Disclaimer: Title, characters etc all not mine!
Author Notes: Happy New Year to All! All the recent talk of Sara and her Mother has encouraged me to brush the dust off what I had written of this and post it!
Welcome To The Room.
By Rianne.
Chapter Four.
She counted the change.
Weighting the many coins in her palm.
There should be enough to make an out of state call, even with the possibility of being put on hold.
There was a phone in her small shoebox apartment, but she felt a conversation like this needed to take place in a wide open space.
She didn't want to hear her own awkward words echo back at her from the thin enclosing walls.
She didn't own a cell phone.
Even now electronic gadgets were a little beyond her price range.
She had never had money, her entire life.
Certainly not for unnecessary luxuries.
Her parents had struggled, she had spent her childhood in hand-me-down clothing, trousers that never reached her ankles, she had married Sara's father young, always working to barely make ends meet, and in cyclical fashion had sent her own daughter off to school in half-mast second hand trousers.
Although she had tried her best to keep her child fed and clothed, Sara had simply been her mother's daughter where growth spurts had been concerned.
The newspaper description had listed her as 5'9".
They would finally be eye to eye, even if it was only physically.
There was a tingle in her stomach.
Anticipation, excitement, nervousness.
Hope.
She had something good to wish for again.
Her fingers were trembling as she left the car, took the few steps up towards the lone phone box.
And then a few steps back.
It took another few minutes of restlessly pacing, feet imitating the advance and retreating motion of the waves, before she could pick up the receiver, each drop of a coin a huge step into the unknown, the dial tone ringing in the air, her voice wavering as she tentatively asked the operator for the number of the Las Vegas Crime Lab.
She had to ask twice before the person on the other end could understand her request.
Would she like to be connected?
She took a deep breath.
Yes, she would.
Then the line was being connected.
Her heart was literally beating in her throat.
She could do this, it wouldn't be Sara on the other end, it would be a receptionist.
She talked to receptionists all the time in her job.
The person on the other end of the phone would just be a person like her.
This was no big deal, not a big deal.
Except this person, she knew Sara.
"Las Vegas Crime Lab, Judy speaking. How may I direct your call?"
She paused, clearing her throat, "Hi, yes, I'd like to leave a message."
"Alright, and who would that be for Ma'am?"
She wasn't sure when she had graduated from Miss to Ma'am, but she wasn't altogether pleased about it.
"I'd like to leave a message for one of your CSI's. A Sara Sidle."
It was the first time she had said her daughter's name out loud in more time that she could remember.
The voice on the phone took on a different tone, a more protective edge creeping into her pitch.
It didn't sound like her call had been the first received about Sara today, her name and her face splashed all over the papers and the news.
"And what message would that be?"
Her brain stuttered, what could she say?
She was unprepared.
She had thought the words would come, but they were failing her.
"Ma'am?"
"Could you please tell her that I hope she recovers well, and that if she wants to contact me I can be reached on San Francisco..."
The words came out in a rush. The number a tumble of digits.
"And the name?"
"Huh?"
"Your name Ma'am?"
"Yes, sorry," she muttered distractedly, "Laura Morris Sidle."
And then she placed the receiver back in its cradle disconnecting the call.
Knowing that she could not have answered the same surname questions, the receptionist would undoubtedly have asked, in a good enough way to satisfy.
Her heart was slamming in her breast.
She pressed her fingers to its beat, rubbing her skin through the thin wool of her top.
If she wasn't careful she would end up having a heart attack, several of her colleagues had succumbed over the last few years.
She was getting to old to put her heart on the line like this.
But it was too late now.
No going back.
It was done.
She had to just let the fates play out.
Above her head a gull careered on an updraft squawking at her mockingly.
Her attention traced its graceful gliding through the air.
Yes, it was true that she didn't strictly believe in trusting fates.
She lived her life day by day, worked as hard as she could to make things happen.
But in something as out of the ordinary and long waited for as this, she would allow herself to look to anything for answers.
And more importantly for patience.
Sara would be hospitalised for at least a week, if not longer, and then she would need time to get through her messages, weeks before she got back to work.
She had to forget about this and get on with things.
It was done now, she had done her best.
She should go back to work.
But her mind was far too scattered to explain her earlier behaviour to her colleagues and her boss.
They would be discussing her enough already, Sara's story already intrigued them and now they knew there was a link between the two of them.
The rumour mill would be rife.
She couldn't imagine what they could have come up with by way of explanation by now.
It was just the kind of attention she really did not need.
That she had come to work in that quiet little office to avoid.
She reached her car, but didn't climb back behind the wheel, instead she leant back against the side of her battered old vehicle and watched the sea, letting the wind stir her hair, wishing it could blow the apprehension right out of her.
000000
It was days before Grissom set foot in the Lab.
And he barely took three steps before he was surrounded.
Colleagues streaming from the smaller Labs all along the corridor, all desperate to hear how Sara was from someone closer to the source than Ecklie, who had apparently delivered only the basic information that she was alive, recovering and the doctors were pleased with her progress, all in his usual emotionless monotone.
Wouldn't want anyone to think that he had feelings or an emotional level beneath the Lab Director exterior.
The Hospital had been extremely strict on visitation rules, only Brass and the close team had been allowed in to see her, but the out pouring of flowers and cards and gifts had been stifling.
This was the first time he had left her side in nearly a week.
Greg was with her, he had left the pair playing a slow game of poker, and as he had left he had been unsurprised to note that Sara swathed as comfortably as she could be in hospital bedclothes, already held the upper hand.
Someone might need to sweep her plaster cast for stealth cards, but her spirits were returning.
She was in safe company, and he felt calmer about that, but his hopes to sneak in and out of the Lab unnoticed were clearly flawed.
He felt flustered enough about her recovery before he even factored in the information that the entire Lab now knew he and Sara were together, and yet it was easier than he had imagined to listen and give responses to their compassionate enquiries about how she was doing, and even more surprisingly about how he was doing, showing a level of affection for them both that he had never imagined.
Smiling, touching his shoulder, his arm, unable to contain their happiness at Sara's rescue, when he had thought it was only he who felt that emotion with such intensity.
Sara, she never failed to bring out the best in people, and he wholeheartedly included himself in that.
Finally breaking free he moved with lighter feet to his office, his brain now crammed full with sentiments to pass on.
The office door was closed, his privacy respected even in his absence.
In the corner, under the blue glow his spider munched away happily. Nick having tended to the creature, and it was a damn good job as all that had been in his mind, he had clean forgotten the lone black shadow that watched him work.
The only other change was the tumultuous stack of paper memos which wavered in his inbox. The ever discreet Judy leaving little trace of her role.
His big fingers skimmed through the feather light slips of ephemeral paper, drawing them onto the desk before him as he took a seat.
Sara's name leaping up at him from almost every page. Some from names he knew, officers, CSI's from other shifts. Some from names he did not and those he placed in a separate pile, Sara could see those at a better time, just in case he threw away something genuine.
One about half way through caught his eye, the matching surname drawing him to sit straighter, the thin paper curling in his fingertips.
Laura Morris Sidle. His eyes scanned the brief note again.
It couldn't be.
He thumbed the power button on the computer base unit, barely hearing it whir into life.
He nudged his glasses lower, rubbing his eyes, fingers combing through his beard distractedly.
His anxious tapping of fingernail against teeth counting down the moments as it booted and he opened up several pages. Checking the number on system using reverse dial. A Laura Morris registered, not Sidle.
A driving licence flashed up.
The picture slowly emerging from pixilation.
Well, damn.
The woman staring back at him could not have been more like Sara.
He slumped back into his chair.
Yet now, did he wait? Did he ask Sara what she wanted to do? Did he call the number?
Was it really up to him?