Don't you remember ?
by Tamara Vels
"Don't you remember Jethro?" Ducky asked with a sparkle in his eyes. "I'm sure you do, but you probably tried to forgot it, since it was really a embarrassing event for you."
Gibbs chuckled "You're right, let's not talk about it anymore."
"I want to know." Abby said while punching Gibbs' shoulder. "Tell me duckman."
The old doctor helped himself a little more upright and took a sip out of the glass Abby handed him.
"It was several years ago, five, maybe ten." He started with a smile.
-----
"So you also think it's a suicide Duck?" Gibbs asked while the ME stored the body away in a drawer.
.
"There is no evidence there to conclude otherwise Jethro" was the answer "It's always sad when young people die, but it's always a degree worse when they take their own lives, think they have nothing more to live for." he reminisced.
Instead of an answer there was a shoosh of closing doors and the ping of an elevator. It wasn't like he expected anything else. He turned to mister Palmer, soon to be Docter Palmer. The young man was preparing for his final test and currently under a lot of pressure. Right now, he was listening to the notes he had taped for himself while he was cleaning the autopsy table. With a sigh Ducky pushed him aside and motioned for him to go study in the office, it was a slow day and no more bodies were waiting so Ducky would clean everything himself giving the younger man the opportunity to study some more.
His assistant gave him a thankful smile and walk in too the silence of their shared office. While he cleaned the table and got rid of the human waste he went over the last case in his head. A petty officer had shot himself in the head, no further abnormalities, except for the giant hole in his head. His roommate had found him, the poor lad had been really shaken up.
Suddenly the ding-dong sound of an announcement pulled him out of his thoughts.
"Hello everybody,
This is director Vance. I need you all to come to the squad room where I shall make an announcement from the balcony. I expect everyone to be there in 10 minutes.
Thank you."
While ducky went to collect his assistant who probably hadn't heard the announcement trough his earphones he wondered what this announcement could be about. The fact that he had asked for the entire agency was unusual. Not being able to hide his curiosity he told Mr Palmer and they walked to the elevator, arguing about what it could or could not be.
The elevator went one level up and opened again, revealing a bouncing forensic scientist. "Duckman, Palmer!" she greated as she stepped forward to stand between them."Do you know what this is about?" she asked. "We have no idea" Palmer said while Ducky wondered how she had been able to even hear the announcement over her usual loud music.
Arriving at the third level they made their way trough the crowd of people. There was no question they would stand near the desks of team Gibbs, like an unwritten rule. Abby ran over to Gibbs and demanded that he shared the information he probablly had, but much to her discontent Gibbs wouldn't share anything. He just pointed up to the balcony where Vance appeared with an other man. It was an older man, probably around sixty years, bold with a grey beard.
Vance whistled, silencing the crowd. Ducky looked arround and guessed that most of the 600 employees of the NCIS hq were present.
"People" Vance started, making sure that he had the full attention of the crowd beneath. "There has been an emergency and our help has been requested. Mister Kennis W. Delley is here to explain the emergency and tell you people what to do."
As whisper went trough the crowd as Vance stepped back. People were wondering what the emergency was and why the it hadn't been on ZNN already. McGee pulled out his PDA and did a quick news search. It came up with nothing.
Vance whistled again and the attention went to Mr. Delley. "Hello people" he greeted as he let his eyes wander of the crowd. "I'm Kennis and I am the director of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park."
An other whisper when trough the crowd and Vance started to get impatient, this was taking way longer then needed.
"Last night, when our last employee left the park she forgot to turn the water off in the south pool area. With as result that the entire park was flooding when our first employee's arrived this morning. We can't open up before we have all the animal returned to their housing and all the water and mudd clean up. I remembered at that point that the secretary of the navy still owns me a favor. Hoping that I could borrow some marines I gave him a call. In stead of some marines he gave me you guys. So, congratulations" he said in a mocking happy tone.
Vance stepped forward again. "The building will still need a skeleton staff, all the other employee's are ordered to go to the zoo and help out." Vance continued to give the names of people who had to stay at the building. Palmer being one of them. Gibbs, Tony, Ziva, Tim, Abby and Ducky all needed to go and Abby was really excited about it. She ran over to the elevator, preparing to change in to the proper clothes and put her babies to bed.
A while later every member who would go to the zoo stood outside and Vance started to part them in groups, handing ever group a car key. It was an odd group, people in coveralls and rain boots, armed with buckets and mops.
Gibbs, Abby, Tony, Ziva, Tim and Ducky were placed in the last van. "Oh crap" Tony complained "Of course we have the car with the bad airco and broken radio" Gibbs just smirked and gave him a little push, which made Tony launch in to the car and ending up almost on top of Ziva, who wasn't pleased. Gibbs and Ducky took the front seat which left Abby and McGee with the back seats.
Ducky braced himself as Gibbs drove trough the streets and took an other sharp corner. "Easy Jethro" Ducky muttered as he was thrown to the right side of the car again."It is not as if you can make it go away with driving like a maniac." Gibbs chuckled and slowed down, much to his team's surprise. Half an hour later they parked at the zoo's parking lot. Grabbing some buckets from the backseat they made their way to the zoo's entrance. One of the zoo's overfriendly employee's thanked them for coming and gave them a map. On the map was a little cross, marking the area that was assigned to them.
Ziva grabbed the map from Tony's hands. "Let's go" she said "the sooner we are done, the sooner we can go." Their map showed them that they had to clean the primate house. "Great" Gibbs muttered. "At work surround by monkeys and now here." he walked after his team, dragging Abby along. "Please Gibbs!" she said in her most pleading voice. "But those bear cups are just so cute!"
"Abby!" he growled as he pulled her along the cages with animals. Listen to her squeels he judged that the naked molerats where her favorites so far. After five long minutes they arrived at the monkey house as last and walked in. He took a deep breath as he noticed the mess it was. He was standing enkel deep in water and he would rather not be thinking about the brown drops floating around. Looking around he figured it was best that they cleaned the big cages first, the ones with the toys and climbing structures. Since the monkeys were still in their shelter they had enough room to fix that first. The rest of the day was filled with removing water, cleaning, wheelbarrows and sawdust. Apparently Tony figured that it would a nice idea to start throwing the sawdust around, and given the fact that every one was at least a little moist the sawdust was sticking to everyone.
Later that night everyone was tired, dirty and covered in saw dust, but the primate house looked better than ever. With a satisfied smile Gibbs was about to go home as Susan walked towards their group. She was one of the zookeepers assigned tot he ape house and had overseen their cleaning.
"Hello" she said with a shy smile. "I want to thank you for helping us clean, so maybe you would like to help me feed the gibbons?" she asked with a nod toward the buckets in the back of her golfcart. Taking a closer look Gibbs noticed that the buckets were filled with a lot of different fruits, leafs, flowers and even some insects. A cheer went up in his group and Abby was the first to ran back inside. A minute later they were all in the cage, being eyed by a group of eight curious gibbons. Susan explained shortly how to feed the monkeys and encouraged them to try it themselves. Tony was the first to pick up a piece of fruit and reached towards a monkey. "His name is Milo" Susan said, "he is one of the most curious apes we have."
Ten minutes later everyone was holding a monkey, everyone except Gibbs. "Don't feel bad" she said to Gibbs, "you are looking at Bradley, he is the oldest and most stubborn monkey we have."
"Reminds me of you boss" Tony grinned as he handed his monkey an other raisin. Suddenly Bradley took a big leap and hung onto Gibbs' arm for dear life. "There you are" Gibbs smiled as he handed the monkey a slice of apple.
Half an hour later the food was gone and the monkeys had all made a bed for themselves in the shelter. All but one. Bradley was still attached at Gibbs arm and refusing to let go, even after Susan had tried to bribe him off with a fat beetle. Gibbs was about to pull the monkey of his arm when Tony started to laugh, pointing towards his side. Within a second everyone but Gibbs was laughing and when he looked down he noticed that the monking had pooped on him. With a growl he removed the monkey from his arm and glared at his team. Trying to make them stop laughing. They tried not to laugh but Ducky gave in first. "Ow Jethro, it's just poo, we will wash it off at home." he giggled. Soon the entire team, including Gibbs was laughing again. Susan promised that she would go get a bag to put his shirt in and a fresh shirt from the giftshop. They started walking back to the entrance, watching the animals and talking about their adventures of that day.
As promised Susan stood there with a clean shirt. Which had, ironicly enough, a picture of bradley on it. Gibbs changed quickly intoo his clean shirt and five minutes later they drove back tot he navy yard.
-----
"It was a great day." Ducky said with a weak smile, not noticing that his voice had become weaker and his breathing more shallow. "It was." Abby said as she wiped the tears out of her eyes.
Gibbs' big hand grabbed Ducky's smaller one. "It's okay" he said. "it's time to let go."
Abby turned around and buried her face against McGee's shoulder while she grabbed Tony's hand seeking silent support. Ducky smiled one last time at his friends, his family and with a smile he breathed out his last breath. Abby clung to Tim as the silence in the sterile hospital room became to much to bare.
"It's better this way" Palmer said softly as he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. "With a brain tumor like his he would have slowly lost his ability to use his muscles, and would have eventually breathing problems, dying a painfull death." Gibbs placed his hand on the young doctors shoulder, giving him a soft squeeze. "He was surrounded by friends, telling us one last story." he said softly.
"But it didn't happen!" Abby exclaimed, borderline mad. "His last memory is telling us a story which didn't even happen!"
"It was a happy memory Abbs" Gibbs whispered as he tried not to yell at her. "I have an appointment with a certain boat." He said before walking out of the small room.
Abby hugged everyone in the room briefly and removed Ziva's tears with her tumbs from her cheek before giving her an other hug. "Let's go." she said finally, dragging Ziva along as a big teddy bear. She turned around to Jimmy who still stood next to his mentor and gave him a questioning look. "Bring him home safely?" she asked with a quiet plea. She didn't get a verbal response, but Jimmy's determent nod told her more than words ever could have.