"Sorry I'm late," Alec chuffed, clapping his hands together, his breath pluming white in the icy cold of Boston in January. "What's up?"

Sara shrugged, her mouth and nose buried in her scarf. She lifted her head briefly to respond. "I only just got here." He had caught her, in fact, walking in the direction of the police tape that cordoned off the alley. Having spoken, she tucked her neck in again and was immediately grateful for the insulation of her scarf.

"Right." He matched her stride for stride as they walked quickly to better warm up. "We're not far from Boston City Hospital, are we?"

She narrowed her eyes in thought, visualizing the maze of Boston's streets. "Two or three blocks over..." Her steps grew faster, and she ducked under the crime scene tape, heading straight for the dumpster the police officers were crowded around.

"CSI. Let me through." She didn't bother to wait for their responses, and shouldered her way through the crowd.

The scarf was suddenly too restricting, and she tore it away from her mouth to breathe. Her lungs seemed to immediately catch on fire as the icy cold raced into her lungs.

Gregory Itzin had been a beautiful baby, and she had her answer - his eyes were gray, like his mother's.

Alec was silent beside her, and she pressed her gloved hand tightly against her mouth, trying to stall the nausea that was rising. No child's skin should be that color, that pale blue from frostbite. No child should be encased in a plastic bag and thrown in a dumpster, either.

Sara lost the fight, and staggered away, shoving through the police officers to lean heavily against the brick wall of the opposite building. A last minute presence of mind kept her from actually throwing up, and instead she heaved dryly, the bile burning the back of her throat and the tears nearly freezing on her cheeks.

Someone's hand was on her back, and she jerked backward, spinning around to press her back up against the wall.

Alec was looking at her with something approaching fear in his eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Why are you being so nice to me?" she snapped. Anger was good - anger was easier. It kept away the other thoughts.

He didn't seem to know what to say to that, but the warmth in his demeanor didn't lessen. He'd been more civil to her over the past two days than the past two months. "Look, this case is hitting you hard. Maybe you should ask Thomas to reassign you."

"This is my case," she spat out. "You just want the solo credit."

Sara could tell that he was holding back anger, and she wondered why. He'd never restrained himself from cutting her down before - usually in public. Finally, he seemed able to form a sentence.

"Maggie told me about what Dr. Grissom said to you...in the hallway," he said bluntly, watching her carefully.

"That is none of your business," she hissed, though inwardly she wanted nothing more than to sag against the wall and sink to the ground. Her past was now the watercooler gossip of Boston CSI. Great. Just great.

Alec held his hands up in surrender and then dropped them back to his sides, his coldness returning. "Fine. Just warning you."

"Consider me warned." She shoved herself away from the wall and headed back to the body.

~*~

"Sara, go home."

She was leaning against one of the autopsy tables, arms wrapped around her ribs, fingers curled around the cuffs of her white lab coat. Mike Pignatelli, the day shift coroner, was weighing the liver of a homicide - multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck. Only the gaping holes in the neck were visible; the rest of the skin was pulled back from the Y incision for the autopsy.

"I heard Thomas give you the night off," he tried again. "When's the last time you slept?"

She shrugged and watched him replace the liver in favor of an appendix.

"We can't do the autopsy for another five or six hours at least. The body..." Mike swallowed hard and set the appendix on the scale. "The body is still too...frozen."

She shuddered, and tried to tighten her arms around her body with no success. "Then there are other things to do. The prints...that nurse that quit the hospital. Helen McGeary."

"Hasn't she disappeared?"

"There will be a paper trail," she retorted.

"That's the police's job," he reminded her unecessarily.

"Trace on the baby," she parried back, willing her body to move. It didn't respond. How long had it been since she'd slept last?

"It's with the blanket. It's...still frozen." His hands were doing something with the victim's intestines. Sara couldn't have said what, exactly; the analytical part of her mind seemed to have left her. "And if you didn't remember that, then you need sleep even more than I thought you did. If you're still here in five minutes, I'm going to call Thomas."

"You'll wake him up."

"It's worth it."

Coroner and CSI stared at each other across the body, and Sara finally pushed off from the autopsy table and left the room.