AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a long chapter, instead of the normally short one. Sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend - - I was away. So I uploaded three Thursday instead of just one. Hope that made up for it!
Erin: Wow, thanks! Things are fine at home; I was on my way out the door to a four-day tournament for volleyball, so things were hectic!
Krazy: It is like pulling teeth with you! Anyway, yes I plan on waking Greg up, and have already written past that. Don't get your panties in a bunch and just be patient! Plenty more angst to come. BTW, what I have planned with the format of this story starts shedding some light at chapter fifteen.
Orangebronco: Always a pleasure! I sent you an email about the medical information.
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everyone is on wave three for calling me.
i decided not to go to work today, and i know grissom may be mad at me, but i don't care.
now i have a new routine. instead of spending every breathing moment at the lab or with greg, things have changed.
now i get up, eat a banana or some other small fruit, sit in greg's room until the nursing staff kicks me out around nine thirty, ten o'clock that night. then i go home and watch some home movies of us. i fall asleep doing that, and wake up cramped on the laz-y-boy greg loved so much. then i start over.
i was thinking today that the baby might not be a girl, but perhaps a boy. i already know what i am going to name the baby - - alicia marie sanders or gregory blake sanders jr.
i asked greg what he thinks of the names and if i understood his brain waves right, he agreed with me.
warrick and catherine caught me at the hospital one time while i was sleeping. i hooked up our VCR to the television and kept playing home movies for greg.
i knew he liked it because whenever the video stopped when i switched tapes, his brain waves changes to something much more subtle.
so warrick and catherine found me crying while i watched a movie where all i did was videotape greg doing the basics - - sleeping, brushing his teeth, making breakfast, getting dressed and spiking his hair.
towards the end of that tape were various clips of him in the hospital after the explosion, sleeping like there was no tomorrow. some of the silent ones was greg laying on his stomach in bed, head turned to the right, sheets wrapped around his waist.
you could see his scars when i changed the bandages. how pink and angry and painful the burns looked, trailing from his right cheek down his neck to various patches of burns the size of CDs on his back.
'you and nick were the only ones he showed his burns to,' warrick said silently, making me jump out of my seat.
the two of them stared at me like i was crazy, sitting here with greg, but watching movies of him.
i knew nick and i were the only ones to see his scars. he wouldn't let nick see them at first. but when nick came into the locker room when i was changing the bandages, it is not like they are hard to miss.
i stood up to greet my friends, but i was crying and my knees collapsed under me. warrick caught me in time.
he holds me tight while i cry into his shirt, whispering into my ear like nick did.
at work, when things got tough, greg would come up to me and whisper some racy comment, making me laugh.
work always got easier when i knew i was going home to him.