A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter. I got well and truly Gibbs-slapped by life this week (actually, I feel like I was just interrogated by Ziva!) so the fic had to take a back seat for a while.
From where she sat, facing the open door of the examination room, as she waited for the attending physician, Dr Janzen, to return, Ziva could see hospital staff moving around, and hear the noises one normally associated with a busy hospital – electronic sounds from monitoring equipment, the voices of ER nurses at the nursing station, other patients talking in low murmurs and the occasional wail from a child. The room she was in was nothing special, an exam table, a chair, cupboards and a sink, some equipment that appeared to have been stored in the room and forgotten. Ziva was not a fan of hospitals - she would tolerate them if she had to, but normally by this point she would be seriously considering walking out and heading straight back to work.
She raised a hand and touched the dressing on her neck. This was the only thing keeping her here. If it had been an ordinary wound – simple bruising, even a gash from a knife or a graze from a bullet – she wouldn't have stuck around. Those were known risks, she could judge for herself the seriousness, and perform first aid on herself if necessary. But this was different. She had no clue what had been in that syringe, and so far as she could tell, neither did anyone else – except for Fiscella, and he wasn't going to be any help, thanks to the misguided heroics from one of the bank customers.
No doubt he'd thought he was doing her a favor by pulling out a concealed handgun and shooting Fiscella, had probably imagined being congratulated by everyone for ending the hostage taking. But with Fiscella dead, it was going to take a lot longer to figure out exactly what he'd injected into Ziva's neck. Add to that the fact that it had been Fiscella's reflex jerk when the bullet struck him that had caused him to plunge the needle into her in the first place, and the young man was likely facing a whole lot of trouble – even if he managed to escape legal consequences, he'd still be in for several minutes of pure terror if Gibbs ever got a hold of him!
Gibbs had left McGee and DiNozzo to deal with the scene in the bank, though he'd bagged the hypodermic himself, and the only reason he hadn't accompanied Ziva to the hospital was that he'd taken it straight to Abby, so she could get a fast start on figuring out exactly what was in the syringe.
He'd waited long enough, though, to walk Ziva out and put her into the care of the paramedics; and the feel of his arm around her, the simple fact of his reassuring presence, had done a lot to calm her. He'd waited until the wound in her neck was dressed, and made sure that she'd be taken straight to Bethesda – even though other hospitals were closer – before leaving her. His parting hug had given Ziva so much comfort that she'd been hard pressed not to cling to him. But the sooner he got that syringe to Abby, the faster she could start working on it. Still, the glimpse of him watching as the ambulance door was closed, and the brief moment when he'd held her gaze, had given Ziva enough strength to hold things together, and answer the questions of the paramedic, as they headed for the hospital.
Abby's initial response to receiving the syringe had been mixed. Word had reached her that Ziva had been involved in a hostage taking, but Gibbs had called her moments after going into the bank, telling her that he was bringing in an unknown substance for her to test.
The only good news so far was that the hypodermic syringe from the scene of the hostage taking had still been almost half-full, meaning that there would be enough of the mystery substance to run multiple tests. The bad news was that the staining on the inside of the syringe indicated that it had been full; Ziva had been injected with nearly 3CC of the stuff, and they had no indication what it had contained. The only person who could have told them was on his way to the morgue.
Now Gibbs followed Dr Janzen along the hospital corridor. He'd made the trip to the NCIS office faster than even he had estimated, and after dropping off the syringe he'd made it across town to Bethesda with even less regard for the speed limit. It had gone against all his instincts to let Ziva make the trip to the hospital alone, but with Tony and McGee handling the scene at the bank, he'd had no option.
As he approached the triage room, he realized that he was going to have a hard time keeping up his professional facade. He'd seen members of his team sick and injured before but somehow this was different. Partly because of the unknown nature of the danger, but mostly because this was Ziva. He had long ago given up trying to fool himself that he didn't have feelings for Ziva that would be considered highly inappropriate by most of their colleagues; he was her boss, and had he ever acted on his impulses, the assumption would have been that he was using his authority to manipulate the junior agent into submitting to unwanted attentions.
Gibbs smiled to himself; anyone who thought that Ziva would be intimidated by him just because he was her boss, really didn't know the woman. Besides, he suspected that the sort of attention he wanted to give Ziva might not necessarily be unwanted. Every so often, he'd catch her watching him, and it wasn't so much the watching, as the way she'd look away almost guiltily, the expression on her face and faint flush in her cheeks making him suspect she'd been thinking something that was definitely not work-related.
But he'd never acted on his belief that she felt the same way he did. He'd gone on with his private life, such as it was, carefully ignoring the nagging feeling that whoever he was with, wasn't the woman he really wanted. He'd seen Ziva take the occasional lover, and had tried – not always successfully – not to think about her with another man, because doing so triggered violent impulses that he preferred not to acknowledge.
Sometimes he wondered what was holding him back. It wasn't just the professional aspect - most of the time, Gibbs didn't let convention affect his actions. And it wasn't the age difference, though he knew a lot of people would have a problem with seeing Ziva with a man so much older than she was. To Gibbs, age was simply a number.
But when he was truly honest with himself, he knew that his real reason for holding back was that he thought Ziva deserved to be with someone less emotionally damaged by life. Gibbs had long ago accepted that he would never completely heal from the pain of losing Shannon and Kelly. There would always be part of his heart that would belong to them, and the idea of giving Ziva anything less than all of his heart just seemed wrong. She deserved better than that. She deserved a man who hadn't spent so long building walls to keep others out that now he wasn't sure if he could break down those walls himself. In the end, it was easier, safer, to convince himself that he was merely seeing what he wanted to see, that he was just projecting his own feelings onto her.
But telling himself that she deserved someone better, that she didn't feel the same way he did, didn't stop him from sometimes imagining how things could have been – thoughts of waking on lazy mornings, to a cascade of hair the color of rich dark chocolate over the pillow next to him; and in moments when he finally achieved a little peace, like the time he'd watched a sunrise over a favorite fishing spot, he'd found himself wishing he could share that moment with Ziva. He'd accepted such thoughts for what they were – comforting but unrealistic. But as he approached the room, where she waited, where she was dealing with the fear of what might result from the mystery injection, he felt himself perilously close to speaking of the feelings he'd kept hidden with such unyielding resolve.
Ziva heard the two sets of approaching footsteps along the hallway; recognizing one of those patterns of footfalls, she was on her feet almost without realizing it. Just seeing Gibbs walk in triggered a sense of relief so strong it startled her.
Gibbs caught the unguarded expression on Ziva's face and his determination not to tell her how he felt about her wavered. He caught himself just in time, before he could act on the impulse to pull her into his arms, to hold her and murmur words of comfort. She was under a lot of stress, he told himself, that look was just because she was hoping that he had information that would relieve her fears. He settled for resting a hand on her shoulder, as he said, "We're working to figure out what was in that syringe."
Ziva nodded, swallowing. She rubbed her hands together as she asked, "Do you know why he lifted up the bank?"
Gibbs almost smiled; Ziva's grasp of idioms had improved immeasurably over the years, but in moments of stress, she tended to relapse. "His name was Dr Conrad Fiscella – he held up the bank so he could get to the CEO who was head of a grant foundation that recently canceled his research funding."
While they talked, Dr Janzen drew Ziva over to sit on the exam table, while he checked her vitals. As she extended her arm for a blood pressure cuff, Ziva asked, "What sort of research?"
"He worked for the CDC – Centers for Disease Control – in Atlanta." He saw a shadow of fear Ziva's eyes, and noted that the pupils of her eyes were mere pinpricks. "He wasn't involved with any infectious diseases, he was doing research on an inherited disorder."
Janzen finished his brief exam and made some notes on a clipboard, then took a quick look under the dressing on Ziva's neck. He was about to step away when he saw Ziva rub her hands again, the gesture almost one of annoyance. "Are your hands cold?" he asked.
Ziva looked down at her hands. "Not cold," she said. "They are..." she paused, searching for the word. "Tickling?"
"Tingling?" Gibbs suggested.
"Yes, that is it, they are tingling." She frowned, then added, "My feet are also tingling."
Dr Janzen stood for a moment, looking thoughtful. He noticed, as Gibbs had, Ziva's constricted pupils, and the sweat that had started to form in tiny beads on her forehead and upper lip. "I'm going to admit you," he told Ziva. "You have some mild symptoms – slightly elevated temperature and blood pressure, the tingling extremities, constricted pupils. I can't say yet what they indicate but..." He looked at Gibbs. "You said this Dr Fiscella wasn't involved in infectious disease research but just in case..." He turned to Ziva once more. "I'm going to order isolation protocols. Just as a precaution, until we know what we're dealing with."