Chapter 2 Remembering
Mutterings of voices, sirens. A soft hand on his face. A confident male voice. Blood. Something about blood. Something about tests. He just wanted to go home and curl up in bed. Sleep. He tried to say it, to say he needed to be at home. He blacked out.
The Sound of Grissom's voice, angry with someone. With him? Probably. It was always that way. The whisper of doctors, nurses. Catherine and Warrick sitting by him. The bruise on his ribs ached but he was lying on something soft. A bed. He was in the hospital. No, not again. No more white walls and tacky linoleum floors and that sterile, sterile smell. Of dying people. He imagined that he was leaving. Saw the doors open and everything, but he was still on the white bed with white sheets and the visitors.
When he finally dared to open his eyes, it was dark. He had a window in this room. He saw the stars and wondered where they had all gone. Of course, they were at work, where he should be, making coffee, jokes, and Sara mad but knowing she really wasn't.
Then a nurse. An older woman with a cup of water. And medicine, medicine that tasted sweet and bitter at the same time. He coughed a little, his throat was so dry. She was quiet and stony faced. She never spoke and Greg grew accustomed to her coming in every once in a while and giving him the pill. It happened three times and then Grissom came in the third time while she was giving it to him. He stopped.
"I heard you were feeling better."
"Yeah," said Greg, his throat aching with each word. Grissom sat in the chair next to him, all business now. Greg turned on his side to face him.
"Do you know what happened, Greg?" He shrugged. He thought he did, but he didn't want to. "Do you know who attacked you? What happened?" Greg heaved a sigh and closed his eyes.
"Was it him? That guy on the News. Our case. The Walking Epidemic." His voice trailed off and Grissom didn't need to say anything.
"Greg. You have AIDS."
Two days after Grissom told him, Greg decided something. He was going to live. And keep living. But sometimes it was hard when he thought of everything he'd ever learned about AIDS. Ryan White, the little boy from Indiana who died, always stood out in his mind. Would he die like that? His own blood eating him from the inside out?
"Mr. Sanders, you have a visitor." Greg felt well enough to sit up in bed lately, so he raised himself up to greet probably Sara, Warrick, or Nick or Cath.
It wasn't them. It was that girl. That girl with the hair he'd admired that night. It was still beautiful hair, a golden brown, so natural and right.
"So."
"So," Greg said back. She smiled.
"I guess you're not taking it too hard."
"What?"
"I know how you're feeling. He got me too." Greg understood now. She was a victim, like him.
"I won't let it destroy me inside. I can still keep going." She smiled again.
"You think it can never happen to you. And then it does and you think, 'Well, NOW what am I going to do?', you know? But you have it now. And you can't get rid of it."