author's note. Here it is, the long-awaited (I flatter myself) second part of the Plague Trilogy. Hopefully the third story won't take as long to get out. This was really hard to write, since it's in Kate's perspective and I've never really tried to get inside her head before. It was a really interesting challenge for me to write, and I hope it's interesting for you to read, as well.

I don't sleep well the second night either, not with his coughs echoing off the glass walls. He doesn't acknowledge my presence or crack any more jokes. I turn on my side, facing away from him. More than once I wish I hadn't stayed. There's nothing that I could do but pretend to sleep while Brad Pitt and Emma smack him on the back, talking him through the worst night of his life. I'm almost embarrassed to be here.

When I finally wake up for real, I have no idea what time it was. Like a casino, the eerie lights make it impossible to tell if it's night or day. Tony is laying back against the pillows, and he grins at me. "Morning, sunshine," he croaks. "Sleep well?"

I groan. "These beds are the worst," I say as I swung my feet over the edge, stretching.

He closes his eyes. His voice is barely above a whisper. "Tell me about it."

All the intravenous antibiotics haven't changed the fact that he looks like crap. Gibbs-slaps notwithstanding, Tony is still pretty sick. This isn't like a paper cut or a cold - although the way he goes on about it, you'd think a paper cut was the plague - and I wonder how long he'll be on sick leave. Three weeks without Tony around the office is as good a vacation as I'm going to get this year.

I don't want to think about what my hair looks like, or how my breath smells. "So…" I begin. He cocks one eye open and looks at me. "What happens now?"

"Brad Pitt's keeping me in isolation," he says, rolling his eyes a little, "and I've ordered a dozen hot nurses. They should be here any minute."

"I thought you weren't contagious anymore?" I say in alarm. I've just spent two days and nights in extremely close proximity with Tony; I hate to think that there was a threat other than the one to my sanity.

"I'm not," he says wearily, like it's already old news. "Apparently it's for my own good or something. Dr. Pitt is worried I'll catch a cold."

"Oh," I respond lamely, suddenly fighting an urge to sneeze.

"You can leave any time you want," he adds. "You don't need to build a helicopter out of coconuts or anything. I mean, I'm stuck on the island, but…"

"Gilligan's Island?" I respond, glancing over at his I.V. "What are you on?"

I profiled him when we first met. Obnoxious, immature, constantly attention-seeking. I wondered then how on earth he had ended up as a federal agent. I still wonder it sometimes.

A nurse comes in to collect Tony's breakfast tray. Nurse Emma is gone - she must have been tired, she stayed here all night - and her replacement is probably thirty years older, gray-haired and severe. "You haven't eaten anything, Agent DiNozzo," she says disapprovingly. Tony won't flirt with her.

Or maybe he will. He turns on the full wattage smile for her benefit. "Maybe a little later, Darlene," he bargains. "But only if you say please."

Darlene smiles indulgently at him. "Okay," she agrees. "We'll try again in a few hours, Tony."

Tony looks back at me, catching his breath. "You should go home, Kate. Take a shower. You stink."

"You stink worse," I retort. He's not going to thank me for staying. Trust Anthony DiNozzo not to know a kind gesture when it crawls up and bites him on the face. Or something; I can't remember the saying my mother used to use.

"Kate, you should…" Tony starts to say something, and then he is coughing for real. Nurse Darlene comes back in, but at a leisurely enough pace to suggest that it's pretty mundane by now. Still, it would be awkward to feign sleep at this point, so I follow her lead and take his other side. Together, we hold him up as he weathers another round. My hand on his back feels strangely intimate, almost an invasion. I can feel the heat of fever radiating through the blue cotton fabric.

And then it's done. "I'm fine," Tony says, shrinking away from my touch. "Please, Kate." He's clearly not fine. It's evident in the way his hand shakes as he reaches for the cup of water Darlene has poured from him. It's the little trickle of blood rapidly drying at the corner of his lips. And it's the way he's so ridiculously weak, when I jerk my hand away from his back - as if I've been stung - he falls back against the pillows. "You can go now."

He's looking at me like he wants me to apologize, but I have no idea what for. I'll carry to the day of my death the conviction that I did the right thing by staying that first night. Still, I haven't sufficiently distanced myself from my Catholic background not to feel the slightest twinge of guilt at the lie. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. But I've done my penance. I stayed another night when I would much rather have been at home in my own bed, with my own pajamas and no one coughing. I've done my time and I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.

The three of us are suspended in awkwardness for a moment, and then the phone rings on the desk outside the glass walls, shattering the tension. Darlene stalks off to answer it, and Tony is suddenly very interested in the ice in his Styrofoam cup. Darlene cuts in over the intercom a moment later. "Agent Todd? You have a phone call."

Me? Wasn't expecting that. It's Gibbs. Should have expected that. "You planning on joining us sometime today, Agent Todd?" he demands.

"And a good morning to you, too, Gibbs," I tell him.

He hisses with impatience. "Kate, it's after ten in the morning. What are you still doing there?"

"I stayed the night," I offer as an excuse. I thought he knew.

I hear the sound of a desk drawer being slammed. That's Gibbs: repressing his feelings with impatience and misplaced violence. I don't know what he was hoping to accomplish by smacking Tony on the head yesterday. It's so much healthier just to talk about things. "Just get in here, Kate," he said. "We have an investigation to run."

I turn away from the glass walls so Tony can't see me. "I thought you talked to Hanna Lowell yesterday? Doesn't she have a brain tumor? There's nothing to investigate."

"Of course we're going to investigate," Gibbs snaps. "She almost killed one of my agents. You think she gets a free pass just because she's dying?"

"Can I at least go home and get some clean clothes?"

Something else is being slammed, or thrown to the ground, or possibly subjected to small arms fire. "Be here in one hour, Agent Todd, or you can start mailing out resumes." He signs off in typical Gibbs fashion: by snapping his phone shut. I can't think of any reason for my face to be this red.

But when I trudge back into the isolation unit to collect my slippers, Tony is grinning at me. It's like when my brothers and I were kids, and seeing another one get yelled at always brought a twisted sense of satisfaction. Except Tony is an only child, and I don't know how he knew I was getting yelled at.

"Next time you come," he says, "bring me a pizza."

"You know, maybe if you ate a vegetable once in a while you'd be healthier." Heaven help me, I can't resist.

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," he offers by way of a rebuttal.

"Tomatoes are a fruit, Tony," I toss over my shoulder as I walk out of the room. By the time I reach the Navy Yard, I've talked myself out of visiting. There will be plenty of time for DiNozzo to annoy me when he's back at work.