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Confident Extravagance
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2007
DISCLAIMER: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
ARCHIVE: Yes, just keep my name and headers.
RATING: PG13 for adult concepts.
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: Living Doll, with allusions to Dead Doll
spoilers (some of which turned out to be incorrect).
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Grissom/Sara, character death.
SUMMARY: They loved her while they had the chance.
MORE STORIES: http://fiction.deslea.com
FEEDBACK: Love the stuff. deslea@deslea.com
How it happened doesn't matter.
It used to matter. He has devoted months of his life to the
study of C. perfringens and its role in gangrene and
septic shock. Searching, he supposes, for that one little thing
he could have done to save her (and correspondingly for that one
little thing to blame himself for). Seeking to understand the
enemy, although the moment for defeating it has long passed. He
has devoted lectures to the topic, and for those who sincerely
ask, he provides answers in unflinching detail.
This earned him wary looks in San Francisco.
The wake was neither his idea nor hers - indeed, Sara had
forbidden one. But her mother, in her more lucid moments, had
insisted. Her sanity may have been tenuous, but her grief was
real enough, and Gil had relented. It was everything he dreaded
and more, and he dealt with it by immersing himself and a small
audience of fellow aficionados of the macabre in the clinical
details.
Now, more than eleven months on, it doesn't seem to matter
anymore. The minutia doesn't matter. He thinks that it is part of
the same phenomenon that has led him to count in months and parts
thereof, rather than weeks or days or, at its worst, hours and
minutes and seconds. He considers the fact that he can round it
down to months to be a minor miracle. He suspects that it will
become hours and minutes as eleven months melds into twelve, but
for now it is months, and that is a mercy he is thankful for.
+++++
It was dark when he found her.
It had rained overnight, and again the next day -
uncharacteristically early in the year for such a long shower.
But the rain eased off and the sun streamed through the clouds,
and the air was still, and it didn't interfere with the
helicopter. Up there in the quiet and the peace, it was tempting,
to let his mind retreat to memories of her - to take shelter from
the reality of what Natalie had done. Only the thought of her out
there alone made him keep focus.
And then at last, there it was. The upended car, bang in the
middle of nothingness, just like he knew it would be. Nothing but
a hand protruding limply from beneath. It could have been
anyone's - not only when he jumped from the helicopter as it
touched down, but right up until he took it in his own. He wasn't
sure whether he wanted it to be hers or not. Which was worse -
Sara hurt or Sara missing? The devil you know or the devil you
don't?
He thought he was in time. When she squeezed his hand, just a
little, he really thought there was still time. He kept on
thinking it as he held her hand in the rain, waiting for the
ambulance and the team and the crane as the pilot smoked and
paced.
It wasn't until the car was lifted free that he started to
suspect. It wasn't her cry of pain and the arched back and
flinching limbs that went with it - if anything, that reassured
him. She was not, at least, a paraplegic. But as he dropped down
beside her, covering her with his jacket and kissing her hair in
the dirt before the car was even completely clear, he could smell
the dull strains of decay. It was a familiar smell - sometimes
even a comforting one. But not now. Not from her.
But even then he didn't really understand. With the luxurious
detail of gnawing worry, he considered how she would cope if they
removed an arm or a leg. In the hour it took them to get to the
hospital, the notion took on almost-romantic overtones. He would
nurse her. Everything he'd ever been unable to say to her, he
would show her with his care. By the time the glittering lights
of the city came into view, the prospect of dealing with a
gangrenous amputation - especially compared to what could have
been - had been reduced to a minor irritation. He stroked her
face and told her everything would be all right, and she smiled
weakly up at him and pretended to believe him.
But Sara knew. She knew the prevalence of C. perfringens
- its presence in virtually every soil in the world. She knew the
manifestations of internal gangrene, of septic shock - hadn't she
assessed more than one victim of exposure? And most importantly,
she could feel the symptoms, had hours to note their buildup in
her own body: the gas buildup, the chills, the rapid breathing.
Although confusion had set in a little, she was lucid enough to
beckon to a paramedic as they arrived, and suddenly the scene
changed. Things became hurried...no longer routine.
He doesn't really remember being given the news. He knows that
it happened - he knows exactly what was said, and where, and how
many anxious hours of activity and surgery took place before it
happened - but the moment itself is simply absent. The words echo
in his mind, but they are in his own voice, not the doctor's. As
though he is reading a court transcript.
What he remembers is walking into her room afterwards, walking
with dull thudding steps. He remembers rounding the corner and
coming face to face with the sign at her door: Sara Sidle, and
then, on the next line, Do Not Resuscitate. Her orders. He was
the witness to her living will. Why on earth had he signed it?
He stared at that sign for a long, long moment. An eternity
lived in seconds.
He remembers seeing her awake and propped up and talking
lucidly to the nurse, pale against the pillows and wincing in
discomfort but otherwise just Sara, and he couldn't understand
how she could be like that and dying at the same time.
He remembers that she knew without him telling her, and that
she wasn't distressed, and he didn't understand why when it was
tearing him apart.
'I'm happy,' she said simply. 'I've never been happy before.'
And he understood - part of him understood - but he wanted to
make her hungry for more, wanted to make her fight, and he would
have pushed her if it hadn't been futile. And so he wiped his
eyes with the heels of his hands and asked her what he'd been
meaning to ask her for weeks, and she said yes, as simple as
that.
+++++
He remembers calling Catherine.
'Sara and I are getting married,' he said. 'Can you be here?'
'Uh, sure,' her voice came across the miles. 'I mean, yeah, of
course. When?'
'This morning,' he said. Then, in a lower voice, 'She hasn't
got long.'
A pause. Then, in a very different voice, 'Oh. Oh, Gil.'
Another pause. 'Is there time to bring some things?'
He looked at Sara through the glass. Time? There was not nearly
enough time left in the world. Not for anything. But if he
thought too much about that, then he would spend her last hours
screaming, if not outright insane. He didn't want to do that to
her.
He forced himself to consider the question. 'Yes,' he said at
last. 'But make it fast.'
+++++
She was fast. They all were.
He had just meant the invitation for Catherine, but she had
obviously taken it in the collective. He was surprised to find
that he didn't mind.
She'd brought him a fresh set of clothes from his office. She'd
broken into Sara's locker and brought her a white tee-shirt, and
added a frilly white overshirt of her own. Warrick maxed out the
little breathing room left on his credit card on a pair of rings.
Greg brought red roses, and Brass brought cheap champagne, and
strawberries from a street vendor. It was paltry in the scheme of
things, but it counted for a lot.
So they were married, and then they toasted and celebrated, and
Sara laughed a lot with pink spots high on her deathly pale
cheeks. She sneaked a few sips of champagne. The nurses pretended
not to notice. The last thing she ate was strawberries, and she
gasped softly as they went down.
Gil and Catherine exchanged looks then, and Catherine ushered
the rest of them out. Sara said goodbye to each of them, and
pretended not to notice when they averted their eyes and coughed
and shuffled their feet, and threw in a wisecrack for good
measure.
Things went downhill very fast after that. They had maybe an
hour before she lost consciousness, an hour of hurried talk, of
hastening to share a lifetime of thoughts and feelings and
anecdotes and secrets.
'I want you to bury me in San Francisco. As Sara Grissom,' she
said towards the end.
He wanted to argue with her, but he couldn't do that without
lying to her, and he couldn't lie to her. Not ever, and
especially not now.
'Yeah? Why's that?' he said, like she'd just said she wanted to
learn to learn to water-ski.
'Because for every moment I've been Sara Grissom, I've been
happy.'
He nearly lost it then. Every defence he'd summoned in order to
enjoy his wedding and his all-too-brief marriage nearly deserted
him in that moment. But he pulled them back. Just.
He bent forward and laid his head on her pillow, facing her. 'I
promise,' he said.
There were just a few more moments after that. He had only the
shortest of lifetimes to be the husband he wanted to be for her,
and he believes he did all right, in the circumstances. He held
it together and he loved her and he let her go. The tears didn't
come until her eyes fluttered closed. And the wracking sobs
didn't come until after she died. His own struggle with the
darkness didn't come until after he'd buried her the way she'd
asked.
+++++
He has been married for a year, he thinks, looking at his watch
for the hundredth time this day, and widowed for an hour less. He
doesn't think about that intervening year very much. He doesn't
dare. But he looks at the cocoon in his office and he thinks of
her and he thinks of himself and the way she died and the way he
is still standing.
He thinks of the confident extravagance of love - the enormous
presumption of life and of endurance that love entails - and he
thinks that they were blessed to be able to cram a lifetime of
love and friendship into those final hours. He has learned to
appreciate his blessings while they are his, and he thinks that
is why he has survived.
END
And when I go to sleep at night
I'll thank you for each blessed thing surrounding me
For every fall I'll ever break
Each moment's breath I want to taste
Confidence and conscience, decadent extravagance
Never ending providence, I loved you when I had the chance
Angel - I hope they love you like we do, forever
Angel - I'll be proud to be like you
-- Angel, The Corrs