Part Seven: South Dakota –Miracle
South Dakota begins, for her, the journey home. Now she heads south, toward Vegas, toward all she's been running from all along. A sense of dread wells up in her stomach, but at the same time she is looking forward to getting back to work, and to her apartment and her cat and her uneventful life. She drops Cory a postcard at a rest stop.
Cory –
Thanks for dinner!
Love,
Sara
She drops another one to Nick.
Nicky –
You wouldn't believe what's been happening, even if I told you.
Miss you. Be home soon.
Sara
She never really dreamed that this trip would be so cathartic, or so healing. Her life today is completely different from her life one week ago; her priorities totally turned upside down. Grissom is the furthest thing from her mind at this moment. The blue stone is tucked into a sock in a pillowcase filled with dirty laundry.
And yet, she is still sad; she feels she has left friends behind, in Fly and Donna, and someone who is to her already more than a friend. She cries a little, when she thinks of time and distance, and how cruel they both are. She likes Cory. She wishes she could see him again.
But at the same time she feels liberated. She wants to stand on the top of a mountain and tell the world about her feelings. Over the past week she has come to understand a great deal about herself, and a change has begun, deep within her. The night in Colorado, when she spoke to the bartender with the bloodshot, vacant eyes, was a first for her. She spoke to a stranger, went out of her way to speak with someone outside of the walls she had built.
And it had felt good.
And the night she met Fly and Donna, she recalls being scared at first, intimidated by their openness and the way they approached everyone as a friend. She wasn't used to people who were so free and unguarded with their emotions, but it felt good to be with them, to feel that way herself. She feels honest and more free than she has since she was in school. Since before she met Grissom.
She wonders if he is responsible, at least in a small part, for the walls she has built around herself the past few years. After all, she idolized him for years. She couldn't help but replicate what she'd seen in someone she admired. Someone she loved.
Not that she blames him, really. Although it sure beats blaming herself.
She wonders what would happen if tomorrow, someone in her life were to pass away. What about Nicky, her best friend? Or Warrick or Catherine or Greg? Or even Grissom. Sure, she knew how she felt about them. She knew they were important to her. But did they know, too?
She resolves to break down some walls, to overcome her awkward social habits.
She hopes it's not too late.