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At the hospital after Nick’s rescue.
“There’s nothing we can do, for now. Go home and have some rest,” Grissom had recommended to Nick’s parents. He told the same to his colleagues and everyone left. He also tried to send Sara and Warrick home, but she said she would not sleep for the next six or eight hours because of all the adrenaline running through her body. While Warrick wanted to be there when Nick woke up.
When they tried to find an arrangement in Nick’s room, Warrick and Sara suggested to Grissom to rest on the empty bed available in the room. Grissom was feeling exhausted indeed and moved to sit on it. Leaning on his left arm, though, he felt a twinge that made him groan with pain. The other two, seeing him massaging his biceps, got interested.
“You should take off your jacket and shirt, so we can see what’s that…” Sara proposed.
“Surely it’s nothing serious,” Grissom replied.
“Hey, boss, c’mon…” Warrick gently invited him.
Grissom didn’t have enough energy to argue, so he did what he had been told. When the shirt was taken off, all three were stunned by what they saw emerging from under the sleeve of his t-shirt. That kind of bruising was usually produced by people trying to kill, suffocate or drown someone; they were produced by the imminence of death. In this case, instead, Grissom, Warrick and Sara came to understand that the bruises had been provoked by a push towards life: as soon as Nick had a contact with a living soul after being buried alive in the ground, he had clung so strongly to Grissom’s arm that he left the mark of his fingers on his skin.
“He was scared to death, poor man…” Warrick said with a deep voice, turning to Nick, who was sleeping peacefully.
“I didn’t realize that…” Grissom muttered lost, staring deeply impressed at those marks on his arm.
“In those kinds of situations, who really knows what’s going on?” Sara murmured.
She then said that it was necessary to put on some soothing ointment or the pain and the bruises would last for days. She asked a passing nurse if she could bring some Bengay, gauze for bandages and patches.
“It’s not necessary…” Grissom slightly protested.
Sara didn’t pay attention to his complaint and replied that it would take only a minute. Once she received the material to medicate him, she prepared to rub the cream, but Grissom protested again, saying he could do it by himself.
“God, you must have been impossible as a child…” she scolded him gently, turning an amused glance at Warrick. “Would you prefer Warrick doing it, maybe…?” she proposed, moving the tube of cream closer to him.
Warrick drew back. “Sorry, Gris, but I prefer to rub cream on some other kind…of person, you know? No offense, uh.”
Grissom rolled his eyes and felt forced to let Sara do it. The first contact, however slight on her part, stiffened him, causing him another twinge. She apologized and withdrew her hand. She waited a moment, then she tried again.
“It will only take a moment…” she murmured, concentrating on her task. “When we’re done, we’ll buy you a nice ice cream, okay?” she laughed at him amiably, making Warrick grin.
“How do you still have all this energy?” Grissom muttered, annoyed, to Sara.
“Adrenaline, remember?” she answered.
“No wonder, however,” Warrick commented. “When does she ever sleep?”
Sara smiled, but tiredness made her thoughtful. “There was a time when I was a child, that night was my favorite moment of the day, you know? I slept like a rock.”
“I can’t imagine it…” Warrick said with surprise. He leaned on the bed next to Grissom, and folded his arms, listening with attention.
“Yeah…the house was so quiet at night…” she recalled absently.
Grissom looked at Sara’s face, a few inches from him, and understood the deeper meaning of those words. In her eyes, though they were focused on his arm, he could see the memories of the fights , the yellings , the trips to the hospital. He saw the memories of the life she thought everyone lived.
“And then what happened?” Warrick asked again with friendly curiosity while handing her the gauze.
She stared at him with the gauze roll in his hand, and her mouth moved in an unripe smile. She took the gauze and began to unroll it with a low gaze and thoughtful movements.
“Let’s just say that I had a bad awakening,” she confessed with a shrug. She started to wrap Grissom’s arm. “So, I think…I started being afraid of…falling asleep.”
At that moment, her hair fell down, making a curtain in front of her eyes, preventing her from having a decent view. With her hands dirty with ointment and occupied in keeping the gauze around Grissom’s arm, she tried to bring her hair back with a movement of her head, but failed as her hair fell back into her eyes. She asked Warrick if he could move them, but Grissom raised his free arm before he could make the slightest movement. Sara rested for a moment at that gesture and looked at Grissom perplexed, but then let him do it. Grissom’s middle finger then leaned gently against Sara’s forehead, just below the hairline, slid down her temple, and slipped behind her ear, carrying the lock of her hair. A unique, precise, and perfect movement, during which Sara could only look at Grissom’s eyes following his fingers. She seemed to see some kind of serenity in them, after all those exhausting hours, which still filled them when Grissom’s gaze returned to look at her eyes.
“Better?” he asked.
“Thanks,” Sara murmured.
“Thanks to you,” Grissom replied, nodding at his arm.
She smiled slightly and then resumed taking care of the dressing.
“Close it, Warrick,” she said to her colleague when she had finished, inviting him to put a bandage to secure the medication.
It was not long before the three fell asleep – Grissom lying on the bed, Warrick on a chair beside Nick’s bed, Sara on a chair with her nape resting on the bed where Grissom was sleeping.
It was Nick who woke them some hours later. The sun was rising, and his abduction would have seemed only a bad dream had it not been for the marks that Nick had on his body and in his soul. He was in a good mood, however, and they were able to joke for a while before leaving him when Nick’s parents arrived. Grissom was the last of them to leave the room.
“You were great,” Grissom spoke as he stopped in the doorway, turning to face Nick one last time before leaving. “I’m proud of you,” he added. For Nick, it was the most beautiful gift.
*
The sun that warmly kissed the hospital’s external parking lot managed to warm up the spirit of the three colleagues. They had to go to the crime lab to recover their own cars, as everyone had arrived at the hospital with the service vehicles.
“I think I’ll take a walk,” Warrick said, refusing the lift offered by Grissom. “See you later at the lab,” he gestured with a wave as he walked away.
Grissom and Sara followed the colleague for a moment.
“I thought we decided that…” Sara paused for a moment, thinking over the wording she’d like to use, “romantic interactions between us were not allowed in front of our colleagues,” Sara murmured as soon as Warrick was distant enough not to hear.
“They are not, indeed. What are you talking about?” Grissom asked, heading towards the car.
“The hair thing,” Sara explained, walking beside him. “You know, while I was –
“I…just moved your hair,” Grissom objected. “It wasn’t something…romantic.”
After speaking, he reasoned on it for a moment. He stopped by the car and suddenly felt slightly worried about what he had done and said. On one hand, if Sara had interpreted that gesture as something romantic, denying that it was would have hurt her feelings; on the other hand, he was worried that Warrick had interpreted his gesture in the same way, jeopardizing the secrecy of his and Sara’s sentimental relationship began officially only a few months before.
“Was that something romantic?” he asked then.
“Well,” Sara replied, “if they tried to pass off my wiping some chalk out of your face as a romantic thing…I think –
“Oh, that was a romantic thing,” Grissom objected confidently.
Sara was stunned. “Uh!” she exclaimed, surprised. “Did you understand that?”
Grissom looked at her tenderly and did not answer.
*
“Does your arm still hurt?” Sara asked Grissom as he drove to the lab.
“Not much,” he replied. “I didn’t have the ice cream you promised me, though…” he pointed out. Turning her a look, he saw her smile. He reached out to take her hand and gently squeezed it. He left his hand there to rest until they arrived at the lab parking lot.
Once there, Grissom parked and turned off the engine. They remained in the car for a few moments, enjoying each other’s quiet company.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked at one moment. Her voice just whispered.
Grissom looked at her and sighed. “I am,” he said, feeling reconciled with the cruelty of the world just because he had those two dark eyes caring for him. Looking at them for a moment, he seemed to witness a sudden change in them, as if a tension melted. “What?” he asked.
Sara stared at him for a few seconds, then her face broke into a wide smile as she looked away. Grissom waited, seeing the classic attitude she adopted – he had not yet understood whether she did it consciously or not – when she was deciding whether to say what was going through her mind.
“These kinds of events change the perspective on things, isn’t it?” she suddenly said.
“Yes, they do,” Grissom replied. He temporized, clearly feeling that there was more to come. “And?” he finally asked.
Sara looked down at her hands. “I would like to tell you something,” she said in a low, absorbed voice.
Grissom felt a bit of agitation squeeze his stomach. “Ok. What’s up?”
Sara’s lips widened in an oblique smile. “I’m not very sure though I should tell you,” she admitted.
“And why do you want to tell me, then?” asked Grissom, perplexed.
“Because, at least…if something bad should happen to me, or to you…you would know…”
“Know…what?”
Sara gave in to Grissom’s curiosity.
“You would know that I love you,” suddenly sounded in the cockpit.
It was the first time Sara told him so, and Grissom felt breathless. His eyes widened, his head tilted slightly to a side, his mouth opened a bit. He felt a sensation he had never felt before: happiness and sadness together, fear and courage mixed in an incredible regenerating force. When Sara turned to him, a few seconds after speaking, she laughed serenely, seeing that expression on Grissom’s face. And the more she looked at him, the happier she laughed. Only after a while did Sara’s joy infect Grissom. So he relaxed on the back of the seat and, rocking his head from side to side, smiled pleased.
“Well…” he murmured, “it seems that the ice cream you promised arrived, at last.”