This is it - - so I hope you have your bets placed and your fingers crossed, and, though this may sound a bit sadistic, I hope you're all wrong.
No offense meant, of course.
Enjoy. There's an epilogue after this, and a few more notes after the end of this chapter.
**
Chapter Eighteen: Inevitable
**
Grissom continued to sign Greg's medical bills for two more weeks. It cost less than he suspected and the payment was less painful than he'd thought. He visited after shifts, often accompanied by at least one other member of the team. They talked into the blank emptiness of the room, and sometimes one of them held Greg's hand, and sometimes one of them cried without noticing - - not weeping, but just a slow trickle of tears that were impatiently wiped away. They brought and left gifts of CDs and hair gel, settling them on the bedside table as if they were offerings to draw Greg from his unerring, relentless sleep. Grissom placed a bag of coffee there one day, noticing how crowded it was growing, and thought the gifts seemed to scream, We're here! We care! Wake up! See how we haven't forgotten about you? See how much we love you?
Sara brought fresh flowers - - daisies. They were gathered in small glass vases about the room, and the slightly green smell seeped through the air. Grissom remembered that she had stroked Greg's hair as they waited, not speaking.
He thought maybe Sara understood that there were few happy endings.
The offerings, the unnoticed tears, and the waiting went on for two weeks. Then, abruptly, he received the phone call that he had been waiting for. Not in the middle of the night, as he had so dramatically imagined. It came quietly, instead, a plain ringing like any other in the middle of his breakfast, and when he answered it, his first thought hadn't been of Greg's condition but of Catherine, who had been working a hot case with him all last shift. Maybe she had found some kind of an unexpected break.
"Grissom," he said.
"Is this Gil Grissom? The Gil Grissom who signed for Greg Sanders's medical bills?" The voice was cool; modulated; precise.
Grissom felt his fingers playing with the phone cord. It was too much. Too much for him to handle, somehow, and he was going to overload and fly into a thousand pieces. He wondered if he really wanted to know what he was about to be told. If he stayed off the realization of Greg's fate, he could still have hope - - and had he really been so arrogant as to think he had felt hopeless before? Now, rushed with anxiety and a horrible, clenching sense of fear, he knew that he had hoped. Despite all of his best intentions and all of his knowledge, he had not been able to accept despair. Hope was the only explanation for the great, teetering unsettlement he felt.
"I'm - - yes. Gil Grissom."
"Greg Sanders entered a new stage a few minutes ago. We haven't awoken him yet, but he's passed out of the coma and into a natural state of REM sleep. As his listed contact - - "
"I'm on my way," Grissom said. He had the phone disconnected before he even noticed, and his toast set, partially eaten, on his plate, ripe with strawberry jam. He had been looking forward to sleep just moments before, and now he was filled with too much energy. He almost tore his coat sleeves working his arms into them. His head spun. Too much, he thought again. Too much happening. Too many sensations. Prickles of light. Far too much for his battered nerve endings to handle.
The drive was a blur. He remembered leaning harshly on his horn, blaring the sound into the clear air and traffic. He didn't feel safe to drive. The rush was driving him crazy - - it was like a sudden shot of cocaine.
He checked in at the hospital and burned shoe leather to Greg's room, but Brenner stopped him right outside. He almost barreled into the doctor - - just boiling off excess adrenaline, and when they clashed it was with the rough, rustling noise of coat fabric brushing against each other. Brenner was the younger man, and he stopped Grissom, holding him off with both hands firm against his shoulders.
"I wouldn't go in there," he said.
Grissom's heart was galloping. He was unsure of his pulse.
"You couldn't wake him," he said. It was a guess. He barely heard his voice outside the roaring inside of his ears.
"We woke him."
A long, low breath came out between his teeth. This was what he had suspected - - he had trained himself to cope with this. The rehearsals had been for this purpose, to calm him when the actual event approached, and it had all been for nothing. He was still soaring from the first call and if he was going to come down, it wasn't going to be gently. He was going to crash, and crash hard.
"What's wrong with him?"
"Physically," Brenner said, "he's fine. The bruises are mending nicely. His stitches have held."
"Mentally?"
"Mentally - - as far as I can tell - - he's also fine. We ran a few preliminary tests - - obviously, not enough to ensure that he still remembers of all the eclectic knowledge that your field of employment demands, but enough to know that he's aware of what year it is. He remembers you and his other co-workers. His vocabulary appears to be adequate."
The puzzle pieces refused to connect. Physically fine. Mentally fine. Grissom didn't care whether or not Greg could remember chemical structures. That wasn't a reason to bar him from the room. This hadn't been rehearsed. He hadn't prepared for this option.
"Then why keep me out?"
Brenner leaned against the door, still the obvious sentry, unwilling to relinquish his post. "Grissom, physical and mental problems aren't all the scars a victim can have. Sanders's emotional position right now is extremely precarious. He remembers - - with great clarity - - what happened to him. We haven't gotten him to talk very much, but he's mentioned dreams. Unusual, for a coma. The things he said about them - - he made them sound horrendous."
"Dipthalamine," he said. He felt disconnected, suddenly. He hadn't remembered. He had forgotten the possibility of Greg's dreams. "He was drugged with a hypnotic prior to his attack."
Brenner nodded. "This isn't rare, Grissom. Sanders knows enough about what happened to know that it's a miracle he's alive. He knows how close he was to death. And if he was drugged with a hypnotic - - or a hallucinogen - - then it's entirely possible that he did dream, and that the dreams were nightmares. This - - his condition - - it's only normal."
Only normal.
"How is he?"
The doctor's smile was weary and crinkled. "What do you want me to say to that?"
"The truth. No bedside manner."
"All right. He's shaken very badly. I'm going to recommend that he be placed on suicide watch for the duration of the week, at least. He may be temporarily unable to differentiate between reality and his own fantasies. I understand that the dreams were very vivid."
"Post-traumatic stress." He'd heard the words before, of course, even used them, but saying them, applying them to Greg, made them strange and awkward, as if they were a complex phrase in a foreign language.
"Yes. In his current condition, it wouldn't be a far leap to catatonia."
Yes. Catatonia. And how had he missed that? How had he failed to consider it? Of course, some part of him still wanted to tell Brenner that his diagnosis was flawed, that it was ridiculous to assume that Greg would simply go quiet and stay that way, because Greg chattered, they'd joked about paying him by the word, no one could ever get Greg to stop talking - - except, apparently, Melissa and Trey. And he wanted to add that they had fought for him, that they had driven Nathan away not out of concern or out of disgust but out of a now apparent sense of proprietary pride. He wanted to tell Brenner, with his worry-lines and his shining white coat, that Greg belonged with them, and that they had fought for him because they had known that.
"I understand," he said, instead. He kept his voice as calm as possible. "May I go inside now?"
"Try not to agitate him." It was a cautionary warning, and with it, Brenner peeled back from the door and stood in the hall. "I'll wait out here," he said, when Grissom turned to see him. "I - - I know that you'll want some privacy. But if I think anything's going wrong - - "
"You'll come in. Yes."
He opened the door and stepped into the room. It still smelled green from Sara's daisies. Greg was sitting on the edge of his bed. One bare foot was slung over the end, and it bumped in relentless rhythm against the metal leg supporting the mattress. The curtains were pulled back and the room was glowing golden. Shafts of light had lit up Greg, highlighting his newly-pale skin and making it shine. The hospital gown looked thin; flimsy.
"Greg," he said, and found himself unable to say anything else. It was as if his throat had closed off some vitally important channel to his voice box.
Greg turned mechanically. The bruises across his face were fading, but still present - - lit up by the sun, they were an illuminated tapestry of abuse.
"Someone cut my hair." His voice was flat, unemotional. He ran a hand through the new, short version. "Stitches, I guess. Hello, Grissom."
"Greg," he said again. He stepped closer. The sound of his leather soles against the tile was embarrassingly loud in the tiny room, though it never had been before. Now it sounded like a far too audible clapping. His mind attempted to focus on something - - anything at all. Greg was looking at him somewhat blankly, not as if he didn't understand, but as if he didn't care.
"Dr. Brenner says my father was here."
He found his words with a startlingly harsh, "Your father's an ass."
"Of course he is. Why do you think I left? And my mom?"
Grissom frowned. This was not the conversation he had been expecting, but he was forced to carry it nonetheless. "He said that your mother was shopping, in Florida."
"She might be. He doesn't know." Greg shrugged. "He lost her. And he hates losing things."
"He lost you."
"He found me. I'm just glad I was in a coma for that part."
"Greg - - don't - -"
"Pretend like it didn't happen?" His face was suddenly twisted, the emotionless glaze gone, and it was ripe with pain - - so vibrantly feeling and so anguished that Grissom wanted to step away from it. "Is that what you want me to do? I - - Grissom, I trusted her. I took her out once and I would have taken her out again. I followed her into the alley because I thought that she was upset. I was trying to help. And then - - everyone hitting me. Everyone - - hurting me. And I never even saw it coming. I guess that's a pretty good sign that I shouldn't take up fieldwork after all."
Grissom touched Greg's shoulder but the young man recoiled. "You aren't allowed to blame yourself for this."
"I dreamed," Greg said. "I dreamed so much."
He felt himself nod. "Melissa Sharpe
drugged your drink with dipthalamine.
It's a hypnotic. Hallucinogenic."
"Just a rush of chemicals going through my head," Greg said, smiling. The smile was pale, washed-out, and empty again. He pulled his hand up to gesture at his bedside table. "Someone bought out Wal-Mart, and someone else brought daisies."
"The flowers are Sara's."
"I should have guessed that. Do you know what it's like, to dream without stopping for weeks? To have one nightmare, and then another, and then another?" His foot moved relentlessly against the leg of the bed. His toes curled around the metal. "Did I look peaceful to you?"
Greg didn't wait for an answer - - he just turned again to direct his gaze out the window, onto the streets of Las Vegas. Grissom could see his reflection, eyes tracking the traffic below.
"It hurts so much," Greg said. His voice was barely there. "And I don't understand."
He touched Greg's shoulder again, but that time, Greg didn't jerk away as quickly. He leaned back, instead, letting his back be cradled slightly by the bow of Grissom's arm.
"You have us now," Grissom said. "We're going to make sure - - that you're okay."
"What if I can't be okay again?"
I'll rehearse for that, Grissom thought. I didn't prepare for all the options before, but I'll get them right this time. I'll eliminate all of the possible paths until I'm sure that I'm ready for everything.
"You will be," he said aloud. "We'll take care of you. I'll take care of you. Because we're a family."
"I ran away from my family."
Greg's shoulders were tight and Grissom didn't know how to help him. He just held the boy by the tense muscles and waited for something further. Tears, or a confession. He received neither.
"You can't run away from us," Grissom said. "We'd be able to find you."
"I don't want to run this time." Greg had finally started to react. Grissom could see in the window that his eyes were glassy with tears. "I just don't know what to do." His mouth quirked gently. "The lab blowing up - - that was nothing compared to this. I don't know what I'm going to do," he said again. "I don't know how to pick up the pieces."
"We're going to help you," Grissom said.
What kind of champions would we be? What is it that I deserve?
A single tear had started to slid down Greg's profile. "That's not your job."
"It's my responsibility. We care about you. Look around the room and tell me that you can't see that we were here. Every day, someone stayed with you. We kept - - hoping."
"Even you?"
"Even me," he said, thinking of his stomach lurch when the call had finally come.
"I don't feel like trusting anyone, Grissom," Greg said quietly. "I'm sorry. I know that you were here. But I can't help it. I don't want to have to believe in anyone right now."
"You don't have to trust me, Greg." He continued to hold Greg's shoulder, in a tight clench that was almost a hug and almost an anchor. He was holding off comas and bad dreams, and he didn't know or care how hard he was pressing. He thought that maybe, with enough pressure, he could hold Greg so tightly that things would rewind and that, if he didn't let go, Greg wouldn't have to get hurt.
They watched the sun crawl over the horizon. Time didn't turn backwards.
He wondered if this was his happy ending.
**
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**
Raise your hand if you're surprised. I was trying for a marginally happy ending, if such a thing is possible, and yes, this does contain the set-up for the sequel. I'm still debating a title for that, but the epilogue notes will probably have that and all other pertinent upcoming-events info.
In the meantime, cheer, because this is no longer a Greg story with no Greg.
