Disclaimer: CSI et al not my property, not a jot, not a sausage. Oh poo.
Title: Last Chance
Author: hazeleyes57
Rating: PG
Summary: Everyone deserves a second chance.
Last Chance Chapter 14
It was just a question of mind over matter.
Gil Grissom lay very still. He looked up and took a deep breath. He let the breath out of his mouth slowly and calmly. Relax, he told himself.
Mind over matter. Brains over biochemistry.
He could do this. He had taken on some of the biggest and best that the roller coaster designers could offer and he hadn't let himself down yet.
One foot first. So far so good.
Other foot. Okay. Shaky, but okay.
One side of his mouth quirked upwards in self congratulation. He might just get through this.
Grissom brought his head up and eased into a sitting position. There, see? Easy.
He took a big breath.
Stood up.
His stomach roiled, indicating its displeasure. Overwhelming nausea hit and sweat beaded his forehead.
Crap.
Bathroom over breakfast.
Ten minutes later Grissom viewed himself in the bathroom mirror as he rinsed out his mouth.
His colour was improving and he did feel a little better now that he had actually been ill. He wiped his face and hands, left the bathroom, then went out to the kitchen area of his townhouse.
For the last week Grissom had endured the same dismal start to his afternoon. It was getting beyond a joke and he hadn't been laughing to begin with.
If this was stomach flu it was a bizarre case. It had lasted too long, and he had no temperature.
Perhaps he should consider Catherine's suggestion that he keep crackers beside his bed.
Grissom frowned as he moved around his kitchen, collecting the ingredients for pancakes. The smirk on Catherine's face and her 'pregnant' comment had been particularly unwelcome at the time. He had been feeling very nauseated and her amusement at his expense had not helped him.
He made a well in the flour in his glass bowl and cracked an egg into the well. He added some milk to the well.
Of course, Catherine didn't know that Sara was pregnant, or that he was the father, so there had been no suggestion of 'sympathetic pregnancy' in her observations about his symptoms, but it had been a shock to hear the contents of her list and immediately think of it himself.
At least as immediately as his groggy brain had able to.
Grissom discarded the two halves of eggshell into the waste and used a fork to start mixing the raw egg and the milk in the flour well.
It was absolutely ridiculous, naturally. Just a coincidence that he had a flu-like illness at this time.
He gradually incorporated the remaining flour into the enlarging well until there was no more dry flour. He mixed the batter and then poured it into a jug to stand for a while.
Ab – so – lut – ely ridiculous idea. Sympathetic pregnancy. Ha! No - one was that sympathetic pal.
Grissom washed up the dirty utensils and wiped down the work surface, the latter with unnecessary vigour.
He rinsed out the cloth and hung it up to dry.
Now, where had he put the pickles?
xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sara read through the letter from her OB-GYN for a second time and rechecked the date written in the first paragraph.
She had been informed that the date had been set for her ultrasound at twenty weeks. Her feelings were mixed. Excitement to be looking forward to the next stage, but sadness that Gil wasn't sitting here reading the letter with her.
Sara reached up to the chain around her neck and pulled it from under her T. Her fingers traced the warm gold wedding bands that were threaded on the necklace. She had made a promise not to remove hers, but she had had no choice when it came to Gil's health. This was the best that she could do to keep it close without it being noticed. She remembered Gil holding her on their last day at the cabin. 'The dust will soon settle and before you know it things will be just like before. Only better.'
Things could have been better since the accident. Things could have been a lot worse.
Grissom could have died. She could have, and the baby with her, unknown at the time.
Sara shivered with the turn of her gloomy thoughts. She looked down at her belly and smoothed her right hand down over the material of her T. No one had said anything at work yet, but some of them must have noticed that she had put on weight. She had gone up two bra sizes already.
Greg, at least, would have noticed that.
"Hey kid, you in there."
Sara addressed her nearly bump.
"Shall I let them guess about you, or shall I tell them?"
She tipped her head, tucking her dark hair around behind one ear.
"No comment, huh? See? Just like your Dad already. Nothing to say."
Sara half-grinned.
"Y'know what? I'll wait a little before I tell them about you. Keep it our secret for a while longer. But I'm going to tell Gris about the ultrasound. He said to ask him about it nearer the time, and I know that Gill wanted to be there."
She had taken her wedding band off the necklace as she was speaking and now slid the ring on to the correct finger. She looked at it, remembering Gil putting it there.
Sara looked at her watch. She had a few hours before work yet; she'd leave it on while she was at home. She tucked the necklace with Gil's ring still on it back under her T, and made a mental note to put her ring back before she left her apartment.
If she was going to face the guys at work wearing a wedding band, she sure as hell wanted to be standing beside her husband when she did it.
As Sara went about her housekeeping chores her mind was going over the potential reactions of the people she worked with when she chose to tell them about the baby. The only thing that she wouldn't be expecting was surprise. They probably had it all figured out already. The first thing they would all be thinking about – even if they didn't say it out loud - would be the identity of the father.
Sara grinned as she dusted her sound system. She had suddenly had this picture in her head of all of them around the table in the break room, her at one end of the table and Grissom at the other. She would tell them about the baby, and everyone's gaze would go from her to Grissom.
He had better have his 'great stone face' ready.
They were all going to assume that he either was the father or knew who was.
There was no point in telling them that she had opted for AI; when the truth came out about their marriage, they would all be pissed that she'd misled them.
Sara suddenly realised that she was working on the assumption that the truth would eventually come out. Grissom would remember, they would be together.
She didn't want to think about what would happen if he didn't remember, but one thing was for sure. If he fell in love with her once, he could do it again. She was no quitter. And this baby would have his name.
Regardless of what hers was at the time.
Sara looked again at the still new looking gold band on her left hand.
Mrs. Sara Grissom.
She still had trouble believing that they had actually got this far. She grinned.
Cool.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Warrick loaded his case into the back of Grissom's Denali, went around to the front passenger door and got in to the vehicle. He waited while Gris loaded his case and came round to get in the driver's seat.
As Warrick had expected, Grissom did not comment as he started the engine and drove away from the scene that they had just processed.
He knew that the older man was probably just as upset as he was about the dead girl, but just had more experience of covering up how he felt. Grissom may be short on people skills, but it didn't mean that he felt nothing.
They drove in silence for a few miles.
"You okay?"
Warrick turned to look at Grissom at his enquiry.
"I will be. It's always hard. Kids."
Grissom glanced at him, but didn't add anything.
"Makes me more determined to catch the perp. though." Warrick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "At least it wasn't Catherine who had to process this one."
Grissom looked at Warrick in surprise. Did he see Catherine as weaker in some way?
"Because...?"
Warrick looked out of the window rather than at Grissom. His right arm rested on the door and his fingers worried at his lip absently. He knew that Gris was probably wondering if he saw Catherine as a weak link because she was a mother, but in actual fact it was quite the opposite. He saw Catherine as stronger simply because she could still do a damn fine job despite the conflicting draws on her time.
"We all see enough bad stuff going down without having to process a dead girl similar in age and appearance to your own child. How would you feel if it was a body that resembled someone you cared for – your wife or your child?"
Grissom was glad that the other man was not looking at him. He knew that the question was rhetorical, but Warrick had unwittingly hit the nail right on the head.
Grissom knew exactly how it felt to be in that position. He would never forget his horror when he thought that he was staring at Sara's dead body in that cold and sterile bathroom.
That had been bad enough. But a child, his child?
Grissom felt sick. He swallowed bile and took a breath.
"We can't make it personal."
Warrick sighed and turned to glance at Grissom.
"Yeah, man. I know. Don't mean it's easy though."
Grissom had no argument there.
The rest of the drive was completed in silence.
xxxxxxxxxx
"Are you sure this is such a good idea?"
Greg's voice was unusually hesitant. And quiet.
From above his head Sara's voice was breezily confident.
"Sure. I use this all the time; it's just usually on a lower shelf. Nicky must have moved it when he tidied up in here."
Greg's grip on Sara's hips tightened slightly and the sweat gathered on his forehead. Normally the king of cool, he was flustered not only about being in the storeroom with Sara while she hunted for a pot of Grissom's famous red creeper, but also about holding Sara steady – by the waist - on a short step ladder whilst she reached up for the uppermost shelf. Greg had offered to go and find the taller steps, but Sara had just stared at him with a look that spelled 'wuss' and his natural competitive streak had brought him up to bat.
He would just zone out about Sara's butt just inches from his face. It was not there. Not bugging him. Nada, naha, nope, no way.
"Ah, found it! I knew it was here someplace, I told - "
"SARA! What the hell do you think you are doing?"
Grissom's furious voice from behind Greg made him jump and he instinctively let go of Sara in the age-old reaction to threat; flight, thinking 'I am touching someone else's woman and that someone else is less than three feet away and sounds really pissed'.
Fortunately for Sara he managed to override that instinct almost immediately and he grabbed her again before she could fall. Sara squawked in surprise, nearly dropping the jar of red creeper.
Grissom was in no mood to appreciate the humour of the situation, but Warrick, standing behind him and aware that Sara was not in any real danger, saw the panic on Greg's face and his dilemma of whether or not to grab Sara again in front of Grissom.
He didn't envy the proto-CSI for one second.
Grissom strode forward and took hold of Sara by one arm, both he and Greg helping her down. Greg let go immediately her feet hit the floor.
Both he and Grissom were pale – for quite different reasons, though both based on fear.
Sara looked from one to the other.
"Hey, lighten up, I'm okay."
Grissom rounded on her, icily furious.
"I can believe this stunt of Greg, but you should have known better than to put yourself at risk, especially in - "
He cut off mid sentence even as Sara glared at him.
"I said I'm okay."
Warrick and Greg looked at the other two and waited to see what would happen next. Their heads swivelled like spectators at a tennis match.
Grissom took a breath and suddenly seemed to realise that he was still holding Sara's arm. He abruptly let go of her.
"Next time use the correct tools for the job. And if you must get something off the top shelf, get one of the men to get it for you. No more climbing, understood?"
Sara found herself the focus of three pairs of eyes. Fear, anger and amusement. Her lips twitched, but she obliged her Supervisor.
"Understood."
Grissom turned and stalked off, forgetting that he had come to the store to replenish his case.
Warrick eyed the retreating man with speculation and then turned back to Sara with amusement.
"I don't know yet what you are up to girl, but that's one tiger's tail I'd leave alone."
Sara just grinned and shook her head as she loaded her case and added the jar of red creeper. She was thrilled with Grissom's reaction.
Greg looked like he had eaten something unpleasant.
"My career as a CSI is so over."
Warrick clapped him on the shoulder as they turned to leave the store.
"It's fortunate that you are needed in the lab then, isn't it?"
xxxxxxxxxxx
"You got a minute?"
Grissom looked up from his desk at the sound of Sara's voice.
To Sara he had the blank look of someone who had been concentrating hard on what they had been doing. He looked at her and then at his piled up desk.
"Uh, no. But I'll take one. Problem?"
Grissom peered over his glasses at her hovering in the open doorway.
Sara was wearing a loose patterned blouse over her usual black pants and her hair was tied back. She had a slightly determined air about her, as if she expected Grissom would resist giving her the required minute.
She entered the office and closed the door behind her. She moved to one of the chairs in front of Grissom's desk and sat down, noticing without comment that there were individual packets of crackers dotted around at strategic places. Obviously he was still suffering with his 'flu'.
Grissom immediately noted that – to him at least – it was more obvious that she was pregnant when she was seated.
"No, no problem. Two pieces of information for you. One, I have the date for my ultrasound and you asked me to ask you nearer the time if you wanted to go. You have plenty of time to decide, so you don't have to let me know now..."
Sara leaned forward and gave him a slip of paper with the date and her OB/GYN's address. Grissom took it, glancing at it before he put the paper in his pocket.
"...and two, the other matter. I'm now coming up on fourteen weeks and apparently I'm past the initial miscarriage scare stage."
She held Grissom's gaze steadily as she continued.
"I've decided it's time to tell the others about the baby, before they start speculating about my shrinking clothes and guess for themselves. If they haven't already after the whole store room thing."
Sara paused to see if Grissom had anything to say.
He did, although he chose to ignore the reference to Sara's near fall yesterday. She was in no doubt about his feelings on the matter. Well, some of them, at least.
"What are you going to tell them?"
As usual with Grissom there was more to the question than its face value.
"Not everything, obviously. But I will make it clear that it wasn't a mistake. It was my choice."
There was a moment of silence as the two of them looked at each other. Eventually Grissom stirred, uncomfortable with the direction of his thoughts.
"And if they ask you about the father?"
Sara lifted one shoulder dismissively.
"I know who he is. He knows who he is. No-one else's business."
Grissom pursed his lips and tapped them with a couple of fingers. He knew that her apparent flippancy was hiding her true feelings. As usual.
"Are you happy with that?"
Sara frowned. What did he want her to say?
"Happy? It's not like I have a truckload of choices. Sure, I'd like to go in and say, hi guys, guess what? But our – that stuff is private, and until you are ready to go public, I'm not going to say anything. I guess you could say that I'm happy with that."
Grissom's nod was subdued.
He was not happy.
Sara assumed that her 'minute' was over and turned to leave.
"I'm sorry."
Sara turned back at the sound of Grissom's voice.
"What for?"
Grissom glanced past Sara at the door to check that it was still closed.
He sighed, picking up a pencil just for something to do with his hands.
"For everything. For losing my memory. For putting you through this and not being the man you married. I can't be that man, Sara. I don't know him."
Sara recoiled as if she had been slapped.
It took her a long moment to find her voice and regain some calm.
"You are that man. I believe it with all that I am." She eyed him. "Do you trust me?"
Grissom trusted her with his life.
But he could not trust himself with her happiness.
"You know that I do."
Sara returned to the front of his desk and looked at him. She was not giving up yet.
"Then trust yourself. Trust Gil. He figured it out for himself."
Grissom toyed with the pencil in his hands while he thought over what she had suggested.
"And if I can't? If the only thing I figure out is that it was... just sex?"
Sara gave Grissom her trademark grin before turning to leave again.
"Oh, I can assure you that it wasn't 'just sex'."
She turned back at the door, an impish grin in place.
"It was awesome sex!"
The pencil in Grissom's hands snapped in two.
xxxxxxxxxxxx
Catherine glanced up from her magazine as Warrick entered the break room and headed for the fridge.
He took out a bottle of water and joined Catherine at the table. His rueful grin was not lost on her.
"How has it been today?"
Warrick stretched before taking a drink of the water and answering.
"Well, Sara is introspective, Greg is still convinced that his life is over – something about not having changed the coffee, Nicky's waiting for the other boot to fall, and Gil has developed the bladder of a two year old girl. I swear we had to stop five times today. Apart from that, everything's cool."
Catherine smirked as she closed her magazine and looked at her companion. He still had the most fantastic eyes.
"Two year old girl, huh? That must be fun."
"Oh, yeah. Between that and Greg. Whew."
He shook his head.
Warrick had already told Catherine about Grissom's behaviour with Sara in the stock room and now the older woman eyed Warrick, her expression the one she usually had when she came up with a good lead suggestion.
"What?"
Catherine shook her head, not intending to share her thoughts just yet.
If her suspicions were correct, sometime in the very near future, the assignment briefing first thing on the shift could get very interesting.
She tapped the table.
"Watch this space."
TBC