Gibbs glanced around the empty waiting room; the ticking of the clock echoed around the room, bouncing off the walls. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes, the events of the day beginning to take their toll as the adrenaline rush that had gotten him through so far wore off. He had never expected to fail. The thought had lurked in the back of his mind, but he had always thought he would get there in time. He closed his eyes as his head fell back against the wall behind him. The time spent waiting for the air ambulance had felt like hours, and Jenny hadn't stirred once. He'd never known her to be so still. Even when she slept she tossed and turned, muttering incoherently. It was her stillness that had terrified him, even more than the blood that surrounded her. The image of her just lying there refused to leave his head.
The door clicked open, and Gibbs's head flew up as he jumped to his feet; his muscles relaxing slightly as Mike walked into the room, a cup of coffee gripped in each hand. He jerkily reached one arm out, offering one to Gibbs.
"Thought you could use this."
Nodding, Gibbs took it. As he sat back down his tense muscles screamed in protest. He took a gulp of the scalding liquid and grimaced at the weak, tasteless beverage. He shot a questioning glance in Mike's direction, and the older man shrugged.
"They don't do designer coffee in hospitals." But the slightly amused look on his face drifted away to be replaced with one of concern. He opened his mouth but Gibbs got in there before him.
"You process the crime scene?"
"Yeah. Bodies are on their way to D.C."
"My team?"
"Still here. They're just outside. Didn't think you'd want them in here."
"Right," Gibbs bit out. Words couldn't even begin to describe how angry he was. How disappointed in his two senior agents he felt. They had been given a job and they had let personal feelings impact it. They had let their guard down. Jenny may have been fobbing them off, but he had trained them never to accept excuses. He thought they would have known better.
Mike cleared his throat awkwardly, his eyes sliding over to his former probie. "How is she?"
"Still in surgery."
"Her chances?"
Gibbs shrugged, his eyes downcast. "I don't know. I'm not family so they won't tell me anything."
"You tell 'em this is an attempted murder?"
"Yeah. They said they'd let me know if there's any change in her condition." Gibbs sipped at his coffee again, steeling himself to ask the question that had been bouncing around his head for the past two hours. "What were you doing there?"
"She called me. Said she needed my help."
"She tell you why?"
"Not until I got here. She said it was to do with an old case of yours. One from Europe."
Gibbs scrubbed his hand over his chin, putting into words what deep down he had already known. "Paris."
Mike nodded. "Looks like Decker screwed the pooch."
"Always thought that case would come back to bite us. She tell you anything else?"
"That she was next on the hit list." Mike kept his gaze fixed on Gibbs for his next sentence. "She was trying to make sure he never got to you. She was trying to save you."
Gibbs swallowed heavily, and his heartbeat seemed to thud in his ears as he rested his head in his hands.
"She wanted me to leave her there. Wanted to face them off alone. Give me time to get to you, to warn you."
Gibbs shook his head. He didn't want to hear this. He didn't want to hear how another woman had thrown herself in harm's way to save him, especially not Jenny. The guilt when Kate had died had threatened to swallow him whole and he didn't want to relive that with Jenny.
"She shouldn't have……she should have told me." He met Mike's eyes. "You should've told me."
"If I had done that she would have run off. It was better that she had some form of back-up." Mike gave a wry, humourless laugh. "You always said she was stubborn. That she always thought she knew what was best."
"Yeah."
"Wonder where she learned that trait."
Gibbs frowned, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"In Mexico, you said that you regretted the way things had turned out between you."
"I did. Still do."
"But you didn't do anything about it."
Gibbs felt his patience begin to fray, his voice terse he replied, "it was complicated."
"These things are only as complicated as you choose to make them." Mike scratched at his chin, placing his coffee cup on the side table that separated himself and Gibbs. "That woman has a lot of regrets, lot o' them are the same as the ones you have."
He stayed silent, didn't want to admit that he had seen it. But that she had angered him so much with her constant secret keeping that he had turned away, rather than attempt to chip away at the walls that surrounded her. "It works both ways, she could have came to me."
"She seems convinced you didn't want her, that you wouldn't forgive her."
A hiss of breath escaped from between Gibbs's lips, as he flashed back to the night he had visited her at home, the look of hope in her eyes when she hinted that she wanted him to stay. The brief flash of hurt that flashed across them when he turned her down. He hadn't meant that he didn't want her, but Hollis had just left. His mind was already in chaos without adding to it. He had always meant to make it up to her, but fate had conspired to make that nearly impossible. "I'd forgive her," he muttered. "Forgave her three years ago."
"Did you tell her that?" At Gibbs's face, Mike shook his head in mild despair. "Thought not. Probie, what's it gonna to take for you to do something? I saw the look on your face in that diner, it's the same look you had seventeen years ago. Take the chance. While you still have it."
At that, Gibbs's gut went off. "She's sick, isn't she?"
Mike looked at him in surprise. "You know."
"Had a feeling about it. She told me she wasn't."
"Thought you were a human lie detector," Mike joked mildly.
"Think we both wanted it to be the truth so badly that she didn't have her usual tell. Or if she did I didn't want to see it." He met Mike's eyes. "How bad is it?"
"Not fatal. Don't know anything more than that."
Gibbs nodded, taking another gulp of his coffee. It hadn't been what he wanted to hear, but neither was it the news he had feared. Wanting to move away from the subject now, he asked, "the team still outside?"
"They better be," Mike growled. "What you planning to do with them?"
Gibbs gave a small bitter chuckle, "Vance called about an hour ago. Said after they processed the crime scene they were to come back here and provide security until Jenny's usual detail arrives. He's on his way as well."
"You going to let them be security?"
Gibbs gave him an incredulous look. "What do you think?"
"You're going to need to go out there and talk to them."
"Yeah." Gibbs agreed, staying in his seat.
Tony shifted in the hard plastic seat across from the nurse's station, he glanced over at Ziva, who in turn was staring at the floor. "I should have listened to you, you wanted to go find her. This is my fault."
Ziva shook her head, "I should have made you listen, I did not exactly try to convince you, did I? This is as much my fault."
"You think she'll be OK?"
Ziva thought back over her time in Cairo with Jenny. The way the red-head had stubbornly carried on with injuries that would have had other agents confined to a desk, or on leave. "If anyone can make it through it is her," she declared firmly. She snuck a glance at Tony, "What do you think Gibbs will do to us?"
Tony shuddered. "Don't really want to think about it."
Ziva was about to reply when McGee ambled around the corner, and slumped into the chair between his colleagues. "Just got off the phone with Abby."
"How is she?" asked Ziva.
"Hysterical. She wanted to fly out, but she's been ordered to stay and process the evidence."
"And Ducky?"
"Has to start the Autopsies the minute the bodies arrive. He's promised to keep an eye on Abby as well. He seemed a bit shaken, asked that Gibbs phone him when he gets any more news." McGee looked around their surroundings. "Have you seen him yet?"
"Given that we're still in one piece, I think it's safe to say we haven't," Tony snapped.
McGee stayed quiet, knowing that what had taken place was weighing heavily on Tony's mind. He knew that if it was him in this position that the guilt would be killing him.
They all looked up as the door to the private waiting room opened, and Gibbs and Franks stepped out. Tony and Ziva sat back in their seats, eyes fixed on the floor in front of them. Gibbs didn't even look at his 'senior' agents, but turned instead to McGee. "Everything go smoothly at the scene?"
"Yes Boss. Everything we bagged and tagged is on its way back to D.C. with the bodies."
"You speak to Abby?"
McGee nodded, "Ducky asked that you phone him when you hear anything."
"Good job, McGee."
The young agent was torn between the urge to beam at this rare praise, or cringe at the way Tony and Ziva were being blocked out. He finally managed a weak smile.
Franks sat down in the vacant seat next to Tony, while Gibbs made his way over to the coffee machine in the corner. When he returned he sat down next to Franks, not once uttering a word to his agents, who sat in an awkward silence. After what felt like hours, a small, portly man in green scrubs made his way around the corner. He paused at the nurse's station. The team watched as the nurse in charge inclined her head in their direction. Gibbs was on his feet in seconds. So quickly that he met the man halfway. The man blinked up at him.
"Agent Gibbs?"
Gibbs gave a small nod. The man offered him his hand.
"Dr Watson. I was the surgeon who operated on Director Sheppard-"
"How is she?" Gibbs interrupted.
"At the moment stable. There were a few complications in theatre. She lost a great deal of blood before we even got her onto the table and this resulted in her suffering a cardiac arrest. We got her back, but it was touch and go for a while. We had to repair a large tear in her liver, as well to a small tear to one of her kidneys. We also removed the bullet from both her right shoulder and left thigh-"
"Will she be OK?" Gibbs interupted, his nerves frazzled
The surgeon managed a small smile. "We have no reason to believe that she shouldn't make a full recovery. For the moment we're giving her another blood transfusion, and she will need intensive physiotherapy to recover the strength in both her leg and her shoulder. Although her existing condition will make the road ahead more difficult, it is by no means an impossible task. For now we've moved her into a private room just off of the corridor. She's heavily anaesthetised and will probably sleep through the rest of the night. However, I see no reason why you and your colleagues can't see her, if you so wish."
Gibbs nodded, and watched as the man turned to leave. Stepping forward, Gibbs's movement caused the man to pause in his exit. Gibbs gave him a small smile of gratitude. "Thank you."
"Not a problem."
Gibbs walked slowly back to the group, a weight having lifted off of his shoulders. As he drew closer to them, Franks got to his feet. Gibbs focussed his attentions on both his former mentor and McGee. "She's going to be fine, they think she'll make a full recovery. McGee, phone Ducky and Abby. Let 'em know."
McGee smiled and nodded, rushing off to find a quiet spot. Gibbs looked over at his other two agents, noting that their relief was palpable. He knew he had to talk to them both, he knew that Jenny would have been persuasive, but that didn't excuse the way they had acted. Everything was just too raw and he was still too angry to forgive and forget. He turned, motioning for Mike to follow him. When they were out of earshot, Mike asked, "What now?"
"I'm going to see Jenny, and then I'm going to finish this."
"You're not planning to do something stupid, are you?"
"No," Gibbs shook his head, "just planning to tie up some loose ends."
"And you expect me to just sit back and let you go."
"I need someone here, to watch Jenny. Until he's dead she's still in danger."
"You have three other agents here."
"Two of which have already screwed up," Gibbs snapped. He swallowed heavily, and tore his gaze away from Mike's, he took a deep breath. The next words wouldn't come easily, they were like an admission of how he really felt, of how deeply this had really affected him, "I need to know she's safe, and I know you won't let any harm come to her."
The older man nodded, knowing that this was a much larger issue to Gibbs than actually killing this Nikolai. "It's about time you tied up them loose ends anyway," he added gruffly. "You two almost have enough to hang yourselves with."
Gibbs gave a small smile as he inclined his head towards the door. "I won't be long."
"Get it done, probie."
Gibbs stepped inside the small, almost airless room, and his eyes drifted to the figure on the bed. She was so ashen that she almost melted into the sheets. He moved closer to her. He had always known she was tiny, but the high heels and power suits sucked you in, until you forgot that she was flesh and blood and not the indestructible force she quite often came across as. His hand reached out to brush away a stray hair that had fallen across her cheek; his hand hovering above her until his nerve slipped at the last moment and his hand fell to hers instead. Gibbs slipped his hand under hers, his fingers gently enclosing her smaller and more delicate ones. The warmth from her hand seeped through him. He'd forgotten how good it felt to actually touch her. He liked to think that this way he was offering her at least some semblance of comfort and reassurance - although he was aware that it was really the opposite way round; that he needed the knowledge that she was still with him. He stroked his fingers across the smooth skin of the back of her hand, and in a low and gravelly voice he said, "I won't be long Jen. Just stay with us. You've got this far."
It was with great regret that he removed his hand, letting hers fall limply back to the bed. He turned away, he knew that this needed to be done, that it was for the best, but he still felt like the worst kind of bastard for leaving her here. For not being with her when she needed walked straight past Mike, calling back, "If you need any back-up, ask McGee."
xxx
