Chapter 3: Realities
I do not own CSI; the characters are not mine, but I like using them for my own pleasure
Catherine had given Sara four days off so that she could pack up and get ready to move to a larger apartment. She had asked Nick and Greg to help her move, and they would be coming by later that evening. She finished packing all of Gil's things into a few boxes, making sure that she included the wilted lilies he had bought her a few weeks before. She hadn't intended on keeping them, she just hadn't gotten around to throwing them out. She thought, personally, that they made a nice topper for their situation.
He said that lilies were a symbol of her, so she figured wilted lilies should be a symbol of what he had done to her.
She loaded it all into her car, being sure not to dump the boxes onto the ground. Arriving at the lab, she was careful to be sure no one detected her as she loaded a cart with his belongings, pushing them into the building and straight to his office. She contemplated her actions only momentarily before taking each box and dumping the contents into a pile directly before his doorway, taking the lilies and dropping them onto the top of the heap. She looked down, satisfied with the mess she'd made before putting the cart away and heading back out to the parking garage
She was, officially, four months pregnant that day and could no longer fit into her regular clothes. She was able to wear jeans that came to just below her abdomen, thankful that the rest of her figure was not expanding as rapidly as her torso. The blouse she wore was somewhat snug around her middle and she knew that her condition was becoming obvious.
She was just backing out of her spot as Gil pulled in, looking over at her as he parked his car along side of hers. Sara felt the rush of heat surge through her as she realized what she had just done, and pulled out quickly before he climbed out of the car. There would be hell to pay, she knew that, and his wrath would probably be great, but until she reported to shift the following evening she didn't want to think about what he would say to her, let alone what he would do.
Gil stared at the pile in front of his office door; unsure whether what he was feeling was anger or just plain irritation. He was tired, he hadn't slept in days and the last thing he needed was another mess to deal with. He thought that his heart had stopped beating when he saw Sara, and the look on her face told him she had felt the same. Still, it did not change their situation. Grabbing some boxes from the supply closet, he began picking up his items, stopping when he saw the lilies on top of his CD collection.
He knelt down and picked them up, staring at the wilted flowers. He thought of Sara and how she loved lilies, her face always lighting up whenever he brought her home a bouquet. He felt a twinge in him when he remembered the night he'd brought her these particular flowers; the night that everything fell apart. If only they could have kept things the way they were, everything would be alright and she would still be with him; but a baby changed everything, planned or not.
There was no feasible way that he could be a father; he was too old for it and he did not have time. He cared about Sara, more than he thought he would, but there was no possible way that he was even remotely ready or willing to accept her pregnancy. He knew, of course, that eventually it would come down to a choice and it was a choice he was not ready to make; and the animosity he felt towards Sara for forcing him into that choice was greatly overshadowing the love he thought he had for her.
Initially, he thought that there was no way he could father a child and that thought still clouded his mind, bringing with it images of Sara with someone else. She wouldn't cheat, would she? If she did, who with? Somehow his mind went to Nick...or even Greg...but it always ended up with some other man. He had trusted her, intimately, and now he felt completely exposed. Then again, he wondered if perhaps Sara just planned the entire thing and so had spent the last few nights researching pregnancy and the pill, desperately trying to find anything that would tell him that this was just an accident; that she had not done it deliberately. They had spent, over the last six months, nearly every night together; Sara's insatiable sexual appetite bringing him to the verge of exhaustion. Was that part of the plan?
Logically as a scientist, his mind told him that the pill is not 100 reliable, that there is always a chance of pregnancy, although those chances were very low. However, also logically, he knew that even in women who missed one or two pills a cycle, they were very unlikely to become pregnant, and women who missed ten pills had a 1 in 10 chance of ovulating; increasing their chances of pregnancy only slightly. Somehow Gil suspected Sara of just not taking the pills at all; and that is what infuriated him.
He wasn't ready to be a father and she was not going to trap him into it; no matter how much he cared for her.
He carried the flowers into his office, depositing them into the wastebasket before going back out and picking up the remainder of his things. He was thankful that he had come in early for shift so that no one else would see the piled mess his life had become; and he was especially thankful that no one was there to see the tears in his eyes as he picked up the discarded remnants of his life with Sara.
"You have got to be kidding me." Nick said as he stared at Sara. When she had told him on the phone that she had something important to tell him, he figured she was going to say that she had bought a piano he had to move or something; not that she was pregnant. She lifted her sweatshirt, showing them her swollen belly. To Nick, it looked like she was just bloated from bad broccoli or something, not like she had a person living in there.
"No." Sara smiled. "I'm not kidding…I am already four months."
"But…" Greg started, perplexed. "Don't you have to have sex to get pregnant?"
"Funny." She said, smacking his arm.
"No, really." He insisted. "I mean, you're not even seeing anyone…so how could you get pregnant?"
Sara sighed; here we go again. "I was seeing someone." She explained. "It got…complicated…he left…and here I am."
"Your guy left you?" Nick exclaimed. "Pregnant? What kind of a jerk is he?"
"A pretty big one at this point." She sighed. "But, I can't think about that too much right now, I mean, I'm going to have a kid."
"Sara Sidle pregnant." Greg shook his head. "The things Vegas does to people…"
Nick took Sara into his arms, hugging her close. "Well, I am happy for you." He said as he kissed the top of her head. "I'd like to kick some sense into the guy that did this, but I am still happy for you."
"Well, I for one would be thrilled if you were having my baby." Greg said with a smile, his face turning bright red as he realized what he said. "I mean…if we were a couple that is."
"Why are you still denying it, Greg?" Sara asked, feigning distress. "Our love child needs his father…"
Greg's face turned an even brighter red as Nick began to laugh. "Please don't put that image in my head." He said, elbowing Greg hard. "Come on, dreamer...let's get this couch moved."
They finished moving all of Sara's things to her new apartment, which was thankfully on the same floor. She bought them all pizza afterwards and they sat watching the Monday Night Football game on the couch that sat in the middle of piles of boxes. As they watched the game, Greg tried to come up with names for Sara's baby, picking names from the players on the screen. He seemed to settle on Hubert, thinking it was appropriate for a 'brainiac'. Sara laughed at him, asking what she should name the baby if it were a girl and he thought momentarily before naming the poor little thing Chastity for "What you should have been wearing when this happened…"
By the time Sara returned to work the following evening, everyone at the lab was abuzz with the news of her pregnancy. By the time shift was half over, Sara had grown tired of explaining why the father was nowhere around; several times she had wanted to just tell them to march into Grissom's office and ask him themselves. She was heading towards the laboratory when he came up beside her, stopping her mid-stride. "We need to talk." He said simply, taking her elbow and leading her inside his office, closing the door behind him and making sure that the blinds were closed. "Have a seat, Sara."
She stood, frozen in place. "I think I'll stand." She said, knowing it would be faster to make a run for it if things got out of control.
He sighed, looking her over. She watched as his eyes grazed her face, smoothing down her body to stop over her abdomen and she wondered what he was thinking. He looked back up at her face, his eyes catching with hers. "Sara," He began. "We need to sort this out…everyone here knows…we have to make a decision."
He said it as though they were making an auto deal, trying to decide which color of minivan to purchase. "I already have made a decision." She responded. "I have no idea what you are doing, but…"
"You can't have a baby alone." He snapped suddenly.
"Well, obviously I can't have one with you either." She retorted. "So what else am I supposed to do?"
"Sara…" He was getting frustrated. "I am fifteen years older than you; this just won't work."
"Wow." She said dryly. "That didn't seem to bother you when we were making this baby…or any other time we had sex. Funny you should have a revelation now."
He glared at her, counting to ten; he was losing his temper. "Sara, I do not want to get into this here."
"Why?" She pushed. "Because you're afraid the lab will find out that you are the father? At least then they would quit asking me about it, 'cause I gotta tell you, Gil, I'm tired of making excuses."
"I didn't have a choice in this, Sara!" He snapped angrily. "You didn't ask me if I wanted this, you didn't even consider me when you did this, so I don't know what the hell it is you want from me."
"You think I planned this?" She asked quietly. "How could you think that I planned this?" Their eyes locked momentarily and Sara felt the tears slipping down her cheeks, cursing herself for being such a baby. "Aside from yourself, have you ever thought about what this baby will do to me? I mean, you can walk away…you did walk away. I can't…it kind of follows me around." She stopped, glaring at him and knowing she was making him uncomfortable. "Do you have any idea how hard I worked to get where I am? How difficult my life has been and how much I frantically wanted to be successful and not screw my life up?"
Her voice caught and she began crying harder, choking on her words as she tried to speak. "Do you know what it is like to love someone so very much and then have them rip your heart out only to walk away over just one mistake? To cry yourself to sleep every single night and be terrified of what the next day will bring? To pretend you are fine when all around you your life is falling apart?" She stopped again, taking a deep breath and lowering her voice. "Do you even know what it is like to be elated just because you made it through an entire day without fucking something up? I was finally there, Gil, I made it and then I got pregnant. Why would you think I would throw away everything I have worked so desperately for by having a kid? I really don't think there are too many screw ups bigger than this one."
She grabbed the door handle, looking at him sadly. "And for that matter, why the hell would you think I would want to screw up the life of an innocent child? This baby isn't even here yet, and it already knows what it feels like to not be wanted…. yeah, I really planned this one." She opened the door and left, leaving him feeling as though she had slapped him across the face. As he stood there speechless, he almost wished she had of.
He sat at the briefing, not really paying attention to what was going on. All he could think of was Sara and everything she had said, the image of her playing in his mind over and over again. She had finished out her shift after their confrontation, carrying herself as though nothing had ever happened, putting on a smiling face for the sake of the charade. He had to admire her for that.
Days had passed since then and to Gil it felt as though an entire lifetime had opened a hole and sucked him in. He had tried, at least once, to talk to Sara again as she walked past his office but all he found himself able to do was stand abjectly staring at the floor. During assignments, he hid in his office until Catherine was done with her team, watching as one by one they filed out of the meeting room. Only then did he dare to leave the safety of his office, ignoring the puzzled expressions on his team's faces at his tardiness.
At one point he had observed her from a distance, noting the swelling of her once flat stomach and wondering in his mind if she could feel the baby moving yet and if she could, what it felt like. He had never really wanted children, had never even thought of having one, and now that he was 50 the thought of one scared him.
The sound of a voice snapped him out of his reverie and he looked up at Jim Brass as he sat next to him on the courtroom bench. "Wow…" Jim said quietly. "Quite the news about Sara, huh?"
Gil remained silent, pretending to concentrate on the proceedings as Jim continued. "Poor kid, the scumbag just up and left her." He shook his head. "Can you imagine? A great gal like Sara and the moron knocks her up and leaves."
'I'm the moron' Gil thought as he clenched his jaw. "Maybe he had his reasons."
"What reasons?" Jim scoffed. "Come on, any guy would be thrilled to have a girl like Sara. And then the jerk that gets her is too stupid to realize what he has….just kind of makes you sick, you know?" He shook his head. "She finally finds a guy she can trust and he stomps that trust into the ground…leaves her with a baby to boot…"
"Can you please not talk about this?" Gil whispered harshly.
Jim looked at him, furrowing his eyebrows. "You got somethin' you need to tell me, Gil?" He asked. They had been friends for over 20 years and he had never seen Gil behave the way he had been since Sara first discovered her pregnancy. Jim had a feeling he knew the reason.
"Leave it alone, Jim."
Jim looked forward, watching as the judge swore another witness in. "Just seems to me," he nodded. "That any guy who fathers a child should stick around and help with the kid. I figure the guy that fathered Sara's baby is probably a pretty good guy, just kind of freaked out." He looked over at Gil, a knowing smile in his eyes. "But, I have a feeling he's going to do the right thing and help that girl raise his baby." He raised his eyebrows at Gil as he stood back up. "It took two people to make that baby, and its going to take two people to raise it...yeah, if I were to ever talk to the guy that is what I'd tell him."
He smiled slightly, walking down the aisle and out of the courtroom, having planted a seed in Gil that he hoped would take root and grow. If not, Jim Brass would just have to kick his ass for being such a jerk.