Cottonwood House III

The Hand You're Dealt

Disclaimer: No, CSI: still isn't mine. *sigh*

Chapter 5

Greg

Always a gentleman I stand when I see the beautiful Sara Sidle, my breakfast date, coming towards my booth in one of our favourite diners.

Well, OK, it isn't a date kind of date, but Sara is beautiful. I always thought so of course, but it's even truer now, escaping from the lab and into the daylight has obviously done her a lot of good.

Seeing Sara at Lindsey's pool party made me realise how little I'd seen of her since she arrived back in Las Vegas; often when I've called she's been on her way out to see Grissom, or she's been working on re-establishing herself in town. Sara has done all the usual settling down stuff like finding work, getting a place to live and, now that she has an apartment, she's busy with renovations. All that is on top of the fact we're now living our lives at opposite ends of the day making it a whole lot harder to meet up, which is why I invited her out for breakfast the first meal of her day and the last of mine. Even so it's taken over a week to pin down an actual day.

"Hey, Sara, you're looking good today!"

"Hey to you too, Greg, I'm feeling pretty good, certainly better than you're looking, has Catherine got you working triples or something?"

Gee, thanks, and after I just paid her a compliment. Still, she's probably right about the way I look right now.

"Catherine's not the one who's responsible for the beaten man you're seeing before you; it's the other Ms Willows."

"Lindsey?"

"Yeah, it was her other birthday party this weekend, remember? She talked me and Riley into being chaperones and while Riley turned up for work the next night fresh as a daisy, I've felt washed out ever since. I think my age is finally catching up with me."

Sara gives me an unsympathetic grin. "Well you have to admit it Greg, it's taken it's time, you're well past twenty-something now, you know?"

It's an old joke; the one about Greg, Peter Pan of the Crime Lab; and doesn't hold as much truth as it used to, since the death of that gang-banger kid and then what happened to Grissom; but I laugh anyway. Sara's sisterly teasing makes the encounter feel almost like old times.

"Yeah, well remind me of that next time I'm tempted to help out with a bunch of teenagers."

Sara looks a little guilty.

"Oh, well I was going to say something this morning about this thing that I'm helping organise for work, but I guess asking you to spend yet another weekend with a bunch of kids is beyond the call of friendship."

Kids? Now I'm confused, "I thought you were working at the animal shelter."

"I was, but the more time I spent there the more I realised it was the wrong choice for me. I loved the animals but the more I saw of what people were doing to them, the more I realised that I was putting myself in the same situations that were so toxic to me in my last months as a CSI. One thing I learned while I was on my travels is that sometimes I have to put myself first. I felt bad letting them down after such a short time but they were very kind. The job I was doing involved recording information about any neglect, illness or injury to new admissions in case the previous owner is prosecuted or tries to sue the charity for wrongly removing their pet, and the management know it's stressful, which is why the job comes with a salary instead of being a voluntary work. It turns out that the probationary period is as much about giving the new recruit an easy 'no harm no foul' exit if they realise they can't cope than it is about whether the shelter likes how they work and they were happy to call it quits with only a week's notice."

"I had already signed up to become a Big Sister at that point and..."

I must have looked pretty surprised to hear that but that's because I am, in fact, very surprised. Sara has often talked to me in the past about her trouble connecting with kids, hoping I might have some advice that would help. The problem is you can't help someone that way, because kids can see right through you and if you're just doing something because someone told you to try it, they'll spot that at once. Anyway, Sara must have realised that I'm confused because she changes tack briefly, trying to explain.

"Gil gave me a 'talk' when I first visited Cottonwood House, and he used the computer to say something that actually started me thinking about whether I want to take on a kid in the future. I thought that taking part in the Big Brother Big Sister programme might be a way of finding out if I can get on with a kid any better than I used to and maybe doing some good at the same time.

"Anyway, I was having an interview as part of the process and I was asked how I'd feel about being a Big Sister to someone who has a parent in prison and I said it might not be a good idea. The woman interviewing me looked disappointed and tried to talk me out of any 'bias' I was feeling. Then I explained that the kid's parents might not be too happy if it turned out that I or one of my friends was responsible for whomever it was being prosecuted in the first place. Her ears pricked up and then, when she found out what I used to do, she was even more interested. It turned out that she was a manager at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Nevada but she was doing my interview because they didn't have enough people qualified to organize vetting and do home checks before the Little Brothers and Sisters are allowed to visit them there. My experience makes me ideal to liaise with the police and I could probably spot more than most people could on a brief home visit. I was offered a job on the spot and I took it up as soon as I'd finished at the animal shelter. I'm still training at the moment but in the meantime I'm helping out at some of the events where they need volunteers.

"So that's what I was going to ask you about. We're in desperate need of more male volunteers to be Big Brothers to the boys who apply and this is going to be a kind of 'find out what it's all about' session where people thinking of volunteering can get to meet existing Bigs along with their Little Brothers or Sisters. We're making it into a picnic and there will be games too so the kids will have some fun at the same time. Nick's coming to find out more because he misses his nephews and nieces back in Texas. Warrick isn't going to be there though; he said something about it not being a Big Brother that he has in mind right now, whatever that means. Anyway,I was wondering if I could tempt you, just to take a look at what's involved. No pressure though, I'm working up to things gradually myself, I've already learned that kids still don't really relate to me from what I've done so far, so I'm concentrating on the group events until I feel more prepared to go one on one."

Sara offers me a smile that is somehow both rueful and hopeful at the same time. I almost agree immediately just to get the smile to widen enough to show the cute gap between her front teeth; but, much as it may surprise people looking at me from the outside, I'm not quite as spontaneous as I used to be and I'd like to think this one through for a while. Besides, I'm kind of concerned about Sara's sudden swap, if she couldn't cope with working at the shelter, will this new venture be any better for her?

"That sounds cool, Sara, but by taking the new job aren't you just swapping one bunch of negativity for another?"

Sara looks like she's considering my question but surely she must have thought about this before if she really has spent the last couple of years learning to put herself first more often?

"Maybe," she answers, "but I really do want to be able to continue using the skills I learned as a CSI to help people, just in a different way. I agree that some of the kids have had a tough time, but the organisation is about giving kids good role models who are interested in them. It isn't about what's been done to them in the past; it's more about preventing problems in the future.

"Besides, at the shelter I was dealing with cases where the abuse had already happened and sometimes the people responsible for it. This time I'm mostly going to be working with good people who want to help and if someone does come along with the wrong motives I'm the ideal person to filter them out. For once I'm going to get to do preventative work instead of only arriving after all the damage has been done. That has to be better for me, hasn't it Greg?"

I grin, "Yes, put that way it sounds like this job is made for you and I bet you'll be great at it. As for being a Big Brother, are you really saying you think I'd be a good role model?" I give a boyish grin to make it look like I'm half joking, but it is kind of neat that Sara thought of me for something like this.

Sara grins back, but her brown eyes are serious.

"Yes, Greg, I think you'd be wonderful."

I'm pretty sure I'm blushing, but I can't let that influence what I decide, I proper role model has to consider things carefully, doesn't he?

"Actually Sara, is it OK if I think about it and maybe come to the next event like this one? This weekend really not good for me and I want to think about how I can balance the other things I do. I'm sure a kid would like to come along and do some of the fun stuff with me..."

Sara cuts me off there, she really is into her new 'mission'; I guess some things about Sara will never change.

"That's exactly how we encourage potential Big Brothers to see it. Taking part in the program isn't about finding extra time to spend with your Little Brother, most of these kids would be glad just to hang out and share a pizza or maybe play or watch sport with you."

Thank you! The waitress arrives and interrupts us before Sara puts me in an arm lock. She takes our drinks order and drops off a couple of menus.

"Hey," I say, once the waitress is too far away to overhear and raising my hands in mock surrender, "I thought you said this was a no pressure deal! There are actually a few things that I do that aren't completely childish or even child friendly you know? Some of them are even things I've taken on a commitment to do. On top of that you know that there will be times when work will spread and take over my whole life for a few days, and I want to be sure that if it ever means cancelling an arrangement I can make up for it as fast as possible, I don't want some kid feeling let down or rejected because of something I've done."

I pause there to gather my thoughts a moment. I know it's not the same, but as an only child with overprotective parents I didn't get to do much and really looked forward to it when Papa Olaf or some other acceptable adult offered to take me out and maybe do something a little more adventurous than my Mom would have wanted. I remember the frustration when those trips ended up cancelled because something unavoidable came up and I don't want to cause that in someone else. Besides there's another reason my free time is precious.

"Sara, I promise I'll consider the suggestion carefully, but one thing that isn't negotiable is the amount of time I spend with Grissom."

Almost while I'm still saying the name the atmosphere changes, the light of enthusiasm about her new job fades from Sara's face and with it the sunshine that was filling the diner seems to fade too, even though it's still as bright outside as it was a moment ago. Even the waitress seems to notice that something's different. Sara manages to place an order, but she still looks upset when the waitress leaves us again. I reach across the table and touch my friend's hand.

"It's OK, Sara, Grissom's doing great."

"Is he?"

I nod emphatically.

"Yes, he is. Sara, I do have some idea what you're going through. It's horrible when you first realise that someone as amazing as Gil Grissom will never be the same again. However much you tell yourself that it's selfish to feel that way, right now it feels like your loss as much as his, doesn't it?"

Sara nods and, after seeing her face, I quickly move around so that I'm sitting beside her in the booth instead of across. I take both Sara's hands in mine.

"Look, I know that what you and he are to each other is something completely different, but you know that Grissom was always a hero to me. When I was taking my turn sitting with him while he was unconscious I thought that I'd lost that, but spending time with him now makes me realise that he's still a hero, just one of a different kind."

Sara looks at me, her eyes watery and red.

"Did you spend much time sitting with him?"

"As much as I was allowed," I smile gently, trying to cheer Sara up a little, "we all wanted to, but the ICU wouldn't let us all clutter the place up and we knew Griss would be mad if he thought Graveyard's solve rate had gone down because we were clustered around his bedside. In the end Catherine drew up a rota that meant there was always someone with Griss while the rest of us worked or rested. She was pretty tough at enforcing it too – even Jim Brass had to keep to the schedule."

Sara's watery smile reflects mine.

"And did the clearance rate stay up?"

"Of course not, we'd lost our biggest gun hadn't we? But we probably did better than if Cath hadn't been so organised. I think it worked out fine, we all wanted to sit with Griss but the rests in between did us good, especially once Grissom woke up enough to get bored if we didn't find some way to amuse him because there was nothing he could do for himself."

Damn, I hoped I was making Sara feel better, but now she's actually begun to cry. Using one hand to offer her some paper napkins from the table dispenser, I wrap my other arm around her shoulders. I'm beginning to wonder if Sara has really talked about this with any one since she got back to Vegas and found out what happened to her boyfriend.

I spot the waitress looking at us like we're lowering the tone or something, but I do want to get Sara to eat something because I know she can forget to look after herself when she's upset. I signal to the woman that we'd like to make the food order 'to go' and then return my attention to Sara.

"You guys shouldn't have had to do all that, I was his fiancée, and I should have been there for him."

Fiancée? She was his fiancée? That implies a whole lot of stuff I don't have a clue about, but that stuff's not for now. I understand that Sara feels guilty, because I don't think there was a single one of us that didn't manage to come up with some reason why it should have been him or her testifying in court that day and that he or she should have taken the beating, not Grissom. The past can't be changed though, and we have to take a leaf from Griss' own book and replace the 'what ifs' with what is.

"Hey Sara, it's OK. Do you really think that we wouldn't have done just the same things if you had been there? You left to do what you needed to do and I bet the others were just like me in deciding that we'd take care of the Big Guy on your behalf. The job got a whole lot bigger than expected, but that was because of what those SOBs did to him and nobody could have known that would happen. At a crime scene in an alley after dark you take precautions, right? But you don't think anything will happen in broad daylight in a public place with so many police and other guards around. You really can't blame yourself for what happened or not being around when it did.

"And, now that you are back, don't think you can swoop in and have the monopoly on Grissom. I really enjoy my time with him and I'm as sure as it's possible to be that Griss enjoys it too. That's why I don't want that to change, not because I feel some kind of obligation. You hear me?"

Sara nods, but she still seems unsure so I explain to her how I call Lucy before I visit Griss and find out what skills he's working on or what's frustrating him most and then try and think of a fun way of working on that stuff. After a while of that we leave it and just have fun; maybe just watching baseball (I cheer whichever team Griss isn't supporting), going out into the grounds for a while or maybe fooling around with my Wii. I play left handed when we do that and pick games you don't have to stand up for, but I don't mention those details to Sara; I'm trying to get her to focus on what Gil is managing to do as much as possible. After I finish Sara seems a bit more like herself, but still takes a few moments to compose herself before speaking again in a quiet voice.

"Tell me about what it was like to be there when it first happened please, Greg? I need to know."

I wonder about Sara's reason for asking that question. Does she really need to know, or is hearing it in detail some kind of penance for not being there?

"Are you sure?" I ask, "It's in the past and Griss and the rest of us all cope better by concentrating on the here and now. Those few weeks are a memory most of us care to revisit, you don't need that stuff in your head."

"I do Greg, because I wasn't there and, unless David Hodges turns out to be even more of a genius than he thinks he is and suddenly invents a time machine, I never can be."

"I really don't want..."

"Greg, everyone tells me that if I'd only seen what Gil was like back when he was still in Desert Palm I'd realise how far he's come. So tell me.

"If you don't want to start with the immediate aftermath of what happened then start later. I know Catherine was the one who was there when he came out of the coma, so you can't tell me what that was like, but maybe you could begin with the first time you saw him afterwards?"

Maybe I've spent too much time with Grissom recently because I find myself pinching the bridge of my nose while I prepare to continue.

"OK, if you're positive Sara. First of all, it's true that Cath was the one of us who was there when Griss woke up the very first time, but that doesn't mean she was the only one of us to have the experience. When someone comes out of a coma it's nothing like how they show it in the movies, it wasn't like Grissom was unconscious one minute and wide awake the next, his eyes would open for a few minutes and then they'd drift shut again, for several days the only way we knew what was happening with him was by checking the EEG that was constantly monitoring his condition. The nurses showed us how to spot if he was awake, asleep or more deeply unconscious just by looking at that. If it hadn't been for the circs it would have been kind of cool."

I glance at Sara. OK, she doesn't want to hear about cool right now, so I won't tell her how Griss looked like some kind of alien, with his head and beard shaved, bandages holding his jaw still and affecting the shape of his face and a set of EEG pads attached all over his skull. Weirdest of all to look at was the probe thingy that was poking out of his head, the other end of which went right into his skull to measure things like pressure and oxygenation levels. I think even I was relieved when that was removed.

"But back then it wasn't cool at all, in fact we were using the machine to try and work out when Griss was about to wake up properly, because when he did he'd be so confused he'd panic and all we could do was talk to him and maybe touch his face until he calmed down or just fell asleep again. I'm not sure he even knew who we were right then; it didn't seem to make much difference if it was one of us or a nurse who was talking to him. Of course, there was none of the hand squeezing stuff you see in the movies either."

"He was paralysed?" It's as much a statement as a question but I nod in confirmation.

"How long did that last?"

I think for a minute, it seems that putting the past behind you can lead to forgetfulness. Sara looks at me, questioningly.

"Sorry, Sara, but it's hard to put a specific time to it, like the coma, it wasn't as if Griss was paralysed one day and not the next. Apparently the problem was mostly caused by the fact Griss' brain ricocheted around his skull, so large parts of the surface were bruised or swollen. It was only as that went down and the neurons started to recover that Grissom gradually began to feel and move again. Even when he was ready to leave the hospital and move to Cottonwood House the bits of his brain that were most bumped around, near the point of injury, still weren't back to normal. Add in all the muscle tone he lost while bedridden and he was still pretty immobile."

I pause, now I'm talking about it more memories are coming back. I'm tempted to edit for Sara's sake, but if I'm trying to make her realise how much progress there's been she needs to know at least some of it.

"I suppose the complete lack of feeling lasted about ten days. Towards the end of that it was suggested that Griss might like to go outside. The hospital has this neat thing where they've fixed outdoor power points around a small rose garden so, as long as they can be moved and don't need a whole ton of equipment, long stay patients can be taken outside in wheelchairs or even their beds and any monitors or other equipment can be reconnected to the supply out there.

"I was there when they took him out and I think Griss thought it was OK, I even caught a few bugs to bring over for him to look at. He was in this wheelchair with a high back so he could be strapped into a sitting position and I remember him closing his eyes tightly whenever it was moving. It only occurred to me afterwards that he must have felt like a disembodied head just floating along above the ground and he was shutting the feeling out by closing his eyes."

I stop there because I don't want to give Sara more detail than she asks for. However it seems she isn't finished yet.

"What about Gil's speech? When did you know that was gone?"

"Sara, that's the third question in a row that I can't give you a specific answer to."

Sara looks contrite and maybe a little disappointed. I give her a gentle nudge.

"OK, I'll do my best to answer that, but when I'm done I get to ask you something, OK?"

"OK." Sara's answer is positive but wary.

"Well, we were still at the stage when every doctor's comments started with 'assuming Mr. Grissom emerges from his coma' when we were told that Griss would probably have a pretty severe language problem. They could tell that because they could see exactly which part of his brain had been affected by sharp force trauma from the injury itself and also the surgery afterwards. They still couldn't tell us exactly how it would affect Grissom though, apparently most of us have a similar geography inside our heads but we're all wired up slightly differently so no-one reacts to a brain injury quite the same as another person would. It was a while after Griss woke up before they could assess him properly because apparently it's not unusual for someone freshly out of coma to have speech problems, plus the side effects of the reconstruction he'd had done to his jaw would have got in the way of him speaking anyway. At first the speech specialist seemed hopeful that things might not be as bad as expected, he was impressed that Grissom was able to reliably use blinks for 'yes' and 'no' from really early on but it turned out he was wrong. I remember that Griss was completely miserable for a couple of days after they finally did the assessment. I think it might have been the first time he did so badly at something he really wanted to do well.

"So, that was pretty much when Grissom hit rock bottom. Since then it' been all uphill from there; and I do mean uphill, Griss has fought for every step. So, however damaged he seems to you now, please don't devalue everything he's worked to achieve."

Sara shakes her head but I can see she's still doubtful. Well, I wasn't expecting this conversation to have her jumping for joy; I just want her to have the chance to start seeing things in a different light.

The waitress has arrived now with our food boxed and bagged. I give her more than enough to cover the check and tell her to keep the change as her tip. I get Sara settled in the passenger seat of my car and walk around to the driver's side.

"Your place or mine?" I can't resist the clichéd question. "I'll sort out fetching your car later."

Sara really isn't doing too good, it's not like her just to accept my decision that she isn't up to driving anywhere right now and now she's even giving me the choice of where to go. I pick her place, so she can relax without worrying about getting home afterwards.

I don't want her to spend the journey brooding so, as we pull out of the parking lot, I remind her; "I believe it's my turn to ask you something now."