Sara was standing at the hospital room window, arms crossed in front of her chest, watching the sunrise. The pinks and purples of the morning sun were reflecting in her brown eyes, which were glistening with tears, just short of spilling down her cheeks. She looked over her shoulder at Grissom, lying motionless on the bed behind her. God, it was so hard to see him like this. She thought, as she flopped back down into the chair that she had just about lived the last week of her life in. She pulled her knees up to her chest and let out one shaky, ragged sigh. She was so physically and mentally exhausted that she didn't even have the energy to cry properly anymore. She squinted her eyes shut and buried her face in her knees.
Time passed. Maybe it was an hour, or four hours, or more. Being in one room for just about a week straight was very disorienting to her internal clock. She wasn't sure if she had been asleep in the chair, or just lost in thought, but a noise across the room pulled her back into the present, and she looked up. Grissom had a roommate. Somehow she had failed to notice the hospital staff bring another patient into the room.
"Good morning, child," came a deep baritone voice.
"Morning," she replied, unfolding herself from the cramped chair and standing to stretch. She looked over at Grissom who had not moved or changed at all.
"Is he your husband?"
"No," she said. "We work together." Sara looked across the room at the new arrival. He appeared to be in his seventies, coarse gray hair and wrinkled, kind eyes. He looked like the perfect old grandpa to be sitting on the front porch in a rocker on a muggy summer evening.
"Oh," he said. "It is quite dedicated for you to sit here with him. The nurses tell me that you haven't moved from this room in days."
Sara looked down at her wrinkled clothes. She knew she must look like hell. "Yeah, well, I just…"
"Are you ok, child?"
"Me? I'm fine. I've just been sleeping in that chair for a week, that's all."
"Are you sure that's all?"
Sara looked confused. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no reason. By the way, my name is Robert White. You can call me Bobby." He extended his hand to Sara.
She smiled at the incongruity of the youthful name for the old man. "I'm Sara. Sara Sidle."
He returned her smile. "What happened to your friend?"
Her smile faltered as she looked back at Grissom on the bed. "He was in a car accident. He was driving back from out of town and he fell asleep at the wheel."
"The desert can do that to anyone. Me? I've survived a few car accidents in my day. Of course, when I first started driving cars couldn't go nearly as fast as they do today. Sometimes it's a wonder people survive to retire."
"I suppose," she said. "What happened to you?"
Bobby laughed at her directness. "My, you don't beat around the bush, do you? Well, I suppose you could say that I am just wearing out. Ninety-nine years is a long time for my ticker to keep ticking."
"Ninety-nine? I wouldn't have guessed you were more than seventy-five!"
"Well thank you! Thank you very much! But I wouldn't want to be seventy-five again. I was young and stupid then."
Sara smiled. Despite her normally reclusive nature, it was nice to have someone to talk to again. "I know all about being young and stupid."
"Oh, you don't look like the stupid type to me."
"You'd be surprised."
"Really? Tell me one stupid thing that you have done."
"Well, when I was five I super-glued the finders of my left hand together," Sara mused, smiling at the thought. Boy did that hurt. She had been trying to build some experiment; she didn't remember exactly what anymore.
"How about we stick to adult life?" Bobby said.
Sara again looked over at Grissom. "I asked him out to diner once."
"Now what could be wrong with that?"
"He said no. He said he didn't know what to do about us. Ever since then things have been strained between us. We used to be so close. We worked together and moved through our days totally in sync. We flirted…we were close once. But I ruined that."
"How do you know you ruined it?"
"Because I went too far. I spoke the unspeakable. I broke the unspoken rule of keeping our friendship platonic, nothing beyond some loaded flirting." Her eyes misted over again as she looked as Grissom. She fought to keep control, to not cry again. "I just want him back the way that he was. Even if I can't be with him, I just want him back in my life somehow. I have spent the last few months missing him when he was right in front of me."
"Have you told him this?" came the soft question from behind her. Sara had almost forgotten that she had someone else in the room with her.
"No, he doesn't listen. He just analyses and over thinks everything."
"He might listen now. It's not like he can get up and walk away."
Sara smiled despite her grief. Maybe she could talk to him now. Maybe now was the time to sort out all of the complicated emotions flowing around inside of her? Maybe this was a turning moment in her life; a second chance to fix things.