Chapter Nineteen: Far from Over

My soundtrack: "Finally Moving" by Pretty Lights, "Come Back" by Foo Fighters

"I'm so sorry you had to witness that, Miss Sidle," the doctor said, real regret evident in his tone and posture as he approached the anxious woman outside of the ICU.

"How is he?" Sara asked, uninterested in small talk. She'd been ushered out by staff just after two nurses and Dr. Holland took over restraining Greg. Backing out, she had watched a nurse inject the contents of a syringe into Greg's I.V. line. It was obviously a sedative and had a nearly instantaneous effect on his body. He had collapsed back onto the mattress but his eyes remained wide open. Sara shuddered recalling his desperate expression as he gazed upwards with such intensity that she'd felt the need to glance up as well, convinced he saw something. Of course, there was nothing there but the ceiling, vents, and light fixtures. Once booted from the area, for an hour she paced; her conflicted emotions as restless as her tired body.

The doctor guided Sara back into the ICU, but stopped just inside the double doors. When he spoke again, his tone was sympathetic but grave. "Greg came close to tearing out his only real source of air. We needed to tranquilize and place him in restraints before he hurt himself or someone else."

"He wouldn't hurt somebody that was trying to help him," Sara argued, feeling the need to defend her friend despite seeing his actions firsthand.

"I know," Dr Holland said quickly. "I'm not doubting that Greg is normally a non-violent person. However, do try to remember that he just regained consciousness after seven days of captivity and four days in a coma. His body has been slowly healing from the incident while he slept, but his mind has only now begun to register what happened to him. At this point, no one knows how much he remembers. We don't even know the entirety of what he experienced, which means that anything could trigger him to panic and we'll have no way to avoid it. The good news is that once the sedative kicked in and he relaxed somewhat, he was composed and reasonable while I talked to him."

"He did appear to recognize me at first."

"That is a good sign. However, complete retrograde amnesia—the kind that you see in soap operas and movies—is not all that common after an experience like this. Instead of forgetting who he is and who his friends are, Greg is more likely to show generalized confusion over more recent events, such as his abduction and captivity. You may also notice changes in his personality, and his nervous system might be affected. We will evaluate all those things as soon as we're able, but for now I would like to work on getting his airway healed, since that is an obvious and understandable trigger. He requires radiographs soon to make sure he didn't further damage his fractured bones, but he needs to let the medications take effect so that he's still for them."

She sighed, frustrated for Greg at the countless hurdles he would need to jump in order to live some semblance of a normal life again.

"You can see him, if you'd like. He's heavily medicated, but still awake the last I checked. I told him where he is, but nothing else about the case. No need to overwhelm him the first time he wakes up. Has the crime lab heard anything from his parents?"

Sara nodded. She had received the news from Nick earlier, who spoke to Greg's alarmed father on the telephone this morning. "Yes, finally. They were doing charity work somewhere in West Africa; completely off the grid until this morning. That's when they received all the calls and heard the voicemails."

"That must have been terrifying for them. At least Greg had already been rescued by the time they found out."

"I guess that is some relief. They're coming back as soon as they can, but it might be a few more days because of travel restrictions in that area."

"Alright. You still have my number? Go ahead and give that to them. They can call me whenever they want, and I'll keep them updated."

"Thanks, doctor. I'll let them know. I think I will go see him now. Maybe I can convince him to relax. Is he still…restrained?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. It's the last thing I want to do considering the what he's recovering from, but right now he is unpredictable, even sedated. I promise you they are designed to cause absolutely no harm physically to a person. And if you can convince him to relax, I'll owe you." Dr. Holland smiled kindly then left to check on his other patients.

Sara sighed again and apprehensively approached Greg's side. After detecting that he was in fact, still awake, she spoke very softly. "Hey, Greg."

His heavy-lidded eyes located her, and there was a spark of recognition in them, but it was much dimmer than before. Fortunately, the panic that filled his features when she last saw him was entirely gone, but uncertainty and insecurity had filled the void it left. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the chair—her chair—closer, took a seat, and tentatively placed her left hand on top of his, noting that his fist was tightly clenched around a handful of the white sheet under it. He shivered and eyed her almost warily, but did not attempt to pull away. She shifted to the edge of the chair and smiled reassuringly. "It's me. I'm not going to hurt you."

Using only slow motions, trying to project 'calm', she reached and began to run light fingers through his disheveled hair. He needed a haircut even before he disappeared, and now his hair was longer than it had been in a long time. The start to a beard was a strange sight on a man that had shown up to his job cleanshaven every day since before she met him. She knew he would want to shave as soon as he was allowed, but now there were cuts and scrapes everywhere on his skin, and his immune system still battled the powerful infection that had taken hold of his wounds a few days into his captivity.

Greg's features softened, but then he glanced pointedly at the padded strap secured around his left wrist. Good, you're here. Take these off.

"I'm so sorry but they have to stay on, just for a little while longer. Doctor's orders, not mine."

He blinked slowly in reluctant acceptance and his gaze returned to the ceiling.

Sara moved her fingers to the side of his face, where she lightly thumbed a small unbruised area of his cheek. He turned slightly into her touch as he gradually relaxed more, his hand releasing the wrinkled fabric of the sheet.

"You're safe. Get some rest. I'll be right here." She hated to lie, because she couldn't actually remain at his side all of the time, but she told him what he needed to hear. Sara would admit later when he was better that she lied, and Greg, being himself, would forgive her and understand completely.

In just under ten minutes, his eyes finally closed, and after a few more minutes he drifted off into an exhaustion- and drug-induced sleep. Under her watch, his eyes continued to roll sporadically under dark lids, occasionally his nostrils flared, and a few times his hand twitched in Sara's. Obviously, his mind was a very active place. She continued to stroke his hair and watch over him, knowing she should call the team and update them, but not willing to leave his side just yet.

Eventually, a small team of medical personnel entered and quietly wheeled Greg away to get x-rays. Decision now out of her hands, Sara pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed Grissom.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I need to."

The hulking warehouse loomed before the group at its main door. Being there with Nick, Grissom, and Brass was surreal to Sara after the events that took place within. Surrounded by friends and aware that Greg was safe, without her prior knowledge she could have easily believed the building to be 'just another abandoned storage warehouse'. However, its demons were within its walls, absorbed into every surface and no amount of renovation would cleanse them. She hoped it would be demolished, and knew that most if not all of the team shared her reservations.

All the evidence collection and scene analysis had been finalized, but yellow crime scene tape still sealed all entrances to deter thrill-seekers and squatters alike. The old rusty chains and padlocks securing the entrance had been replaced and upgraded to ensure no one else got in.

When Sara called Grissom with an update from the hospital, he informed her the scene had been released. Her first thought was going back, and Gil had been only slightly taken aback. Sara herself couldn't quite explain it; perhaps she hoped that walking through the place again could bring some semblance of closure. More likely, she sought to understand Greg to help with the recovery he faced. Getting a look around while mostly in her right mind could give her a handle on the causes of his wounds: physical but especially emotional.

The morning after Greg first woke up, D.B. somehow convinced Captain Brass to let Nick and Sara walk through the scene, even if they were both on leave. Nick only agreed to go to back up his friend. He hadn't been there since the night Greg was rescued, and even then, it had been dark. But the blurred details briefly lit by the beam of a flashlight weren't things he wanted to revisit. The fact that Sara wanted to go back was tough for him to grasp, but not as tough as one would expect. Although he worried this might not be the best move for her to make, he knew that she believed it was, and that was good enough for Nick Stokes. Each of his teammates had backed him up in situations like this, so the least he could do was return the favor.

As they entered, Sara glanced to the table on her left, from which she grabbed the cellphone during her escape. When she ran away from Greg. There was a guilty pang in her stomach that she quickly suppressed. The time for dealing with her responsibility and self-pity would come, but not now. Not in this place.

The first room—the enormous storage area that Sara now knew once stored nuclear weapons parts—wasn't too difficult to enter. Nothing terrible happened here; at least not to her. The other three followed, but at a small distance as they crossed the dimly lit area to the line of three rooms along the east wall. Sara hesitated for quite a long time at the entrance to the improvised dungeon, the first room. The door was already propped open, but the smell at the threshold was almost intolerable, both in its intensity and the memories it evoked. Most people don't know that the smell of decomp doesn't actually require a whole, decaying body. Just toss a few of the 'ingredients' together, add a dash of heat and time, and Sara might as well be entering a room containing a dozen rotting corpses.

Her face instinctively contorted into a smile to suppress the gag reflex, but it was more akin to a grimace as she pulled on some booties to protect her shoes before entering. Nick was close behind. Grissom and Brass stood at a distance, lingering in the main room. They'd spent more than enough time in this place, especially that room. Along with D.B. and Catherine, Grissom had processed and collected the majority of the evidence in the huge building. Even the strongest menthol gel under their noses and the hottest shower after work couldn't mask or rid them of the smell, although they all guessed it was somewhat psychological considering their closeness to the case.

The small space had been nearly stripped bare by the investigators. The chains, ropes, chairs, buckets, and even the straw bale and the hooks in the walls were brought to the lab to analyze. The stains in the concrete lingered; those would be impossible to entirely remove without deconstructing the room itself. Sara led the way in a circle, pausing at each especially large blood stain or splatter, knowing the ones that belonged to Greg because they were brighter red than the older samples. She did veer away from the corner that once contained the buckets, because the ground there still crawled with insect larva. It had obviously been where prisoners were forced to use the bathroom, and she didn't need to know anything else right now.

The middle room smelled much better, and appeared to be under construction. It had plywood installed over three of the cement walls as well as fluorescent lighting fixtures on the ceiling. Sara recalled Whitney's comment just before throwing her in with Greg: "I'm only putting you in with him because the other rooms aren't yet set up for containment. We're working on it…You really don't deserve to see him, but I don't trust you anywhere less secure."

If this room was meant to be a second, upgraded dungeon, Whitney and her goon really did have big plans for this place. Plans that extended far beyond the scope of revenge on those that testified against her. 'How many victims have they tortured and killed in the other room? How many remain on their list? Or is there no list?' Sara speculated in her head. She wished this all made more sense; wished they had more information.

The bathroom, which she hadn't yet seen either, was the last room to enter. The porcelain tub was drained, but retained a grimy ring of blood and dirt residue near the top. Red, smudged handprints stained the rim as if somebody tried to pull themselves up from the bottom. More blood and smears decorated the floor next to the tub; it appeared that someone had lay there bleeding, possibly while sustaining more injuries. Sara remembered Whitney's comment about Greg's experience in the tub and shuddered. She wondered if he would ever want to talk about it, and part of her selfishly hoped he wouldn't.

She was so lost in thought that Nick's voice startled her.

"This is the last room, Sara. Do you feel…have you seen enough?"

Dragging her gaze from the disturbing scene and her mind from the gaps in Greg's experience that her too-creative imagination desired to fill, she blinked at him. "Yes."

"Do you want to visit him now?"

They had only just been there, but Greg had been asleep. Plus, after seeing the warehouse again, Nick felt the nagging need to see the younger investigator again for himself; ensure he was still safe. And if Nick felt this way, he knew that Sara would also.

As predicted, she nodded gratefully. "Definitely. Let's go."

Greg gripped the sheets with the only hand that he could feel. Yesterday, he remembered being terrified that his right arm was gone, and he hadn't been able to force the muscles in his sore neck and shoulders to allow him to check on it. Somehow, his doctor had read his mind and reassured him: "I injected a nerve-blocking agent into your right shoulder to help with the pain. It only lasts about twenty-four hours, so we will need to perform the injection again soon."

That all made perfect sense to Greg, but its logicality did little to reassure the jumpy, kid-Greg whimpering in the back of his mind like a terrifed science nerd cowering in his locker waiting for the bully, Colin Finck to give up his search.

Whoa, whoa! Where did that reference come from?

'You were bullied,' kid-Greg reminded him now. 'You didn't tell anybody because you didn't want people to worry. Can you imagine what mom would have done? You'd have been a real-life bubble-boy. Wait…did you really forget all of that?'

'Ooh, juicy!' squeaked Whitney. Her voice was distant and muffled; how a person might sound who stood two closed-doors away. Greg knew that she wasn't really in his hospital room. He didn't know if she was in custody, or even alive, but he believed it unlikely she would be anywhere nearby. The voices were all in his head.

Is that supposed to comfort me?

'Of course not! Who said anything about comfort?' Kid-Greg sighed. Roles reversed: young lectured older. 'You shouldn't feel comfortable. At some point they're going to inject you with things again. Remember what happened before? It burns. And they'll do things to you while you're passed out.'

Despite the hospital-prescribed drug cocktail Greg knew flowed into his veins via the I.V. lines, he knew where he was and why he was there. He also vaguely remembered why he currently had restraints on his wrists and ankles, and the reasoning seemed rational. He couldn't blame the hospital staff. Greg had been an uncooperative patient, and the restraints were for his own good. But the pressure could be felt even through the thick bandages covering the wounds from the last time he'd been tied up, and kid-Greg didn't like that, either.

They're not going to do anything to me here. I'm safe.

At least, that was what Greg told himself as his fingers wound themselves into the sheets, and he repeatedly clenched and relaxed his fist. Scorpion-Nick no longer clung to the ceiling, but the medications induced other phantoms there: whirlwinds of shadows and bursts of color in the normally flat, white surface. It was beautiful, but these illusions too attempted to lull him to sleep.

Greg had two current goals: retain his memories, and stay awake. The memories, he clutched tighter than the thin hospital sheets under his left hand because they were his. Too many blank spaces of time took up his stay in that dark place, so they served as some comfort. Awake, he had the physical discomfort. Asleep he still had that, but Whitney had him. He still heard her when he was awake, but she only took control when he drifted off to sleep. She was relentless. Everything worked against him; the sedatives coursed through him and tried to send him spiraling back down into her lair. His younger self urged him to

stop lying to yourself all of the voices are you

boring current-version you

simply going batshit crazy

fall asleep, but that must have been a mistake, because the kid seemed the most scared of feeling powerless.

But Greg fought the exhaustion, fought the voices, because for some reason the only time he could rest somewhat peacefully was when he had company, and right now the seat next to him that Sara normally occupied was empty. He needed her. He needed someone there, as hard as it was to admit. Nick, Catherine, D.B., hell he'd even take Hodges. At least he could serve as a distraction. An annoying distraction.

He lay in his hospital bed unable to move and waited. The voices, the conversations between his ears continued but he resolved to pay them little heed and did not contribute. He was too tired to argue, even with himself. It helped somewhat to identify, one by one, the sounds that Greg knew were real: the machines buzzing and whirring and dripping and beeping, the soft voices of doctors and nurses as they scurried around outside of his sight, the rattles and whooshes of the ceiling vents.

When he finally had visitors again, he was so focused on the ceiling and sounds that his first clue was the warm touch on his clenched hand. He jumped slightly before recognizing the touch. His eyes burned from exhaustion, but he turned them sluggishly and saw Sara in her chair. Nick stood just behind her. They both smiled at him, but their smiles didn't carry to their eyes.

Stop worrying about me, guys. I'm fine.

Sara's hand raised to his head and the light stroking began through his hair again, and he immediately allowed his eyes to close.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed the new chapter! I've been trying to edit and correct chapters one at a time, and have noticed a couple things I would like to clarify:

1. Apparently, I can't write Morgan. I like her character, but I just can't write her. I think I tried to add her earlier in the story, but then she just disappeared. 😂 So let's just say that Morgan doesn't exist for the purpose of this series.
2. I'm unaware of any human medical conditions that cause someone to be resistant to sedatives and pain medications, but something like that might exist? Either way, I'm keeping it-I never claimed to be an expert.

The rest of the story will be a bit faster-paced, in that time will skip a bit because I'm not going to write out every second of Greg's recovery (as much as I wish I could), but I will certainly try to cover the biggest steps because h/c is life, and Greg deserves as much comfort as possible after all of his hurt!

I'm still estimating another four chapters in this work (and have some of the sequel typed up), but that number is subject to change (likely increase) as I continue to fine-tune the ending.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the comments and favorites! Please let me know how I'm doing!