Morning came. When the clock beside her bed turned to 9:00, Sara finally acknowledged that she would get no sleep. She dressed slowly, and wondered why every inch of her body ached. Exhaustion seemed to drip from her pores, and she considered going back to her little café. But her stomach recoiled at the thought of food. It was time, Sara decided finally, to go to the place she had come for. Once again, she imagined her childhood home being knocked to the ground with a bulldozer to make way for a hospital. The thought brought horror along with a strange sense of relief, and Sara quickened her pace toward the door. Out in the hallway, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes as she waited for the elevator. She drank in the sounds of the hotel. The soft, steady beeping of someone's alarm clock. Footsteps. Murmuring. And then, a voice, one that seemed to come from far away.

"Ms. Sidle?"

She kept her eyes closed.

"Sara?"

Sara sighed and opened her eyes. A man stood in front of her, small and wiry. His hair was dark and unkempt, his eyes wide and charming. He looked unsettlingly familiar. Sara searched for something to say, suddenly wondering why he knew her name.

"I'm Tim White," he explained with a small smile. "Your neighbor."

"Oh. Right. Hi," she stuttered, extending her hand. Tim took it and shook her hand heartily before producing a card. Her driver's license.

"You dropped this. It was outside your room," he explained genially, and Sara remembered his voice as the one that had helped her sleep, once.

"Thank you," she murmured, taking her license. "I don't know how I could have dropped this."

Tim shrugged and smiled his disarming smile.

"Don't worry about it. All you need is some rest," he assured her.

Sara blinked and felt déjà vu wash over her once more. And then, finally, the elevator door opened, and she mumbled her goodbyes and watched the doors close on this small, smiling man in the white polo.

Sara drove through the California sunshine in silence, without even the radio to quiet her thoughts. She was frustrated. She was tired and frustrated. This was supposed to be her place of rest and renewal. But still, the things that haunted her hovered just beyond her reach. She thought distantly of Grissom, and the seventeen missed calls on her cell. Sara groaned in the silence of her car, appalled at her own bitchiness. She could still feel him watching her, worrying over her. His ineffable presence was Godlike and somewhat uncanny. Miles and miles away, sometimes Sara could even swear that she felt his hand on hers, his whispers in her ear. She missed him. And as much as she wanted to stay in California and find whatever it was she was missing, Sara knew with a burning apprehension that she would have to return to Vegas, to reality, as surely as the waves that cling to the sand must return to the sea.

When she finally reached her old neighborhood, it was with a sense of foreboding. There was yellow caution tape, and construction workers yelling things in Spanish, and wreckage in the grass of what had used to be a quiet suburban neighborhood. Sara parked on an unoccupied street a few blocks away, and began to walk. She passed Roy Madison's old tree house and Ms. Peluski's prized daffodils. She stepped over the sidewalks where she had once drawn with chalk and crossed streets upon which she had ridden her bike. And then she was standing there, standing in front of her old house. It still had white paneling and a magnolia tree in the front yard. To the left and right of her house, there were bricks and wreckage. Her home stood there, lonely and decrepit, in the midst of the construction, and somehow the sun seemed to shine only upon this one lot. Sara drew in a deep breath. There was a buzzing in her ears. Inside this house was everything she needed to find and everything that would break her. She took a step forward, and was dizzy. Her muscles ached. Her throat was unbearably dry. Sara closed her eyes and opened them again. She began to walk forward toward her front door, but she couldn't walk fast enough. It was as though she was walking underwater. Her arms were numb, her legs were lead. Only her mind was truly awake, awake and screaming. You need this, it said. You will never live in peace unless you do this. You can't run anymore. After what seemed like hours, Sara managed to raise one arm and ring the doorbell. But it wasn't the ring she remembered. It was a beeping, a soft and steady beeping. The door was opening. But she couldn't see inside, everything was too dark. She was falling, her legs crumbling underneath her, hitting the floor, slipping away.

"Sara."

She kept her eyes closed. Nausea crept through her.

"Sara, can you open your eyes for me?"

It was Tim White's voice and, Sara realized with a particularly sharp pang of nausea, the voice of the doctor from her dream. Dr. Brown.

She opened her eyes and found him, whoever he was, sitting in front of her. His small form was tense, and his friendly eyes were expectant. She was once more in her nightmare of dull hospital walls and antiseptic smell.

"Sara."

This voice was different, and agonizingly tender. She turned her head. Grissom was sitting beside her, both of his hands clasping her right one. He looked haggard and remorseful.

"How are you feeling?"

Her stomach flipped again.

"Sick," she muttered. Grissom tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ears.

"That's normal," he murmured gently. "You'll be okay."

The nurse standing at the back of the room cleared her throat.

"I'll get a bedpan," she said. Sara closed her eyes. It was the voice of her other hotel neighbor, the one she had heard talking to Tim White, or Dr. Brown, or whoever the hell he was. Sara closed her eyes, feeling a remote but urgent need to go back to her childhood home and see behind the dark door. But she wouldn't wake up.

She heard the steady, familiar beeping, and realized that it was a hospital machine.

Memories began to infiltrate her senses and tangle with thoughts of California.

The desert.

A red car.

Thirst.

And it hadn't been a dream. This wasn't a dream.

Sara twisted away, sick, just as the nurse shoved the bedpan under her. She vomited and then dry heaved for a few moments, feeling miserably dehydrated.

When she finally fell back onto the pillow, Grissom took her hand again, quiet and unshaken.

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked. Her voice was dry and scratchy.

"A couple days, on and off," Dr. Brown said. "The pain meds will do that."

She turned to Grissom. "Natalie Davis?"

Grissom looked away, as if the name pained him. "We got her."

Sara nodded and closed her eyes again, still disconcerted by her drugged reality flip.

"I had a weird dream."

She heard Grissom give a rueful half laugh.

"Feel like talking about it?"

She shook her head.

"Not really."

Grissom smoothed her hair again.

"Well, I'm glad you're back."

Sara smiled and squeezed his hand, and the minutes passed that way. Hours later, she saw the rest of the team, and felt safe. Days later, she came home and curled up against Grissom in their big bed, and didn't dream. Months later, Sara left her vest in the locker room and her goodbye with Judy and her apology on Grissom's lips. She went to California.