Everyone had thought that his visits would become less frequent as time went on but Tony reverently kept his promise to Ziva. He drove to the hospital every morning at 5 and sat staring at her helpless form lying prostrate in the bed until he had to leave to get to work on time. Then, at lunch, he would slip back for a few minutes and tell her all about the case. After work he would reappear and whisper to her for hours on end until he fell asleep with his head resting beside her on the bed. A nurse would come in to check on Ziva at midnight and would shake him awake.
Every second of every day he wished that Ziva would wake up and his taxing routine would be broken but he wouldn't stop coming until she had walked out of those doors with him.
His mind went back to the first time he had passed under the sign above the hospital entrance running beside the stretcher with her bloody body on it, crying her name over and over again. Over the next few days the name had become a mantra, a prayer, a word of hope poking through the expanse of despair surrounding her motionless body.
He told himself that she wasn't dead and he should be grateful for that mercy. There was a chance that she would wake up and laugh again which wouldn't have been there if she had died already. However, Tony was not naïve enough to believe that she would wake up. Once someone has been in a deep coma for over a year, it is so unlikely that they will wake that it is almost impossible. Ziva was stubborn and amazing but even Tony did not have enough faith in her to expect her to rouse herself.
Perhaps she was better numb to the world and all its pain, Tony sometimes thought. She had led a terribly painful life and at least she was freed from that agony. This soothed him until he had asked a doctor in passing whether she was feeling anything in her comatose state. He had innocently replied that it was possible to be living a nightmare behind the still, closed eyelids although it would have to be a terrifying memory to pierce through the cloud of nothingness to attack her subconscious. Tony's heart had been plunged into a fog of depression again at this devastating.
Now, every time he looked at her, he wondered what was playing in her head. Every kill she had ever made? Pulling the trigger and sending the fatal bullet into her brother's head replaying incessantly? Watching her sister's body explode and be instantly incinerated with her standing watching helpless to save her? Reconciling herself to death in Somalia? There were too many options to choose from and Tony tortured himself daily running through the possible painful moments she could be reliving for eternity.
She had named him as her next of kin. The doctor asked him regularly every month whether he wanted to pull the plug on her. He contemplated this agonisingly every time but each time he declined. He had the faintest shred of trust in Ziva's obstinacy and he clung to the possibility of her waking up whenever he thought of ending it permanently. If she was preparing to wake and he ended it, he would have killed her. That idea seared through his heart and stopped him accepting the well meaning offer.
Her eyes held secrets which would never be revealed. Her mouth was choking back unsaid words. Her hands were restrained from holding him back when he hugged her in greeting and in parting every visit. Her nose could not pick up on the different aftershaves he was trying out. Her ears could never hear the words he whispered in them.
It had been a year and he had never voiced the feeling which was eating him from the inside out. It had been gnawing at him since he met her but the teeth had grown and sharpened and every bite sent a shot of excruciating misery through him. He longed with every cell in his exhausted body to be able to slip the three words that had eluded him all his life into his frequent whispers but so far he had not been able to.
He left every day at eight in the morning so that he could be in work on time. He hoped that she would be proud of his willpower in getting up so early daily. His Italian shoes clicked on the polished floor as he disappeared down the too familiar corridor. Suddenly, he was consumed by an urge to shout his declaration to the world. Holding this impulse in, he ran back through the white hallway and skidded into her room. He firmly pushed the nurse out of the door and bent over her lifeless body. 'I love you, Ziva,' he whispered honestly into her ear.
He pulled away and looked at her, his hand clasping hers. Some romantic part of him had been expecting her eyes to flutter open and him to feel her squeeze his hand. If it had been a film that is what would have happened but life wasn't a film, as she had so often reminded him, so nothing like that happened. She just continued to stare at the blackness of her closed eyelids and remained still and silent. Although whether she was calm and quiet in her head was unknown to anybody but her.
Her wild hair fanned out on the pillow, the dark mane contrasting with the pure white cotton of the pillowcase. Her body was unmoving and relaxed; a position she had never taken in consciousness. She hardly looked like Ziva when all the life had been sucked out of her.
Never again would she reflexively go for her gun. Never again would she aim her knife and wow every one with her superior prowess. Never again would she duck and dodge a rain of blows while delivering powerful strikes to her opponent. Never again would she take a life because she did not have one herself.
She was in a timeless state of limbo. She did not feel her life slip away through her fingers. She aged but she could not feel the wrinkles appear on her frozen brow. Opportunities fell away but she would never even know they existed. She could have touched so many people's lives and saved so many lost souls but no one would ever know her capabilities now.
The chance was gone and he had wasted their time together. So many moments flashed passed his eyes, moments when it would have been fitting to tell her how he felt but he declined to do so and let them continue on unsatisfied. It was too late now. She could not hear him.