Disclaimer: I don't own them.
A/N: This is a follow up to my very first fanfic, Judy's Crush. Of course another post Grave Digger. We've got all summer to flog this dead horse. I don't think you have to read Judy's Crush to read this, but it might help.
When I heard, I don't know how I kept from losing it right there, in the lobby. I had just seen him, earlier that day. We had breakfast - his "famous green chile egg scramble" as he calls it. It always makes me wonder whom it is famous to besides a few Stokeses and me.
I walked numbly down the hall. I didn't see any faces. Everything was blurry. I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. I walked into the women's restroom and I sat in the hard plastic chair that is inexplicably in the corner. Then I ran into a stall and threw up those famous eggs.
No one gave me a second thought. Why should they? I was worried just like everyone else in the lab. After all, I was the receptionist, and everyone knows that Judy the receptionist has a crush on Nick, but it's just a crush.
Except that it wasn't a crush. Now it was different. It was real. We had kept it quiet. It wasn't that we didn't want anyone to know. It was more like a guarded treasure. If you tell someone about a treasure, they want a piece, and I had been treasuring Nick. We never talked about it. It was an unspoken agreement. Work was work and our time was separate, and never equal, always superior.
There was so much I wanted to say to him. Things that I thought I had time to say. I had been scared to tell him how deep my feelings were running. My feelings of how he had turned out to be everything I had ever wanted. Of how the crush I had on him at one time was nothing compared to the crushing love I now felt. Of how I could overlook how white his legs looked in black shorts to know how good it felt to wake up next to him, and to feel his heart beat and sleepy breathing on my neck.
Warrick knew, but being Warrick, he never said anything. Sometimes he would give me a certain look when I waved at Nick walking through the hall. He would wink at me and grin and Nick glare at him playfully, as if to say, "Quit hitting on my woman". And that is what I was, Nick's woman. My crush had become my lover. And more.
How much more? I sat in the bathroom, my eyes red and aching from the tears. What if they didn't find him? What if I never had the chance to tell him how much he meant to me? What if? What if?
I would tell him that I loved every piece. I had never really understand the Song of Solomon in the Bible until I had caught myself watching him play around one evening in his shorts and no shirt. He had been working in his small courtyard and I was sitting in the lounge chair, drinking a beer and just looking. Drinking him up with my eyes like I sucked the beer out of the longneck. And I understood. His legs were long and strong, pillars of marble. I longed to run my hands over the muscles in his torso, his back. His eyes were peaceful and calming as doves. When we lay in his bed and he dozed gently, I would lean over and just breathe in the fragrance that was his. His smell was like no cologne, no perfume. But his smile was best of all. His lips were soft and supple as the petal of a lily. His mouth was milk and honey. His smile could power Las Vegas. His smile could melt me in a moment. He was altogether lovely. My beloved was mine, and I was his. No, I hadn't understood the Song of Solomon at all. Now I did. Now it might be too late.
Warrick sought me out in a quiet moment. We were in an out of the way part of the lab. Though I tried to hold up, he pulled me to him, folding me up against him in those strong arms. I felt myself collapse against him and my sobs came again.
"We will find him," Warrick said. I couldn't answer. The sobs strangled anything that would come out of my throat. I clutched at Warrick's clothes, thankful for his strong presence, but ashamed at my complete loss of control. "We will find him," he repeated, though I wasn't sure if it was for me, or if it was for himself.
I stayed at the lab. What else could I do? I avoided the AV lab. I couldn't watch him struggling in the box. How could any of them? But I stayed at the lab. Home was no place I could go and find relief knowing that he was out there.
I had finally pulled it together enough to meet his parents when they came through the door. They were just as he had described, and I could see the distress and worry in both their eyes. I showed them to the conference room where Grissom was waiting. Catherine gave me a concerned look, and I wondered just how red my eyes were.
After they had been shown the horrible sight of Nick struggling in the box, they had been offered a small room to sit in while we all waited. I stepped in and offered them some coffee. It sounded surreal. Have some coffee while you wait to find out whether your son makes it. And by the way, when he makes it, I am going to tell him I want be with him for the rest of my life and bear his children.
"Are you - are you Judy, Nick's Judy?" his mother asked. I was surprised. Though I had heard all about them, I wasn't sure how much Nick had told them about us.
"Yes," I found myself answering. She held her arms out and we embraced. The tears were flowing freely again. To my surprise, his father stood up and held us both.
And we all continued to wait.
I thought again about all that I hadn't told him. I thought we had plenty of time. And time was what it was all down to now.
Hodges cornered me in the break room when I was retrieving my diet Dr. Pepper from the small fridge. I stood with the door open, absorbing the cool air. I thought about the first time I had offered Nick lunch. It had been chicken and dumplings. How many times had I made lunch for him since then?
I was hoping the caffeine would help my zombified state. I was hoping to appear more normal. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep and I couldn't even make myself go home.
"They will find him," Hodges said. "We will find him," he corrected himself. I gave him what I hoped was a typical worried look. I didn't want him to see the heart crushing dread that was actually oozing out of my being. "How are you holding up?" he asked, real concern in his face.
"I'm… I'm fine. I'm just worried like everyone else," I found myself saying. My eyes burned from crying and my voice was hoarse. I looked almost as bad as I felt. But I knew it wasn't as bad as Nick had to feel and look. My Nick, my buried heart.
"But you aren't like everyone else," Hodges said. He gripped my elbow gently. "I know you and Nick have something going on," he said quietly. My eyes filled with tears at his concern. "You shouldn't be here, to hear and see this." Here was a Hodges I had never seen before.
"Where else can I be, David?" I asked, my voice cracking and the wellspring that I thought I had dried out threatening to flow again. Where else could I have been? At home, in my too small bedroom, holding the pillow he had slept on the last time he was there? Could I have gone to his house, where a lot of my things had been migrating over the past couple of months? I could not have gone away from where everyone was working so diligently to find him. I didn't know how his parents were holding up, but at least they had each other. I had David Hodges.
"Thank you. I really appreciate your thinking of me," I said, and I meant it. I felt a little better knowing that someone else knew that I was more than just worried. First Warrick, and now Hodges, had stepped in to comfort me.
Too bad it was small comfort. I had heard the muttering, though I tried not to.
Plexiglas tomb.
Gun.
Battery operated fan and lights.
Ants. Eaten alive.
Hodges and I were startled when Grissom erupted from his office with an entomological text in his hands.
"Fire ants!" he exclaimed. Hodges and I exchanged startled looks and followed him down the hall. Before long, the other CSI's were crowded around a table with a map of Vegas. They were speaking rapid fire and drawing overlapping circles. Sara ran out to another office and returned. She knew where he was.
"They've found him," I gushed to Hodges, who squeezed my hand. I didn't realize until then that I had been holding his hand in a death grip. I looked up at him, trying to hold the hope down, but just like the dread had rushed before, the hope sprung forward. Hodges had a strange look on his face.
"Judy, forgive me, but there is one thing that keeps puzzling me," he said and extricated himself from my grip to walk down the hall. I was confused by his manner, but the hope in my heart drowned it all out. I tried to catch Warrick's eye, but he was focused on what Sara was saying. Grissom was barking orders, and everyone jumped to do what he said, not only because he was Grissom, but also because it was Nick they were after. Warrick was the last to leave the room and he stopped long enough to grab me by the shoulders.
"I'll call you as soon as we have him," he said.
"Call his parents first," I said. "But make sure mine is the second number that gets dialed." He gave me a quick squeeze, and strode out with the others. The looks on their faces did more to squelch my hope than anything else. Now the dread was competing with it for command of my emotions.
"God, please let them get there in time. Please keep him safe. Please give me a chance to tell him what I've been too afraid to say," I prayed. Now I had to wait to get my answer. I remembered my grandmother's admonishment when I was a child.
"God answers all prayers, Judy. You have to listen for the answer, and He doesn't abide by our schedule," she had said. My grandmother had been confident of God's love. I wish I had her confidence. I had been praying for a puppy then. I had never gotten it.
"Dear God," I prayed. "I will do whatever you ask of me."
When they all fled out into the morning, I wanted desperately to rush with them. I wanted to be there to find him. I could only stand in the wings. His parents had gone to a hotel. I was alone in a crowd. We were all worried about Nick. But I knew that if something happened to him, I would break into a thousand tiny pieces. I would spend the rest of my life trying to put those pieces back together, but I would fail. I didn't even have my grandmother's faith to hold me.
"You've done it before," a small voice inside me said. Yeah, I had pulled it together after a bad marriage, after a bad situation. But this was different. If something happened to Nick, how would I last? He had been in my life such a short period of time, but he had made all the difference. How would I last?