Author's Notes: Lots and lots of thanks for all the kind reviews.
Moments
by Kristen Elizabeth
"Daddy, what happened to your arm?"
Grissom glanced at Sara, but rather than help him out with an answer for their six year-old son, she focused her attention on finding the perfect spot for the flowers that had just arrived from the Sheriff. He shifted a bit and gestured at his son to climb up on the hospital bed next to him. As Samuel curled up against his father's uninjured side, Grissom searched for a reply that he hoped wouldn't invite too many questions.
Unfortunately, his nine year-old daughter beat him to it. "Somebody shot him," Rosalind said from across the room where she was tucked in a chair. "With a gun."
Sara's head jerked up. "Rosalind..." Her tone was one of warning, but even through the fog of Demerol, Grissom could sense that his wife's control over her emotions was hanging by a thread. It was understandable. One of his most vivid and debilitating nightmares was of getting the call that Sara had the night before.
Samuel frowned. "Why would someone hurt Daddy?"
"They weren't trying to hurt him, Sammy! They were trying to kill him!"
"Rosalind Emilie Grissom!" Sara spun around to face her. "Don't ever let me catch you saying anything like that ever again! Do you understand me?"
Rosalind shot out of her chair. "It's true!" she shouted. "I heard you talking to Miss Catherine! She said it was a miracle that the bullet hit his shoulder instead of his heart!" Her defiant expression dared her mother to deny the truth.
"Young lady, I..."
"Sara." Grissom shook his head wearily. "She's upset, too."
Fat tears appeared in the corners of Samuel's eyes. "I don't want Daddy to die!"
"Daddy is not going to die!" Sara yelled. Raising her voice only made her son cry harder. She put a hand to her mouth for a long moment. "Baby, I'm sorry." Looking at Rosalind, she saw that her daughter's face had crumpled. Sinking down to her knees, Sara held out her hand. "I'm sorry."
Rosalind vaulted into her mother's arms. "I was really scared, Mommy," she sobbed into her shoulder.
All Sara could do was nod and stroke her hair. "I know. I know, sweetie."
Samuel burrowed into his father's side, hiccuping. "Don't go away, Daddy."
Grissom rubbed his son's back in tired circles. "I'm not going anywhere."
There was a knock on the door just then, and Catherine entered. "Am I early?" Sensing the tension between the members of the Grissom family, she added, "Or interrupting?"
Sara stood up and wiped at her cheeks. "No, it's all right." She took a breath. "Kids, Miss Catherine's going to take you to her house again tonight. Tomorrow, you're going to go back to school." Rosalind opened her mouth to protest, but her mother gave her a look. "Daddy is going to be fine. I promise. Okay?"
Their daughter nodded and rubbed the back of her hand across her blue eyes. "'Kay."
Catherine lifted Samuel off the bed after he gave his father one more hug. "Oh, you're getting way too big, kid," she told him as she set him down.
Samuel sniffed, but slipped his little hand into hers when she offered it. "Can we have pizza again for dinner?"
"I think that can be arranged." Catherine caught Sara's eye. "I'll have them put broccoli on it."
Rosalind approached her father's bed. "Daddy...I'm sorry."
"It's okay." The combination of pain medication and exhaustion was getting to him. His voice was weak. "Be good for Miss Catherine."
"I will," she promised. "I love you, Daddy."
Grissom swallowed dryly and nodded. "Love you, princess." He winked one sleepy eye at his son. "You, too, scout." Catherine held out her other hand for Rosalind and led the children out of the room.
The hospital room was silent for several minutes. Sara cleared her throat. "Do you need anything? More water? Or...um...your pillows...fluffed?" Just like that, the control that she'd been maintaining a slippery hold over for the past twenty hours snapped. "Dammit, Gil...I thought you were dead! They called me and they said there'd been an accident. An accident! Like you'd tripped and broken your wrist instead of being shot! And they wouldn't tell me anything...they wouldn't even tell me if you were still alive!" Bracing herself with both hands on the bed's metal railing, Sara's tears fell straight to the floor. "I couldn't think...I couldn't breathe. I just kept seeing this image of you...lying in the morgue, and David explaining to me the...trajectory of the fatal blow. And inside my head, I was screaming that it wasn't fair! That it wasn't fair, dammit!" She looked up at him. "That it should have been Greg instead. And that's horrible, I know! But, god forgive me, I was willing to barter anything, anyone...if I meant I wouldn't lose you."
He hadn't stopped her, because he knew that she needed to get these things out, get them off her chest before the pressure did any more damage. Now, he strained his good arm out as far as it would go, but only manged to barely brush her fingers with his. "Honey...look at me." She angled her head away. "Look at me, Sara." After a second, she complied. "I'm going to be fine. In a week or two, it'll be like nothing happened."
It might have been a mistake to reach out to her with the hand in which his IV had been inserted. Sara took one look at it and vigorously shook her head. "No, Gil. No. This isn't just going fade into memory. You were shot! Three inches to the left and..." She forced herself to take a second to breathe. "You're going to be sixty next year. I know you don't want to hear this, but maybe it's time...to think about retirement."
"This is definitely not the time to have that talk," he quietly informed her. "You're too emotional right now."
"And you're not emotional enough!" she shouted. "Don't you care that our children came within three inches...three inches, Gil...of growing up without you? Doesn't it matter that you could have died!"
"My age has nothing to do with what happened." Grissom fought back, but his fatigue showed in every word. "You said it yourself. It could have just as easily been Greg. He was five feet away from me when the car drove by. Would you encourage him to retire?"
"Greg isn't my husband." Sara tasted the tears at the corner of her lips. "What if it had been me?"
Her question hung in the air between them until he'd gathered enough strength to respond. "Every day, we put ourselves on the line in the name of justice. And there's always that chance that something might happen. That we might not come back. I tell you I love you any time you leave the house, partly because I promised myself a long time ago that you'd never have to question my feelings again. But also partly because there's no way of knowing if it'll be the last time I get to." He lifted his good shoulder. "I try to make sure that the kids know they're loved as well. That's all I can do, Sara."
"You didn't answer my question. What if I were lying where you are...with a bullet hole in my shoulder?"
Grissom exhaled slowly. She always knew what buttons to push. "I'd be lost," he admitted.
"And?"
"And...I'd never want you to go to a scene ever again."
Sara's smile was soft and sad. "And I'd tell you that you were being ridiculously overprotective and maybe even a little chauvinistic." She sank onto the edge of the bed and took his hand between hers, careful of the IV. "So, what do we do about this? Besides accepting the fact that life sucks in its unpredictability."
"We don't let fear rule our lives. We see this..." He looked down at his bandaged arm, hanging in a sling. "...as good luck, not bad." It took her a second, but she lowered her chin in agreement. "And we put this retirement issue on indefinite hiatus," he added.
"Hiatus," she conceded. "To be revisited in five years."
Too tired to argue any further, Grissom let it go. They could pick this up again when he was fully recovered.
Mindful of his wound and the machines to which he was still hooked up, Sara gingerly lay down alongside him. She put one hand over his heart, comforted by its steady beat. "I want to have this every day for the rest of my life," she whispered. "I'm selfish like that."
He rested his hand on the curve of her hip. "It's not selfish." He didn't, however, add that it also wasn't realistic. The reality of their age difference was cruel, but their life together would be well worth the risk. "It's what I want, too."
Another long moment passed. "Don't ever do something as stupid as getting shot again." Sara's voice quivered. "You hear me?"
Grissom closed his eyes with a smile. "Whatever you say, dear."
To Be Continued