Over the last few months, there were times when Abby was assigned so many cases in such a short amount of time. Largely fueled by Caf-POW and running on very little sleep, hardly leaving her lab in an attempt to stem the tide, she pushed on as much as she could. Tony, Ziva, and McGee started noticing her odd behavior over the last few days, but attributed it to her just being under more stress than usual. She was working lots of overtime; her displeasure was starting to be more out in the open. She would mutter under her breath about how much she had to work while the rest of the staff got to go home at end of their shift.
About a week later, her mannerisms started to become a little more erratic. There was countless empty Caf-POW cups (all the very large size, what else?) strewn around her lab. As Gibbs walked in, she snapped, letting her foul attitude show, and argued with Gibbs about him giving her work than she expected. She ran out of her lab up to the bullpen, where she shouted obscenities at Tony, Ziva, and McGee, and proceeded to trash every desk in her sight. Then she ran back down to her lab, leaving the coworkers in total shock. As she rambled on in anger and angst, she got more and more out of control, to the point where she was yelling at the top of her lungs. All the staff could do as they ran down to see what the commotion was, was to stand and watch as she demolished expensive lab equipment. The angrier she got, the more violent she was throwing test equipment around. Vance ran up behind Gibbs, who was watching from the doorway..
"What's going on here?" Vance demanded to know.
"Dunno, she just snapped and went section eight, just up and lost her mind. Must be all that swill she's been drinking," Gibbs said, indicating all the Caf-POW cups littering the lab.
Suddenly, there was a loud crash. Both Gibbs and Vance looked at the source of the sound and noticed that Abby was partway on the floor, partway standing up, but unable to stand up, but rather violently thrashing around. Both men ran to Abby, but couldn't immediately get to her because the bench and a machine had her caught. They tried to move the machine, but couldn't get to her in time before she drummed out a final kick and her eyes rolled back into her head.
Upon investigation, they had determined that in her blind fury, she had not been aware that something had caught her ponytail, pulling her one way, which then caused her collar to get caught up on the lab table, and landing in such a way that she was pinioned where she could not free herself. The way the collar had gotten hung up ended up hanging her. Later on, the autopsy report had come in: aside from the obvious cause of death, there was an excess of caffeine in her system – plus one other substance: opioids. The full inquest read: overdose of caffeine and opioids, combined with a lack of good sleep, contributed to her death.
"Stupidity, more like it," Gibbs muttered as he read the report.
Vance nodded. "On her part? Couldn't agree more. What was she doing, taking opiates anyway?"
"Actually, she claimed she slipped at a grocery store a few weeks back, got hurt." Ziva handed over a report from the local grocery store.
Tony added more information. "Visited her doctor the next day, got prescribed oxymorphone for her... sciatica... strange, I didn't recall seeing her limp or act like her sciatica was bothering her..."
"Well, and there are surveillance cameras showing her walking into a rave club and exiting it some time later, walking like she's high as a kite." McGee raised an eyebrow.
"Died of stupidity, I guess," Gibbs said, closing the file. "Case closed."