Sara lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, not seeing, not feeling, not thinking. She lay on the bed fully clothed, having allowed herself to simply fall backward on it in sullen despondency. Her body was numb, the clothes barely registering in her mind. She could feel herself slowly sinking into the bed… the covers… the mattress slowly rising to meet and envelop her body, she becoming one with the bed, and then the floor, and then the ground and then nothing.
The ceiling suddenly seemed so far away as though she really were sinking. As she stared, her eyes roaming around, everything was farther away, the lamp, the bedside table, the door, her feet. It was a disconcerting feeling. She blinked but it was the same, everything so far away, like she was shrinking, or the room was growing. Her head felt funny: thick and dense, like it was filled with cotton balls that were pushing against the backs of her eyelids. Her body felt disjointed, like her head was resting atop another body, not her own. When she moved it was like trying to make another body move, a body that was not used to her ways.
She sat up in bed, but it was the same. It was almost as though she were looking at everything through a peep hole in a door with everything being distorted and pulled outward. She got off the bed and swayed as her body acclimatized itself to the new visual cues. She felt as though she were walking on stilts and the hallway had grown wider, her arms longer, her feet farther away from her body.
She turned on the faucets in the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, tensing at the sudden coldness. She looked in the mirror, but it was the same: the mirror far away, her image far away. She squinted and leaned forward but it didn't help.
Closing her eyes she shook her head, but all that did was make the cotton balls grow and push more on the inside of her skull, the pressure increasing. She grasped the cool rim of the sink, steadying herself, not wanting to see that far away image again.
She stumbled back to her bedroom. Far away. Everything so damn far away! She spun around, trying to dislodge whatever was causing this distortion, but her balance was lost and she went crashing to the floor. Her nails dug into the carpet, trying to find something to hold, to keep her here, to keep her safe, to keep from falling, from sinking.
Pressing her eyes shut, she saw Grissom on the floor, blood all around him, eyes open and unseeing. Her body jerked and her eyes snapped open, her breathing coming in hard gasps. She closed them again and saw Grissom lying in that hospital bed, hooked up to every conceivable machine sounding out his life in those steady rhythmic beeps that soon became way too annoying. If visitors could hardly stand that noise, how could he, who had to listen to it day and night, the machines right by his head, constantly beeping… beep beep beep beep beep! ARGH!!!
. She looked around herself. Her room was the right size again. Her hands and arms were the right length. Her bed, right beside her face, didn't look half a mile away. It looked comforting, actually. Like an overstuffed teddy bear with its arms opened and begging.
She yanked open her eyes. Her breathing was hard and fast, heart pounding in her chest, shoulders aching with the effort of keeping herself from falling further into the floor. Her thighs screamed as blood slowly pooled in her folded legs, stomach cramping from the exertion of holding everything in. Slowly she stood, hands bracing her body on shaky knees and undressed before crawling in between the covers, drawing them up to her chin and curling herself into a tight ball on her side. With one last look around her room, she let her eyes fall closed and sleep came for her then.
~*~
She walked into Grissom's room the next day, first thing in the morning, as soon as visitors were allowed. As she had done yesterday, the plastic curtain was drawn carefully aside as noiselessly as possible.
He was the same as he had been yesterday, tubes and wires and beeping. That incessant beeping. The chair was back in the corner so she retrieved it and put it back by the bed and sat in it.
She felt as uncomfortable that day as she had the previous day, wanting to speak to him but not knowing what to say, or how to say it. She reached beneath the covers and brought his hand out again, cradling it between hers, trying to quell her frustration and anxiety. It was warm but still inert, he didn't take her hand in his, didn't hold her. That was her business now, the holding.
So she sat and held his hand, sometimes letting it rest on the bed in hers, sometimes bringing it up to her face to feel it against her cheek. Just to feel his skin against her cheek. She knew it would look strange if the others at work saw her like this, but she didn't really care at this point. She was not going to back away again and let him die. She was not going to let him push her away. And in this state, he couldn't really do that, so she took advantage of it and stayed where she was, with him, beside him.
And that was her routine for the week that he was in the hospital unconscious: with him during the day, work as much as possible during her shift and barely any sleep. If they thought she barely slept before, they ought to see her now, she thought, tossing and turning in her bed, staring around her as she fought for sleep to come and yet her mind stayed awake and with Grissom in his hospital bed.
