Can't decide whether this chapter is too dramatic or just too long, but I hope you like it anyway.
x x x x
Greg stumbled out of the door, spinning in a full circle in the empty hallway.
"Someone help!" He hollered, tears spilling down his pale, terrified face.
Sofia, halfway down the hall, came to an abrupt stop and turned towards the frantic man at the exact time Catherine poked her head out of her office.
"Help!" He repeated, remaining in their sight just long enough for them to catch a glimpse of the red streaks staining his hands and bare chest.
Cath and Sofia wasted no more time in following him, their previous argument all forgotten in a flash as they raced into the locker room.
He was already back in the shower block, kneeling down on the cold, wet ground when the women fell inelegantly through the door together.
"Oh no." Sofia gasped, one hand flying to her mouth as the other clutched her lurching stomach.
Sara's unconscious, towel-clad body was face down on the floor; her blood fluid and pale as it spread into the puddles of water littering the tiles.
"Oh, God." Catherine stepped carefully around the blood pool and crouched down beside the prone woman, pressing two trembling fingers to her neck. The skin was hot and damp to the touch.
Greg, hanging back this time, was shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. Sofia placed a comforting hand on his arm, her face contorted into a mask of worry.
"What happened?" She asked of the young man softly.
"I don't know." Greg ran a hand through his spiky hair, his voice trembling and weak. "I came in to take a shower… I, I just found her like this."
"Call an ambulance." Cath instructed calmly, her fingers still pressed against Sara's neck; taking comfort from the rhythmic beating of the girl's steady pulse.
Greg fumbled instinctively in his pocket for his phone, then remembered he'd left it in his locker for safe keeping while he was in the shower. In his rush to get back to the locker room he nearly took Sofia off her feet, but he was too freaked to even notice as he swung himself around the doorframe and stumbled across the room.
After a frenzied search he located the device and barely managed to dial despite his tremors, when Nick and Warrick wandered past again. They paused, throwing a lazy glance into the room.
"What's up, you leave all your clean shirts at home?" Nick teased playfully, misreading the frenetic actions of the young man.
Blatantly ignoring the comment, Greg tapped his foot impatiently while waiting for a response on the end of the line.
"Ambulance, quickly." He gushed into the phone before the switch controller could get her first sentence out. "Las Vegas Crime Lab."
Instantly sobering up at this news, Nick and Warrick entered the room; their foreheads creased in concern.
"What's going on?" Rick asked. Now that they could see Greg better they noticed for the first time the blood on his hands and red smears on his chest. Unable to form a coherent explanation, he just pointed them towards the showers.
X x x
Sofia jumped at the ungraceful entrance, fortuitously moving aside and giving them full view of Sara's lifeless body on the floor.
"Oh man!" Nick's horrified exclamation startled Catherine, who had been busy checking Sara for any injury other than the obvious dent in her forehead.
"What the hell happened?" Warrick asked, naturally taking a step closer.
Well aware of Sara's state of undress, Catherine shook her head at him.
"Wait outside guys." She instructed calmly.
Understanding the reason for the request, Nick tugged on his mate's arm.
"Come on, we'll go wait for the ambulance." He said softly, trying to ignore the instinctive fear bubbling in the pit of his stomach.
On their way out, they passed Greg coming back in. He, unlike the other two men, cared not for Sara's privacy at this moment in time as he landed heavily on his knees beside his friend.
Sofia remained on her feet, not trusting herself to touch Sara right now. Instead, she continued to pace; repeatedly dragging a hand through her long tresses.
"I'll go clear the hall." She murmured at last, desperate to feel useful somehow.
Greg wiped at his eyes, although the effort was pointless as every tear he wiped away was quickly replaced.
"Is she going to be okay?" He gulped.
"She'll be fine, Greg." Cath assured him with a weak smile, although it was clear from her voice that she was struggling to convince even herself.
He was watching the strawberry-blonde stroke Sara's damp hair, when his eyes shifted involuntarily to the area of milky skin bared to him.
Out of the corner of her eye, Catherine spotted his trembling hand reach out to graze a fading bruise on Sara's shoulder blade.
"Don't." She murmured, catching his gaze.
Greg froze, facing off with his supervisor for a long moment but not quite daring to ask the question that was burning on the tip of his tongue.
A clattering just outside the door broke their staring contest and they both glanced up in time to see two paramedics shuffling around the corner, followed closely by the rest of the team.
One of them stopped in the doorway, his eyes widening in horror.
X x x
"Sara!" Hank gasped, darting to her side and effectively shoving Greg out of the way in the process.
His mate, choosing to ignore her partner's sudden unprofessionalism, turned to the awaiting CSIs.
"We're going to need some space." She declared pointedly. She was a thirty-something Latino woman with a soft accent, but her blunt tone left no room for argument.
Understanding the request, Sofia took Greg by the arm and hauled him to his feet.
"Come on, let's leave them too it."
"I'll go find Grissom." Warrick declared, not willing to stand around idly waiting for news.
Catherine, however, didn't move. She was currently in the corner of the room, effectively pinned in by Sara's body and she had no intention of going anywhere.
Hank, busy monitoring her pulse, was oblivious to the narrowed blue eyes trained on his face. His colleague, on the other hand, wasn't. However, she opted to leave him to it for now and turned her attention to Catherine.
"Alright darling, my name's Nikki. Can you tell me what happened?" She asked calmly, kneeling beside Hank.
"I don't know, we think she must have slipped." Cath explained, feeling marginally more relieved by the woman's relaxed demeanour. Of course, she would be relaxed wouldn't she? She didn't know Sara.
"Alright. What's her name?"
Catherine opened her mouth to answer, but Hank beat her to it.
"Sara Sidle." He declared, not tearing his gaze from the patient. "She's 31, she takes contraceptives and B12 supplements. No other health issues."
Catherine and Nikki both blinked at him in surprise, but he was too busy checking over Sara to notice their bemusement.
He was carefully searching her body, just as Cath herself had, for any other injuries. In the back of her mind, Catherine wondered how many times Sara had let him touch her in the past. His hands were huge and strong against her slim frame; and yet his touch was gentle, tender even.
She couldn't help but compare this image to the idea of Kirsty – her touch so feminine and light – causing those dark rings around Sara's slender arms.
Shaking the thoughts away, Cath stood up and moved aside as the paramedics carefully rolled Sara onto her back and lifted her limp body onto the stretcher. Nikki tucked a blanket tightly around her before brushing aside the damp curls clinging to her pale skin.
Finally able to see her face, she realised where she recognised the patient from.
"Wasn't she your girlfriend?"
Hank's expression morphed into a mix of guilt and sadness. "Yeah." He mumbled, stroking her hair affectionately. "Yeah, she was."
X x x
The hallway remained blissfully clear thanks to Sofia's strict orders for everyone to stay in their labs until told otherwise.
Of course, in a building made of glass that didn't mean squat and numerous pairs of eyes peered curiously through the lab walls as the paramedics carried the stretcher towards the front doors.
Grissom, flanked by a breathless Warrick, practically jumped out at them as they passed his office.
"What happened?" He barked, attempting to reach for Sara's hand.
"She slipped; she's going to be alright." Sofia assured him, tactfully using her body to prevent him from touching the brunette. Nikki nodded gratefully at the police officer. As sympathetic as she was to the plight of friends and family, they didn't half make her job more difficult sometimes.
Nick held the front door open, guiding them down the concrete steps and into the awaiting ambulance.
Trailing closely behind, Greg continued to intermittently send Catherine suspicious glances in between staring at Sara's peaceful face.
"I'm going with her." He declared, already moving towards the ambulance.
"No Greg." Cath said, pulling him back by the wrist. However, the normally placid CSI was in no mood to obey orders today and he wrenched his arm free, sending her a dark look before climbing into the vehicle anyway.
"We can only take one person with her." Nikki pointed out, already clambering into the cab.
Catherine locked eyes with Hank, who offered a small nod of assurance to the blonde. He knew that she didn't like him, but that was no reason to cause her undue worry. Sara was in safe hands, that's all she needed to know.
Releasing a frustrated sigh, she stepped back and let them close the doors.
"Should we all go?" Nick asked once the flashing blue lights disappeared from view.
Cat turned, almost surprised to find all three men and Sofia staring at her expectantly, as if she should know what to do next.
"No." She breathed, stopping herself from running a hand through her hair when she caught sight of the blood staining her fingers. She dropped her hand to her side sadly, meeting Grissom's gaze at last. He looked lost, his baby-blue eyes wide and round with disquiet. "No, I'll go. You guys stay here and I'll call you as soon as there's some news."
Nick and Sofia clearly didn't look too thrilled with this arrangement, but Warrick and Grissom nodded in agreement.
"Good idea." Gil breathed. "Why don't you take some spare clothes for her as well?"
As if she'd anticipated the instruction, Sofia held out a carrier bag to the other woman. No one had seen her collect Sara's clothes from the bench, but then no one had really been paying attention to the detective.
"There's a shirt in there for Greg, too." She said before anyone could ask.
Catherine accepted it gratefully, offering the guys a weak nod before turning and walking numbly towards her car.
Everything suddenly felt oddly surreal, as if the last hour of her life had been nothing more than a warped dream.
But it wasn't a dream and, her argument with Sofia on hold for now, she was still faced with the task of explaining those bruises to Greg … hopefully before he came to his own conclusions about them.
X x x
He knew that his incessant foot-tapping must be annoying Hank, but he couldn't make it stop.
His instinctive protective nature around Sara was making him twitch every time the paramedic touched her, but he managed to restrain himself from batting his hand away.
After all, as much as he disliked Hank, the man was currently acting in a professional capacity not a romantic one.
Despite the blanket draped across her, the bruises were still visible on Sara's shoulders and arms. Where he was sat, he could just about reach her hand and had not let go of it since peeling out of the parking lot, but he wanted desperately to get a closer look at the marks marring his friend's skin.
What did Catherine know about them? And why hadn't she said anything sooner?
"ETA's three minutes." Nikki called from the driver's seat. "How's she doing?"
"Vitals are stable." Hank replied. "Her breathing's a little off though."
In response to the answer, she clicked the siren on for the final couple of miles. Greg could just barely hear her talking to someone on the radio, detailing the incoming case he assumed.
And before he knew it, the vehicle came to an abrupt halt and the doors flew open.
At Hank's impatient insistence, Greg was bundled out into the parking lot and forced to stand back while the two paramedics and a doctor unloaded the stretcher and lifted Sara onto a waiting trolley-bed.
"31 year old female, she was found unconscious at work; believed to have slipped getting out of the shower. Serious head wound and she's been unconscious for at least twenty minutes." Hank rattled off breathlessly. "Vitals are stable, BP and heart rate are all fine. Have blood on standby just in case - AB-neg."
Greg attempted to stick close to them as Sara was wheeled through the winding hallway of the ER, but he only made it as far as the trauma room before the door swung shut inches from his face.
Despondently, he threw his hands in the air and dropped heavily into a seat at the side of the corridor.
X x x
A familiar visitor to the hospital, it did not take Catherine long to locate her colleague.
"Hey," She cleared her throat, stalking up to Greg. "How is she?"
He sat up, folding his arms across his bare chest.
"She's okay. They're just moving her into a ward, then we can see her." He explained. "They said it looked worse than it was."
She nodded, relief seeping into her features. Reaching into the bag, she handed Greg the shirt Sofia had packed.
Despite his caginess towards Catherine, he accepted to garment gladly. He'd initially forgotten about his state of undress, but sitting in the hallway in the busiest hospital department for any great period of time was enough to make anyone feel self-conscious.
"So, are you going to tell me?" He asked once he was suitably covered again. At her puzzled frown, he sat forward and rested his hands on his knees. "About the bruises. I know that you know something."
Her face paled slightly and she dropped slowly into the seat beside him, rubbing a tired hand over her face.
"Yeah, I do." She agreed quietly. "But I can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because Sara asked me not to."
He shook his head, emitting a bitter laugh.
"Come on Catherine, I'm not blind. She's covered in them!" He paused, narrowing his eyes. "The bruises I saw in the decontamination shower … you already knew about them, didn't you? You lied to me."
She sucked in a deep breath at the obvious hurt in his voice. She had spent the whole drive over here debating how to broach the subject, but he clearly was not going to make it easy for her.
"Greg…" she began tentatively.
"There is something going on isn't there?" He continued, raising his voice. "Catherine, tell me!"
She dropped her shoulders resignedly, sending a silent apology to Sara.
"Alright, there is something going on."