I know you probably thought this story was long forgotten, but truthfully I just wound up slammed by real-life. Building a house will kill a person, and when you add that to IEPs, classroom observations, extended school year recommendations and about a thousand other miscellaneous things… well… this story may be slow in making it to the hard-drive. Please bear with me. Thanks much… -Crys-

Chapter 2

Sara sat in the uncomfortable chair of the audiologist's waiting room, and she… waited. Frankly, she had been waiting for the last two weeks, so this was no more frustrating than that had been.

Two weeks. It seemed hard for her to believe that it had really been so long since her world – literally – had blown up around her. It had been two weeks since she had asked her boss to dinner, and had been shot down without consideration. It had been two weeks since she had been able to hear without a constant ringing in her head that was just about to make her go insane. It had been two weeks since she had really slept.

And, if she were truly honest, that went back to Grissom as well. On the day of the explosion, after realizing how fragile life could be, she had wanted to talk to him. She had only wanted to talk. She had missed their friendship, and she had needed some reassurance that everything would be okay. She had needed a friend, and she had received… nothing.

In fact, his rudeness had been so out of character that she had discounted it, tried again, and he had done the same thing. With two strikes in under thirty seconds, she hadn't bothered to try again. There was no point. Clearly, he didn't want to be any more than her boss. It was her own problem that she wanted to be more than his employee.

Impatient regardless of her recent practice at the waiting game, Sara uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way, flipping a page in the Cosmo which she wasn't really reading. She couldn't concentrate with the buzz continuing in her ears, so reading was an impossibility. Like a child, she was relegated to looking at the pictures. The irritating condition had also begun to affect her work, causing her to miss instructions and misunderstand the most simple of directions.

When she had gone for her final follow-up to have sutures removed from her hand, she had shared her concerns with her physician. While only a family practitioner, the doctor had recommended an audiologist as the first step in determining whether she was really having a problem, or if this was to be expected following the explosion. It had taken another week to get an appointment with Karen Roth in the ENT clinic. She was in demand, yes, but she was also the best in the field, at least locally. If it hadn't been for some serious string-pulling by Doc Robbins, she would still be on a waiting list. Sara didn't think she could wait another day to find out what the hell was wrong.

She shifted her legs again, turned another page, and looked at her watch. She'd been waiting for over half an hour past her appointment time. She didn't know why it should bother her – it wasn't as though she ever really slept anymore – but she hated to be kept waiting. It was with great relief that she put her magazine down when her name was called, then she reached down to grab her purse.

"Come right back this way," the nurse said with a smile. "The doctor is ready for you."

As Sara rounded the row of chairs, she was nearly bowled over as several things happened simultaneously. A man was walking briskly past her when a nurse called after him. That caused the man to turn and stop, and she nearly tripped over him. She could have ignored that with a quick and embarrassed apology – never mind that it was his fault for stopping – but the words that the nurse said were impossible to ignore.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Grissom. I forgot to get you these. You'll need to take these forms up to pre-admissions, and they'll schedule your anesthesia consult prior to your surgery. If you haven't had the blood work done, we'll have to put off the surgery, so I didn't want you to forget."

"Thank you," he told her in a stilted voice.

Sara noted that his face was mottled, and his ears a bright red. It wasn't anger, but embarrassment, and she hadn't seen quite this level before. "Grissom?" she asked, still unable to believe it was really him.

"Good morning, Sara," he said simply. "If you'll excuse me, I see they've already called you…"

"Wait a minute," she said, shaking her head, willing the ringing to stop for just a moment so that she could clarify what in hell was going on. "Did she say surgery?"

He cleared his throat and looked away. "It's nothing to worry about. It's minor, and elective. Go to your appointment."

She wanted to argue, but he was already half-way out the door. Shaking her head at the idiocy of men in general, she turned to follow the nurse back to the audiologist's office to try to find out what the hell was wrong with her.

Despite her unexpected meeting, Sara did her best to maintain attention through her doctor's barrage of questions and a series of tests that the audiologist performed. First the doctor looked for any obvious damage to the ear, and then she checked for fluid with an uncomfortable device which made the ringing in her head even worse. When that torture was over, Sara was escorted to a sound-proof room for the majority of her exam. There, in the confines of the claustrophobic space, she listened as tone after tone was played through the earpieces, and then repeated the procedure with yet another of the physician's uncomfortable devices which bypassed the mechanism of the ear and checked for nerve function. When the tones had all been played – or at least the ones that Sara could distinguish from the high-pitched ring she could not hear past – the entire procedure was repeated again using words. The doctor spoke, and she was to repeat back the word as she heard it. Some of the words were as clear as a bell; many were not. Had the doctor said rope or robe? Was that word cat or cap? By the time it ended, Sara didn't even care about the results; she just wanted it to be over.

Finally the doctor opened the heavy door to the room and released what felt like pressure from the space around Sara. Logically she knew that the room had air whether the door was open or closed, but logic was in short supply as Sara nearly held her breath and waited for the doctor's verdict. The woman was not smiling.

"Sara, this line shows the level of hearing which we consider to be normal," the doctor told her as she indicated a red line which bisected the paper horizontally. Just below that line, Sara saw a jagged grouping of dots which had been connected on the computer printout. "And this," the doctor continued," shows what you have been able to hear during this testing. As you can see, you have some loss at all frequencies, however the majority of the loss is upper and lower." The doctor demonstrated the locations on her graph, and looked up for Sara's attention. At her nod, the doctor went on. "The bottom line is that you have what we consider to be a moderate hearing loss. Our second battery of tones and words show that this loss is nerve related, rather than occlusive or some other mechanical dysfunction. You also have some loss of clarity at volumes which are below this point," she added, showing another line on the paper, this one more bell-shaped than the previous ones. "Fortunately, the vast majority of the loss is outside normal speech range, so while this is a definite inconvenience, it's by no means a sign that you are going deaf."

Sara digested that for a moment before asking her first question. "Is it going to get worse?" That was her major concern.

The audiologist put down her sheet and faced Sara seriously. "I don't have an answer for you, Sara. The loss may be related to aging, to the severe concussion to the ears from the explosion, or it may just be from years of loud music and gunfire. Police officers comprise a great deal of my practice; one gun shot is worse than working at a runway for two years."

"We wear ear protection," Sara put in, not even aware of her own defensive posture.

"And it helps, but it doesn't prevent all damage."

Sara nodded her understanding. "What about the ringing?"

The doctor sighed and her expression was sad. "That ringing is something we call 'tinnitus' and it's very common. It's almost always present when nerve loss is experienced, and often it's worse to the patient than the loss of sound itself because it distorts what is heard."

"Why is it louder when it gets quiet?" Sara asked in confusion.

"It's not. Actually, the volume of the ringing is probably the same at all times, however we don't notice it as much when other sounds are holding our attention. Many of my patients play a radio at night so they can tune out the noise to sleep, or they leave on the television. But you're right; the louder things are around you, the less you will notice the ringing."

"Will it get better?"

The doctor looked at her a moment, and Sara knew the answer before it was spoken. "It is very, very unlikely. Nerve loss is generally irreparable, and in most cases it worsens with age rather than improving."

"I'm having trouble with work now," Sara said, knowing she sounded pathetic but not really caring. She would lose her job. She would lose everything she had because of this.

"And that's something we can fix," the doctor said, and for the first time Sara could see a gleam of pleasure in the woman's eyes. "What I would like to do is fit you for hearing aides. The aides will increase the tones you are able to hear, and as I said, those are in the speech range. You may still have difficulty hearing certain sounds, but I can almost guarantee a great deal of improvement over what you hear now."

"Hearing aides?" Great, Sara thought. She could look like an old woman or she could lose her job. This got better and better.

"Not as traumatic as they once were," the doctor told her with a grin. "In fact, we have several types which are virtually invisible unless you're looking for them. One of our models actually fits within the canal and is truly impossible to see, but I don't recommend it. I find that it's very limited in it's amplification and I can't make adjustments as effectively. In addition, while you get used to using the aides you'll probably prefer a model with volume control so you aren't overwhelmed."

"How…" Sara began, and then stopped. It seemed so trivial to worry about money; this was her hearing after all. This was her job. This was her only chance, or at least it sounded that way to her.

"They're not inexpensive," the doctor admitted. "But I will tell you that one of the companies we work with provides a significant discount to law enforcement and rescue personnel as a courtesy; you essentially get the aides at cost. For both aides, you're looking at about seven hundred dollars.

She took a quick intake of breath. Yes, she had the money, but that was a hell of a lot. "What if they don't work?"

"You have three months to try them with a no-risk return policy. If you can't adjust, then you're refunded completely. It's really a no lose proposition. If they work, then you get your hearing back. If not, then you haven't lost anything more."

"Great," Sara muttered under her breath. "I sure hope you have a payment plan."

Gil gently pounded his head into the steering wheel of his car, grateful for the resounding thud which filled his mind. It was painful, but at the very least it was distracting him from the embarrassment of what was to come.

Sara knew. She might not know about his hearing loss, but she knew about his upcoming surgery, if indirectly. He knew her well enough to realize that she wouldn't let their meeting go without an explanation. He would have to tell her the truth.

Shit.

Lying really didn't occur to him; not with Sara. He respected her intelligence too much to think she wouldn't put two and two together. Hopefully, he could catch her at work that night and explain that he really didn't want anyone to know. He didn't want to worry anyone, didn't want the sympathy, and sure as hell didn't want his job on the line for something that might be correctable by surgery. Doctor Roth had been reasonably certain that the surgery would be successful. He had been so sure that he could slip this by everyone at work.

Putting the Tahoe in drive, he made his way through the city streets with the absent precision of a man who had driven it a thousand times before. His mind was occupied with so many other things. He would need to call his mother; she deserved to know, even if it would cause her guilt. It wasn't her fault she'd passed on a recessive gene for deafness; she hadn't even known she had the disease until he'd been five years old. Still, he remembered the painful process of watching her lose her hearing. Over the duration of three years, she had juggled work, a growing son, an increasingly dissatisfied husband, and the adjustment to the deaf community. She had been a remarkable example, but that didn't mean he wanted to join her silent world.

Gil didn't even think of going home; he knew he couldn't sleep, and there was always paperwork to manage. He had found that daylight hours provided him ample opportunity to get things done – at least minimally – so that he didn't have to give up field work. Lately he had been passing off assignments, true. But he was relatively certain that he would be back to his usual form once the surgery was complete. He should be. He had to be. Hell, his job was all he had; it was all he'd let himself have.

Absently, his mind drifted back to Sara. Why had she been at the Audiology clinic? Why had she been seeing Doctor Roth? Was she having trouble of some kind? Wouldn't she have told him if she was?

He could answer that last one, though. Sara wouldn't be likely to spit on him if he were on fire, much less come to him with a problem. Unbidden, the memory of her expression when he'd rejected her offer of dinner flashed into his mind.

"By the time you figure it out, it really may be too late."

He had it figured out. Unfortunately, he was a realist. Even if he weren't her supervisor, he wouldn't burden anyone with the possibility of a deaf husband and father – or a deaf child. He couldn't do it. Even if he weren't fifteen years older; even if she weren't one of the few people he truly, truly cared about. Even if he loved her.

So he had put the blame on himself, and he had sent her away with anger rather than sympathy for him. It was better this way, he told himself. She deserved better than a relationship with an old, deaf entomologist who cared more about his job than his next meal. She just didn't know it yet.

But regardless of what she knew about him personally, he was going to have to talk to her about the surgery. Maybe he could find out what was up with her at the same time.

A man could hope.