Sara fiddled with the knobs of the microscope slightly, bringing the fiber into clear focus. Organic fiber - hemp, probably. She'd have to send it down to trace to be sure. At any rate, it matched the heft and weave of the fiber she'd pulled from the shoes of their suspect, which meant she had placed him at the crime scene.
Her pager chose exactly that moment to go off; Thomas wanted her in his office to pick up the info on an suspected rape, and then to go process the victim at Beth Israel. Time-sensitive evidence; Sara cleaned up as quickly as she could and was shouldering her way out the lab door when Marianne, the swing shift supervisor, called her name from further inside the lab.
"What is it?" Sara asked the older woman, and shifted her weight impatiently.
"There have been some scheduling issues with Day 5," Marianne told her, brandishing a sheet of paper. Sara glanced at it, but couldn't read anything that was printed on it; the other woman was waving it too rapidly. "I need you to sign off on this and then pass it on to Carl to work around the problems."
"Look, I've got to go - I trust you, make whatever changes need to be done. We'll go over them later, okay?" Without waiting for a response, she took off at a jog, heading for Thomas's office.
"Sara!" Marianne yelled after her, and Sara waved behind her back as she rounded the corner.
"I came as quickly as I could," she told Thomas, leaning in his office. He looked up from the form he was filling out and gestured for her to enter.
"I can see that," he observed mildly, raising an eyebrow at her slightly accelerated breathing. "Victim is a student at BU, Morgan Hayes." He passed her the sheet.
"And she's at Beth Israel...why? Doesn't BU have its own health center?" Sara scanned the sheet quickly.
"It was closest," he responded simply, and Sara ground her teeth. Something told her there was evidence that would soon remove the prefix "suspected" from the charge.
"I'm gone," she said, and spun on her heels to exit at the same jog she'd entered.
"Dr. Coriander!" Sara stood on her toes to try to flag down the serologist's attention. Tall as she was, the businessman in front of her was still taller and was wearing a cap against the cold. Frustrated, she pushed her way past him.
It was no longer holiday season, but Boston's Logan Airport was still incredibly busy, and fully half of those waiting at the gate seemed to be carrying placards indicating they were waiting for passengers travelling to the area on business. The one Sara was holding up to wave to Dr. Coriander had the logo developed for their colloquium in the upper right corner, "Dr. Megan Coriander" in the center, and the logos of Harvard, MIT, and Boston Criminalistics arranged along the bottom.
"Sara!" Megan recognized her and waved back, maneuvering her rolling carry-on awkwardly around the turnstiles. "You didn't have to come meet me yourself."
Sara grinned and reciprocated a kiss on the cheek. "Are you kidding? I had to draw straws with Thomas and Carl."
The other woman laughed and shook her head, slinging her arm around Sara's shoulder as they made their way to the baggage claim area. "That Thomas. Did I ever tell you he once thought himself madly in love with me?"
"Megan!" Sara returned, mildly embarassed, and couldn't help but laugh. There was something about Megan Coriander that blended elegance, blunt honesty, and pure brilliance to make her one of the most fascinating and charismatic people Sara had ever encountered.
"Yes, well, young forensics investigators in love," Megan replied with a melodramatic sigh. "It was destined not to be. I lost him to serial killers and he lost me to blood spatter."
The moving luggage counters sputtered into life just as they arrived, and they stood next to each other amid the crowds of other people who had arrived from San Francisco on the same flight. They were silent for a few moments as everyone around them chattered with their newly reunited friends and loved ones.
"How are you, Sara?" Megan finally asked, her tone serious for the first time since she'd disembarked from the plane.
Sara stuck her hands in the back pockets of her corduroys and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?"
"Because we - "
"Care about you," Sara finished for her. "I'm going to have the words 'I'm fine' engraved somewhere permanent and clearly visible."
"Still so private," Megan mused.
Sara was incredibly tempted to fire back "Still so nosy," but exercised better judgement and pressed her lips together carefully to prevent the words from escaping.
"Go ahead, Sara, say it," was Megan's dry comment. "I dare say I deserved it. I'm not sorry to pry, but I am sorry that it pains you."
"Water under the bridge," Sara replied with forced ease.
"Hmmm."
Another few moments of silence followed, and then Megan leaned over to snag her dark red suitcase as it came by, lifting up and over with a graceful gesture.
"I am somehow not surprised that you have red luggage," Sara commented, picking up the suitcase before the other woman could shift her carry-on to grab it. A subject change was in order, or it would be a long ride to the hotel.
The serologist laughed. "I am the job, and the job is me, as they say? And I'm not yet so far advanced in age that I can't carry my own bag."
"No, you're not," Sara agreed, but didn't relinquish her hold on the bag. "Is that yours, too?" she asked, pointing to the red garment bag coming by at that instant. At Megan's affirmative, she reached over and pulled it out, hefting it over her shoulder and picking up the suitcase with her other arm. "I've got my car parked in the garage. Would you rather go straight to the hotel or to the labs?"
Megan raised a chastising eyebrow. "You have to ask?"
"Megan!" Carl leaned over to give a few last-minute instructions to Carrie, the day shift DNA analyst, and came forward to shake Megan's hand and kiss her on the cheek warmly. "It's been years."
"Far too long," Megan returned with an answering smile. "How are Julia and the children? Robbie must be what - in high school by now?"
"He graduates next year," Carl said proudly. "He's looking at Bowdoin. And Lizzie starts high school next year."
"Time flies," Megan murmured, shaking her head with a half-smile. "You have a good setup here," she commented, looking into the DNA lab and through the glass walls to the labs beyond.
"We hope to crack the top five next year. I'd love to show you around - " His pager chose that instant to go off, and he read its message with a frown " - but it looks like I've got a crime scene waiting for me. Home invasion in the Back Bay. Maybe Sara..."
"Go," Megan waved him off, "I can explore by myself. I wouldn't want to keep Sara awake any longer than she already has been."
"Hm?" Sara snapped back to attention; she had backed off to a discreet distance to let the old friends converse and had been mentally cataloguing her to do list over the last few days before the colloquium. "I'm sorry, I was out of it for a second there."
"Go home. Sleep," was Carl's order. "I'm heading to the Back Bay. Megan, good to see you again. Thomas is in on overtime today; be sure to stop by his office and say hello. We'll catch a bite to eat later..." His paper sounded again, shrilly. "...and I really have to go. Bye!" He waved over his shoulder as he took off down the hallway.
"Carl's right, you should go home," Megan said, turning on Sara, who had leaned cross-armed against the wall. "How long has it been since you've slept?"
"A while," Sara replied vaguely. "I'm fine. Where do you want to start?"
Before Megan could answer, one of the day shift CSIs passed the two women and did a double take. "Sara?" Kevin asked, looking at her with narrowed eyes. "You just come from Logan?"
"Yes..." Sara replied, confused. "I picked Dr. Coriander up."
"That's...weird..." Kevin said slowly. "Carl just had me pick someone for the conference up because he said you were home sleeping and he didn't want to bother you."
Sara spread her hands apart and shrugged; there was really no way she could answer that beyond the obvious, that it didn't really make sense but it was done now.
"Huh." Kevin furrowed his forehead, and then shook his head quickly, as if to clear it of the misleading thoughts. "Whatever. Miscommunication or something. I'll see you around."
"Yeah," Sara agreed, slightly uneasy for some reason. "See ya."
Thomas's door was closed when they arrived, and they could hear his muffled voice from where they stood in the hallway. Sara shrugged. "He's with someone, I guess. I'll take you through the lab a bit more and we'll come back later. You should see our chop shop - it's huge!"
Megan shook her head at the younger CSI. "Only you, Sara. Only you."
"I happen to like the automotive work," Sara snarked back, and took a few steps in the direction of the CSI garage before the door to Thomas's office opened.
"Sara! Megan!" Thomas stood in the doorway and beamed. "You were just going to walk by?"
"You were with someone," Sara told him while Megan launched herself into Thomas's arms for a hug. "We were going to come back later."
"Nonsense," Thomas said. "Just an old friend, in town for the conference. We were nearly finished." Releasing Megan, he returned to his office and picked up the phone. "I'll call Kevin to have him bring you to your hotel," he told whoever was sitting across the desk from him; the doorway obscured Sara's view.
Megan pushed the door open further to enter the office first, and Sara followed - bumping her nose hard against Megan's back when the other woman stopped abruptly. "Ow, Megan, what are you - "
The door finished its swing, and Sara got a clear glimpse of the other man in the office.
"Grissom," she breathed.