A/N:   Here's the latest chapter.  It's a little longer than the last two, and I hope that will make everyone happy.  Please read it and please review, if you feel it's worthy.  All of your kind words and support so far are very much appreciated!  Enjoy!

Chapter 7:  Fear

After stopping by the locker room where Grissom quickly changed his shirt and ran a brush through his drying, disheveled hair, Sara walked with him down the hall of the criminalistics building, catching a glimpse of the rest of the team through the glass walls of the break room.  They were all seated around the long table, eating and talking.  When Catherine saw them, she got up right away and stepped into the hall.  "Where have you been?" she asked Sara, concern evident on her face.  "You were gone for a long time."

"Yeah, it took longer than I thought," Sara replied.

Catherine had been more than a little surprised to see Grissom with her.  She had hoped he would still be asleep.  He didn't look well-rested at all.  In fact, he looked worse than before, which was hard from Catherine to fathom.  How could he not be even slightly better by now?  She had thought they had been helping him, but maybe they had done him more harm than good.

Catherine looked up at his face, which was pale, with dusky smudges obvious under his eyes.  "Weren't you able to get any sleep at all?" she asked him.

"I think I slept a little," he answered.  "But then I had…"  He groped for the word to use.  He would feel foolish saying "nightmare," and "bad dream" was too childish, so he finished simply with just, "…a dream."

Catherine knew exactly what he meant and exactly what kind of dream it must have been.  If she had had any doubt, the shadows of fear lingering in his eyes would have made her certain.

He shivered violently, and Catherine guided him into the break room.  "Come on, let me get you something warm.  I boiled water for tea."  She sat him down next to Warrick, poured hot water into a mug, then dropped in a tea bag.  "Drink this," she said, placing the steaming cup in front of him.  She moved her hand up to squeeze his shoulder, surreptitiously placing the backs of her fingers to his neck to check the progress of his fever, frowning at the high level of heat she felt.  She glanced over at Sara, who was kneeling down to put Grissom's half-full bottle of water in the mini-refrigerator.  The dark-haired woman was staring at Grissom as he disinterestedly played with the tea bag in his mug, but after a moment Catherine caught her eye.  "Drink it, Gil," Catherine told him, keeping her gaze locked with Sara's.  "It'll help.  Warrick, why don't you and Greg fill Grissom in on where we are with the case?"

"Sure, Cath," Warrick began.  He turned to the older man.  "First of all, how are you doing, boss?"  The news of Grissom's illness had spread quickly to the rest of the team.

"I've been better," he answered honestly, sipping the tea.  The warm liquid soothed his irritated throat and seemed to calm his still-jumpy stomach, so he tried a larger swallow.  "So, did we get anywhere with the blood?"

"Glad you asked," Greg replied, a huge grin spreading over his face.  "So far, most of the blood matches our female vic.  But Jo-Ann from days just analyzed a batch that contained unknown DNA—from a male."

Grissom's mood picked up a bit at this, and he waited for the young technician to continue.

While the guys talked, Catherine had ushered Sara into the hallway and they were now on their way to Grissom's office where Catherine had stashed the remaining supplies from the drug store.  As soon as they had stepped out of the break room, Catherine had watched Sara's façade of normalcy crack and her intense distress show through.  "So what happened in Brass's office with Grissom?" Catherine asked.

"Nothing," she replied, walking faster.

"Nothing?"

The younger woman stopped abruptly and turned to face her colleague.  "He seriously scared the hell out of me, Catherine."

"Why?  What happened?"

Sara expelled a breath, trying to figure out where to start.  Catherine took her arm and led her into Grissom's office where they sat down on the chairs in front of his desk, facing each other.

After a moment of fiddling with her hands, Sara looked up and began slowly, "As soon as I opened the door, I heard him.  He was…calling out in his sleep.  I turned on the light and tried to wake him.  It didn't work right away.  He was soaked in sweat, Catherine, soaked.  I could feel the heat coming off him.  I almost called an ambulance, but then he sat up all of a sudden.  He was confused and he didn't seem to see me until…until…"

She had to stop for a few minutes to gather her thoughts and distance herself just a little from the emotional memories.  "Once he really woke up and looked at me, I saw something on his face.  It was fear, Catherine.  Grissom was completely terrified.  And seeing him like that scared me just as much.  He grabbed onto me—so tightly.  It was like he didn't want to let go.  I wasn't sure what to do.  I wanted to help him, but I didn't know how."

"What did you do?" Catherine asked, even though she suspected the answer.

"What did I do?" Sara repeated.  "What could I do?  I just…held him until he calmed down.  I held him and talked to him, trying to comfort him, even though my heart was pounding just as hard.  I've never seen him like that before, Catherine, so…vulnerable.  It was frightening."

"I know.  We're so used to him hiding his feelings, keeping them deep inside, that when we do get a glimpse of what he's going through, it's…scary.  Just like you said."  She turned silent for a minute, thinking, and when she spoke again, her voice held a hint of regret, "You know, I think we forget sometimes how much Gil does feel.  Sometimes I think he feels even more than the rest of us.  He just hides it well.  He thinks because he's the boss, the supervisor, he has to hide it, to set an example for the rest of us.  It should be about only the evidence, not our emotions.

"But then we forget why Grissom acts the way he does, and I know we've all said things to him—about him having no feelings or 'personal stuff,' being like a 'robot'—and I know our words have hurt him.  I've seen the pain in his eyes, even though he tried to bury it.  But it still doesn't stop us from continuing to say such horrible things.  We never apologize for what we've said, even when Grissom turns out to be right about everything, which he usually is.  And in spite of that, he just seems to forget about it and then he acts like nothing had even happened.  He treats us the same way as always, with respect and support.  I admire him for that, so much.  But I worry because he keeps everything inside."

Catherine stopped, letting her words hang in the air, as she realized she had drifted quite a bit off topic.  She brought their attention back to what was happening to Grissom now.  "Did he tell you anything about the nightmare, Sara?  About what scared him so much?"

Sara shook her head.  "No, he wouldn't talk about it."

"That's not a surprise."

"Do you think he'd ever be willing to talk about it?  I know it would help.  Do you think we could convince him to tell us?"

"Maybe," Catherine replied, pondering the situation.  Something was beginning to nag at the back of her mind.  This seemed familiar somehow.  "But we can't push him.  He'll only talk to us when he's ready."  Her voice sounded distracted as she tried to grasp onto the distant memory that was tugging at her.

Both women seemed lost in their thoughts for a moment, until Sara broke the silence, "Catherine, have you ever seen Grissom like that?  You know, really scared?"

"Not that I remember.  When he was willing to open up to me, I've seen Gil go through a lot of things—many kinds of emotions—but I don't think I've ever seen him truly terrified.  I used to think that nothing scared him.  Well, except maybe for one of the members of his team being in danger or getting hurt.  That would…"  She trailed off, and then jerked as if something had hit her.  Something had connected, and the wispy memory floating through her brain now solidified and came back in almost complete clarity.

"Wait a minute," she said, leaning toward Sara, "I do remember something.  It was a long time ago, back when I was a rookie.  It was one of my first cases working out in the field with Gil, and we were assigned to a double homicide.  Two women had been discovered in a house, stabbed multiple times.  There was a lot of blood around, I remember."  She stopped as she realized that there was another connection between what happened fifteen years ago and the case they were working on now.  She went on, somewhat amazed at the unexpected correlation she had made, "It's funny, Sara.  I didn't remember it until just now, but there was blood spatter on the walls of that house, too.  Not nearly as much as at the house we worked tonight, but the scene was eerily similar."

She blinked and shook her head, trying to push back her surprise so she could finish telling Sara the story.  "Anyway, I got a glimpse of the house, but before I could see anything else, I was paged back to the lab.  They needed me to process some stuff because the new lab tech was swamped."  She waved a hand between them.  "It doesn't matter.  So, Grissom began working the case alone, but he told me about it when he got back to the lab.  And he kept filling me in as he started piecing it together.  But it didn't take long until he hit a dead end.  I remember that the case bothered him.  I'm not sure why.  He spent hours studying photos of the crime scene in the layout room.  A couple of days after the discovery of the bodies, I was looking for Grissom.  I knew he hadn't been sleeping very much.  Even only having known Gil a short time, I already realized that he shortchanged himself in the sleep department normally.  But I could tell that he probably hadn't slept for more than a few minutes at a time since the case had started.

"When I finally found him, I was kind of shocked—he was face down on the break room table, fast asleep, with the case file spread out around him.  I came up next to him, planning to wake him—gently—when he suddenly jerked awake by himself.  I'll tell you, Sara, I must have jumped five feet when he did that."  Amusement colored her words and she gave the other woman a grin as she remembered the incident—it seemed a lot funnier now than it had been then.  But Catherine quickly turned serious again, her brow kitting, as she recalled the expression on Grissom's face at that same moment.

"That was it, Sara," she continued.  "That was the only time I ever remember seeing Gil seem so scared.  He woke up and looked at me with utter terror in his eyes.  I asked him what was wrong, but he didn't tell me.  He just gathered up everything and walked out of the room.  He never said any more about it, but I knew he must have been caught up in some awful nightmare.  I remember thinking that he probably had been having nightmares since the case began.  That's why he hadn't been sleeping."

Sara was nodding in agreement, her eyes fixed on the floor.  Then she glanced up to meet Catherine's gaze.  "What ever happened with that case?  Did you catch the guy?"

"No.  We never did," she replied gravely.  "Grissom worked on it for a little while longer, but he finally had to give up.  The case got stored away in the 'unsolved' part of the evidence vault, and eventually I guess Grissom's preoccupation with it got 'stored away,' too.  He got back into the rhythm of regular sleep and working on other cases.  I was never aware of him having such powerful nightmares again, at least none that he told me about."

"Do you think the case we're working now has somehow…reawakened that fear in Gris?  Could his nightmares be related to whatever he went through back then?"

"Maybe," Catherine said, continuing to contemplate the idea.  "This case definitely could have reminded him of the other one.  I just can't believe he has to go through this now.  On top of him being so sick, he can't even rest because he's being plagued by these nightmares."

"Yeah," Sara agreed softly.  "Do you know what the first thing he said to me was, after he finally calmed down?"

"He apologized," Catherine replied knowingly.

"Yeah," Sara repeated, slightly surprised at Catherine's certainty.  Then exasperation crept into her tone.  "Why does he do that?"

Catherine shook her head.  "I'm not sure.  For some reason, he thinks he's causing us trouble."

"But why would he think that?  We know he'd do the same for any of us if the situation were reversed."

"Yeah, we know that," Catherine began.  "But I don't think he realizes that we know that."  She took a breath, trying to put her current theory about Grissom's behavior into words.  "We know that Gil cares about us.  I think he feels that he doesn't show us enough.  So he doesn't understand why we're hovering around him and taking care of him.  He thinks he's not worth it."

"Not worth it?" Sara responded, her voice rising as a rush of anger consumed her.  "Is he crazy?"  She calmed down again almost immediately as quiet worry forced out her irritation.  "He doesn't know how special he is…  How can someone so brilliant be so stupid?"

"Good question," Catherine replied, and then suddenly burst out laughing.  Sara soon joined her, the laughter breaking the tension they were feeling for a few minutes.  This certainly wasn't the first time that a comment like that had been made about Grissom, and it was so true.

When their chuckles faded away, Sara pointed out, "Speaking of Grissom, we'd better get back to him."

"Right," Catherine said, suddenly remembering why they had come to Grissom's cluttered office in the first place.  She grabbed a large bottle of pills off his desk.  "We've tried the other fever reducers, and they didn't work.  So why don't we try this ibuprofen?  You said his fever shot up again?"

"Oh, yeah.  He was so hot, Catherine—he was literally burning up."

"I know high fevers are normal with the flu," Catherine began.

"But how high is too high?  I'm worried about the fact that his temperature keeps going up.  When is it time to take him to a doctor or the hospital?"

"I'm not sure," Catherine admitted.  "I mean, I've been through things like this with Lindsey, but it's different with children.  Adults have more of a resistance to high fevers, although at a certain point, it does become dangerous."  After a pause, she added, "I think I'll go find Doc Robbins.  Maybe he can give us some idea of just how sick Gil is and when we should really worry.  I'll see if he or David has a thermometer somewhere—something besides those meat thermometers—so we can find out exactly what we're dealing with."

"All right," Sara said, taking the pills from Catherine's hand.  "I'll go and try to get our 'patient' to eat something."

"Good idea," Catherine replied.  "I got him some soup and rice.  I also had them prepare a special order of plain chicken.  See if you can get him to eat some of that—he needs the protein.  It should all be pretty easy on his stomach."

"I'll do my best," Sara promised.  "Meet you back at the break room?"

"Sure."

The two women parted and went their separate ways.

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