Sara was in her car on her way home from work when the call came across the scanner. Single car rollover accident in the desert just outside Vegas. She didn't really think much of it until a second police officer came on the scanner.
"Dispatch, this is officer Stevens, 892. I recognize the driver. It's Gil Grissom, he works for the crime lab, a CSI." Sara felt her blood freeze solid in her veins. She felt like she was frozen in time, unable to move or breathe. A giant weight had settled on her chest, and time seemed to stop, the whole world went quiet and faded into the background. The honking of a car horn was what pulled her back to reality. The light was green. She drove through the intersection and pulled into the first parking lot that she came to and turned around. Forget work, it was her day off anyway. She was going to the hospital.
Since the accident was a ways out of town, and she was right by the hospital when she heard the call, she beat the ambulance there. She wished that she hadn't. After an agonizing fifteen minute wait, she saw the ambulance pull up, and the paramedics take the stretcher out of the back and jog into the emergency room. He had on a neck brace and backboard, which were holding him still so as to not make his injuries worse than they already were. He was absolutely covered in blood. His hair was matted to the side of his head, an apparent head trauma the cause of that pile of blood. His beard was a dark maroon color from the drying blood. His skin was definitely whiter than it should be, the parts of it that she could see. Most of his face was obscured by the oxygen mask that the paramedics had strapped to his face. She could see that his eyes were closed, but he wasn't dead. Everyone was too busy working on him, he must be alive. She had to believe that much.
The paramedics whizzed by her and into the nearest trauma room, and she followed. The doctors and nurses moved around her in a blur of activity. They were too busy to notice her, so she just stayed back and out of the way. She watched his limp, pale hand sitting on the white hospital sheet. They hooked him up to machines, they cleaned out wounds, and they did an ultrasound to look for internal bleeding. When one of the machines flat lined the tears started streaming down Sara's face, but she didn't even notice. She continued to stare at his hand. The paddles came out and they shocked his heart, making his body tense and arch off the table. But nothing happened. Another shock, another moment of tense muscles and he arched off the table. Small blips reappeared on the screen, and Sara once again began to breathe. She hadn't realized that she had been holding her breath. She heard one of the doctors call for a surgical consult. She cringed inwardly at the thought of him being cut open. Ten minutes later he was on his way up to have surgery to stop the internal bleeding. Sara sat in the family waiting room, barely moving an inch the entire time. When the madness of the emergency room had passed and the doctors realized that she wasn't family they had tried to keep her out, but she had refused. She would have handcuffed herself to the bed if necessary. When Sara put her mind to staying put, she was staying put.
When he came out of surgery he was finally stable. After a stay in the recovery room he was placed in the intensive care unit. The nurse there was nice enough to ignore the fact that she was not family and let her stay in the room with him. He was in a coma; he didn't even know that she was there.
She reached over and took his hand in both of hers. It was warm to the touch. She took comfort in the feel, knowing that he was still alive. She had seen and touched a lot of dead bodies in her life, and this was nothing like that. He was alive. She just had to keep telling herself that. She reached up and brushed a stray tear off her cheek. He was going to be all right, she knew it. He just had to be.