HOSPITAL CONVERSATION

SUMMARY: A conversation between two characters, post-Living Doll.

RATING: K

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own CSI.

They sat in the hospital cafeteria, white walls surrounding them, two grown men trying to figure out the events that had led them to this particular spot on this particular night.

The lights overheard were bright and artificial, blinding yellow revealing harsh planes and lines on people’s faces. The light illuminated everything that a person wanted hidden, displaying to the world emotions that were too personal to be on such living display. At the table across from where Warrick sat, he could see perfectly an example of how this bright light revealed what should have been kept inside a tightly locked box.

A woman, older, perhaps sixty, sat at the table, utterly alone. Her hair was a brassy red shade, a color produced only from a box. She must have been beautiful in another lifetime but now she was just an old woman with a bad dye job, sitting at a table with tears dripping down her face into her coffee cup. She wore the look of absolute desolation and it was easy to imagine a story to fit with her look.

But while it was easy to imagine the circumstances that had led that woman to be sitting in this hospital cafeteria, Warrick couldn’t help but think that she wouldn’t have wanted her sadness to be seen by anyone who walked into the cafeteria. There was something entirely personal about the sadness that engulfed her, a sadness Warrick felt he had no right to be privy to. It was a sadness born of great loss and no one should have invaded that woman’s privacy. Yet they were because this was a hospital and hospitals are public places where privacy is an impossible thing.

Others were probably looking at him and Greg, sitting at their own hospital table with cups of coffee untouched cluttering the table top. They were probably wondering what had led these two men to be sitting in the hospital cafeteria, watching as the two men stared at anything but each other’s face. People were probably devising their own story to explain why he and Greg were at the hospital, using the emotions radiating off their faces as a way to validate their story. It wouldn’t matter that the actual reason was highly personal and that no one should have been wondering why he and Greg were at the hospital yet something in human nature made people want to wonder, made them want to come up with stories and explanations and plausible theories.

There was no way that anyone would be able to come up with his and Greg’s particular story. It was that unusual, although Warrick supposed that most stories were unusual because each story involved different people and different people led to circumstances changing, even if the overall story sounded familiar. Still, how many people could say that they were waiting for news about a co-worker who had been purposely placed underneath a wrecked car and left to die in the Nevada desert?

It wasn’t just Sara’s burial underneath a car that had Warrick and Greg so quiet. The doctor had already said that the chances were good. They were just waiting for the final confirmation that Sara would be all right, at least physically. Mentally was another thing that resided in a whole other ballpark. They wouldn’t worry about that until they knew Sara was going to be physically fine.

What really had Warrick and Greg so quiet was the fact that they were still dealing with the revelation Grissom had given them ten hours ago that he and Sara had been in a relationship for some time. It was that information, that knowledge, that had him and Greg floundering in how to deal.

From what they had learned subsequent to that revelation, Warrick and Greg now knew that the relationship between Grissom and Sara had been going on for months, since before Brass’s shooting nearly eleven months ago. Here they were CSIs, working for the second best lab in the country, and they hadn’t even realized that their boss had been dating their co-worker for over a year.

Warrick and Greg had both been blindsided by their new-found knowledge. It wasn’t that they begrudged Grissom and Sara their happiness, at least Warrick didn’t. He was sure that Greg didn’t either, even if Greg had professed to having a crush on Sara for years. It wasn’t that they didn’t support their co-workers right to find love and happiness with each other. What bothered Warrick, and Greg by extension, was that Grissom and Sara had felt the need to hide their relationship.

If the hospital lights revealed things that should have been hidden then Grissom and Sara had concealed things that should have been said. There was nothing right about Grissom and Sara hiding their relationship. It made it seem more clandestine that it was and it made their co-workers doubt their importance to the couple in question. Obviously Grissom and Sara had not trusted them to keep their relationship quiet. That hurt and it raised questions about just how close the graveyard shift really was.

“I still can’t believe that Grissom and Sara were seeing each other for so long without any of us realizing it, or at least stumbling upon them accidentally,” Greg said just as Warrick was about to suggest that they leave the cafeteria. Warrick still had half a mind to suggest this for it was clear that Greg wanted to discuss things. These things really weren’t meant to be aired in a hospital cafeteria.

“Greg, maybe we should…”

“I don’t understand how you can be all calm about this,” Greg burst out, cutting off Warrick before he could finish his simple request that they remove themselves from the cafeteria. “I mean, it’s a huge thing and you’re all calm and collected and I just don’t get it.”

With a sigh, Warrick resigned himself to having this conversation in the hospital cafeteria. He could only hope that Greg kept his voice down, so as not to attract too much attention. They really didn’t need to do that.

Warrick sat up straighter in his chair, the hard orange plastic pushing against his sore back. “Greg, just calm down.”

“I am calm,” Greg replied with a glare. His voice was anything but calm. It was a near-screech, jarring in the quiet cafeteria. The brassy redheaded red glanced over them, giving Greg a look that caused Greg to whither in his own hard orange chair. “Okay, so maybe I’m no so calm,” Greg said, his voice much lower.

“I agree,” Warrick said with a nod. “It’s okay. I’m not feeling very calm either.”

Greg snorted in disbelief. “You don’t really look all that shook up.”

Warrick knew Greg was right but he also knew that it wasn’t in his nature to display any nervous tendencies. While Greg was now fiddling with his coffee cup mug, Warrick kept his body straight and upright, resisting any temptation to fidget. It was just the way he did things, the way he had gotten through high school without allowing the taunts of the other students to weigh too heavily on his mind. It was almost second nature to him but Warrick could understand how Greg might misinterpret a defensive mechanism for a cold and callous attitude.

A change in topics was needed. There had to be a safer topic, something that was more appropriate for a hospital cafeteria. The truth was that Warrick didn’t want to talk about himself but had he known where the conversation would lead Warrick probably would have just stayed quiet.

“Why do you think we were all so oblivious to the changes Grissom and Sara’s relationship obviously underwent?”

The question, spoken softly, was sufficient in strength to distract Greg from fiddling with his coffee cup while accusing Warrick of being a robot. The fidgeting stopped. Greg became calm, almost as collected as Warrick appeared to be to the outside world. It was like another person was taking over Greg’s body, leaving the confused man behind and replacing it with a man Warrick couldn’t recognize. A man that was no longer floundering like Warrick was.

A smile that frightened Warrick spread across Greg’s face. It was a horrible smile that accompanied sad eyes. It was a smile that spoke volumes, that spoke words Warrick really didn’t want to hear. It was a self-deprecating smile. It was a smile that said you couldn’t hide from the truth, no matter how much you wanted to. The truth was a horrible and painful thing but this smile said that you could do nothing but face this horrifying truth head-on.

Greg’s words were slow and measured when he spoke. “I think that while we like to believe that we’re these great investigators that see beneath everything but the truth is that we’re blind and self-absorbed. We are just as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Our personal lives are the only lives that are important and we shield ourselves from learning too much about our co-workers. Because knowledge would imply that we care when really we don’t. We don’t want to care about anyone else’s life so we remain ignorant, locked in a dark box that truth cannot shine illumination upon.”

Warrick blinked slowly. It was taking time for him to fully comprehend Greg’s words. But even as it took time for the words to process fully, Warrick could already feel the truth in the words Greg had spoken so eloquently. It was the truth that Warrick had feared, from the moment Greg had smiled that sad smile that went along with those hooded and saddened eyes.

That truth that lay in Greg’s words was something Warrick could not deny. He himself would readily admit that he tended to be oblivious to the troubles his co-workers faced. With the occasional exception, Warrick tended to focus on his life. The last year had been ready proof of that fact. In the past year Warrick had been consumed with marriage counselling, a pregnancy scare, a near-affair and the divorce that finally ended it all. Those things had captured his attention and kept him from thinking about his co-workers, something Warrick had never done often even when his life hadn’t been unraveling.

As those thoughts spiralled through his mind, Warrick had to wonder about Greg. Truth be told, Warrick knew little about Greg. To Warrick, Greg was merely a co-worker with eccentric tastes. Sure Greg had matured over the past couple of years but Warrick still associated Greg with things like heavy metal music and eclectic clothing. Even though that really wasn’t what Greg seemed to be about these days, Warrick’s old image of Greg had persisted. He never took the time to wonder about the changes that Greg must have gone through in the transition from lab tech to CSI.

It was easy to blame his blindness on having other pressing burdens that prevented him from spending more time with his co-workers. Warrick knew that wasn’t truth. If he proclaimed it to be the truth then he would be merely lying, engaging in a cope-out because the truth was too hot to handle. When he shouldn’t have been concerned about how Nick was dealing with the aftermath of his burial, Warrick had inside been getting married. When he should have been worrying about how Sam’s death affected Catherine he had been too consumed with his marriage counselling. When he should have been worrying about Greg following the beating and trial he was being consumed with pregnancy scares and almost-affairs.

Instead of finding a balance, Warrick had chosen the easy route too many people chose. He chose to believe that nothing had changed, that everyone he worked at was the same as they had been seven years ago. Instead of recognizing the evolution his co-workers had undergone, he had naively chosen to believe that everything was staying constant. Even when Warrick had perceived changes, such as following the Cassie McBride case, when it became truly impossible to deny that the burial hadn’t affected Nick, he had told himself that with time everything would sort itself out. Nothing was a permanent thing, just a temporary stepping stone before everything righted itself.

It was all a lie but a lie that was easy to believe. Believing the lie meant that they could continue being conceited and self-absorbed and ignorant of the truth.

The sound of Greg tapping the table top snapped Warrick out of his musings. He looked at his co-worker, wondered what things he had missed. He wondered when Greg had gotten so wise and cynical. He wondered when Greg had gotten so old. The man sitting across from him was no longer that young bubbly lab tech Warrick had met nearly nine years ago. The man sitting across from him was both familiar and unfamiliar, and Warrick had to wonder when the man he had known had been replaced by a stranger.

“Maybe this is an opportunity to escape that blindness that prevented us from seeing the truth about Grissom and Sara’s relationship,” Warrick finally offered. The words sounded hopeful, suggesting that there could be a silver lining to this whole thing. The problem was that Warrick wasn’t sure he wasn’t just speaking those words for the sake of speaking them. He wasn’t sure he believed that there was any truth to his words.

Greg snorted, apparently finding the words hollow and superficial. “That’s a nice thought but it’s not at all realistic, now is it? Nothing changes, at least not in how we treat each other. We’ve all grown over the years, becoming very different people, but we act like we’re stuck in the world from seven years ago and that’s just not true, not anymore.”

Warrick nodded and remained quiet. He had no words to offer now, no comfort to give. Anything he said would just be said for the sake of saying something. The chances of any substantial changes occurring were slim to none.

In his mind, Warrick went back eleven hours, to the moment when Grissom had revealed the truth about his relationship with Sara. Warrick thought about the shock he had felt about that discovery, the betrayal that had thumped through his veins. Grissom and Sara had deliberately hidden their relationship and even if Warrick did lay some of the blame on himself personally, he still felt like the bigger betrayal had come from Sara and Grissom.

The faces of his co-workers appeared. Greg’s face had radiated shocked. Catherine’s expression had been one of disbelief. Warrick doubted that she had ever thought that Grissom would actually pursue Sara, and disbelief was an obvious thing for her to experience. Nick’s face had been blank but his eyes had reflected shocked surprise. Warrick was sure that the expression on his face had resembled the expressions on all his co-workers faces.

They had all been so blind and maybe they were to blame just as much as Grissom and Sara were for the reason why none of them had been privy to the secret. It would have been so easy to blame it all on Grissom and Sara, to say that the couple should have trusted their co-workers. There had been a year to recognize the changes and they hadn’t so the blame couldn’t reside all with Grissom and Sara. It just couldn’t. To blame just Grissom and Sara would be to deny the fundamental truth that human beings were blind and conceited beings. As much as the truth as Greg had revealed it to be had hurt it was still the truth, as horrible and terrifying as that was.

Warrick wished that there was some nice comforting answer to why everything had happened the way it had happened. He wished that the answer wasn’t what the truth was, for the truth was not at all comforting.

They say the truth frightens. Warrick could attest to this fact quite nicely. The truth did frighten. It caused your insides to twist up. It made everything inside you clench and pull tighter together, until you felt like you were being squeezed by a giant snake. You felt like you had no control over your own body, as if the control had been taken over by that invisible snake that you can feel squeezing your body until you have to wheeze for breath. Slowly the labor to breath increases until you’re just waiting to die. That was what the truth felt like.

It had been said that the truth could set a person free. This saying was something that Warrick could not believe. For the truth to him represented a snake tightening its grip. The truth was akin to a noose being pulled around your throat. The truth was like a lot of horrible things that ultimately end in death. No matter what else people said, Warrick had never believed that death was freeing and thus the truth cannot be freeing since it was in his mind associated with death.

The reasoning Warrick engaged in was circular at best. He recognized this, understood this, but still he couldn’t help his thoughts. Truth equalled snake. Snake squeezing body equalled death. Death did not equal freedom. Ergo truth could not equal freedom. Although circular in nature, that reasoning made perfect sense to Warrick even if circular reasoning was something that many argued was unreliable.

To realize that the true reason why they had remained in the dark about Sara and Grissom’s relationship was that they were all so self-absorbed was a truth that frighten. As a CSI, Warrick knew he was expected to set a standard higher than the standard everyone else in Las Vegas was supposed to achieve. It was the way things worked when you were employed to enforce public good. To discover that you were no better than the human scum you arrested on a daily basis put into question just how good a CSI you were.

Warrick loved being a CSI. He loved the respect he got from his job. He had endured childhood taunts throughout his youth and now that he was removed from that he never wanted to go back. He never wanted to be that kid again, the one who was looked down upon and was called trash. His fear was of reverting back to that kid, back to that insecure child with no self-esteem. He told himself that it wouldn’t happen but he couldn’t help but think it was a possibility with the truth that had just been presented.

The fear was beginning to build, almost coking Warrick. He feared that soon he wouldn’t be able to breath. The first signs of a panic attack.

“Maybe you’re right, Warrick. Maybe this is a second chance.”

Greg’s words caused Warrick to look up. He hadn’t even realized his eyes were gazing downwards at the table top but they had been. He met Greg’s eyes and had the distinct impression that he was being treated like a child. It was almost as if Greg had seen the signs of the panic attack and had decided that saying the lie was better than fighting the lie. A part of Warrick wanted to rebel against Greg’s choice but another part of him took great comfort in the fact that Greg could still lie. It meant that Greg really was no better than he was. Really they were all the same.

It should have been wrong to take such simple comfort in a lie but the lie was enough for Warrick. Lies were what so many of them based their lives on. Lies were what Warrick had based his life on for years. Lies that everyone was fine, that nothing was changing. It was easy to believe the lie. It was harder to believe the truth. It was even harder to fight for the truth.

His eyes swept over Greg, intently studying the young man who had just lied to him. The nervous ticks were back and Greg was fidgeting once more. Warrick decided that Greg fidgeting was the normal thing. The calm man had just been a façade, another lie. In that way Warrick could almost believe that Greg’s truth was just another mere lie. Afterall, life seemed built upon lies. What was one more, really?

“I think it is a chance to start over,” Warrick confirmed after a few seconds of silence. His voice sounded sure and confident. It was a statement to end the conversation, to conclude everything that had been discussed but shouldn’t have been discussed in such a public forum. In fact, those words should have never been said for the truth was something that no one really wanted to know.

Greg nodded and let the conversation drop.

“We should probably go back, right?”

Again Greg nodded and the two men, strangers in reality but friends and co-workers in lies, rose from the table. They abandoned the still full coffee cups and the people sitting in the hospital cafeteria, experiencing emotions that weren’t fit for such a public place. The brassy redheaded woman was still sitting there. She didn’t look up as Warrick and Greg passed her, and Warrick didn’t bother to throw her a small smile. Such a gesture would have been useless.

Their shoes were loud against the hospital floor. In the distance they could hear conversation and the occasional shout but where they walked was quiet. They passed equally quiet people who kept their faces towards their feet. Warrick and Greg followed suit, looking down inside of forward as they walked through the halls back to the ICU where they suspected Sara would be by now.

They found the rest of the nightshift in a waiting room close to the ICU. It was close enough without interfering with the doings of those employed in the ICU. They walked into the room that was deserted save for the nightshift and took in the scene.

The room was small and white colored. Hard blue chairs were arranged on the three walls that made of the room in rows of four. There was no fourth wall. In its place was an open space where Warrick and Greg were standing.

Catherine was seated in one of the hard blue chairs on the far left wall. She was the only one sitting in that row. She flipped idly through a magazine. She had looked up when they had come into the little waiting room briefly before returning to her magazine. She looked almost bored, as if she was here out of duty and nothing more.

Across from where they stood was the row that seated both Grissom and Nick. They were sitting next to each other in the two center chairs. Grissom was hunched over, arms resting on his knees, his chin propped on his hands. He looked old, almost ancient, and completely unfamiliar. Nick was sitting next to him and was leaning against the back of the chair. Despite the seemingly relaxed pose, Warrick felt like Nick was guarding Grissom, acting as a sentry, to protect Grissom from any harm. What harm was a question Warrick wanted to ask but he felt that there was no point. He doubted Nick would answer and, anyways, Warrick didn’t feel like he had a right to ask. Something was going on in Nick’s mind but Warrick didn’t want to know just what was going on there. Warrick let it go, the question escaping like a kit when released on a windy day. He didn’t even want to contemplate the implications of Nick acting like that. The truth probably wasn’t at all comforting and so Warrick really just wanted to remain in the dark.

On the far right wall row of seats sat Brass. Greg started heading in that direction and Warrick followed. Greg sat down next to Brass and Warrick took the seat next to Greg. There was still one empty seat, next to Warrick, but Warrick doubted that it would be filled. The six people in this waiting room were Sara’s family. They were it.

That thought almost made him laugh. They were a family that knew nothing about each other. They believed in lies and let blindness guide them. They were conceited and self-absorbed and arrogant. Not one of them had a right to be here and yet here they all were, brought together in the time of a crisis. Crises were the only things that saw them together as a family these days. Otherwise they were just a splintered family, going through their lives and living the lies, perfectly content to live that lie.

The doctor came into the room and said that Sara would be fine—physically fine, that is. Whether she would be okay mentally wasn’t mentioned but that didn’t matter, at least not right now.

They all cheered and came together to present an image of a happy and together family. Onlookers would have thought they were all so close, except that the truth was so very different. Yet they all participated in the lie, hugging each other and ribbing Grissom gently about keeping his secret for so long. They acted like they were fine. They acted like everything was back to normal.

If only the truth was as simple as the act, Warrick mused. He could only wish that things really were fine. He knew the truth, even if he still ran from, even if he let the lie continue. He knew the truth was that things really weren’t what they seemed. They weren’t all fine. Everything wasn’t back to normal. It was just a façade, an illusion presented to the rest of the world because that was what people did. Only in the rarest of circumstances, in rare places like hospital cafeterias did the truth come out from behind the façade. Usually the truth was locked up tight, everyone pretending that they were fine for the sake of appearances. For the sake of appearances, they would all pretend that they were fine. That was what you did in situations like these, when the person in the hospital was going to be fine.

Warrick had to wonder if the doctor could offer any reassurances that they as a family and as a team would be fine. He wished that the doctor could but he doubted it. There was no way to know if they were going to be fine. Besides, Warrick knew that he would never have the courage to ask that question. He liked the lie just too much to really dwell on the truth except in the dark recesses of his mind. That was where the truth belonged, not in the open for all to see, like in had been for that brief time when he and Greg had been in the cafeteria.

So they hugged and they planned and pretended that the truth didn’t exist. They were all investigators dedicated to the truth but the reality was that the truth scared them when it concerned them personally. They would believe the lie and live the lie and that was that. That was just the way the world worked.

Around and around they go on the ship of lies. Where it stops nobody knows.

THE END

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wanted to write a story centered on Living Doll without having the main character being Grissom or Sara. This little story sprung up in my mind. It turned out far more angsty than I had intended. In fact, the original draft had a whole lot more angst and was a lot darker. I tried to re-write and come up with something a bit more light but I really failed, since this story is still clocked-full of angst and lacks a happy ending. But I guess life is like that sometimes.

Thanks for reading. As always, reviews are appreciated but totally not necessary. Just your reading is enough.

-Melissa