Touch
TEASER: She would never be the same. GSR. Angst, but not about them.
RATING: T for violence.
SPOILERS: Through Season 5.
DISCLAIMERS: In my dreams, I'm wealthy enough to make Bruckheimer, et al., an offer they can't refuse. Alas, this dream has not yet come true, so nothing except what little plot there may be here belongs to me, and I'm not making any money from that, either.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Reviews appreciated, archived at my site, and this isn't a challenge response, so I really don't care how many words MSWord 2003 tells me I've used.
CSI CSI CSI
"Hellish" only scratched the surface of the week the night shift had experienced.
Sofia, on her last night at the lab before she left to take a supervisor's job in Phoenix, suffered second degree burns on her hands at a suspected arson site when a hot spot flared. Greg saved her from worse, but in the process, their best shot at proving arson was destroyed.
Greg couldn't yet be sent out on his own, which meant that Grissom had only two functional teams for investigations after Sofia's departure – himself and Sara with Greg tagging along with whichever one had the tougher sounding case.
Sara worried that Grissom would somehow always determine that she needed the help, not because he didn't trust her as an investigator but because he was still running scared from what happened to Nick. She needn't have worried; the next night, Grissom gave her an apparent suicide and took Greg with him to what was billed as a homicide-suicide.
Except that the killer opted to start shooting again with a different gun as soon as Grissom and Greg arrived, and Greg ended up in the hospital with a through-and-through gunshot wound in his right calf. Grissom reamed at least five senior cops new ones that night before Brass took over and reamed them second and third new ones. He also told them that each of them would be as dead as the two bodies back in the morgue if they ever allowed such a lapse in scene security again.
Sara laughed behind the glass the whole time, her own anger at the cops dissipating as first her boss, then her avuncular friend, took the slacking officers to task.
Tuesday night, it was just her and Grissom. Ecklie refused to allow anyone overtime to cover the holes, as there were a couple of high profile cases on day shift that had taken up the whole team's time and swing shift – just back to full strength this week with Nick back – was already covering for them. Sara saw it as Ecklie getting back at Grissom for having the audacity to request his team back and at her just on principle. She and Grissom made it though the night physically unscathed, but by the time they agreed to go home at noon Wednesday, they had closed only 2 of the 8 new cases.
Wednesday night, Greg was back on limited lab duty, which helped with their backlog but not with the multiple-participant fight that left two men dead and one in a coma. In another instance of police inattentiveness, one of the suspects pulled a knife on Grissom in the interrogation room, but the guard subdued the man before he could do any harm. Sara only found out about that after she shared her close encounter of the reptilian kind with Grissom over a full pot of Greg's special blend coffee; she wasn't sure who was shaking more after their break – her from hearing about Grissom's close call or him from hearing about her shooting a rattlesnake's head off at two feet in mid-strike. He gave her no guff at all for her quick use of her firearm that night.
Thursday night was eerily quiet after such a crazed week. They closed 10 open cases, including two hanging from the previous week and five of the six from Tuesday. At 6:30 Friday morning, Sara and Grissom got called out to a partial building collapse with three casualties – presumably parents and their child.
The fire department had secured the area and shored up the building enough for the two to get into the foundation while David pronounced the victims dead out on the lawn. Sara started at one corner and Grissom diagonally across the crawl space from her as they worked clockwise around the outer walls, then around again along the edges of the debris from the collapse of the inner core.
Sara heard a noise when she flashed her light across a void in the rubble. "Grissom?"
"Yeah, I heard it, too. Do whatever you did again."
This time, the noise had a distinctly human timbre.
Sara searched the debris around her inch by inch as Grissom called in the paramedics and a rescue team. The whimpering got louder with each sweep of her light, but she still couldn't see any sign of a human body.
"Can you talk? The paramedics are coming. My name is Sara, we can help you." She tried to keep her voice calm in hopes of getting a more concrete response, but whomever was buried in there was apparently too little to do more than coo and chatter in response to her inquiries.
"Grissom! I think it's an infant. Where are those paramedics?"
His voice sounded in her ear, startling her. "About seven minutes out. The rescue crew is on its way down, though."
Something shifted in the rubble and the child screamed, a sound of such pain and fear that Sara flinched before she wrapped the strap of her light around her wrist and hoisted herself through a small opening.
"What the hell are you doing?" Grissom's deep voice rose an octave as she moved toward the child's racket.
"Saving a life." I hope, she whispered, fearing she was already too late when the screeching stopped abruptly.
"Sara . . ."
She heard an edge in his voice like the one she'd heard so often as he watched the live feed from Nick's entombment and berated herself for a moment for causing him such pain, but when the child screamed again, she knew she had done the right thing. "It's okay, help is coming," she said softly, hoping her voice carried out to Grissom.
The child's whimpering resumed, a mewling that didn't have enough air behind it to be full-fledged crying. Sara reached out ahead of her with one hand and touched soft fabric, then stretched three fingers a little more to feel cool skin under her fingertips. "I found the baby, Grissom!"
More debris shifted, falling around her and raising a cloud of dust that made her choke. Through her coughing spasm, she heard Grissom calling to her not to move. But the baby's breathing had become labored and raspy as the dust settled and the maternal instinct she had previously dismissed as irrelevant to her life kicked in with a vengeance. Precious time slipped away after the rasping and coughing stopped while she clawed her way forward. At last, she could see the baby's head. She fought back panic when its skin showed blue in the bright beam of her wrist-bound flashlight. She still couldn't tell if the baby were a boy or a girl, but it didn't matter to her; instead, she did the best she could to check its vitals and started CPR as soon as she knew she had an airway.
"Sara?" Grissom sounded terrified.
"CPR!" she managed between breaths as she steadied her nerves by counting compressions obsessively.
Everything receded from her as she concentrated on the child wedged between a bent steel beam and her body. The noise of rescue equipment and the frantic calls of the crews who worked to get them out safely without causing more damage registered as faint echoes alongside the pounding of her heart in her ears. She lost track of time, switched hands briefly when her fingers cramped from their constricted position against the child's chest, switched back to relieve a cramp from the twist necessitated by using her left hand, all the while praying to the God in whom she hadn't believed since the day her mother murdered her father that the air she breathed into the tiny lungs and the blood she massaged through the miniscule heart would keep that precious brain alive without harm. Not once did she feel a pulse under her fingertips or catch the soft tickle of breath against her cheek when she checked, but still she prayed.
She probably didn't hear the warning, so the fireman who tapped her shoulder startled her into losing count of compressions and breaths.
"We've got the baby. Wait here," he told her, reaching out for the body in its white Onesie and soaked diaper.
Sara thought it a good sign that the diaper was only wet. She watched as the fireman backed down the tunnel to pass the small body out to his colleagues, then listened as he told her how to get herself out of the little cave in which she'd been sitting for she had no idea how long.
She followed his directions with care, but when she dragged her numb legs over a small rise at the mouth of the tunnel into her shelter, she felt something give in the pile under her.
She woke up in the hospital with a slight headache and a throbbing ankle. Grissom sat next to her bed in a straight chair, sleeping in what had to be an incredibly uncomfortable position.
A nurse looked up from the desk nearby when Sara moved in the bed. "Oh, good, you're awake. I'll let the doctor know."
A few minutes later, a woman about Catherine's age with raven black hair and a similar figure her lab coat couldn't hide came through the curtains on the side of the bed where Grissom sat. "Miss Sidle, I'm Dr. Cortez. How do you feel?"
"Groggy," Sara admitted. "I have a bit of a headache and my foot hurts like hell. Did I fall through the looking glass into Wonderland feet first?"
Dr. Cortez smiled. "Pretty close. Do you remember why you're here?"
"We were working a building collapse and I was in the debris pile trying to save a baby when I got trapped by falling debris."
"That's what you told us when you came in, too. We found no evidence of a concussion or other head injury, so the headache is probably a side effect from the tetanus shot and the anesthetic we gave you. You have a nasty cut on your ankle from a rusty nail, though, and we had to put you under to debride the wound and stitch it up. You'll need some therapy after a couple of weeks to make sure you keep full mobility with the gash we had to repair in the peroneal muscle, but it wasn't severed. We can give you another shot of lidocaine before you leave."
Grissom mumbled something and wiped his hand across his face. "What about work?"
Dr. Cortez shrugged. "I'm suggesting crutches for a couple of days to keep the strain off that muscle, but I don't see why Miss Sidle can't go back to the lab on limited duty on Monday night. You'll need to see your primary care to be released to full duty, though."
Sara nodded, pleased that she wouldn't be stuck at home recovering.
"Dr. Grissom, if you don't mind me saying so, I'm getting kind of tired of seeing you around here."
"It's mutual, Dr. Cortez. I'm thinking that I should stay in the lab with Greg and Sara next week just to make sure I don't wind up here as a patient myself."
"You came close last night. Well, yesterday morning when that guy pulled a knife." Sara winced at the memory.
"I don't even want to know. Let me get you a shot of lidocaine for that ankle, Miss Sidle, and then you can go."
Sara nodded, but before the doctor could get back through the curtain, she asked, "What about the baby?"
"I don't know. My guess would be Sunrise." Dr. Cortez gave her a shadowed smiled and stepped out of the treatment area.
"I'll check after I get you home," Grissom promised.
An hour and a half later, she handed Grissom a key to her apartment before she went to lay down in her bed. "Thank you for checking for me."
"You're welcome, but I wish I didn't have to leave you alone to do this." His blue eyes held something tender and compassionate that was new since she told him about her parents, magnified now by his concern for her as a member of his team. At least, that's what she assumed, because to think it was anything else was to walk a road more dangerous than being trapped in three stories of debris.
"I'll be fine, Gris. I'm going to sleep while you're gone, and you're going home to sleep after you bring me news and groceries."
Was that a pout she saw on his face? Maybe the lidocaine had traveled to her brain. Whatever gave her visions also allowed her to fall asleep within moments of his departure, though.
She woke up only when the bed shifted under her. She opened her eyes to see those beautiful blue eyes clouded with tears as Grissom sat just at the edge of her bed, his hands turning circles around themselves as his jaw worked in silence.
He took her hands in his. Something in that simple contact changed everything. Maybe she gave him strength to tell her, maybe he gave her strength to hear him. But they would never be the same after this.
"His name was Richard Dale Loring. He was 8 months old. They couldn't save him, Sara."
She moved over on the bed and pulled him down to her, needing the comfort of his warmth as they cried together in each other's arms. She would never have had the courage to do that without his gesture a moment ago, and wondered at the barrier that had shattered between them in that moment.
"But you did a good thing, Sara. A very good thing. I talked to his grandparents. They wanted me to tell you that thanks to you, his heart will beat in another child's chest and two other children will be able to live and breathe."
"It's not fair," she whispered into his chest. "Why did I live and he die?"
"Oh, honey, you can't ask that question and get a good answer." Grissom's voice washed over her as he stroked her hair. "He had a severe subdural hematoma that bled out in the ER. Everybody did everything right from the moment we realized he was in that pile of debris. It was just . . . I don't know, his time to go? You made it possible for three other children to live even though he died, and if you hadn't risked your life to go in there . . ."
She let the silence hang, taking solace in the rhythm of his hands over her hair and eventually along her spine. Her voice sounded small to her when she asked, "Were you mad at me for going in?"
"No," he huffed, and pulled her closer to him. "But I was terrified."
"Like you were with Nick?"
His hands stilled at her shoulders. He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes, showing her depths of his soul she never thought to know. "If Nick had died . . ." He swallowed and blinked tears away. "If Nick had died, I would have been devastated at the loss of a friend and colleague. I'd have known a part of our family was missing, and I'd have missed him in the lab, but I'd have dedicated my work to everything that he stands for – compassion, thoroughness, professionalism."
She watched emotions swirl through his eyes, first fear, then anger, then relief, then something she didn't dare name because it looked like the one thing she knew she would never see in his eyes.
"If I had lost you . . ." His voice trembled and his lips quivered as he tried to voice the thoughts that apparently went with what she didn't dare name in his eyes. "Sara, if I had lost you, if I lose you, I will die."
"Gil?" His first name slipped out, as it so often did in her dreams of this moment that had never resembled this moment at all.
His whole body shook in her arms as he held her face and her gaze. "I can't keep you at arm's length anymore, Sara. I can't pretend that I don't worship the ground on which you walk and savor the air you breathe as ambrosia worthy of royalty. Without you, my life is nothing."
Never had anyone's touch been so gentle and so loving as when he brushed away tears from her eyes with his thumbs. She leaned into his palms and kissed each smooth hand, laying claim to him. "That's why I've stayed so long. As bad as it was, being here with you was so much better than being anywhere without you."
His eyes widened, as though he was surprised at her words. He hadn't known, or hadn't trusted, "this," but in this time and place of pain, solace, and honesty, she hoped he would understand just as she was starting to understand how he felt.
She let him settle them back on the bed, content to lie in his arms as the horrors of the week receded into the mist of a restful, dreamless sleep.
He held her, and she would never be the same.
--FIN--