Author's note: Please forgive the long note here, but I've got a few things to respond to and a few things to say, for those of you who want to take the time to read a few thoughts off the top.
A few specific responses:
Veronica10 – Thanks for the suggestion about including organ donation info. UNOS is apparently a great organization, but since this site doesn't seem to want to allow me to add a link, all I can say is Google it if you want to learn more.
To those who feel the story is just too depressing – I'm sorry, but it won't suddenly become a fluff fic. That's just not what I'm doing here. Please note, however, that that does not necessarily mean that it can't potentially have a happy ending.
anneruhland - thanks so much for sharing your personal story. I'm glad you felt I did the issue justice.
Elialys - Thanks for the long, thoughtful reviews! And I have to add, I find it kind of funny that you said you'd 'rather love some geek-babies' since when I decided to write a CSI fic, I told myself I'd pick something that's been done many times but, in my opinion, rarely done well, and attempt to write it entirely in character if it killed me. And it came down to either Sara-gets-sick or Sara-gets-pregnant. You've kind of got me tempted to write the other one now.
About Josh - we're just barely getting to know him a little bit here, so please keep an open mind at least until you've read the next chapter. We see him mostly through Nick's eyes at this point, and he doesn't know him (yet).
I've struggled a bit with how much or how little to use the Josh character, since I tend to hate original characters in fics, but I think he's really necessary here and can eventually add a lot to the story.
Anyway, thanks again for all the fantastic reviews. CSI fans are particularly thoughtful in reviews, it seems to me, and I love that.
As always, these characters are not mine, and I would so appreciate any and all reviews and feedback.
Moments of Truth
Chapter Seven
It was fucking cold.
And Nick didn't even own a pair of gloves, let alone have them with him now.
The fall winds blew so strongly that candy wrappers and grocery bags and other litter fluttered around by his feet.
His eyes hurt. He hadn't slept for more than a few hours at a time in four days.
He hadn't had a real meal in four days, either. Unless, of course, you considered hot dogs and pretzels from street vendors a meal.
If it had been the type of neighborhood where people gave a damn, someone probably would have already called the police to report him as a stalker.
But Nick never considered for even a second that he might have to give up.
Sara needed him.
Grissom was counting on him.
And the piercing need not to disappoint had been hardwired into Nick Stokes from the time he was a toddler spilling milk on his rigid father's good clothes.
And this wasn't about spilled milk. This was a world away from spilled milk.
"I'm trusting you, Nicky", Grissom had said, unknowingly uttering a phrase that Nick both cherished and dreaded.
And it echoed in his head now.
He'd give it a few more days, hold out as long as he could, and then actively start searching for this Joshua Sidle if he hadn't returned.
He'd only caught a glimpse of him before, and he only had an old photograph to work with. He wouldn't even be sure he had the right guy if he hadn't questioned a surly neighbor for confirmation on the man's name, and he'd told Grissom as much.
It had been a rather intense phone call. Grissom hadn't been thrilled to hear that Nick lost track of his subject in the subway system. He hadn't yelled, hadn't had any particularly cutting words for him, but the quiet sigh had been punishment enough.
Grissom had moved on in the conversation quickly, wanting details, and Nick didn't have much to give him.
Blue jeans, longish hair, looked healthy enough from a distance, wasn't limping or slow or anything… Nick had told him what little he knew of Sara's brother, added wearily that he'd been carrying a duffel bag, and then listened as Grissom sighed again and put it all in his eternally desperate-to-please hands. "I can't leave her right now. You do whatever you have to do. Trust your instincts, go into it slowly, don't tell him too much too soon, feel him out first. Just do what you have to do to get him back here, and then I'll take it from there. And keep calling, keep in touch. I'm trusting you, Nicky."
There had been the abrupt 'click' of a hang up then, and Nick could still here it.
He stood up off the cold ground now, and stretched his sore limbs.
He sighed heavily.
Grissom was trusting him.
Sara could die.
No pressure, or anything.
…
For the first time in almost a week, Grissom was walking around the crime lab wide awake and feeling relatively rested.
Better than that, he was feeling rather hopeful.
Sara was finally feeling a little bit better than she had been in the early days of her second round of chemotherapy, and they'd both slept well all day.
He'd left her at her place eating a bowl of soup for 'breakfast', and made it to work for his shift early rather than late.
Catherine had been picking up a lot of the slack lately, and Ecklie had, miraculously, had the decency to let them work out a kind of combined supervising effort on their own.
In addition to all of that, Nick had a line on a man who just might be able to give them their miracle.
Things were looking up.
Arriving at ballistics, he walked briskly into the room and up to Bobby Dawson.
"Got your page," Grissom acknowledged. "Did you finish with the bullets from the camp site?"
"I did. And not a single match to the nine millimeter from the trash can." Bobby offered a vaguely apologetic shrug, and Grissom nodded.
"It's actually what I expected," Grissom told him distractedly, thinking over the details of the case. "Thanks," he added quietly, absentmindedly, turning to leave.
"Hey, I'm glad Sara's doing better," Bobby called out, and when Grissom turned back he found the other man wearing a friendly smile.
"So am I," Grissom returned, and then gave him a curious look. "I didn't think anyone had been by to see her since I left. Who told you she's doing better?"
"Sara herself," Bobby answered, fiddling with his microscope.
"You called her?" Grissom asked, clearly surprised.
"Saw her," Bobby corrected, unaware of the concern washing over Grissom's face. "She's working in the break room."
Without a word, Grissom turned on his heel and took off down the hall.
…
"No."
Grissom spoke slowly and firmly, and accompanied the word with a shake of his head.
Sara was sitting at the table in the break room, piles of papers and folders spread out around her. She was wearing makeup for the first time in days, even if only enough to disguise the pallor of her skin.
She looked up at him now, ready for a fight.
"This is the first day in almost a week that my stomach hasn't rebelled," she told him calmly, clearly prepared for this. "I've spent a lot of days staring at those same four walls. And I'm not going to let that be all I have left if I can help it."
That got to him, turning the stubborn, adamant look of disapproval on his face into something sad and hesitant, and so she continued.
"I know I can't even think about going into the field or handing evidence right now," she told him gently, her tone now one of careful understanding. "And I'm fine with that. But going over cold cases with fresh eyes, being here at work, it's not going to hurt me. And it's something, at least it's something worth doing."
Grissom stood silently for a moment, apparently thinking, and then sat down at the table across from her.
"I don't like it," he told her after a moment.
"I know."
"Ecklie will probably have a fit."
"It'll be more entertainment than I've had in weeks."
He cracked a reluctant smile at that, and she knew she'd won the battle.
"You don't leave this room," he told her sternly.
"I promise," she agreed. "And thank you."
She spoke softly, almost apologetically, sorry because she knew this would keep him worried and distracted tonight, and grateful because she knew he still had the authority here in the lab to tell her 'no' right now, if he wanted to.
"I have to track down Warrick about the camp site murder case," Grissom told her as he stood up, effectively turning the mood in the little room to something closer to professional.
"Hey, where's Nick?" Sara asked curiously, and Grissom literally froze halfway to the door.
"He's, uh, he's out of town. Working a big case," Grissom told her, barely turning back to face her. "I'll tell you about it sometime soon. I promise."
With that he was gone, and Sara picked up a file for only a moment before putting it down and getting up to get a drink out of the fridge.
She was damn thirsty today.
…
Nick's 'big case' was finally breaking.
He had been fighting sleep five minutes ago, but now, following Joshua Sidle into his apartment building and down a dimly lit corridor, he might as well have just downed a pot or two of Sara's extra-strong coffee, and then stuck his finger in an electrical socket just for good measure.
This was it.
He had to play this right.
He'd watch and see which apartment the guy went into, and then take a few minutes to finalize what he was going to say, and then knock on the door.
That was the plan.
But when the man reached his door, he turned and fixed a suspicious gaze on Nick.
Josh Sidle looked the other man over for a minute, from the other end of the hall.
And something bright and relaxed gave way to something hard and worn out in his eyes.
He'd had four good days.
But now it was back to this, wasn't it?
He slowly made his way down the hall, keeping his eyes on the stranger all along.
He figured him for a cop or a bookie, but he looked damn nervous for either of those.
He looked like he might get sick, and yet… he didn't look scared, exactly.
Just nervous, intense, maybe a little hopeful. Who the hell was this guy?
Nick was watching Josh, too, taking him in up close for the first time.
He looked like the kind of man who had gotten his muscle from life rather than the gym, dressed in blue jeans and what looked like an ancient denim jacket, a plain grey t-shirt underneath. His hair was lighter than Sara's, and hanging in his eyes. He looked to be in his early forties, looked older around the eyes, looked like he hadn't shaved in a day or two, looked tired.
And still, somehow, there was something a bit boyish about him, something rather young.
It might have been the practiced look on his face, the challenging-but-slightly-amused expression he wore as he stood there, letting the other man make the first move because he knew it would unnerve him.
"Are you Joshua Sidle?" It was all Nick could come up with at the moment, but he felt good about the firm tone of his voice.
"You first, Cowboy," the guy returned, putting him on edge with expert ease. "Or should I be calling you 'Detective'?"
"I'm not a cop," Nick said immediately, and then wondered if that was the right move.
"You don't say."
Josh said nothing further, and Nick settled on a half-truth, needing to somehow get the ball back into his own court.
"I'm not a cop but I work with them, and I need to ask you a few questions," Nick told him, carefully confident as he gestured to the door the other man had approached before. "I'd like to do this some place less public."
Nick watched his reaction, noting that behind the pretense of control the guy was beginning to look confused by him.
But Josh only nodded almost imperceptibly after a moment.
"Suit yourself," he tossed out, and turned to go back down the hallway and open the door.
When they were inside, Nick took a second to look around, noting that the place was small and sparsely decorated, if decorated was even the word. An old table near the tiny kitchen area, a couch, a TV on a small table. That was about it.
He turned to look at Josh just as the man dropped his duffel bag by the door, and what looked like a few little square pieces of paper fell from his large jacket pocket.
Before Josh could snatch them up Nick noticed that they were Polaroid pictures, but of what, he couldn't tell.
Josh stacked the photos and placed them face down on top of the refrigerator, and then walked the few steps back over to Nick.
"I'd offer you coffee or tea, but I'm fresh out."
The words were spoken with a bit of a scowl, and more than a bit of sarcasm, and Nick took a deep breath, ready to forge ahead.
"Where you been for four days?" Nick asked, trying to fall into the familiar routine of the interrogation room.
"Albany." The answer was quick and direct. And deliberately brief.
"Why?"
"Had somebody to see."
"Where do you work, Josh?" Nick asked, using his name intentionally, trying to take some control of the conversation.
"I'm between jobs right now."
"Fair enough."
Nick paused then, for a long moment, thinking.
A typical opening line of questioning was pointless.
Grissom had said to take it slow, feel him out.
But the only thing that mattered was his history with Sara.
"When's the last time you saw your sister, Josh?"
It was a sudden shift, and Nick felt a little jolt of something like triumph when the other man's practiced look of indifference faltered briefly.
"Something happen to her?" Josh asked, and it might have been wishful thinking, but Nick could have sworn he saw a distinct concern in his eyes.
Nick let him sweat for a minute without answering.
"That why you're here?" Josh asked, ratcheting up the tension a notch with a slightly more demanding tone.
"You could say that," Nick told him, and then paused again.
"She alive?"
"For now, she is."
"Fucking cop mind games." Sara's brother almost spit the quietly muttered words, and he looked just anxious enough that Nick took pity on him – and let himself feel a bit more hopeful than he'd dared to before.
"I told you, I'm not a cop. I'm here as Sara's friend. I'm a criminalist. I work with her."
He paused again, sent up a silent prayer that he was playing this right, then continued.
"She needs you."
…
The break room at the CSI division of the Las Vegas Police Department out on North Trop Boulevard was generally a place for small groups of employees to kill time while awaiting test results.
A certain graveyard shift team had been known to use the place as a lounge more than anything else, coming together for snacks and brainstorming sessions as often as they turned in reports or pulled on pairs of latex gloves.
Occasionally it was used as a kind of extra office.
But in almost all circumstances, it was a place for groups to gather and stay for a while.
Not so, tonight.
Sara sat surrounded by case files as before, but she had trouble concentrating thanks to the steady stream of people coming and going.
She didn't mind. For a considerably less-than-outgoing person such as herself, it was a pleasant surprise to realize that so many people wanted to come by to see her as word spread that she was in the building.
Bobby and Ronnie and Hodges and David and Dr. Robbins and Jackie and Wendy had all been by once or twice, long enough to say 'hi' and that she'd been missed and wish her well before going back to work.
She looked up now and then to find Grissom just standing in the doorway, checking in on her.
Greg came by every twenty minutes or so with a joke, or a question he supposedly needed answered, or a simple "Hey, how's it goin'?" He seemed to be purely enjoying having her nearby, which was touching.
Warrick dropped in a few times, sat down as casually as ever, talked over the cases she was looking at with her.
Catherine wouldn't admit that Sara was the reason she was in and out of the break room tonight, but she'd gotten seven drinks out of the fridge in the space of about two hours, and each time had stopped to chat.
It felt good.
As much as Sara had needed to get out and do something useful, she'd needed this from the people in her life even more.
If she hadn't been feeling slightly light-headed and so damn thirsty, it would have been easily the best night she'd had in a long while.
She was getting up to get another bottle of water when Greg came bouncing in yet again.
"So I turned into a tourist yesterday," he told her with a grin, grabbing the chair next to her, and she sat down with her water and returned his smile.
"This'll be good," she said in a 'I know you well' tone, and Greg's grin grew.
"Toured a few of the newer hotels. I'd never actually been in Mandalay Bay before, believe it or not."
"You don't say."
"I do," he told her, pleased by the mildly amused tone of her voice.
"So why now?"
"Met a girl," he told her, raising his eyebrows for effect, and Sara cracked a smile.
"How nice for you."
"A tourist girl," Greg clarified, and Sara nodded, seeing where this was going.
"So, let me guess, you decided to be the nice, dependable local Vegas expert who could give her the grand tour?"
"Precisely."
"At a hotel you've never been to before?"
"Well she didn't have to know that."
Greg smiled again, enjoying the pointless chatter.
"We did some gambling. Higher stakes than I've ever tried before."
"Which was?"
"Dollar slots."
They both laughed, briefly, at what amounted to a walk on the wild side for Greg Sanders, and then he quieted and gave her a meaningful look.
"I guess I just decided I wanted to believe in the odds of beating the odds."
Sara looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded her head once, in acknowledgement of what he was trying to say.
But then she had to lighten the mood again, because tonight was going too well to get lost in the ever-present misery.
Catherine breezed into the room and headed for the fridge just as Sara spoke.
"The odds of beating the odds. You do realize that that makes no sense at all?"
"You still expect Greggo to make sense?" Catherine teased, and then rubbed Greg's shoulder affectionately as she walked by him to toss the empty can of her last soda in the garbage.
Both Catherine and Greg looked at Sara then, expecting a joke or at least a smile in response.
But they found her looking suddenly afraid and alarmed.
"Sara?" Greg called her name, and though she turned her head in his direction, she seemed to be looking right through him.
"Sara?" It was Catherine calling her now, Catherine with a gentle hand on her arm.
Sara dropped the open water bottle in her hand to the floor and gripped the arms of her chair as if they might somehow help her.
"I think something's wrong," Sara told them quietly, and she managed to grab Greg's shoulder, looking unsteady. "I think something's wrong."
…
Josh scoffed at Nick's words.
"Sara needs me like she needs a hole in the head." His tone was sad, bitter.
"Maybe before," Nick responded immediately. "Not anymore."
"What's so special about now?"
Nick swallowed hard, and he abandoned his careful mask of control as a hint of desperation came over his face.
"She's sick, Man." He paused, begged Sara's brother with his eyes. "She's real sick."
…
"Greg, get Grissom."
Catherine's voice was calm, but laced with urgency.
Greg took off out of the room, and Catherine took his chair next to Sara.
"Sara, tell me what's happening," Catherine prompted.
"I'm…" Sara seemed to lose the thought half way through it, and Catherine grabbed at her arm again.
"Sara?"
"Dizzy," Sara finished, and Catherine nodded. "I need water," Sara added, and Catherine was up and over to the fridge immediately, the half-spilled bottle of water on the floor now forgotten.
Catherine had just closed her hand around a full bottle in the fridge when she heard a sound that was something like a cross between coughing and vomiting.
Her head snapped around to look at Sara.
The first thing she noticed was the absolute panic in Sara's eyes.
A split second later, she saw the trail of blood spilling from her mouth.
…
Josh's eyes narrowed, considering.
This criminalist guy looked altogether too broken up about this to be messing with him.
"What's she sick with?"
"Hepatitis C, and liver cancer."
Josh took that in, and nodded a little nod after a moment.
Hepatitis C meant nothing to him, but 'cancer' he got.
"What does she want?" Josh asked after a minute, looking genuinely confused. "What does she need me for?"
Nick just stared at him for a moment.
He couldn't answer that. Not yet.
It was too much, too soon, just like Grissom said.
"She needs to see you. She could be dying, Man. I need you to come back to Vegas with me."
It was Josh's turn to just stare, and Nick couldn't tell if he was thrown or afraid or reluctant or devastated or all or none of the above.
Maybe he was just lost in the past.
"What do you want? You want me to beg?" Nick asked after too many long seconds had passed in silence, and Josh looked up, but his face was still unreadable. "Look, all I'm saying is come back with me… see her, talk to her… I've got your plane ticket covered and you already admitted you don't have a job to worry about." Nick paused for a second. "Please."
The emotion in Nick's tone sparked a different kind of glance from Josh.
"You in love with her or something?"
Nick shook his head slowly.
"No, Man, I'm not in love with her. It's not that I'm in love with her. Funny thing is, your little sister, she's something like a sister to me too."
…
Grissom got to Sara from the doorway before Catherine could make it back to her from the fridge.
Sara tried to reach for him, her eyes clinging to his face, and she nearly slipped right out of her chair.
He caught her, held her, lowered them to the floor, took in the sight of the blood on her chin.
And it was so fucking bad.
And he wanted to scream.
Because this could only be evidence of one of the complications her doctors had spoken about.
And she was supposed to be one of the lucky ones, dammit!
…
Nick waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And even though he didn't know just how urgent things had just gotten back home, it killed him to watch the man who was Sara's hope incarnate wander around thinking his options through.
Josh finally turned, after what felt like an hour but was probably closer to five minutes, and shrugged.
And his expression was a practiced one again.
Practiced coldness.
"I guess I've got nothing better to do tomorrow."
Nick breathed out a long, relieved breath, and met Josh's eyes.
"What's wrong with tonight?"
…
"You're okay," Grissom murmured, the hand of the arm that wasn't wrapped around Sara instead pressed against her face. "You're okay," he said again, trying to calm the stark fear in her eyes.
But she wasn't okay.
And they both knew it.
Because this was what the doctors had warned them about.
Somewhere behind them Catherine was telling someone to call an ambulance.
Warrick's voice was around, so maybe it was him making the call.
Someone was standing so close that knees were bumping into Grissom's back.
So maybe Greg was here, too.
It didn't matter.
Nothing else mattered as Sara coughed again and Grissom used his sleeve to dab at the blood that spilled down her chin, and felt his throat constrict as her wide-eyed panic multiplied and she gripped his wrist in her hand.
"You're okay," he told her one more time.
But she didn't believe him.
Because they'd been warned about this.
And she'd never been one of the lucky ones.
…