Grissom lay in his bed, fighting the pain that still nagged at the sides of consciousness as well as the persistent groggy feeling from the pain killers being continually fed to his body via the tube in his good hand. He was in his new room complete with walls and a door. He was alone and it was getting late. His body had rested so much the past week that now it fought to remain awake and make up for lost time. Every time he heard footsteps in the hall that seemed to be coming toward his door, his heart would speed up hoping it would be Sara.

The others had already come to visit and he was glad to see them. Sara hadn't been with them that time. Perhaps it had been for the best that she not be for their relationship, he knew, was not at the best of moments. But knowing that she had been to visit him every day since he'd been here had revealed something to him. She had taken the time out of her self-inflicted busy schedule to come and see someone who had persistently pushed her away. In the back of his mind there was a thought, not of words but of feelings, faint yet there, that there was still hope. She had not totally given up hope. She had stayed and she had come to see him. Suddenly he felt something break open inside him – something that had held him back for so long.

He felt hope.

There was hope inside him, small yet growing with each thought he had of her and the past few days. He felt his shoulders relax, his face relax, his body relax as it unbent itself back into the shape of a regular human being, not twisted and contorted to fit some mold of someone he was not. He pressed his head back into the pillows and looked up, through the ceiling to the sky beyond it and he smiled. A big toothy ear-to-ear grin plastered on his face as his eyes closed and a chuckle bubbled up from deep inside him, bubbling its way through the muck and mire that had begun to infest his soul. There was hope, after all.

"Feeling better I see?" came a familiar voice from the door.

Immediately his head came down but the smile remained. "Sara…" he said under his voice.

"It's me!" she said and he remembered those same words the day she had arrived in Vegas when he had called her. How he had felt then upon hearing her voice again was how he felt now knowing she was still there, with him.

She came into the room carrying something behind her back. When she got closer to the bed, her smile still on her face, she brought her hands from around her back. In them was a book.

He eyed the book, his face showing his glee. It was the latest entomological book that had just arrived on the shelves of only the most prestigious bookstores. "For you," she said as she handed him the book.

He took it with his good hand. It was big and bulky and his strength had yet to return to its former level so the book almost fell out of his hand. Sara reached forward and grabbed it, at the same time her hand landed on his under the book and she felt the same jolt of electricity at feeling his skin again. Unable to take her hand away lest the book should fall to the floor, she kept her hand on his while her other one came around and grabbed the book. His hand stayed beneath hers. "Sorry," she said. "Forgot how heavy it was and…" she took the book from him and went to place it on the night stand.

"Just put it on the bed…" he said, his voice lower than usual, his eyes locked on her face. She looked at him and found she couldn't look away. He was staring at her directly as though trying to speak through his eyes to her, the words failing his intellect.

"Uh… okay," she found herself saying, words failing her.

His hand had twisted and now held hers in his and her heart leapt into her throat at the touch. His fingers wound around her hand, holding and squeezing it just like she had hoped he would those days when he was in the coma. And now he was doing it. She was looking down at his hand in hers, her breathing coming faster.

"Would you like me to let go?" he asked her.

Her eyes came up to meet his. "No… it's just…" she looked down before continuing. "I held your hand while you were…out and… I thought how nice it would be if… your hand held mine back. And now… you are…" She looked back up at him. He was still staring at her, his eyes wide and open… and darker.

"You held my hand?" he asked.

Sara looked away and swallowed. "Uh, yeah… I did…"

His thumb had started to rub her skin sending shivers up her arms and down her body. "I don't know what to say…"

She took a deep breath. "It was nothing really…" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "Just what a… a friend would do, you know…"

His face seemed to close a bit. "A friend…" he repeated as though testing the word to see if it was what she had said.

"Yeah… a friend."

He sighed. "Oh."

Just one word - one sound - yet it was so full of feeling it could have taken up much more room and time than it had. She felt it like a stabbing pain in her gut, his pain had become palpable for her. She had sensed as though they were getting somewhere again, somewhere they hadn't been in such a long time. And it was frightening her. It meant hope, hope that they might return to their previous ways of casual banter and flirting. But hope for her had only meant pain in the past, so she had pushed hope aside in favour of safer alternatives. Whereas she had felt him trying to bring them to that place again, fear made her bring them back out again.

They needed to start out fresh again, she thought, as friends before they could go back anywhere near what they were. So she reiterated her statement. "Friend, Grissom. Just what a friend would do. You know, be there for a friend in time of need." When he didn't respond as she had hoped, she sat down keeping his hand in hers and decided to push it. "You know, friendships can take many different forms, Griss." He looked at her, his eyes full of questions. "When you get out, how about I make us a dinner to celebrate your recovery." She offered in way of a reconciliation of sorts.

"Dinner?" he said incredulously.

She pursed her lips to keep from smiling. "Yeah, you know, I do cook! It's not just take-out!"

"Really?" he said, his good humour returning.

If looks could kill… "You know… if you weren't so incapacitated I'd hit you!"

"Now, now… no violence in the work place, Miss Sidle."

An eyebrow rose. "We ain't at work, Mr. Grissom. This is personal time, here."

His eyebrow rose as well. "Personal?"

She caught the gist of his tone. "Personal, Griss. This is my time, my choice. I want to be here… with you." She kept her gaze steady on his. And this time, her thumb rubbed against his skin and she was rewarded by his sudden intact of breath, the slight flushing of his skin and the darkening of his eyes. She licked her suddenly dry lips and was further rewarded when his gaze dropped to her lips and then back up to her eyes and his own were now even darker than before.

His eyes searched her face for signs that this was anything but what he hoped they were. Her eyes, which had never lied to him, told him what he needed to know. Her friendship knew no bounds when it came to him, and there was possibility for more… in time.