barely made it up the steps—and she was not carrying a baby. Jim Brass stood in her kitchen wearing a flowery apron; he was baking bread. Immediately, when he saw the paleness of her face, his arm circled her waist and he helped her to a nearby chair.
He whispered, "Sweetie, say the word. I'll run all these people off so you can rest." She shook her head.
"You are all family, Jim." She replied. Then she quietly giggled. "What I really need is a small glass of wine."
Three months later, Grissom and Sara placed two bundles of sleeping humanity into separate cribs. Both babies were wrapped in soft flannel blankets, swaddled from shoulders to toes. Dark hair, wispy and curly, made the two infants appear similar, but to their parents, or anyone who looked closely, they were nothing alike. William—Will was quiet and plump and pink with blue eyes that would remain intensely blue. His pale eyebrows often shot upward when something unexpected happened and, for lack of a better description, he was hesitant, almost timid if one could label a baby. Aimee was a different little thing—her baby blue eyes had changed to her mother's brown color within a month after her birth. She raised her head before she was ten days old and watched everyone and anything around her. And she made noise—rarely crying, but gurgled and babbled and cooed while she was awake. Her lashes made dark crescents on fair skin and when she smiled her toothless mouth had a strong resemblance to her mother's.
For a moment, the parents stood beside the beds. Grissom leaned over one bed and adjusted the light blanket. There was no doubt in his mind; he was the father of the most intelligent, most beautiful children in the world.
"What are you thinking?" Sara asked.
He chuckled, saying "The same thing I always think—we made two beautiful children."
She gave him her wonderfully brilliant smile, the one that always warmed all the places deep inside him and most days, remained as a permanent fixture across her face. Motherhood agreed with her and she continued to be surprised at the simplest achievements of her children and how much she enjoyed being with them.
He added, "And I have the most beautiful wife—the most brilliant soul mate in the universe."
Sara slipped her hand around his elbow and turned away from the baby beds. "I love you, Gil."
He knew he had married a woman of many talents, he thought. Under her supervision, everything in his world, his children, his home, himself, thrived. He realized she was leading him to their bed.
"It's time for our nap," she smiled slowly and tugged his shirt over his head. "But you are wearing entirely too many clothes!"
Grissom laughed, a sound low and husky and warmed by happiness. She opened her arms and let him remove her shirt, let him unzip her pants and pushed them to the floor. He returned to her belly and gently kissed her stomach, just above the faint scar along the lower front of her pelvis. His finger went underneath the elastic of her purple panties. Sara heard him make a sound that closely resembled a growl as his teeth bit the fabric and peeled it away from her skin. In a few minutes, they were both on the bed. He pulled her down so she fit between his thighs and wrapped his arms around her. Sara framed his face with her hands and kissed him until he groaned. She could feel him pressed against her, warm, heavy and rigid with desire.
He slid one hand down her back and traced the cleft that separated the swells of her butt. His fingers dipped lower, finding the place where he wanted to be—where she wanted him, and found her damp, throbbing entrance.
Sara bent to his neck and kissed him from his ear to his chest, nuzzling her face against his soft beard. Her hands threaded through his hair as her mouth traveled from his neck to his chest. He tugged her upward and positioned her so she straddled his thighs, and began to stoke her, watching her face.
Two unexpected results of pregnancy had been very pleasurable for Grissom—they had discovered this face to face sitting position worked very well to stimulate pleasure for both and Sara's breasts had gotten slightly larger and as her lower body tightened to his touch, her nipples hardened into two rose-colored buds, and it aroused him beyond belief. He buried his face in the valley between the perfect firm mounds and breathed in her unique scent as his lips began an upward ascent to the peak.
A wonderful rush of sensation whipped through Sara as Grissom's fingers continued to touch her in a very intimate way. Her hands encircled his neck as she pressed tightly against him. He kissed her again and again until his mouth found hers. She moved against his hand, twisting and clenching as rippling muscles became rolling waves. And then, just when she thought she could not stand the continued stimulation, he clamped hands around her hips and drove himself deep inside her. They moved together until both fell into that whirling pool of desire.
For a time they lay quietly, listening to breathing as it returned to normal, feeling the warmth of each other. Grissom's eyes opened to find a pair of brown ones very close to his. He made a humming sound and smiled.
"Hey," he said as he smiled. His arms pulled her into a tight hug. "Having you love me is the most perfect thing that ever happened to me." He had never expected to feel this way—he had not dreamed he could—and now he did, his life belonged to her. "I love you" he said, his voice low, catching with emotion so that he paused for several seconds. "You taught me to love, Sara."
A/N: One more chapter-now review. This has been a long one, thanks to you who have stayed with us, especially those who send a message! Last chapter tomorrow...
