Summary: Abby gets a shocking diagnosis.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing with them. Free bonus disclaimer, since I'm dealing with medical goodies, the internet is an awesome resource, but don't use anything you read online as a replacement for a real medical professional. Your doctor should always be a key player, even if you do have a disease so rare that you have to teach the doctor how to diagnose it before he can diagnose you.
A/N: I'm marking this complete, but I don't really know if there will be more chapters, or if this one will stand alone. I'm open to ideas, if you have any thoughts on what might come next, or if you even want anything to come next. Maybe you'll spark an idea for me. Either way, it's been fun to play around with the concept. Apologies for errors; I tried to pay attention but my attention span is about zero at this point.
I started kicking this idea around back nearer to Rare Disease Day. The name "Goald's Syndrome" is made-up, but the genetic disorder described in this story is very real. I created a new name for it because I have it myself. I don't want people who know me in real life to find my fiction writing by googling for information on the disease, and the real-life Goald's is so rare that if you google it, that would actually be a possibility. The symptoms I describe are some of the common ones I've heard from many people who have a mild to moderate assortment of symptoms. Not everyone agrees that all of them can be blamed on Goald's. "Syndrome" means a group of symptoms... something like a checklist, nobody has all of them, and some are a lot more unusual than others, so... there's a lot of room for debate.
I got the idea to use NCIS as my own personal way of raising awareness, when I was showing a friend some of the outward signs of my disorder, and I realized that Abby has a lot of them herself. Of course, that does NOT mean that Abby has the same condition. One in eight people carry many of the primary outward signs, but only about one in 5,000 have the underlying issues that are needed for diagnosis, so actually it's highly unlikely. But you know how plot bunnies go, once I put two and two together, I had to write the story just to see how Abby would react to the diagnosis. Want to know more about Goald's, including its real name? Message me, and I'll fire off a couple informative links.
The first thing he observed when he emerged from the elevator was the silence. Immediately, the hairs on his neck stood up. It didn't always have to mean something was wrong, when Abby's music wasn't heard throughout her hallway; Abby got headaches like anybody else, after all. He knew he was just telling himself that because he was worried, that her awkward phone call asking him to come to her lab was proof enough that something was wrong. She knew he always came down around three o'clock to check up on her, when they were between cases. She only needed to wait another half-hour or so. The very fact that she didn't, told him all he needed to know. But he hoped, just the same.
"Abby?" Gibbs called gently, keeping his voice low in case she did have a headache or something. It was entirely plausible. The team calendar, the one that nobody knew he knew how to check, said she had been out for a doctor visit earlier in the morning. She'd blocked out six hours. Wait. Six hours, for a medical appointment? Working some quick arithmetic, he realized she probably had only been at work for a few minutes when she called. He instantly regretted not realizing that her call might be urgent. She'd been waiting for him for ten minutes, he estimated, as he wandered through her lab, to her office, finding her only when he stumbled over her feet sticking out from under her desk. It only took him a moment to set down the drinks in his hands, and get down onto the floor with her. His knees would make him pay for that later, he knew, but that didn't matter. That's what Advil was invented for, he reasoned, taking her hand in his and tugging her out into the open, so he could wrap an arm around her as they leaned against the furniture.
"Abby, what's wrong?" He kept his voice even and low, but inside, he wanted to panic. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, more or less," she said, voice devoid of emotion. "I had a doctor appointment this morning."
"Mmhm. It was on the calendar."
"Gibbs! You know how to read the team calendar!" That got a smile out of her, at least.
"Abbs? The doctor appointment?"
"Oh yeah. It was... um. Well, I kind of feel bad, because this is the kind of thing I usually tell you about, and I didn't, not for weeks and weeks, and it was really hard not to, and I'm sorry, but I just kept thinking if I didn't tell anybody, it wouldn't be real." Gibbs just raised an eyebrow at Abby. Normally he'd chide her for talking too fast, for not getting to the point, but he could tell she needed to go about this in her way. He looked down at her, and though she didn't make eye contact, she turned her face so that he could see it for just a moment, an unspoken apology mingling with fear on her face. His heart twisted itself into a knot, and he wished he had a magic wand to fix... well, whatever was wrong.. "It didn't work," Abby continued. "It's real anyway. I should have told you."
"If it's got you this upset, yes, you should have told me. But you get a chance now to fix that, so, let's have it." Abby took a deep breath... and then another one... and then one more before Gibbs lost his patience. "Abby, do you have some fatal disease?"
"No, no, Gibbs, nothing like that. It's just... wow. A few months ago, my brother let me know that my niece has a genetic disorder. And... so does he. And based on what he remembered about growing up... he thought I might have it, too." The last bit came out in such a rush that Gibbs almost didn't understand it... or maybe he didn't want to, he thought, as the meaning of her words hit him full force. No. No, whatever this was, it couldn't be happening, he couldn't lose any more family. Gibbs allowed himself a moment of sheer terror before he sucked it up and forced himself to face whatever it was his young friend was trying to tell him.
"Is that why you blocked out six hours for a doctor appointment today?" he asked, starting with the easiest question.
"Yeah. Well that, and it was in Baltimore. She's supposed to be one of the best, people fly here from all over the country just to see her. But the drive was horrible, and then some idiot cab driver cut me off on the 295, slammed on his brakes, I nearly hit him, and he's flipping me off like it was my fault!" Gibbs allowed himself a moment of amusement before getting back to the real issue.
"Well, it's genetic... doesn't that mean that you could have just tested yourself for it, here in the lab?"
"I would if I could, but it's not that simple, Gibbs. Just because we know things are passed along through our genes, doesn't mean we always know which ones, or which of a billion variations produce a normal human being, and which produce disease. We don't know a whole lot about how to test for common diseases, let alone one that only affects about two hundredths of a percent of the population."
"There's no test for this one yet," Gibbs replied, showing her that he understood what she was getting at.
"And there might never be, really. It's not like breast cancer, with the nonstop fundraising. The federal government defines a rare disease as one that affects about one in fifteen-hundred people. This thing is one in five thousand, Gibbs. There's not a whole lot of research funding, not even for something as basic as definitive diagnosis. Goald's Syndrome is diagnosed by clinical exam," Abby continued to explain, still half-ranting out of sheer nervousness. Gibbs was slightly bothered that she'd still not made eye contact with him, other than when he had pulled her out from under her desk. "They look at you, and ask about a million questions about your symptoms, history, family history, and there's a lot of room for debate about it all."
"What did the doctor say about you?"
"That I don't have a ton of the problems that usually come with. But, she's pretty sure I have it... and I think she's right." Gibbs had prepared himself for that answer, from the moment she'd begun talking, but it still hit him hard, almost as hard as when he'd gotten word that his first family had been taken from him. Some days, loving people just sucked. It was worth it, of course, and life isn't supposed to be all rainbows and butterflies, but right now it sucked, and he hated these parts of life.
"Will you get more symptoms later on?" he asked, focusing on the practical issues as a way of calming his freaked-out heart.
"I might, but at my age, it's less likely to see a whole lot of them out of nowhere. It can happen, but the doc thinks I shouldn't worry too much about it. So that's good, at least. And she was able to tell me how I can avoid making it worse. Well, it can't get worse, it's genetic, but the symptoms can be progressive, because of... well. I guess I should start at the beginning." Gibbs chuckled at that, and Abby found herself giggling,too, in spite of herself. "Goald's Syndrome affects the ligaments in the body. It's like..." Without looking, she opened her desk drawer and pulled a rubber band out, holding it out for Gibbs to see. "It's like this. Right now, it's stretchy and elastic," she explained, demonstrating her point. "But if I stretch it a lot, like if I use it around something a little bit too big, it'll stretch out some, and then I might use it around something that it used to not fit around, but now it's stretched out, so it can fit. And then it keeps just stretching bigger and bigger, till it's not a whole lot of use anymore. That's what my ligaments might do. Instead of holding my bones together, and making my joints work right, they might just stretch out, and not hold so good."
"If that happened, what symptoms would it cause?"
"Dislocation, subluxation, easy spraining, muscle strains because the muscles aren't affected, so they'd get yanked... osteoarthritis." Gibbs started genuinely laughing once she explained. "What? Gibbs, stop, this is serious! I'm really scared!"
"Oh, Abby," he muttered, pulling her into a hug as he laughed. "You're right, that's serious stuff, but I was worried it would be so much worse than that. I'm just relieved it's not worse." Abby glared at her companion for a moment before melting into his hug.
"Yeah, it could be a lot worse... there was some scary stuff I read in my research. There's a few different types, and the one that my niece has, and that I guess I have, is the least terrifying. I do have pain... I thought that was normal, I thought everybody had it and I was just a wimp. That's a lot of why I think I got into science. Sitting and reading was easy for me. It didn't hurt."
"Well, that's a good thing about it," Gibbs muttered into her hair, not ready to let go of her yet. "Don't know what we'd do without you." He didn't have to look to know Abby was beaming at being reminded that she was irreplaceable. Her grin almost literally lit up the whole room. "Abby... tell me about the symptoms you do have." He smiled slightly as she frowned in thought. She was thinking so hard, it was almost a glare.
"Well my fingers bend back way more than they should... I'm definitely more flexible than a lot of people my age, outside of the porn industry anyway. And I can do this," she said, pulling her ring finger away from the hand bone and wiggling the 'wrong' end of the finger at Gibbs, who grabbed her hand to put a stop to it, sure that his treasured young friend was doing herself injury. "And my joints do pop more than they should at my age... muscles never get to relax, which makes them sore. My fingers do kind of sublux -- that's a mild dislocation that resolves itself -- when I push elevator buttons and stuff. And... um. Something isn't right about my left knee, but it's not too bad either. Just hurts when it's humid out." Gibbs suddenly noticed he'd started rubbing little circles on her shoulder with his thumb, trying to calm himself as much as her, as she shared what she was going through.
"Sounds like you feel a lot like I do, but probably to a lesser degree," Gibbs summed up, getting a nod out of his companion in response. "It sounds to me like this is incredibly unfair, but you can still have the life you want if you remember to take care of yourself." Another nod. This was good, at least. It was starting to sound like not such a bad thing, other than the shock of being diagnosed with some weird rare disease. Gibbs took one deep, calming breath, before Abby started talking again and messed up his whole 'this isn't a big deal' illusion.
"It's scary, though. I mean, I've talked to people who have the same type as me, online. I talked to one lady who holds down a job, and raises two kids, who both have it too, and she's like, Wonder Woman. But I've also talked to somebody who had to give up her career of choice because the disease affected her eyes, and a couple people who have to use crutches... even wheelchairs, or walkers... a lot of people have it affect their fingers and hands, and it makes it hard to write, or even use a computer. A lot of people say that the symptoms vary from one day to the next, because it can depend on how strong your body is, if you've injured anything... even what you eat might matter, because if you didn't feed your body good building blocks one day, then it might build even crappier ligaments, and people can call you horrible names and treat you like you're faking, just because you were walking one day, and using a wheelchair the next. I even met somebody who had it affect the teeny bones in his ears, but because it's not real hearing loss, doctors don't even do anything to help... there's not much you can do, but he had to teach himself sign language, even. I guess sign language wouldn't be a big deal for me, but Gibbs, what if it screws up my hands? What if I can't walk one day?" Well, Gibbs didn't really expect her to be so freaked out over nothing, he reasoned, as he plotted how best to approach her fear and uncertainty. Her words scared him, too, and he made a point to look it all up later, and do some more reading. But for now, he decided, he should approach the practical issues.
"Okay... what if you need help walking? Can we make your lab accessible? Is it possible, according to the laws of physics? Is there anything in here that we cannot figure out how to make accessible to a wheelchair-bound lab technician?" Abby pulled back from the hug just enough to peer up at Gibbs, dismayed. Leave it to him to thwart her perfectly good anxiety attack. Gibbs, for his part, reached out and ran his fingers through her ponytail. He wasn't sure if she was going to gripe at him or not, but he was prepared to take whatever came next. It wasn't personal, after all... Abby was just upset.
"I think we can make everything accessible, theoretically, but it wouldn't be cheap. Or easy. It would require a bigger lab."
"Law's pretty clear on making accommodation, Abbs. It would get done, if I have to rebuild your lab myself. What about your hands? Is there anything they can do for hand problems?"
"Well, there are some things... a certain style of splint. They're actually really unobtrusive, and even kind of pretty, though I think I'd have to quit wearing my rings, to make room for them. And they're kind of expensive, and I don't know if you've noticed, but the Navy doesn't pay that well. I live within my means, Gibbs, and I'm comfortable with that, and I love my job too much to leave it over money, but... I don't make enough for some of the stuff that my insurance won't cover. I mean, I can, but it would mean giving up on my retirement savings, and I could say goodbye to my rainy day fund."
"Can you buy more insurance?" Abby shrugged at that.
"I'll have to look into it more, but as far as I can tell, getting things covered is a big game of what codes to write on the forms, and it's anybody's guess what insurance will do with each one, on a given day. I might be able to set up a flexible spending account to at least make things tax-free, but I just don't know yet. A lot of people pay out of pocket, or just do without and hope they don't screw anything up too badly. Insurance often will cover surgical repair, but nothing in the way of prevention. Bureaucracy is set up to deal with the things that happen 99.9% of the time; it has no real plan for the remaining tenth of a percent."
"Hmm. Good thing you have a friend who loves you enough to see that you have what you need." Abby peered up at him, at that.
"Gibbs, I couldn't take your--." He cut her off before she finished the sentence.
"You can and you will." Before she could argue any further, he silenced her with uncharacteristic openness. "Abby, I don't get to do the whole 'protect and provide' thing for my own daughter. Let me do it for you." Abby made a whimpering sound as she fell back into the hug she hadn't fully escaped from yet. She could think of a thousand ways to argue, starting with the fact that nothing he could ever do, would bring meaning or good out of the senseless loss of his precious family. But she could tell by the tone of his voice that these kinds of things did, in fact, help Gibbs to somehow cope with the horrific loss. And besides, she'd seen the prices for some of the items she feared she'd someday need. Having a benevolent surrogate father to write checks and solve problems, could be a good thing.
"What about your living arrangements? You worried about that?" Again, Abby peered up at Gibbs. How did he do that, anyway?
"The doctor already said I should consider moving to a downstairs unit, or to a building that has an elevator. And it's not urgent or anything, I can take a year or two before I get around to it, but... I kind of wanted children, but Goald's is dominant, meaning that if I pass the gene on, my child will have it, no ifs, and I don't know if I'm okay with that and... Gibbs, I hate this." Abby was acutely aware that she'd degenerated fully into whining at this point, but she didn't have the energy to care right now. In the span of fourteen weeks, her whole life had come crashing down around her, and she'd had absolutely no help in dealing with it. Of course that was her own fault, she knew, but it didn't make the pain or stress any easier. In fact, it made her feel worse, because she knew she could count on her NCIS family to be there for her, and she didn't even give them the chance. All because she hoped that not talking about it would make it go away.
It crossed her mind to apologize for keeping such a serious secret, but before she got the chance, they were interrupted by Gibbs' cell phone ringing. She sat quietly as he answered it, listening as the caller gave some details about a crime scene the team needed to go take a look at, knowing that her source of comfort was going to get up and leave in a moment. Much as Abby loved her job, right this minute she hated it. But to her surprise, when Gibbs ended the call, he didn't spring into action right away. He simply sat with his arm still around her, looking into her eyes.
"Abby, it seems like most of your problems right now have to do with fear. You've gotten some scary news, that I'm going to go read up on later, but right now you're in good health, and we can deal with any problems that come up in the future, even though we hope we won't have to. Don't let the fear make you forget those facts." She nodded in reply, her expression a mix of gratitude for Gibbs' understanding, and a need to say something, so he waited just a moment more.
"I'm-- I'm so sorry, Gibbs. I should have told you when it first came up."
"You should have. You didn't have to go through any of this alone. But we've fixed that now." Gibbs smiled as he got a grin out of his timid young friend. Finally, she seemed at peace... well as much as she could be right now. "See you tonight?" he asked, as he gathered them both up off the floor. Abby's eyes shifted in that way they did, when she wanted to be big and bad, but really just needed to take refuge in Gibbs' spare bedroom for a little while.
"Probably," she finally answered. Gibbs nodded, planting a kiss in her hair before turning to leave. "Gibbs?" she asked, stopping him halfway across the room. "I'm not ready to tell the rest of the guys yet... but when I am, will you come with me?"
"Mmhmm," he replied. "I'll even do it for you, if it'd make you feel better. And Abby? There is nothing even remotely wimpy about you, pain or no pain."
Abby took a deep, cleansing breath, listening to the familiar ding of the elevator. "I have the best boss ever," she told Bert the hippo, as she began her routine of cleaning and organizing, preparing her lab for the deluge of evidence she knew would be coming in just a couple hours.
A/N: Yeah, okay, a couple people want to know what happens next, and now that I think of it, I kind of wonder, too. So I've gone back and marked it in progress. I'll mess with it some more, though Refuge is really my pet tale. This is going to be a companion piece to Refuge, because I want to have the freedom to really focus on Goald's here, without it mowing down the tale I'm weaving over in Refuge. But it's the same universe, which is why Gibbs said, at the end here, that he'd see Abby "tonight". I might, later in this story, figure out where in the timeline it falls, but for now all I'm sure of is I want Ziva to be part of it, and Abby to be over her "I hate Ziva" thing, so we're at least most of the way through season three here. There were a lot of days I leaned on Ziva's quiet strength, the first couple years after diagnosis... Abby will be able to take even better advantage of that, since she's actually a real person in Abby's world, and not just a character.