Here's the absolute truth about this chapter: 1) I wrote two-thirds of it in response to Secretchild's "Fine is a Four-Letter Word," and it was because of this great story that I, with Secretchild's blessing, decided to write my story. 2) I also wrote this before we, the viewers, were introduced to canon's Anthony DiNozzo, Sr., I swear to goodness! Ask Secretchild!
Okay, that's enough. Thank you all for sending me such lovely feedback. Take care, and let's all be gentle with each other.
*****
He was dying. He was sure of it.
In the morning, after his breakfast of bland food, with bland liquid, Tony felt strange, which was a remarkable differentiation in his new life when everything, every day was strange. He would later say that he just felt kind of off. He had decided it was a bi-product of a busy day-before that had been filled with more tests, a visit to the cardiopulmonary physical therapist, a late night watching "Lion in Winter," followed by an hour musing over what life would have been like if he had been born Peter O'Toole. When he woke up feeling nauseated and achy, he just thought it was another one of those days. The cardiac rehab therapist had warned him about the "one-on/one-off" phenomenon of CHF. It was a wonky twinge deep in his gut, less physical than disconcerting. His hands were swollen, and even his ankles and feet hurt. If he hadn't known better, he'd have said he had gone out with his fraternity buddies the night before and killed off a case of cheap beer—lethargic, puffy stomach, dull and aching head.
This day was definitely "one-off." Worn-out, feeling queasy, Tony decided to take a nap, telling himself that he was just tired, that he'd feel better in a couple hours.
Until he woke up coughing, hacking, unable to catch his breath. His fingers skittered over the buttons on the bedrail, trying to find the one to elevate his head. And he coughed, feeling like he was at the bottom of a murky sea. Hands began to shake; limbs twitched from the lack of oxygen.
"Dorothy," he tried to call out, but the pressure, the weight on his chest was immense. He struggled to pull in breath, breath that left him in cramping rasps. "Dorothy…"
His stomach roiled, a burn shot through his lungs, and then it was in his throat. Tony pressed himself to the edge of his bed, leaned over the distance he couldn't traverse, and vomited. It seemed like his chest was turned inside out, his stomach, too. A crushing ache, a ripping ache. And still he coughed, and when he did, he felt the back of his mouth fill. Not mucus, but suffocating, all the same. His eyes spiked with forced tears, his skin prickled with sweat, and Tony spat into his hand.
Frothy. Tinged pink. And with each cough, his mouth filled with more. He couldn't stop it any more than he could stop hacking. It terrified him, this alien substance bubbling from his lungs. He spat again, just spat it out of his mouth, splattering his sheets, the front of his gown. "Dorothy…"
Alarms began to sound on his monitors, insistent chirps and warning beeps. Dorothy flew in, snapped off all the alarms, and inserted the stethoscope in her ears. "Okay! Let's find out what's going on," she said, her voice belying the seriousness of her work. She pressed the cool, metal head to his chest, and listened. "Sick to your stomach?" she asked, hearing what she knew she'd find—rales.
"I was."
"I see that."
"Can't breathe," he managed.
"I bet." Like paper being crumpled in his lungs, the sound was unmistakable, and it told the nurse one thing—pulmonary edema, so common in patients in end-stage heart failure. She had thought he had more time. "Why don't we get you fixed up," she told him, smiling, stripping his sheet down and off, palpating his wrists, the blue-ish fingernails, his distended stomach. She took in the swollen ankles, and listened to him cough.
"I tell you what, I'm going to switch you over to a full mask," Dorothy said, pulling the oxygen mask from the basket behind Tony's bed. With quick hands, she pulled the nasal cannula from his face, and cupped the mask over his mouth and nose. "If you need to spit again," she told him, placing an emesis basic next to his face, "just tell me, and I'll help you out." Sliding the elastic band over his head, Dorothy switched over the oxygen source from the cannula to the mask, and hit the call button.
"Yes," came the voice.
"Can I have the attending doc and anesthesiologist come on into room 245?" Dorothy said, slipping a blood-oxygen monitor over Tony's index finger.
"Sure enough," said the distant voice.
"Am…I…dying?" Tony managed, the mask fogging with each quick burst of expelled air.
"Not if I can help it," Dorothy told him. She pulled a few tissues from the box and wiped away the sputum that had dribbled onto his neck, his chest, that he had spat into his hand. "You're full of fluid, and your heart doesn't want to seem to get rid of it." She picked up his wrist, and Tony was grateful for the reassurance, and then realized she was simply taking his pulse. Nonetheless, he was grateful.
"What do we have?"
Dorothy turned her attention to the physician striding into the room and began to report on Tony's condition, and while she did, Tony closed his eyes and sucked in the oxygen, concentrating on trying to move it into any space that would take it. Again, the froth returned, and he wrestled with his fatigue to remove the mask. Dorothy was there to help him, lifting the mask, then the basin, into which he spat again. She dabbed his lips, and offered him a smile before securing the mask back over his face.
Tony was only barely aware of the two physicians working over him, listening to his heart and lungs, reading his monitor outputs. He fisted his hands in his blanket, panted on air that would not come, and hoped that Dorothy had enough sway to keep him from dying.
"Okay, Mr. DiNozzo," said the first physician, "you're not getting enough oxygen."
What Tony wanted to say was, "Take ya all twelve years of med school to come up with that, Doc?" But, his lack of breath precluded any attempt at sarcasm. He merely nodded instead.
"So, we're going to intubate you," the physician said, and turned to the anesthesiologist, who spoke to a nurse just beyond the entrance to bring him a tube tray.
Tony shook his head and squirmed, from pain, from fear. "No. No." The head of his bed began to lower, and Tony's hands grappled to raise it. "No!" A scouring cough raked his body, and his vision grayed.
Dorothy grabbed his hand, leaned close to him, and, brooking no nonsense, said, "Tony, I want you to listen to me. This isn't up for discussion. We're going to give you a bolus of medicine in your IV that will put you right out. I don't want you to be afraid, but I do want you to know what is happening. The paralytic may burn a little going in."
Tony chewed on the thin air, clutched at Dorothy's hand, and wanted to tell them all to stop, just stop. He wasn't ready for any of this. Before he could make any attempt at an objection, his bed was completely flat, and his pillow was taken out from under him. He tore at Dorothy's hand and pulled her toward him.
"Yes, Tony," she said, coming close to him.
Tony swallowed, peered into her eyes, and asked, "How long?"
"How long for what?"
"N…need t…tube."
She smoothed back the hair from his damp forehead. "Until you're able to breathe on your own. Your doctors will make that decision. Ready?" Tony shook his head, but squeezed her hand. "Okay, a little burn when the medicine hits your vein, and then you'll be asleep. I'll be here when you—"
Tony pulled his head up, gripped her hand, and said, "Call…call Duck."
"Doctor Mallard?" Dorothy asked, rubbing his hand. When he nodded, Dorothy assured him she would.
Like red-hot nails being jabbed under his skin, the Propofol entered Tony's bloodstream.
And when he woke up again, some two hours later, Ducky's kind, sympathetic eyes were upon him, and a plastic tube was snaked down his throat and taped to his cheek. It was uncomfortable, humiliating, and scary. Definitely an "off" day.
At least he could breathe.
*****
Ducky had called earlier in the afternoon, telling the team that Tony had taken a turn for the worse, and Gibbs had broken any numbers of traffic laws getting to the hospital. Once there, he was met first by Dorothy who said Tony was still unconscious and that Ducky was with him.
"Because of the situation, Jethro," she had said, touching his arm, "I can't have his room crowded with visitors."
"That bad, Dorothy?" Gibbs asked.
Dorothy's smile didn't quite make it to her eyes. "I'll tell Doctor Mallard you're here."
Alone again, with only his festering thoughts for a partner, Gibbs had waited out the time. He took calls from Ziva, from Tim, three from Abby, and to Tim and Abby he was unable to report anything more than, "He's still asleep." Ziva asked about Tony in only the most perfunctory way, but then told Gibbs that a head had been discovered in the Dismal Swamp, and that she would like to go out there alone. Gibbs gave her his permission, not that she needed it, and continued his wait.
"Ah, Jethro," the older man had said, bracing himself against the top of a chair, "we meet again in this…unfortunately appointed room."
"How's he doin'?" Gibbs asked, motioning for Ducky to join him in the gathering of chairs, which he did.
With one heavy exhalation, Ducky said, "The damnedest part of this all, I'm sure you'll agree, is this will amount to a stroke of luck."
"I can't agree with any of it, Duck, if I don't know what's going on," Gibbs reminded him.
"Well, of course," Ducky said. He spooled through his thoughts, trying to place the most positive spin on the whole situation, but he was tired. Looking at his friend, at the deep lines around Jethro's eyes, the ever-present ridge between his brow, Ducky knew he wasn't the only one suffering, and so he got on with it, as he knew Gibbs would expect. "Anthony presented today with acute pulmonary edema, or a gathering of fluid in his system, specifically in and around his lungs and heart. Because his heart can no longer pump efficiently, that fluid is collecting in his tissue. This, of course, presents a wide range of issues, but the bottom line is he simply cannot wait for a new heart."
"What the hell are you trying to tell me, Duck?" Gibbs demanded, his voice rough with indignation.
"What I'm trying to tell you, Jethro, is the great paradox of the situation," Ducky told him, clasping his palms together. "You see, because he is so sick, Tony is going to be moved up the transplant list, and that's a very good thing. Also, his doctors are scheduling him for surgery early in the morning to insert an LVAD, a device that will do the work of his heart."
Gibbs scowled, and said, "Okay. And?"
"In Tony's diminished state, any surgery is a risk, and this is a major surgery, requiring his chest be opened," Ducky said. He shook his head, and went on. "There was a children's book a number of years ago wherein a child was invited to a party, a most fortunate circumstance. Unfortunately, it was in Paris. Fortunately, he had an airplane. Unfortunately—"
"Unfortunately, I don't give a damn," Gibbs had said.
Ducky nodded, empathizing with his friend's frustration. "My point is, even though this all looks rather dire, the insertion of this device will provide a bridge between now and when he will receive his new heart, and that is fortunate, indeed," Ducky had said. "Unfortunately, it is the last resort before transplant, and if Tony cannot withstand the trauma of the surgery, there is no other option."
Gibbs thought about Ducky's words, words that scalded him. "Does Tony know?"
"Yes. His doctors have informed him of their plans."
"What's he think about it?"
Ducky considered his reply before saying, "I firmly believe our Anthony is simply overwhelmed by the suddenness of this entire illness."
Gibbs focus tracked to the doors leading into the step-down unit. "Yeah. Well, he's not the only one."
"He's resting now, but I'm sure he would like to see you when he awakes."
Gibbs reached out and patted his friend's knee. "Thanks, Duck." Gibbs rose, deciding he simply couldn't sit still any longer. Ducky joined him, and the two old friends contemplated each other. "You look tired," Gibbs finally said. "Why don't you go home?"
"I believe I will," Ducky had said, rubbing the tight cords in his neck.
"Good," was all Gibbs would offer. He found himself aiming for the ward, almost without thought. Ducky, sensing Gibbs wanted to be left alone with his agent, said his goodbyes.
Once inside Tony's room, with the whisper of the ventilator and the ubiquitous chime of monitors, Gibbs found what he was expecting—a sleeping DiNozzo and an empty chair. It was good that Tony was resting. In his estimation, Gibbs thought the man pushed himself too hard, and he had half a mind to call him every evening and order the man to get his rest, just like he was, for all intents and purposes, ordering DiNozzo to survive heart failure.
He was actually ordering Tony to survive heart failure. Not just survive, but to suck it up and stop whining.
The arrogance.
Gibbs hunkered down in the corner of Tony's room, elbows anchored on his knees, fingers twined, a rough thumb nail scraping across his lower lip, and wondered about his own stubborn, solipsistic tendencies. It was his nature to be confident and to inspire confidence in others. It was his training, his life as a Marine to command respect when he gave an order. After all, he was a man who could back up his words with action, who could instill trust in his ability to preserve life or cause death. In those matters of policy, of political unrest, of the just and unjust, infusing those around him with confidence in his ability to carry out and complete a mission was legendary. Mano a mano, no one was more self-confident.
But heart failure wasn't a deployable combat unit; heart failure wasn't a terrorist about to step into a carefully constructed ambush; heart failure wasn't a set of evidence, ready to be sifted through and connected, a puzzle waiting its imminent solution. What heart failure was was an unknown agent, one that didn't follow conventional rules of warfare, and none of Jethro Gibbs' training had prepared him for this battle. It was the unknown that gnawed at him, the complete and utter lack of control that bore into him. And in that fissure in his confidence, in his unreasonable request that Tony simply deal with it, Gibbs found himself battling another nasty opponent—reality.
It was also in this crack in his carefully fortified confidence that a voice began to be heard. It whispered thoughts from the deep recesses of Gibbs' consciousness, from that part of himself he so deliberately tamped down. Moments like this only amplified the voice, making it all but impossible to disallow that one particular facet of his life to reawaken. There was one niggling, one idea that grew in its insistence to be mollified, one buzz of a thought that pestered him, that attached itself to his core. What made it worse was he knew it the right thing to do. But to do it, Gibbs would have to somehow breach the subject with Tony that their plan of walking away from heart failure might not work out. Gibbs wasn't sure he had to stones to take that away from his friend.
"We need to close this case, for Tony," McGee had said, the impetus for Gibbs' shift in perception. Two jagged edges deep in his gut were created in the shift, and they rasped against each other, all day, most of the night.
So it was that in this darkening world, when unknown scores of people outside the cramped, dim hospital room ambled on—a continuous, chaotic thread of humanity—Gibbs steeled himself against the highly disconcerting "what if" and forced himself to "go there."
"There" was cold and empty. "There" was out of his control. "There" was a little too easy to see, and it brought Gibbs no small amount of pain to admit it.
His Marine training told him to protect his own. His special ops training told him to prepare for all outcomes, to cover his bases. His NCIS training told him to lead and command confidence in those around you. But, nothing can actually prepare you that your agent, your friend might be… How do you prepare for the fact that your friend might…
You don't. But you don't just accept, either. You sit with him, and you do what you can to make him comfortable. You learn to accept and roll with the new developments. You deal with it. You pretend that Tony's not that close to you, that you don't care that much, that even if they talk about the team being a family, it's really not. You pretend. You separate. You lie to yourself. At least Gibbs had that, so in a way, he supposed, he was prepared.
As it turned out, that's what bothered him the most, that there was someone out there who wasn't prepared, who might be getting a phone call one day about the death of a child, and of all people, Gibbs knew the desolation a call like that could bring. There was no way he could pretend away that type of devastation.
He scraped his knuckles against his knotted forehead and hoped he'd find the right words to let Tony know what needed to be done.
A rustle of noise came from the bed, and Gibbs jumped up to find the young man searching for something on the bedside table. "What do you need?" he asked, trying to figure out what Tony's fingers were reaching for. Tony mimed the action of writing, and Gibbs picked up the pad of paper and pen. He rolled the table over the bed, and placed the pen in Tony's hand, the pad securely on the table. "Have at it."
He watched Tony scribble out some words, and when he tipped his hand and pen to the side, Gibbs picked up the pad. "When Cameron was in Egypt's land, let my Cameron go."
Gibbs quirked a smile, immediately recognizing the allusion to one of Tony's favorite movies. One of his, too, if truth be told, under extreme duress. He dropped the pad onto the surface, and, lowering his face to mask the sight of his smile, he said "You're not dying, DiNozzo. You just can't think of anything better to do."
A skittering of pain crossed over Tony's face, and when it passed, he blinked, and reached for the pad again. "I never pegged you for a Ferris Bueller fan, Boss."
Gibbs laughed, nodded his head, and asked, "How ya doin, DiNozzo?"
Tony offered a noncommittal shrug of the shoulders, rolled his eyes, and drummed his fingers against his chest.
"Yeah, I thought as much," he said. Gibbs' blue eyes softened, and he smiled at his senior agent. "Tony."
Tony raised his brow and blinked. Air mixed with oxygen, and the mixture filled his lungs, and his lungs rose and fell, so rhythmically, so inorganically.
"What's rule number five?" Gibbs asked, shifting the pad for Tony to write.
Tony looked past Gibbs, through to his memory, hazy from the stress of having been tubed, or having spent so many hours in distress. His eyes shuttered while he gathered the correct answer, and then he wrote, "Angles?"
Gibbs nodded, his lips curling up on one side. "That's right, DiNozzo. Always cover your angles."
When the concept clashed against the odd hour to talk shop, Tony understood this to be one of those hard moments. He locked eyes with Gibbs, and when he saw the deep concern, when he realized that Gibbs' self-assuredness was lacking, Tony felt his heart rate begin to increase.
Gibbs leaned toward Tony, and when he spoke, there was a muted quality to his voice, and it did nothing to assuage Tony's growing fear. "I want you to hear me when I tell you that you're gonna get through this, DiNozzo. Can you remember that?"
Tony nodded, but knew it was more of an appeasement than an agreement.
Gibbs found his own stoicism slipping, so he grasped hold of Tony's hand, a symbol of their friendship. He shifted his grip on Tony's hand and decided he ought to look Tony square in the eye when he told him what was on his mind. He owed the man that much. "There's an angle we haven't considered. I think it's time we brought your father into the loop." At the mention of his dad, Tony felt a tightening in his chest. Color began to seep into his face, unusual and alarming against his pallid skin. His lips formed words that couldn't come, and so Gibbs filled the void with his own. "Your dad should know. A father should… A father deserves to know about his son's… About his son."
Heat scoured Tony's limbs, and his focus slid away from Gibbs, finding it much too uncomfortable to look at his boss. His brow tightened into a knot. He grabbed the pen, and wrote, "It won't change anything."
Gibbs pinched in the corners of his eyes, set his mouth in a tight line, and said, "I'm not looking for change, DiNozzo. But a father…a father should be prepared."
In that somber moment, when a past fraught with tangled and angry words crashed into the unspoken questions of a tenuous future, Tony felt himself begin to crumble. Gibbs' steadfastly held Tony's focus, knowing full well that he had caused this pain. And he knew, he knew the pain had little to do with contacting the senior DiNozzo and everything to do with allowing Tony to see the crack in his resolve that all would be well. Jethro almost wished he could apologize for having let the awful truth of the situation surface, but he'd be damned if he'd further the pain by showing any more weakness. But he wanted to. God, he wanted to.
Pain from the bitter reality of it all, from the plastic tube taped to his cheek and rushed down his trachea, swept across him like a harsh, arid, chafe-filled wind. Tony clutched Gibbs' hand, and reached out for the far bedrail. His nose began to prickle; his eyes began to burn. Tony stared at the innocuous, insouciant wall and tried to force back the emotions bombarding him.
"Tony?"
Tony throttled the bedrail and, crushing shut his eyes, felt his fragile grasp on hope begin to fail.
"Anthony." Jethro leaned in closer to his struggling friend, rested his hand above the pillow, and took note of the single pool of tears collecting near the corner of Tony's eye. He knocked their conjoined hands against his breaking heart, and told him, "It's the right thing to do."
Tony crushed shut his eyes, allowing one tear to escape. "Okay," he meant to say, but no sound escaped. Didn't matter. Gibbs knew.
"Good. Good. I'll make the call in the morning," Gibbs said, laying his cool hand against Tony's feverish brow. Tony nodded. Slipping. Slipping. "Get some sleep. You have a big day tomorrow. You're gonna be fine."
For the first time, Tony took no comfort or confidence in Jethro Gibbs' word.
*****
"This is usually about the time when Gibbs strolls through my door and hands me a Caf-Pow," Abby said.
Quickly glancing her way, Tim said, "Hey, I handed you a Caf-Pow when I came down."
"Yeah, but Gibbs does it in a kind of freaky, precognitive sort of way," she said, waving her fingers next to the computer screen. "You, on the other hand, brought me my master after I texted you, not that it isn't appreciated."
"He's not psychic, you know."
"I knew you were gonna say that, Timmy."
They stared at the screen, at the seemingly endless data, the tickertape of code. An odiferous, gangrenous weed, the case bloomed in front of them, over and over. Although the specifics were unclear, the initial understanding was this thumb drive that Justin Chen had so cleverly hidden and that Tony had so perceptively uncovered was the key to unlock the case. Now that it was unlocked, it was like a high-tech junk drawer, full of all sorts of treasures, as well as junk.
"Okay," Tim said, cradling his aching head in his hand, "we're obviously not looking at a Ping of Death."
"Or a Smurf Attack," Abby said, positioned much the same.
"So, you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"If you're thinking you should be at the hospital, ready to write Tony's blood type and where to cut on his chest with a permanent marker, then yes, that's what I'm thinking," Abby said, never taking her sight from the scrolling data.
Tim pivoted his chin in his hand, squishing his cheek in his palm, and said, "Actually, I was thinking 'keylogger.'"
"Oh," she said. "Well, yeah, I guess I was thinking that, too, along with the whole drawing on Tony's chest thing."
Tim kept his eyes on her and her tenuous grasp on remaining calm in light of Tony's surgery. It was a valiant effort, Tim thought.
When Ducky had called to tell them about Tony's prognosis, Abby had gone into "ohmygod" mode, flapping her hands, walking in circles, repeating the phrase over and over. Tim knew better than to try to stop her. It was just her way of cycling through the initial fear. Finally, after a minute or so, she came to a complete stop, turned to face Tim, and stated, "This is not a bad thing."
"No, it's not," Tim assured her.
"With this thing—"
"An LVAD, left ventricle assist device."
"Right, with that, Tony will be able to walk around," Abby said, repeating what Ducky had told them.
Understanding the technology a little better than ninety-nine percent of the population, having worked on making LVADs more compact, with fewer electrical problems while he was a student at Johns Hopkins, Tim filtered out the esoteric information he had at his disposal and went with the more general information. "Yeah, I mean, potentially he'll be ambulatory, if he's on one with a power pack, but he may require one that tethers him to an air-powered pump, and that bad boy is the size of a desk."
"Not helping, McHopesucker," Abby told him, her fists drilled into her hips. When she began her list of positives once again, she did so while marching. "As I was saying, with this pump, Tony will be able to walk around, and the stronger he is going into transplant surgery, the better." She didn't hear a response from Tim, so she came to an abrupt halt, and said, "This is where you agree with me, Tim."
"Okay, well, yeah, I suppose that's true."
"No supposition! It's an absolute," she told him.
"Look, Abby," he began, ready to bring a little reality into her world.
"If you're going to tell me to not get my hopes up, you can stop right there," she said, pointing her finger at him accusatorily. "I won't let you take this from me."
He knew she was right. And although his biomedical training and scientific mind rationally told him there was no empirical evidence to suggest positive attitude truly affected the outcome of another person's health, he did believe in the power of positive thinking to get through the night. He stepped in front of her, pulled her into a hug, and said, "You're right. I'm sorry. This is a good thing."
"I'm glad you see it my way," she said, hooking her chin on his shoulder, worn out from exhaustion of caring so deeply for such an ill friend.
It was at that point, when they both surrendered to the fact they were powerless, that they decided the best possible use of their energy was to continue on with Justin Chen's data. So they buckled down, allowing the code to fill the screen, occasionally recognizing keystrokes and passwords. When they began to identify specific, personal information from NCIS's agents and cases, they began to also realize the deepening horror of what Justin Chen was involved in, and what may have culminated in his death.
"Do you think we should, at the very least, call Gibbs?" Tim asked.
"Hold on," Abby said, standing up straight, pressing her fingers to her temples and closing her eyes.
"Um, Abs?"
"Is he here?"
Tim looked around the room, almost disappointed that Gibbs hadn't shown up. "Maybe he's waiting for you to call."
"Maybe," Abby said, hunkering down again in front of the monitor.
"But you don't want to call," Tim surmised.
"I just want the world to revolve the way it used to, with Tony here working on the case, and with Gibbs rushing into my lab, and with Ducky not spending all his energy between here and the hospital, and with me feeling like I'm not useless," she said.
"Useless is a word I would never associate with you, Abs," Tim told her.
"Thank you, Timmy," she said, "but until this case is closed, and until the universe goes back to something like normal, I'm feeling a little… something akin to useless."
"So, we don't call Gibbs," Tim said.
"Not until we can earn a 'that's good work, McGee, Abby' from him," she said, mimicking their boss.
"Which would be something like normal," Tim added.
"Exactly."
Tim inhaled and let the air out in one long puff. "Okay, then. We have a lot of work to do."
"Yes, we do," Abby agreed. "But, nobody said we couldn't call Gibbs just to check on Tony."
"We can do that," Tim said, reaching an arm across her shoulders.
Abby took hold of his hand, draped near her neck, and leaned into its warmth. "I think I just saw this program jam the anti-FUD protocol."
"I saw it, too," Tim said. "It's a killer program, except for the minor detail of potentially infiltrating all of NCIS's files."
"I hate this," Abby said.
"The keylogger, or waiting to hear about Tony?"
"Yes."
"Me, too."
Screen after screen, the bones and cartilage of NCIS flashed in front of them. And between each line of code, they thought of Tony.
Somehow, national security was an easier mess to wrap their heads around.
*****
They said the surgery would take a couple hours, and that Tony would be in recovery for most of the day after that. Ducky had shown up prior to the surgery and had been allowed to scrub in, strictly as an observer, so Gibbs knew all the bases were covered where his senior agent was concerned.
He had a call to make.
Even though Gibbs' days began with the sun, he was aware this wasn't necessarily true where the rest of the world was concerned, so he waited until O-nine hundred to place the call.
Stepping into the conference room, Gibbs held his coffee cup in one hand, his cell phone in the other, the number already keyed in. It was just a matter of hitting send.
So why wasn't he hitting send? Gibbs had no compunction about talking to people, especially about conveying terrible news. Just part of the job. He'd made countless "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this" calls, so why was this one any different?
Nope, it wasn't different. Jethro jabbed the send button, and took a swig of coffee. Two rings in, the line picked up.
"Yes?"
Gibbs swallowed, placed the cup on his desk, and said, "Mr. DiNozzo, my name is Special Agent Gibbs from NCIS. I—"
"Is he dead?"
Gibbs blinked. Brusque, he thought. "Uh, no. No, sir. Your son is not dead. He—"
"Then he's in trouble. In jail? What is it?"
Gibbs pressed back in his chair, jutted his chin forward, and said, "No, no trouble. Not like that. Sir—"
"Then why are you calling, Agent…"
"Gibbs, Special Agent Jethro Gibbs," he reminded the man, finding his sense of sympathy with the man quickly waning. "I'm calling as a courtesy to your son, Mr. DiNozzo. He—"
"Agent Gibbs," interrupted the senior DiNozzo, elongating each word, inoculating his name with scornful disdain. Gibbs dropped the phone to his lap, reached for his coffee, and let the man ramble on unheard. After Gibbs had enjoyed a long sip of coffee, he lifted the receiver back to his ear. "…took only my name, and I expect him to keep his part of that agreement." There was nothing Mr. DiNozzo had to offer that Gibbs found even slightly relevant, so he remained silent, not wishing to be interrupted by the verbose man when he did decide to speak again. "Agent Gibbs, are you still there?" Jethro drank his coffee and let the man wonder. Bastard. "Agent Gibbs?"
"Uh, yup. Still here."
"Mr. Gibbs, are do you have children?"
Jethro leaned forward, pulled the phone from his ear, closed his eyes, and decided he really disliked Tony's old man. After a moment, he returned to the phone. "No, sir, I don't," was his answer, not necessarily a lie, but he wouldn't give the son of a bitch any cause for further comment.
"Then you can't possibly understand the complexities of my position, the father of a resentful, impetuous, disrespectful boy."
Boy. The word stuck like barbed wire in Gibbs' craw, and his anger began to simmer. A brittle, sardonic laugh rumbled from his mouth. "Yeah," he said, nodding, "you're probably right. But here's what I can understand. Your son is in a Bethesda, Maryland hospital undergoing open-heart surgery, and to be honest, Mr. DiNozzo, he's not doin' too good." Gibbs paused to let the message sink in, and when an appreciable amount of silence filled the line, he went on. "Now, I didn't call you this morning to ask you for anything, and God knows I'm not calling because Tony asked me to. No, I'm calling because I didn't want my first call to you to be the one giving you the plans for his funeral." And there it was. There was the truth, the one that Gibbs didn't even want to admit to himself. Somehow, in the wake of such brazen selfishness and disregard where his son was concerned, the truth turned out to be just the weapon Gibbs was looking for to clamp down on his own burgeoning frustration.
When the voice on the other end of the line came once again, all the bluster and puffed-up indignation was gone, but none of it ameliorated Gibbs' anger. "Agent Gibbs," the senior DiNozzo began, and Jethro sipped his coffee. "Agent Gibbs, tell Anthony… Tell my son—"
"Nope," Gibbs said, rising from his chair, "I'm not your son's messenger. You have something to say, you know where to find him. Hope that's not too…complex for you." And with a quick snap, the phone was closed, and the conversation was ended. Gibbs took the final swig of his coffee, dropped the empty cup into the trashcan and his phone into his pocket, and moved on with his day.
*****