Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone who's reading this, and double special thanks to PhDelicious for her beta-ing.
Updates will be less frequent from now on, as I started a new job this week. Sorry, but you know what the song says...I work hard for the money.
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The Last Embrace
by Kristen Elizabeth
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August 2006
"Dr. Grissom!"
The terminal at Louis Armstrong International was jam-packed with people, every one of whom seemed to be speaking at the top of their lungs, yet Grissom heard his name quite clearly. It was hard to miss when it was being shouted across the gate.
Adjusting the straps of his carry-on bags, Grissom approached the girl doing the shouting. Not only was she waving her arm so he wouldn't miss her, she held a piece of notebook paper that had his name written in thick, black marker.
"Are you Dr. Grissom?" She didn't give him time to nod. "Of course you are! I recognize you from your picture in the lecture brochure." Tucking his name under her arm, she held out her hand. "Welcome to New Orleans."
She couldn't have been more than twenty-five; she wore jeans and flip-flops. Masses of silky brown curls tumbled over her tanned, bare shoulders. Her nails were short, but perfectly manicured. And her wrist was decorated by a diamond tennis bracelet.
Grissom shook her cool hand guardedly. "Thank you." There was a pause. She was studying him with what could only be described as interest. He just hoped it was intellectual curiosity. He cleared his throat. "Well, we both know who I am…"
"Oh! I'm so sorry! I'm Reese Callahan." Her voice dripped Dixie. "I'm from the university. I'm here to give you a ride."
"What did you do to get stuck with that job?"
She laughed. "I could say that I'm a first year grad student, and as such, I get sent on a lot of errands. But in all honesty, I asked for this one." Without elaborating further, she asked, "Did you check anything in Vegas?"
"Um…no." He patted his shoulder bag and laptop. "This is it."
"Great, then we can get going!" Reese gestured him in the right direction to exit the terminal. "How was your flight?"
He was too puzzled by the sudden twist in his travel routine to answer her. "You know, they didn't need to send you all the way out here. I could have just taken the shuttle."
"Oh, the shuttle doesn't go where you're going. And cabs are so expensive."
"The shuttle doesn't go to the Holiday Inn?"
"I'm sure it does." She winked. "But you're not going there. I think you're going to like your new hotel, though."
Grissom frowned. "New hotel?"
"Yeah, I hope you don't mind, but I talked my thesis professor into getting the department to put you up somewhere else for this trip. I can't believe they've been making you stay in an airport motel! Men. This is why more women need to get involved in our field." She shook her head vigorously, and he caught a whiff of something flowery. He couldn't quite put a name to the scent, though. "You'll have a much more pleasant stay at this new place."
"And what makes you sure of that?" It wasn't jasmine. He knew that for sure. Jasmine was Sara's scent.
When the girl smiled, her porcelain cheeks dimpled. "Well, for starters, my father owns it."
As they made their way through the airport, Reese continued to chatter about her father's hotel and how it had miraculously survived the hurricane, which she had missed while she was vacationing in Napa Valley. While they waited for the valet to bring her Escalade around, she talked about her undergraduate degree in biology, and how her father was convinced that she'd be applying for medical school any day, even though she had just been accepted into the forensics program at Tulane.
By the time they were on I-10 heading towards the city, she'd moved on to how she'd never given any thought to bugs at all, except what was the best way to keep them out of a dorm room, until she'd started reading up on him.
It was flattering, but it wasn't anything he hadn't heard before.
Reese was in mid-sentence when Grissom felt his phone vibrate. "Excuse me," he interrupted, and reached into his coat for it. The screen displayed one word that made his blossoming headache go away. He answered with a smile that he had to fight to hide. "Hello."
"Hello to you." Sara's voice was a throaty antidote to his driver's sugary drawl. "I take it you got there safely?"
"Relatively."
"And is New Orleans just as you left it?" There was a trace of bitterness there, but it wasn't the time to explore it. If he was honest with himself, he half-hoped he'd never have to at all.
"Appears to be." He hesitated. As much as he wanted to talk to Sara, he didn't particularly want an audience. "Listen, Sara, I'm going to have to call you back. We're about to cross Lake Pontchartrain, and the reception could get bad."
"Sure. Yeah." Sara wasn't very convincing in her attempt to hide her disappointment, but there wasn't much he could do about it right then. "Um…talk to you later." She ended the call abruptly.
With a silent curse, Grissom slipped his phone back into his pocket. "Sorry about that."
Reese shook her head; the flower scent was from her shampoo, he realized. "No problem. But I think you're a little turned around. We won't be going over the lake."
"Oh." Guilt twisted into his heart. He knew exactly where they were. "My mistake."
A moment passed. "Was that your wife?"
"I'm not married."
"Girlfriend?"
Being hard-pressed to give Sara a title even in his own mind, how could he be expected to define their relationship to a stranger? He settled on the barest of truths.
"She's a co-worker of mine. I'll be mentioning a few of her cases in my lecture tomorrow."
The girl's dimples made another appearance. "I can't wait! I absolutely eat up anything to do with female crims. We're a rare bunch." When she glanced at him, there was definitely more than just professional admiration in her gaze. "It'll still be early by the time we get you checked in. What are your plans for the rest of the day?"
His preliminary schedule had included preparing for the lecture and calling Sara to find out what she was wearing.
She rushed on, like she didn't really want to hear his answer. "You know, my father is on the board of trustees for the Audubon Zoo. They're hosting a rare collection of insects from Asia right now. If you're interested, I could get us a VIP tour."
Magnolias. That was the scent. Southern, fragrant, beautiful and toxic if handled improperly.
It wasn't until the next day when her name came up in the lecture that Grissom realized he'd never called Sara back. He hoped she'd understand. After all, the exhibit had included Coccinella septempunctata, the seven-spotted ladybug.
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The first person Laura saw as she rushed into the emergency room with Cassie on her hip was Gil Grissom. She came to an abrupt stop.
He sat alone at the end of a lengthy bank of hard, molded plastic seats. His back was hunched over, like he was trying to alleviate nausea by putting his head between his legs. There was movement all around him as doctors and nurses walked back and forth, but he remained still, frozen in despair.
"Ge-ge," Cassie said suddenly. Cranky from having her sleep interrupted, she rubbed her eyes with her little fists. "Go!
Her tired protests were a bit too loud for the waiting room. Gil lifted his head and looked over at them. And what Laura saw in the centers of his eyes made her own anxiety almost unbearable. The man was grieving. Like he hadn't even at Nick's funeral.
She held onto Cassie and braced herself for the worst. "How is she?"
"They won't tell me anything." His voice was hoarse. "I'm not family."
Laura couldn't make sense of any of it. Sara had left for work complaining about eating everything in sight and still being hungry. Six hours later, she was in the hospital, and her baby's life, as well as her own, hung in the balance. "She just started bleeding?"
"She said…she fell." Gil hung his head again. "I don't know. I wasn't with her." It sounded like he'd be blaming himself for that indefinitely.
Laura sank into the seat next to him. Cassie was squirming, a sure sign that she'd be crying soon. She wished she could join her. More than anything she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. Don't take my daughter's baby from her.
Don't take my daughter…
"She was just starting to get excited about the pregnancy." Her eyes filled with scorching tears. "I caught her looking in the mirror the other day to see if she was showing yet. She even talked to her stomach when she thought she was alone." She paused. "There should be a limit to how much loss you have to suffer in one lifetime."
The man beside her scrubbed his hands down his face. "They've had her back there for an hour."
Laura hesitated a second before lifting Cassie up. "Take her." She deposited the cranky child onto Gil's lap; both of them seemed stunned by her move. "I'm going to find a doctor."
The ER receptionist was on the phone when she approached; Laura folded her arms and waited until the woman hung up. A full three minutes. Finally, her presence was acknowledged.
"My daughter was brought in earlier. Sara Sidle. I want to see her right now."
Five minutes later, a nurse escorted her back into the exam rooms. "She's in there," the nurse said, gesturing to a closed door.
"Thank you." Laura took a breath before entering, preparing herself for whatever lay ahead. They hadn't been able to tell her much, only that Sara was stable. There had been nothing said about the baby.
Sara was asleep, so Laura carefully made her way over to the bed and lowered herself into a chair next to her. It had been over twenty years since she'd last held her daughter's hand; she reached for it now, but with only the lightest brush of her mother's fingertips against her pale skin, Sara woke with a start.
"Gil?"
Laura drew her hand back. "Shh. No, Sara. It's me."
Sara closed her eyes, her body visibly relaxing. "Where's Cassie?"
"Don't worry. She's fine." She paused. "Are you all right? The baby…" She swallowed the bitter taste of fear in the back of her throat. "He said you fell. And that you were bleeding…"
Her daughter shook her head against her pillow. "They called it a threatened miscarriage. It wasn't the fall. Just one of those things. But the baby's hanging on. For now."
"For now? What does that mean?"
"I'll be on bed rest for a week or so, and if there's no more bleeding, we'll be out of the woods." Sara's chin quivered. "They did…um…an ultrasound." She took a breath. "They think it's a boy."
Relief coursed through her. "Oh, Sara."
Sara held up her hand, quite literally blocking her mother's joy. "I can't. Not until I know for sure if he…if it will be all right."
Laura couldn't blame her daughter for not allowing herself to get too attached to the fragile life she'd created with Nick. She couldn't say that she wouldn't have done the same thing.
"So…" She searched for something to say. "Will they be keeping you here?"
"Just another few hours for observation."
"Can I bring you anything? Do you want me to go get Cassie? She's just out front with…"
Sara shook her head. "No. I don't want to frighten her by making her see me like this." She indicated her IV, but the needle wasn't what caught Laura's attention. There were a few stray smears of rusty-brown on her daughter's hospital gown.
She was staring at them so intently that she didn't hear Sara calling for her attention. Laura blinked. "I'm sorry. What?"
"Who has Cassie?" Sara repeated.
"Gil," she said a second later.
Her daughter turned away, looking towards the window. Laura wasn't sure what she hoped to find there. But when Sara looked back, she asked, "Can you bring him here?"
Laura took her time walking back through the maze of identical corridors to the waiting room. When she passed through the final set of double doors, she paused to take in the scene in front of her.
Gil was sitting right where she'd left him. Cassie was still on his lap, but instead of crying or wriggling like Laura had figured she would be by that point, she was sound asleep, her chubby cheek pressed against the center of his chest.
But that alone wasn't what made her stop to stare. It was the way Gil was looking down at the little girl. She could only describe it as the way an artist might look upon his greatest sculpture.
Laura cleared her throat to get his attention. "She wants to see you."
The child in his arms kept him from leaping to his feet, but just barely. His features were heavy with worry; he looked five years older overnight. "Is she…?"
"She's fine. They're both fine." Laura gently picked up her granddaughter, eliciting a sleepy whimper from her. "Come on."
When they reached the door to Sara's exam room, Laura peeked through the glass observation window. Sara was dozing. One hand cupped her belly protectively; the other lay by her side.
Looking back at Gil, Laura asked, "Do you believe in second chances?" He seemed to be searching for an answer, but she wasn't willing to wait. "You should." Adjusting Cassie's weight on her shoulder, she tilted her head towards the door.
She waited until it closed behind him before peering through the glass again. Gil approached Sara slowly, and took the same seat she had. He let a few seconds slip by before he took her free hand between his. Lowering his chin, he squeezed his eyes shut like it physically hurt to see her in that condition.
It didn't take a lip-reader to make out the words he spoke to her sleeping daughter.
"Sara…I'm sorry."
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To Be Continued