Hey, guys! Here's the next chapter for you! Sorry that it took a little longer than I'd expected it to - I've had a fair bit going on recently, with regards to the fact that it's pretty much the end of the academic year, but it's nearly at a close so I thought I'd finish this and give it to you guys! I hope you enjoy it!
Upon reaching the front of the building, Tony was slightly relieved to spot McGee speeding into the parking lot of the warehouse area, screeching to a stop not too far from the van they'd put a BOLO on. The Special Agent jumped out of the vehicle and made his way over to Tony and the girls, sending the more senior agent a nod before narrowing his eyes at the Petty Officer.
"Is this Harper?" he asked, though he didn't need to look at Tony to know there was a nod of affirmation.
"The other two are inside with Gibbs and—"
The sound of loud sirens cut Tony off, and the group looked towards the entrance to the warehouse area to see flashing lights and…
Ambulances.
Tony's face paled slightly as he handed the Petty Officer over to McGee. "Get her in the car."
McGee simply nodded as he moved to seat her in the back of his car, ensuring there was no way she could escape without them realising, before heading back over to Tony and the children. Deciding to focus on Alice (whose eyes were transfixed on the ambulances heading towards them), the agent moved to stand towards her.
"How are you feeling?" he asked her gently.
"Worried," she muttered quietly, staring at the emergency vehicles for a few moments before turning her head to look at McGee. "Worried… because Andy's still in there…"
The vehicles screeched to a stop and their occupants spilled out, racing towards the building and heading straight inside with stretchers and various pieces of first aid equipment. McGee and Tony headed towards the younger agent's car and sat the two girls on the front bonnet, not surprised at all when a couple of paramedics approached to check up on the girls.
Tony had to admit, he was a little surprised when Jessica clutched to him tightly as the paramedic approached her, though he was glad that he managed to calm her down at least a little to allow her to be checked up on.
When the first set of paramedics emerged from the building, Tony breathed a sigh of relief to see Ziva walk out of the building, a bandage wrapped around her upper arm. Honestly, with all of the gunshots that had gone on, he was hoping that was the worst of it – a simple graze from a bullet, she told him. Bled a lot, and stung like heck, but not too serious.
That was when the chaos started.
Stretchers began to rush out of the building one by one, the paramedics attending to the patients as they sped along. On the first two stretchers, Tony recognised the injured from the suspect photos McGee had shown. The blood and the gas masks on their faces suggested injury – Tony was guessing Gibbs had something to do with those. Part of him was glad that Gibbs had at least incapacitated those two – still alive to talk but not strong enough to run away. Perfect for interrogation.
It was the last stretcher that emerged which caused him to hold his breath, his eyes wide.
Because there was no mistaking the teen lying on the stretcher, a gas mask on his face as paramedics rushed him into an ambulance, hands pressing down a piece of cloth on his stomach.
Alice was the first to move, trying to push past the agents as Jessica began to sob loudly. If Tony hadn't realised what she was doing quickly enough, he was pretty certain she would've pushed past and gone straight over to him.
She struggled in his grip as she continued to try and get to Andrew. "Let me—let me go!" she screamed.
Tony kept his grip firm. "Alice, Alice! You going over and disrupting won't do anything to help Andrew!" As she continued to struggle, Tony pulled her close, holding her tightly against him to try and stop her from struggling. "Andrew needs to get to hospital, Alice."
"And I need to go with him!" she protested, still trying to get Tony to release her. The Senior Field Agent looked to Ziva for help, who was working with McGee to try and calm down the startled Jessica. Upon seeing his look, she gave a small sigh, before moving so that she was in Alice's line of sight.
"Alice… please listen to me," she started softly, waiting until the girl was looking at her before speaking. "Andrew is in good hands. He needs to be rushed to the hospital as quickly as possible to ensure that he remains alive and well, and deep down I know that this is something you also know." Reaching out and placing a gentle hand on the teen's shoulder, she gave Alice a pointed look. "He will be okay, but you must let him go to the hospital first."
Slowly but surely, Alice stopped struggling, and once he was sure it would be okay, Tony let her go, stretching out his arms from where he'd held her tightly enough to stop her from running off. Instead, the teenaged girl ended up in Ziva's arms, resting her head on Ziva's shoulder as they watched the ambulances rush off, Gibbs approaching the others by the car.
"Is he going to be okay?" Alice blurted out as soon as she deemed he was within speaking distance, but he focused his attention on his agents.
"DiNozzo, McGee, get our suspect," he sent a cold glare at the woman still in the car, "to interrogation. We need as much information from her as we can get, considering our other two sources are currently incapacitated. David," he turned to the female agent, "bring the girls. You're coming with me."
"Where are we going?" Alice demanded, not moving from Ziva's embrace. When Gibbs could see that she wasn't budging until he told her, he glanced towards Jessica before back at the teen.
"The hospital."
"BP is 100 over 70 and dropping."
"Bleeding is stemmed for now, but we don't know how much damage has been done."
"Breathing is regular."
"He's responding to pain."
"Get him into CT now."
…
"CT shows a fair bit of bleeding."
"Prep OR2 now."
"Get him prepped!"
…
"Is he stable?"
"Seems like it."
"Not too much damage… he'll be okay…"
…
The first proper thing Andrew could remember was the soft beeping of a monitor somewhere nearby. Then it was the beeping speeding up at around the same time he registered the pain in his left side, right near his navel. Instead of a scream, all that he managed to let out was a pained grunt as he heard the door open and someone come rushing into the room. The beeping began to slow as he felt the pain begin to subside, and slowly he opened his eyes, meeting a pair of what looked like steel grey eyes on a freckled face.
The person smiled down at him. "Mr Parkson, you're awake."
The teen simply blinked up at the person as they began to deal with the monitor, pressing all sorts of buttons and taking different measurements before they turned back to him. If Andrew had been lucid enough right then, he would've realised that the person was a guy – a nurse who had heard what was happening as he'd passed and had rushed in right away to check up on him.
"Don't worry – I'll make sure your doctor knows you're up so that she can come and take a look at you, alright?" He sent Andrew a smile. "You probably want that tube out of your throat, right? So that you can breathe and eat on your own… well, maybe not eat on your own quite yet, but definitely breathe." He turned to head towards the door. "I'll be right back, Mr Parkson."
Andrew didn't register that the doctor had arrived until he heard murmuring beside the bed, which caused him to open his eyes. He wasn't sure whether to feel surprised or anxious that he saw the doctor standing there with Gibbs and someone he thought was Jerome, his social worker.
Brand new social worker. Because, you know, he hadn't needed one before.
Letting out a small grunt, his eyebrows rose when everyone turned to face him. The doctor smiled.
"Andrew Parkson! It seems you are awake after all."
He just blinked at her.
"How about we get that breathing tube out of your throat and hook you up to some oxygen in a less invasive way, eh? Just to make it easier on you." Gibbs and Jerome moved to the far side of the room, closer to the door, as the doctor moved towards him, the nurse that Andrew vaguely remembered from earlier following. He was startled when he slowly felt himself being lowered flat onto the bed, but calmed down at the doctor explained what she was doing.
"Nurse Whittaker and I are just going to remove your breathing tube, alright Andrew? It might hurt a little bit, since it's going to scratch your throat a bit, but you're going to be just fine. Afterwards we'll put in the nasal tubes just to give you that extra little bit of support until you're completely recuperated, alright?"
She was right when she said it was going to hurt, and Andrew was almost tempted to start thrashing about on the bed as they pulled it out. But it was at that moment when logic started returning to him and he realised that doing that might not be the best idea for his health.
As soon as the tube was out, he took a gasp of air, wincing when he realised his throat was scratchy and dry. The doctor smiled slightly at him.
"Try not to talk for a little while, and let that throat of yours get back the way it used to. It'll take a little while, and it'll be sore, but it's better for you, alright?"
The teen nodded, furrowing his brow slightly as the doctor turned towards Gibbs as Jerome.
"You can stay for a little while, maybe keep him company and talk to him for a bit, but he needs rest. And do not let him speak."
The two men simply nodded as she left the room, before turning to the teen on the bed. The teen who looked pale and almost sickly, and was fiddling with the bedsheets with a frown on his face. When Andrew looked up, Gibbs could see the questioning look in his eyes. The Federal Agent sent a slightly raised eyebrow towards the social worker standing a step or so behind him. The worker simply shrugged, and Gibbs turned back to the teen.
"You wanna know how bad?" the agent finally asked as he moved closer to the bed, his hands in his pockets. When he realised Andrew couldn't exactly speak (or nod for fear of hurting himself), Gibbs added, "blink twice for yes, once for no."
Two blinks.
Gibbs took a deep breath before beginning to explain, starting from the top. "You got a concussion, not a bad one. Pretty mild. Came with the bump on your head. Got some bruising on your wrists and ankles from the handcuffs and bindings, and bruises and scratches as well…" Gibbs had to pause there to stop his anger from flaring at the memory of the hand-shaped bruise that marred young Jessica's face.
Andrew stared at him, waiting for him to continue. It was clear that there was more.
"…and a fair bit of blood loss." When the teen's eyebrows rose in what Gibbs assumed was shock, he continued. "You got stabbed in the stomach, and there was a fair bit of bleeding, but not as much damage was done as originally thought. Still gonna take you a while to recover from it, though."
He seemed to deflate a little at that, his gaze moving from Gibbs to the floor.
Jerome took this as his cue to speak up. "Because of your extensive injuries," he started, noticing how Andrew's eyes moved quickly to focus on him as soon as he spoke, "and the fact that you technically can't be moved out of witness protection until the case is completely closed, which I've been told won't happen until after the interrogations," he glanced at Gibbs, "means that you're going to have to stay at the Gibbs residence for a good while."
Andrew's eyebrows shot up, his eyes widening as they focused on Gibbs. Gibbs who has a slight smile on his face at the shock on the teen's face.
"What, you think I'm kidding about this?" Gibbs asked, chuckling lightly at the fact that Andrew didn't even blink at him. "We'll take care of you when you get home, get you up and running again. That good with you, Andrew?"
The two blinks that followed were so quick that the two men almost missed them.
"I guess he is," Jerome said with a chuckle. He grinned at the smile that broke out on Andrew's face, before sighing. "Well, I guess I should check up on your sister, see if she's okay with it."
The smile on Andrew's face fell at the mention of his sister, and Jerome sent him a sympathetic smile.
"How about I talk to the nurse about letting your sister stay in here with you?" he suggested. "She should be fine with it. And she's okay too – Special Agent Gibbs can give you all the details."
Gibbs shot the social worker a look as he left the room, shaking his head slightly as he turned back to see Andrew with a questioning look on his face. He sighed.
"Alright, alright, I tell you…"
It was pretty late by the time the nurse allowed Andrew to have visitors other than Gibbs and his social worker, Jerome.
And by late, it was nearing one in the morning and Andrew's eyes were already drooping closed from the exhaustion of having to keep them open following a surgery. He hadn't eaten anything, and hadn't had anything to drink other than some water to soothe his throat. Plus, his bedtime was usually around 10 p.m., and even though he often woke up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night and chat with Gibbs for an hour or so, staying up this late wasn't something his body was used to.
The gentle gasp of, "Andy," caused his eyes to open sharply, his gaze landing on the two figures being escorted through the door. He smiled when he recognised the little redheaded sister of his, followed by his blonde best friend, Alice.
Momentarily ignoring the doctor's earlier piece of advice to "not speak", he managed a quiet, "Hey," before stopping at the feeling of slight pain in his throat. He really hoped these two weren't expecting him to talk a lot.
Fortunately, the vibe he got from his sister didn't commune that at all, shown by the fact that she immediately climbed into the bed with him, curling up on the side that he hadn't been stabbed on. Moving his arm, he gave her more space to curl up against him, smiling as she rested her head on his chest and soon began to breathe softly, indicating that she'd dozed off.
Alice, on the other hand, pulled up a seat beside the bed, on the opposite side to Jessica, and sat down, resting her forearms on the bed. She smiled up gently at him. "How are you feeling?" she asked him quietly, her eyes glancing over at the younger girl to see if she'd accidentally woken her up. The lack of shifting meant that she hadn't done so.
Andrew raised the arm around his sister slightly, giving the girl a thumbs-up. Alice's eyebrows just rose at his gesture.
"Can't you talk?"
The thumbs down she got in response answered her question.
"Why not?"
He used the arm closest to Alice to point at his throat.
"Does it hurt?"
Another thumbs-up.
"Oh." She hesitated for a moment, glancing at the bruises on his wrists before shifting her own to compare with his. For a moment she forgot exactly where she was, and why she was there – to check up on him. When she remembered, her eyes snapped back up to his, startling him slightly.
"How are you feeling, though?" she asked him gently. All she received was a wavy thumb hovering somewhere in between okay and not so great, which caused one side of her mouth to quirk up into a slight smile. At least he was being honest with her.
She didn't exactly expect him to gesture to her, though.
"Me?" She pursed her lips. "I guess… I guess I'm okay? I mean…" She looked down at her wrists. "These'll take a little while to heal, and my head kinda hurts, but otherwise I guess I'm okay. Ish." The slight quirk of his lips made her actually smile, and she looked won at their hands again. "I'm… I'm glad you're alive, though. You had us worried…"
The smile melted off his face at that, and he looked down at his little sister sleeping peacefully beside him. The hand-shaped bruise on her cheek that had once been an angry red was now an ugly purple, and he carefully brushed some stray hairs from her cheek, careful not to wake her. Other than that, she only had scratches on her arms and legs, which Andrew was grateful for. He would've been livid if his sister had been hurt anymore. As it was, he was prepared to fight someone because of how hurt his sister was.
Then again, he was also stuck in bed right then, and he was pretty sure he wouldn't be fighting anyone for a while.
Alice read the apologetic and worried expression on his face loud and clear, and placed a gentle hand on his own. He looked up at her with wide eyes.
"It's okay, Andy," she told him softly, a gentle smile on her face. He returned the hesitant smile with one of his own, before a yawn wiped it off his face. Alice chuckled slightly, rubbing the back of his hand gently. "Looks like you need sleep." The look he gave her just made her grin even wider. "What? You need your sleep. So I'm gonna head off and let you guys sleep, okay?"
As she got up to leave, he grabbed her hand, pulling her back down. Her eyebrows raised at the slightly pleading look on his face.
"…Okay, I'll stay." She moved closer to the bed. "But I'm not sleeping on those seats, so you guys better budge for me."
The male shifted a little, bringing his sister closer to him so that she didn't fall off the bed as Alice climbed in beside him and curled up closely, trying not to fall off the bed herself. When she looked up and realised Andrew was looking up at the ceiling, fighting off what was probably a blush, she poked him in the stomach, forcing a surprised gasp out of him.
"Go to sleep, Andy."
He pulled a face at her, making her giggle as he closed his eyes and allowed his breathing to slow, drifting off to sleep.
I hope you guys enjoyed that! Please let me know what you thought about it!