She stood on top of the roof and wondered why she was there. She didn't come up much; she didn't have the time. Work, Lindsay, and sleep. Eat and pee somewhere were in there too. Sex should have been but lately she hadn't been getting much of that. Work, Lindsay, and sleep. That was her life. She didn't have the time to do anything else.
Not that it was a totally bad life, but Jesus, did it suck sometimes. Just a few short months ago, Eddie had been killed. Murdered, by either his skeezy girlfriend or some punk drug dealer. She was a CSI. It was her job to put people behind bars for murdering others. And when her ex- husband had died, who had she put behind bars? No one. No evidence. No clue. Nothing.
Lindsay had seemed to take the death of her father okay, as normal as anyone could take something as horrible as that, but sometimes she wasn't sure. The death of a parent could make a child grow up awfully fast. She didn't want her little girl to be grown up just yet. She was still only nine years old. Nine is far too young to be grown up.
Nick was nine, she thought to herself and shuddered. Who could that do that to a little child?
She feared for her daughter more than anything else in the world. Everytime she saw a case that hurt a child she instantly thought of Lindsay and was terrified for her. She never wanted her to grow up. She wanted her to be a little girl forever so she could keep her at home and protect her.
But had she really protected her? When Eddie died, it was Lindsay comforting her, not the other way around, the way it was supposed to be. When the father died, the mother was supposed to help the daughter. She could hit herself for making Lindsay have to say, "It's going to be okay, Mommy." Lindsay wasn't supposed to be the mature one. Only nine!
She'd like to use the whole Eddie situation as an excuse for being distracted that one day when she left an explosive chemical near the hot plate but she couldn't. She just hadn't checked to see if the hot plate was on. She had no reason to think it was. . .oh, this was pathetic. She had just been stupid. She just wasn't thinking.
She blew up the lab.
It might have been funny, being the chick who blew up work on accident, but the thirteen unsolved cases that would never be solved because of her wasn't very funny at all. Neither was Sara with a concussion or Greg Sanders on a stretcher with burns all over his back. Greg, who could have died. All because she wasn't paying attention.
When she found out that it had been her fault, she went to Greg. She had to tell him, to have him know. She didn't want to. Not that Greg and her would ever tell each other their deepest, darkest secrets, but she did like the little lab rat, and she'd never want harm to come to him, certainly not because of her. The lab just wouldn't be the same without him dancing around to screaming music with a latex glove on his head. It just wouldn't be right.
She had feared Greg's reaction. Greg didn't have much of a reaction. He had just stared at her, prompting her to ask him, "Greg?"
Greg had just said, "Okay."
He didn't seem to blame her. He talked to her later like nothing had ever happened. But she couldn't ask him if he blamed her. He would have told her no. She didn't think he would tell the truth.
She shook her head. That should have been enough. Eddie dead, Greg hurt because of her. That should have been enough.
But Sam. . .
He was like a surrogate father.
Instead, he was a real father.
And a murderer.
It was too much.
Far, far too much.
She stepped away from the edge of the roof and looked at the sky above. It was blue skies, not a cloud in sight, the kind of day people always seem to be looking for. She wasn't looking for it. She just wanted some calmness, some clarity. It could rain until the next millenium for all she cared.
God, what a life. A good life. She loved her daughter more than the whole world; Lindsay was the continuous joy throughout all her days, the blue skies that everyone was looking for. She loved her job and the satisfaction it gave her, the King-Kong-on-Cocaine rush. She enjoyed talking with her friends and co-workers: Nick, and his All American boy charm, Warrick, and his depth under Vegas cool, Sara, and her diligence and passion to everything in life, her absolution to the way the world worked. Grissom, and the way his world worked, where truth always brings inner peace, and where bugs crawled the Earth as kings. Grissom, going deaf because of some bad gene work.
God, what a life. A good life. But, oh, how it sucked sometimes.
She wondered what she was doing up here on the roof again. Just yesterday, she had seen Nick up here, looking down at the world, thinking about whatever Nick Stokes thought about it. She wondered how often everyone came up here to get away. It was nice to get away. Necessary. Feel the blue, blue skies and the calmness in the storm.
She sat down on the roof and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her face. She could stay up here for awhile and think. No one needed her downstairs. She could just relax and be the calm in the storm.
People often compared life to a hurricane. Those rare moments of stillness were just that: moments. They would never stay. Life was always tossing you up and down like a rag doll in the air. You had no control. You were a mere twig in the storm.
Eh. Who needed to be the whole storm, anyway? She was happy where she was. . . calm for a moment, a single twig in Las Vegas.