It was a long night, visiting the hospital, making sure Kelly and Michael ate and taking care of their young grandson. They were pretty lucky though and Mason was a fairly easy child, all things considered. Thankfully, Maddie Tyler stopped in with a change of clothes for both parents and his father provided some emotional support as well.
Knowing their schedule, Maddie offered to take Mason for the night, more than willing to watch her surrogate nephew and support her childhood best friend.
Still, hitting the rack, sleep didn't come easy to either Jethro or Shannon that night. The situation was stressful no matter which way you sliced it. The lack of sleep wasn't new to Jethro for a variety of reasons but the combat-veteran-turned-agent was tired, so he grabbed a tray of three large black coffees from Elaine's dinner on his way into the Navy Yard that morning.
"The victim is Lloyd Grunfeld," McGee informed him. "He's a seventy-one-year-old, recently widowed, Vietnam vet. For the last thirty-one years, he's managed an on-base dry cleaning shop at Quantico."
Ziva jumped in to speak. "District Hospital says that he checked in last night with the same symptoms as our twenty-four afflicted children."
He sighed. That number's gone up. "Twenty-nine."
"Sky-high fever, respiratory distress," Ziva continued. "However, before they could get Grunfeld in a bed, he collapsed and died on the ER floor."
"We've got his home quarantined until we know what killed him," DiNozzo added as he audibly hung up his black desk phone.
"What about the BOLO on Comey?" he inquired.
"No hits yet," DiNozzo replied with a subtle note of irritation in his tone. "The landlord said he was close to eviction, but moved out on his own."
"We spoke to some of his former co-workers at the research lab," McGee said, jumping back in. "Sounds like Dr. Max was a pretty odd guy."
"Doctor?" he asked.
"Doctor, Doctor!" DiNozzo confirmed. "That's what he called himself."
"Took his job as a lab assistant a little too seriously," Ziva remarked.
McGee spoke up yet again. "Boastful, self-important. Especially around the ladies, who considered him more annoying than dangerous."
His Senior Field Agent chimed back in. "That is until the mould spores went bye-bye."
"How toxic are these things?" he inquired. I know mould's pretty bad but it couldn't do this, could it? It just seems… off.
"Well, they're not exactly anthrax," McGee said, "but the spores are more than capable of making someone sick if ingested or inhaled over time."
Yeah, that's what I thought. He glanced between Grunfeld and Comey's ID photos up on the plasma screen. "It's got to be connected."
"Well," Ziva said, "we've requisitioned surveillance on Grunfeld and some of the kids. That will hopefully tell us if they've crossed paths."
Just then, Jethro's cell phone started ringing. Taking a quick glance at the call display, he answered the incoming call. "Yeah, Duck?"
His long-time friend didn't miss a beat. "Jethro, can you come down?"
"Yeah," he readily agreed. "Be right down." Closing his flip phone, he shoved it into the right pocket of his suit jacket. He then made his way over to the main elevator.
Downstairs, Ducky and Palmer were performing an autopsy on Grunfeld. The duo were downing hazmat suits. Jethro stopped to listen before barging in. Happier to be able to deal with an older victim than processing through kid data, Palmer voiced his concerns about fatherhood to Ducky.
"And now with this adoption becoming a real possibility," the younger man admitted to his mentor, "it's got me wondering if I'm even ready."
"Ready?" the medical examiner reiterated.
"To be a father," Palmer clarified. "Consigned to a lifetime of worry. There are so many things that can go wrong."
Ducky glanced up at Palmer briefly while still multitasking. "Well, that may be true, but with the rewards far outweighing the risks, I'm sure you're up to the task."
"I'm glad one of us is sure," the younger man replied.
Jethro finally knocked on the glass doors.
Palmer shot him a look. "Agent Gibbs!"
He waved at the lead Medical Examiner. "Hey, Duck. What's the word?"
Ducky started walking towards the autopsy doors. "Retired First Lieutenant Grunfeld's misfortune may well be the saviour to many children."
"What's the cause of death?" he asked.
"An extremely aggressive strain of pneumonia," the Medical Examiner said. "Yeah, his trachea and lungs were besieged by it."
"Treatable?" he inquired. Please tell me it is.
"Not to a man of his advanced years and diabetic condition," his long-time friend said. "But, uh, previously healthy children, yes, it should be quite treatable."
"Really, Doctor?" Palmer asked eagerly. "That's-That's wonderful!"
He eyed the much younger man. "Hey, Palmer… Things do go right sometimes." And if they don't, as hard as it is, it's still more than worth it. Even when I'd lost Kelly, it hurt but I never regretted a second of being her dad. It's so worth it.
Palmer's expression shifted. "Oh, you heard that earlier?"
He gave the younger man a small nod. "Yeah."
Ducky redirected the conversation back to their case. "That is, provided that Abby and Carol can identify the specific strain of pneumonia -" The medical examiner proceeded to gesture to the evidence Palmer was holding. " - from those cultures."
Palmer nodded purposefully. "I will get these up to them right away."
Ducky smiled and nodded to himself. "Yeah. Good."
Walking back upstairs, Jethro went and grabbed himself a cup of coffee from the stand outside and called his wife and daughter. He then went back up to their squad room to check in with his team and try to get some of his pending paperwork done. He couldn't do much more until Abby and Carol's lab test results came back or his field agents had found them a new lead.
Two and a half hours later, Jethro called and ordered his team and himself some lunch from General Lee's Chinese restaurant. They were all drained as it was, and he wanted to ensure his team was taken care of despite the craziness.
He'd just finished eating and grabbing a coffee when he finally got the phone call from Abby asking her to meet both her and Carol down in the forensics lab.
Abby smiled, a large Caf-Pow in hand, as he finally walked in. "Hey, Gibbs!"
"You got news for me, Abs?" he asked.
"Yup," the head of forensic science stated happily. "Looks like old man Grunfeld died of Streptococcus pneumoniae."
"Didn't look like strep before," Carol said, "but the cultures came back positive."
"And it's the same bacterium that's been infecting the kids," Palmer added.
"So, what now?" he questioned.
Just called the hospitals, and they're administering the correct antibiotics as we speak.
Should just be a matter of time, and the kids will be right as rain. Here's to healthy kids, and Jimmy being a daddy!
"Woah, woah! But that's still just potentially, Abby." Palmer gave a weak chuckle as he continued speaking. "Don't want to get ahead of ourselves."
The Supervisory Special Agent eyed Abby. "For once, I'm with Palmer."
Palmer smiled and then went straight-faced. "Wait… You are?"
He nodded grimly and made his way out of the lab and back up to the squad room. He wasn't going to get into it with Palmer but he agreed that the young man shouldn't get too ahead of himself. He could easily remember how it felt when he and Shannon were trying for a second child after having Kelly and all the tests kept coming back negative after negative. It hurt. A lot. That wasn't the only reason for the grim expression he'd sported, though. He felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Up in the squad room, his field agents were watching the surveillance and home video footage of Grunfeld and some of the children that they had requested in an attempt to see where they may have crossed paths or picked up whatever they picked up.
Jethro gave them the strep news and his team was relieved, but Jethro still wanted to find the source. McGee's relief over little Emma Daly was palpable. Not much later, a BOLO hit finally come back on Comey. Based on the fact that he reportedly likes the ladies, Jethro decided to send in Ziva.
His surrogate daughter fashioned a meet-cute with Comey at this small Christmas Tree lot where he worked. She told him she temped at Lasbynthe and calls him Dr. Max and inquired as to what such a smart guy is doing working at a Christmas Tree lot. Of course, he didn't know when to quit and admitted to Ziva that he was living out of his van. Ziva played to the man's ego, the man explaining that he likes to experiment. He claimed he didn't have to be a doctor to save the world. Unfortunately, during his interrogation, the man claimed he just wanted to make Bernadette his girlfriend sick so that he could nurse her back to health and she'd appreciate him more. He didn't do it because he hadn't worked out the cure yet.
Jethro conferred with Ducky who thought Comey was delusional and dangerous. Ducky thought if Bernadette existed she had no idea who Comey was. The medical examiner was also not convinced that the mould spores they recovered from the man's van were sufficient to induce strep pneumonia.
Unfortunately, that was when Abby walked into autopsy to drop the other metaphorical shoe. "It's not strep pneumonia."
He eyed Abby with a crestfallen look. "What is it?"
"Well," Abby stated, "all the doctors agreed with our initial findings, but the kids aren't responding to the antibiotics for strep. And it seems like the bacterium is mutating into something else... something way, way, worse. They're developing lesions now and I'm really, really bummed."
Ducky's expression matched his. "That makes two of us."
Sighing, Jethro walked out of autopsy so he could fill in the director who was at home with his family due to the late hour. The family had just finished eating dinner and was now decorating the Christmas tree.
"So we're back to not knowing?" the director said after he explained the situation.
"It looks like that for now," he said.
"You'll keep this Comey fellow in custody till we do?" Vance surmised.
"Of course," he replied.
Vance sighed. "Alright, Gibbs. Keep me posted."
Unfortunately, an hour later they were informed that the sick kid count was now up to thirty-five inflicted kids, cases at no less than eight different hospitals from Portsmouth to Baltimore. They were all getting worse. They followed up with all the families. There were some acquaintances but no close friends. Most of the children attended different schools. There was barely any crossover.
All the non-medical personnel, meaning Santa's helpers, the candy stripers, all started heading home. Ziva mentioned having seen them the day before and suddenly Jethro had a thought. The base Christmas parties! Why didn't I think of that?
Ziva tilted her head slightly and eyed him. "Oh, I know that look."
"Me too," McGee agreed. "What is it, Boss?"
"The on-base Christmas parties," he explained. "We never looked into who all attended them. My gut's saying that's our crossover."
"Did Kelly and them attend one?" McGee asked.
He nodded his head in the affirmative. "Paisley wouldn't stop babbling about the treats and getting to see Santa. It was right before she fell sick."
Checking in with all of the children's parents, they all headed back to the Navy Yard for what was going to be a long night, cross referencing all the attendance lists for all the DMV area's on-base Christmas parties.
As he called his family to check in during the drive, he prayed they weren't too late.
