A/N: Another chapter-thanks so much for reading!
An Unusual Sequence of Events
Chapter 9
A perfect arrival
Sleep came easily to Sara. Pregnancy sleep, she called it. She could sleep in a chair, on the sofa, in the bed, while watching television, riding in a car, out in the canyon, in darkness or in the middle of the day. She would dream, not the nightmares she'd had for so long, but of no place she recognized. Her dreams were of gentle places with nothing to fear, of cool, sunny places, or hazy faces that passed her by, but nothing that disturbed her sleep. But with her husband out of town she was restless, only managing to doze for a few minutes before she had to get up and walk around. She was uncomfortable for no reason other than late pregnancy; her back hurt and she was lonely. Slowly, she walked through the house, hands massaging her lower back.
When the phone rang and Catherine's voice asked how she was doing, Sara quickly lied and said "Fine!" And then Catherine was inviting herself over, bringing dinner, she added, and would be there in fifteen minutes. Sara suspected her husband had put Catherine up to this.
Before fifteen minutes had passed, the doorbell rang followed by three quick knocks. Hank gave a friendly bark welcoming Greg with his signature announcement of his arrival so Sara swung the door open to see two round cartons of ice cream being held in two hands. Greg's smiling face framed between the ice cream containers.
"Dessert," Greg said with a laugh as he stepped into the house. "Catherine called and said you two needed male companionship for dinner—was I free—so here I am."
Sara waved him inside and he kicked the door closed with his foot asking "How are you feeling, Mama?" He had been asking her this question for weeks.
Wiggling her hand, she said, "Back aches. Can't seem to do anything to relieve it."
Greg grinned. "You are carrying around a little load on the front, you know. Sit down; I'll get you something to drink."
She shook her head. "Everything I drink runs right through me." She laughed. "Too much information—I'll take water!"
The doorbell rang again; this time Hank ran to the door and waited, wagging his tail, until Sara opened the door for Catherine. In a flurry of activity, Catherine was inside, carrying several food boxes that she deposited in Greg's hands then turned to pet the dog, all the while asking one question after another.
"How are you? How's little Isabella? Did Gil get to San Diego? Hope you are ready for Battista's Italian—Eggplant Parmigiana and salad!" She hugged Sara, reached to Greg and gave him a playful pat on his cheek. "Always good to see you, Greg."
Within minutes, food, plates, drinks, and the assorted implements for dining were on the table and the three friends were passing containers around the small table. When Sara stretched to place the salad on the bar, she winced and placed her hand on her belly, just under her left breast.
"You okay?" Catherine asked; both she and Greg watched the grimace on Sara's face quickly disappear yet her hand stayed on her abdomen.
"Oh, yes, I'm fine. Just a back ache and Isabella's foot is giving my ribs a pounding."
Catherine reached over and placed her hand beside Sara's. For a full minute, their hands stayed on her belly. An odd expression formed on Catherine's face.
"How long have you been feeling these? How long has this been going on?" asked Catherine, her voice edged with uneasiness. She moved her hand to another spot on Sara's abdomen. "When's your due date? A month, right?"
"Is she in labor?" Greg asked. He was holding a fork in mid-air.
Sara laughed. "No, I'm not in labor. It's false contractions, Catherine."
"When's your next appointment?"
Again, Sara laughed. "Weekly. I'm going in every week now—high risk pregnancy—which means I'm over forty and having my first baby." Nervously, she laughed. "To be perfectly honest, I don't feel well—back hurts, can't sleep," glancing at Greg, she continued, "have to pee all the time."
Catherine dropped her napkin and stood. "Greg, put all this food away—doesn't your doctor's office have late hours?"
"Catherine!" Sara protested. "Let's eat—I'm fine!"
Motioning to Greg, Catherine said, "No, I'm going to take charge—if I'm wrong, we'll be back home in a couple of hours."
Greg started clearing the table.
Sara stayed in her chair, insisting, "I don't think this is labor!"
"And how many babies have you had? Let's go get you checked out. Do you have a bag packed? We'll slip in and have a nurse check you out. If it's not labor, you'll sleep better. I'll sleep better!" Catherine placed hands on her hips and Greg was putting food in the refrigerator.
Protesting, but feeling so oddly out of sorts and the backache wasn't getting any better, Sara finally agreed to go. She did call her physician's office and heard an affirmative answer when she asked if she should come in.
Greg helped fasten Sara's seatbelt and crawled into the back seat of Catherine's new car. "Nice," he said. When both women looked at him, he said, "I'm going! If Grissom can't be here, I get to be the stand-in dad!"
Catherine cranked the car and chuckled.
Sara said, "This baby isn't coming until he gets home—and she isn't due for another month." She leaned forward so she could get her hand against her lower back. "If this backache would go away, I'd be fine."
Catherine shot a worried glance toward her passenger and accelerated onto the street.
An obstetrical nurse practitioner examined Sara thoroughly, then summoned Catherine into the room.
"Sara says her husband is in San Diego. You need to call him—get him back as quickly as possible." The nurse took Sara's hand. "This baby isn't going to wait a week much less a month."
Turning to face Catherine, Sara's eyes filled with tears. Catherine tried to blink the fright from her own. "It's too early, Catherine. She's not big enough."
"Now, Sara," the nurse said, her manner serious yet caring, "we'll get you settled into a room, lots of monitors going. See if we can slow down your labor. Little Isabella weighs around four pounds—she'll be fine!"
Catherine stepped closer to Sara and took her hand and squeezed it; with her right hand she brushed Sara's hair away from her face. The change in Sara had been sudden and dramatic; worry etched her face, the downward turn of her mouth, tear filled eyes, an unusual paleness of her skin. Catherine wanted desperately to help her friend.
She said, "Everything will be fine, Sara! You'll have Isabella for Christmas! How much fun will that be?" Her mind was working on logistics—Grissom in San Diego—she needed to be making phone calls, but Sara needed her here.
The nurse was talking about moving Sara in a wheelchair. "The doctor is already at the hospital. We'll get you transported over—you've had your tour and know about labor and delivery, right?"
Sara was nodding as the nurse helped her sit up.
As the nurse kept talking Catherine realized the woman was experienced in calming frightened patients. "Sometimes the back pain is the most elusive type of labor—not consistent enough for a woman to know its labor." The nurse smiled. "You did the right thing coming in. It's not an emergency right now, but in the middle of the night it might have been." The woman's hand lifted Sara's foot, examining it carefully. "We'll move you over to the hospital in a wheelchair."
After the nurse left, Sara said, "I need to call Gil, Catherine." Her voice choked. "He was so excited about this trip—talking about his book with—with other bug guys." She closed her eyes and tears bubbled along her lashes. "Everything has gone so perfectly, Catherine. It's like a dream—and now this."
"Now come on, sweetie, no gloomy thoughts! I'll call Gil—even get him a flight and he'll be here before you know it." Smiling, she tossed her hair and flicked her finger toward Sara's folded pants. "Need help?" When Sara shook her head, Catherine said "I'll step outside for a minute. I don't know why they have all the signs 'no cell phones' but I'll go outside."
Sara was nodding her head and blowing her nose when Catherine left the room, pulling out her phone before the door closed. In seconds she had a confirmed seat for the one hour flight and then she called Grissom.
For two hours every fear that had ever entered a husband's mind filtered and lingered in Gil Grissom's brain. Even while he was talking with Sara, sometimes with Catherine, and once with Greg, he was in a state of confusion—stunned at the sudden turn of events. Sara had been fine when he left her; he knew she had felt fine—no backache—he would have known. All the information in books he had read were in his thoughts, round and round, until the plane touched down in Las Vegas. As he left the plane, only one other person would have made him happier; Nick was standing on the jet bridge, smiling and opening a door to a metal stairway leading to the tarmac and his black SUV.
"Catherine says they are waiting on you! Sara's fine, baby's fine. Just ready to get here."
Grissom stumbled on the steep steps, caught himself as Nick turned. "They are okay, Grissom. Honest. I wouldn't lie."
"Thanks, Nick." Grissom crawled into the cool vehicle. "I would never have left her if I had known."
"Ahhh, man! Of course you wouldn't have! Greg says if Catherine had not insisted, Sara would not have realized she was in labor until things got real scary. Now, they got her labor slowed." Nick continued to explain in some detail what was happening; more information than Grissom would have guessed he knew about labor.
And then Nick was stopping at the hospital's entrance, telling him to get out, and he'd see them later. "Sara's waiting!" Nick laughter rumbled, "And congratulations, Dad!"
For a little longer than two hours, Sara kept insisting her baby would not be born until the father walked into the room. She had been taken to a well-equipped delivery suite for premature deliveries that contained even more monitoring equipment than the normal labor-delivery rooms; a specialized infant care area was set into an adjoining area. She counted fourteen people in the room at one time, including Greg, Catherine, and Betty standing near the door. Then she counted the lines and leads attached to her body and laughed when she realized there was one attachment for each person in the room.
When Grissom entered the room, he saw nothing and no one but Sara—and she was smiling. And kissing him, tangling him up in some of the wires and tubes attached to her. Laughing, tremulous, but laughing.
He took the chair someone pushed behind him and for a time, there was no one else; just the two lovers surrounded by physicians, nurses, technicians, and who knows who else, but they seemed unaware of anyone else. Just as Sara predicted, with some help from medications, little Isabella Grissom waited for her daddy to arrive before she made her grand entrance into the world. The baby barely had to fight her way through the birth canal; small she was and her mother was made for having babies. Arriving a month before her due date, weighing four pounds and a few ounces, the baby girl colored a healthy pink and let everyone know her lungs were in good condition minutes after birth.
When baby Isabella was placed in Sara's arms, a transformation, or what many call a miracle, occurred. Tears ran down the faces of the couple and in an instant they went from man and woman, husband and wife, to father and mother. In a while, when their friends and the child's grandmother joined them, everyone noticed the somewhat dazed and humbled expressions on the new parent's faces.
The perfect, beautiful little girl, with delicate arched eyebrows and a cap of soft dark hair already indicating her coloring would likely be her mother's, slept quietly in a sophisticated incubator with temperature and light regulated and monitors for heart and lung function.
"But she gets to stay with me for now," Sara explained. "She's nursing well. She opens her eyes and waves her little arms."
"She's advanced," Grissom added, a prideful boast accepted by everyone in the room. "Didn't take her nine months—I think she might be a genius!"
Baby Isabella thrived on her mother's milk and behaved perfectly, or so the parents reported. In some mysterious way, a notation on a chart or a misfiled report, Sara's hospital stay coincided with the release of her baby so a few days after delivery mother and baby were discharged from the hospital. Sara sat in the back seat beside Isabella as a nervous Grissom drove home.
"I've seen this," he laughed. "Woman in the back seat and the man in the front—I've just realized it was because of a baby!" He laughed and reached back to touch Sara's knee.
At six weeks of age Isabella was sleeping through the night; she continued to gain weight and her progress suggested to everyone from grandmother to pediatrician that the baby was developing ahead of her age.
"Her eyes are blue," Betty signed one afternoon after handing her granddaughter back to her mother. "Not like Gil's" she continued. "Vivid. Her own color." The older woman took one of the baby's legs in her hand, cradling it for a few minutes. Signing, she said, "Except for her eyes, she is going to look like you."
That night, for the first time, and after the longest break in relations since their marriage, Sara came to bed wearing nothing but a soft blue teddy. Grissom's hand reached for hers, bringing her gently into an embrace; the muted light from the nursery showed a look of wonder and beauty in her eyes before their lips closed on a kiss, soft and tentative. In minutes, the emotions and sensations pushed aside for weeks filled them, so splendid that neither knew anything beyond hands, flesh, and mouths seeking gratification. When he eased her shoulders out of the teddy to bare her full breasts and gather them against his chest, a stab of utter pleasure shook him until he groaned.
And Sara responded. As her husband's hands laced into her hair, she felt a flush of sensation that spread down her spine. He kissed her neck, making a necklace of kisses that barely brushed her flesh yet she squirmed under the heat of his lips. When he came into her, deep arcing motions of her pelvis communicated her urgent need for him. She felt him try to pull out—thinking he was moving too fast, wanting to prolong their pleasure—but her body refused to allow it and soon his powerful finishing strokes began.
It seemed to Sara she was nothing but a wet pool, giving way to his thrusts, a smooth tongue of rapture licked through her when he came, flooding her with bliss as she rose on her own wave, a long spasm of her pleasurable orgasm. They lay for a while, quiescent, tired.
Sara moved her hand along Grissom's abdomen, up to his chest and finally rested her fingers at his jaw. One finger found his mouth. "I love you, Gil."
He kissed her finger. "Sara, dear, you know in our haste we used nothing."
Sara laughed, softly, a carefree sound echoing their very recent joy. "I'm not worried. Breast feeding usually has some effect on postponing fertility, but truth is," she giggled, "I want another baby." Her words faded to a whisper in his ear.
She felt the rumble in his chest before she heard the low happy chuckle he made. "Another one—little Isa is only six weeks old and you want another one?"
"It took a while to get her started, you know."
His deep laugh came again, this time very close to her ear as he turned to face her. "Another baby—you really think we're up to a second one." His hand slipped around to her backside. "Don't you need time to recover?"
She laughed. "I'm recovering—and Isabella should have a sibling. So she isn't spoiled. So she isn't alone, surrounded by adults."
"I love you, Sara," he whispered as he hugged her tightly, able to see her smile in the faint light from a nursery that was definitely going to be too small.
A/N: We do appreciate your support. One more chapter to this one.