A/N: Thank you for the wonderful support and feedback. As this story draws to a close, I offer my sincerest thanks to the readers who have taken the time to let me know their thoughts. Every review makes my day.

Grissom hated the hospital.

The smell, the muted sounds of the equipment, and even the feel of the too-crisp sheets reminded him of the impersonal, institutional nature of medical centers. And while he appreciated their necessity in day-to-day life, at the moment, he wished he could be almost anywhere else.

The chair next to his bed was empty at the moment, having been vacated ten minutes earlier by a very tired and very cranky Catherine Willows. Having endeavored to send her home for the past two days, Grissom smiled when he finally managed the impossible and convinced her to leave him alone so she could take care of her own affairs.

"You don't want Lindsey to forget... what you look like," he had said, needing an extra breath to complete his goading.

"Don't start on me," she'd grumbled in response. "Lindsey knows enough of what happened to want me to make sure you're okay."

"Catherine..." he told her softly, "I'm okay."

His punctured lung had been repaired during surgery, and now he had only to wait… and heal.

Heal physically, Grissom mentally amended the prognosis. While the injury to his body had been set to rights, his mental state was something else altogether. Whenever he closed his eyes, his mind transported him back to a new traumatic memory.

Pain surrounded and permeated him, but it seemed secondary to the more alarming problem that he could not draw in enough oxygen. The rawness from where he'd struggled against the bindings at his wrists paled in comparison to the cold steel penetrating his back, having been shoved roughly between two ribs. Each attempted breath resulted in a throb of agony and a sense that internally, something was very, very wrong. But he needed to keep breathing, needed to keep the darkness at bay a little longer, even if all he could do was watch helplessly as the scene before him unfolded.

Sara had begged Brenda to stop, and he recognized the wild desperation in her eyes. But Grissom also knew all too well that the woman he loved, the woman who loved him back just as fiercely, would never be able to do what Brenda wanted.

Even so, Sara picked up a knife, and Grissom found he could not breath for an entirely new reason. While Brenda seemed pleased at having coerced Sara to do her bidding, he knew better. She hadn't been able to cut his hand when he'd handed her a knife in the safe confines of his mother's kitchen. She had even praised his strength at keeping her alive by adhering to Brenda's psychotic dictates, admitting to him that she likely would have been unable to do the same. But beyond all of that, he knew Sara would never harm him the way her mother had killed her father.

And yet, Sara picked up a knife. The edge gleamed ominously in the unnatural light from the fluorescent overhead fixture, but Grissom found her countenance even more foreboding.

"Very good," Brenda said confidently. "Now I want you to cut him."

"Anywhere?"

Sara's tone reached deep inside him and twisted his gut. He already knew what she was about to do, but nothing he could do would stop it.

Even before he could attempt to muster enough breath to call out, Brenda confirmed, "Anywhere."

As cliché as the observation seemed in his own mind, time seemed to stop.

For long moments, all Grissom saw was the blood. Little else registered as his mind catapulted him back to his garage, back to when her blood had covered his own hands and not just her own.

So much blood.

When he came back to himself, Grissom saw Sara kneeling on the floor, obviously the victor in whatever confrontation had resulted with Brenda. But she looked weak, the color having drained entirely from her face. She held one hand wrapped around her slashed wrist but the pressure she applied was wholly unequal to the task of stopping so much blood.

"Sara…"

Her name took nearly all the breath he could pull into his lungs, and involuntarily, he began coughing violently, each attempt to clear his airway resulting in more pain and more blood in his throat and nasal passages.

Despite her obviously flagging strength, Sara crawled over to where Brenda had tied him, and her hands reached for the ropes. But Grissom could see she was fading too quickly, her slim frame having been held up by willpower alone until her body gave up the right to remain upright.

Just before she lost consciousness, Sara smiled. As she let go of her injured wrist to make the sigh for "I love you," the blood on her fingers twisting the meaning into a macabre symbol he could not truly appreciate. And even as she slumped onto the floor at his feet, Grissom pulled against his bindings anew. He struggled violently, knowing as he did how quickly the damage to a major artery could result in exsanguination. Sara might only have moments to live.

The rope on his right hand held tightly, but his left had some wiggle room. Blood from the injury to his back had soaked through his shirt and gravity had finally brought some of that natural dampness down to his wrist. Deliberately, he used it to make his skin more slippery against the binding. With some effort, he found he could get his wrist all the way down to the tight knots of the rope, but the knuckle on his thumb proved too wide to slide past.

With a glance down at Sara, her face white as a sheet, her hands and arms stained red, Grissom gave his arm several violent yanks.

Pain erupted from everywhere - from his back where the use of his muscles pulled against the intruding blade stuck between his ribs to the knuckle on his hand now erupting in fresh agony, a sure sign he had at least disjointed it. But past the pain, he felt elation at managing to free one hand.

In his haste to help Sara, he had not heard the sirens approaching. The maddening whoosh of his own blood rushing in his ears had tamped out all other sound, so he looked up in surprise as the bedroom door burst open in an explosion of wood pieces and bits of door frame. Brass stepped forward with his service weapon extended, scanning the room. Catherine and a uniformed officer moved a step behind him, checking the other corner of the small space before turning to Grissom with concern.

Before Catherine could reach to untie the remaining ropes, Grissom pushed her away with his free hand. "Sara! Help Sara!"

Grissom shook his head to clear it of that memory once again. He had been reliving it over and over again each time sleep threatened to take him. Everything after his friends' timely rescue had been a blur. Grissom vaguely recalled being loaded into an ambulance, but nothing else registered until he had woken up in that hospital bed with Catherine sitting beside him. Thankfully, Catherine had taken pity on him and answered his questions even before he could muster the breath and strength to pose them.

Sara was alive. She had received a blood transfusion. The blood loss and trauma had exacerbated her earlier injuries, but the doctors still expected her to make a full recovery.

With a sigh, Grissom closed his eyes. While their ordeal had passed, he still felt drained, both physically and emotionally. Breathing still hurt, and the drugs which dulled that pain tended to pull him into the sort of uncomfortable sleep he would rather avoid. And worse, after almost two days in the hospital, he still had not seen Sara.

Nick and Warrick had been by, and Catherine had dutifully held the phone to his ear so he could talk to her in her hospital room. But he still had not laid eyes on her in person.

So, he blinked in surprise as he woke an hour later from an unintentional nap to see exactly the person he wanted to see occupying Catherine's empty chair beside his bed.

"Sara."

The name came out low and raspy, a byproduct of his injury.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, honoring him with one of her enigmatic smiles.

The corners of his lips lifted in response.

"Better… now," he told her truthfully.

Like him, she wore a hospital gown, and like him, an IV tube ran down into a needle taped carefully to the outside of her lower arm. But her IV bag was on a pole with wheels, a fact which she had clearly used to her advantage in finding her way to his room.

Reaching out a hand, Grissom felt pleased when she immediately grasped it in her own. But he did took notice when she tucked away her left hand, the one with splints on two fingers and a new bandage around the wrist, offering him her IV-laden right hand instead. His own thumb, the one which had become disjointed in his frenzy to free himself from the bindings, had obviously been popped back into place, a dark bruise the only evidence of his fruitless efforts to help her. Still, she took care to be gentle with him.

"And you?" he asked.

"Better - now."

Glancing around, she took in his room, the flowers people had sent, the "Get Well" cards and even a teddy bear clutching a stuffed heart.

"I think you got more than me."

"Not likely," Grissom teased back. Then, with a raised eyebrow, he nodded with curiosity towards the stuffed animal.

Standing up from her place by his bed, Sara slowly trudged the few steps to where the bear sat before sliding a small card from a pocket on the outside of the heart.

"Hodges," she informed him with a grin.

The answer earned a chuckle from Grissom, who tried not to grimace as the action caused a stinging pain deep inside his chest.

"Of course, Hodges."

Sara returned to his side and they sat in companionable silence for a while, the warmth of each other's hand enough of a distraction to belay conversation for a time. Eventually, she spoke up again.

"I, um… I talked to Nick. He told me that Brenda was transferred out of the ICU. She's going to make it."

Slowly, Grissom nodded. From what little he'd been able to glean from the others thus far, it had been touch and go for their suspect for a while. The stab wounds Sara had inflicted evidently cause quite a bit of intestinal damage. But the very same immediate medical care which had saved Sara had also saved Brenda.

"And once she's recovered," Sara went on, "she will enjoy the full hospitality of the Nevada Department of Corrections for a very, very long time."

Sara's gaze slipped from his face down to their joined palms. Casually, she reached her left hand up to join her the other, letting all of her smaller fingers envelope his hand. Grissom tried not to focus on her injuries, concerned she might feel self conscious or overly concerned about his reactions.

Instead, he asked, "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she answered automatically. Then, seeing his stern expression, she said more deliberately, "I am, really. They gave me a blood transfusion. I have even more stitches now. And they say they're keeping me for observation, but I think they're really just worried I'll come back again with another life-threatening wound."

She said the words in jest, but Grissom swallowed tightly at her statement. Of all the memories Grissom hoped to forget in his lifetime, the most recent horror was the sight of Sara passed out at his feet, her blood-stained hands reaching out to free him from bonds even as her life's blood drained from the cut on her wrist. Catherine had told him that help not arrived precisely when it had, Sara would have certainly bled to death in front of him.

Sara had sliced open her own wrist rather than harm him.

He grimaced as that reality continued to stare him in the face, just as it had every moment since he'd woken up in the hospital. When faced with the same choice he had been given, to harm the one she loved or end her own life, she had acted without hesitation.

And now, she acted as though it was nothing at all.

"Sara…"

Her name flowed easily from his lips, even as he considered what to say to her. What was there to say, really? Thank her for saving his life, by very nearly ending her own? No words could ever do that sentiment justice.

A deep part of him wished he could apologize to her yet again, to beg for her forgiveness for once more failing to keep her safe. After all, Sara had been strong when he'd been weak. She had refused to give in to Brenda's demands, had not for a moment thought about inflicting on him the torture he'd visited on her, despite the real possibility that making that choice would end both their lives.

"So… Ecklie says I have to see a department psychologist," Sara mentioned quietly, breaking into his chastising thoughts. Raising her eyes to meet his, she added, "I was wondering if you'd go with me."

"Not sure... that's allowed," he said weakly. "I don't work at the lab... any more."

Sara shrugged. "You're still suspended, but that doesn't apply to department services. And with the DA dropping all charges against you, I'm sure Ecklie will get you reinstated before long."

Reinstated? With everything that had happened, Grissom had assumed his career was done, flushed down the interdepartmental toilet. For far too long, the job had stood in the place of all his highest priorities, eclipsing everything else, even relationships and family. The knowledge that it was gone had proved strangely… freeing.

But now, there was a chance of him being reinstated. The very thought of returning to the lab suddenly left him anxious, the back of his neck warming uncomfortably as he pictured himself walking through those glass-walled halls again. How many people would turn and look at him, their eyes dark with distaste, lips speaking recriminations that would reach everyone's ears but his own?

"I don't think I can go back," he confessed softly.

Sara smiled at him, a bit sad but also understanding. With a comforting squeeze of his hand, she assured him, "You don't have to."

There was still so much to say between them, and Grissom knew he owed it to her to find the words. And as much as he'd always struggled with expressing himself to the woman currently sitting at his bedside, the words were there. He just needed to learn better ways of using them.

Slowly, he told her, "Even so, I will go with you... to therapy. I think that would be beneficial... for both of us."

Just as he finished speaking, a nurse poked her head into Grissom's room and, at the sight of Sara sitting in the chair next to his bed, tsked loudly at his visitor.

"Miss Sidle, you aren't supposed to be in here," the woman scolded, not unkindly. Clearly, Sara had developed a reputation at the hospital.

Sara made a face like a child caught with their hand in a cookie jar before offering, "You said I should take some short walks."

"Not to another part of the hospital," the nurse chided.

Turning back to him, Sara offered a smile. "I've gotta go," she said softly. "I'll see you soon."

Giving her hand a gingerly squeeze, Grissom said, "Not if I see you first."

TBC