IV.
The night I was rescued and admitted to the hospital, I couldn't sleep because when I did I'd have nightmares and I'd wake up screaming. It would take a while to calm me down and while I tried desperately to stop crying, Warrick would pace the halls and Catherine would put a trembling hand to her mouth to hold back a sob while trying to soothe me at the same time. Eventually, the doctors gave me a sedative and I slept for a long time, but the dreams didn't stop and somewhere, silently, I was still screaming.
One night a few weeks later, Warrick was staying at my place and I went to bed early because I was tired, something that seems to happen now a lot. When I fell asleep, I dreamed that I couldn't move, and that Grissom, Warrick, and Greg carried me to that damn glass coffin, and then they sealed me in and lowered it to the bottom of a six foot deep hole. I could move again once the coffin hit the bottom of the hole, but I couldn't break the glass and I couldn't get out. Everybody from the lab came around to stand near Grissom, and they all started saying prayers but their voices sounded dead, as if they were rehearsing lines with absolutely no emotional attachment. Sara said, "I miss you," but there was nothing behind it and Grissom said, "I thought of him like a son," but in a way that made it obvious that he was just looking for something nice to say. And then everybody picked up shovels and started hauling dirt on top of the coffin, and I screamed at them to stop but they refused to hear me, and I pleaded at them to help but Brass only said, "You're already dead, Nicky, so be quiet already." And I tried to scream that I wasn't dead, that I was alive and they shouldn't bury me, but the dirt just kept on coming, and I screamed and screamed and screamed. . .and Warrick was suddenly there, hands on my shoulders, shaking me, saying, "Nicky, Nicky, NICK!" And I woke up suddenly, aware of my bedroom and of Warrick and of not being dead.
I tried not to cry, of course, but that didn't really work, and I wasn't that surprised because the days where I could pretend that manly men like me didn't cry were long over. Any dignity I ever had was lost to me now, and I just couldn't keep the tears in, no matter how hard I tried. Warrick looked miserable and lost as he held me by the shoulders and I suppose I looked the same, gasping for breath and fighting back panic. Warrick said, "It's okay, Nicky, it's okay, now," and when I looked at him I think we both knew that he was lying.
V.
It's been three months since the incident, three months since what happened, and I've returned to work and living in my apartment alone, and my friends come by to visit but no one sleeps over anymore. My parents say their goodbyes but now only twice a week instead of every other day, and I have nightmares, but not five or six a night. Still, the nightmares are very present in my life, usually about three times a week or so, and I'm started to wonder if the nightmares will ever completely go away, if I'll ever be able to sleep without being buried again. Both Greg and Warrick ask about the dreams, and I lie and say I sleep fine, but I'm sure the circles under my eyes tell a different story. And when I wake up in the mornings screaming and I look into the mirror, I'm sure that the nightmares won't stop, that I'll be dying every night that I live.
And somehow I know that the nightmares aren't the worst part, that there are worse things about surviving and going through the aftermath.