30 minutes earlier...
The cold was unbearable. Even with his now consistent movement, running around the back of the truck as best he could, Gibbs wasn't getting any warmer. It hurt to breathe, in fact.
Slowly, it had become more and more difficult to continue moving about the small space. It was harder to think, too, and he knew that wasn't a very good sign at all.
Stumbling in his movements, he decided it would be best to not injure himself in the process. It was a possibility that he already had, and simply couldn't feel it. So, he ventured to the doors; the one place he was sure wasn't emanating the cold, and sat down.
Exhaustion was quickly overcoming him, but he was determined to stay awake, moving the best he could; rocking back and forth to keep up some form of circulation. If he fell asleep, it could mean the end of him, and there was no telling when his team would find him at this point.
At one point, he set the phone down to pull his shirt up over his face in effort to stop breathing in the cold air. But there was seemingly no warmth to his own breath anymore. Instead, he folded his arms across his torso. The feeling in his hands was pretty much non-existent.
It was several minutes later that his eyelids began to refuse his insistent requests to stay open. He heard the phone ringing, somewhere in the back of his mind. But he couldn't bring himself to reach out and pick it up. The ringing sound became distant; echoing. And then there was no more...
11 00 11 00 11
Present...
"Gibbs!" Tony scrambled up onto his knees to hover over his unconscious boss. His hands went to either side of his face, flinching at the freezing temperature of his skin. "Gibbs, come on! Come on, Boss, don't do this to me!" he frantically searched for a pulse.
McGee stood there in shock. He should've expected this, in all honesty. But seeing his boss so pale and lifeless looking...this man that they'd always assumed was some sort of superman; indestructible... And Tony, his mentor, who rarely showed such an open level of panic, now seemingly at a loss for what to do next...
But as soon as the thought left his mind, Tony seemed to snap back into action. He looked up at the younger agent, "He's alive...call an ambulance!" he ordered and turned back to their boss. As McGee fished out his phone, Tony went over in his mind what to do. "Best thing to do for a victim of hypothermia," he pondered.
When McGee was finished with his call, he turned back around to find Tony stripping Gibbs' jacket off of him. "What are you doing?"
"Don't happen to have a sleeping bag in that pack of yours, do ya, McBoyscout?"
Almost instantly, Tim realized what he was planning to do. "Uh...no," he replied. "But I do have a Mylar blanket," he said as he swung off his back and knelt with it on the ground.
"It'll have to do, until they get here," Tony said as he began removing the rest of Gibbs' clothing. "What's the ETA?"
"They said eight minutes," he replied as he pulled out the square package and began to tear it open.
"Help me get the rest of this off him," Tony told him as he began to shed his own clothes. McGee only hesitated for a moment before complying. "We can put our clothes underneath us, and then I'm gonna need you to wrap us good an' tight-"
"Like a sleeping bag, yeah. I got it," Tim finished for him. By the time he got Gibbs down to his boxers, Tony had his own clothes shed and in a pile with Gibbs', making a bit of a warm cushion beside their boss.
"Let's roll him onto his side, so he's on top of the clothes," Tony told him. They rolled him, and Tony took position laying next to and facing Gibbs. His arm went around to the older man's frigid back, and once his skin was flush with his, he violently shivered against the sudden dramatic temperature difference.
Tony didn't need to tell Tim what to do next. McGee immediately began covering them both with the blanket, tucking it snugly around them both, then going to the feet and tucking it under them there as well. He could feel Tony shivering through the blanket.
Tim stood and looked down at the display before him. This was no time for jokes, which kind of pissed McGee of just a little, since there were about a dozen of them floating around in his head right now. Hopefully, he'd remember them for later.
"God he's so cold," Tony said, almost whispering. He stayed as still as he possibly could under the Mylar. He remembered reading that rubbing the arms of the victim could be bad.
"He's gonna be okay, right?" Tim asked in a quiet voice.
Tony looked at him from the corner of his eye, "'Course he is, Probie. He's Gibbs," he told him. "He has to be," he added, possibly trying to convince himself. He pulled his head back a bit to look at Gibbs' face. His lips had a tint of blue to them, and he was betting if he were to examine him more closely, his fingers and toes would, too.
Tony brought his head forward again, tucking Gibbs' head a bit under his chin. "C'mon, Boss," he shivered. "We're both pretty close to naked together in a make-shift sleeping bag and I've got n-nothin' funny to say. Y-you're missin' it."
McGee swallowed. "Tony, you should be careful. You know, trying to warm a victim of hypothermia that way could, in turn, cause you to become hypothermic..."
"Yeah...well, I'll be fine," he retorted calmly. "I can worry about me l-later." McGee couldn't help but to be worried for them both. "God this is...killing me!" Tony said as a violent shiver wracked his body suddenly.
"Tony-"
"Can you imagine?" he continued, "I've been in here a few minutes...It's gotta be warmer in this thing than it was in there. Gibbs was in there nearly 23 hours! I'm already freezing! How did he do this?"
"You've always been a bit too sensitive to the cold," Tim mused. "Gibbs is...Gibbs. And you...well, you pansy out every time we go out to a crime scene where there's snow on the ground..." he wasn't sure what possessed him to say it that way.
But Tony was suddenly laughing. He wasn't sure if it was the boldness of the statement, or slight insanity finally setting in from the day. But when Tony's laughter changed into something akin to slightly panicked hyperventilation, he settled on the latter.
"C'mon, B-boss," he whispered where his mouth sat not far from Gibbs' ear. "Ya gotta w-wake up. G-gotta be okay...wake up an' sh-show us y-you're o..okay..."
McGee had never been so thankful, in his life, to hear the sirens in the distance...
11 00 11 00 11
Tbc...
A/N: There, see? I'm not THAT evil... Didn't even make you wait half a day ;). 'Course, we didn't really...resolve anything, now did we... lmao!