Sara slept for hours at a time, her reserves thoroughly depleted by the fever. For the first couple of days it seemed to Grissom that for every five minutes she was awake, she needed an hour of sleep to recover. She was still on heavy duty pain medication, and as a result, when she woke she was definitely cognizant of those around her and the situation, but at the same time she was a little inebriated, often slurring or tripping over her words and unable to focus on details for more than a moment or too.
Had anyone asked him though, Gil would not have cared one whit because, in a clear and lucid moment, she had smiled at him. The day after she awoke Jenni, Thistle, Freya and Shawna arranged another trip to the NICU, putting it all in place so that when Sara stirred from her latest nap she was already in position to see her baby. The staff had agreed that moving her while she was still asleep would be best, rather than exhausting her further before she even arrived. The look on Sara's face when her eyes focused and cognition dawned across her face had melted Grissom's heart. She hadn't said a word, but her eyes had sought his and her entire face had lit up with that stunning smile that still took his breath away. In that moment, he had finally allowed himself to truly believe everything would work itself out in the end.
…
Sara was weak; there was no doubt about it. She struggled with tasks as simple as sitting up, feeding herself and rolling over on the bed. Thistle had been in to determine pain levels, healing rates, range of motion and to help put together a physical therapy plan that would help Sara regain the strength she needed for basic movement, particularly in her arms and upper body while she was restricted to bed rest. After nearly three weeks of complete inactivity, muscular atrophy had set in, despite the stretching and massage techniques employed by the medical staff while Sara was unconscious.
"If it wasn't for her leg, we would be trying to get her on her feet and walking as soon as possible," Thistle explained to him after she and the therapists had conferred at length and Sara, exhausted yet again by all the testing, had gone back to sleep. "Some gentle walking after hysterectomy is encouraged, but she absolutely mustn't put any weight on that leg, and even if she could, the knee would give out." She sighed in frustration and looked him over carefully.
"How are you doing?" she asked.
"Pretty good really," he noted, truthfully. "The pain is a lot more manageable, and I've slept well every night since I've been home. Greg is keeping me in line." Thistle snorted with laughter and glanced over at Greg who was chatting with the physical therapist who was demonstrating the massage technique for him.
"Yeah, I have no trouble believing that," she grinned. "Well, we'll continue with the massage and stretching in her healthy leg; you and Greg can help with that. We'll do so simple resistance stuff, to build her up again while she heals. The same with her upper body; she's got pretty good function in her right arm and I expect she'll start regaining strength and movement quickly there."
"And her left arm?" asked Grissom. Thistle pursed her lips and shook her head slightly.
"Not so much," she allowed. "They took the drain out of her shoulder two days ago, correct?"
Grissom nodded.
"Yeah. Henry said this morning that the infection is completely gone now." With the move out of ICU Doctor Henry Wheeler was now the primary physician in charge of Sara's care at night, and Doctor MacAndrew during the day.
"True," agreed Thistle, "but the infection was centered in that shoulder, she's incredibly lucky she didn't lose the arm. It's going to be more like building up her damaged leg than just returning strength like in her other arm."
"Right" sighed Grissom, watching his wife sleep, completely unaware of the conversation surrounding her. Thistle smiled at him, and then nodded briskly, handing him a sheaf of information.
"Patience," she ordered cheerfully. "She'll get there; it's just going to take a while. The rule of thumb is five days rehabilitation for every day in a coma. It may take Sara a little more than that because of the infection and the fever, but she will get better. Just remember what it felt like when Jenni made you get out of bed and start walking. How long did you think it was going to take you hmm? And how long did it actually take in the end? Not nearly the decades you were predicting, was it? Yes it's going to take Sara longer than you, but stop with all the over exaggerating. I've read some of your work; I know you have a brain. Start using it." Grissom snorted with laughter at her frank assessment of his worrying.
"Jenni said something very similar to me," he told Thistle. She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Good. Why didn't you listen? That girl has a first rate mind; I've been trying to convince her to become a surgeon since the day I met her."
"Seriously?" Thistle nodded.
"Indeed. It does no good though; she's studying psychology, trying to find links with that massage technique of hers. It's very impressive stuff; her trials have had amazing results. There was a woman here who was the victim of a mugging that went very wrong; she had recurrent nightmares and PTSD symptoms that were so bad they had to keep her partially sedated all the time until Jenni worked her magic. I imagine when Sara is more aware and a lot less tired she and Jenni will have a lot to talk about."
"You've read some of Sara's work too?" asked Gil, thinking of a paper Sara had published last year about the effects of a breaking and entering that had similar consequences not only for the victim, but also the perpetrator.
"Some?" asked Thistle, one chiseled eyebrow rising archly. "Try all, Grissom." He stared at her and she laughed, picked up her notes and waved goodbye as she slipped out the door.
…
Physiotherapy was tough, and for days Sara kept falling asleep halfway through the sessions, needing hours of rest before she could open her eyes again. In the afternoons, the occupational therapist came to see her, working skills necessary to daily life, while at the same time building muscle tone and strength in her weakened body.
After a week, Grissom sat beside the bed watching as Janine spread a deck of cards face down on the table. It was essentially a game of pairs; Sara had to turn them over two at a time and match them up. All week he had watched, uneasy and disturbed, as she consistently hit a fifty percent match rate when in the past she would have beaten anyone who challenged her to a game.
It had been something of a running joke in the lab over the years, getting new employees to take her on with the deck of cards Lindsey Willows had left there as a child. There was a particularly memorable incident in which Hodges accused her of cheating and the entire shift had laughed him out of the room.
Now he watched as she matched fifty percent of the cards and then began to struggle again, picking the wrong selections again and again. She growled with frustration and shifted irritably against the pillows that propped her up behind the table slid up to her chest. Angrily she tapped two cards and Janine turned them over for her, revealing a non-match. The longer the game went on, the more tired she became and the less control she had over the dexterity in her good arm, meaning someone had to start helping her with the cards. She scowled at them, her mind ticking as she tapped two others and Janine revealed another non-match.
"Oh my god," said Greg suddenly, sitting bolt upright in his chair at the bottom of the bed. "I know what the problem is." Grissom, Sara and Janine all stared at him as he stood up and grabbed a magazine from the cabinet. He flipped through the pages to an article and then put it on top of the cards, pointing with his finger as he looked at Sara.
"Read this to me," he said, as she stared at him, puzzled.
"Greg," she muttered tiredly, staring down at the paper and squinting at the fuzzy black lines. "I can't," she muttered, putting her head back against the pillow and closing her eyes.
"What are you doing?" asked Grissom, beginning to get annoyed.
"She can't see the differences," explained Greg triumphantly. He pointed the stack of matched cards. "These are all very distinct pictures, but these," he indicated the cards Sara couldn't match up, "are all somewhat similar pictures. It's the details," he explained, elated at his discovery. "She needs reading glasses."
…
Greg was right; an ophthalmologist with a gap in his schedule came up to see her at six that evening and confirmed, through a long, exhaustive and extremely thorough exam, that Sara did indeed need reading glasses. The cause was most likely the head injury during the actual crash, and not an aftereffect of the fever and raging infection. As the process of determining her prescription drew on Sara felt the long day pulling on her like a deadweight being dragged below the surface of the ocean and into the depths. Fatigue, a lack of sufficient sleep, the inability to control her body exactly as she wanted to and the fact that she hadn't been able to see Rowen that day because of the extra testing made her irritable and grumpy as the eye doctor finished up his work.
"One last time," he cajoled gently, as she tried to determine which eye was clearer as she looked through two different lenses.
"That one," she grumbled at last, before laying her head back and shutting her eyes, effectively ending the conversation. Within seconds she was asleep.
"I'm sorry," sighed Grissom apologetically to the specialist. "She's not normally so irritable. It's been a long day."
"Nonsense," grinned Doctor Thomas Dale, "I'm amazed she was able to stay awake for the whole thing. Now, these," he rummaged in a bag he had brought with him and produced a pair of glasses, "will do temporarily. I'll come back tomorrow so she can pick out frames and we can get her own pair ordered. When would be the best time?"
"The OT comes at three," said Greg, dropping the book he had been reading onto the end of the bed. "She's usually pretty awake before that starts, but as you can see, therapy makes her tired and cranky."
"Excellent, I'll come up at two thirty then," nodded the doctor. He glanced at Greg as he began to put his tools back in their respective bags. "I understand you are the one who realized Sara's problem was visual?" Greg shrugged.
"Yeah, I realized the pairs she couldn't match were always the same half of the deck and that they all have similar characteristics that would be hard to differentiate between if they were blurry."
"Well done," congratulated Dale, "you've probably just saved her a lot of aggravation with her recovery." Greg shrugged again, raising his hands slightly as he smiled fondly at Sara snoozing away, her mouth slightly open.
"Why didn't she say something?" asked Grissom, voicing a thought that had been bothering him for the last few hours. "If she couldn't see the cards properly, why didn't she just say so?" Doctor Dale pursed his lips and ran a hand over the clasp of his case and he latched it shut.
"She probably didn't realize," he replied, picking up a pen he had dropped on the blanket. "It's not that uncommon for patients who have had head trauma not to realize their senses are impaired. Her brain is still settling down from all the drama; think of it like a big earth quake, it takes time for the ground to settle back into stability after an event like that. There are aftershocks and surface damage to deal with, but eventually everything is cleaned up and restored or rebuilt. I really wouldn't worry about it; we know what the problem is now and we can solve it. Have a good evening, and I'll see you both tomorrow afternoon." He nodded to the both, and strode out of the door."
…
"I really don't know how I'm ever going to thank Mrs. Wallis," sighed Grissom happily as he helped Greg clean up the remains of yet another highly appetizing dinner. Greg laughed and leaned down to grab a ball that was causing a disagreement between Romeo and Juliet; he confiscated the toy and filled their dishes, occupying their attention elsewhere.
Grissom twitched his sling into a more comfortable position and then returned the leftovers to the fridge. Shutting the door, his gaze fell on the calendar there and it dawned on him he had no clue what day it was.
"Hey Greg," he called across the room, "what day is it today?"
"The eighth of October," replied Greg, straightening up from wrestling Lucy away from Hank's dish.
"Has it really been twenty-three days?" Grissom muttered to himself, staring at the date. He looked up suddenly, a thought occurring to him. "You're going home tomorrow," he said sadly. Greg shook his head.
"I was, but I called Catherine a couple of days ago and asked for another week; I have the time accrued." They made their way into the living room and sat down.
"Not that I don't really appreciate you being here, but doesn't she need you back?" asked Grissom, a slight frown nestled in his brows. Greg let out a long sigh and leaned back into the sofa, resting his head back on the cushion.
"I don't think she really cares right now," he replied freely, "and to be honest, I really don't want to be there at the moment either."
"Why?" asked Grissom, shocked. Greg was quiet for a moment, reflecting.
"Do you remember your last case?"
"Of course, the Dick and Jane Killer."
"Right! Well Haskell came back on the scene; he escaped and fixated on Langston."
"What happened?" asked Grissom, sitting upright and watching Greg carefully.
"Langston killed him."
"What?" whispered Grissom. Greg nodded miserably.
"Yeah. It was probably justified, but not the way he did it. Catherine and Brass covered it up as self-defense for the IA investigation." They fell silent, Grissom astounded and Greg still saddened by the events.
"They covered up murder?" asked Gil, unable to believe it. Greg sighed again, running his fingers through his messy hair.
"Haskell was messing with Ray big time; he kidnapped Ray's ex-wife and tortured her, and Langston played right into his hands. Haskell deserved to die, I don't doubt that, but I still don't think Ray had the right to kill him." Gil stared at him, absolutely stunned. "It's a mess Griss, a long, drawn out mess and it's made the lab look bad and screwed up half the people that work there."
"What's happening now?" asked Grissom, stroking Juliet soothingly as she climbed into his lap. Greg shrugged hopelessly.
"Catherine and Nick have been demoted; there's a new supervisor starting in a couple of weeks. Like I said, Catherine really doesn't care at the moment; she's too mad! So I'm here for another week. And I'd really rather not think about work, if you don't mind. Me being here is as good for me as it is for you to have me looking after you."
Grissom laughed at that omission, and agreed. He suppressed a yawn and indicated the chessboard; Greg grinned at the invitation and began to rearrange the pieces. Chess was a challenge he could thoroughly enjoy. He was debating his first move when Romeo sauntered up to him and sprawled across his lap, purring gently and comforting Greg into a blissful state of relaxation, pushing all the unpleasant thoughts right out of his mind.
...
...
Ok, so I know I've bent the timeline here just a little bit, but I wanted to keep the lab moving in the background. (And I'll admit, I never really liked Ray that much...) Also, I just couldn't let Greg go home yet, not until Sara is a little stronger.
I hope you're still enjoying the journey; I'm so in love with this story and the way it has unfolded. It has turned into so much more than I was expecting when I dreamt up the original idea. Please keep reviewing; I do treasure them so.
Happy reading and writing,
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