CHAPTER 3

"What was that boss?" Tim's eyes widened as his boss' last comment began to register.

"You heard. Is Tony faking some ridiculous illness so he can get out of doing his job? Or has he lost the plot and created a non-existent illness to blame for it?"

McGee's eyes went impossibly wide. Did he just say…? That son-of-a… No, Tim, stay calm, don't lose your cool.

"With respect, sir," McGee said tightly, his anger barely controlled in his voice, "epilepsy is a legitimate neurological condition that affects 1 in every 900 people in the world."

"1 in every 900?" Gibbs said, giving McGee a skeptical look.

"That's right, boss. Doctor Harding, the neurologist that examined Tony, says that he probably developed it in his late teens, but that the whole thing with the pneumonic plague made it manifest itself."

"Uh-huh," said Gibbs, looking as though he'd be more likely to believe that Carson from Queer Eye was straight, than the scientific information Tim had just given him.

Tim's eyes narrowed, his anger beginning to show through.

"You don't believe me, sir?"

"McGee, you and I both know that Tony, while being a good agent, has a few unresolved issues. Being handcuffed to that murderer, the incident with Ari, the pneumonic plague. I saw this all the time in the Marines. You get a few guys who can't take the pressure, so they throw themselves on the floor, roll their eyes, twitch for a couple of minutes and get their discharge without having to get their hands dirty. I just thought Tony was made of tougher stuff than this, I never thought he'd go this far."

"Go this far?" Tim all but yelled, causing Ducky and Abby to stick their heads around the corner of Tony's door, twin looks of shock on their faces.

"Oh dear," Ducky murmured to Abby.

"I know," replied Abby, "How about I go and get that nurse before this all goes hinky?"

"Thank you, Abigail," said Ducky absently, as Abby took off down the hall.

Ducky moved inconspicuously down the hall, closer to where the two men were standing. He watched the scene in front of him unfold with worried eyes; this was not going to end nicely.

"Go this far?" Tim repeated, fighting to keep his voice down, it was after all a hospital.

"Damn it, Gibbs! Tony suffered through a four minute tonic clonic seizure. Not to mention the three absence seizures, one of which could have got him killed!" McGee hissed at his boss.

Gibbs' eyes widened in surprise at the tone in the younger agent's voice. The only time he had heard McGee get this emotional was when he, Gibbs, ordered the younger agent to tell the Deputy Secretary of Defense to 'Stick it'. The low, intense, angry voice coming out of the young man's mouth just wasn't that of Timothy McGee.

Then Gibbs' eyes narrowed. McGee seemed to know an awful lot about this whole mess. It didn't sound like he was just repeating what a doctor told him either. In fact, it almost sounded like he was speaking from experience.

"You seem to know an awful lot about this, McGee," Gibbs said suspiciously.

"I should," McGee snapped back, his patience wearing thin, "I've had epilepsy since I was sixteen. So I KNOW that it's not something you can fake, regardless of whatever the hell you think you saw in the Marines. Did you ever stop to think about the people who suffer from it? Or did you just yell 'COWARD' as their ambulance was driving away? Did you ever consider Tony in all of this? Did you even… …ah damn."

Tim felt the familiar fuzziness in his head, looked down and saw the familiar twitching in his hands. He sighed in resignation as the world slid in and out of focus. Any second now his head would… yep, there it goes. Oh wonderful.