Title: After the Look
Thanks for the reviews!
Edited this chapter due to reading a few more spoilers regarding Brass's condition.
Hopefully this chapter is not too confusing. And, Nick was back at the lab :0). My muse is pushing this story.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chaotic. That was the scene in the hospitals emergency room as Grissom and Sara entered the building. Police milled around the waiting room and halls, mingling with curious patients and several reporters who had arrived sometime before Sara had skid the Denali into the emergency room parking space.
Approaching the receptionist at the front desk they were on the verge of asking about information on Brass when a desperate voice and frantic hands clutched each of their shoulders. "Gil! Sara? How is Lyndsey? Have you seen her yet? Where is she?"
"What are you talking about Catherine? What happened to Lyndsey?" Grissom was baffled by the line of questioning, his thoughts a jumble of one thing. "Jim was shot at a crime scene. We don't know anything about Lyndsey."
This was insane. Sara looked between the two shell shocked individuals and decided to take matters into her own hands. She turned to the receptionist and requested information on both Jim Brass and Lyndsey Willows. The receptionist, who had taken in the whole drama as it was unfolding, already had the information at her fingertips.
"Miss Willows is in trauma room one. John will take you to her, Ms. Willows, and he will need to get some information from you, including your insurance card." She indicated a triage nurse who stood beside the desk.
John motioned for Catherine to follow him, and they hurried away as Sara assured her they would find her soon to see how Lyndsey was doing. Next, the receptionist turned sad eyes towards Grissom. "Jim Brass is in trauma room four and I'm afraid that unless you are family you can't go back there right now."
"I have his power of attorney," Grissom said quickly. Sara looked over at him and reached for his hand as she offered her silent support. "Is there someone that can show me where trauma room four is?"
The receptionist looked around and found that there were no available personnel. "Follow me," she said as she stood and walked quickly from the room with Grissom and Sara on her heels. They weaved through more commotion as officers stood around the halls and hospital personnel rushed back and forth between rooms.
"Gris!" Warrick stood outside the trauma room and after taking in his grim expression, Sara steeled herself for the worse. "They won't let me in, but the doctors are talking about emergency surgery. He was shot twice, Gris, at least once in the heart."
Gasping, Sara gripped Grissom's hand tighter and he stared at the closed trauma room door in horror. He had to walk inside. He had to speak to the doctors about Jim's conditon. They all leapt back when the door flew open and personnel pulling a stretcher with a bloodied Brass lying still as Doc Robbins patient, wheeled into the hallway.
"Move out of the way!" Someone yelled as they ran with the stretcher in the direction of some elevators.
A physcian spoke in low voices to a nurse. "We need to find whoever has power of attorney and have them make a decision."
Grissom stepped forward and said softly. "I'm Gil Grissom. I have the power of attorney."
Relief etched the doctors face and he filled Grissom in on the options that Brass now faced and what decision did Grissom want to make in regards to this information?
Without hesitating, Grissom said urgently. "How much time do I have to give you an answer?"
"He is losing so much blood we are rushing him to the OR as we speak. We need to repair the artery and I need to know whether or not to remove the bullet."
Pain began to press against the back of Grissom's neck as he absorbed the surgeons words. With calmness he did not feel he managed to give his consent for the bullet to be removed.
A nurse led Grissom away to the registration desk where they began giving him a flurry of papers to sign. Left in the hallway outside the trauma room, Sara felt drained and filled with dread. With a worried look she stood beside Warrick and they each leaned against the wall, deep in thought. Something stirred in Sara's memory and she pushed off the wall with sudden motion as she spun around to face Warrick.
"Lyndsey was in an accident. Catherine is with her in trauma room one and I don't know how she is doing!"
Warrick stared at her with disbelief. "Lynds was hurt? When did this happen?"
"You know as much as I do about this, Warrick. Maybe we can find some information?"
After spending ten minutes searching for any information on the teenager, Warrick was irritated and decided to find out another way.
"Screw this, maybe it's not protocol but I'm going to find out how she is and if Cath is okay."
Sara felt helpless as she watched Warrick push his way through the trauma room door that led to Catherine and her child. Left alone, Sara pushed her hands into her coat pocket and wondered if she should go outside and make a call to Nick and Greg to let them know about Brass and Lyndsey. She had taken two steps towards the waiting room when the two men jogged through the doorway.
"Sara! How is Brass? Tell me he is alive!" Greg grabbed Sara's elbows as Nick punched him gently in the arm.
"They took him to surgery," she informed them as she pulled her arms free and went on to fill them in on what she knew, including the accident involving Lyndsey. A nurse offered to show them to the surgery waiting room and Sara encouraged both Greg and Nick to go while she waited for news on Lyndsey.
"One of you can come back and show me where it is later on, okay? I want to see how Lyndsey is and check on Grissom."
Warrick found her leaning against the wall and told her with some relief that Lyndsey would be fine, with the exception of some bruised ribs and a broken arm that was in the process of being put in a cast. Catherine was holding her own, but he was going to keep an eye on her until they let Lyndsey go home. Sara agreed to find him if there was any change in Brass's conditon.
Left in the hallway again, Sara waited for another fifteen minutes before she decided to go in search of Grissom. Finding the registration desk she saw no sign of him and asked several people if they knew where he had gone. It occurred to her that he may have been taken to the surgery waiting room and was prepared to ask someone where that waiting room was when a tech stepped forward.
"If you are talking about that handsome man with a beard then he went outside to the Koi pond." She explained to Sara how to reach the secluded area.
"Thank you," Sara left the hospital and went in search of Grissom. She found him sitting on a bench, leaning back against a wall, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Without a word she slid onto the bench beside him and reached over to slip her left hand into his, the way he had done for her on two occasions in the recent past. "Lyndsey will be fine. She has some bruised ribs and a broken arm, but other than that she should be released tonight."
Without opening his eyes, Grissom rubbed his thumb over her hand and released a deep sigh. "That's good to know." His thumb stopped tracing its pattern and he squeezed her hand gently. "I don't know if I made the correct decision, Sara. If Brass is bleeds out or has a stroke because of a decision that I made then I'm not sure how I can live with myself."
"You did not have much of a choice, Gris, if what the surgeon told you was fact." Sara moved her right hand and placed it on his knee, turning her body so that she was facing him. "You basically asked the surgeon to do what he thought best and if the outcome is not good, then you know that you left it in the hands of a professional." She hoped that made some sort of sense to Grissom.
This earned a slight smile from Grissom as he opened his eyes and stared into her own troubled face. "That would be a cop out for me to place it all in the physcians hands. I had to sign the papers that permitted him to operate."
"If you had not signed the papers then I think they would have operated anyway. They had to stop the bleeding and if he did not have permission then maybe he would have still taken the bullet out." She did not know if he would have done so without authorization and did have her doubts that he would have as long as Brass was stable, but then that was something they would never know.
This gave him some pause as he thought about the truth of her words. "Emergency operation. I still could have stopped it." Grissom would not let himself off the hook. He had been sitting there pondering the thought of Jim being paralyzed and wondered if the man he had known for over fifteen years would want to live in a wheelchair or possibly worse, a bed for the rest of his life.
"Jim asked me several years ago to be his power of attorney because he said that he trusted me," Grissom stared at their intertwined hands and continued almost as if she was not there, sitting beside him. "I remember laughing at him when he asked me who my power of attorney was and if we wanted to make an even swap. He had some major issues with his daughter, Ellie, and did not want her to have any say so when it came to his life." Grissom hesitated and his voice broke slightly as he applied more pressure to Sara's hand. "He also told me that he did not want to live by artificial means."
"I can understand that thinking," Sara mused. Leaning forward so that she was certain Grissom was listening to her next words she said softly. "But, this is all together different, Gris. This is a matter of trying to save his life so that he doesn't have to live on a respirator for the rest of his life. I would hope that you would have signed those papers if it was me on that table."
This statement startled Grissom so much he dropped her hand and pushed away from her as he stood and moved to the far side of the small koi pond. His back was to her when he spoke. "That is not an option."
Sara had felt an emptiness when he had pulled away from her and walked around the pond. She felt her heart skip a beat when he spoke, his voice rippling with some strong emotion that she recognized, but could not put her finger on. Walking around the pond until she was standing behind him she reached up and placed the palms of her hands on his back and felt him tense beneath her fingers. He did not pull away from her and she took that as a positive sign. Leaning her forhead on his back, between his shoulder blades, she said gently.
"You would be the only one that I trust to make a decision that critical, Gris, the one that I trust with my life, just like Jim."
A deep sigh rushed from his lips and he turned his head slightly to glance over his shoulder. "It's not the same, though, is it Sara." It was a statement. Gruff. Spoken with a reluctance that made her drop her hands and step back.
She watched him spin around to face her and was surprised when he gripped her hands in his own. "If you were on that table then I don't think that I could breathe. I know that I would not be able to think logically or think at all for that matter. I would probably be admitted to the hospital myself," He dropped her hands and reached for her face, wrapping his shaking fingers around the smooth outline of her jaw as he stared intently into her eyes. "I would trade places with you in a heartbeat." He started to lean forward, hesitated, pulled back slightly and gave her a questioning look.
"Kiss me, Grissom, before my knees give out or I start to cry."
He closed the distance between their lips and the first touch was so soft and light. Pulling away slightly, their eyes locked and they shared a gentle smile. The second kiss was more urgent as Sara opened her lips and allowed his tongue to slide inside and they lost themselves in one another for what felt like an eternity.
The urgent beeping of Grissom's pager was a reality check. Pulling away slightly, but keeping one hand on Sara's hip where his hand had found itself minutes before, Grissom pulled his pager off of his hip and stared at the number.
Looking back up at Sara he said with a tight smile. "When we are alone when this is over then all pagers and phones are going someplace where they will not interrupt us again,"
"Is that a promise?" Sara asked. She was pleased that he had suggested that they would finish what they had started and she would not be left alone and waiting for him to stop running.
"It's a fact," Grissom stated. He leaned forward and placed another kiss on her lips, but pulled back before it could turn into another frenzy of suppressed emotions. "I've been paged to the surgery waiting room."
They left the koi pond, each sporting somber expressions as they made their way back inside the hospital, along the corridors, and to the waiting room where they would face the inevitable news concerning Brass.
TBC