The words reverberated around the room like an echo.
For an achingly long moment, Greg was the only person to move, sliding carefully off the arm of the couch onto the seat itself, landing beside Sara's curled up feet.
"Cancer?" Grissom finally managed to say, his voice cracking.
"It's Hodgkin Lymphoma, a form of blood cancer." She elaborated, softening her tone. She still remember the shock she had felt upon discovering Sara's diagnosis; she understood their need to process this new information in their own time.
"Blood cancer." Warrick cleared his throat, sitting forward in his seat. "Like leukaemia?"
"Very similar. It affects the white blood cells." Her left hand had absently found its way under the blanket and was stroking Sara's side, while her right one interlocked with Sara's fingers where the patient's hand lay in her lap.
"But it's treatable, right?" Nick asked, although it was declared more as a statement than a question.
"Yeah." She nodded. "She's been having immunotherapy treatment for the last ten weeks. She has another two sessions left of this round; then they'll do some more tests and take it from there."
"What does that mean?" Greg asked in an uncharacteristically sombre voice.
"If the treatment has had an effect, she'll be moved onto a less intensive dose and they'll carry on for another round. If it hasn't, then they might have to run a course of more aggressive treatment, possibly chemo or radiotherapy."
"But, she's going to be alright." Nick declared again sternly, tears starting to well up in his eyes despite his best efforts. "I mean, she's not..."
"They don't know, Nicky." Catherine admitted softly. "Until they run the tests again, they don't know whether the treatments working or not."
"Why ..." Grissom began, his gaze fixed on Sara's face. "Why ... why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted to." She insisted. "But Sara didn't want people at work to know."
"But she told you." Nick spluttered somewhat indignantly.
"No, I found out on my own." Catherine corrected. "That's why I brought her here; so I could look after her."
"You should have told me." Grissom stated quietly, finally meeting her eye.
"Well, I'm telling you now." She shrugged. She had expected this, and in all honestly didn't have much else to offer. They were right, they should have known.
"Who else knows about this?" Brass asked. He had been so still, his low voice startled her.
"Doc Robbins. He figured it out from her symptoms. He's been giving me some advice."
"And?"
"And that's it." Cath shrugged. "Apart from my family, obviously. Nancy's treating her at the hospital; that's actually how I found out."
"What about her own family?" Nick pressed earnestly. "She must have told her parents, at least?"
Catherine exhaled, debating how to answer this. This, she had really hoped, wouldn't come up. Sara would not thank her for revealing the truth, but she had lied to the team enough already; she probably owed it to them to give them something here.
"Sara doesn't have any family to speak of." She replied at last, keeping her voice as level as she could. "Her father died when she was a child and her mother's ... not well. She's in a facility in California."
The answer hung between them for a moment, with the guys clearly picking up on an omission in her statement and deliberating on whether to call her out on it or not.
"She mentioned a brother to me once." Grissom stated at last.
"Yeah, Sara doesn't know where he is." Cath sighed, almost relieved with the shift in focus away from her parents. "Although even if she did, I don't think he'd be much help."
"He still has a right to know."
"He's a heroin addicted drifter with a long rap sheet." The blonde deadpanned. "She doesn't need that in her life right now."
"What about grandparents, aunts, uncles..." Nick cleared his throat, visibly thrown by this revelation about his colleague's previously unknown backstory. He'd always assumed that Sara had a similar background to himself – middle-class upbringing, devoted parents nurturing her freakish intelligence.
Catherine shook her head sadly.
"After her father died, Sara went into foster care." She disclosed, choosing her words carefully. "Some placements were okay, some ... weren't. She left for college at 17, and she's been on her own ever since."
"Damn." Warrick ground out between his teeth, shaking his head as if it would make it easier to absorb this information. "She's never mentioned any of this."
"Sara's never had anyone care for her before. After growing up in that house ... she's been pretty much looking after herself since she was five years old. It hasn't been easy for her relinquishing care to me, but she's done it."
"What kind of care?" Grissom asked, a small frown creasing his forehead.
"She's on six different medications a day, on top of her weekly IV treatment at the hospital. She's tired, she has no appetite. She frequently develops fevers, her blood pressure is all over the place..."
"Whoa, hold up." Nick stopped her with a scowl. "Should she even be working?"
"No." Cath agreed in an unexpectedly blasé tone. "But you try telling her that."
A small, shared nod of understanding passed around the group.
"Anyway," she cleared her throat, flicking a loose curl over her shoulder. "That's my headache, not hers. All she has to worry about is fighting this thing. I take care of everything else."
Catherine took a moment to scrutinise each one, while they considered the onslaught of information they had just received.
Grissom looked characteristically perplexed, trying to take this very human issue and translate it to something more clinical and scientific – something he could analyse without his emotions getting in the way. Nick and Warrick continued to shake their heads in shock and sadness; while Brass was watching Sara closely, seemingly trying to assess her condition for himself – ever the detective.
But it was Greg whose desolate expression hurt her the most. Unlike the rest, he wasn't even trying to hide the tears welling up in his eyes, letting them stream freely and untouched down his face.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to be able to promise him that everything was going to be fine, that Sara would be okay and everything would go back to normal. She wanted to be able to wipe that unfamiliar picture of heartbreak from his unapologetically innocent young face.
But she couldn't.
No more than she could wipe Sara's pain away.