Author's Notes: Once again, my deepest thanks for all the kind words you've had about this story. I'd say more, but it's really late and I'm really tired. So, enjoy!
Giving Up
by Kristen Elizabeth
And Eve said let's give it a try
Now lead us not into temptation
But no matter how hard I try
Eve is the apple of my eye.
- Bell X1
Grissom watched the ambulance race away, carrying off the woman he loved with all sirens blaring. Brass let him watch in reverent silence until the blue and red lights all but disappeared into the darkness. He came up behind his friend and waited.
"Tell me she's going to be all right, Jim."
He didn't even hesitate. "She'll be all right. She doesn't give up easily." He couldn't resist adding, "On anything."
"Yeah."
Brass looked down at the two items in his gloved hands. "She had these on her."
Grissom finally turned away from the direction the ambulance had taken. Brass held Sara's cell phone and a length of bloody rope. Her wrists had been rubbed raw…that was Sara's blood. Grissom looked away from it and only took the phone.
He started scrolling through the phone's recent activity. Two outgoing calls to 911, countless incoming calls from his number and what he assumed was Greg's. And in between, nearly an entire memory chip's worth of photos. Frowning, Grissom pulled them up.
"What've you got?" Brass asked, looking over his shoulder.
It was an unnecessary question. Both men instantly recognized the neat and orderly documentation of a set of dusty tire tracks. It was Sara's precise camera work.
"She processed her own crime scene," Grissom said, his voice shaky. He closed the phone up in his fist. "Only my Sara."
"If she's your Sara, why is she on her way to the hospital all alone?"
Grissom's eyes flew open. "I didn't think…" He stopped. "I promised her I wouldn't leave her alone."
"So go now," Brass ordered. "We've got things covered here. This isn't the primary crime scene, anyways. I'll send some rookies out to follow her tracks as far as they can be followed. But even if they find something, you can't process, anyways."
Grissom nodded to all of it, but made no movement towards the car. "Now you're thinking when you should be moving." Brass sighed. "Do I even want to know about what?"
"Love the heart that hurts you, but never hurt the heart that loves you.' Vipin Sharma."
"I don't speak cryptic."
"I think…" Grissom looked up at the star-dotted sky. "I think I made a promise tonight…that I might not be able to keep."
"Jesus, Gil." Brass ran his hand down his chin, exasperated. "Okay. I'm not the go-to guy when it comes to relationships, but I'm going to say something here. You're crazy about this girl. You know, I know it, everyone involved in Vegas law enforcement knows it. Now…she knows it, too. What's the big, damn deal?"
"Everything changes after 'I love you'."
"And…change is bad?"
"You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea." Grissom started off towards the car. "Pearl S. Buck."
"Two ridiculously esoteric quotes in one night," Brass muttered. "I'm the luckiest little police man in the world." Spotting two uniformed officers, he flagged them down. "Get this stuff to the lab," he ordered one of them, handing the young man the rope and phone. To the other one, he said, "Let's get to work. This is one bad guy we can't afford to let get away."
"So…" Nick entered the strangely silent break room and stopped short. It was like all the energy he'd had a second ago had been zapped away, merely by looking at the two men seated at the conference table. Neither Greg nor Warrick acknowledged him; they continued to sit and stare into empty coffee cups. "I've got news."
"Good or bad?" Warrick asked.
"Uncertain." Walking over to the coffee pot, Nick went on, "Sara's car was found abandoned at McCarran a little while ago."
"To get rid of it, or make it look like she took off?"
Nick answered Warrick's question with a shrug. "Depends if it was locked or not. Taylor from days is processing. He's a good guy; he'll keep us in the loop."
"What do we do in the mean time?" Greg asked. His tone was dull, but dark.
"Nothing." Nick returned to the table with his coffee. "Brass is on the scene. Catherine's on her way to the hospital. And we're hands off." He took a sip and winced from the heat. "Ecklie so wants to nail our asses for processing Forbes' house. But since we were technically on the Julia Sommers case, he can't."
"Where's Grissom?" Nick had no answer to that. "Is he with Sara?" Greg pressed on. When he still got no reply, he pushed his chair back and shot to his feet. "Well, that's a resounding 'no' if I've ever heard one." He cursed, particularly foully.
"Hey, Greggo." Warrick threw him a look. "Cool it."
"Why does she love him? Really, can someone tell me? After all of this…after everything…why does she still love him?"
"Because." Greg waited for Nick to go on. Finally, Nick noticed. "That's all I've got, man."
Shaking his head, Greg stormed out of the room.
"He still hung up on her?"
"Nah. No more than I am." Nick swallowed the last of his coffee and threw away the Styrofoam cup. "My cell's on if you hear anything."
"Where are you going?"
"There's 500,000 people in Las Vegas. I'm just looking for one of 'em."
Catherine's heels clicked a steady pattern against the immaculate white floors of Desert Palm Hospital. She wasn't sure why Ecklie had given her this assignment; she had worked with Sara for a long time. Certainly, she was no less biased than Nick or Warrick or Greg. But then, her oft-times disdain of Sara wasn't exactly a well-kept secret around the lab. Maybe Ecklie thought she didn't give a damn what happened to Sara, good or bad. She was going to have to work on that, she decided.
Kit in hand, Catherine approached the admitting desk.
"I'm looking for Sara Sidle," she asked the attending nurse. After receiving a blank look, she clarified, "Woman brought in from the desert?"
Recognition dawned. "The doctors are with her right now. If you'll take a seat, I'll let you know when she can have visitors."
Catherine plastered on her best bitchy smile. "How about you tell me where she is, and I won't make a scene?"
Scowling, the woman pointed down the hall. "Curtain five."
During the short time it took her to reach curtain five, Catherine mentally prepared herself for what she was about to see. It wouldn't be anything new, and yet…it would be entirely different. There wasn't a nameless victim waiting for her behind the curtain. It was Sara. A woman she might not always agree with, or even get along with, but someone she respected. And, if she was being honest with herself, someone she sort of liked. It was nice to not always be the only set of breasts on the team.
She just hoped it wasn't too late to be friends with her co-worker.
Catherine pushed aside the curtain and waited for the first doctor to acknowledge her. "Catherine Willows. Crime lab," she said, flashing her badge. Her composure wavered slightly when a nurse moved and she got her first look at Sara. "How is she?"
"She's got second degree sunburns on her arms, face and scalp and she's severely dehydrated. But I think once we get her electrolytes back into balance, she'll recover quickly. That is, if her concussion proves to be minor."
"Concussion?"
"We'll know more after the CAT scan. Initial X-ray shows no skull fracture, though, so I'm optimistic." The doctor hesitated. "Will we need to check for sexual assault?"
"God…" Catherine shook her bangs out of her eyes. "I don't know. I guess so…just in case. I gather, then, she hasn't regained consciousness? At least not enough to tell you anything regarding that?"
"She's in and out. When she is awake, she keeps asking for someone named Grissom."
"Well, that tells us one thing."
The doctor frowned. "What's that?"
Catherine reached for her cell phone in order to relay the news to the concerned parties waiting back at the lab. "No brain damage."
It was through an act of sheer luck, and perhaps even divine intervention, that Nick found Grissom in only the fifth place he thought to look for him.
The concrete patio sat in the shadows of the casino off of which a man had been pushed six years earlier. Nick remembered well, because it had been one of his first cases after being promoted to CSI III. He'd worked the scene with Grissom because Catherine wouldn't let anyone else work the Holly Gribbs case.
"She walked back into my life here," Grissom said before Nick even got a single word out. He was sitting on a stone bench, framed by a flower bed, looking out at nothing.
Nick approached him like he would a wounded dog, hands in his pockets, gait subdued. "I remember," he said. "I thought she was cute. A little loud, and more than a little competitive, but definitely a hottie." Grissom's lack of reaction had him worried. "'Course, once I started thinking of her like a sister, it got harder to think of her like that." He sat down next to his boss. "What did you think of her the first time you saw her?"
"Young," Grissom replied.
"That's all?"
"She was young, Nick. Barely old enough to drink." He didn't have to see Nick's pointed look in order to go on. "Young. And…beautiful."
"You ever tell her that?"
"Yes," Grissom replied, surprising him. "Sometimes I'm not all that heartless."
Moments passed in silence broken only by the sounds of the Strip. "So, Catherine called. She's gonna be okay, Gris." Nick glanced at the older man. "Are you?"
"My heart rate's pushing 100." Grissom steepled his fingers tightly together. "I'm mad as hell."
"Mad?" He frowned. "At Forbes?"
"Yes. But also…you."
The conversation was not going in the direction he had anticipated. Confused, Nick shook his head. "Me? What did I do?"
Grissom's voice rose with each angry word. "You set her up on that blind date. You introduced her to one of your Neanderthal frat brothers who got her drunk, had his way with her, and…"
Nick cut him off. "Whoa, wait. Wait. What are you talking about? Sara said that she and Kevin just didn't work out. She never told me…"
"If she hadn't been used and tossed aside by your so-called friend, she never would have needed counseling. And she never would have met that nauseating excuse for a psychiatrist. And she never would have been kidnapped and left to die in the desert!"
"You're seriously blaming all of this on me?" A vein rang along the length of Nick's neck, a testament to his own mounting anger. "I'll shoulder some of the guilt, Grissom, but I'm gonna put some on you, too." He twisted his hands together. "When it comes to Sara, you're a freaking hot and cold faucet. You've run her in so many circles, it's amazing she's still walking straight. But what's even more amazing is that she's still here at all. And I don't know if you've been watching, but Sara's not the same woman I met right here six years ago. You can say it's just the job, but I know better. It's you."
Nick stood up. "I respect you, Grissom. When it comes to work, you're my mentor. But as for everything else, I would no more look to you for an example than I would a serial killer."
"You're right." Grissom's words stopped Nick from leaving. "I'm sorry. This wasn't your fault, Nick."
"I told you. I'll take some of the guilt." He sat back down. "She avoided me like the plague after that date with Kevin; I should've tried harder to find out why." Nick's fingernails dug into his palms. "And trust me, I'll deal with Kevin." He relaxed his fists. "But you've got to do something, too. Instead of sitting here in the dark, you should be sitting next to her in the hospital."
"Telling her how I feel about her?"
"Baby steps, Gris." Nick's anger dissipated with an easy, southern smile. "I heard this quote awhile back. I've been saving it up. Never figured we'd have a talk like this and I'd get to use it, but here goes." He cleared his throat. "'We are all a little weird and life's little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutual weirdness and call it love.'"
A ghost of a smile graced Grissom's face. "Who said that?"
"Anonymous," Nick replied.
"The wisest of all men is anonymous." Grissom looked down at his hands. "Tell me something. If you thought she was attractive, and you hadn't yet started thinking of her in a brotherly way…why didn't you go after her?"
"Because. She's your girl, Gris. I didn't need to be CSI III to figure that one out."
Sara woke up to the steady beat of her own heart monitor. Upon opening her eyes, she quickly discerned several things. One, she wasn't in the desert. Two, she wasn't in much pain. And three…she wasn't alone.
"Hey." The person sitting next to her bed smiled at her. "About time you woke up. I'm out of back issues of People."
Sara couldn't quite make her mouth move right; her lips felt too big for her face. She tried running her tongue over them to wet them, but couldn't.
Catherine offered her an ice chip. "They said you could have some when you came around." She gently slid the chip between Sara's sun-swollen lips. After a moment, she asked, "How are you feeling?"
"Probably…better…than I look." The wispy quality of her voice shocked her. "What are you…doing here?"
"Processing," Catherine replied, honestly. "And, okay, waiting for you to come around."
"Is Grissom…here, too?"
To avoid answering, Catherine slipped her another ice chip. "Tell me what you remember, Sara."
She thought as the ice melted on her tongue. "Grissom…on the phone. He said…he would find me. He did?"
"He did." Having already gleaned from Brass the juicy details about Sara's rescue, more specifically Grissom's part in it, Catherine bit her lip when Sara failed to go on. "You don't remember him finding you?"
Sara shook her head as much as she could against the starched pillow.
Oh Gil, Catherine thought as she fed Sara another ice chip. You either just got a second chance...or got off way too easy.
To Be Continued