Two days later Sara was still in the hospital with Grissom. She had briefly gone home to shower and change, and pick up some magazines, but that's all. She didn't want to leave his side. Her overzealous attitude towards work was paying off. Due to her refusal to stay at home and not work for oh, the last three years, she had a lot of vacation time saved up, so she took off a few weeks to stay by his side. She didn't know if he would wake up, but if he did she was going to be there when he did.
She had taken to reading him forensic magazines during the day. She heard somewhere that when a person is in a coma they may still hear what is going on around them. If that was true, she somehow thought that Grissom would be glad that she was helping him to keep caught up on the latest forensic techniques while he was in the hospital. If only she could get him on a roller coaster somehow, then he would have to wake up. She smiled at the odd picture of a hospital bed strapped to a roller coaster car.
When the doctors moved him from the intensive care unit to a regular room she was able to bring in a small radio to play for him, and more books to read to him. The rest of the night shift visited every once in a while, but they seemed to sense that Sara had it all under control, and that she wanted to be alone with him, and they let her be.
Now it was night, and she was starting to feel drowsy. The radio was playing softly in the background.
"If I were a painter, I would paint my reverie, if that's the only way for you to be with me. We'd be there together just like we used to be, underneath the swirling skies for all to see. And I'm dreaming of a place where I could see your face, and I think my brush would take me there, but only…If I were a painter, and could paint a memory. I'd climb inside the swirling skies to be with you. I'd climb inside the skies to be with you…"
She shifted in the chair to rest her head, and closed her eyes. She could just take a little nap; there was no harm in that.
And her dreams were filled with pictures of Grissom. A sort of slideshow of all of the memories that she had of him. She saw him sitting at his desk with a tarantula crawling on his hands. She saw him standing at the base of a building as dummies flew off the roof. Then he was in a lab coat with Dr. Robbins working on an autopsy. Then he was as she first met him, standing at a podium in a lecture hall. She saw him standing by a body at a crime scene, walking down an alley carrying a scarf. He was sitting on a bench beside her at an ice rink talking about baseball and beauty. She saw him sitting behind CSI doing regression formulas on calculations about bugs on a pig. She saw him holding her back from killing a murder suspect. Then he was standing under a bridge with her, staring off into the sky. He was taking his pulse and pacing outside of an apartment building. He was giving Greg that "are you for real?" look; he was giving her that "did you just say what I think you said?" look. She saw him taping her hands together with duct tape. She saw him in a cramped airplane bathroom; "It does have protein in it." He was signing to the principal of a school, he was arguing with the sheriff; he was standing up to the F.B.I. He was looking at her over the top of his glasses. He was standing beside her, patiently waiting for her to find the answer instead of just giving it to her straight away. He was simply standing in the doorway, watching her work. Then he was gone.
She woke up and rubbed her eyes. What a dream. She looked over at Grissom, who was still not awake. Sara sighed and stretched her neck. She hoped he woke up soon.