"Do you think there'll be an inquiry?" said McGee's hushed, anxious voice.
"Nah," said Tony. "We're all witnesses, right? We saw that Gibbs didn't do anything."
"Well, Tony, you and I weren't actually looking…"
Tony gave McGee a look under which the Junior Agent withered. Gibbs' loyal St Bernard indeed.
"I was," said Kate. "He did nothing. He was just about to speak when the girl just fell forward like that. She didn't even say anything. Besides, It'll be on the tape."
"Didn't think of that, did you, Probie?"
"No," said McGee reluctantly, as if he was a disgrace to computer nerds everywhere. "But what if we're had up for negligence…?"
"Just drop it, will you, McGee? Or I'll make you eat the inside of your computer. Into which there will be an inquiry."
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"The cause of unconsciousness is a mild concussion, Dr Mallard." The young doctor watched Ducky carefully. Slightly fearfully, as if Ducky was going to come and show him up as wrong. "It's not serious. But if it had been seen to sooner…"
There was a mutual shrug of understanding.
"She didn't say anything."
The young doctor nodded. "The force and placing of the blow would have damaged the nerves. She felt no pain."
Ducky gave a deep breath of relief.
"Only, Doctor Mallard… There's something else which I feel you ought to see."
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"There's a bruise, Jethro. Like this." Ducky traced his finger across his lower ribs and into his slight paunch.
"Do you know what would've made a shape like that?"
"That's what puzzles me, actually. From what I can see, and the four strips of deeper bruising, I would've supposed this came from a ski boot. If you remember that case of the Canadian helicopter pilot a few years ago…"
The doors to autopsy bumped gently closed.
"Jethro?"
Ducky sighed, but fondly. His old friend had slipped away, to pursue his idea. Not slipped. Jethro didn't slip. Just… left without anyone realising until he was already gone. Maybe it had to do with being a Marine. Or maybe it was just something about Gibbs himself.
He turned back to his surgical instruments, methodically checking and rearranging them. Chelmonski lay on the steel table. They had been born in the same year. Ducky in post-war Scotland. Chelmonski in Communist-controlled Poland.
"What happened that led our paths to cross?"
The other doctor remained motionless. His tanned face unnaturally white, his hair unnaturally still.
"And what happened to your daughter?"
There was a gasp behind him. It was so short and sharp it was almost like a catch of breath.
DiNozzo was sitting against the instruments cupboard, his head leaning against the lock that had been broken for years and no one had bothered to fix.
"Anthony?"
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"And what's happened to your son, Michael?"
A tall woman with a laugh like a braying horse. Leaning in right to Tony's face, a finger with a tasteless nail job poking at the cut on his forehead.
"A riding accident," his father grunted. And there was no need to the Look he threw down at Tony. He knew what would happen to him if he said anything else.
"Come, Elise," his father said, sweeping the woman up with one arm, and running one finger along her pearl necklace. "I'm sure we can find another Martini in my bedroom."
The woman laughed again. "Oh, Michael." And Tony was forgotten.
He always cried when he was younger, when his father gave him a slap for doing this or that. He knew it was stupid, because he never cried when he was older and he was told to bend over for the strap.
But that day he had made his dad really mad. It had been when he had walked in on his dad and the maid. In bed.
His dad had been skiing. The stuff was half unpacked, most of it was strewn over the room.
He had stopped in the doorway. His dad was always yelling at him for not knocking, but he never did, anyway.
"What are you doing?" he said, staring at the writhing peach satin duvet.
"Leave us, Anthony. I shall deal with you later." The voice was calm, but Tony's father's face glowed with fury and his eyes shone.
But Tony just stood there and stared. "What are you doing?"
"Shut up, boy."
"What are you doing?"
"Shut up!"
And he'd stood there and he'd said it again. "What are you doing?"
His father had ripped himself from the bed. Grabbed his ski boot. It was an expensive new model. It was heavy. He held it in both hands and he threw it.
It crushed Tony against the door frame. He couldn't breathe, just take desperate, empty, gasping attempts at taking in air. He was clawing at his chest, trying to rip it open, let the air in. The top of the doorframe thrashed around in front of him, and he could hear the maid screaming uselessly. "Michael! Michael!"
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"Anthony?"
Tony felt Ducky's comforting arm around him. He said nothing. And they just sat there together in the bright lights of the autopsy room; old and young, the Scotsman and the Italian.