CSI Redux:

The Fall of the Grissoms

September 1996

            “Why?”

            Sara momentarily froze, surprised by the edgy voice behind her, her hands stalling above the cardboard box that she had been packing. A chill ran down her spine as she slowly resumed her packing, her mind still preoccupied by his presence, unable to form an adequate answer. She hadn’t expected him. Hell, as far as Sara knew Gil wasn’t scheduled for any time off for the next four days, which is why she had started her moving project. Sure, it was cowardly but she just didn’t have the heart to fight with him and she knew her moving out of Ike and Katie’s guesthouse would lead to a fight.

            “I found a small place,” she began, busying herself with taping the box shut. “It’s closer to work and the price was reasonable.”

            A heavy silence hung in the air, pulling Sara down, making it difficult to breathe. She hadn’t looked at him yet but she knew he was still there. Sara knew he watched her. She could picture his beautiful blue eyes turning gray as he observed her, his gaze a mixture of frustration, anger, disappointment and hurt. Sara couldn’t say which of these cut the deepest but combined it made her feel terminal, lost. There were days when she wondered how her heart kept beating, how her lungs continued to bring in air when she felt like she was drowning in anguish.

            “A smaller place?” Gil almost accused.

            Sara stood, brushing her hands on the khaki shorts she was wearing. With a deep breath to bolster her courage, Sara turned to meet her husband’s gaze. “Yes,” she answered.

            Grissom’s eyes narrowed, studying Sara. “I repeat my original question…why? I thought the whole point of renting the guesthouse was so that we weren’t locked into a lease?”

            Unable to bare the weight of his scrutiny, Sara busied herself with the next box. “I just think, maybe it’s not the best idea,” Sara said, her words lacking the conviction of her actions.

            Doubt, she was mired in it. The only thing that Sara was certain of was that she loved him. I love him enough to save him, to let him go was what Sara had reasoned. What she hadn’t counted on was Gil’s tenacity. It had been seven months since Jamie’s death and Sara had tried to fill every waking and non-waking minute of her life with work. Although Gil had visited San Francisco regularly, Sara had made the painful decision not to reciprocate, hoping the distance would make her decision easier to bare.

            Grissom ran a frustrated hand over his close cropped hair. He had a weary, almost dangerous look about him as he sighed heavily. “What the hell is going on Sara?”

            “I…need my own space,” she told him, trying to infuse a cold edge into her voice that she did not feel. “That’s all.”

            “Space,” Grissom repeated, his face a mask of frustration. “Space. Is that it, Sara? Or is it something more?” He asked, his voice rising as he spun in agitation, his flying hand knocking a nearby lamp of an end table. “Shit!”

            The combined sounds of Grissom’s raised voice and the shattering lamp had Sara’s heart leaping into her throat, driving long hated memories to the surface. “Damn it!” She hissed, spinning on her heels to see her husband crouching down beside the destroyed lamp.

            Grissom glanced over his shoulder at Sara, her ire at his clumsiness seeming over the top. “It’s just a lamp,” he told her, picking up the lamp shade, a large portion of the light fixture dangling broken beneath it.

            “It’s not our lamp, Gil,” Sara accused, stomping to the kitchen to get the garbage can. “You can’t have a fit and go around breaking things that aren’t ours.”

            Grissom’s gaze narrowed at her words. “I didn’t have a fit and it was an accident,” he said, his words delivered in a slow precise manner before he dropped the broken lamp into the garbage can.

            “Really…well, it sounded like the beginning of a tirade to me,” Sara bit.

            Her heart was still racing and she clenched her hands into tight fists as she marched back into the kitchen to collect a broom and dust pan. She felt edgy, angry, a hated but well remembered sickness laid at the bottom of her stomach and the sound of her parents fighting played like a distant echo in her mind. Like so many years ago, Sara felt the overwhelming urge to flee but couldn’t. Then it had been because she feared if she left everything would come apart, her world would shatter. At the present moment she didn’t dare run, knowing it would only cause Gil to chase and then she would have to explain everything.

            She heard the sound of glass hitting glass as Grissom plucked the large pieces of broken lamp from the rug and dropped them into the waste can. With the broom in one hand the dust pan in the other, Sara returned. “I’ve got it,” she said, her voice devoid of the turmoil roiling in her.

            “It’s fine,” he told her, scooting over to pick up another large piece of glass that had managed to make its way a couple of feet from the rest of the debris.

            Something in his voice caught Sara’s attention, her gaze shooting to take in his profile. The dark stubble on his face did nothing to hide the weary exasperation on his face, his lips twisting as if chewing down words of criticism. The thought of him being somehow disappointed in her only added to Sara’s volatile state. He can’t be disappointed in me! I’m doing this for him! It is what’s best- for him!

            Sara leaned the broom against the couch and sank to her heels, reaching for a large shard that was partially sticking out from under the sofa.

            “Honey,” Grissom held out his right hand, gently blocking her hands, “it’s sharp.”

            Sara ignored him, reaching for the long curved piece of broken lamp. “I know it’s sharp. I’m not an imbecile.”

            Grissom sighed heavily, reaching to take the broken shard from her. “Sara…”

            “I’ve got it!” Sara demanded, her hand slicing through the air between them as she attempted to throw the sharp debris away before he could take it from her.

            Sara knew the minute it happened, an ice cold dread permeated her being, spreading out from the pit of her stomach and accentuated at the grimace of pain erupting on Grissom’s face. Her wide, brown eyes followed his startled gaze down to where his right hand gripped his left forearm. The sight of blood oozing out between his fingers caused Sara to gasp in anguish, tears of regret springing to her eyes as she jumped to her feet and ran to the kitchen to grab a clean dishtowel.

            “Ohgod!” She hissed as she rushed back to Grissom who had gotten to his feet. “Gil, I’m…”

            Grissom helped her wrap his injured arm with the towel, the white cloth quickly staining red as his blood seeped through. “It’s okay,” he said calmly, watching as Sara tied to corners together.

            “No it’s not.” Sara took Grissom by his good arm and walked him to the front door, avoiding the remnants of the broken lamp. “We need to get you to the emergency room.”

            “Sara-“

            “Don’t argue with me, Gil,” Sara ordered snatching her keys and purse from the small wooden table near the door.

            Within moments the two of them were on their way to the nearest hospital emergency room. Within a half hour Sara found herself waiting impatiently in a moderately busy emergency room. The sights, sounds and smells assaulted her mind, drudging up memories Sara wished had died with her father. But those kind of memories never really died. They always simmered on some back burner of the mind always ready to boil out of control.

            Sara watched as the woman directly across the narrow room from her abruptly jumped to her feet, her arms flailing wildly as she screamed at the stunned nurse with the clipboard. The raging woman’s face was distorted by anger and accentuated by a huge black eye and swollen, bloody lip. She was screaming something about her children, wanting to see them before she viciously knocked the nurse’s clipboard from her hands.

            “I DON’T GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT POLICY!” The woman screamed; security quickly rushing forward to subdue her. “I WANT MY KIDS!”

            An odd hum buzzed in Sara’s ears as she watched the woman fight, first one then two security guards. Her arms swung wildly, connecting several times and eliciting grunts and curses from the two men working to control the woman. Sara thought she heard a young girl call for her mother but there were no children in the waiting room.

            When the woman’s struggles threatened to upend her and the guards into Sara’s lap Grissom stood, placing himself between the combatants and Sara, his good arm coming up to keep them at a distance. “Whoa…whoa,” Grissom warned, being jostled by the commotion and causing the bloody towel that had been wrapped around his forearm to fall to the ground atop Sara’s feet.

            It was a living scene of one of her many nightmares born from childhood memories filled with fear, pain and violence. The echo of her young self pleading with her parents in a similar waiting room more then a decade before warred with the jackhammering of her heart, drowning out Grissom’s words as he looked down on her.

            “Sara? You okay?” A puzzled frown crossed his face as he took the towel from Sara’s hand and reapplied it to his wounded arm.

            Sara’s eyes widened as a dread, deep and cold cut her in two. I’m my mother! The waiting room, Grissom’s bloody arm, it all mocked her cruelly. I’ve become my mother! What would have happened if she had cut a major artery? Could Gil have bled to death…because of my anger!

            Again the need to run overcame Sara. “Yeah, yes, I’m fine,” she forced herself to answer, barely keeping a lid on the rising panic threatening to choke her.

            Grissom gave her a look that said he wasn’t convinced but was interrupted by his name being called by one of the emergency room nurses. “Mr. Grissom?”

            “Yes.”

            “Come with me.” The young nurse led them to a large room with curtain partitions. “Here we are,” she said motioning for him to take a seat on the hospital bed. “The doctor will be in in just a moment.”

            Sara sat in the chair near the door but immediately jumped up to pace. Her mind was a frazzled mess. Thoughts of her father and mother careened wildly in her head as she paced the limited space she was allowed. She tried to play the event over in her mind, attempting to get some insight, some answer to the barrage of ‘what ifs’ going off in her head. There had been no intent on her part. She would never want to hurt Gil.

            But you did, came an acidic voice from within her head. You did hurt him. What if he had been leaning forward? What if it had been his neck and not his arm that had been sliced open?

            A rush of bile erupted from her guts. “I have to go,” Sara pled, rushing through the door, passing the doctor and leaving a confused and worried Grissom behind.

            The fear that she was not coming back pounded mercilessly in Grissom’s chest as he mechanically answered the doctor’s questions before handing over his wounded arm. They were falling and Grissom couldn’t figure out how to catch them, how to save them from ruin.