The bed rocked slightly as Sara rolled over. "Gil?"
"Ummm," was Grissom's response. He turned over so that his back was to her, and pulled a pillow over his head. "Nmmning."
"Uh . . . what?"
Grissom cocked an eye open and gave her a tired look. "No' mo'ning," he mumbled, then replaced the pillow over his head.
Sara sighed. "Of course it's not morning, Grissom; you don't get up in the morning to begin with." No response, and she shook his shoulder again. "Grissom. Wake up."
Both eyes opened this time. "What, Sara? Is something wrong?" The fog was beginning to clear from his brain, and he was realizing that it wasn't normal for Sara to wake him up in the middle of the day.
"My back hurts."
Her back hurt. It wasn't an emergency. He wanted to go back to sleep. Grissom decided to be conciliatory; it usually worked well on her. "Ok, honey. Turn over, I'll rub it for you." One hand reached for her spine, the other pillowed his head as he closed his eyes again.
One of Sara's fingernails punctured the hand he was holding out to her and he yelped and flipped back over to face her. "No, Gil," she repeated. "My back hurts."
He began to run through his mental list of reasons why Sara's back would hurt. Walking too much? No, she'd hardly left the house for the past three days. Slept in the wrong position? More likely; she'd told him many times how hard it was to find a functional sleeping position. "Did you . . ." he began.
Her low moan cut him off. "Owwww."
That did it. He was fully awake. "Sara?"
"Ow."
"Sara, what's wrong?" Things began to click, a piece at a time. She was waking him up at an unlikely time, her back hurt badly enough to make her voice it, and she sounded shaken. Her back hurt. Contractions would make her back hurt. Oh god! "You think you're having contractions?"
Sara paused, querying her body. A nod. "Yeah."
His muscles felt frozen for a moment, then his memory kicked in. There was an order to labor; what was it? "You're having contractions. How long?"
"I've been feeling twinges for about an hour, but it just started to really hurt a few minutes before I woke you up."
"Time?"
"I'm not positive, but I think about eight minutes." She inhaled slowly, then let out the breath. "Do you think it's for real?"
He ran his hand over her stomach and closed his eyes. "I don't know. Does it feel real?"
A soft hand slipped around his and squeezed slightly harder than usual. "I don't know why, but I think it is. What should we do?"
Grissom pulled away from her and sat up, feeling for his glasses. When they were perched on his nose, he switched on the light and opened a drawer in the nightstand. A set of papers were pulled from the drawer and held under the light. "You said eight minutes?"
"Yeah." Another breath, this one slightly faster. "Make that seven."
"Another one?" When she nodded, he consulted the papers again. "We're supposed to go to the hospital when they're about five minutes apart." Pushing his glasses back up, he read a little farther. "But nothing else? Water hasn't broken?"
"No."
"Then we sit. And count."
Sara nodded and inched up in bed, trying to balance well enough to sit upright. Noticing the struggle, Grissom grasped her arm and, between the two of them, they managed to haul her up. Grissom put an arm around her shoulders, and Sara leaned back and closed her eyes.
He looked at her for a few minutes, timing his breaths to hers. In, out. He watched her stomach rise and fall in rhythm, and fancied that he could see the baby moving against her skin. Testing his theory, he placed his free hand back on her belly. It wasn't a kick; it felt more like a wiggle. Maybe the baby was turning over. Were babies supposed to turn over? He didn't remember.
Her voice startled him out of his ponderings. "Are you counting?"
Another contraction. He glanced down at his watch; it had been six and a half minutes. "Six point five. Are they supposed to progress this fast?" He winced as she crushed the hand he had slung over her shoulder. "Ouch. I'll take that to mean it hurts?"
Sara's eyes opened and she fixed a steely glare on him. "Like a bitch. Try for a little sympathy, huh? I have no idea if they're supposed to move this fast; you're the fact-gatherer. I'm just the guinea pig." Her eyes fluttered shut again and she resumed concentrating on her breathing.
Ten minutes later, her contractions hit the magic number. "Time?"
"Five," he said briskly. "Let's get ready to go." He removed his arm from her shoulders and stood up, moving toward the closet where her small suitcase was sitting.
Sara put out a hand and just managed to grip the back of his shorts. "Wait. We need to call people. We need to call my parents. And Nick. Susan." She sighed. "Everyone we've ever met."
Grissom carefully pulled her off the bed and into a standing position, then hugged her. "Breathe, sweetie. Panic is a bad thing right now."
"I'm not panicking. I'm just saying that we need to call people."
"I'll make you a deal: right now, calm down and help me get everything together, then once we're in the car, you can call everyone on the way to the hospital."
"Ok. Ok, yeah." She did indeed feel the tide of panic rising. Not a lot, she told herself; it was just the adrenaline kicking in. She wasn't going to go all flaky like the women she'd seen on TV. With that determined, Sara began a slow waddle toward the front door, watching Grissom as he stepped into a pair of pants and scrambled ahead of her.
He shuttled her suitcase and the bag of things he thought she'd need but hadn't told her about to his car, then returned to the house, struggling with the emotional riot going on in his mind. First one thought, then another, was flying around, and he could have sworn that there were voices arguing in there. She'd be fine. No, she was built very small; she might have trouble. But even if there were trouble, there would be doctors all around them. Yeah, there were doctors around most people who died, and they still died. Ohhh . . .
"Grissom."
Her voice sounded slightly off, and he quickly pushed his thoughts aside and focused on her. She looked ok. "What?"
She gestured to her legs, and it took Grissom a minute to figure out what she was showing him. Then it came into focus: running down her leg was a small trail of pink liquid. Sara's water had broken.
