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Chapter Ten: Matters of Blood
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The phone rang fifteen minutes before he had to leave. He was gathering up socks for laundry, his face already flushed with anticipation for the day ahead of him, and he'd been forcing his body to do busywork for the last hour. Grissom had clocked in almost three hours ago, leaving Greg with the soothing reminder that he would be fine, and that any one of them would be more than happy to help if he wasn't. Greg had showered and dressed early, and was propelling himself around with newfound, nervous energy, eager to get out the door, but not wanting to show up so early that Grissom knew about his longing to return to work.
Later, he would wonder if, having left early, he would have been able to stop everything else.
But the phone rang, and he dropped a cluster of socks onto the armchair and bounded to it, raising it to his ear. "Hello?"
"Hello - - Dr. Grissom?"
He didn't recognize the voice. He balanced himself on the arm of the chair, toying with the phone cord. If the conversation ate up enough minutes, maybe time would hurry itself along for him.
"No, this is Greg Sanders. Grissom's at work - - I can reach him if you want - - "
"Hello, Gregory."
Only one person had ever called him that, especially without being prompted. His hand froze along the cord and his fingers pushed together, as if by pressing down on the cord, he could choke the signal rushing through it and somehow deaden the conversation.
I could hang up, he thought sickly, his stomach unsettled. I could just take the phone away from my ear and put it back down on the receiver - - no one would blame me, and Grissom least of all. He hates my father. They all hate him. And if I don't, I can. They'd let me, because they met him.
Just to swing his arm far enough to drop the phone back on the receiver - - but his arm was lead. He couldn't move anymore.
"Hi, Dad."
Time refused to fly for him at all. It settled in his head, weighty and insistent - - and there was too much of it, too much time, too many broken promises, too many implications, too many accusations, too many years of wanting something and getting nothing, and just too much regret and flayed-open secrets. And had he really been enough of a fool to think that Grissom understood any of this at all? Telling Grissom that his father had called him worthless was the tip of a mountainous iceberg. There was so much more, lingering below in black, stagnant consciousness.
Hate and fear and disappointment. Love and failure. Need and denial.
It all came rushing back into Greg, breaking down all the protections he'd so naively thought he had - - all of the distance and all of the years separating them - - and his father could break that all down with a phone call.
Even when he'd thought he'd needed protection, he'd never thought he would need protection from this.
"It's been a very long time, Gregory. Such a long time."
There was regret in that voice. Regret and assurance. Greg didn't know and couldn't understand why, after so many years, his father would choose to pick up a phone - - not when Greg had extended so many invitations so many times before. He wasn't a child anymore, but when he was, he'd always waited for something like this. Some call, some indication that he was more than a burden, and it had finally come, but he was more terror than joy.
He made himself swallow. His throat felt painfully sore, and the taste in his mouth was bitter.
Like old blood, and that's what we have here, ladies and gentlemen. Old blood. Some of my blood. Blood of my blood. Blood, quite literally, calling to blood.
"Grissom said that you stopped in when I was - - sleeping. So it hasn't been such a long time for you, really. I guess."
Grissom. Grissom would have been able to help him. By the time Greg had frozen to the phone, Grissom would have pried him from it and slammed it into a disconnection. Grissom would have coaxed him into a car and back to work where things were normal, and sane, and where he had been, finally, so close to being happy again.
"It wasn't the same when you were like that," Nathan Sanders said. "Seeing you unconscious, unresponsive - - it hurt, Gregory. It would have hurt any father."
Love and pain and tears and madness.
When had his father ever said he loved him?
"Sure," he said. His vision seemed gray around the edges, like he was fighting to come up from underneath a tidal wave. Of course, with scuba diving, you always had oxygen with you, and he'd never been worried underwater about running out of air. But now, he was breathing so shallow that he might just suffocate in Grissom's living room. "I - - I can get that."
"I was bitter when you were a child. And I held onto that bitterness for so long. Too long."
Greg wondered, fleetingly, if his father were drunk, and decided that not even alcohol would have clouded Nathan's mind or lowered his inhibitions enough to make this call. Whatever else was behind Nathan's inhibitions, there certainly wasn't any kindness.
Doubt and fear and longing and blood.
There was so much blood between them. The blood flows from father and son. The blood demanded love, respect, and nurture. The blood that had seeped through his bandages in the hospital - - the blood that had filled his mouth when he had bitten through his tongue in the parking lot - - the blood that Grissom thought was soiling his hands - - it was Nathan's blood, too.
"I really, really have to go into work, Dad." He wasn't sure that he could make himself talk anymore, but the words were starting to come. "I - - I'm already running a little late." He looked at the clock and saw that he wasn't, but he was close. He needed to throw the phone down and run for the door; drive as fast traffic allowed to the lab. Needed to surround himself with his friends and forget the ominous ties of blood.
"Gregory, please. Give me a second chance."
The time for second chances had been years ago.
There had been second, third, fourth, fifth chances - - there were too
many chances to count, and Nathan had thrown them all away.
But he had never asked for one before.
"Whatever you want." He screwed his eyes shut as if he could block out the nervousness assaulting his senses right along with the light. He tried to speak, but what came out was a strangled, tearful barking noise that sounded something like a laugh. "Why do you even have to ask? You know that you've always been able to have whatever you wanted from me."
"Yes," Nathan said, and there was something in his voice that was unidentifiable to Greg, something sickeningly prideful. Then, in the time it took to blink, it was gone. "You've always been a good boy, Greg. You've always been able to believe in people."
Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me. And I was starting to believe them, too. But you've got your chance, whatever number we're up to now, and if you let me down, I just might go crazy for real. Because this is what it all comes down to, right, Dad? All my years of asking, and you're finally the one who wants something from me.
"I'm staying in a hotel on the Strip. It's called the Siesta Inn. If you could come up - - we could talk."
"Give me a day," he said, horribly aware of the way his voice stuttered on the sounds. "Give me a day to - - to get things together - - before I take off. Things have been rough lately, and if I just disappear, Grissom's going to be worried about me."
He relished the taste of the words. Someone would be worried for him. Someone would be nervous if he just pulled up stakes and left.
"Grissom," Nathan said. It sounded almost like a hiss.
He started to say, "Dad, I'm living in his house," but the words stuck in his throat, and refused to come out. All of the things Grissom had done for him, and when it came right down to it, Greg was a sad defender. The gray around the edges of his vision was turning slowly into black. It was like staring through a tunnel.
"I have to go." He was really going to be late now.
The socks were still in a pile on the chair, but he couldn't think about them right then. The taste like blood in his mouth had grown stronger.
"I'll - - I'll see you tomorrow," he said shakily, and lifted the phone from his ear.
If his father said anything about love, Greg couldn't hear it. He clicked the phone into the receiver and rubbed the sweat away from his brow. He thought that he could hear his own heartbeat pounding away in his chest. He'd stuck a Post-it to the phone three hours before, a yellow little marker with an unusual drawing of a duck and the word for it in Norwegian. He hadn't gotten around to putting up any of the others yet, though he'd had some plans - -
He'd been thinking about sticking one to a coat hanger - -
He could hardly breathe. He tore the Post-it from the phone and crumpled it into his hand.