Author's Notes: My posts might start to slow down because I'm starting a new job. But I promise not to abandon the story;) Thanks for reading and enjoy! By the way, does anyone know what's up with YTDAW?
The Invisible Man
by Kristen Elizabeth
It was a slow morning on the maternity ward with only four women currently in labor, exactly the sort of night Nurse Barbara Hinman enjoyed. There was more time to spend with each patient which resulted in more trust between the mother-to-be and her caregivers and an easier birth for the baby. But more than that, Barbara loved to watch a happy couple bring their child into the world. The joy of becoming a parent was a universal experience, but always different for each new mother and father.
But that night, it was the couple in the second room down the hall who intrigued her the most. Mother in her mid-thirties, on her first child. A career woman who had heard her biological clock ticking. Nothing wrong with that. But the man who'd been with her since she was first brought up from the ER…there was a cookie of a different flavor. Fifty if he was a day. Articulate and polite, but clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation. And even, Barbara suspected, with the woman. There was a bond there. But also an invisible wall of strained formality.
You learned a lot about people after three decades in healthcare.
So when she glanced up from her notes and saw the man stumble out into the hallway, looking like a refugee who had just realized he had no place to call home, she had a pretty good idea of what had happened.
"Mr. Grissom." He looked in her general direction, but his eyes didn't quite focus on her. She set down her pen and came out from around the nurse's station. "Is everything all right?"
"She…wanted to be alone."
Barbara tried not to smile. She had seen this a thousand times. "Well, what you have to remember is that as much as this is a wonderful experience, it's also a very stressful and painful one."
The man's Adam apple bobbed. "I should go. If it's what she wants…I don't want to add to her stress."
"You know, in thirty years, I've never seen a man kicked out of one of these rooms who wasn't almost immediately called back. I'd suggest finding a cup of coffee and waiting." She patted his arm. "C'mon. I'll show you where we keep the good stuff."
Thinking that she'd feel better once Grissom was gone had been a flawed hypothesis. If not for the pain, the constant reminder that in a few hours, she'd be someone's mother, Sara would felt nothing but horribly alone from the second the door had closed behind him.
But she was a stubborn woman. It was a trait that had served her well in some areas of her life, and seriously debilitated her in others. He was gone and she was going to do this on her own. And maybe it was better that way.
"From now on…" she whispered to her belly. "…it's just you and me. I swear, I will be ten…no, a hundred times the parent for you that either of mine were to me. There will be stories in our house. And science projects and…and we'll eat dinner together, every night. There will be no fists…no weekly trips to the hospital…and I will love whoever you turn out to be."
Frustrated tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. "But all of this depends upon you coming out!"
She was still fighting her tears when a new nurse, one who had just come on duty, came into her room to check her vitals, as well as the baby's. As the woman studied the readouts from the machine that tracked the baby's heart rate, she let out a small and disturbing, "Oh, dear."
Cold fear replaced Sara's anxiety. "What's wrong?"
The nurse tried to give her a calm smile. "It's probably nothing." She paused. "I'll be right back with the doctor."
The few minutes she was gone stretched like years. And the only thing Sara wanted to hear, besides the doctor telling her everything would be all right, was Grissom's voice saying the same.
"Your baby's heart rate has significantly decreased. There's a possibility that it's becoming stressed," the doctor told her after he'd examined the same readouts. "Now that alone doesn't necessarily warrant immediate, aggressive action. But you're still at only eight centimeters. In the time it will take you to dilate to ten, the stress could get to a dangerous point. And with the baby being four weeks premature, I'd like to go ahead and prepare you for a C-section. Just to be on the safe side."
When the nurse asked Sara if there was anything she could do to make her more comfortable, she had only one request. "I want Grissom."
In the short amount of time since Barbara had left him to his thoughts, Grissom had gone through about half a pot of coffee, but felt no better.
As he poured his fourth cup, he wondered again if he should just leave. Despite what the nurse had claimed, he'd received no summons back to Sara's side. What was true for most women didn't always apply to the woman he loved. Wasn't that what had attracted him in the first place? Of course, if he had known that ten years after joining that fresh-faced college girl for a cup of coffee, he'd be sitting in a hospital waiting for her to give birth to a child that wasn't even his, he might have just kept packing his briefcase and politely declined.
But then he would have missed out on ten years of knowing Sara Sidle. As Grissom sipped the scalding liquid, he tried to imagine those years sans Sara. He couldn't do it. All that was coming to mind were bleak images of endless, routine days. No endearing smiles when he entered a room, no one who could name the source of most of his quotes, no one who paid attention to him with quite so much enthusiasm.
No one who made him wonder if his life was really as rewarding as he liked to pretend it was.
Grissom drained the cup and stood. But just as he resolved to leave, as Sara had requested, Barbara ran into the room, her ample chest heaving with exertion.
"Mr. Grissom," she panted. "Sara needs you."
"Hi, Sara. I'm Dr. Evans. I'm going to be your anesthesiologist today." The woman smiled down at Sara. "What we're going to do is very simple. We're going to give you an epidural. It'll numb you from your ribs all the way down to your toes. You won't feel anything more than some odd pressure during the procedure."
Her words sounded muffled, like she was underwater. Sara closed her eyes. It was all happening so fast.
"Sara?" The doctor's concerned voice forced her to open her eyes again. "Do you understand all of this?" She waited for Sara to nod before continuing, "You and your baby will be just fine, I promise."
It wasn't. Panic was already bubbling to the surface though the calm veneer of Sara's initial shock. She was surrounded by unrecognizable faces, blurry through a hot film of tears. There wasn't a single person to whom she could turn for true comfort.
She clenched her hands into twin fists and squeezed her eyes shut as the nurses rolled her over onto her side to start the epidural. The pain came, sharp and sudden. Despite her best efforts, Sara let out a small cry.
A warm hand covered her fist. "Relax, honey" a familiar voice told her. When took a peek through her lashes, she saw blue eyes watching her from just over a face mask.
"Grissom?"
Kneeling next to her, his other hand tucked a stray lock of hair behind her surgical cap. "It's going to be all right, Sara."
She shook her head as much as she could. "No. No, it's not." Crying openly now, she went on, "What am I doing, thinking I'm fit to be a mother? Look at the role model I had…but what if I can't do any better than she did? I mean, sometimes I can't even take care of myself." She wasn't making much sense, but she kept going. "I'm going to mess up, Grissom. I just know it. Don't try to tell me I won't, because I mess everything up eventually."
"Of course you're going to mess up," he said. "What happened the first time you tried to use fingerprint dust?" He answered for her a second later, "You told me you got so much of it up your nose that you were sneezing for a week. Now, no one can lay down as light and perfect a layer as you can." Grissom shrugged. "You learn, Sara. We all do."
The doctor cleared her throat. "Okay, we're done." She looked at Grissom. "Will you be staying?"
He glanced at Sara. "Will I be staying?"
After a moment, she relaxed her fingers enough to entwine them with his and nodded.
He held her hand through it all. Sara was surprised, and oddly pleased, that his palm was sweaty. At one point, his forehead touched hers and she allowed herself to imagine that he was here as more than just a friend. That his nervous anticipation was due to impending fatherhood. It was a daydream in which she'd often indulged.
On the other side of the sheet that hung suspending in the air, transecting her body, the doctors worked to bring her baby into the world. The child's first strangled cry was like music.
"It's a boy!" a doctor announced.
And just like that, Grissom was no longer the only man in her life. He seemed to realize this, because somewhere in the ocean depths of his eyes there was sadness. He covered it well; the smile he gave her lit up his entire face.
The wailing infant was placed in her arms after being cleaned, measured and examined. Every speck of worry, every inch of self-doubt vanished. He was so small, but so perfect. Ten toes, ten fingers, a button nose, with a tuft of dark brown hair.
Sara's cheeks were wet as she kissed her son's soft head. She had no words; the power of the moment had taken them away, too.
Fortunately, Grissom could always be counted on. He pulled down his face mask. "'Before you were conceived, I wanted you; before you were born, I loved you; before you were here an hour, I would die for you. This is the miracle of life.'" His lips touched Sara's brow. "Maureen Hawkins."
To Be Continued
