The operation was supposed to take about an hour and a half, but due to some complications with the equipment, and the tumor slightly more difficult to remove than anticipated, the expected finishing time doubled. After hour one, Nick began pacing the waiting room, and only stopped when an elderly woman threatened to call the psychiatric ward if he didn't stop. By hour two, Nick was fidgeting in his seat like an impatient five-year- old and Warrick had resorted to pacing. Luckily for them, the old woman had left a few minutes earlier. The third hour rolled around and Nick and Warrick were in danger of going out of their minds from the worry, when Greg stopped by, and began entertaining them with his sometimes odd jokes and little known facts.

"So, these two guys are sitting in a bar, drinking beer, and one of them says, 'The government is blaming bad intelligence on the recent war.'" Greg started, "And the other one goes, can you guess? 'Then maybe they should stop calling it intelligence.' Funny huh?" Nick and Warrick gave him weary smiles for his efforts.

"Okay," Greg drawled, "How about this one? Did you know that Hitler had a square mustache because he admired Charlie Chaplan? He wanted to imitate him or something."

"Really?" Nick asked without interest.

"What else haven't you told us yet man?" Warrick also asked, with slightly more interest than Nick.

"Well, when you put it that way," Greg replied, "I do have a few more facts up my sleeve." He gave them a 'Greggo Grin' and continued, "Would you like to know what they are?"

"Sure, man, just keep it clean, I think the evil old woman is back," Warrick muttered referring to the one who had threatened Nick with the psychiatric ward, "She might get you sent to jail for saying something in the sexual context."

"Don't worry," Greg assured them, "I always keep it clean." Warrick just rolled his eyes, and Nick pretended to not have heard. "Okay, anyway, on to what I was saying. Did you know that the adult human head weighs the same as a light bowling ball, which is about 12 pounds?"

"Yeah, man."

"Yeah, Greg, this is one of the first things I learned in bio class and then I put two and two together."

"Oh," Greg replied, slightly crestfallen, but then he brightened, "Well, I have something that you may not know! Did you know that the first American TV show seen in the People's Republic of China was 'Baywatch'?"

"Okay, Greg," Nick replied, after staring at the lab tech like he was a fly for some time, "When people say I watch too much TV, they've obviously never seen your viewing habits."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Greg returned with a devilish grin. He opened his mouth to tell them another fact, but was beaten to the punch.

"Friends of Sara Sidle?" the nurse who had brought her into the operating room asked.

"Yeah," Nick replied.

"She's still under anesthesia, but we expect her to wake up in the next couple of hours. The surgery went well, and they were able to remove a larger amount of the tumor than they had hoped to get, so she may not have to undergo such a rigorous regiment of chemo."

"Can we see her?" Nick demanded.

"Sure, but don't be too surprised if she doesn't wake up until tomorrow."

"Got it."

"Her room's just down the hall." The nurse pointed down a long corridor to their left. "And it's 671, okay? Any other questions?"

"No. Thank you!" Warrick called as he followed Nick who had started down the hallway as soon as he heard the room number.

*****************************************

Sara awoke to the sound of humming. "Who is that?" she asked groggily, willing her eyes to open more than the cracks that they already were.

"Sara?" Warrick asked, "Great! You're awake, but Nick is going to be ticked off that you woke up when he wasn't here. Could you pretend to be asleep again and wake up when he's here? It's his turn to get coffee."

"How many cups have you guys drank so far?"

"About five for Nick and four for me. Greg had the other one, but he didn't like it, said it tasted like mud in comparison to his."

"Greg's here?" Sara queried, wondering why the room was suspiciously quiet.

"He left a few minutes ago," Warrick answered with a smile. "Yeah, it is too quiet in here if Greg was supposed to be sitting beside me. He began hitting on the nurse, you know."

"Really? Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"I wouldn't know." Warrick suddenly became silent and whispered, "Nick's coming, pretend to be asleep and maybe I'll still have my head later on." Sara did what she was asked to do, much to her amusement.

"Warrick," Nick began as he walked into the room, "They didn't have any more donuts in the cafeteria, so I hope you like blueberry muffins. The woman working there nearly threatened me with some stale toast that's as hard as a rock, because I was, and I quote, 'Making such a racket over such a small thing. Why, in Croatia where I grew up, we would have been happy for that muffin!' Or at least, that's what I think she said."

Sara couldn't contain her laughter anymore after Nick's awful impression of a Croatian accent, and let out a guffaw.

"Sleeping Beauty awaketh!" Nick cried, quite loudly too, only to be shushed by a passing doctor.

"Yeah, I'm awake," Sara replied, not making mention of the fact that she had been for some time now.

"Good to know," Warrick replied, as though he didn't know about her being awake beforehand, "It's kind of hard to do the CSI Trinity with only two people. It would have become the Dinity, or something without you."

"I know, it's great to be back," Sara replied, looking at each of them in the eye and smiling.

*************************************

Nearly two weeks and four rounds of chemotherapy and radiation later, she didn't think it was that great to be back. In fact, she absolutely hated the way life was going for her at that moment. Sara, who was thin to begin with, became even thinner to the point where she looked like a skeleton with skin stretched over her bones. The powerful chemo drugs made her weak, lose her appetite, and caused all her hair to fall out. The radiation made her extremely tired. To some, it was ludicrous that she insisted that she show up for work every night, even if it was just to push papers around. Nick knew the real reason of course: it was Sara's way of keeping herself sane through the whole ordeal she had to endure.

"Hey, honey, how's the most gorgeous woman in Vegas doing?" Nick asked gently as he gave Sara a kiss on the cheek.

"Gorgeous?" Sara asked with an incredulous tone, "Nick, I don't have any hair, not one strand, and I look like the poster child for anorexics." To prove her point, she shifted the bandana she wore on her head.

"That doesn't matter," Nick protested, "Outward appearances don't matter, it's what's on the inside that counts."

"Yeah, and that's drugs that are so potent, they run the risk of killing me instead of the cancer, and I could probably light up in the dark from all the exposure I've had to radiation."

"Sara . . ." Nick chided gently. Ever since she first felt the affects of her treatment, Sara had gone from being the optimistic one who kept him sane and put everything in good context, to being extremely pessimistic.

"No, Nick!" she cried, "I don't want to hear what you're going to say. That this is only a short-term thing, and that it will soon be behind us like a distant memory. I don't want you to say that you'll love me no matter what, because you know, and I know that that's not true!"

"Sara . . ."

"And did you know that the recurrence rate for cancer is nearly fifty percent?" she cried out hysterically, "Did you?"

"No. Sara . . ."

"No, Nick, leave me alone!" and with that, Sara pushed at his shoulder, as though to knock him over, but it did nothing more than make him swivel at the waist. She ran weakly out the door in tears.

Catherine and Warrick peaked into the room through the door. "Rough going for her, huh?" Catherine guessed.

"Yeah, she's got it in her head that I won't be able to handle this and that I'll just leave her in the middle of nowhere to go at it alone."

"We know you won't," Warrick replied to his best friend, "But this is traumatic, and Sara's got to live with it, and let's just say she's become more melodramatic. Just keep reassuring her; that's all you can do for her. That, and keep loving her, like you won't let go, man."

"Thanks Warrick," Nick said. "I guess I'll have to find her first before I can reassure her, huh?"

"Yeah," Catherine piped up, "She was heading in the direction of the locker room, judging from what I saw."

"Thanks." Nick began walking quickly towards the locker room. "Sara," he called out quietly. She didn't reply, but he did hear the sounds of muffled sobs. Quickly locating her by sound, he dropped down beside her on the floor in the corner of the darkened room and attempted to wrap his arms around her. "Sara, honey . . ." He didn't get any more said, because she wrenched herself out of his arms and scooted farther into a corner huddling herself up into an even smaller ball. "Sara . . ." Nick began in frustration, drawing out her name.

"I don't want to hear it," she replied. "Just leave me alone, Nick, that's all I'm asking you to do."

"What if I don't want to leave you alone?"

"Then I'll just ignore you."

The childishness of her statement would have been enough to make him smile at any other occasion, but he knew that she could easily slip into depression if he didn't talk some sense into her at that moment. 'Desperate times call for desperate measures,' he thought. "Okay, so you want me to leave you alone. I can do that, but I'm going to get Warrick or Catherine, maybe Greg or Grissom to come in here, okay?" He wanted to follow her wishes, but at the same time he didn't want her to be alone. "Do you want me to call anyone in particular if you won't talk to me?"

"Warrick, I guess," Sara muttered, seeing that Nick would not leave until she compromised with him.

"Okay, I'll get Warrick to come in here," Nick replied unselfishly.

A few seconds later Warrick showed up beside Sara. "Hey," he began as he eased his tall frame down beside her, "I hear you're giving Nick the silent treatment." He didn't get a response; instead, she took off her engagement ring and placed it firmly into his hand. "Okay . . ." he trailed off, knowing that he wasn't getting anywhere with her. "Sara, do you know Corinthians 13?" At her affirmative, though reluctant nod, he continued, "Good, I have a passage from it that my grandmother made me memorize when I was a kid. You going to listen to this?"

"Yeah," Sara replied, intrigued despite her foul mood.

"Okay, so it goes: 'Corinthians 13: 4-7, 13. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.' So you see, Sara, Nick loves you. He fits this definition to a T."

"I know that he loves me," she replied, saying more in that one breathe than she had for the entire five minutes that Warrick had been sitting beside her. "And I love him. That's why he should forget about getting married to me, because I'm going to make his life miserable, and I don't want to do that. 'Love does not seek its own interests', right?" And before Warrick could respond, she stood up quickly, and said, "Be sure to give Nick back his ring for me, will you?" She walked out, never looking back.

*****************************

Oh the angst!! (It will get better soon, I hope. Oh, and I hope ff.net has fixed up the uploading problem it has)

And just a note, I got all of Greg's facts from this great book called "Useless Knowledge: Answers to Questions You'd Never Think to Ask" they have a website called uselessknowledge.com in case you want to check it out.

Please review!