AN: I did research the medical stuff, did my best…

Graduation Celebration Confrontation

Chapter 11

Lieutenant Barraclough took on the police work; "You do the work, you get the credit," Gibbs had said. "I've got two hurt agents to see to. I'll leave your SWAT team up to you." That was more than he could have hoped for, Barraclough thought, although he knew that the grizzly bear Fed with the bad haircut would be expecting him to do something. Oh, he would, he would…

Mari went in the ambulance with Tim; Gibbs and Ziva got a lift back to the car they'd abandoned and headed for the hospital, where Mari greeted them with some anxiety. Gibbs put his hands on her shoulders. "Hey, ssh… what's wrong? Is Tim OK?"

"Tim's fine, Gibbs… or, he will be. They're going to clean the wound and stitch it, and give him some blood; I can see him as soon as they're done… nobody seems to know anything about Tony… and nobody seems to want to find out. They look at me with the blood on my dress and they assume I'm in shock; they keep asking me if I'm hurt and if I want to see a doctor, but they won't listen."

"They'll listen to me," Gibbs said ominously.

"Come and sit down, Marianne," Ziva said. "I think you are a little bit in shock, and I know you will feel better when you can see Tim again, but you need to rest a little. I will get you something to drink, and Gibbs will find out about Tony."

"Anthony DiNozzo," Gibbs was saying patiently (for him) to the woman at the ER admission desk. "Admitted about an hour ago. Gunshot wound, upper thorax. A Federal Agent, injured in the line of duty. Shouldn't be difficult to find."

"How d'you spell it?" Gibbs was still patient…he spelled very slowly. "Oh… there's a Deano… that must be it… they must have spelled it wrong." She gave him a bright, empty smile. "I've only just come on duty." He didn't know it, but he was going to hear that a lot tonight. "Room 220. Up one flight, turn left." Thankful for small mercies, Gibbs went back to Ziva.

"I will stay with Mari, Gibbs, until she can be with Tim, then I will come and find you." Ziva spoke before he could ask her. He appreciated her thoughtfulness, he knew she was keen to reassure herself about Tony, but her assessment of Marianne had been right. Brave as the young Swiss woman had shown she was, she didn't need to be left alone just at that moment. Gibbs squeezed Ziva's shoulder briefly, and said, "Room 220", and disappeared towards the stairs.

There was an elderly man sleeping peacefully in 220, smiling in some pleasant dream. At least someone was happy. "I'm sorry," the nurse at the nearest station said. "We've just changed shifts, I've only just come on duty. Let me see…" She tapped her computer. "DiNozzo…" she sighed. "Looks like they spelled his name wrong in emergency." She tapped a correction as she told Gibbs, "Apparently a bullet was removed, upper left quadrant, under local anaesthetic, the patient was given a transfusion and a light sedative, was sleeping peacefully and making good progress when brought up to his room. Room 202. The wing on the right at the end of the corridor. The nurses on station there will help you."

Gibbs nodded his thanks and set off again. The nurses on station at rooms 200 to 214 were chatting comfortably; one was showing off what was clearly a new engagement ring. Their response to Gibbs' enquiry was a blank, "But there's nobody in room 202." One of them pointed to the card slot beside the door; there was nothing in it. For some reason, instead of the fury he would have expected, Gibbs suddenly felt absolutely sick.

He strode across and flung the door open, and the sight of his kid plastered in sweat, drenched in it, writhing feebly, attached to empty drips and the call button out of reach made him stop momentarily in his tracks, so that the two nurses almost cannoned into him.

"We thought the room was empty…"

"We've only just come on duty…"

"What the hell is going on here?"

The roar made the sick man's head snap up, although it drooped again immediately. His eyes opened, glassy green and struggling to focus, and he attempted to reach his right hand out as Gibbs got to his side in two long strides. "Tony…"

"Knew you'd come, Boss…" The gravelly whisper was barely audible. "McGee?"

Gibbs held the struggling hand between both of his own. His SFA clung to him like a lifeline. "Easy, son, ssh, easy…they're all safe…"

"You… you're not just saying that…"

"You know me better than that, DiNozzo. McGee was a hero."

The smile that lit Tony's white face was followed instantly by a grimace of pain. "That's my Probie… aah… ow, Boss…"

"Hold on, Tony, it'll be OK, I'll get help… just lie still." The hand was hot with fever, and the SFA's neck and arms bore a gritty red rash. Gibbs stroked his hair soothingly; he didn't know if it worked, but that sort of physical contact usually seemed to ground Tony.

One nurse was already running out of the room, saying, "I'll call Doctor Rankin."

"You do that. Ya want to explain to me," he fixed the other nurse with a baleful stare, "How my agent comes into hospital and I find him worse than when I last saw him?"

The nurse couldn't give him an answer, but to be fair, she went about what she had to do swiftly and efficiently, until a small, determined looking Asian woman in perhaps her early forties ran in. She would have been pretty, Gibbs thought, but for bone deep exhaustion that dragged her features down. Her name tag said she was Dr. Di Chow. Gibbs spoke before the weariness really registered, then regretted it.

"Don't tell me," he said snarkily, "You've only just come on duty."

The doctor gave him a brief, hard glare, before turning her attention entirely to her patient, clearly gravely ill. "No," she said shortly. "I was just going off duty, in cardio… when they told me that Dr Rankin hasn't shown up for duty here." She winced as she withdrew the thermometer the nurse had put in Tony's mouth. "Help me to sit him up," she snapped at the nurse, "I want this gown off so I can look at the wound."

It was Gibbs, however, who said softly, "Gonna lift you a bit, Tony," and began to raise the patient; the doctor gave him another hard look but didn't try to stop him, and Tony slumped against him, as the pillow he'd been lying on came up with him, and slowly peeled off his back. There was a patch of weepy discharge on it. As they tried to remove the gown, it stuck to the back of Tony's right shoulder; he hissed softly with pain as they sponged it off.

"What is this?" Dr. Chow asked, quiet but very angry. The mottled rash covered Tony's back and shoulders, and where they had sponged the gown away was a swollen area of raw, abraded skin, horribly inflamed, discharging nasty stuff.

Gibbs glanced at it in revulsion, the former Marine who'd seen a lot of nastiness in his time, and looked at her anxiously; 'help my boy' unspoken but clear on his face. He waited for her to explain to him. She threw the soiled pillow across the room angrily. "Fetch a clean one," she snapped. The gown followed. "Get rid of them. Bring me a gram of intravenous Amoxicillin, and a magnifying glass. Oh, and pass me that tumbler."

The nurse scurried across with it, as Tony lay against his Boss's shoulder, suffering silently, and trusting Gibbs, and this nicely bossy lady, to rescue him from this misery. The doctor pressed the tumbler against the rash on the patient's back and it stayed, although the surrounding skin whitened. "Rapid onset Septicaemia," she whispered to Gibbs.

"Blood poisoning?" Gibbs hissed back.

"We can fix this," the doctor said firmly. "If we move fast." To the nurse she barked, "Are you capable of drawing blood?"

"Yes, doctor," the nurse said meekly.

When she had done so, she was told to get it to the lab as quickly as possible. "Tell them I want the results now. They can phone them through to the nurses station." She injected the large dose of broad spectrum antibiotic through the canula into Tony's hand, and picked up the lens. She peered very closely at the infected area, and said, "Glass. And God knows what. What does this look like to you? The shape of the surrounding bruising?"

Gibbs didn't need to look twice. "A boot," he said shortly.

"Oh, yeah…" Tony muttered vaguely, "Those nice SWAT guys…"

Dr. Chow looked at Gibbs. "I thought that Mr. DiNozzo was a federal agent? Then why…"

"The SWAT team beat up first and asked questions later," Gibbs explained as they laid Tony down again. "Whatever's in that wound came off the sole of one of their boots. His jacket should have protected him; I guess it came off his shoulder when they put him on the floor. He'd already been shot by then."

The doctor's shocked brown eyes met his again, briefly, then she pulled the dressing off the bullet wound. "Mmm," she said, "This is becoming infected too, but the antibiotic I've just given you will take care of that, Mr. DiNozzo."

"Tony…"

"Fine, Tony, I'm Di. I'm just going to leave Nurse Francis to sponge you down to cool you a little. I'll be right back." She led Gibbs out of the room.

He began to speak, but she held a hand up. "I know you're mad, so am I. But please listen… First things first. Are you his father?"

Gibbs winced. "It feels like it. I'm his boss… and yes, he's like a son to me," he admitted quietly. "I'm his medical proxy. And doctor… I simply wanted to… apologise for my remark…" If DiNozzo could hear me, he thought, he'd faint.

"I've had worse. You're worried; it's understood. Now, as long as I treat that wound fairly aggressively, I'm pretty certain we caught it in time."

"Pretty certain? His life's in danger?" Gibbs was shocked, even having seen Tony's condition.

"Not now I'm here," the doctor said flatly. "He was on the edge of toxic shock when you discovered him, but the Amoxicillin will have started to take effect right away. Nurse Francis is working on bringing his temperature down, and as soon as I know what the infection is, I can administer specific meds. I'm going to have to knock him out, because that wound needs a thorough cleaning, and on top of the pain he's already in, it would be too much. I need your permission for that procedure."

Gibbs nodded. "You got it. But –"

"Some major mistakes have already happened, and I'm not about to make one. They should have given him an antibiotic right away;" she had walked over to the nurses station computer and was studying Tony's notes, "and there's no mention that they did." She paused for a moment as she read. "I only knew what I heard over my cell phone as I ran… but no, they didn't… there's no mention of the wound on his back, which means they didn't look. I saw some nasty bruising on his ribs just now, there's no mention of an x-ray. I'll take care of that."

"Anything else?" Gibbs asked sickly.

"He was left unattended; the two nurses on duty are good girls, but both inexperienced, they really should have checked every room as soon as they came on; and they should then have read all the active case files for their wing. If they'd done that they'd have known not to take any notice of the lack of a card."

The little firecracker doctor was simmering, and Gibbs didn't doubt that at least now DiNozzo was in good hands. She tapped a few keys, and a printer began to produce the necessary form. "Which they'd have known to do if Doctor Rank-in-bloody-competence had shown up to tell them so. I'll be taking this further; what you decide to do about it is up to you, Special Agent Gibbs; my first concern –"

"And mine,"

"Is Tony. When the wound has been treated, I'll have him moved up to the High Dependency Unit, where we can monitor every minute of his treatment; but I wouldn't expect him to be in there more than twenty-four hours." She handed Gibbs the form; he signed, and they went back to Tony.

"Hey… Boss… it already hurts a bit less… guess my penguin suit's ruined…"

"You and McGee both…"

"But… you said…

"He's fine, Tony – he got winged… but he's got Marianne holding his hand. By the way, you were a hero too."

"Ah. Er… right. Is… er… is Ziva here?"

"Sure… I left her in charge. She'll be here when you wake up."

"Wake up?"

Di Chow spoke. "I'm going to send you to sleep, Tony; while I dig the muck out of your shoulder. When you wake up, you will most certainly feel better. I don't want you to have a fit when you find yourself in Intensive Care; I'm just sending you up there for round the clock monitoring. We need to get your temperature down."

"Oh… can Nurse Francis… come too?"

Fortunately the sedative that had just been put into the canula sent him off to birdland before the doctor needed to answer.

Gibbs looked at his agent's sleeping face, free from lines of torment for the first time.

"Thank you, Doctor."

"Di. You might not want to watch this… I'm sure you've seen plenty in your time, but I'm going to use a preparation that bubbles like a witch's brew, to float the muck out, it's not nice."

Gibbs felt the doctor probably wanted to be trusted, given what had already happened.

"I'll go and see how my other agent is," he said tactfully, then added mordantly, "I left him in the Emergency Room."

Di Chow smiled wryly. "I'll let you know when Tony's settled," she said. Gibbs smiled his thanks and left; as he walked slowly back down the corridor, composing himself, he heard a familiar clumping. He turned the corner.

"Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs…..!"

"Ah, Jethro!"

AN: I promised to start making him better. Review, please?