To Die in Las Vegas

Somehow, after everything that had happened, I felt better.

After that night in the drying room I was whisked off to hospital, despite my feeble protests. Fortunately my face had required no stitches, though I sported a sizeable bandage for the better part of two weeks that made me look like Michael Jackson post-surgery. I went in to work anyway, because I am a dedicated and driven individual.

Well, not really. At this point, I just didn't have anything else.

I placed a couple of calls when I got out of hospital. I felt like I should. After all, when you're nearly killed by a deranged co-worker, your friends have a right to know, right?

I caught up with my best friend, Isabel, over the weekend. She was surprised that I had been the one to call her. She rocked up at 12am with champagne and a hot water bottle. How she had known I would need these things is still a mystery to me.

"Oh my gawd," she gasped as I opened the door. "Your face!"

Isabel was tall, blonde, and cosmetically-enhanced beautiful. She was also a fellow graduate from UNLV, but that was a small and insignificant fact. Last I heard she was working in some chemical plant or other, helping manufacture nuclear weapons. (Okay, perhaps not nuclear weapons, but it was something like that.)

I invited her into my decimated house. I had not cleaned for what felt like weeks, and I wasn't about to.

"Darling, you couldn't have called me at a better time," Isabel cooed as she fussed over my bandaged appearance. I hadn't told her what had happened over the phone as I suspected she wouldn't believe me. As we sat down to glasses of champagne and cheesecake, I told her everything that had occurred since I started work at the LVCL.

"So, this Nick guy," she said once I was finished. "Is he good looking?"

I smiled. I had figured this would be Isabel's reaction. Never mind the whole nearly-being-shot part, was the guy hot? "He's..." I searched for words. "Really, really, really ridiculously good looking."

Isabel grinned. "Worth it, then?"

"Worth nearly getting my head blown off by a crazed psychopath?" I paused, considering. "Oh yeah. Definitely."

We spent the rest of the afternoon gossiping about old college buddies, giving each other pedicures, and doing girly stuff I hadn't done for ages. It felt really good.

When Isabel left I sat in her perfumed wake, thinking. Did I really want this life, full of death and misery and crazy people? Did I really want to get involved with a guy who examined dead bodies for a living? Did I, when it came down to it, really want this?

Oh, hell yeah.

Full of resolve and goodwill towards all of mankind, I did the thing that I should have done a long time ago but put off for fear of scaring my cat.

I cleaned my house.

I went into work on Wednesday. Grissom had insisted on giving me a couple of extra days off, in light of me nearly being killed and all. Fido was happy to see me home, and I actually managed to get some sleep, not to mention my impromptu spring cleaning. (It was still winter, but the point was, I cleaned.)

Mandy had been arrested and put away on charges of attempted murder and assault. I was still amazed she had sent those letters – Mandy had always seemed sane, if not the nicest person in the world. It turned out she'd been on Xanax for manic depression, and had neglected to take it for quite a long time, which exacerbated her unstable state of mind. That, and her secret obsession for Nick, had set her off when she saw us together.

It turned out Mandy had, as I suspected, used the Kimberson Kosmetics nail polish remover. Brass had discovered Mandy had purchased the stuff online, and had promptly swung into action. He'd gone to the break room and told Nick, who was horrified, as I'd gone off with Mandy just five minutes earlier. And so Brass had grabbed a few uniforms, Grissom, Catherine and Nick accompanying them, and rushed off to the drying room...right in time to save my life.

I was still sporting the bandage on my face and my lip was pretty swollen, but I managed to make it look just like a bad Botox job with some concealer and lipstick. Even Hodges looked sympathetic when I rocked up to the Trace lab at 7:30am sharp. He was just going home, though, so I didn't need to deal with him staring at me and making disapproving noises.

I busied myself running a sample from one of Day Shift's cases through the mass spectrometer. Operating the machine was familiar and easy, the one comforting thing about being back at work.

I vowed never to go in the drying room again.

I was concentrating deeply on trying to identify a fibre from another case when I heard someone clearing their throat. "Hodges, I thought you went home," I said, not looking up from the microscope. "Haven't you got better things to do than to hang around here annoying me?"

"No, actually," said an all-too-familiar voice. I jerked away from the microscope as if the eyepiece had burned me, and swivelled to look up at Nick Stokes.

"Hi," I said timidly, all-too-aware of the disfiguring bandage on my face and my puffy lip. "I thought you were Hodges."

"I realized that," Nick said, smiling down at me benevolently. "How you feeling?"

"Like I was run over by an industrial steamroller," I said truthfully, "But otherwise okay. You?"

"I'm good," he said, walking over to me. I flinched as he brushed a lock of hair away from my face to look at my bandaged face. "I'm just glad you're okay."

"Me too," I said. "Glad that I'm okay, I mean. And glad that you're okay." I paused. "You know, you sort of saved my life. Mandy would have shot me if you didn't intervene."

Nick grabbed the chair that Hodges usually sat in and parked himself across from me. "Hey, all in a day's work," he said.

"Speaking of that, it is daytime," I replied, glancing at my watch. "Shouldn't you be at home?"

"I'm pulling overtime," Nick said. "A new case rolled in last night; a triple. Grissom has us all working around the clock."

"And still you took the time to visit me," I said. "That's sweet." I grinned a parody of what I had nicknamed the Stokes' Shit-Eater.

"Come to dinner with me," Nick said unexpectedly. It wasn't an unwelcome question.

"When and where?" Tell me and I'll be there, stud, I thought in a bad Texan accent, holding back the laughter.

"Tonight, 8'o'clock. I'll pick you up."

"What about the case?" I gave Nick a sideways look. I wanted to have dinner with him, but no way was I going to bring down the wrath of Grissom for stealing away one of his CSIs.

"You'll be the only case I'm working on tonight." Nick smiled. I laughed. The line was so lame, but it worked. I was sucked in. Maybe it was his eyes. No, I thought. It's the grin. Definitely the grin.

"I look awful," I said. I really didn't know why I was protesting so much.

"No you don't."

"Fine, I won't argue with you, Stokes," I said, holding up my hands in defeat. He looked triumphant.

"8 o'clock, then?"

"Sharp and pointy," I agreed. Nick stood and kissed the top of my head. I felt a blush start at my neck and work its way upwards as I wondered if anyone had seen Nick's PDA. Well, it wasn't like half the lab didn't know we were together now, was it?

Together. Yeah, I liked that word.

"See you at eight, rookie," Nick said as he made his way towards the door. I threw a pen at him, and he turned and gave me a hurt look as it bounced off the back of his head. I laughed and waved at him, and with a final flash of that damn grin, he was gone.

Despite the fact I'd almost been killed, things were looking up in the land of Sadie.