-1Okay, chapter three. If Ziva's a bit OOC in this, I apologize; I did my best, but I haven't seen most of season three yet (I was at a boarding school for a good fifteen months and we didn't have TV, so I'm slowly catching up with my downloaded episodes), so I don't know Ziva's character perfectly yet, and I have a bit of a hard time writing her. But hopefully I kept her pretty well in character. Reviews muchly loved!

Chapter Three

Gibbs hesitated outside the door. He'd asked - or, rather, demanded - to see Abby, and the doctor had relented, saying they could each have five minutes with her. Maybe everyone else would have five minutes, but no power in the world would drag him from the room once he entered it, and he was pretty sure the doctor knew it as well as his team did. But now, standing outside said room, he found himself having to stop and prepare himself to enter.

Everyone's reaction to the news had been different. He had demanded to see her, of course. Tony had stood shell-shocked, gazing in disbelief at the doctor for a long moment before sitting back lightly in his chair and dropping his head into his hands. McGee on the other hand had instantly sat down rather hard in his chair, staring a bit open-mouthed at the wall across the room. Ducky had leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, folded his hands, and started praying. Ziva had been the most unexpected, and maybe the most odd: she had looked at the doctor, looked at the ground, announced her intent to go get a cup of coffee - her offer to get one for anyone else had been collectively ignored - and promptly left the room.

Taking probably his fifth deep breath in the past two minutes, Gibbs finally stirred himself from his thoughts and pushed the door open. The first thing he noticed, before he'd managed to convince himself to look to the bed, was the slow, high-pitched beeping of a heart monitor. The thought that that shaky, unsteady sound was mirroring her heartbeat was truly frightening. But that fear wasn't comparable to the feelings that hit him when his eyes finished scanning the multitudes of medical equipment in the room and fell on the bed. He thought he'd readied himself, but no amount of mental preparation could have made him ready to see Abby like this.

She was terribly still, her normally pale skin now a ghostly white, standing out against the light blue of the bed sheets. Her hair had been loosed from its pigtails and was splayed out against the white pillow, one arm lay alongside her while the other was bent over her chest, her head was turned slightly to the side as if in sleep, and it might have looked natural were it not for the multitude of wires and tubes linking her to the machines filling the room, the most notable - and most important, he thought uneasily - being the breathing tube down her throat and the wires linking her to that ever-beeping heart monitor. He could barely see her chest rising and falling as air was pumped into her lungs, and that tiny movement was the only sign of life - and it was false life, his brain insisted on reminding him, as it wasn't even her doing the breathing.

He didn't know how long he stood still in the doorway. He didn't know when he moved. All he knew is that he suddenly found himself half-kneeling by the bed, clutching her icy cold hand tightly, his free hand moving to tenderly stroke her hair. He'd heard once that the feeling of knowing a loved one was dead was nothing to the feeling of seeing the one you loved dying. He had to agree wholeheartedly.

Every attempt to talk to her was cut off before he could utter a word by the thought that she couldn't hear him. Comatose people can hear when people talk to them. But she was more than merely comatose… she's dying. He couldn't keep that thought out of his mind, no matter how hard he tried. "God, Abby…" he finally managed, and somehow those two words seemed to cover nearly everything else he could have said. He felt his eyes burning and squeezed them shut for a long moment, taking a few steadying breaths.

"You can't give up, Abbs," he finally whispered, squeezing her hand lightly. "You've got to keep fighting." He was pleading - no, ordering - and he could hear the frantic note in his voice as he knew nothing he said could change what would happen. "Damn it, Abby, you are not allowed to leave me!" That came out a bit louder than he'd intended; he lowered his voice, gentled his tone. "That's a direct order, Abbs… you know you can't disobey a direct order…" he dropped his head down beside her on the bed, forehead resting lightly on her arm. "God, Abbs, I can't lose you."

He knew time passed while he just sat there like that, but he had no idea how much time. All he knew is that he was brought back to reality by a sound from behind him, someone clearing their throat from the doorway. He lifted his head and turned around, expecting to see the doctor trying to tell him to leave, or Ducky coming in for his five minutes. Instead, he found Ziva standing in the doorway, fidgeting slightly and looking a bit unsure of herself; not a familiar expression for her.

"Can I talk to you about something?" she asked, keeping her eyes angled a bit downward, not really looking at him and quite obviously keeping her gaze from falling on Abby's still form.

Not really sure what she could want to talk about and hoping she knew better than to try to get him to leave the room, Gibbs nodded. "Yeah. Talk."

Ziva cleared her throat again, shifted her weight from one foot to the other, sighed slightly, then apparently decided to just leap right in. "Abby and I have the same… blood letter." She paused for a second, corrected herself. "Blood type. What I mean is, I am O negative, and she is O negative."

Gibbs looked at her uncertainly, trying to figure out where she was going with this - he thought he knew, but he didn't want to make a wrong assumption; get his hopes up. "And?"

"Well…" she glanced up at him, flicked her eyes to the bed, then quickly away again. "Must the blood come from a hospital? Couldn't someone donate it?"

"What are you suggesting?"

Ziva sighed; he wanted her to be straightforward, and wasn't going to fill in the holes if she didn't just come out and say it. "I'm going to donate my blood for Abby."

Gibbs was a bit surprised at the 'going to' rather than a 'want to'; she'd already made up her mind. Even more surprising to him was his own reaction; despite the hope that leapt into his heart, his mind - and, through it, his voice - reacted quite differently. "Ziva, are you sure about that? That's a big thing to just decide."

"I'm very sure."

"You do know that even that might not save her?"

"He said she'd have a good chance."

"He said she'd have a 50/50 chance. That means there's just as much a chance she'll die as live, even if you do give blood to her." He sounded pessimistic; he was voicing his worst fear, and somehow his brain wouldn't let him think positively.

"That is much better than her chances if I don't." There was a long silence as Gibbs turned back to Abby, lightly stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. He felt more than saw Ziva come up beside him, and glanced up at her to find her eyes now fixed on Abby, a determined glint in them. "The doctor said they'd have to do a few tests, to make sure we were - I believe he said compatible? - and if we were, they could do the transfer within a couple hours, as soon as the results come back." She reached out, lightly brushed her fingers along Abby's arm, letting her hand rest there for a second before drawing back. "They've already taken a sample of my blood, so it shouldn't be long until they know if it will work."

Gibbs couldn't find any words to say; he merely nodded. The mix of emotions running through him was unbelievable, some positive, some not, but hope had been sparked in him, and he held more tightly to Abby's small hand. Ziva stood there for a moment before saying softly, "I should go. Ducky will want his turn."

Gibbs nodded again, and she turned to leave. "Ziva?" Gibbs' voice stopped her at the door, and she glanced back at him; he wasn't looking at her, but he didn't have to be. "Thank you." She stood still for a moment, smiled slightly, then turned and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.