Sara too, had been wandering through the whole hospital looking for room 202, she swore she had seen every other number possible except the one for which she happened to be searching. She really had no good reason why she had hopped a flight to New York in the first place, so maybe it was a sign, an omen, telling her than only bad could happen once she found the room where he was to meet Greg. She knew very well there would be some bad after telling him what had happened while the cat was away. She just wanted to turn around and leave, but it was just then when she found the right door…number 202.
"…I mean, I heard about the lab explosion, but you never told me about being at a shoot out."
"Well, I didn't want you to worry. There were bullets flying everywhere…I was scared." He confessed to the girl in the hospital gown that Sara knew had to be his sister, but wouldn't have guessed by her appearance.
"Really? The Greg Sanders…scared?" Sara interrupted as she entered the room. Upon seeing her, Greg gave her a big hug as if he hadn't seen her for years, when in reality it had only been a week.
"Sara? What's wrong?" He pulled away from her embrace to ask her. He really looked worried.
"What would make you think there was something wrong?"
"You finally took some vacation days and few all the way across the country…I'd say that's not something you'd do without a reason."
Now she felt as if she was the one stuck in the interrogation chair and not on the other side of the table for once. He couldn't tell him then, not in front of his sister.Was he on to her? Did he know something that she didn't know he knew? No, of course. Lab gossip traveled fast, but not at all like this, not across the country.
"I...I've just had two too many threats against my life in the last few months…"
"What! Again…the serial guy, well what…how did…"
"And Grissom practically threw the guy across the room…" It was the last name she wanted to mention at the moment, but she did anyway, wincing slightly as she did.
"Grissom to the rescue…see I had nothing to worry about. You guys did just fine without me." Sara forced a smile and just nodded. It made her feel even worse, so she decided it was a good time to change the subject "It's okay, I'm fine now, a little shaken up, but good none the less." She glanced over to the young redhead in the hospital bed beside him. "Hey…aren't you going to introduce me?"
"Sara…this is my sister, Agatha…"
"Gregers…" She whined.
"Sorry, this his my sister who happens to hate her name, so we just call her Aggie." Sara should have known that with grandparents Olaf and Pernilla, who spoke more Norwegian than English, they'd have rather odd names as well. "And Aggie this Sara, my…girlfriend." He glanced over to Sara for some kind of approval to actually use the term they hadn't yet decided on using.
"Well, Sara…it's nice to finally meet you. He's talked so much about you…for a while I was starting to think he'd made you up."Aggie laughed, though stopped because it hurt her ribs to continue. "He's done it before, so…"
"Hey! Once, only once. Okay…"
"I don't think so, Greg. What about the Russian model you told the guys about last year. Hodges didn't even fall for that one." Sara added in her own two cents.
"You know what…I think I'm beginning to like her Greg." She said honestly. "Plus she doesn't have bleached blonde hair like the rest of them…so she has to be smarter than some that I've met."
"Aggie…"
"Fine, I'll stop."
"And…and a ONE, two, three." Aggie directed clapping to the beat. Even a hospital bed and an injured knee couldn't stop her. If she couldn't be Roxie, she was certainly going to help someone else learn to dance.
"Ouch, Sara!" Greg yelled slightly hopping on one foot. "Watch where you're putting those feet!"
"How can I? Aggie said I'm supposed to keep my back straight, arms up, and eyes focused on you…not my shoes!"
"Whoa, okay." Aggie interrupted their arguing. "Forget all that until you get the steps down. Let's start over…and watch where you're stepping, both of you. They've got tubes and cords all over this place, so unless you want an audience of frantic doctors for Grandma Moses over there, don't do it." She pointed to beyond the curtain.
"I won't yell anymore Sara, I promise. Now let's try this again." He smiled.
"Right foot back…left to the side…" All the steps Aggie was telling her were drowned out by the one, two three's Greg whispered in her ear as she watched her feet carefully. She managed to make one full turn before cracking up that caused her to stop moving.
"Stop it, Greg…or I'll step on your big toe again." She threatened, trying not to laugh.
"You better not make things worse if you want her to learn this before the wedding." Aggie scolded.
"What wedding…you're getting married!" He assumed.
"God no!" She exclaimed. "It's just when Nana learns about Sara she'll start planning your wedding. She told me, 'If that boy hasn't bothered to call me, he better at least be spending that time with a nice girl. He isn't getting any younger you know. I had gotten married and had your father before I was his age.' " She mimicked the strange old lady with whom they grew up.
"I know…but I don't see a problem with not being married, Plus, Sara's older than me and she hasn't gotten married yet." He joked.
She elbowed Greg in the stomach. "You're just lucky I don't care like Catherine or you'd be with Doc Robbins right now!"
Aggie couldn't be more happy, though she had a cast on her foot, a brace on her knee, and was, at the moment, hobbling around on crutches, she was still free from the hospital. She had been trapped in that room for over a week, and she was tired of it, tired of being bed ridden, trapped within the stark white walls, and sick of the awful food. She was back home, or almost, as soon as she managed to get herself into the elevator and up four floors to her home. Though it took a lot longer than she had wanted, thanks in most part to Sara and Greg's attempts to help her when she knew very well she could do it fine without them.
When she stepped inside it was, oddly enough, exactly how she had left it, considering Greg had been living there for the past week. In fact, it seemed a bit more tidy. All her black and white pictures were hung straight on the sage green walls and were clean of all the dust that was usually magnetically drawn to them. The dirty dishes she had left in the sink had been washed and put away. Though it still looked as if Greg was living on her living room couch, which he was, his stuff was all folded neatly into his suitcase instead of strewed across the floor like his room always was when they were both much younger. There was even a bouquet of flowers in a vase on the kitchen table, which she figured were a welcome home gift from her brother.
Greg sat Aggie's bag down on the floor by the closed door leading to her room, while she took the chance to help herself on to the couch. "That neighbor guy…Evan…uh, Ian...whatever his name is, stopped by earlier. He hardly said a word to me, other than that those flowers over there were for you when you got home. I don't think he knew I was staying here…"
"Oh…" She said, not really wanting to continue with the subject. "Yeah, he can be pretty shy at times…" It was partially true, but it was mostly the fact that she didn't really want the two to cross paths quite yet. "What do you all want for dinner? You know I could kill for some really good Chinese right now…"
"Uh…yeah that's fine with me…" Sara nodded as well.
"We'll the best place is Wok'n Roll seven blocks down, but they don't deliver…" She strategically pointed out, hoping he would go for it anyway.
"Oh, of course…" Greg, as she already knew, would do about anything for her, and as of now she needed a moment without him around. She watched him grab his jacket and dash right back out the door again. As soon as the door closed behind him, she called Sara to come sit beside her.
"It's time for payback…"
"Excuse me…what?" Sara was a bit confused by it.
"Greg, whenever he would meet someone knew from my personal life, he would always tell all kinds of really embarrassing stories about me. You know, like baby pictures, blackmail kind of stuff, but he just told them anyway."
"Really…Greg did that?" She was quite surprised that he would do anything like that, but still it sounded like a fair deal. "So what have you got?"
Twenty or so minutes later, Greg returned back with a bag of take out containers. As he approached the door, he heard female laugher from behind the door, assumingly Aggie and Sara's. What they found so hilarious he didn't quite know. He pressed his ear up against the door to enhance his hearing.
"He had these footed pajamas that Nana Pernilla got him for Christmas when he was seven. They had little bunny ears and a furry tail on the back. He hated them so much, but you know how Grandmas are…She made him try them on and took pictures of him. He didn't wear them at home, but whenever we went to visit he had to bring him with."
"We had this one case, like five years ago dealing with this famous showgirl, so Greg had to process her headdress, you know for hair samples. Well, Grissom came back to get the results and found Greg dancing around the lab in this humongous headdress…gold beads hanging around his face, sequins, the work…and then he noticed Grissom had caught him, he tried to hide it behind his back. There were feathers sticking up everywhere…you should have seen Gil's face!"
"I guess I'm not the only one who wants to be on stage…"
Just then he chose to open the door, the least bit happy. "Aggie…the bunny pajamas…Why!" He handed Sara's takeout order to her, sat down in the old comfy chair adjacent to the couch, and began to eat his own, keeping Aggie's hostage.
"It was necessary information…" She quickly said.
"For what situation would Sara ever need to know that Nana made me wear bunny pajamas? Why!" Aggie, still couch ridden due to her leg, reached attempting to snatch her dinner from him, but he pulled it out of her reach just in time.
"Well then…why did you have to tell Eric when he came to pick me up before prom that during my first dance recital I fell flat on my face and ran off stage crying!" She hobbled off the couch andsnatched the white box out of his hands and sat back down to eat.
"You were going to prom…you know, dancing…'It was necessary information'!" He debated back, though with a mouth full of noodles.
It was time for more retaliation. "You know what…" She directed the question towards Sara. "He failed his driver's test…three times." She paused for a moment as Sara let out a chuckle. "And a month after he finally got his license, he manage to crash the car into a telephone pole."
"It was a squirrel. What...did you just want me to run him over?"
"You did both, quashed the squirrel and ran into a telephone pole! And Papa made him give up his chance to go to Space Camp and get a job over the summer to pay for it."
Sara could just picture it now if the whole situation hadn't happened. He'd actually have a legitimate reason to be referred to as a 'space cadet', not only for his plentiful blonde moments.
She laughed. "If that's what Papa Olaf did, I'd hate to hear what your parents did to him."
There was an odd silence between the two siblings, that left her puzzled. Greg began to speak softly. "Sara…I never told you, but…Papa and Nana were the ones who we lived with then, the one's who raised us. When I was eight, my…our mom and dad went back to Norway for their tenth anniversary…and on their way back their plane went down somewhere over the Atlantic…we never saw them again."
"I'm so sorry…I…" It explained so much. She had always wondered why she had never heard anything about his parents. All the weird stories had all been about Olaf and Pernilla. If the average person couldn't remember much before they were four years old, thenneither onehardly knewtheir parents. Sadly enough, she knew exactly how it felt.
"On a lighter note…" Aggie ended the awkward silence, simply because neither one of them ever liked to discuss the previous topic at hand,and thought it was best to change the subject."Who's up for watching Dirty Dancing…I know I am!" Greg just groaned. She had already forced him to watch it a hundred times before…what difference would one more make?