Catherine Willows walked into the supervisor's office, nervous, although she didn't know why. She had been acting supervisor, more or less, for awhile, but still, with Grissom not actually in the office, it felt weird. She needed to come up with a good excuse for him not coming to work. She actually couldn't believe he was naïve enough to think that no one would notice him being gone. She also couldn't believe that Sara wasn't already there. Once she'd broken up with Hank, the younger woman had returned to her old MO of burying herself in her work. She competed with Grissom for the first one there and the last to leave. Come to think of it, she would have thought Grissom would have told Sara about his surgery too and she would have been at the hospital with him, but Catherine hadn't seen her. The explosion had messed a lot of things up, including relationships between her coworkers.

Warrick Brown came into the office, noticing that his friend looked worried about something, but just thought it was Lindsay, her daughter and sort of a mascot for the lab. Everyone loved her like she was their own, even Sara, who didn't like kids. "What's wrong?" He finally asked.

She looked up, startled, as if she hadn't heard him come in. "Nothing. Where are Sara and Nicky? It's five past."

"I don't know. He was supposed to meet me for basketball this morning before it got too hot. Never showed."

"Maybe he met someone."

Warrick shook his head. "Nah, his dry spell's worse than mine." All the men were going through a dry spell, even Greg. After the explosion, the only woman he'd let close was Jen Grissom, the only platonic lady friend he had, a forensic profiler, and Grissom's only daughter. "Maybe Sara's with Jen?"

Catherine shook her head. "Jen's with her dad. Maybe Sara and Nick are just sleeping in."

Nick Stokes woke to a hangover, the likes of which he hadn't experienced since frat parties at college. He couldn't remember anything of the night before and wondered why on earth he thought he could drink like this and go to work the next day. He wasn't a kid anymore. Scolding himself, he walked towards the kitchen to get a couple of aspirin and to call in, but he stopped when he heard moaning. He followed the sound to see one very sick Sara on the tile floor of his bathroom. Pushing aside the initial shock and surprise at having picked up one of his coworkers, especially the one that he had a crush on, he kneeled beside her. "Sara, it's Nick. It's going to be okay. I'll take care of you." He still felt sick himself, but he doubted if Sara had ever gotten drunk before. He knew she drank, but he also knew she hadn't ever been what one would call a 'party girl'. "Can you walk?" Tired and sick, she nodded and he helped her back to the bed. "Stay here, okay? I'm gonna go get something to help."

The phone rang when he walked into the kitchen and he caught it as he was taking out the Gatorade mix from his cabinet. "Nick, where are you?"

His initial thought was to respond that the question was stupid, but caught himself before he actually said it. "My apartment. Look, Cath, Sara called last night with the flu. She wouldn't go to a doctor so I'm gonna take care of her, okay?" He hated lying to her, but wasn't sure that anyone wanted the truth told.

Catherine frowned, worried. "If she wouldn't go to a doctor, how do you know it's the flu?"

"Because she's throwing up and she's really really worn out. She just needs someone to look after her." At least that part wasn't a lie, but he'd done a hell of a job looking after her the night before. "If she's feeling better in awhile, I'll come in, okay?"

"Okay. We don't have much of a caseload. Warrick and I can hold down the fort until you get here."

Nick nodded out of habit, not even thinking about Grissom not being there. "Okay, great. I gotta go. I'll call you if I decide not to come in." He hung up and began making the Gatorade.

Sara awoke a little more and noticed where she was and why exactly Nick was there. She blushed slightly when he came back with the Gatorade and aspirin. "Um, about last night."

"It's okay. We were both drunk; we didn't know what we were doing. Neither of us remembers anything about it, no harm done."

She nodded. "I need to call the lab."

"Catherine already called here. I told her you had the flu, but I'd try to be in later."

"I can't believe I got this drunk. I haven't done this in years."

"Neither have I." She looked surprised. "What?" He asked.

"Nothing. I just thought.I mean, the way Greg talks."

"Haven't you learned by now not to listen to Greg? Besides, I think he's made me out to be his hero or something. About seventy percent of what he says is boys' locker room bunk."

"You're all the time telling stories."

"Mostly about frat parties. The last time I did anything wild and crazy was when Kristy died." He frowned, remembering. It might have been Catherine that solved the case, but it was Sara that stayed with him, let him talk things out, just as she had after Crane. "I never thanked you for that."

"For what?"

"Staying with me, listening to me." She'd seemed to understand that he hadn't thought of Kristy as a prostitute, more as a scared kid that just needed a chance to get out of a bad situation. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you after Hank."

She shrugged. "Catherine was. We went out to a bar.and I still didn't get this drunk." Her head was splitting and the room was going in circles.

"Do you feel like you're going to be sick again?" She shook her head. "Then why don't you go take a shower? It might help. I'll make some more Gatorade before I go to work." She nodded and started looking for her clothes. Before she found them, she found a slip of paper. "Nick."

He'd been halfway back to the kitchen, but he returned to the bedroom. "Yeah?"

"Read this." She handed the paper over to him. "Tell me something's wrong with my reading."

He took the piece of paper from her and read it silently. "Oh, my." In his hands, he held a marriage certificate, their marriage certificate, legal in the eyes of Nevada and federal law.