Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: Be forewarned, there are tragic and upsetting elements in this story. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. I owe many, many thanks to mingsmommy and Cincoflex for their invaluable insight and help. And thanks to you too, for stopping by and reading;)
Cradle and All
by Kristen Elizabeth
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. - Norman Cousins
Sara was in the shower when he arrived home, having left the lab almost a half hour before him. Grissom listened to the sound of the water as he traded his work clothes for a T-shirt and boxers. In the past, he might have knocked on the bathroom door and asked to join her.
But things were different now, and he was no longer welcome.
She came out into the bedroom in her robe, rubbing her wet hair with a towel. He was already in bed with the dog and a forensic journal. Over the top of the page, Grissom watched Sara rifle through her drawer until she came up with a tank top and a pair of pajama pants. He swallowed heavily when, instead of changing right there, she walked back into the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she slid into bed, far away on the opposite side of the mattress. The dog stretched between them like a fur-clad fence. She turned onto her side, her back towards him, and settled down under the covers.
"Goodnight," he said before he could stop himself.
There was a short pause. "'Night."
Unable to concentrate anymore, Grissom tossed the journal aside and turned off the lamp, plunging the room into semi-darkness.
Lying there fully awake, he listened to her breathing, waiting for it to even out into the deep, rhythmic pattern that would tell him she was sleeping. But it never happened. Just staccato breaths and the occasional shift of her body. Sara couldn't sleep either. Not that she ever did anymore.
He wondered if she was as relieved as he was when the phone suddenly rang.
"Grissom," he answered, the receiver being on his side of the bed. Sara rolled over onto her back and glanced at him as he listened to the person on the other end. "No, don't wake Catherine. I'll call…um, I mean…Sara and I will go." He paused for a reply, a scowl creeping onto his brow. "Jim, it's too early for innuendo. We'll meet you there."
Their eyes met a second after he hung up. "419 out at Lake Mead," Grissom explained. "Technically, it's still our shift."
Sara nodded as she slipped out of bed. "I'll make coffee." The dog heaved himself up and followed her out the door.
Grissom lay in bed for another minute, working up the energy to keep going. Everything was so much harder now. And he had no more of an idea how to make it better now than he had four months earlier, when the world turned upside down.
He couldn't tell if it was the biting rain, the cold mud, or his own fear, but he couldn't stop shivering. The only warm part of his body was his hand, and he just hoped she was feeling that warmth, too.
Lying on his stomach, his fingers firmly entwined with Sara's, Grissom peered under the car. "Sara, talk to me, honey." Behind him, the rescue workers prepared the crane that would lift the Mustang off the woman he loved.
She was only able to lift her head off the ground a few inches, not enough to look him the eye. "Gris…" he heard her whisper. "I can't feel…my legs."
He forced himself to remain calm and to keep breathing. If he panicked, he would be no good to her. "Just hang on…it'll be over soon."
"Ready with the crane!" someone shouted.
Kneeling down beside him in the mud, Brass called to Sara. "We're set to go, kiddo. Try not to move, okay? Squeeze Gil's hand if you got that." Grissom felt her fingers move against his. He nodded at Brass, who turned and gave a signal to the crane operator.
Metal scraped metal as the chains that had been looped around either end of the car pulled taut and the vehicle began to lift away. Sara let out a little muffled whimper.
Seconds passed like hours. Rain dripped into Grissom's eyes and he blinked furiously. Raw instinct told him to grab her and pull her to safety as soon as he could. But he hung onto his senses just enough to keep reminding himself that he could hurt her even worse if he did that.
"Don't move, honey," he reminded her when the car was all the way up in the air. Her body was positioned just like in the model, flat on her stomach, her feet bent at awkward angles. "Stay still…I'm here."
The Mustang crashed to the wet ground several yards away. Having been standing by with a backboard and a neck brace, the paramedics swarmed around them. Sara looked up at him as they immobilized her and took her vitals, her eyes wide with pain and probably shock. Grissom refused to let go of her hand even as they lifted her onto a gurney and rolled her to the ambulance.
He climbed in with them, kissing her cold fingers as the doors slammed shut.
The ride to Lake Mead was silent, save for a few momentary spots of near-conversation. They agreed to keep the radio station off. They agreed to take the back roads and avoid the interstate. They agreed not to stop for breakfast, in case it was a decomp.
So much agreement, and yet Sara couldn't wait to get out of the car.
Brass was already waiting for them at the yellow crime scene tape. The grim look on his face told her it was going to be an unpleasant morning. As soon as he saw her walking with Grissom, he started adjusting his tie, like he always did when he was confronted with a situation he would have liked to have avoided.
"What are we looking at?" Grissom asked him.
Swearing under his breath, Brass shook his head. "Sara, you're going to hate me for this…but I don't think you need to go down there."
"What?" She frowned when Brass exchanged a meaningful look with Grissom. "Why? And you'd better have a really great reason."
"It's a rough scene," Brass said with grave resignation. "Vic's a newborn. Can't be any older than week or so."
Sara's breath caught in her throat. She felt Grissom touch her arm, and it took every ounce of her willpower not to jerk away from him. "Are you going to take me off the case?" she asked her supervisor in her most coolly professional tone.
"I want to," he said quietly. "But I won't."
"Fine." She ducked under the yellow tape, her heart pounding beneath her breast. "Then let's go."
"Tell me if this hurts."
The request for information came with searing pain as the ER doctor pressed down on her belly with two fingers. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, so all she could do was nod.
"Abdomen is rigid and tender," the doctor informed the other people working on her. "Is there any chance you're pregnant, Sara?"
She shook her head as much as the neck brace would let her. "I'm on…now."
A nurse translated. "She's on her period now." The woman's hand had replaced Grissom's when he'd been gently pushed out of the trauma room. "Just keep breathing, sweetie," she soothed. "We're going to take good care of you."
"Call for a surgical consult," she heard the doctor order. "And get the portable sonogram in here."
Sara gripped the nurse's hand. "Grissom," she murmured. "I want…"
"I'll bring him back in here as soon as I can," the nurse promised. "Try to relax. Everything's going to be okay."
The baby had been wrapped in bloody towels and stuffed into a black and red backpack, which had been tossed into the lake.
Snapping on a pair of gloves, Grissom knelt down at the water's edge and peered into the unzipped bag. A tiny, bloated fist peeked out from stained terrycloth. He closed his eyes, turning his head away from it.
"No insect activity." Sara's voice startled him. When he opened his eyes, he saw her kneeling next to him. One look at her face was all it took for him to instantly regret his decision not to keep her away from this scene.
Her mouth was set in a hard line, but her eyes were dry. He saw her jaw moving, like she was unknowingly grinding her teeth as she reached into the bag.
"Don't, Sara. David hasn't..." Her hands shook as she lifted the bundle out of the backpack. He let it go. It was too late. And right then, formalities and procedures just didn't seem to matter.
Sara parted the towels to reveal what they swaddled. The smell assaulted them, and sent the two nearest uniformed officers running for higher ground. Grissom didn't know much about children, but he knew a lot about the morphology of human beings.
Their victim was younger than a week. Probably only a few hours old when it died, if had ever been alive at all. The decomposition was too severe to tell if it had been a girl or a boy.
"The backpack kept the bugs out." It seemed strange to be forming such calm, rational words while Sara was holding a dead child in her arms. "It'll make TOD harder to determine."
"Stillborn?" she wondered out loud, her voice little more than a whisper.
Grissom shook his head slowly. "I hope so."
"They won't tell me anything, Catherine. They just keep saying she's with the doctors and they're taking care of her and…" Grissom plunged his fingers into his hair. "For all I know, she could be dying. And those bastards won't let me be with her!"
She gave him a few seconds to decide if he was really was done ranting before she put her arm around his shoulders. "Is there anything I can do?"
"No." He looked down at his hands. The one that had held Sara's was still warm. "Nothing."
"Do the doctors know she's not just your co-worker?" There was a hidden barb in the question. Grissom gave her credit for restraining herself; he could tell that she desperately wanted to berate him about his newly-revealed relationship with Sara.
He dipped his chin to indicate that they did. "I didn't see any blood on her," he said, unaware that he'd made the same observation only five minutes earlier. "Could she be bleeding internally?"
"You really don't need to be thinking about any worse-case scenarios."
"A Mustang weighs approximately 3,500 pounds," he repeated from memory. "Sara weighs 129. Bone breaks at…"
Catherine dug her nails into his bicep. "Stop," she warned him. "I'm serious. Say another negative word and I'm going to…" Her threat deflated before it was even fully formed. "Gil…she's going to be okay. She's too stubborn not to be." She paused. "Have you told her that you love her?"
"Not directly." Grissom squeezed his eyes shut. "Not yet."
There were no footprints. Sara collected as much of the debris around the backpack as she could find, but she had little hope that any of it would provide a viable lead. After so many years on the job, she knew the early warning signs of a cold case. They usually made her work doubly hard, to ensure that justice prevailed.
But this time…she didn't feel any extra motivation. She wasn't sure she ever wanted to meet the person who could have dumped a baby into the lake like it was trash, no more valuable than a crumpled beer can or an empty pack of cigarettes.
By the time David arrived to take the baby away, a small gathering of media and looky-loo's had formed at the yellow-tape barrier. Several people were crying; the reporters were talking about the horrible discovery in their gravest tones. Every now and then one of them would try to engage her in an impromptu interview. After she sent away three of them with the withering power of her best glare, the rest seemed to get the hint.
It was noon by the time they were ready to release the scene. Sara had just finished storing the evidence bags into the Denali for the trip back to the lab when she felt Grissom come up behind her.
"Hey," he eloquently announced himself. "Ready to go?"
"Just about."
When he cleared his throat, she knew he was gearing up to suggest something she wasn't going to like. It was his tell. She was all-too familiar with it now.
"Maybe we should stop by the house on our way back." He touched her shoulder. "You could stay there and catch some sleep."
Sara pulled down the rear door with more force than necessary, and turned to face him. "I thought you weren't going to keep me off this case."
Grissom's pained expression spoke of his concern. It still touched her, and made her long for the days she could have just buried her face in his shoulder and forgotten that there was anyone else in the world but him.
"I just don't want you to…overextend yourself. Physically or emotionally." He paused. "You're still healing, honey."
"If I couldn't handle it, I would tell you." She folded her arms over her stomach. "You have to trust me."
"I do trust you, Sara. But I also know you."
"What the hell does that mean?"
He held up his hands, and somehow that only fueled her frustration. He was placating her, like she was an unruly teenager. "Just that you've gotten absorbed into cases in the past, to the point where you almost can't put everything down and walk away for a few hours. I want you to take care of yourself. I want to…" Grissom stopped suddenly. "Consider the suggestion withdrawn," he continued a moment later.
Sara looked away. After a count of ten, enough time to swallow the lump in her throat, she said, "I'll drive."
He reached for her again, but she stepped back, avoiding the touch of his fingers. She missed his hands on her body, but she wasn't ready for them yet.
"Sara, I want you to listen to me very carefully."
The surgeon had only been in the room for ten minutes, but he'd already taken charge. Sara could tell this annoyed the ER doctor a little bit, kind of like she imagined she'd feel if Catherine jumped in and took over one of her cases. She couldn't quite describe the surgeon; her vision was starting to get blurrier.
"There's blood in your urine, which means you are bleeding internally."
That didn't sound good. What did sound good was a mai tai. On the beach. With Grissom lounging in the chair next to hers. Wearing some horrible Hawaiian print shirt and reading a book about an extinct species of insect.
"But you're very lucky. The best surgical team in Las Vegas is on call today, and they're all upstairs waiting for us."
She and Grissom should take a vacation. She could make something up about a family reunion, and he could claim to be teaching another seminar. They'd go to the Caribbean or Hawaii or Cabo. They'd drink cocktails by the ocean, and make love to the sound of the waves.
"We're going to take care of you, Sara. I promise."
You make me promises, promises. She hated that song. The whole world was spinning, and she couldn't make it stop. She reached out her hand, searching for Grissom's. But he wasn't there anymore. Nausea overwhelmed her and she felt herself retching.
"Turn her on her side!" the doctor ordered just in time. A nurse held up a silver basin to her mouth. Her vomit looked wrong. She hadn't eaten chocolate….why was it reddish-brown?
She could hear people yelling things, but she couldn't focus on any of the words. The bed began to move and her whole body hurt and she just wanted Grissom.
Back at the lab, Grissom let Sara process the backpack while he started on the bags of debris she'd collected. They worked in silence for a long time. Every now and then, he'd glance over at her, searching for any remote sign of fatigue. But Sara was too stubborn to show anything. She knew he'd be looking.
He was on his fifteenth bag, a used condom presumably from a lake-side tryst, when Sara announced, "I think I've got something."
Abandoning his work, Grissom walked around the table to her side. Anything to be nearer to her.
With her tweezers, Sara pulled out a tiny, wadded-up ball of paper from the lining at the very bottom of the backpack. While she began gently straightening it out, Grissom pulled the lighted magnifying glass over to help her better see the tiny creases and folds.
The towels that had been wrapped around the baby had absorbed most of the decomp fluids, sparing this piece of evidence. When Sara had it all flattened out, they could see that it was a piece of lined notebook paper, torn from the corner of a page. There was writing on it, a girlish scribble in purple ink.
Their eyes met for a second. Sara quickly looked back down at the tiny note. "'Darcy, if you get any fatter…' spelled f-a-t-e-r, '…Josh is gonna hook up with Michelle F'."
"A teenager," Grissom said when the words had time to sink in. "The backpack should have been our first clue."
"There are 41 high schools in Clark County alone," Sara said dully.
"She doesn't necessarily have to be in high school. How many junior highs are there?"
She shook her head like she always did when she was overwhelmed by something. "Where do we start?"
"Hospitals," he sighed. "Let's hope the mother was at least smart enough to seek post-partum help for herself."
Grissom took out his cell phone and was about to punch in the speed dial code for Brass when he noticed a shimmer in the corner of Sara's eye. Before he could do or say anything, she wiped it away and straightened her back.
But her other hand lingered on her flat belly.
"Gil Grissom?"
He was on his feet before the doctor even finished calling his name, with Catherine just a second behind him. "How's Sara?" he blurted out. "Where is she? Can I see her?"
"My name is Dr. Jenkins," the younger man began. "I was with the team working on your CSI."
Grissom restrained himself from telling the kid that he couldn't give a damn what his name was. "Please just… answer my questions."
He was smart enough to acquiesce with a nod. "Her condition is severe. There's internal bleeding, and Dr. Markham believes her pelvis might be fractured. She's being taken up to surgery, though, and I promise you, she's in the most capable hands in the entire city."
Blinking was all Grissom seemed able to do. "Will she…will be all right?"
"If they find the source of the bleeding and stop it, yes."
Catherine squeezed his arm, but he ignored her. "And if they can't?" he managed to ask.
The doctor was quiet for a second. "They will."
Grissom could feel his blood pressure creeping up, the tell-tale flush of his skin, the rapid beat of his heart. Fear and worry came out as anger and frustration. The kid didn't deserve it, but he was there, the most convenient target.
"I don't think you get it," he snapped. "She might just be a body to you…muscles and skin and organs…but she is everything to me! You've got my heart and soul on your operating table, and if you don't…fix her, I'll have…nothing!" He sucked in huge gulps of air, but his chest still hurt.
"Gil." Catherine's voice was small, almost lost in the chaos of his frantic mind. "They're going to take care of her."
The doctor nodded. "You have my word, Mr. Grissom. We will do our very best."
His shoulders slumped over when the younger man left. Catherine rubbed her hand in small circles on his upper back; it was annoying, but she was just trying to help. When he had control over his breathing again, he removed his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes.
"I think I'm being punished." Catherine's hand stopped. "For every year I wasted when I could have been with her…I feel one slipping away."
"It doesn't work like that," she said with quiet conviction. "Neither of you did anything to deserve this."
"Cath…" Grissom's head jerked back and forth. "It should've been me under that car."
"No one should have been under that car."
He kept shaking his head. "It should have been me."
"I'm afraid you're not going to like what I have to tell you." Doc Robbins looked back and forth between Grissom and Sara. The autopsy table stretched between them and him, too big for the tiny body laid out on it.
"Just…tell us," Sara said wearily. "It's been a long day."
"For all of us, Sara," Grissom reminded her.
Doc Robbins pulled back the white sheet that covered the baby. "You were right in your initial estimations. The bones in the baby's skull are still compressed together to allow passage through the birth canal. She was a newborn."
"She?"
He nodded at Sara. "I was able to establish that, yes."
"So, she was delivered naturally. From the extent of decomposition, we're guessing almost two weeks ago." Grissom frowned. "Was she stillborn?"
Sighing heavily, Doc Robbins reached for a specimen jar and held it out to them. "I found white fibers in the lungs. She was wrapped in white towels, wasn't she?"
"Yeah," Sara whispered. "Terrycloth."
"She suffocated," the ME said, disgust creeping into his voice. "Which means that at one point, she was breathing on her own."
None of them said anything for a long, reverent moment. Finally, Grissom nodded. "Thank you, Al."
Sara felt him reached for her elbow, to guide her out of the morgue. She was tired of fighting him off; she gave in and let him lead her away.
Out in the hall, she looked up at him. "I bet she was perfect. Ten toes and fingers…chubby little legs…" Searching his eyes, she asked, "Why didn't they want her?"
Grissom touched her cheek lightly, hesitantly. When she didn't pull away, he relaxed and cupped her face in his palm. "I can't imagine."
Just as quickly as the precious moment came, Sara ended it by stepping back, turning and walking away.
The woman with stringy brown hair and dead eyes wouldn't leave her alone. All Sara wanted to do was sip her fruity, rum-filled drink and watch Grissom get sunburned while he tried to catch sand fleas.
But the bitch wouldn't go away.
"Everyone loves you, Sara. You don't even notice, do you? You just ignore them and go home with your boss."
Shut up, she wanted to tell her. How do you even know my name?
"Do you like dolls? Do you know you are a doll? My doll. I dressed you up and sent you to him. I think he'll like it. He keeps all my models."
Down on the beach, Grissom had given up on the fleas. Silhouetted by the blue water, he was looking back at her with the strangest expression on his face.
The girl who'd stabbed her neck with a syringe disappeared, replaced by a beauty with sleek black hair and bruises on her throat. "He's my friend, Sara," she said with a smirk. "He protects me. Did he even try to protect you?"
Sara felt something warm on her thighs. Looking down at her lap, all she saw was red, soaking her bathing suit, trickling down her legs.
Suddenly, Grissom was beside her again, in the next chair over. "This doesn't look good, honey."
"I agree." The dominatrix was behind him now, nipping the back of his ear. "She's got half a dozen complaints in her jacket already. Don't risk everything just to be with her."
Help me, she whispered, touching her belly. Her fingers were sticky with blood as she reached for him. Grissom…
His lips moved, but the voice belonged to someone else. "She's coming around, Doctor." A pause. "Are we going to tell her?"
"Not yet." Heather's mouth formed the words, but the voice was a man's. "Not until she's stable."
Sara opened her eyes to blinding white light.
Luck wasn't supposed to be a rare thing in Las Vegas, but in Grissom's experience, it could certainly be elusive. So much so that on the rare occasion when it struck, it still caught him off guard.
Brass knocked on his open door before waltzing in, brandishing a manila folder. "Some days…everything just falls into place." He clarified, "Desert Palm just faxed us this report. A month ago, a teenage girl came into the ER complaining of bad cramps. After she was examined, she was determined to be almost eight months pregnant and having Braxton-Hicks contractions. When the doctor tried to talk to her about it, she freaked out and bolted."
"Did they try to track her down?"
"Well, she gave a fake address and phone number, so the trail ended pretty quickly. ER docs didn't dig much further, and there was no reason to turn it over to us. Their words, not mine."
Grissom frowned. "How does this help us, Jim?"
"The doctor's notes mention that the girl was carrying a black and red backpack with a keychain on the zipper for South Valley High, Home of the Hornets."
"We didn't find a keychain."
Brass shrugged. "I guess the girl's not completely stupid then."
Nodding, Grissom held out his hand for the report. "Call South Valley. Let's get a student roster and start looking for a Darcy."
"Because I never would have thought to do that on my own," the detective snorted. When he got no reaction, he sat down on the arm of one of the chairs in front of Grissom's desk. "Where's Sara?"
"Home," he replied curtly. "She left after the autopsy."
Brass folded his arms over his chest. "And you didn't go with her?"
Closing up the report with a sigh, Grissom whipped off his glasses. "She told me she wanted to be alone. I respected her request."
"Well…that's very…chicken-shit of you."
"Excuse me?"
"You're not doing her any favors by not making her talk about it. I'm no psychiatrist, but I think you're probably only making things worse by letting her push you away."
"She's not pushing me away," he lied. "She's coping with what happened to her."
Brass leaned forward. "If she was coping with it, you'd be with her right now." He shook his head sadly. "She wasn't the only one who lost something that night."
The doctor had told Grissom that Sara was awake and aware, but when he approached the ICU bed, her eyes were closed. He didn't say anything as he quietly pulled up a chair next to her. She was an angel when she slept, her dark lashes on her pale skin.
He ignored the tubes and the needles and took her hand again, lifting it up to his mouth. "You stayed with me, Sara," he said, his voice muffled by her palm. "I love you."
When he looked at her face again, her eyes were open. "Hi," she whispered.
Grissom let out a ragged breath. "God, Sara…you don't know how worried I've been."
Her forehead wrinkled with concern. "I threw up blood."
"You were bleeding internally."
"I feel empty. I don't know why." Her fingers tightened around his. "Gris…a woman…did this. She…in the parking garage…"
"Shh. We know. We've got her. She won't ever hurt you again."
Her body relaxed. She ran her dry tongue over her lips. "My hip hurts."
"You fractured your pelvis," he told her, keeping his voice low and calm. "It's going to hurt for awhile."
"But…I'll be okay?"
She needed to hear it from him, and not some random doctor, so Grissom nodded firmly. "Absolutely."
"Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt." The doctor who approached them was unfamiliar to Grissom. "I'm Dr. Rigel. I was with Sara in the operating room."
Grissom shook the man's hand. "Thank you. For taking care of her."
"I need to tell you some things, Sara," Dr. Rigel said, only barely acknowledging Grissom's thanks. "And I should probably tell you alone."
She moved her head back and forth the tiny bit that she could. "No. I want…" She looked at Grissom. "Stay."
The doctor lowered his chin for a second. "All right. Let me just start by saying…we did everything in our power to stop the bleeding without resorting to drastic measures. But we just couldn't find another way."
With each word that followed, a buzzing in Grissom's ears got louder and louder, drowning out everything the doctor was telling them. But he could still read it on the man's lips.
And see it in Sara's eyes.
Darcy Manning looked like she wanted to throw up.
The cops had pulled her out of rehearsals for South Valley's production of Cinderella. She was playing the title role, good casting as far as Sara was concerned. She looked every inch the fairytale waif with her porcelain skin, delicate features and huge blue eyes.
What she didn't look like was a girl who could have delivered a baby and immediately smothered it.
"Why are you asking me about the baby in the lake?" Beside the child advocate who'd been call in, it was just Sara and her in the interrogation room, but the girl was obviously still intimidated. She had on a hooded sweatshirt and she was tugging the sleeves down over her hands. "I don't know anything about that."
She said it with too much emphasis to be telling the truth. "Darcy," Sara started again. "Do you have a boyfriend?" The girl nodded. "What's his name?"
"Josh," Darcy said with a smile. Sara remembered that smile and the feelings that prompted it. She missed that smile.
"Are you two sexually active?"
The advocate pursed her unpainted lips. "That's quite a personal question, Miss Sidle."
"Yes, it is," Sara agreed. She looked at Darcy; the girl's cheeks were positively red, and she was squirming in her metal chair. "Never mind." She paused. "Darcy, your teachers told the police that you were out for several days the week before last. Can you tell me why?"
"I was sick." She wrapped her arms around her fragile frame. "I had a stomachache."
Sara nodded. "I believe that." She leaned forward. "We've talked to a doctor at Desert Palm Hospital who treated a pregnant girl awhile back. If he came down here and saw you…would he recognize you?"
The girl's face was ashen. "No…"
A moment passed. "Do you know what DNA is?"
"Miss Sidle," the advocate jumped in. "Do you really think you have enough evidence to even go down that road?"
"Detective Brass is talking to a judge about a court order even as we speak," Sara informed her. Looking back at Darcy, she continued in a softer tone, "We have a sample of DNA from the baby we found in the lake. If we look at your DNA and the baby's DNA and we find a match…"
Darcy's eyes filled with tears. "Please don't. Please."
"This isn't going to just go away, Darcy. The baby wasn't stillborn. She was alive; she breathed on her own…until she was smothered."
"No," the girl whispered, shaking her head.
"I can't imagine how overwhelming it must be to bring a child into the world." Sara lowered her stare to the metallic surface of the table. "Carrying such a big secret for so long and going through childbirth when you're still a child yourself…of course you were scared. But Darcy…" She lifted her eyes to meet the girl's. "There are other ways. Places you could have taken the baby…no questions asked." She swallowed. "And there are people who would have gladly given her a home."
Tears streamed down the girl's cheeks as she stared at Sara, still shaking her head back and forth. "You don't understand," she cried. "He told me…" She sucked in a ragged breath. "He told me…she was born dead!"
"Who told you that?" the advocate asked. Darcy buried her face in her hands; her slender shoulder shook with her sobs, all the answer Sara needed.
"Was it Josh? Was he there when she was born?"
Lifting her head, the girl nodded ever so slightly. "I had her at his house when his parents were in Tahoe." Her chin wobbled. "She came out really fast. I thought I heard her cry, but…" She clutched the ends of her sleeves like they were her last life line. "He told me it was just my imagination. You have to believe me…" She looked at Sara again, pleading. "I wanted to keep her."
Sara bit down on her tongue, and tasted blood. "I understand."
When Catherine poked her head into the hospital room, Sara was torn between the desire to be alone, and the need not to be. At her own insistence, Grissom had left ten minutes earlier, swearing that he would only be gone as long as it took to return home for a shower and a change of clothes. After almost forty-eight hours, he desperately needed both. She missed him almost as much as she'd been relieved to see him go.
"Feeling up to visitors?" Catherine asked from the doorway. "I told the nurse I'm your younger sister."
Sara gave her the faintest of smiles. "Come in."
The older woman entered with a gaudy purple teddy bear. "The gift shop sucks," she explained. "All the flowers looked brown."
"I'm on…so many pain meds…it's almost cute."
"Yeah." Catherine's fingers shook a little as she played with the ribbon around the bear's neck. "How are you feeling?"
"Empty," she said after a moment. "Is that normal?"
"I don't know." Catherine stepped closer to the bed. "Sara…" She stopped suddenly. "I have no idea what to say."
"It's okay." Sara closed her eyes. "I wouldn't either."
Swallowing, the older woman went on, "I only know because…the official report. It's in the surgeon's notes."
"It's okay," Sara repeated. The words weren't at all comforting, but maybe if she said them enough, she could make herself believe them.
"I blacked that part out," Catherine assured her. "No one else will know. I promise." When Sara opened her eyes to look at her co-worker, she was surprised that her lashes were we. She hadn't felt the tears coming. "I'm so sorry, Sara."
Despite the high dose of Demerol the nurse had injected into her IV shortly before Grissom left, the center of Sara's body began to ache. "At least…I won't be stealing…tampons from you anymore."
Catherine rested her hand against her mouth. "You're allowed to be angry, you know. What she did to you…"
"Maybe later." Sara tried to lick her lips, but her tongue was bone dry. "Right now, I just…" She wasn't entirely sure how to finish the sentence, so she let it go. Seconds ticked by before she worked up the energy to speak again. "Cath…someday…will you tell me what it's like to be pregnant?"
Brushing tears away with her knuckles, Catherine just nodded. "Someday." She walked the rest of the way to Sara's bed. "Does Gil know?"
"Yeah." The image of Grissom's traumatized expression as the doctor told them they would never have children was carved into Sara's memory. She doubted it would ever go away. "He knows."
Catherine tried to smile. "He loves you, Sara." Some woman's instinct must have prompted her to add, "I don't think that'll ever change."
She wanted to believe it. But there was the smallest trace of doubt in her heart, and it was slowly pumping out to the rest of her body.
"The boyfriend's parents screamed for a lawyer," Brass told Grissom. "Who just arrived, so…he's ours now."
Grissom inclined his head. "I want to talk to him alone."
"The last time you told me that…" The detective stopped short. "Are you sure?" Grissom was already pushing open the interrogation room's door. "Ah, crap," Brass muttered.
Josh Woods was everything Grissom had been expecting. Young, easy on the eyes, with a devil-may-care attitude that reminded him of James Dean. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt; his muscled arms were folded over his chest as he leaned back in his chair.
Unlike Darcy Manning who was probably still crying, Josh's eyes were dry. He looked bored and inconvenienced.
Grissom decided not to even bother with the kid gloves.
He didn't greet the boy or the lawyer; he just walked into the room with the photos from the crime scene and began laying them down on the table in front of Josh. When he was done, Grissom sat down and waited.
Josh looked down at the photos for a few seconds. When he glanced back up at Grissom, he lifted his shoulders. "That's really sick."
"Oh, I agree," Grissom said, his eye twitching. "You know what's even sicker? That this wasn't an accident. That you did this on purpose."
The lawyer held up a hand. "Take a step back, Dr. Grissom. You're jumping ahead of your own evidence. Nothing concrete connects my client to this baby."
"Except the statement from the baby's mother that says your client was the father and was present when the baby was born." Grissom smiled dangerously. "Of course, I'm personally counting on the DNA match we're going to make between the baby and Josh here." He looked at the boy. "You'll be volunteering a sample later, by the way."
"Proving that my client was the baby's father doesn't necessarily mean you can prove he had anything to do with the child's death." The lawyer put his hand on Josh's shoulder. "He's the vice-president of the student council. A straight-A honor student. He…"
Grissom cut the lawyer off. "Being so smart, he should have known that there would be ways to tell if the baby breathed or not." Folding his hands, he leaned forward on his elbows. "She wanted to keep it, didn't she?" Josh turned his head away. "You knew she'd take one look at that baby, hold it in her arms…and she'd never let it go." He paused. "And there goes the rest of your life."
"I'm still not hearing any direct evidence tying my client to the child's death," the lawyer said a moment later.
His comment went ignored. "I know it probably doesn't seem like it at seventeen, but you were given a gift." Grissom's knuckles turned white as he tightened the weave of his fingers. "You threw away what other people can't…" It took him a few seconds to regain control over his voice. "Did it make you feel better? Getting rid of your problem?"
"Dr. Grissom," the lawyer warned.
But he didn't stop. Couldn't stop. "What was it like to smother the life out of something you helped make?" His words shook with mounting anger. "Were you sad? Happy? Relieved? Did you feel anything at all? Or were you just grateful that your girlfriend was so out of it that she couldn't tell if she gave birth to a living baby or a dead…"
"Gil!" From the doorway, Brass motioned for him. Still glaring at Josh, Grissom stood up and reluctantly joined the detective on the other side of the room. "Greg's here to do the DNA collection," Brass quietly told him. "You can step out now."
Grissom shook his head. "I'm collecting. I'm going to make the match. And I'm going to see that smug little bastard in jail until he's too old to impregnate anyone."
"Don't think this is me disagreeing with any of that, but I'm not letting you near that kid again. You're two inches away from a harassment suit."
"He killed his own child, Jim," Grissom said between clenched teeth. "There is no excuse for that."
"I know. I'd like to castrate him myself. But punishing him isn't going to make you feel any better." Brass put his hand on his friend's arm. "It's not going to give you back what you've lost."
Grissom's chin touched his chest. Torn between utter frustration and complete despair, he was lost. He angled his head just enough to look back at Josh. The boy was smiling and nodding at whatever his lawyer was telling him. Even if he was convicted, he was a minor. His jail time would be limited, if there was any at all. And he knew it.
Defeat won out and his shoulders slumped over even further. Whipping off his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Tell Greg he'd better follow every damn protocol we've got."
"Oh, I'll tell him," Brass promised. "Go home, Gil."
He snorted softly. "Yeah. Home."
Two weeks to the day after she'd left the townhouse, and he though they'd both be back in eight hours, ready for showers, food and sleep, Sara came home.
"Down boy!" Grissom barked at the dog before he could greet his mistress with two friendly paws to her stomach. The boxer gave Sara a mournful look, and retreated, his tail between his legs.
"He wouldn't have hurt me."
"He still thinks he's a puppy." Grissom took her elbow to help her down the two steps that separated the foyer from the den.
"I can walk, Gris," Sara reminded him. As if to prove this, she took the first step. She visibly winced, but kept going.
He slowly followed her across the den and into the bedroom. She stopped a few feet inside and simply looked around for a long moment.
"I never thought I'd see this room again," Sara said softly. Behind her, Grissom reached out to touch her shoulders. She reacted to the touch of his hands like he'd dipped them in acid. "Gris…" Her head turned enough for him to see her profile, but not enough for their eyes to meet. "Everything's different."
Her statement worried him. He'd thought that maybe her reluctance to be touched in the hospital had something to do with her injuries. But her bruises were fading. Her scars were healing. He needed to touch her, and she was making it quite clear that physical contact was the last thing she needed.
"Honey…this doesn't have to be the end of the story." She flinched again when his fingers brushed her arm, so he let his hands fall back to his sides limply. "You're here. You're safe. The rest…we'll find a way through it."
Sara turned the rest of the way and looked up at him with an expression he couldn't quite identify. Sorrow mixed with annoyance tossed in with disdain. "That's very easy for you to say. You can still be someone's parent."
His blood felt cold as it ran through his veins. "We've never talked about children."
"It's a conversation that can be shelved as long as all the necessary organs are present and functioning." She looked down at the floor. "Take one away and it just…" Her hardened features quibbled suddenly. "In a very real way, this is the end of the story for me."
"Oh god, honey…" He reached for her again.
"No!" she screamed. "I don't want you to touch me! I don't want you tell me it's going to be okay, because it's not! You have no idea…no idea what this feels like!" She shook her head as she backed away from him. "You never told me you loved me when I was whole. How can you love me now that I'm not?"
To a man who had trouble coming up with the right words in a good situation, this was hell, pure and simple. Sara might as well have been speaking a foreign language because he had absolutely no idea what to say to her, or how to say it. The only thing he knew for sure was that if he said the wrong thing, she would slip even further away…and he might never get her back.
So he didn't say anything. It took him a long time to realize that she translated his silence into the affirmation of her worst fear…that when she'd lost her womb and the ability to bear his children, she'd lost his heart.
After leaving PD, Sara drove around for hours. She'd hate herself when she got her credit card bill, but she just kept making haphazard circles around the city, paying no attention to how much gas she drained. She stopped for food, fries and a milkshake that likely contained no actual milk. With her stomach full and her mind almost empty, she turned the car towards the townhouse.
Grissom's car was in the driveway. She parked next to him and sat with the keys in the ignition for a minute. He was probably inside, cooking something that would smell wonderful. He would offer her a plate. But she was stuffed, and would have to turn him down. He would stare at her sadly, and tell her there would be leftovers if she got hungry later. The next day, he would mix them in with the dog's food, so they wouldn't go to waste.
Sara slipped her key into the lock and pushed the front door open. The townhouse smelled faintly of the lemon cleanser the once-a-week housekeeper used to mop the floors. There was no warmth emanating from the kitchen. And there was no sign of Grissom.
The dog trotted over to her, and she treated him to a scratching behind his ears. His tail thumped against her thigh appreciatively, and he followed her a moment later when she started for the bedroom.
Grissom was sitting on the bed with his laptop, frowning over the frames of his glasses at whatever was on the screen. He looked up when she entered.
"Long day," Sara said after a moment. He inclined his head. "Brass called while I was…out. He said you got the boyfriend." She attempted a smile. "That's great."
"Don't break out the champagne." Grissom looked back at the screen. "He's probably out on bail by now."
A few moments passed in silence, save for the soft click of Grissom's fingers on the keyboard. Sara looked down at the floor for a long time before she spoke. "I wonder if the next one will be easier."
"I hope not."
Glancing up, Sara saw him watching her. "Did he say why he did it?"
Grissom shook his head. "No. He never confessed. I don't think…" He took a breath. "I don't think Josh believes that what he did was wrong. It wasn't a baby to him. It was just a problem that needed to be taken care of."
Her nails dug into her palms. "There were other options."
"Maybe down the road, after we match his DNA and he goes to jail, some teenager will learn from this."
"Maybe," she echoed. Another moment slipped by. "What are you looking at?"
Grissom took off his glasses. "DCF"s requirements for prospective foster care applicants." She stared at him as he continued, "I thought we'd start small. Work our way up to adoption."
Sara blinked back mounting tears. "I...Gris…"
"We can talk about it later when we've both had some sleep." He closed the computer and set it aside. "I told you this wasn't the end of the story. I just didn't know how to make sure you didn't just hear it, but that you felt it, too." Grissom paused. "When you love someone and you almost lose them, you don't count their parts. You just get down on your knees every night and thank whoever's listening that they're still with you."
Her whole body trembled as the walls she'd forced herself to put up over the months cracked and crumbled. "I've missed you," she whispered. Shame for all the times she'd turned her back to him, pulled away when he'd reached for her or snapped at him washed over her in a great wave. "I'm so sorry…"
Grissom held out his hand. "Come here."
Suddenly starving to be touched, Sara crawled across the bed to his side. She still fit there, cradled up against him, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her back. His scent, his warmth, the way his fingers played with her hair…it was just like before.
It was her home.
Unbidden, her tears flowed in steady rivers down her cheeks, soaking his shirt. She had a thousand of them stored up, and there was no way to stop until they were all free.
"I wanted to carry our babies," she said when the tears finally ebbed away. "I wanted all that maternal…stuff. Cravings and kicks and…and stretch marks. I wanted part of you growing inside me."
She felt Grissom's lips on her brow, a soft, sweet kiss that made her body ache, not with pain, but with need.
"'Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone. But still miraculously my own'," he quoted, tightening his embrace. "We'll be someone's parents. And we'll be good at it." He kissed her again. "I love you, Sara."
Nodding, she closed her eyes and let sleep claim her.
Fin