My first NCIS fic, so let me know how you like it, because I might be able to be persuaded to write a second or third chapter.
He watches her from his chair. Her normally fierce little body looks so broken, so fragile, hooked up by tubes and wires to all those beeping monitors…as if the faintest might cause her to shatter in to a million pieces and leave him forever. He has to repress the urge to yell at the nurses and doctors not to touch her. Somewhere amongst all his jumbled thoughts, the pain meds and his own comparatively inconsequential aches and pains he knows that's ridiculous. He knows they are trying to help, not to hurt.
But he's never seen her like this, and it terrifies him. It shakes him to his very core. Even in Somalia when she begged him to take McGee and go, to leave her to die, there had been some form of strength behind all the resignation in her eyes.
He can't help feeling that somehow he could have prevented this. He should have been paying better attention to the road and less attention to the feel of her hand in his, their fingers intertwined, the soft way she spoke his name, the look in her eyes…and yet…could he really take back that moment? In all honesty, he can't say he would…but would she? She's the one lying there in the coma, she's the one who may never wake up, and she's the one who may not retain her memories if she does. If he was presented with the choice to stay that way or wake up and lose his memories of her…his eyes well up with tears and he has to shake off that train of thought or risk having another break down in her hospital room. He's not the only one who has cried there, of course. Jimmy and Abby were useless in the emotional support arena, sobbing like children, really, but that was to be expected. McGee had clearly cried as well, his eyes more red and puffy than they had been when Mike was gunned down outside Gibbs' home. Ducky, Gibbs and Vance grieved stoically. Usually Tony would have been right there with them, quietly providing a pillar of strength for those who couldn't help but give in to the melancholy.
But like he had told E.J., it was just different for him.
"Come back to me, Sweetcheeks…" He whispers, using the once ironic nickname, but he is still too afraid to reach out at take her hand. He's pretty sure he's not being ironic in calling her that anymore. He can still here her annoyed response, Don't call me that Tony, and it makes the corner of his lips quirk upwards in a horrible imitation his trademark smirk.
"Go home, DiNozzo," Comes the deep voice of his boss turned surrogate father figure from behind him.
"No way, Boss," Tony replies, only able to speak at half volume as he tries to hide the way his voice trembles and breaks under the weight of his anguish. He's sure that Ducky has sent the older man to force him to get some sleep. Lucky for him, he's just as hard and stubborn when he wants to be.
"You're no use to her if you can't stay awake," Gibbs reminds him. Clearly, the boss man isn't trying that hard. He'd order him to go home if he really meant it.
"Good thing no one here's sleeping then," He replies a little more forcefully.
"At least eat something then, will ya?" Gibbs concedes as he tosses a granola bar into Tony's lap.
At some point after everyone left (he's pretty sure Abby went back to McGee's place with him, and he'd bet money that Ducky is drinking in Gibbs' basement with their team leader) he ate the granola bar, but he can't remember when that happened or what it tasted like. His entire being is focused on the petite woman lying in the bed in front of him.
It's been three days now since he woke up to find his partner comatose. He's starting to smell pretty ripe and he can see it on the nurse's faces when they come in to check on her. Of course they're too polite to say anything about it. Or the frightening, bedraggled way he probably looks. Eventually he caves and texts Abby, asking her to bring him some baby wipes and maybe some toothpaste…and bourbon. Bourbon is good.
He has slept a little, despite everyone else insisting that it doesn't count; his body eventually gave out and he passed out in the chair with his head hanging. He woke up the moment he realized he was asleep only to find her still unconscious. It's been like that for a while now. He'll sleep for an hour or two here and there, but he never allows it to last for long. Foolishly, he believes that he has to stay here and be her strength until she is awake and strong enough to be her own again. He finds himself alternately praying to and cursing her god—he doesn't have one of his own to call on, but he's found that people do strange things in moments of desperation. He finds himself bargaining too. He promises to spend less time checking out other women, maybe even to stop all together if that's what it takes. He promises to quit drinking…once he's out of this hell of course, cause he's not going to give up something for nothing and he suddenly gets Gibbs a little better. He promises to cut back on the movie references and read a book or two because he thinks that she would like that.
"Mr. DiNozzo?" Comes a voice from the doorway.
He doesn't turn to face her, but even in this state he can't help but joke in response to that. "Mr. DiNozzo is my father," he replies. "Call me Tony."
The nurse isn't sure how to respond. Usually she would smile obligingly to an overused joke like that and do as the patient asks, but she understands that this is a coping mechanism and that, in all likelihood, that response would probably get in the way of her goal here. "Of course…" she responds hesitantly. "I'm sorry to intrude, but the Doctor asked me to remind you that you're still injured."
"So?" he snaps.
The nurse sighs, expecting this behavior from him at this point. "I know you don't want to leave your partner, but we really do need to check on your injuries."
"Then do it here," He says tersely. "Because I'm not moving." And so he sits through them poking and prodding and talking at him like he gives two shits about his health right now. If she's not going to make it, he's pretty sure he doesn't want to be here after she's gone. They ask him if he's listening and he pithily repeats the previous sentence they've spoken to assure them he does hear them, he just doesn't care.
As they conclude their check up and leave the doctor looks back at him and says, "Mr. DiNozzo, if you don't manage to recover from your injuries because you refused the necessary care, this hospital won't be held accountable. I hope you understand that." And with that he is gone, which is just fine because Tony hadn't planned on dignifying the man with a response.
Another hour goes by and he takes a deep irritated breath when he hears the foot falls of the nurse returning. He bites his tongue, knowing she is probably just coming to check Ziva's vitals, but he can't help but wish that they would all just leave them alone.
The nurse goes through her checklist just as she has every time she's checked on them before, but when she is done, she stops and looks at him for a long moment.
"WHAT?" Tony finally demands.
"I get it, you know," she replies, unfazed by his crankiness. "You love her."
Tony doesn't bother denying it at this point. After all, he's been sitting by Ziva's side for seventy two hours straight. Even family members would have gone home at this point. "I never told her," He tells the nurse, his voice going back to its previous somber tone. "She was about to tell me," He pauses and then starts again. "Or at least I think she was about to tell me…I really hope she was about to tell me. Otherwise, I've been sitting here like an idiot, hanging on to something I never really had…we've danced around this for years. Right when I begin to think maybe, just maybe we're ready to give ourselves a shot, Mossad pulls her away from me again. I've never cared about anything the way I care about her, but there's always something…rules, relationships, bad timing, she and I getting in our own ways. Do you think maybe that's a sign? That maybe we've been doomed from the beginning?"
There's a long silence as the nurse just stands there, her eyes down cast, as she does her best to come up with and answer. The second hand ticks away on the clock for what seems like eternity before she finally responds. "I think…" She pauses again before forging ahead. "I think we make our lives the way we want them to be. If you want things to stop getting in the way, you have to stop letting them. I know this will sound cliché, but they say that talking to them helps…and physical contact. I've been watching you, and you haven't touched her even once."
"Does it? You see this all the time, have you ever seen a coma cured by holding their hands or reading stories to them?" Tony snarks.
The nurse smiles sympathetically. "Do I have medical proof? No," she responds. "I'm not religious; I don't think God or Allah or that anyone else can do anything for us that we can't do ourselves." She replies. Tony shoots her a look, a nonverbal thank-you-for-making-my-point, but she hasn't finished. "But I do believe that people are capable of things that science can't measure. Just because I have no proof she can't hear you or feel you, doesn't mean she can't. At the end of the day, won't you be happier knowing you tried absolutely everything? Tell her how you feel, even if she never hears it."
She is right. Science was doing all it could, and he's already tried religion. If there is a god, he probably doesn't respond to last minute favors for people who have otherwise ignored him their whole life. Applying a little of the unexplained mysteries of the universe certainly couldn't hurt. Of course he is too embarrassed to do any of that right in front of her, and so he nods his thanks and waits for her to leave.
When they are finally alone again, he pulls his chair closer to the bed and reaches out. Before he can touch her hand, the image of her body disintegrating into a million little pieces flashes across his mind's eye again, but instead of recoiling and giving in to his irrational fear he sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and as gently as he can manage, took her hand in his.
His heart races a million miles a minute, but when she doesn't disappear before his eyes he lets out the breath with a whoosh and quickly covers their joined hands with his free one and uses his forearms to support his body as he leans on her bed.
"Hey Zee-Vah," he teases her name like he always does. "I don't know if you can hear me in there, but…" He feels his eyes prick with the tears he's been trying to hold in and he has to take another deep breath to steady his voice while he fills the momentary silence by lovingly stroking a thumb across her knuckles. "It pretty much sucks out here without you. We're gonna get Bodnar, for you and for Eli, but I can't…I can't live without you, remember?" He turns her hand in his to kiss her open palm. "I can't believe how much time I've wasted with you, and I should have said this a long time ago. I love you, Ziva David, so don't you dare even think about leaving me now."
He falls asleep like that, holding her hand while he uses his other arm to cushion his head on the bed, and for the first time since he woke up from his own surgeries he sleeps a full night's sleep and dreams of a olive skinned little boy with dark curly hair and a life in the suburbs.