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Summary: I haven’t been sleeping. I can’t, because every time I do, she’s dead.
I haven’t been sleeping. I can’t, because every time I do, she’s dead. In every dream I have, we didn’t make it to her in time. So I stay awake, I stare at her unconscious body, because I can see her breathing, I can hear the machine monitoring her heart rate. I can know she’s still alive.
I walked into our apartment, eyes sore from crying, hands dirty from clawing through the dirt, body aching from trying to push the car off of her. Davy started barking at me, tugging on my pant leg. The walls were spinning, I was stumbling off of furniture, walls. I fell down and Davy had to drag me by my hair into the bathroom. He knocked over the trashcan and a pregnancy test fell onto my nose. It had a big plus sign right in the middle.
Scream, deep breath, beep… beep… beep…
I woke up in a cold sweat in the Denali. Nick was driving at top speed, off-road through the desert. Helicopters rushed overhead. The sky was pitch black. No moon, no stars, no nothing. And then it started to rain. Just down pouring rain pelting us. I jumped out into the water, and started swimming towards the overturned car. I could see her hand, just like in the miniature. I could hear her muffled screaming, then it turned into bubbles, and the whole car sank.
Scream, deep breath, beep… beep… beep…
I was at her funeral. But it wasn’t just hers. There were three caskets. It was her, Jess, and Evan. I was sitting in front of everyone. Mom, Dad, everyone was behind me. Then there was nothing but me and those three wooden boxes. Then the headstones appeared behind them. Evan Parker Sanders, loving brother, son and father. Jessica Lindross Sanders, dear daughter and sister. Sara Ambrosia Sanders, devoted wife and daughter. Lightning struck, and each headstone shattered into pieces. Nana Olaf put a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “It wasn’t meant to be, Gregory. You let her go.”
Gasp, deep breath, beep… beep… beep…
I was in the old DNA lab, processing evidence from some case or another. I wasn’t paying attention. I looked down and there was a bag with Sara’s rings. I couldn’t stop staring at them. I took my own ring off and looked, and there was an inscription, “Forever and eternity, All my love, Sara.” It started glowing. Her ring started glowing, it said “I’ll never leave you.” The whole lab then erupted in flames.
Sob, deep breath, beep… beep… beep…
I was processing Sara’s body. Grissom was lurking around me, critiquing every move I was making, saying I was treating her like she was more than just a victim. I picked up my kit and threw it at him. He didn’t even try to dodge it, though. It smashed into his head, but he didn’t bleed. It just dented, and he got even more angry with me. “Look at what you did? I’m trying to look like a well put together supervisor here and you dented my head.” “You aren’t a well put together supervisor! This is your fault! You touched her in public, at a scene, and that’s what made her a target!” He started laughing at me. “That was the point, Greg. You just couldn’t handle her. I was doing her a favor by getting her away from you.” I wanted to lunge at him, I could feel myself pushing through the air to get him, but I couldn’t move. I turned around and Sara’s hand was clutching to my shirt. She looked at me, shook her head. “Just let it go, Greg. Just let me go.”
Sob, deep breath, beep… beep… beep…
We were at the church in New York. Sara was broken and bruised, but standing up anyway. She’d died under the car, but she came back to me, in spirit, and we were renewing our vows as living and dead. Grissom walked into the chapel and dragged her away. “She’s mine! This was my second chance with her, leave me alone! Leave us alone!” And Sara didn’t fight him. She turned and they ran off.
Choke, cough, beep… beep… beep…
I was in the interrogation room. I had a container of bleach in my right hand. Every question I asked this woman she avoided, she just stared at the bleach like it was going to kill her. I screamed at her, shook the table, shook my hand in the air. The bleach spilled just a little bit and landed on her hand, and it started fizzing. She shrieked and pulled her hand away. Every time she tried to wipe it off, her skin came off in sheets. It just kept peeling and peeling away, older, wrinkled skin underneath. My eyes got wide and I zoomed in on her, she was all I could see. I lifted up the bleach and dumped it on her, all of it, just straight on her head. The scream went from high pitched piercing to a deep rumbling. Her skin, her hair, all fell away. She covered her face, trying to hide. She pushed the table onto me, and I was so entranced with this transformation I couldn’t even fight it. My eyes closed initially, at the impact of the ground hitting my back. When I opened them, her eyes were staring down at me, inches from my face. She pulled back, and she wasn’t a she at all. Her flesh was falling off in chunks, but her face was recognizable. Grissom.
Gasp, choke, cough, deep breath, deep breath beep…beep…beep…
“Mister Sanders? Mister Sanders, are you alright?”
“Yeah, sorry, something went down the wrong way…”
“Mister Sanders, if you don’t mind my saying so, you look exhausted, you should really get some sleep.”
“No, really, it’s alright. I’m better without it.”
She checks Sara’s vitals, looks at her watch, and walks out, with one last glance at me. She should have kicked me out. But she knows I need to be here, I need to see her, hear that steady beep. Nick keeps checking on me, saying he’ll take my place for a while so I can go home, take care of Davy, get away from the hospital, get some rest. I can’t, because it’s better if I’m awake. Sleep isn’t what I need right now. That machine tells me I’m alive, because it tells me Sara is alive. In my dreams I can’t hear it, and Sara is dead.
Beep… beep… beep…
But I’m awake. And she’s alive. I don’t need sleep.