"So in essence, the high dosage of Levodopa intensified the paranoia and anxiety levels of both Leon Stoyanov and Robert Patterson. In both men it triggered violent, paranoid laced, homicidal episodes. Each man seemed to have gotten sucked into some violent fantasy world based around the delusions and anxiety they had suffered. Then each manifested itself in new forms in the room with Kincaid and after another dosage meant to fuel such violence at you guys."
Sara's voice distracted him, his mind following aspects of the case, anything to shake his growing edginess. She had moved 'the chair' over to the left, where he was fitfully laying on his side. He had a fistful of bed sheet, his PCA control lay against the rail where he could reach it without stretching. His fingers curled around the thin cotton, wrinkling the fabric where he constantly messed with it.
"Stanfield slipped it in their nightly medications," Nick stated, waiting for confirmation.
Sara sighed. "Yeah. He got wind of all of Kincaid's inquiries about certain inmates, Sheldon Tanner and Joseph Brighten especially. When he pulled those patients, along with Leon and Robert from his care, he found out from one of the orderlies who saw him setting up his video camera for recording the session that night."
Nick shifted his legs slowly, grimacing at the after shocks of the movement, balling up the bed sheet in his hand reflexively. His fourth day in bed and he was ready to crawl out of the damn thing in order to get outside the same four walls. He held off from his usage of the 'juice machine' as much as possible, but the longer he was forced to just lay around, the harder it became not to let the pain get to him or more so, the sheer dullness consume him.
"We found the tape in Stanfield's safety deposit box," Grissom chimed in, his only contribution to the conversation thus far these types of tiny added details from the case.
Nick nodded. "When did he get the equipment?'
"After the inmates were subdued. It got smashed on the floor and scattered. The guards and Angelo were so caught up in the fray, no one noticed anything in the dark, and they simply got out and left," Sara filled in for him.
"Soooo, Stanfield came by and cleaned up afterwards?" Nick prodded. He shifted his body slightly and it earned him another reward of pain along his spine; this time he couldn't suppress a grunt.
He felt his toes curl, digging into the mattress, his face fraught.
"Nick..."
"I'm fine," he blurted out not even sure who the voice had belonged to. He buried his head in his arm, embarrassed but still irritated.
"Sorry," he whispered not even sure who had said his name in the tone he had now come to despise.
Not waiting for another foray into matters of the heart and mind he swallowed thickly. "Why?" He looked up at two sets of eyes. "For what?"
Sara cleared her throat, playing along for now, ignoring his little outburst. "Money. Power. Fame."
Nick rested both his hands carefully on the railing to lean further along his body, almost onto his stomach. His eyes drifted towards the floor, noticing the tiny dots that made up the patterns there. Something else to count later on.
"He had a connection at The New England Journal of Medicine. All of his lab data was correct for the patients he had actually used it on with success. All the bad reactions of the patients, where his drug didn't get positive results, Stanfield substituted names with bogus ones like Tanner and Brighten who could still be verified as patients at the Institute. Then, with the fabricated data, he paid off at least one staff member from the journal to overlook those phony aspects of the paper. With his reputation, no one would be the wiser."
Nick shook his head; how many inmates and staff members had been put in danger for one man's hubris? How many had died? "He did all this by himself." Nick looked up. "One guy?"
Grissom arched an eyebrow. "Dr. Rhodes didn't want to be bothered by anything that tarnished the reputation of his Institute and turned a blind eye. It was Stanfield who broke Kincaid's neck...the man had a faint pulse that the orderlies didn't detect. He also used his knowledge of the computer systems to rig the disruption which actually controlled both the security measures and the power grid." Grissom's voice softened in near admiration and awe. "He helped develop the system. Made it possible to cover his tracks."
"That little mouse of a man actually got his hands dirty. That weasel snapped Kincaid's vertebrae," Nick wondered out loud still amazed by the man's ego and God complex. "He gave Ivan another dose of loopy pills when we came back. Hoping to injure or kill one of us," Nick theorized.
Grissom shrugged. "He never thought the investigation would be as thorough or that we'd wouldn't just collect the circumstantial evidence and implicate the inmates." The entomologist sat back. "Then he got desperate, and well...we all know how it all spiraled out of control."
Nick's eyes fell on the steel rail, another manifestation of his cage. It wasn't hard to lapse like this; his point of sight stared straight along the steel, then up his IV pole, another tube stuck inside him... this one in a vein. Not to mention the one attached in another place, every little fidget tugging, reminding him how tethered he was to everything. It was so overwhelming at times.
He felt his hand clutch the sheet and secure it upwards, the ends mangled by his constant fiddling. It was all dawning on him, all at once and he curled himself tighter into a ball, a flare of pain ripping along his back.
He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, sort of excusing his visitors away. He didn't want them around right now. Even when he 'was' awake, he constantly fought between wanting someone to talk to, and wanting nothing more than to sink back into the ocean of numbness.
Right now he was far from deadened, and yet from behind closed eyelids he could smell the must and mildew of that damn storage closet and his fingers balled into a fist on instinct.
"I...um...I've got to get back to the Lab. I've got to meet with Catherine about a case." Sara fumbled so rarely and for some reason it made him want to shrink back further under his blanket.
Another flare of pain reminded him that his little device offering entry into oblivion was only inches from his fingertips.
"I'll be back tomorrow," Sara told him with a quick touch to his shoulder and the sound of her footsteps leaving followed.
Nick didn't feel like staying in his current direction and began the tedious task of rolling over onto his back. The motion of turning made his vision swim in a sea of white. Then putting weight back on the incision made the room spin, his eyes closing automatically to block it away.
He was frozen; fists balled up and intertwined with his covers, his pallor blanching with every passing second.
"Nick, you should really try to lay still as much as possible."
His hands shook, another set of stitches pulled along the laceration on his right arm. Nick felt his fingers dig into his palms, but his ragged and torn fingernails did little to the flesh. He could still feel the wooden splinters tear and split under his desperate clawing.
"Take slow breaths, Nicky."
He slammed his hand against the steel rail. "You try being on your back this long!" he snapped.
The controller to his pain medication fell to the floor, clattering on the tile. Nick breathed heavily, fuming. He stared at the miserable ceiling, then jerked his head right back at Grissom. Off white privacy curtains loomed too closely and it filled him with contempt at feeling these old flare-ups all over again...it'd been almost a year. A damn year!
Nick's fist lashed out at the bed rail again, IV pinching his skin with the jarring sensation.
Grissom shifted in his seat, adjusting a new set of eyeglasses. The normal silence drifted back into place. Just like old times.
"I'm sorry, Nick. I don't know what it's like to be confined to a hospital room like this. Or even with..." The words hung in the air.
Nick pulled at the front of his hospital gown to alleviate a round of labored breathing. He had somehow wound the garment tightly around his chest with his increased restlessness. Nick reached out for the PCA pump control, forgetting momentarily that he had just knocked it away. He looked down at it dejectedly, his supervisor following his gaze. With a bit of difficulty Grissom picked up the controller and draped it over the steel rail.
"Dr. Bernard suggested that because of your medical history that they could add a sedative to your medications to help relieve your... anxiety."
"He suggest that or did you?" Nick rested both hands on his chest, trying to keep them still.
"Your physician did. Though I might add that I agree with his recommendation."
Nick looked at the other man. "You tell him that already?"
His boss seemed so unreadable, yet his voice, the quiet response, told Nick everything he needed. "No, I didn't."
The Texan allowed his mind to drift away, imagining the breeze from Lake Mead fresh on his cheeks. He swallowed. "You wanted to, though."
"I think it's a good decision. The bleeding just stopped in your kidney, but you still need to be monitored for another three days. Same precautions. No sitting, no moving. And Nick, even before last year, you're very much a get up and go type of guy."
'But he didn't'. It was such inconceivably small thing, but... it stood for a lot.
"You going to tell me about Nigel?"
He said it like a question and left it vague so that his supervisor would be forced to choose which aspect to discuss.
"What do you want to know?"
Nick grinned slightly; a safe response. Grissom had to be a great poker player.
"He's back in the ward, of course, and undergoing another psych evaluation."
Nick rubbed at the stubble on his chin and cheeks, the hairs coarse under his fingers; he was due for a shave later today. "Why?"
Grissom leaned forward somewhat thoughtful. "Certain of his actions were very questionable."
Nick could see the red light bounce off those geeky plastic lens, eyes taunting. "He relished every second of it." His voice trailed off, repulsed at how much they 'owed' the little troll. "But he saved both of us."
It sickened him to the core, having slight appreciation towards a man who lived a life terrorizing others.
"Nigel Crane took every opportunity he had to try to gain and control power. He didn't do anything that didn't grant him an advantage. He waged a battle of mental warfare," Grissom countered.
Nick glanced over at the out of reach tray for a glass of water.
"In his mind what he was doing was helpful."
Nick found the lever that controlled the elevation of his bed and pressed on it to increase the angle at which he rested to a slightly more upright position.
"All his actions were carefully orchestrated. He helped when he thought it would allow him to exploit you later." The supervisor shifted in his chair, a bit apprehensive at the younger man shifting around so much.
He could feel a sharp sensation along his back and with every degree he moved forward the dull ache became a sharper burst. "Nigel could... have left me... to die." Nick stopped the movement of the bed. "He could have let Ivan kill you."
"No, he just locked you in a broom closet knowing full well what he was doing," Grissom injected but didn't budge as the patient struggled for the glass he was still unsuccessfully trying to grab.
Nick swallowed, holding his breath as he reached for the water glass, moving forwards, fingers still way out of reach. He grit his teeth, grunting from the effort. The image of a door shutting in his face and plunging his world into total darkness flashed through his head. He dug his right palm into the mattress and pushed himself harder, his only reward terrible pain that tore through him.
He fell back to the bed exhausted, arching his body away from the torment.
"Nigel was --- was tryin' to punish me," Nick gasped. He fitfully wrapped his arms around himself as he rode out the fall out of his efforts.
"Why do you think that?" His boss's voice drifted through the buzzing in his head.
Nick squeezed his eyes shut, the revulsion of needing Crane and falling victim to his whims still fresh. "'Cause I wanted to help you," Nick replied, eyes mere slits trying to face the prospect of being nearly flat on his back once again, held prisoner by his injury.
"Wanting to help a friend is a funny thing, Nick." Grissom's neutral voice commented. "For instance, I knew you wanted that glass of water and that it was impossible for you to get it. My choices were to piss you off again by getting up and handing it to you, or letting you keep your pride but fail at it, while hurting yourself in the process."
Nick pried one eye open, his back still feeling like someone took a fiery rod to it. His supervisor looked at him with what seemed a profound sadness.
"My choice to make, Gris," Nick replied.
"It's all about point of view. And that's something I did learn," Grissom stated.
Nick fell silent letting his troubled mind evaluate what had been said and unsaid at the same time. He kept drifting back towards scattered visions of Lake Mead and the calm it evoked. Apparently it had been enough talk as his supervisor adjusted in the hard plastic chair, the pages of a magazine being turned filling in for the rest of any conversation.
The constant sounds of pages and paper for some reason made him uncomfortable; his eyes drifted upwards at the ceiling, every panel of which had been memorized by now. The lyrics from the Johnny Cash song he'd been unable to sing after being dropped into a new torture chamber a melody in his head. Time crept by, the television that could only get two good channels turned off and stored over his bed.
Every thing was silent... unmoving.
A nurse entered the room right on time. A vitals check, scribbles into a chart at his outputs. "The lunch tray will be coming by. I know that creamed soup and pudding has been added. Do you have a preferred flavor?"
It was hard to get excited about but he gave it his all. "I like chocolate," he replied.
The nurse wrote his choice down. "Anything else I can get for you?"
Nick was already forming the words 'no thank you', when his ears reminded him of the deafening sounds that seemed to only magnify his growing tension. "Um... yeah," he hesitated.
The young caregiver smiled at him. "Whatcha need, sweetie?"
Nick shifted for a moment and didn't allow his eyes to roam anymore or to notice that his supervisor must have been equally curious. "Well, I heard that... um, it was possible I could get something to help me relax."
"I'll go let your doctor know that you requested a sedative. I think he left standing orders for it. But lemme check up on that," She explained a bit too cheerily before moving towards the bed to lower his position to a degree more suitable for his recovery.
Nick looked at the clock knowing he had another two hours before he got the next dose of morphine. His gaze drifted towards his boss who merely nodded and went back to his reading.
He could have done without the low whistles or the raised eyebrows.
Normally his cheeks wouldn't blush at such attention, though there was just something about sitting partially up in bed, missing your fashionable hospital gown and going commando under your flimsy bed sheets. Especially when two of your close friends, not to mention female colleagues, were practically ogling.
"Nice outfit, Nicky." Catherine snickered, her face beaming with all sorts of amusement.
Sara's cheeks had to be almost as red as his as she giggled, which was a sound rarely heard. "Um, you got the nurse too excited to dry you off?"
"Laugh it up," he drawled, knowing he was still sort of fresh from his sponge bath, a thing he hated and made each nurse who had given him one since his arrival tease him about his modesty. He swore they took their time.
Catherine and Sara wore matching mischievous expressions which only prompted him to cross his arms defiantly, despite the IV in the left one.
"She claimed she left the clean one behind and then one of the patients down the hall got into some trouble and I've been sort of hanging out ever since." Nick bit his lip as soon as the words were out and both women burst into laughter again. Nick rolled his eyes.
"Its not like we've haven't seen you without your shirt on," Sara said, trying to make him feel better and failing miserably at it.
"I thought you weren't supposed to be sitting up till tomorrow,
Catherine added.
Nick fiddled with his sheets. "Betty let me sit up just a little while ago, although if Nurse Attila the Hun found out, I'd be in deep trouble," he mumbled.
"And how long are you supposed to be sitting up," Catherine prodded.
Nick knew he was going to lose and grabbed the remote to the bed, glaring. "She told me for a couple of minutes." He pressed the device before the mother hen CSI could say anything else.
"Who's Betty?" Sara inquired, taking a seat in the lone chair.
Nick felt the soreness abate when he restored the elevated bed to a more even keel. His back had become so stiff during the morning hours and just couldn't take being so horizontal, even with the added sedative to his system. His physician wanted to start weaning him from the higher dosages of morphine since he might be returning home in two days. The effects of the smaller amounts of pain medication had been more pronounced then he would have liked.
Once back to his 'beloved' familiar place in bed, he looked at his co-worker. "Betty is the one who treats me like I'm an adult", he defended.
Catherine rolled her eyes. "She's just giving you what you want so she can seduce you later."
"Yeah. Maybe that male nurse, Eduardo, should give you your next sponge bath; that way we don't have to worry about you being taken advantage of," Sara joked.
Nick huffed even more just adding to their amusement.
"Grissom wanted you to know he'll stop by later. He had to go back to the prison to give a more detailed statement about Leon Stoyanov's death," Catherine explained, bringing the light-hearted mood down to a more sobering one.
Nick got a faraway look in his eye at the Russian's name. He knew no one would blame him for reacting that way; then again he was his worst critic when it came to facing ordeals. "Nigel rounded up a murderous posse to take him down. Blunt force trauma, right?"
Sara wiggled in her chair a bit. "Yeah. Cause of death was loss of blood from his injuries. They can't identify who was involved but the prison plans on charging Crane with the act."
Nick looked up sharply at that tidbit of news. "What?"
Catherine shrugged. "They're not sure of the charges, but they want to pin some of the deaths on someone. Nigel assaulted several people..."
"Out of self-defense," Nick added.
Both women looked at him askance, Sara the first to speak up. "They did find the four inmates who attacked you and beat up the prison guard. They're all facing multiple assault and attempted murder charges."
Nick simply nodded. "Franco's been by to visit a couple times while he recovered."
"He was released the other day, right? Broken ribs, arm, concussion and lacerated spleen," Catherine reported, recalling the man's injuries.
Nick kept to a quiet, "Yeah." The CSI didn't mention the guard's offer to meet him at the prison after both their rehabilitations for some sort of appointment with one of the doctors. The guard understood his hesitancy at having anything to do with any other staff member at the place. The man's phone number and card was now somewhere with the rest of Nick's belongings.
"Hey."
Sara's voice brought him out of his reverie. "Just two more days and you're out of this place."
Nick sighed. "Yeah, then another two to three weeks at home."
"At least you're going home, Nicky," Catherine added, not wanting the younger man to forget the severity of his injury.
Nick nodded and gave a faint smile. "I've just got cabin fever and I'm not even out of here yet."
Deep down inside he also knew that it was the extreme fluctuations in his emotions that led him to this hospital room. Feelings and tempers and a loss of control over these had been increasing and becoming more unpredictable. Warrick had dropped off his laptop the other day, and he'd spent some of his time, when he was able to focus in between doses of drugs, in researching his erratic mood problems. It was ironic, after digging into so many histories of people that he had judged, to be spotting things in himself that he had long denied.
His ruminations were disrupted when Betty, his nurse, came bounding in, full of apologies. "I'm so sorry, Nick. Mr. Johnson down the hall coded and then Mrs. Hitchcock started to react to her change in medication and..."
Nick held up his hand. "It's all right. I've been entertaining my friends."
The young nurse felt the collective glare from the two criminalists.
"Um, so I have a new hospital gown for you. And I can help you get into it."
Catherine arched an eyebrow and gave Nick a smirk. He quickly backpedaled, feeling that familiar hue rising to his cheeks. "I think I can manage."
"You're still not supposed to stand up, Nick. I can help you get mobile enough to tie a new one on," the nurse began to protest.
"Well, 'Nick'," Catherine teased, emphasizing the use of his first name as casually as the perky caregiver had. "We'll leave you alone, unless you would like one of us to help instead?"
He gave her a dirty look. "That's fine."
The women began to leave to give the Texan some privacy when Sara stopped in her tracks right before she left his room. "Oh, by the way, Grissom wanted me to tell you that Joseph Brighten has recovered from the Levodopa that had affected his system."
Nick stared at her, stopping the nurse from pulling at the curtains to
cut off the show. "Wait... Sara?"
She turned to look at him.
"Did Grissom say that he's back to normal now? That he's talking?"
Sara seemed to study his face and gave him a warm smile. "I think that's what he was referring to. Yes."
Nick nodded. "Tell Grissom I got his message," he replied knowing exactly what his supervisor would construe from his reply.
Sara's face reflected that she knew that there was some sort of silent communication going on, but took it in stride.
Nick knew if they had to revert to hidden messaging then it was at least a step forward from the complete lack of any meaningful exchanges over the past few months. Nick turned to face the nurse and began to blush again.
Notes at my bio