"What happened?", he asked tensely.
"We were standing in the elevator, about to go to the main entrance, when she collapsed," Ziva began to explain. "She said she was just nervous, but then it got stronger and stronger, she suddenly couldn't breathe and collapsed."
Nervously, the gray-haired man stroked his face. The day was already nerve-wracking enough, that he was now standing here in the hospital and had to worry about Jenny's health, was actually not planned that way. But who planned to have to go to the hospital? No one!
"No one just collapses like that Ziva, how could this happen? Had she said anything else?"
"Where was she going? What's going on between you two?", the Mossad agent sternly hardened to her superior. "For months now you've been sneaking around each other, barely saying a word to each other, and she sits at my house almost every day crying her eyes out."
"Nothing you need to know."
"Gibbs, it can't go on like this. There's something wrong with you guys."
"Ziva, there are things that are between Jenny and me."
"Ziva, you'll know soon enough.", he added.
"Gibbs, I..."
"The doctor's coming.", said Jethro curtly, and before he even hung up he could hear the young woman say; "Please call me later."
Without a reply, Gibbs had also ended the call.
"Are you a relative of Ms. Shepard's? I'm Dr. Jordan."
He nodded, but it felt wrong somehow. After all, they were both getting a divorce today. Legally, though, he was still her husband, so he could be given the medical information about her treatment.
"Can I see her?"
"Of course, I just want to talk to you a little first."
Gibbs swallowed, was it that serious after all? Wasn't this just about the nausea? After all, he hadn't looked too good earlier in the day... Was there a serious illness behind it after all?
"First, she's still asleep right now. Is..."
"Can you tell me what caused the collapse?" Both men walked down the long hallway.
"When she arrived at the emergency room, she described symptoms resembling a heart attack."
"A heart attack?"
Jenny had a heart attack? But, how ...? He knew she was under enormous stress, she had long nights at the office without having slept a single night in between. But a heart attack? Never would he have expected it.
"You know, the symptoms were again too vague for a heart attack, and after talking to her a bit, I was able to come up with a more accurate diagnosis," the doctor explained calmly, looking sternly at the man in front of him.
"Do you want to tell me those too, or do I have to guess?", echoed Gibbs, rather tensely.
"In medicine, we call it broken heart syndrome."
"Broken heart?"
"Your family issues are none of my business, of course, but from the complaints your wife described, this diagnosis fits very closely," Dr. Jordan continued, stopping at the front of the room.
"Sufferers express a twinge in the chest, also a feeling of tightness, they feel nauseous, and they get short of breath. The main trigger, however, is massive stress. In this syndrome, an acute dysfunction of the left ventricle of the heart occurs, which then leads to the symptoms."
"So, it wasn't a heart attack?"
"No, it just feels like one."
"Can I see her now?", repeated Jethro's question from earlier.
"She'll still be very tired, we have some tests going on, I think she'll be allowed to go home in the morning."
Nodding, Gibbs let him know that he had understood everything he had been told before entering the patient's room.
Hello!
Yes, I am also still around! I am very sorry that I was so inactive, but there were big changes in my life. I am studying now! But since I work most of the weekends, I can't say exactly when I can upload the following chapters.
I hope you like my new idea, which came to me the other day while I was studying and listening to the song "Hold My Girl".