Hey! I was curious if you have a take on the severity of Sara's injuries from dead doll. Obviously she was pretty bruised up and dehydrated, plus the arm, but they never go that far into it if I recall
all we're ever told/shown in canon is that
she is hit by a high-powered taser blast
she is drugged with an unknown knockout drug (possibly rohypnol or ghb)
she breaks her left arm in two places
she suffers from extreme dehydration, severe sunburn, and heatstroke
she sustains multiple contusions, abrasions, and lacerations to her face and hands
beyond those injuries/conditions, we can't say anything else for certain, and especially since we don't know how long she spends in the hospital following her rescue or what her course of treatment is.
it also doesn't help matters that the show fudges the timeline on how long it actually takes her to recover from her injuries, showing that she still has cuts and bruises that haven't healed four months after her abduction (when usually those kinds of superficial wounds would have cleared up over the course of a few weeks), thereby making it even more difficult for us to ascertain what may or may not have happened with her between the events of episodes 08x01 "dead doll" and 08x02 "a la cart."
personally, i think she is in pretty bad shape and probably has to spend at least a week or two in the hospital after she's found.
the most emergent issues that would be treated right when she entered the er would be her breathing and body temperature. she’d probably be put on oxygen for a while (and possibly even temporarily intubated, depending on her course of treatment and/or whether she lost consciousness again at any point). she’d also be covered in cooling packs and doused in cold water to try to get her body temperature down to treat the heatstroke.
there’d be a real danger of her going into shock and since one of the possible complications of extreme heatstroke is organ damage, she’d have to be closely monitored for several days in the icu even after she was stabilized.
having also gotten hit by a high-powered taser blast, it's possible that she might have some breathing issues or an arrhythmia of her heart that would require monitoring and correction at this time, as well.
for the first several hours she's in the hospital, she may also still be suffering from the lingering effects of the rohypnol or ghb with which natalie drugged her, which could impair her motor control, cause memory loss/nausea/headaches/vomiting, and further depress her already disordered breathing, etc.
side note: the fact that she has enough clarity of mind to do all of the things she does to get herself saved from the desert while still under the influence of a heavy hypnotic is just incredible.
since she ends up swimming in dirty floodwater while her wounds are still open, she also may require a course of iv antibiotics in the icu to treat whatever infection(s)—e. coli, salmonella, shigella, hepatitis a, leptospirosis, staph, etc.—she is likely to have developed.
even with the medication, said infection might make her very sick for a time, particularly if she were septic, resulting in a high fever, nausea and vomiting, blood clots, dropping blood pressure, pain across her body, etc.
potentially, such an infection could become emergent in the hours/days after she is first admitted to the hospital.
i also wouldn't rule out the possibility for internal bleeding from the injuries she sustains trying to escape from natalie, her heatstroke, and/or the infection.
if so, it's possible that she requires surgery to repair those injuries, as well.
then, outside of all of the literal “she could actually die from this shit” stuff, she almost undoubtedly has more non-life-threatening injuries than we initially know about from when she jumps out of natalie's car (which is moving pretty quickly at the time she does so).
i would not be at all surprised if she has a concussion and/or some loose or knocked-out teeth, given that she seems to have landed on her face on the gravel.
ditto for other broken bones—such as fingers or ribs—or sprains elsewhere on her body besides her arm.
and speaking of her arm, it’s a very good bet that she has to have surgery to reset the two fractures.
the fact that she's still wearing such a heavy-duty cast four and a half months later is perhaps indicative that she had some temporary medical screws/plates/pins put in that were then later removed, as part of a two-step process to make sure the bones healed right.
all of her wounds would have to be cleaned (which would involve debridement, or having the sand and gravel that had inevitably lodged there picked out of the cuts on her face), dressed, and in some cases sutured—including the ones she undoubtedly has on her back and abdomen that aren’t visible to us in the episodes.
her sunburn would also require treatment.
side note: i cannot even imagine how painful it would be to have a severe sunburn of the kind that cracks and peels on your face at the same time that your face is also cut to shit (with little bits of rock in the wounds, to boot). like. the recovery must be hell. her nurses would have to be so careful with where they applied the aloe vera, so as not to get it in her cuts.
so would any serious bug bites she may have gotten out in the desert.
and, of course, there’d be the little injuries and pains that she’d just have to endure, for which there’d be no real treatment but the passage of time: the heavy bruising on her wrists from where she was zip-tied, the itching as her sunburn and wounds healed over, the headaches and light sensitivity from her (probable) concussion, the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach from all of the medications that made her lose her appetite.
overall, she would probably be very weak for the first little while—as she goes a long time without both food and water and the hot sun saps you of energy—and would need to build up her strength with high-nutrient meals (if she could hold them down), perhaps supplemented by iv treatments.
she’d also probably be on pain medications, which would make her groggy and disoriented.
a lot of her time would be spent sleeping.
so all of the above said, i think there are probably a couple of very scary days at first, where sara is in critical condition and spends time in both surgery and the icu. though she eventually stabilizes and is moved to a step-down unit, her course of recovery may not be totally linear, particularly if she ever does develop an infection. i imagine the whole ordeal is very touch-and-go for a while.
grissom is definitely terrified out of his mind the whole time.
then, even once she’s discharged to go home with him, she has to undergo physical therapy on her arm, eventually get stitches removed, have follow-up doctor’s appointments to check the progress on how her wounds are healing and her system is doing overall, continue taking medication, etc.
if you’ll allow me a personal aside, when i was eighteen, i got into a bad skateboarding accident where i flew off my board and skidded across some asphalt, fracturing my right arm and sustaining some serious road rash on my hands, chin, hip bones, and belly. my injuries were nowhere near as severe as sara’s, and i was still young enough to where “bouncing back” was probably easier for me than it would have been for someone even slightly older (like her), and yet it still took me the better part of a year before i truly began to feel like myself again.
though, even now, my elbow on that arm is weaker than the one on the left. like. i can still feel where the break occurred, decades later.
i remember: the recovery was grueling. my body hurt all over for a long time. the cuts and scrapes on my face, hands, hips, etc. constantly ached and felt tight. they took forever to scab over because they were such broad abrasions and then oozed even after they did. i was exhausted for the first few months, fighting not to fall asleep during the day while my body worked overtime to regrow my bones and skin. i got random headaches. honestly, the first month after the accident was a blur.
and that’s all to say nothing of how difficult it was to finish out my freshman year of college in a cast, unable to write while i sat for final exams.
and here’s the thing: i can only imagine that the going is 1000x more difficult for sara than it ever was for me—and particularly as because on top of all of her physical injuries, she is also dealing with a severe case of ptsd (that she feels compelled to conceal from grissom, who is her caretaker during this time).
that girl comes home from the hospital exhausted and held together with medical screws, gauze, and grissom’s love, and the whole time she’s probably just waiting to exhale, telling herself, “okay, i just have to hold on until i start to feel a bit better—”
but then she doesn’t get better anywhere near quickly enough.
physically, she’s still a mess for most of the four and a half months that elapse between the events of episodes 08x01 “dead doll” and 08x02 “a la cart,” and emotionally she’s spiraling, her poor mental health undoubtedly compounded by the fact that she’s in pain and just doesn’t feel like herself.
the severity of her injuries exacerbates her sense of being off.
it’s hard to smile when your face hurts, you know? it’s hard to be strong when you feel weak. hard to get “back into the swing of things” when you are still so physically limited with what your body can do.
anyway, all of the above is to say that i personally believe we miss a lot with sara during the time jump between her rescue and her return to work.
—though of course most of i’ve said here is just conjecture and headcanon, so ymmv.
thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.
