Greg fumbled left-handed at his seatbelt, trying to get it undone. It would have been easier to use his right hand, if he and his right hand were on speaking terms; but they weren't, and the pain was making it hard to concentrate. He couldn't quite figure out which part of the buckle he was supposed to press.
His head hurt, too, and there was an annoying noise at the edge of his hearing, a buzz, rising and falling like the throb of pain in his hand and his head. His thumb slipped on something slick on the surface of his seatbelt, and finally met the button. It gave slightly under his push, and the noise crescendoed. "Sanders!"
It was Grissom, sounding angry and disappointed at the used the john at the crime scene level. Greg froze.
"Do not touch your seatbelt," Grissom said, enunciating each word. Greg got the impression that he'd had to repeat himself, and wasn't too happy about it.
Greg tried to squirm--to see Grissom in the darkness behind him, or to get away from his sharp tone--but it only made everything hurt worse. He heard himself say it, not quite low enough for Grissom not to hear in the quiet interior of the car. "Hurts."
"I know it hurts, Greg," Grissom said, and his voice had turned patient and reasonable. Greg found that alarming, in a vague, distant way, a troubling piece of evidence in the case he was building. "It hurts because it's the only thing holding you up. Don't take off your seatbelt."
Greg knew that. He could feel it. The straps dug into his thighs and his chest, and his head hung down when he didn't hold it up, and ached more as the blood rushed into it. But now that Grissom had said it, he had to look. There was nothing to see, just blackness down below him. He couldn't even see his right hand, though he could feel it, throbbing, trapped and useless, somewhere far beneath him. He tried to move it, tried to pull it out of the darkness toward himself, but the pain just got worse, and the darkness just got darker.
Grissom was talking to him again, telling him to pick his head up. Greg did it, because he couldn't say no to Grissom. It was hard, as hard as not puking at the scene of the bus accident, as hard as walking back into his lab after the explosion, so hard he trembled with the effort, but it made his head throb less. He could hear Grissom more clearly this way. Grissom was saying, "Now pick up your hand."
"Well," Greg said, and his voice sounded high and faint and rusty, like he'd been hanging there a long time in the silence after the scream of tires and guard rail. "I would, but I think it's getting on with its own life down there. I shouldn't interfere. I think it's better this way."
"Greg," Grissom said patiently. "It's not pinned."
Greg bit his lip. This was why Grissom made him nervous. He always knew what you were really saying, no matter what words you used.
"I know how it feels," Grissom said, in that same even tone, and this time Greg opened his mouth to protest. Grissom didn't know how it felt. How could he? It was Greg's hand. "But it's not pinned, Greg. It just feels like that because all the blood is rushing into it, and there are probably some broken bones. But your hand is not crushed and it is not pinned. You can do this. Just pull it up."
"Just pull it up," Greg mimicked. Like he hadn't tried that? Like that wasn't how he'd figured out that it was stuck down there in the blackness that used to be the passenger side of his car? Just pull it up, ha.
"This is important, Greg," Grissom said. "Listen to me. You need to pull your hand up to your chest."
Greg wasn't conscious of making the choice. All at once he was forcing his arm to bend, pulling it up, inch by inch, shaking so hard he could feel himself rocking in his seatbelt straps, could hear the twisted metal of the wrecked car making a little whimpering noise (because that couldn't be him making that noise, his jaw was clenched too hard to let any sound escape).
He was halfway there when his arm stopped moving, and he knew he couldn't bring it the rest of the way up. He froze, in all-new different kinds of pain, paralyzed. "Grissom," he gasped, because Grissom was so close, right there behind him. Grissom could easily reach out, push his arm the rest of the way up if he was so determined that Greg's arm should be up.
"Use your left hand," Grissom said. "Grab your right elbow with your left hand and pull it up."
His left hand touched his wrist first, trying to find his elbow, and it was him screaming that time for sure. He kicked something as he thrashed, and it seemed like the car thrashed and screamed back, all around him. The darkness went gray, shot with throbbing red, and his stomach and inner ear protested, and Grissom was yelling at him to hold still, hold still. When he could think again, one of his knees was jammed up under the steering wheel and his left hand was clamped on his right elbow. He shifted his right arm closer to his chest, trying not to put any actual pressure on it, trying to breathe without moving. Between gasps, he said, "You could have helped."
Grissom, sounding maddeningly cool and calm as ever two inches behind him, said, "Some things you have to do on your own."
"You always say that," Greg muttered. "You just said that..."
Greg frowned, and his hand tightened spastically on his elbow, and his head hurt really badly. Grissom had said that to him just tonight, during assignments, when Greg had been playing it cool, pretending he wasn't excited to be going out to the desert to process a DB solo. Some things you have to do on your own.
"I was alone in the car," Greg said, feeling dazed, lightheaded. His head hurt. He'd hit his head in the accident. He'd been in an accident. He was hanging sideways from his seatbelt, and the car was hanging sideways from God only knew what. "Grissom..."
"You're still alone in the car," Grissom said.
He heard a soft ringing sound, far away. At first he thought his ears were ringing, and then he realized it was his phone. It sounded like it was somewhere outside the car. "Unless I'm hallucinating it," Greg muttered, glaring at the spot where the rearview mirror was faintly visible, dangling crookedly from the windshield. It didn't show him Grissom. It didn't show him anything. It was dark.
"You're not hallucinating it," Grissom murmured. "They're calling to find out why you didn't show up. They'll know you're missing. They'll come and find you."
It sounded logical, but what did Grissom know? "You're a hallucination."
"Yes," Grissom said, sounding a little tired. "Greg, we've been over this."
It was getting colder and colder, and he was tired. His head and his arm hurt less when he held them up, but they still hurt way too much, and Grissom, backseat hallucination driver, wouldn't let Greg sleep. But he wouldn't talk--like you could ever get Grissom to talk about anything but bugs--so Greg had to find things to say, to pass the time.
"I didn't think field work would be like this," Greg said, wondering where his kit had landed. It was a good thing he'd been on his way to the crime scene. If he'd been on his way back, the chain of custody would be irretrievably compromised, and all his evidence would be inadmissible. "I thought if I was going to risk death in the field at least it would be in a sexy way."
"Sexy?" Grissom repeated, sounding mostly curious but a little bit appalled.
"You know, sexy. Not sexy in a sex way. Sexy like the Marlboro man. Like you."
"Not in a sex way," Grissom echoed dryly. Greg suddenly felt warm.
"In a cool way," Greg said quickly, thinking of the desert, and the rocks, and the cold distant sky, and anything but Grissom in his backseat. "I thought, you know. Heroically facing down the bad guys. Something like that."
"You could ask Nick if he'd like to trade," Grissom said. Greg tried to think about whether he'd rather be in a box right now. At least the box had probably been warm. Nick had been shivering when they got to him, though. Cath had yelled for a jacket. Grissom had stood there and watched, and Greg remembered thinking they were all in shock, not just Nick. Would they all stand around shivering when they found Greg? Would Grissom?
"What about you?" Greg replied. "Would you like to trade?" Grissom had almost died once, facing down the Strip Strangler, but Cath had shot the guy dead. Neither she nor Grissom had talked about it, but the story had gotten around the labs in vivid detail. That had been cool. That had been sexy.
"No," Grissom said flatly. "I'd rather have you here than within a hundred yards of Syd Goggle."
"Oh," Greg said, and they were quiet for a while. When his head started to sag he felt something like a finger tentatively tracing the edge of his ear, and he snapped sharply awake. He didn't say anything, held perfectly still, but the touch didn't come back.
It just figured that his hallucination was shy.
"It should be like The Wizard of Oz," Greg said, trying not to let his teeth chatter. He'd tried to pull his knees up closer, but the car shook and made alarming noises, and Grissom had told him to be patient, not to move. "Everyone should be here. You were there and you were there and you..."
"I believe that was a tornado," Grissom said, like it was a case he'd read about in the Journal of Forensic Science.
"We don't have tornadoes in Nevada," Greg said. "We drive off cliffs. We make our own fun. Warrick could be a lion, I think. And Nick should be the scarecrow. I think he could do that dance, and he would wear the hat. No one else would wear the hat."
"Mm," Grissom said, but Greg was pretty positive on that point. No one else would be caught dead in the hat, but Nick had that country-boy thing going on. Greg would bet that somewhere, in secret, Nick had a pair of overalls with patches on the backside.
"And Sara's the tin-man. Tin-woman? Tin-person?" Greg squinted into the darkness, considering whether tin people were robots and whether they had a feminist movement, but his head hurt and his mouth kept running. "Work-work-work, but she got left out in the rain, and you can hear it sometimes if you knock, she's all hollow and rusted. She wants you to give her her heart."
"Ah," Grissom said, and Greg winced. They weren't supposed to talk about Sara to Grissom, Grissom to Sara, not like this. It was a rule, you had to keep the peace. But this was only his own hallucinated Grissom, so maybe it was all right.
"And Cath is the good witch," Greg said quickly, "she'll point me which way to go. She knows all the good roads." She'd given him directions before he left tonight, writing them down on the back of a bindle, small enough to tuck into his shirt pocket. He scratched at his own chest with the clumsy fingers of his right hand, and heard it crinkle faintly. Still there. Not quite ruby slippers--but then he was off the road, wasn't he? And no poppies in sight.
Greg thought he'd laid out all the evidence, but Grissom said nothing for a long time, and then, "Am I there, Greg?"
"You're the Wizard," Greg said. Hadn't he already explained that? Hadn't it been obvious? But then this wasn't the real Grissom, just Greg's hallucination of Grissom, and Greg had suffered a head injury. Neither of them was at the top of his game. "You take me home in a magic wagon, or--no, in a balloon. We fly away in a balloon."
"I think you're thinking of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," Grissom said.
Greg snorted. "That's a glass elevator and no way does Nick watch that much TV. No. Oz. I think it's a balloon. Either way, we definitely end up together."
"Well, there you go, then."
"If I'm hallucinating you," Greg said, "why can't I see you?"
"Because you're hallucinating me in the back seat," Grissom replied, very slowly, as though Greg's head injury was the kind that took off a lot of IQ points. He was pretty sure it wasn't, though: he'd been thinking it through, and he could still grasp all the fine points of DNA analysis. At least, he thought he could.
"Yes," Greg said, just as slowly, "but why?"
"Apparently you want me to be in the backseat of your car," Grissom said, and Greg really couldn't argue with that.
Greg didn't realize it was light until he realized he shouldn't look down. The passenger window had broken, and the frame of the car was crumpled on that side. There was just enough of an opening for him to see the drop below, the rocks casting deep black shadows in the gray light before dawn. "It's going to get hot," Greg said. "I won't die of exposure."
"No," Grissom said. "You won't die. Just hang on, they'll find you. They found Nick, they'll find you."
"I think I was lost," Greg whispered. His mouth was dry, and he'd lost a lot of blood and at least as much sweat. His clothes were clammy with it. And now the sun would come up and bake him in the half-crushed oven of the car. The directions were still in his shirt pocket. He hadn't taken them out. "They won't know where to look. They'll be too late."
"They'll find you, Greg," Grissom said firmly, but Greg's thumb drifted idly back and forth on the button of his seatbelt. If he dropped he'd die quickly, another screaming tumble down the cliff and then nothing, no suffocation, no waiting and waiting for no one to come.
"Don't," Grissom said sharply, but Greg gritted his teeth and curled his hand around the seatbelt buckle, and then Grissom said, "What if it doesn't kill you?"
"I'll hit the side of the car, knock it loose, and fall the rest of the way down the cliff," Greg said. "It'll kill me."
"It'll kill you eventually," Grissom corrected. "But they'll also find you eventually. Suppose all you manage to do is break your back right before you're rescued? They'll save you, you know. You'll get the very best care, but you'll still be paralyzed."
Everyone would think he was lucky, Greg thought. A dramatic rescue, a story circling the labs, a miracle.
"But no more field work after that," Grissom said brightly. "No more worrying about dying in a sexy or unsexy way. Just a lot of Conrad talking about ADA compliance--they'd lower the counters in the lab so you could work from a wheelchair. Widen the doorways. Everyone else would stop using the handicap stalls in the bathrooms. Everyone would be really nice."
They would, that was the worst thing. They'd all be really nice. Warrick and Nick would be careful to treat him just the same, tease him and talk to him and never look at his legs. Sara would be stiff and awkward, but that was Sara. Cath would mother him a little, and Grissom would be Grissom through it all, never giving him a second look, legs or no legs.
"That's what you want, isn't it, Greg?" Grissom's voice had moved closer to his ear, gone all soft and low. "You want me to be nice to you."
But nice wasn't what he wanted at all, not from Grissom, not from any of them. He'd earned their respect, he'd become a part of the team, and without his legs he'd lose all of that. And Grissom would never look at him, never--his face hurt, it was so hot, and his arm hurt and his head hurt and when he glanced down the light off the rocks was almost blinding. Grissom was just trying to distract him. It didn't matter whether he fell or not: Grissom would always be Grissom. "Fuck you," Greg muttered, but his heart wasn't in it.
"Now you're getting warmer," Grissom said. "In several respects."
"You're a terrible hallucination," Greg whispered. His lips were cracked, and he'd have been tempted to lick his own blood off his face if it hadn't long since dried. It itched, and every so often he tried to raise his right hand to rub at the spot, and then the pain would break through. He thought he was losing time whenever it happened, and that just made him want to do it more.
It took him a while to realize Grissom hadn't responded, and for a second Greg thought that Grissom hadn't heard--but Grissom was his hallucination. It didn't matter whether Greg could speak audibly. He turned his head, looking in the reflection of the mirror. There was enough light now for it to show him the backseat, but that was all it showed him. No Grissom.
"Grissom?" His voice rasped and cracked on the single word, but Grissom was gone. Offended, probably. Stupid Greg, always opening his mouth and sticking his foot in it, and now Grissom was gone and he was all alone. He reached for his seatbelt with his right hand and pain struck him like a wave, crushing and engulfing, knocking him right off his board, right out of consciousness.
Grissom was talking to him in a pay attention voice, and Greg picked up his head so fast he got dizzy--no, so fast he swayed in his seatbelt, that was the dizzy feeling. Grissom was saying something, but Greg had to strain to understand him. Grissom was yelling at him, and Greg summoned up the spit to say, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
Grissom stopped yelling and looked down at him with his mouth open and a frown wrinkling his forehead. Greg said, "If I could hallucinate anyone I would hallucinate you."
Grissom was floating above him--he was getting good at this hallucination thing all of a sudden--and he moved lower, stopping almost face to face with Greg. "You're not hallucinating," Grissom said. His eyes were very blue, and his cheeks were pink above his beard, and his hair was sweaty, hanging upside down. "We're going to get you out of here, all right?"
Greg blinked. "Out is good."
Grissom nodded upside down, and then turned his head and yelled up above himself. Greg closed his eyes. The yelling made his head hurt more, and it made the car shake. He could feel himself being rocked in his seatbelt. Grissom said, "Greg, look at me."
Greg looked. Grissom said, "I can't reach your seatbelt, Greg. I need you to take it off for me, or else we'll have to cut you out and it'll take a lot longer."
"I'll fall," Greg whispered. He understood now: his hallucination had switched sides on him. Reverse psychology, that was Grissom all over.
"No," Grissom said firmly. "Greg, I won't let you fall."
"You wouldn't," Greg agreed. "But I might."
Grissom frowned again, which looked funny upside down, but he also leaned closer. Greg could feel pressure around his chest, hot and damp and different from the seatbelt. Grissom's arm. Grissom had said You're not hallucinating. "Oh," Greg said, in a very small voice, and Grissom turned his head toward the sound. Greg swayed dizzily forward, touching his mouth to Grissom's for just a second, rough and clumsy, concussed and upside down.
Grissom pulled away just far enough to break the kiss, still too close for Greg to see his eyes, and said, "Oh," right back. His arm around Greg tightened, and Greg found the button for his seatbelt with his thumb and pushed down hard.