Disclaimer: CSI trademarked product, no infringement meant or implied.
Author: hazeleyes57
Title: I'll never tell.
Rating: R for subject matter.
Author's note: I have only seen up to the end of Season 4, so I haven't seen any screen explanation for Sara's drinking, and can only guess that it's tied up with Grissom. This is my take on it. P.S. Last Chance (18) has not been forgotten, but this wouldn't go away.
I'll never tell.
Just an ordinary piece of white plastic. It looks perfectly innocent, but its simplicity hides an inner complexity that will reveal my fate. I have only thirty seconds to wait, but the mind is a wonderful thing, it can make time fly or stand still. While my body waits, my mind flies back. Back to that wonderful, terrible morning.
I was watering my plant. I have called it Gil. It helps me see the funny side when I think to myself, 'I have to feed Gil', or 'I have to water Gil', 'I wonder if Gil needs his soil topping up'.
The doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone, didn't want company. Not after seeing the dead girl with my face. Without uttering a single word Debbie Marlin had explained Grissom's odd behaviour. His obsession.
I feel so distant from them all now, so remote. As if nothing they do can hurt me any more.
It's too late, I'm already hurt but no one can see it. No one knows, no one will know, not even him.
Because I'll never tell.
After I checked the spyhole, I had hurriedly answered the door. What the hell did he want from me? Another chance at 'another chance', so that he 'couldn't do it' again? I might one day forgive, but I will never forget hearing those words.
Grissom had looked dreadful. Tired, upset, beat. I had opened the door wide and he had almost fallen in.
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"What do you want, Grissom?"
He looked at her, silent for long moments, trying to find the answer to her question. He shook his head.
"I don't know. An answer. Resolution. Peace."
"I don't have the answers Grissom. All I wanted was the chance for us to look for them together. You made your decision, and now it's too late. "
Grissom looked beyond disappointed, he looked crushed. He made an abortive move to touch her, stopping himself before contact was made, his fingers curling into a ball. Sara folded her arms across her chest, her message clear.
But she didn't move away.
Grissom stepped closer and Sara could see the weariness in his eyes. He was past the limits of his own endurance, and the fatigue was mixed with what seemed to Sara to be supplication.
"I don't have the answers. I can't afford to look for them, and you shouldn't. Not with me."
Sara shrugged flippantly, arrogantly. The 'don't care' of a hurt child.
"I'm not, Grissom. You made that abundantly clear."
Sara tried to ignore the fact that Grissom had stepped in to her personal space. She refused to back away, to yield.
Grissom's voice dropped to a whisper.
"I'm not finished…please Sara, I can't…" He broke off. " I need…just, please don't send me away. Not today."
Sara realised almost too late that he had come to her because he had finally figured out that he wasn't made of stone. His first trip out of his self imposed shell.
She couldn't very well throw him back.
Sara turned around and walked away, ostensibly to make some coffee, but in reality it was to get herself away from Grissom and the temptation to throw herself into his arms and cry. She was not a weeper, not one for whom the tears were easy. But the few that she had shed had been about this man. She looked up from the makings of coffee to see Grissom still standing by the door, looking at her.
"For God's sake Gris, sit down."
But he took no notice, preferring to step closer to Sara. Her apartment suddenly seemed too small and close for the two of them. This time Sara did edge backwards away from Grissom, from something dark and needy in his eyes. Something that called out to her and made her fear for her ability to resist him.
"I thought it was you."
Sara looked at him sharply.
"What?"
Grissom's voice was soft and matter of fact, quite far away in tone.
"I knew that it couldn't be, but I was so shaken that I had to check that you were outside. You have no idea…"
The turmoil that had made his face so stony at the crime scene was visible now. He reached out again, and this time Sara felt the soft touch of his hand to her hair. She leaned into his caress without realising it and thought that she heard a sigh.
Sara found that she was backed against the wall and there was nowhere to go.
Nowhere that she wanted to go.
Sara looked into the blue eyes that she had once thought so cool and professional and nearly melted in the heat.
Grissom's voice had dropped to a whisper.
"If I lost you…"
How could she have ever thought that this man felt nothing? Sara's heart ached for him, wanted to take away his pain, if only for a moment.
"Griss…"
Grissom closed the gap between them and his gaze was intent on Sara's lips. The lightest press of his body against hers held her in place as surely as chains.
"Sara…"
Sara knew that she would hate herself for it later, but she knew that she had to try.
"We can't Grissom, we can't. Please don't do this to me, please. I'm not strong enough to resist."
"Then don't."
Grissom's mouth descended to hers, cutting off any further protest.
Not that there would have been any.
Sara's token protest had been swept aside and she didn't care. She was satisfied that she had given Grissom chance to leave; now it was up to him.
After a series of kisses that left Sara reeling with desire and barely able to stand, Grissom picked her up in his arms and carried her to her bedroom.
They had undressed quickly with scant regard to where anything had fallen. They did not speak words of love, or promises of tomorrow. There was only this, only now.
Sara did think briefly of protection but did not speak of it, worried that the practicality of it would make Grissom realise what he was doing and stop. She would see her OB-GYN tomorrow.
The sex was a glorious triumph of desire, need and culmination. Grissom had reached for again and again as if she were the oasis in the desert of his heart, until finally, late in the day, they had slept the deep sleep of the exhausted.
Sara awoke to find herself alone, only the dent in the other pillow and the scent of sex letting her know that she had not imagined it all.
It had hurt. That he could steal away without a word had hurt her more than she had ever thought possible.
Until she got to work the following night and Grissom had acted as if it had never happened, then Sara knew the true meaning of pain.
She did not say anything to him, she had her pride.
Sara held her chin high through the visit to her doctor, the collection of her emergency contraception and all the days that followed.
All the days that led to now.
I looked at my watch and then picked up the innocuous white plastic stick. It didn't take a genius to read the little positive sign.
My first reaction is denial. It cannot be true, the stupid stick is defective. But I know as well as any other that this was only the final check. I already know the truth of it. The dawning suspicion, the frantic date checking, the appalled realisation that it was all too real.
I am pregnant with Gil Grissom's child.
Just hours after this shocking news I have to go to work and face him. I cannot and will not tell him. I have not adjusted to this yet myself, how would I tell him?
The days pass and I am operating on two levels. Super Sara continues to work and do her best, I don't know how she can do it, but underneath, there is the real me, and I am screaming inside.
I have marshalled my arguments, my choices. I could tell Grissom about the child he has sired without thought or care, but I am guilty too. I remembered but did nothing, wanting him so badly that I gambled and lost. Or won. Whatever.
I could just carry on and wait for everyone to notice that I am filling out, until he notices andsays something.
I am not so naïve that I think that a baby will solve all my problems; that Grissom will declare his undying love for me and we'll live happily ever after.
Although part of me longs for just that.
I know he desires me, wants me. But it's not enough. We are too complicated, too flawed, and too real. No white picket fence for us.
Adoption is out of the question. I cannot bear the thought of my child out there in this world without my protection. Once I carried this child it would be mine, irrevocably.
And Grissom would know.
I have started to avoid him at work. I am worried that he can tell what's going on. Terrified that he will discover my secret. He looks at me when he thinks that I'm not looking, and I can see that he is puzzled by my behaviour.
I have a last choice. Not a choice, a last resort. I am only six weeks pregnant. I don't have to be seven weeks or eight, or any more.
Two days of no sleep, my thoughts on a treadmill. Ironically I have lost weight, and I can see concern in Grissom's eyes. I am no martyr, but I can spare him this.
I make the telephone call. I cannot afford a child, financially, emotionally, in any way that is real and tangible. I am weeping, the tears coming easily, but they are used to that.
No problem, see you next week they say.
I am careful with my diet, no alcohol, no one else's cigarette smoke, and no heavy lifting. I shall look after the only child that I shall have any part of right up until the moment I kill it.
But two days later I am spared that moment, plunged instead into guilt.
When the pain starts it is an unpleasant ache, no worse than any period pain. I do not take any painkillers, preferring to experience every part of this pregnancy for every moment that I can.
The pain increases, the cramping starts and I am bleeding. I call my doctor and the next few hours are a blur of pain and loss, overwhelming loss.
The nurses are kind, sympathetic. They assure me that I shall still be able to have children, later, when I'm ready. I don't care. I wanted this child, his child and now I've wished it away. It didn't matter that I couldn't afford it, I would have managed somehow.
They ask me if I want to call anyone. They mean the baby's father of course, but I tell them no.
No one else will know.
Because I'll never tell.
I take a couple of days off sick, stomach flu. There is an odd note in Grissom's voice when I tell him and I wonder if he has guessed my secret.
Work is my salvation again, and I throw myself into it. I've had a lucky escape I tell myself. One day I might be convinced. But never on October 24th. They day my baby, Grissom's baby was due.
I got home today, tired and down. I have a shower and wash my hair. The telltale cramping has started; I'm due on today or tomorrow. Wrapped in my towelling robe with my hair bound up in towel I go to the fridge. I haven't shopped for food this week and the pickings are slim. It doesn't matter; I'm not really hungry. There is a large, opened bottle of white wine in the door. I take it out and collect the wineglass off the draining board as I go past on the way to the couch. I sit down and tuck my feet up under me. I pour myself a generous glassful, it's a nice wine. It helps me relax.
Perhaps I should go shopping, this bottle is nearly empty. I'd better stock up with another one. I do like a nice wine.
After all, what harm can it do?