Chapter Nine: Loss

"There was nothing we could have done."

Hospitals came with varying degrees of emotion. The maternity ward was full of joy and anticipation. The Intensive Care Unit was full of despair and pain. On some floors the emotion was boredom and endless waiting. The floor that Sara was on didn't feel like anything to Grissom.

Sara was asleep. Her recently fractured arm was splayed oddly across her because of the new cast. They had her hooked up to an IV and several fans were pointed at her bed. She would be fine as soon as she had some fluids in her and her body temperature went down.

Grissom had stayed in the room awhile after the doctor had finished up some tests and talked to him. After leaving Sara's side, he had somehow managed to wander into the church. Grissom took a seat in the first row, staring at the many candles people had lit for hope. Grissom hadn't actively practiced Catholicism in a long while, but he found that somehow in his darkest moments he still found comfort in prayer.

He didn't know exactly what to pray for, strength? Hope? Sara had plenty of strength, she didn't need any of that. Grissom might, but she didn't. And why pray for hope? What could that help?

Sara had been through so much. But it wasn't over yet. They still had more troubles to face before it would be over.

"The best thing to do will be to accept it. Let it go and move on. Start over."

Grissom concentrated on his breathing. His pulse was above normal. There was nothing to he could do to slow it down. He felt a pressure building behind his eyes. His heart was heavy.

Grissom asked for Sara to find a way to accept what all that had happened to her and left the church. The pressure was still there. He couldn't let himself break down. No matter how much he'd wanted to the past day. He had to be strong for Sara. The pressure lessened behind his eyes, and spread to the rest of his body. Grissom saw an exit sign and followed it, knowing he'd need to return to Sara soon.

Grissom didn't know what to do with himself. The pressure had built up to the point where it was unbearable. So he took all the pressure out on a brick wall. A very hard brick wall. All he accomplished was to tear up his hand. And cause himself a lot more pain.

Sara was just waking up when Grissom returned. He'd stopped by a bathroom first to clean off his hand. It was pretty badly bruised and one of his knuckles was bleeding. That's what you get, Grissom thought to himself.

Sara felt better now that she was in the hospital, which was really saying something. She'd never liked the hospital. When she was a kid, it was a regular occurrence to show up at the ER. It caused her family a lot of suffering. In her line of work, her visits to the hospital weren't good either. The victim was either dying, badly hurt, or scarred. None of the victims would be able to get over things like that very easily.

She supposed the only good things she'd ever experienced in a hospital was when Nick was recovering. There was relief, but then again, there was the realization that even he wouldn't make it through his ordeal completely unscathed. And with Brass, there had been major anxiety. Hospitals just weren't one of Sara's favorite things. But they were an upgrade from the desert, which was now low on her list of places she liked.

Sara felt better, but she felt different. The decisions she'd made in the desert were still there, but that wasn't the difference. It wasn't in her head. Her arm was in a cast, but the difference wasn't entirely physical. The only thing she could think of to describe what she was feeling, was that she felt like she was missing something.

The difference wasn't in her head, but she still felt different. Sara was feeling a lot of emotion. Happiness, comfort, love, relief, anger. And then there was something else there. It didn't feel like something that was entirely new. It felt like something she hadn't experienced in a while. Sara couldn't quite name the feeling, it was unknown.

Grissom was there, he was smiling. He took her hand and kissed it. Sara couldn't help but smile back. She was alive. In her final moments before she blacked out, she had imagined she'd never be with him again. She'd never hold his hand, or kiss him, or look into his blue eyes, or live to make him a father.

As if reading her mind, Grissom leaned forward and kissed her. Sara looked into his eyes. She looked into his deep blue eyes in which she'd always found comfort. Sara found comfort, but there was something else there too. The smile that was still on his lips didn't reach his eyes. In his eyes she found a different emotion. The same one that she hadn't been able to name. It now had a name: loss.

Before she could help it, Sara's eyes filled with tears. She couldn't speak. She didn't know why she was acting like this. Or maybe she did. She just didn't want to accept it. She waited for Grissom to explain.

"There was nothing the doctors could have done," Grissom started, then stopped. Sara had calmed herself down after the outburst, and was dreading what she knew that Grissom would say next. It was what she had feared when she was out in the dessert. Grissom moved closer, then continued, "Your body shut down. You were barely alive when we found you . If it had been a few minutes later, you would be dead too. They did the ultra sound about an hour ago," Grissom sighed, "There wasn't a heartbeat. There wasn't anything. You miscarried."

Sara took it all in. The baby was gone, dead. Technically it wasn't a baby yet, the scientific side of her brain said. Grissom looked horribly sad. For her, and for himself. Sara opened her mouth to say something comforting, that everything would be okay, that they could move past this, but all that came out was a strangled sob. Sara covered her mouth with her good hand, to stifle the noise and calm herself down again. But it was too late, it was like flicking a switch. The waterworks were on, and she couldn't turn them back off. This was how she would deal with the pain.

Tears streamed down her scratched and sun burnt face. They stung. With each breath came another sob. Sara was in too much pain to stop. And this was her way of dealing with it. She could see Grissom's heart breaking for her. And she knew that his pain was just as real as hers. And that made it hurt even worse.

Grissom hadn't cried in at least two years. He'd wanted to stay strong for Sara as he comforted her, but the pressure behind his eyes had finally reached it's limit. Grissom's eyes overflowed with tears. He took Sara's hands, and cried with her. She doubled over, burying her face in the tangle of their hands. He moved onto the bed and held her as the sobs slowly subsided. After it all, Sara just laid there, with Grissom stroking her hair.

They'd cried out everything. All the stress from the past few months. The horror from the past couple of days. And the pain of Sara's miscarriage. Natalie didn't know it, and she never would know, but she'd succeeded in hurting both Sara and Grissom.

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Sara's entire world was different now. In the few short months she'd been pregnant, she'd grown accustomed to the idea to her being a mother. Now that she'd miscarried, she'd had to deal with that. And somehow, Grissom had managed to reveal that they were together while she was out in the desert, causing Ecklie to move in and take action.

Although Grissom had insisted he would, Sara moved to swing shift. She knew that night shift would cope a lot better with her loss than it would Grissom's. Sara also felt that somehow, even her work was different. Or maybe it was just her again? She didn't get the same thrill out of solving the puzzle as she used to. All she could see was the death. And how unfair and wrong it was. She'd felt the thrill of the solve gradually becoming less and less even before what happened to her in the desert, but now it seemed all the more obvious. The desert hadn't really changed her. She'd just finally accepted many of the ideas that had always been there while she was in the desert.

Nothing had changed about her love for Grissom. Or her happiness with him. But everything else had. And right now, it seemed that everything else was the problem.

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To Be Continued…

A/N: This chapter hurt for me to write, so please don't be completely angry for me having to do it this way. I thought about it, and this was the way that it had to happen. It might take a while, but you'll see why…