Tony paced the corridors of the children's hospital, anxiously awaiting some news. He had started the day out at Bethesda but while the Navy hospital could handle delivering babies and taking care of newborns it simply wasn't equipped to handle preemies so the small DiNozzo family had been transferred to the NICU at the only hospital in the DC area dedicated solely to children. Dimly it occurred to Tony that he should have been at work right now but it was only a fleeting thought. His tiny children, born way too early, were Tony's only priority at the moment.
Besides, he hadn't even told anyone at NCIS he was going to be a father yet. His team were the closest thing he had to family but Tony really felt as though he had grown apart from them during the past couple of years. He also knew that some of the team members didn't have a very high opinion of him. His goofy, frat boy persona may be good for getting suspects to let their guard down around him but it wasn't so good for letting his colleagues know that he was a smart, capable agent and a good man. If they knew about this Tony could just imagine their snarky comments. They would say that considering his serial dating habit it had only been a matter of time until something like this happened and that they were surprised it hadn't happened sooner. Tony teased his colleagues quite often so if he dished it out he should be able to take it but he was still keeping his mouth firmly closed. It had taken Tony a while to warm up to the idea of being a father but on the day he'd seen the babies on the ultrasound monitor, moving inside their mother's body, and been told that he was having two sons he had gone home and cried. It hit him that for the first time since his mother died when he was eight years old he was going to have a proper family again. He wasn't going to be alone in the world anymore. Tony knew he deserved his colleagues' taunts but his boys didn't. He loved his sons with his entire being and he would protect them from anyone, even the people who were supposed to care the most.
Tony had never imagined being in a situation like this, though. He had known right from the beginning that he was going to be a single parent. The mother, Kat, was a waitress, about seven or eight years younger than him. They'd 'dated' for want of a better word for a few weeks until they both agreed that, while it had been fun, it was time to move on. After that Tony hadn't heard from Kat again until she randomly showed up at his door one night, about a month later. She was pregnant, she said, and he was the father. She could barely support herself so she definitely couldn't afford to take care of two kids. She didn't believe in abortion, though so she would go through with the pregnancy and give the babies up after they were born.
Tony had offered to pay a generous amount of child support but Kat was adamant. She had to work hard just to survive herself. Even if she had the money to take care of them she didn't have time to raise twins. Kat told Tony that the ball was in his court now. He could raise the babies himself, as a single dad, or he could allow them to go up for adoption. Tony had agonised over the decision. Kids had never been high on his list of priorities because he feared turning out like his father but if he gave up the twins because raising them seemed too hard wouldn't that be acting just like senior? His father may have disowned him but, as the only grandchild, Tony had inherited a generous trust fund when Grandfather Paddington died. He didn't use it much, other than to buy suits and DVDs so the balance was still high. That meant taking care of twins wouldn't be hard financially, even if he had to give up work for a while, but Tony still hadn't been sure that keeping them was the right thing to do. He imagined a happily married couple, probably older than him and infertile, who were desperate for children. Tony knew that there were probably people out there who would love his sons as their own and give the boys everything, including the stability that his job didn't allow for, but he felt sick at the thought. In the end he had made the only decision that seemed logical. It wouldn't be easy but he was going to keep the babies. These were his sons and he would not turn his back on them.
Now he couldn't even be sure if the babies would live long enough for him to take them home. Kat had called him at 1am to say that she was in labour and, even though it was way too early, the doctors didn't think that they could stop it. He'd rushed to Bethesda, arriving just in time to see his sons, born at just 27 weeks, come into the world. They were so small Tony could have held one of them in the palm of his hand. Kat had distanced herself right away, saying that she wanted nothing to do with the babies. She'd made it clear to Tony all along that that was what she was going to do but he'd still thought that she would stay, at least for a while, because the boys had been so premature. She hadn't though and Tony couldn't help but hate her a little bit for it. He didn't know Kat that well – they'd had lunch together once a week and gone to her OBGYN appointments together – but even her company would have been good right now. Tony felt sick as he paced the corridors alone, desperately awaiting some news.
Was this his fault? he wondered. Had his delay in deciding whether or not to keep the babies somehow caused this? Was he being punished because, until that ultrasound where he'd actually been able to see the babies for the first time, he hadn't particularly wanted them? For a long time he had feared the changes to his lifestyle being a single parent would bring and he wasn't sure he wanted to make those changes. Were his two helpless infants lying in the NICU because of his selfishness? Tony hadn't set foot in church since he was a child but he found himself praying to god that so long as the boys survived this he would spend the rest of his life working to make it up to them. Tony had lost so many people he cared about. His mother had died. Kate had died. Paula had died. Jenny had died. He couldn't loose the boys as well. Tony had been weathering the storm for years now but he knew that if he lost his sons there would be no coming back for him this time. If the boys died then he would as well.
Finally at about eight o'clock in the morning Tony's agonising vigil ended. The door to the family room he was now waiting in opened and one of the consultants stepped in. Tony could tell, just by her body language, that the news wasn't as bad has he'd feared it would be but he couldn't tell whether the news was good or not. "Agent DiNozzo?" she said. "I'm Doctor Bainbridge. I have some news."