1. "Be careful what you wish for"
Grissom knew that the debacle into which his return had disintegrated was entirely his fault.
It hadn't been all bad, to be fair. His first day back, and one of the first things he had discovered was that his fears about losing his job upon discovery of his condition had been largely groundless.
"I don't understand why you would think that you would be forced out for this, Grissom," Dr. Robert Covallo had said. "Even if we wanted to simply dump the supervisor of one of the premier crime labs in the country—your team's solve rate speaks for itself—how would that look from a political standpoint? Even if you didn't personally sue us, someone would make sure the ADA litigation was used to carve us all a nice new set of orifices."
Grissom had been slightly and momentarily frightened to see the director's dour expression briefly break up into an uncharacteristic smile. He was reassured when he realized that it showed more teeth than amusement. That was in character.
"Now, if you can't in fact do your job, that's another story. If you can't keep your people from getting sloppy and incinerating my lab, for instance...well, the Americans with Disabilities Act assumes that a protected individual is actually qualified to do his or her job, Grissom."
Grissom nodded crisply.
"Understood," he replied.
The director snorted with genuine amusement—this time nearly alarming Grissom into falling out of the chair.
"I'll bet you did understand. 'If you have something to say to me, say it to my face.' A better job of dissimulation I have yet to see." He let out another short bark of laughter. "I'd fight the sheriff tooth and nail to keep you just for your entertainment value, Grissom."
It took Grissom a moment to realize that the interview was at an end. He just barely succeeded in suppressing a loudly whooshing sigh of relief and wonder as he got to his feet. That was it? He was so engaged in those unaccustomed emotions that he almost didn't notice the director trying to attract his attention again. He could have derived a great deal of satisfaction from seeing the uneasy look on his supervisor's face as the man tried to figure out a dignified way to do so, but this reprieve made him feel too charitable."Sorry, Robert. You were saying..."
"Ahem." The director cleared his throat to regain his equilibrium. "Er, yes...I just wanted to remind you not to treat the request for an interpreter the same way as you do your other paperwork. I want it on my desk ASAP, Grissom."
Grissom was taken aback. He hadn't expected that the LVPD could afford extravagances such as that. Even if cost were not an issue, he could see the potential for the disruption of the tightly knit team by the inclusion of an outsider.
The director intercepted the objection before it came to fruition.
"Look, just get me the paperwork. It will be up to you whether you make use of our offer of help. I suggest you do so, however." He waved to indicate that the still-hesitating Grissom could leave at his leisure.
"Thank you, Robert," he managed to choke out. The director nodded but made no further comment.
The niceness had by no means stopped there. He had encountered Brass in the hall on his way to the office.
"Hey, nice sports car," the chief had teased, gesturing to the sapphire-blue earmold of the behind-the-ear hearing aid Grissom brazenly wore on his unoperated ear.
Grissom's audiologist had laughed at his keen interest in the color choices she usually only offered to her youngest clients and their parents. But he had found the flesh-colored molds to be frankly unattractive and far from invisible—even if he had cared to hide the aid.
"It cost at least as much as a decent down payment," Grissom conceded amiably.
"And it matches your eyes so nicely," Brass jibed with a sly smile. "I'm sure that was just a fortunate accident, right? Well, glad to see you back and doing so well," he said cheerily, his sincerity reflected in his kind dark eyes. With a comradely clout to his colleague's black leather jacketed shoulder, Brass continued on his way.
Not to be outdone, Al the coroner accosted him further down the hall.
"That'll teach you to listen to me, eh?" he ribbed gently. His crystalline blue eyes reflected the sympathy that he would never disgrace his friend by expressing aloud. "Well, don't start thinking you're in the club or anything..."
"'Club?'" Grissom repeated, not quite sure he was tracking properly.
The doctor's grin was wide and wicked.
"The gimp club, my friend. You'll have to work harder than that to gain admittance."
Grissom thought how shocked any of their workmates would be to hear Dr. Al's irreverent treatment of his life situation. Strangely enough, it made him feel closer to "normal"—whatever that might be—than he had in ages.
"Let me know the membership costs and get back to me?" he suggested with a wry smile.
"You can count on it. Though if you don't get in to see your orthopedist about those knees of yours..."
Grissom laughed.
"If I do that, I'll be out of the club for sure, and I couldn't bear that."
Dr. Al straightened up on his canes.
"Got a 'client' waiting for me...gotta get back."
Grissom raised an eyebrow with interest.
"Whose case?"
"Catherine and Nick are working on this one. Looks like a routine suicide—as routine as they come, anyway."
Grissom sighed. "Would that there were no such thing," he agreed, his tone pensive. "See you, Doc."
Back in his office, he felt that odd sense of disconnection that a long absence often brought to familiar surroundings. He could now see how an outsider might view the place as cluttered—but also realized that the feeling wouldn't even last the entire shift. It began to fade even as he thought about it.
Catherine had been kind enough to keep his paperwork completed for him during his prolonged medical leave—even though it likely also involved enlightened self-interest, not wanting to have her own leave and travel requests buried among the chaff as usual. He chuckled to himself at that thought. At any rate, the desk was clear of the usual pile of postponed bureaucracy. She had even completed the interpreter request form sent to him by Covallo, lacking only his signature (which he was certain she had forged many a time during his absence). He was thus free to contemplate what to do next.
***
If only he had contemplated harder. Because that genie, Percocet-induced though it might have been, was right. He had gotten what he wanted—what he thought he had wanted. And he knew that he wasn't going to be able to make it through another shift like this one, because of it. He needed his wish undone.
Having been so foolishly noble as to free the genie, he sought a more readily available alternative. What about that Employee's Assistance Program that was so heavily hyped by the management? There was supposed to be walk-in counseling available. Heck, maybe he could pretend that he'd been involved in a suicide-by-cop incident, should there be any unreasonable delay. He picked up the jacket he'd tossed carelessly on the floor and headed down to the EAP wing.
He had been asked to wait—but only until the next available counselor finished an appointment. Half an hour, Dr. Grissom?
So he sat in the tastefully, though not ostentatiously—cranky taxpayers being what they were—appointed anteroom, with plenty of time to rehash the parts of his shift that had been most definitely bad.
He had walked into the staff room, clipboard in hand, striding confidently, clad in the classic black leather jacket that had attracted so much clandestine notice the last time he had appeared in it. His unusual attention to his appearance had garnered him a sardonic smile from Catherine.
Catherine had comprised nearly his entire support system throughout the whole ordeal leading up to his return. He had always wondered about her continuing loyalty to him—he knew himself to be a difficult person to befriend, much less maintain a friendship with. But then he had figured it out; once Cat decided you were worth her time, no matter who you might be, she would simply not be dumped.
Lord knows he had tried...he had in the past attempted ignoring her when she got on his nerves (as if she would permit herself to be ignored), insulting her in an attempt to get her to withdraw (big mistake—one couldn't win slanging matches with someone who had earned such a decidedly feline nickname), going out of his way to offend her. No go. She brushed all of that off as she would a speck of dust from one of her stylish outfits. So, he had long ago accepted the fact that she could not be dislodged—he had the feeling that having her killed would only result in her returning to haunt him as if nothing had ever happened. He now accepted her mixture of contention and sincerity as a permanent part of his life.
She stepped back to join their junior colleagues in awaiting their assignments—and that was the end of the "Let's Support Grissom" pep club.
Sara, Nick, and Warrick slouched at the table in varying positions of polite disinterest. Upon his greeting them, Nick had given him a desultory smile that had disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. Warrick had quickly nodded, his aspect neither friendly nor unfriendly; merely impersonal. She Who Must Not Be Allowed to Upset My Equilibrium—wow, that had been close—Sara's eyes had been their usual lucid espresso brown; but, not like usual, completely unreadable.
Catherine's smile faltered a bit in the decidedly chilly atmosphere of the room, but she said nothing.
Neither did any of the three that had been, to varying degrees, closer to him than his actual kin. He had braced himself for accusations, intensive questioning, over-effusive welcomes, a cake in the break room...and it had turned out that he need not have bothered.
"I thought perhaps one of them might have questions," he said wonderingly. "Hell, even a tirade would have at least been interesting. But they just sat there in a row, as if we'd never been any closer than supervisor and subordinates."
"Is this typical behavior for them?" queried the young woman seated in the petite armchair across from his own matching one.
He stared at the counselor in disbelief. Up until that very moment, Melissa Settergren, MSW, had impressed him with her no-nonsense, down-to-earth presence and immediately apparent intelligence.
Far from being intimidated by his hearing loss, upon being informed of it, she had pulled open a desk drawer to extract an FM receiver, which she laid upon the adjacent coffee table. She then clipped a lavaliere microphone to the collar of her blouse.
"I have a neck loop here, a set of headphones..."
Grissom reached for the neck loop. He would be able to use it to take advantage of the telecoil built into his hearing aid. He plugged its cable into the receiver with deft fingers that were accustomed to finely detailed work.
"...And so I see that I won't need to explain the use of assistive listening devices to you, Dr. Grissom," the counselor had said, an unsuspected dimple appearing in one cheek as she smiled.
"Please, Ms. Settergren, just 'Grissom' is fine," Grissom had offered.
"Agreed—but only if you stop making me look all over the room to see if my mother's here to check up on me."
Grissom had raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"She's the only 'Ms. Settergren' in our family," she explained.
He laughed even as he gave her a reproachful look, the type given to those inclined to tell painfully bad jokes.
"I would be happy if you felt comfortable enough to call me 'Melissa,'" she offered in return.
Something about the small round face, framed with a riot of dishwater-blonde curls, made him feel unusually comfortable in her presence. Consequently, he had been lulled into taking her less than seriously...until she had asked her seemingly nonsensical question. But the expression in the sharp amber-flecked eyes held not the least hint that she was making a joke.
"What are you talking about?" he had replied, the long, stressful shift he had just completed making it difficult for him to keep the irritation out of his tone. For a moment, he felt a nostalgic wave of emotion...it was almost as if he had Warrick or Nick before him, overlooking details. "Would I be here if this were their typical behavior?"
"You're an investigator," Melissa replied, unfazed by her client's riposte. "As well as a highly independent research scientist. I believe you would get more out of our time here if you were guided to discover your own answers. So, to begin, why don't you venture a guess as to some reason for their atypical behavior? You know your team."
Did he?
He would have sworn that he had. The team had investigated—and cheated—death, had formed a united front under political pressure, had bailed each other out of varyingly difficult personal situations, and thus forged bonds that he had thought were elastic and unbreakable.
The idea that this could turn out to be untrue was almost paralyzing. It certainly dried up his power to speak.
"Your hearing loss...is it of recent etiology?" Melissa prompted.
She'd found it—the sticking point. He felt the paralysis lessen.
"Ah...yes and no."
He expected her to interrupt with an indignant demand to clarify his answer, but she didn't. She sat in her chair, her expression peaceful and encouraging.
Thankfully, she was going to allow him time to explain in his own way. He felt himself relax into his own comfortable armchair, some of the tension abruptly gone.
"Yes...this current level of loss is new to me," he elucidated. "It's the result of surgery that didn't turn out as hoped. Which leads us to 'No, it's not new.' I have otosclerosis, a particularly aggressive and destructive form, it turns out. It's hereditary in my case, and I'd thought that I'd escaped...until last year, when I simply couldn't continue to attribute my symptoms to anything else."
Her expression implied full comprehension; he knew that he would not have to clarify what the disorder entailed. "Was your team aware that you were dealing with this problem?" she asked him.
He had the feeling she had sometime in her past had contact with some of the departmental attorneys, and was now employing one of their credos: Never pose a question on the stand to which you don't know the answer.
In response, he simply returned her glance, and she nodded in acknowledgement.
The ensuing period of silence was brief but weighty.
Grissom shifted restlessly in the chair that suddenly seemed not as comfortable as it had been.
Melissa said conversationally,
"It can be a tough call, to know when—and if—disclosure of a disability in the workplace is wise or not."
Grissom looked at her with gratitude, but found himself again unable to reply. The words simply would not come.
"Especially," she suggested, "when you might not have necessarily worked out for yourself what you're going to do about it?"
Grissom chuckled mirthlessly.
"I hadn't, in fact. Not until the decision was taken out of my hands, when the surgery didn't work out as I hoped it would," he confirmed.
Melissa's smile had a hint of wistfulness.
"Correct me if I'm off track. You were feeling a great deal of pressure because of this situation. The only thing that you really, really wanted was just enough space and time to figure it out by yourself, so that you could rejoin the group with a plan of action in place."
He looked at her in some surprise, nodding emphatically.
"Exactly. I just needed to get a handle on things in my own mind before I could deal with the others."
She allowed the sympathy to show openly in her eyes as she ventured,
"Well, Grissom, I think you got exactly what you wished for."
Startled, he looked at her suspiciously for a moment. She looked nothing like his Percocet genie, being much shorter just for starters, but still...
She didn't appear to find his reaction to be anything out of the ordinary.
"All the nonverbal signals we inadvertently send in situations like that...they are often misinterpreted as, 'Back off, just leave me alone' as opposed to, 'Please give me some time to work this out, though I appreciate and need your support.'" she observed.
In spite of his interest in the conversation, the effort it took to follow it was making itself felt, especially after the taxing ten hours he had just spent; the counselor could see that he was visibly fading from fatigue. Since they were only 10 minutes into an hour session, she wondered if he would be able to continue. She felt a bit disappointed to have to postpone the session with the legendary entomologist, but if he couldn't benefit...
Grissom noticed her concerned study of him and he tried to assume a more upright position in the chair.
"Grissom, do you think we ought to reschedule?"
He shook his head firmly.
"Right before you whip out the Rosetta stone and solve the whole thing?" he joked mildly. "Wouldn't dream of it. It's just that extended conversation can get a bit tiring for me these days. I'm not quite used to...my new circumstances."
Understanding cleared the furrow that her brow had developed.
"I see. Well, I'm neither an audiologist nor an occupational therapist, but...have you considered perhaps taking a course in speechreading? And, well, not to offend you, but the option of learning sign languge is..." She trailed off upon seeing his sardonic smile—unmistakably at her expense. She couldn't imagine what could be amusing him so, and it became her turn to be cranky.
"Dr. Grissom, I don't think I quite understand what's so funny," she began in her sternest tones.
He waved an apologetic hand.
"I've spent the last few months taking speechreading classes. They were the secret to—well, my having been able to keep my secret as long as I did," he explained. And I learned Sign as a child, he signed, mischievously using true, "voice-off" American Sign Language.
He was about to translate for her, when he noticed that she was now smiling delightedly.
"A friend of mine in college had a roommate who was deaf," she signed and spoke aloud. Her hands were clumsy from rustiness, her pace slow, and her grammar as "Englishy" as it got, but her message came through intelligibly. "After four years of learning, I didn't get much better than this, but I'd be happy to practice on you," she said with a charming grin—though not winsomely gap-toothed like...
He blinked with the effort of forcing Her from his consciousness. Fortunately, Melissa noticed nothing amiss for once.
You sign beautifully, he told her truthfully—after all, was not the effort to communicate with one's fellow humans in itself beautiful?
The session continued in this mode; whenever the well-intentioned but sometimes less-than-fluent counselor mangled a sign beyond comprehensibility, he discreetly picked up her meaning by watching her lips. However, he was able to sit back and relax instead of focusing all his energies on the mere act of conversing. He felt some of the exhaustion lift from his spirit.
"All right," she continued, "back to those nonverbal signals."
He sighed audibly.
"I'm going to theorize that they worked all too well," she averred. "I work with the people in this department every day, Grissom."
He stopped her to show her the name-sign his mother had given him, to save her from the tedium of spelling his name each time she addressed him. She smiled her gratitude.
"With few exceptions, they tend to be intelligent and sensitive."
He thought about Ecklie when she mentioned the possibility of exceptions, and studiously suppressed a smile. She must have caught the glint in his eye, for her own lips twitched for a second.
"Most of them. Anyway, I am going to guess that this description would fit your group?"
He nodded firmly—his reputation of not being one to suffer fools was not exaggerated. What most didn't know was that he cultivated it assiduously.
"The scientists with which I have worked tend to be introverts, more so than the balance of the general population. Sound anything like your CSIs?" she probed.
He nodded again. Her expression encouraged him to elaborate, so he obliged.
"Except for one member of my team who is most certainly anything but introverted, yes, that's the composition of my group."
The amber flecks in Melissa's eyes lighted with her interest.
"Let me guess...you aren't having the same trouble with this member of your team."
Grissom laughed quietly. Maybe all sorts of other trouble, but not the massive withdrawal he was sensing from the other three.
"As a matter of fact, she's been my right hand while I was gone. Not for completely altruistic reasons, mind you..."
Melissa actually smirked.
"You're a biologist," she countered. "You know all about the myth of altruism in the animal kingdom."
He had encountered all the recent debunking of the concept, and frankly, it depressed him.
She was contrite after seeing his expression.
"Sorry," she apologized. He simply shook his head. How could one apologize for telling the truth?
"At any rate, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement," he agreed.
She cut to the chase.
"Okay. You have three sensitive, intelligent introverts. They receive signals they interpret to mean 'leave me alone'. They don't have the persistence—an introvert in a bad mood might call it nosiness—of your only extravert."
He laughed again at this uncannily accurate characterization of his longtime best friend.
"So they retreat behind their own personal walls," she speculated. "After all, don't we as humans—when well-intentioned—have the strong desire to give others what they seem to want?"
His shoulders sagged again. He could see the scenario exactly as she portrayed it. She was kind enough not to put it bluntly, but his own mind did it for him—he had hurt his team deeply with his seeming rejection, then abrupt disappearance. The reason for the aforementioned disappearance had come to them third-hand, revealing a long-held secret that seemed to imply a lack of trust of them. He was lucky that they hadn't refused to work with him altogether, as betrayed as they no doubt felt.
***
Earlier...
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a fiery flash of strawberry-blonde hair. He looked up to meet Catherine's ironic gaze. He slid his reading glasses off his nose and onto the desk; if she were going to speak to him, they would make her face too out of focus to read.
He felt somewhat annoyed as she comfortably settled herself against the doorway, folding her arms, while saying absolutely nothing. After what felt like an eternity—even though logic told him was just a minute—he volunteered with false agreeability,
"Cath, can I do something for you?"
Her grin widened.
"My friend," she drawled, "not this time. You might say I'm here to do you a favor."
She leaned back even further, her intense green gaze unwavering.
He tossed down the slide he had been preparing, irritated beyond concentration. If no one else had any real work to do, he certainly did. And he wanted to get back to it. He stared back at her with a hint of belligerence.
"I'd be afraid to ask what that could possibly be, if it weren't for the fact that I don't have all night to wait," he snapped.
"Ouch," she replied with a mock air of injured feelings. "If it weren't for the fact that you are about to be late to your own staff meeting..." she taunted gently.
With a muttered expletive, his abstracted air disappearing, he scrambled to his feet.
"Thanks, Cath," he said in genuine gratitude, falling into step beside her as she efficiently made her way to the break room. Dr. Al was right about the knees, he thought, apropos of nothing to do with the upcoming trial by fire—er, informal staff meeting.