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Tentative
Chapter Four
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There's a chaos of sound around me as my eyelids peel open. Assaulting noises of machinery, people, and packages being ripped open. Doctors and nurses flutter around me hurriedly, wearing yellow gowns or scrubs in dark blue.
Something – a needle – pricks into the already abused and bruised flesh of my arms and I cry out at it, kick against the harsh fabric sheet sitting against my burned, scarred, and bleeding legs. A person calls out, "Sinus rhythm!" while another yells, "He's bleeding bad! Get a unit of O-neg in here!" and after an inch of neglect, I am noticed.
"Sir? Sir, can you tell us your name?" One brunette pleads with me, silver-blue eyes which are rimmed in brown connect with mine.
I wish I knew which one to tell her, since I have no clue, but, "Greg." rolls over my tongue of its own accord. My chest hurts so bad I can hardly breath and choke out the rest, "Sanders."
One the two that hide my past, present, and future. Yet for the moment, it serves me – if they cannot reach my family, they will at least find someone to call from CSI. Though I'm not sure how nor do I concern myself with the details of such.
"Greg Sanders?" She asks, inking each letter onto her pants' leg.
Nod, then a redheaded man starts handing out orders, "I need an ABG!" He shouts and turns to me, "Greg, besides your chest, what else hurts?"
Oh…uh, everything! I manage to state, "My stomach." through the steady pulsation of penknife pains in my side.
And I should not have said that because there are fingers there posthaste, probing until I cry, beg, wince and whine for him to stop, "I know it hurts, Greg." He wrings out and yells out for someone to call a surgeon, "He's bleeding!"
No shit, Sherlock! You went through medical training for eight years to decree a car crash vic's bleeding? Idiot. The agony hits with the intensity of a star gone nova in a sole second, "My head!" I reach one hand up to scratch…have to get it to stop; to end and leave me to my demise.
"Greg! Greg, stop! Someone get his other hand!"
Nurses are holding me, pressing me into the soft mattress and hold my fingers in a deathgrip. I want only to make myself bleed more, "Make it go away! It hurts!"
"What hurts?" The doctor is asking me, "Greg? What hurts?" He's pulled my hand into his and is practically in the bed with me, he's so close, "I can't make it stop if you don't tell me what's hurting!" He informs as if I'm not fully aware that he's not a mind-reader.
"My head! My head burns! Oh, please, just make it stop!" There's tears flowing freely, soaking every material as it mingles with my own blood to form puddles of watery crimson.
"Tell Claire to meet us in MRI!"
We're moving now and the ceiling tiles pass over me so quickly it makes me unnervingly dizzy. I vomit up my Thai, continue to try to claw at my forehead. Someone wipes the mess away with their hand and another grasps both my wrists.
I want to sleep, want to close my eyes and go away from this pained reality if only for a few hours.
Escape away into the abyss of haunted dreams where there are people who will be responsible for me instead of the other way around. Creative stories of finding a girlfriend, like I once had in Aria, who will love me all the same, through thick and through thin.
Calming memories, recreated in Technicolor, of spending time with tiny Nikolai while my sister and mother sewed his Christening suit out of silk and satin in baby-blue, heather-green, and cream-white.
"Greg, stay awake!" The doctor demands, "You may have a head injury."
Uh huh. That's not really a reason for me to keep myself alert. Hell, at this point if I were to die, would it make a huge difference in the world? Not really.
"Talk to us, Greg." They're running now, shoving me down the measureless corridor, "Tell us about your family."
"Big. Nordic and Slavic." I reply. The world is getting fluffy around the edges and hazy-sounding as though my head's been filled with cotton, "I'm the oldest."
The redhead
hums, turns me sharply into the room housing the giant machine. It drones and clicks; I'm lifted up by the
edges of the sheet and shifted onto the bed, "Any sisters?"
I go to answer, except the
ache in my lungs lurches forward.
Instead of expelling air, the crimson trickles out.
"Everyone out! Get this thing started! And where the hell is Claire?!"
MRI swipes me in, courses through its needed procedures and extracts me back into the careful arms of the hospital staff.
"Greg." A blonde woman looks at me, "I'm Dr. Dean. I'm going to take you to the OR while Dr. Circe looks over your results, alright?"
"My head." I croak. Please, Lord, this is torment. End it. Someone chants my name, yet it does not defeat my eyes from closing tight and launching me in the pitch darkness.
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I wake slowly, drowning in the florescent lighting of my dull-white room. The windows are covered with thick white curtains to block out what is assuredly yellow daylight.
Dr. Circe, who I assume must be the redhead from some time ago, is standing in my doorway with people I can't focus on.
"He's had a good crack to the head and several of his internal organs are torn. His left leg is broken in several places." Huffing from Circe, "But there's some burn scars that I'm worried about."
Then Grissom's voice and I realize that he must be one of the person-shaped blurs. Some thing is about to blow up in my face, "He said they were from a fire as a child."
"Some of them are. I know from prior reports he was injured in the Crime Lab's explosion, but there are others."
"Others?"
The doctor nods, and glances back at me, "Ones on his abdomen and inner thighs. I think they're self-inflicted."
I was wondering how the secret would come out. Whether I'd blow up at my family one day, thereby freeing myself of the act I concocted or if it would happen such as it has.
My boss, Sara, Uncle Paul and mother suddenly are in the room, staring holes into my body – straight to the empty soul I've acquired over the last decade and a half.
"Luka?" Mama's voice is still so homey and cozy to me, even after the hell she put me through. Because I know she loves me and she never laid so much as a fingertip on me, "Sweetheart?"
Go to roll over to look at her.
"No, mladenets, don't move. You've got stitches in your side." She tells me, stroking my cheek like she did when I was fifteen and stripped down to my underwear from a raging fever.
"Mama." My hand reaches to her, and she grasps it within her petite own. A thick of sandy-blonde hair hangs onto my shoulder, "What happened?"
"You don't remember?" She implores. She must look up at Grissom, as his eyes break from watching me momentarily.
He answers, "You were hit by an SUV and then a van. It's a miracle you survived."
"Oh."
"Luka." Dyadya is looking levelly at me, "Do you hurt yourself?"
I try to gauge the expression he wears. Does he really want to hear the truth? Or should I sugarcoat it? Or lie my ass off? Although with him, lying usually ends with tears – because the liar feels guilty.
So I opt to ignore the question and turn to my peer, "Why'd you come? You don't like me."
And with a look of absolute despair, Sidle replies, "I came because you are my friend, or I believe you are, and you got hurt badly." She pauses, absolutely flustered, "I think you do hurt yourself, Greg. For as long as I've known you, you're never without a lighter nearby and you're always scratching your stomach."
"What would it matter if I were?" I mutter, "No one cares anyway."
There's collective intake. There's a verbal berating coming, I know it. Or at least that's what my mind tells me. My heart, on the other hand…
"It would matter very much, Pervyj." My nickname rolls off of Grissom's tongue like it belongs there.
"I haven't been called Pervyj since I was twelve."
The rubbing begins again; I missed it so. My mother kisses my temple, "Oh, my mal'chik. I'm taking you home soon. Mama will take care of you like I should of when you were little."
A lone tear drips onto my neck, "I'm slommanyj. My soul…it's bol'no."
There's another kiss pressed to my forehead, "I know." She whispers to me, in that voice that is not the one from my nightmares or the one which screams at me from my answering machine tapes, "I'll make it better, Luka."
But I don't know if I want to go home. Nor do I want to remain in Las Vegas. I don't know where I want to go, aside from wanting – needing – to be away from everyone and everything.
"I've already started making arrangements for a temporary tech to take over for you while you're gone. You can take as much time as you desire."
Sara's eyes twinkle with the reality that's in front of her. In one day, I've destroyed her whole idea of who I am. I wonder what the boss bribed her with to make her come here or if Catherine sent her as the voice of methodical reason. Either way, she should not be subjected to this. She's too lovely a presence for this.
"Don't look at me like that. I know what it means, Greggo." A bittersweet smile, "I came of my own accord."
"Go."
"Do you really want me to?"
I shrug as best I can hooked up to a hundred different IVs and electrodes and held in the bed by my weaken muscles, "No. Figured I'd get you to go away for a little while so I could rant."
She leans over and offers, "Nice try, but if my name's to be mentioned, I want to be here."
"No, you don't."
The anger boiling within the pit of my belly screams, erupts, devoid of any warning, "Fuck all this! I've taken care of myself since I was a kid! I still take care of myself without anyone's help, so why do all of you want to start now? Huh? I'm pretty damn confused about all this!" I bellow, the rolling sound thundering in the hallway, "So what if I injure myself? Would you prefer the real Greg at work?"
Panting, I listen as each replies.
"First of all, Greg, you never had to rely on just yourself once you came to work with us. If you'd asked, we all would have been there. Second, the glimpse we got of the real Greg in the breakroom today makes me want to know you for the personality that lies within." The boss instructs me, "After you left, we all agreed we wanted to find out who was behind all those layers you use to hide."
"We did." A breathy lisp from the gap-toothed brunette.
Should I take heed of that? Is it really that important that my once reserved, uncaring colleagues wish to know me now when I'd rather not allow them that privilege?
Still, they want to know me. They're offering to make me a little less lonely in this world that is cruel and hellish, loathsome. Catherine and Warrick and Nick and Sara and Grissom…perhaps I can gain allies against the other techs with members of the team, or maybe they will see how I have grown up over the time I have worked for them.
Mama pats my back, "I have years to make up to you, baby. Years that I should've spent raising you and your brothers and your sisters. You will never understand the guilt I feel at having neglect you like I did, letting your father do to you…" She holds back a choking sob, "You went away and we allowed you to go, when we should've held on tighter. I won't make that mistake again. I won't let you push your family away anymore, Luka."
"I don't want to go to Cali."
"Then we will stay here." Dyadya Paul trails a palm over my foot, my toes. Makes me laugh when he hits a ticklish spot.
He always did know how to make me happy when I needed it most; when my blood ran cold from taunts or hatred.
"And don't think you can escape us either. We're going to be here every step of the way."
Oh, dearest heavens…I'm surrounded by them. Pathetic, hopeful people who think they can change me from who I am to something "better". Well, fuck that. I'm me, and I will not deviate.
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*v* Cassie Jamie *v*
csimiami@cassie-jamie.com
