Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Spoilers: None as far as I am aware
Rating: I've gone with T or PG-13 just to be safe. There's a use of the f-word about once and THAT'S ONCE TOO MANY! Swearing is overrated, kids.
Summary: GCR with a little WS. After an accident affects a team member, the team find themselves revisiting old memories.
Thanks very much for the early reviews; it was really nice to get them – TrishG, cherishedcrush, Megara1 and D.M.A.S. Keep on reviewing! I'm really a bit worried that it sounds too rushed but this was meant to be just a side story to keep me running with a GCR fix while I write the mainly WS fic Wake The Hope so I didn't think too much about this one...enough excuses. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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Perpetuity. Chapter Two. My Comatose
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As soon as a nearby nurse had revived Catherine Willows, she was off again, demanding to be taken to her husband. They did, of course, oblige and led her to the ICU. If any of them had been prepared to see the way the defibrillator had jolted life back into Gil Grissom's heart, they weren't prepared for what they saw in the Intensive Care Unit. There was just something about seeing their boss, their friend, their family member lying hooked up to machines with wires snaking in and out of him and tubes sucking and breathing for him, that filled them with a strange emptiness.
Though the rest of them hung back, reluctant and afraid, Catherine marched straight into the room and sat by his bedside.
"Will he wake up?" she asked quietly when she heard Warrick, Jim and Nick come in. Sara lingered in the doorway. Greg found couldn't go in at all.
"I – uh – I don't know, Cath," Warrick replied after nobody else did. Sara took a few more steps in and Catherine turned vacantly to look at her.
"Someone needs to pick up Lindsey. She finishes school in ten minutes – she'll be wondering where I am," her voice trailed off into nothingness but Sara nodded as Catherine fixed her eyes back on comatose Grissom.
"Greg," Sara murmured softly in the doorway. Greg didn't hear her for a moment, staring shocked and wordless at his boss. "Greg?" Greg jumped, looked at Sara. She offered him a grim smile and squeezed his hand.
"Go get Lindsey from school." Sara ordered him kindly. Greg swallowed.
"What do I tell her?" he croaked.
"Tell her her mother needs her." Sara suggested. Greg nodded, took a breath and walked in shaky steps back down the hall as Sara went into the room, shutting the door behind her.
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Lindsey held tightly onto Greg's sleeve as they wound their way through the maze of hospital corridors. She said nothing when she saw her adoptive father lying there.
"Is he - ?" she began but after that words failed her.
"No, no," Greg assured her. "He's in a coma, Linds. There's a chance he might still wake up." Lindsey nodded and walked boldly into the room.
"Hi Mom," she whispered in her mother's ear. Catherine didn't even see her come in but started at the sound of her voice and instantly wrapped her arms around her daughter.
"Oh Lindsey," Catherine choked and, failing all attempts of control, buried her head into her eleven-year old's shoulder. Jim Brass made to move forward and separate them, seeing the fear etched on the young girls face as she hugged her mother back.
"It's alright, Mom," she murmured uncertainly, fixing her eyes on the clean white wall opposite her. Catherine only wept harder.
"Cath – Catherine," Brass gently prised her arms away from her daughter and pulled up a chair to sit beside her. Lindsey stood for a while, shaking and pale. Then she turned and walked out of the room.
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"How're you holding up, kiddo?" Warrick asked in an attempt to sound optimistic. Lindsey looked up dazedly from where she sat on a red plastic chair in the hall. Warrick took the chair to her right and Sara on her left.
"Better than Mom." was Lindsey's dull reply as she looked at her hands. Sara sighed and leant forwards, looking sideways at the little girl.
"It's okay, Linds," she told her gently. "It's okay to be scared or upset, kid. You don't have to stay strong for your Mom, you know? There're enough of us to do that for you."
Lindsey nodded but her face stayed stony when she buried it in Sara's shoulder. She wasn't crying, only trying to find some comfort as Sara instinctively put her arm around her.
"Hey kid," Warrick spoke again, exchanging glances with Sara over the top of Lindsey's blonde head. "Your Mom'll probably be staying here so how would you like to sleep the night at our place?"
Sara smiled in agreement; they'd moved in together a year ago and gotten engaged a few months later.
"Okay." Lindsey answered, muffled. Warrick nodded, sighed and sunk his head in his hands.
"Okay."
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The hospital porter brought in a mattress for Catherine to sleep on but she didn't bat an eyelid, sitting in the same chair and still holding firmly onto Gil's hand. Brass, Nick and Greg took turns in sitting in the room with her after Warrick and Sara had taken Lindsey home with them before it got too late.
"He blinked!" Catherine spoke suddenly. She turned to Nick who was standing in the room with her and pointed excitedly at Grissom's face. "His eyelid moved, did you see?"
"It was just a reflex, Cath," Nick told her heavily. It'd been the third time she'd done that.
"Right. A reflex." Catherine remembered, dully and sank back into her frozen position of vigil.
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Sara paced their living room floor, restlessly. Lindsey had fallen asleep in the car and had been carried into the spare room bed by Warrick just minutes before. Now Warrick sat on the sofa, silent, unmoving and the complete opposite to his overwrought fiancée.
"Do you want some coffee?" she suggested suddenly. Warrick blinked.
"Huh?"
"Coffee – do you want some?" Sara repeated. Warrick frowned.
"Oh – okay, sure." and watched her walk into the kitchen before following her in. Sara moved through the kitchen, opening cupboards and rattling mugs distractedly.
"Sara – " he began in a warning tone as she flitted from drawer to drawer, forgetting where they kept the spoons.
"Can you pick up some more coffee beans when you're at the store next?" Sara rambled, ignoring him.
"Sara – "
"There's enough here but we're on our last packet." Her voice was constricted and edgy. "How do we get through this much coffee so fast?"
"Sara, your hands are shaking." Warrick cut her off firmly. She looked at her white hands and observed them trembling violently with a smile.
"Oh – so they are." she commented cheerily and carried on darting through the kitchen until her uncontrolled fingers slipped and she dropped a mug to the floor with a crash. She jumped in shock, ceramic chips across the tiles, and was speechless for a moment.
"Oh Sara..." Warrick drew her into a tight hug and she stopped trying to move, stopped trying to resist him.
"You didn't see it hit him." she whispered into his chest. "You didn't – you didn't see."
"No, I know, honey. I know," he murmured soothingly as her shoulders began to shake. From another part of his grandmother's old house, Warrick heard someone else crying.
"Lindsey." Sara realised, looking up and wiping the tears from her face. She smiled a brave smile that Warrick returned and they went to comfort the girl, leaving the ruins of a coffee cup lying scattered on the kitchen floor.
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Exactly a week later, with Lindsey still sleeping at Warrick and Sara's, and Catherine still sitting tensely by Grissom's bedside, it was the middle of the night and Catherine had finally fallen asleep alone on the foam mattress. Though the rest of the team tried to be there as much as they could, with two supervisors off work, they were needed more than ever to pick up the slack.
In the darkness, the sheets stirred. Gil Grissom, seemingly lifeless for a week, suddenly became very aware of having been intubated. He opened his eyes to an oppressive darkness and, panicked, began to cough, his stomach convulsing, trying to force out the foreign tube in his trachea.
Catherine was awake in a moment and, seeing her husband struggling to sit up with flailing arms, ran barefoot with hap-hazard urgency down the hall of the sterile hospital to alert the doctor on night duty, breathless with exhilaration.
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