Author's note – I apologize for the delay in updating, especially given how I ended the previous chapter, and especially because there were a few people who I had told this would likely be up sooner. As seems to happen more often than I'd like, real life got in the way.

The response to the last chapter was absolutely wonderful! So encouraging and so very much appreciated, just as any feedback from here on in will be treasured.

Thank you again. As always, these characters are not mine, and I hope you enjoy the story from here on in.

Moments of Truth

Chapter Eight

The ambulance hummed along down the street.

Grissom watched every change in Sara's facial expression, every movement of her body, every breath she drew into her lungs.

He caught every wince, noted with concern the little sounds that escaped her lips.

They weren't quite moans of pain, but rather sighs of exertion, as though the mere act of breathing was an effort for her failing body.

Neither of them spoke as they made their way closer and closer to the hospital, but they both knew what was likely happening.

It was called esophageal bleeding, and was a common complication of liver disease.

Vomiting blood, paleness, light-headedness, excessive thirst… all were symptoms that they had been cautioned to keep an eye out for.

It could be treated.

Grissom was almost certain that he remembered reading that it could be treated.

He also thought he remembered reading that the prognosis was poor, and that the need for a transplant became imminent.

He suspected Sara remembered the same thing, because the fear in her eyes had given way to a blend of grief and dread.

"This isn't over," he told her, forcing confidence into his voice.

They hit what must have been a pot hole then, and the ambulance jerked slightly, and Sara winced, and Grissom bit back a curse.

"Sara, this isn't the end of anything, Honey."

He was about to do something he hadn't planned on, and tell her that her brother might be coming to town before long, and that he might be able to save her.

But suddenly they were there, and the paramedics were rushing her into the ER and barking facts about her age and illness and condition.

And so Joshua Sidle was forgotten, just for the moment.

…

There is a unique kinship that exists only between siblings.

For most siblings it boils down to shared memories and the joy of the inside joke.

For Josh and Sara Sidle, the understanding that existed between them had less to do with inside jokes, and more to do with shared trauma.

One could assume that that kind of bond would be the strongest of the strong.

And it had been, for a while.

No one, not even other kids whose fathers beat their mothers, could understand quite what it was like to be locked in their bedrooms, in that house, listening to their Mommy scream.

But after Mommy killed Daddy, the trauma was no longer shared.

Sara had been home.

Josh hadn't.

And no one, not even his little sister, could understand what it was like for a teenage boy to leave the sister he was supposed to protect alone in a volatile house, only to return hours later and find his father dead, his mother gone, and the sister he'd abandoned shattered.

She had never blamed him, which made exactly one of the two of them who hadn't.

The memory of that night was something that lived in the back of his mind.

Tonight, as he stared through a window out into blackness, from his cramped seat in the coach section of a buzzing airplane, on his way to the city where she lived and could be dying, the memory was much closer to the surface.

"Sir?"

Josh looked up, jerked out of his daze by the too-happy flight attendant and her snack cart.

Some days he would have had a snide comment to brush her off. Other days he might have tried to flirt with her.

Tonight he just shook his head, and Nick did the same from the seat next to him, and the woman moved on, rattling her cart along the aisle loudly enough to rattle their already unsettled nerves right along with it.

Josh glanced at the man who was apparently his sister's friend, and then his eyes fell to the worn file folder in his lap.

He looked up and found Nick looking back at him.

"The life and times of Joshua Sidle, I presume?" Josh asked, his tone lined with a hint of amusement.

Nick nodded once, and kept his head down, not sure if he should feel bad about an invasion of privacy or not.

"One of our guys put it together," Nick said after a moment, for lack of anything else to say.

"Doesn't make much of a bedtime story, does it?" Josh spoke with a kind of resigned familiarity with his own history, though his voice still wasn't without a slightly sarcastic quality.

It seemed then that Josh was waiting for something, and after a moment Nick handed the file over to him.

He waited several seconds while Josh leafed through the contents. Josh paused briefly at the old photograph of himself as a teenager, which wasn't lost on Nick.

"How'd we do?" Nick queried, again more because he didn't have anything else to say than because he really wanted to know.

"Hits the high points."

It occurred to Nick that 'low points' would have been a more accurate description, but he kept the thought to himself.

They were both silent for a few minutes, and Nick had begun to get lost in his own thoughts when suddenly Josh spoke without being prompted.

"My sister," Josh began, sounding a little bit hesitant, and he paused for a moment, watching as he picked at the frayed edge of the end of his denim sleeve. "She still stubborn as a mule with something to prove?"

Nick cracked an automatic smile at the description of Sara, and then studied the other man before he answered, encouraged by the fact that he'd bothered to express any kind of curiosity at all.

"That stubborn and then some," Nick finally answered him, and noted that the smallest of smiles crossed Josh's lips. "She been like that since she was a kid?"

"Long as I can remember." Josh leaned back in his seat, seemed to be thinking for a moment. "When she was maybe ten… she got it in her head that she was going to mow the lawn. We didn't have much of one, but our mom had been on our dad about it…" He went back to picking at the hanging threads of denim, paused again. "So Sara gets out there, and she was damn little to be starting any kind of mower, but this one was broken more often than not anyway. So she's yanking away at the thing over and over and over again… for maybe a half hour. Finally she goes next door, borrows their little weed trimmer, does the whole lawn that way. Happy as a clam about it, too."

"Sounds about right."

"Can't quite see cancer taking her down."

The both fell silent again at that, Josh staring out the window while Nick found himself again stuck in an internal struggle, not sure whether to tell Josh the whole truth or not.

"Tell me something, when's the last time you saw Sara?" Nick asked, hoping the answer might help guide him in one direction or another.

"Maybe ten years, give or take." Josh left a beat here before continuing. "She staged an intervention or two. Took off when they didn't take."

Nick's brow creased as he took that in.

"Didn't we just agree that Sara is the last person to give up?"

"Didn't give her much of a choice."

There was something hard creeping back into Josh's voice at that, and Nick backed off.

A short bout of turbulence shook the plane briefly, and the irritating tone of the seatbelt sign re-lighting sounded.

In the quiet that followed, Nick heard Josh take a deep breath.

"Sara in the hospital?" His tone was carefully even, and both men kept their eyes locked on the space in front of them.

"No."

"She got someone taking care of her? She ever get married?"

"Only to her work. She's got someone, though. Grissom."

"Boyfriend?"

"Something like that."

"It serious?"

"I'd say so." It felt strange to Nick, to have to categorize Sara and Grissom's relationship. "He's actually the one who sent me here after you."

Shit.

Nick realized immediately that he'd said more than he'd meant to, and he closed his eyes for a second, cursing on the inside.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Josh's head turn to face him, and he waited, staring at the seat in front of him, for the inevitable question.

"It wasn't Sara that sent you?"

The words carried a vague note of accusation.

It was Nick's turn to take a deep breath, and he met the other man's eyes.

Time for the whole truth.

At least there was nowhere to run.

"Sara thinks I'm working a case. She has no idea."

"It didn't occur to you to mention that before we got on a damn airplane!" Josh asked harshly.

"It's like we were saying, Man, your sister's stubborn. But it's like I told you, she needs you."

"And like I told you, that girl needs me like a hole in the head."

"She needs your liver!"

Nick said the words almost without thinking.

And then he watched, feeling faintly and perhaps unfoundedly panicked, as understanding slowly dawned in Sara's brother's eyes.

…

Greg sat alone in one of too many emergency room waiting areas.

In the hospital where Sara was likely about to die.

The world wasn't his playground anymore.

It was dark.

And twisted.

And wrong.

And it hurt.

That change had started a long time ago.

He couldn't blame it all on the fact that some cruel fate was about to steal one of his best friends.

Becoming a CSI had brought with it a tough dose of reality, and he'd had some hard knocks in his teen years, as well.

But he couldn't remember ever feeling quite this cold before – the kind of damp, clammy cold that comes from the inside out.

His chair was plastic, and uncomfortable, and unaccountably bright orange. His eyes were itchy like only recently dried eyes could be. The remains of a shredded Styrofoam coffee cup were strewn about his lap.

Somewhere behind a distant curtain Sara was in bad shape.

It was all too real, too harsh, too cold.

And it sucked.

Catherine and Warrick were supposed to be on their way. Waiting for them, Greg felt no need to put up a façade of strength.

But it was Grissom who approached him, looking rather dazed, and Greg sat up straight and forced a calming breath into his lungs.

"Hey."

Grissom didn't respond.

He lowered himself into the chair next to Greg without a word, and sat perfectly still, feet on the floor, hands in his lap, eyes less than focused.

It occurred to Greg that for the first time in all the years that he'd known Grissom, he looked something like a tired old man.

"How's she doing?" Greg tried.

"The on-call doctor is trying to stop the bleeding." Grissom never turned to look at Greg as he spoke.

"Bleeding?" Greg's eyes narrowed in confusion. "I know she was coughing up blood, but --"

"Esophageal bleeding." Grissom absentmindedly fielded the question as a teacher. "Liver disease puts pressure on the portal vein. The veins in the area balloon, sometimes the vessels rupture."

"But they can stop that, right?"

"In the short term, hopefully."

"How short term?"

Grissom said nothing for several seconds, and when he spoke again, it wasn't to answer Greg's question.

"Nick's not answering his cell phone." He spoke quietly, more to himself than to Greg.

And because Greg didn't know what Nick's absence meant, he only nodded.

"We'll call him later. When we have news. Good news, maybe. Hopefully."

"They won't let me stay with her right now."

Grissom looked up then and met Greg's eyes.

He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again.

There was something like shame written all over his face.

"What?" Greg prompted.

"I felt resentment." Grissom spoke as if he wasn't quite comfortable with the words, almost as if he was questioning that he could really mean that.

And he turned his eyes back to the wall across from them.

"Towards Sara?" Greg sounded surprised.

"It was always fleeting, and I always felt guilty about it after the fact," Grissom assured him. "But I missed simplicity." He took a moment to collect his thoughts. "We spent a lot of hours in that apartment. And some days she was sicker than others. Some days she was bitter. And it was hard." He left a beat. "And once or twice, I missed simplicity."

"Okay, but…" Greg licked his lips, settling on how to word the question. "That's okay, because… I mean, on the whole… it's not like you're wishing you hadn't gotten together with her, right?"

Grissom rubbed his eyes, leaned back against his seat.

His eyes flitted almost unconsciously in the direction of the cubicle where Sara was.

"Simplicity is overrated."

…

It was much later that Sara was finally put in a private room.

Grissom had never actually seen her in a hospital bed before.

It was hard to believe, given how long she'd been sick and how sick she was, but it was the truth.

He'd seen her hooked up to an IV in a kind of hospital recliner in the chemotherapy clinic, and he'd seen her walk into and out of a number of examining rooms at one appointment or another.

But seeing her white as a sheet and weak as an infant in an honest-to-goodness hospital bed was something new.

It felt wrong.

These rooms and beds were meant for nameless victims of violent crime.

Sara was supposed to be the one standing at the foot of the bed, taking notes.

At least the bleeding had been stopped.

The doctor had actually called her "one of the lucky ones".

But the need for a transplant was urgent now.

And there was nothing lucky about that.

Presently she was sleeping, and he was grateful for that, because she couldn't try to talk.

They had inserted a tube into her nose, down her throat and into her stomach, and inflated it to put pressure on her bleeding veins. And though it hadn't actually been said, it seemed to him that her throat must be feeling quite raw.

He heard a door open behind him and turned his head, wondering whether Greg could be back from the cafeteria already.

It was Catherine, wearing an expression so solemn that if he hadn't known how bad things were, the look on her face would have given it away.

Her eyes were on Sara as she approached, but she reached out and put a gentle hand on Grissom's back.

"I ran into Greg," she told him softly, and he nodded and turned his eyes back to Sara's still form in the bed.

That explained Catherine's look, then.

She knew the medical facts.

But she didn't know everything.

And he'd been waiting for a chance to go try to call Nick again.

Nick would answer, and tell him that he'd found Josh, and Josh had agreed.

That was all that was left to cling to now.

"Will you sit with her until Greg gets back from the cafeteria?" Grissom asked, and Catherine looked at him in surprise for a moment, but nodded.

"You're not staying here?"

"I have a phone call to make."

"You know you can't use your cell phone here in -"

"I know," he told her distractedly, getting up.

He'd been reminded by enough nurses in the last few hours about the rules surrounding cell phones in hospitals.

"I'll be here," Catherine assured him.

"Don't let her talk much," Grissom ordered her, and then he quickly left.

The room was decidedly eerier without him in it. Just a sleeping Sara and a few rustling and beeping machines, monitoring her fading body.

Catherine remained standing, avoiding the chair Grissom had vacated.

She wasn't sure how long it had been when Sara's eyes opened.

Sara looked around, but only her eyes moved.

"Hi," Catherine said, her tone brighter than the situation warranted. She moved closer until she was right next to the bed, until she was sure Sara saw her. "Grissom just went to make a phone call."

"Can -"

"He also said you shouldn't be doing too much talking," Catherine said quickly, cutting off Sara's hoarse voice. "But if you need me to get a doctor or -"

"No." Sara shook her head ever-so-slightly from side to side, and locked eyes with Catherine. "I need your brutal honesty."

Catherine swallowed hard.

She knew exactly what Sara wanted to know.

And it was a hell of a thing to have to say.

"Without a transplant? Days." She paused, wondering if that was enough. But she knew if their roles were reversed, she'd want to know everything. And so she reached out her hand, placed just her fingertips on Sara's wrist, and added: "They say it could be more like hours. They're not sure yet."

Sara had seen the news coming.

But it didn't stop the tears that sprang to her eyes.

"Thanks," she whispered.

Catherine felt tears prickle the back of her own eyes as she watched Sara's tears begin to escape onto her cheeks. She wondered vaguely when she'd started to care this much. She told herself that she was only human after all, and that Grissom loved Sara, and that that was reason enough to want to go ahead and break down and cry.

But the truth was that a lot of shared meals and laughs and triumphs and failures while working side by side had a lot to do with why her eyes were filled to the brim.

And she might have gone ahead and said so if Greg hadn't appeared at that moment.

She left him with Sara, and went to find Grissom.

And somewhere in the back of her mind she told herself - promised herself - that she would say a thing or two – an important thing or two – to Sara.

Before it was too late.

…

Catherine found Grissom at a nurse's station down the hall.

He was still at the phone there, bent over the desk, dialing and then listening intently, and so she waited without saying a word.

She became curious and confused as he slammed down the phone and picked it up again, and punched in a number with an angry finger, and then listened for several seconds before repeating the whole process again.

"Grissom -" Catherine stopped short when he spun to face her.

He looked desperate.

"Nick's not answering his cell phone." Grissom said almost angrily, as if that should mean the world to them both right now, and Catherine just shook her head slightly, puzzled.

"We'll keep trying."

Grissom nodded and turned back to the phone, and though Catherine had meant later, she let him go ahead and try again.

But he didn't just try once more.

He tried over and over again, until she was beginning to question his current state of mind, and not quite sure she wanted to be the person who had to try to stop him.

"Gil -"

"Just a minute!" he told her irritably, and he jabbed at the numbers on the phone again, and she reached out and covered them with the palm of her hand.

Grissom turned wild eyes on her, and she gave him a look that was utterly lost and yet desperate to comfort.

"He's supposed to answer his cell phone! I told him over and over again to stay in touch! To keep me informed and stay available!"

"Maybe he's in a hospital too, Gil." She didn't understand why it mattered to him so much right now, but she was willing to talk it through. "Maybe he can't turn his phone on, maybe he's taking a statement from a victim. Is it ringing?"

"No!" Grissom answered immediately, and then his eyes lit up with a kind of appreciation. "It's that 'customer not available' message."

"So maybe -"

"He could be on a plane." Grissom took in a deep breath, letting the thought sink in. "Why else would he turn his cell phone off right now? He could be on a plane!"

Catherine nodded agreeably.

If for some reason that was what Grissom wanted to think right now, fine.

She was trying to come up with an appropriate question to ask when Warrick arrived with coffee for them both.

She took hers, offering Warrick a grateful but subdued smile.

Grissom only waved him off, and started walking purposefully back toward Sara's room.

Catherine and Warrick followed.

And a strange thing happened, just before they reached Sara's door.

Nick rounded the corner and came into view.

And a stranger was with him.

And suddenly Grissom froze.

And stared.

And within seconds his eyes were wet with unshed tears.

And when the stranger reached them and Grissom shook his hand, he didn't let go right away, and his eyes never left the man's face.

It didn't make any sense to Catherine, as she watched the scene play out and listened to Nick explain that they'd gone to the lab and heard that Sara was here.

She didn't know who the newcomer was, or understand the guarded emotion or uncertainty in his eyes.

That Grissom reached out and squeezed Nick's shoulder and shot him a look of gratitude wasn't lost on her, nor was Nick's little nod or his beyond-touched expression.

The stranger looked uncomfortable, almost like he wished he could hide behind the unruly hair that fell into his eyes, and his gaze dropped to the floor briefly before he looked up at Grissom again.

"You're Grissom?"

"Gil Grissom."

The man nodded.

"Josh Sidle."

…