"Too quiet," Nick commented apprehensively, looking toward the room they'd been thrown out of three hours ago. "Isn't she supposed to be screaming?" He rubbed the side of his face, trying to hide his worry.

Catherine glanced across the room to where Sara's parents were sitting, leaning into each other with silent support. Steve appeared to be reassuring his wife, and Catherine wondered if they were discussing the same thing her group was. With a sigh, she joined Nick in looking toward the hallway. "We don't know that. We aren't even sure if she's far enough into labor to be in that much pain. Sometimes these things can take up to 24 hours."

All three men stared at her with dropped jaws. "You're kidding me," Greg breathed. "She's going to be doing this for another whole day?" He shook his head. "I'm so glad I'm not female."

Susan didn't join in the laughter that followed Greg's comment. She was still looking anxiously toward the hallway that held her friend somewhere in its walls, too nervous to move her eyes.

She didn't know it, but she was having many of the same thoughts Grissom had been having all day. Sara was small, and Susan had watched her sister, who was about Sara's size, struggle with giving birth for hours on end a few years ago.

Like Nick, she was more frightened by the silence than she would have been by screaming.

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

Grissom looked at Sara. Sara looked back at him, eyes narrowed. "Sara, honey," he wheedled, "you don't have to pretend nothing's going on. We're – you're – about to have a baby, the doctor's almost ready to have you start pushing, and you haven't made a sound."

She managed a smile, though it looked more like a grimace. "I'm fine, don't worry."

Grissom and the nurse who was attending Sara exchanged looks. "Sara," the nurse began, "there's no reason to be ashamed of being in pain. I've never had a mother in here who wasn't in terrible pain at this point."

"I'm fine," Sara said again. "Where's the doctor? I want to push."

Her tone would almost have been believable if her jaw hadn't been so tense that Grissom feared she would crack it, or if her face weren't perfectly white, or if she weren't sweating so hard. All three signs were present, though, and he knew it was pure stubbornness that was preventing Sara from voicing her pain.

Grissom ran a towel lightly over her forehead, collecting the sweat, and gave her a Look as he bent over to do it. "Come on," he whispered, an inch away from her ear, "I'll feel like I didn't father a good enough baby to make you scream."

Sara's eyes widened and her jaw relaxed a little. She didn't say anything out loud, but her eyes communicated exactly what she was thinking, and it involved some rude words. Then she smiled. Just a little, but enough for him to see and take comfort in.

When he tried to pull back from her into a standing position, she grabbed his wrist and tugged him back down. Now an inch from his ear, she whispered, "You make me scream anyway."

Grissom gaped at her. He wasn't sure if it was a reference to their sex life or their fights, but either way, he was pleased that she still had her sense of humor in the middle of the pain.

The moment was broken when the door swung open, revealing Sara's doctor, who was merrily snapping on a pair of gloves. Before the woman could say anything, Sara caught the look in Grissom's eyes and said clearly, "No, dear, you can't play with them."

Doctor, nurse, and not-quite-husband all stared at her, then began to laugh. "Well, Sara," said Dr. Franks, "I'm glad to see you're still in a good mood. We'll see how long that lasts. Ready for me to check you?" She carried out her task in comforting silence, then stood to face the woman on the bed. "Ok, you're at 10cm. Let's get this show on the road!"

"Is this really necessary?" Sara asked desperately, looking around as she was pushed down the hallway with her legs half in the air. She forgot about her embarrassment quickly when another contraction hit her, the most painful one yet. Shutting her eyes tightly, she gritted her teeth and waited for it to pass.  A large, warm hand covered her belly over the hospital gown and she opened her eyes to see Grissom watching her with concern. "I'm fine," she repeated. That phrase was becoming her refrain for the night.

*********

Nick and Susan sat slightly away from the rest of the group, discussing their worries. "My second-oldest sister is tiny," Nick said quietly, "but I think she's still bigger than Sara, width-wise. And Jen had to have a C-section because her pelvis wasn't wide enough." He glanced back toward the hallway. "The fact that she's quiet . . . it scares me."

"I know. It took my sister eight hours. I thought she was going to break into little pieces with the effort she was putting in."

Nick put a comforting arm around Susan. "But Sara's a fighter. She won't just fade away. I have a feeling she's determined to have this baby her way, come hell or high water."

********

"Push!"

A grunt.

"Again! Come on, Sara, put some effort into it!"

She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

"Ok, relax."

She sucked in the deepest breath she could manage, fighting the vertigo that was swirling around her. Who knew that going without oxygen for nearly a minute of pushing could make a person this dizzy?

When she managed to open her eyes, she was gratified, in a vague sense, to see Grissom leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, rubbing his forehead. Then another contraction seized her.

"Come on, push," the doctor ordered. "You're getting there, Sara, come on. As hard as you can."

Air escaped her tightly pursed lips in a high-pitched stream. Sight and sound faded out as she devoted every atom of energy in her body to pushing. Her throat closed for a moment, then reopened. There was a hand on her stomach, one on her left foot, and another on her brow. The one on her brow was Grissom's; she knew that without looking. She pushed again with all her strength, her upper body rising off the bed as it bowed with the effort.

"Ok." A disappointed sort of tsk came from the vicinity of her legs.

She fell back against the bed, again drawing in every bit of air she could fit into her lungs. There was no way she was going to survive this; there was no way that a baby that felt like it was the size of a watermelon was going to make it out of her body.

Grissom's tinny voice drifted to her ears. "How much longer?" he was asking the doctor. "Is she going to be able to do this? She looks so weak."

A quieter voice: "It's been fifty-five minutes, Mr. Grissom. This stage usually takes one to two hours for a first time mother. The baby could crown on the next push, or thirty pushes from now. I can't tell you exactly when; I can only tell you that, assuming there are no complications because of her size, she isn't any worse off right now than any other woman would be."

She didn't know if she could make it through thirty more. She didn't know if she could make it through one more. All she wanted right now was for the pain to go away, and to be able to sleep. She was so tired . . . She winced as the pain returned.

"Come on, sweetie," Grissom's voice said into her hair. "You promised you wouldn't wimp out." She felt him smile, then lost all sense of feeling as she again focused on pushing.

"Sara, breathe," the doctor ordered. "You need to breathe like you learned to or you're just going to make things more difficult for yourself and for us."

She tried to breathe, but felt like her muscles were too focused on her lower body to cooperate. Her body was concerned with nothing right now other than the need to push the baby out. Complex thought, digestion, and sight and sound all fell by the wayside as her body struggled. Every muscle she had was flexed and straining.

"Good, Sara! Keep pushing! Pushpushpush!"

A guttural sound escaped her throat. "Guhhhhhhhhh . . ."

"Come on," Grissom ordered. "Make noise, let it out."

"Push!"

She gave up on breathing and thinking entirely and pushed so hard that her body ought to have turned inside out.

An indrawn breath from the doctor. "Ok, Sara, relax." When Sara had recovered enough consciousness to open her eyes and Grissom was sure he wasn't going to keel over, Dr. Franks smiled at both of them. "A few more, Sara, and that should do it. The baby's head is just about there, you'll probably crown on the next contraction."

Ruth Franks watched with a small smile as mother and father stared at each other, amazed that they were going to make it through this ordeal. The eyes were always the same, she mused, no matter who was in the bed. Always wide and liquid and joyous, with a hint of a victorious gleam in the background.

Sara's body clenched again, and this time she didn't fight it. Grissom's hand in a death grip in one hand, the bedclothes in a similar grip with the other, she pushed. Somewhere, there was more energy, and she dug it out for the home stretch. Time stopped.

"Good!" It was nothing that hadn't been said throughout the day, but the tone behind it told Sara that her baby was about to enter the world. She was glad something could tell her that, because she couldn't feel anything down there anymore. Her body was numb.

She heard Grissom suck in his breath. His hand went lax in hers. "Sara . . ." he breathed so quietly that she could hardly hear him. "The baby . . ."

A squall rent the air and Sara's eyes flew open. Their baby was here.

She stared, awestruck for a few seconds. Then a curtain of black swept across her field of vision and she fell back against the bed.

A/N: Everything I know about labor and delivery, I learned from TLC's A Baby Story and the internet. Any mistakes are just me being dumb and not researching thoroughly enough.