Author's Note: Sorry, it's been a while. Not sure this will make up for the long wait, but here's some story.
Chapter 21
Tony emerged slowly from the bathroom. Brad was still there, but everyone else had left. He felt a frisson of unease at Gibbs' absence, but he controlled it. "Thank you," he said to Brad. "Now, what do I have to do to escape from this joint?" he asked, climbing into bed.
"I'd like another x-ray of your lungs, but like I just told Dr. Abrams from the Wayne County Hospital, you're recovering nicely."
"So I can go home?"
Brad looked at him searchingly. "Are you going to stay with Agent Gibbs again?"
Tony shook his head. "Not with my dad here. He's already put out that I didn't want his private clinic in New York. The man is insanely competitive." Brad raised his eyebrows, and Tony got the point instantly. "Yes, I realize that's a similarity between us. One of very few. No, I'll go home."
"You're going to have to stay there," Brad said warningly. "No going out, no having lots of people over, not for at least a week."
"What?" Tony exclaimed.
"Your pulmonary system has just suffered a massive insult," Brad said firmly. "You'll be especially vulnerable to any little bug that's going around, so I want you to stay away from them. That means someone will have to get you stocked up, so figure out who you're going to have do your shopping for you."
Tony stared at him in dismay. When he'd had the plague, Brad had made similar restrictions, but he hadn't been nearly that sick this time, had he? "A whole week? It's not like I had the plague."
"You had pneumonia," Brad said. "On already stressed lungs. Unless you want to come back for another stay here, go home, stay home and let someone take care of you."
Tony sighed. The breath caught in his throat and made him cough, but it wasn't too bad. He looked up. "When can I go? I'll need to make arrangements."
"Let's get the x-ray first. I think you can probably go home in the morning, though." Brad checked a couple of the machines, squeezed Tony's shoulder and then left.
Tony lay back in the bed and reveled in the solitude. Then he noticed a thick file sitting on the bedside table and grabbed it. Had Gibbs left a case file sitting around? Maybe Tony could solve something from his hospital room. That would look good. He flipped the file open and found a sheet with four photographs of women on it. All bore a superficial resemblance to Lola, and all had names and other particulars listed under them. It was a personal mug book. Sighing, he started flipping through to see if he could find her. The sooner the better as far as he was concerned.
McGee showed up an hour later with another cup of that soup, and Tony could have kissed him. Number one, he was a relief from trying to find Lola in amongst all the faces in that file. Number two, his dinner had been inedible by the time he'd been ready to face it. "McGoo!" Tony croaked. "You are a sight for sore eyes."
"Been looking at the file Abby made up?" McGee asked. "Did you find anything?" he added, looking at the sheet of paper Tony had been writing on.
He flipped it over and looked demurely up at McGee. "I haven't found Lola so far," he said. McGee put the cup of soup on the tray and uncapped it, then snatched the sheet of paper before Tony could stop him. "No fair, I'm not at my best."
McGee shrugged. "What's this? A list of names?"
"Girls I wouldn't mind dating," Tony said with a leer.
"Tony, all those women have criminal records!"
"So? I'm not going to call them, I just needed something to keep me going."
McGee scooped up the discarded pages and sat down. He started flipping through, looking for the names. "Hmmm, Shana Lynch isn't bad . . . but Megan Rice?"
"Look what she was convicted of."
"Tony!" McGee exclaimed sounding so horrified that Tony laughed. Unfortunately, the laugh quickly turned into a cough. McGee got him a glass of water.
"Don't be such a prude, McGoober," Tony said when he could breathe again. "I just needed to keep my brain engaged, otherwise it's a sea of faces. Where's Gibbs?"
"Riding herd on Fornell." He stood up, putting the pages he'd usurped down on the bedside table. "I'm not supposed to stay in here, so I'd better –"
"In here?" Tony repeated. "What's your assignment?"
"I'm supposed to stay outside your room in case you need something or if you remember something important."
"Hang out in here for a while, McGee," Tony invited.
McGee blinked at him and sat down slowly. "You must be desperate for company if you want me to stay," he said.
"Maybe," Tony said.
"I could get your parents if –"
"They're still here?" Tony asked apprehensively.
"Your father asked me to call if you wanted him. I think he went back to the hotel to sleep."
"Thank God," Tony muttered.
"He's been sitting with you since we got to the hospital, him and Gibbs."
Tony nodded. "Of course he has. And if Gibbs had left, he would have, too. He's not staying because he cares, McGee. He's staying because he doesn't want to be outdone by Gibbs."
"Tony, he's your father," McGee said.
"Yeah, I know." Tony started turning pages again. "Hey, get a load of this one," he said, passing a page across. Thus they whiled away the hours till Gibbs sent Mary Perkins to relieve McGee. By then Tony had very few of the ladies left to look at, so he finished them without commentary. Agent Perkins would not have been amused. If McGee was a prude, Agent Perkins was a prig.
"Anything?" she asked when he slid the last sheet back into the file, and he shook his head. She took the file and made a phone call to report the lack of findings while he turned over and went to sleep.
Gibbs slammed the phone down in sheer frustration when Agent Perkins reported that none of the women in the file Abby had given them had been identified by DiNozzo as Lola. Something had to give. He called Fornell and gave him the news.
"Agent Gibbs?"
He looked up. "Yes, director?"
"Your agent is found, he's in the hospital under guard, and the FBI are looking for his kidnappers. You've already sent both your other agents home." He gazed up at her, waiting for her to say something he didn't know or get to the point. "Go home. Get some sleep. You can't live on caffeine indefinitely."
"Try me," he snapped.
She glanced around as though to make him aware that they weren't alone, then lowered her voice. "Jethro, he's safe. The urgency isn't there anymore. If something breaks, I'll have someone call you, but barring that, I don't want to see you here or hear that you've been to the hospital until . . ." She glanced at her watch. "It's past twelve-thirty. Till ten a.m. tomorrow morning."
"If DiNozzo calls me –"
"That's a different case," she said. "But he should be asleep. Go home, get some rest, then you can go check on him tomorrow." It was an order and he didn't have a good reason to flout it. He rose grimly and gathered his gear. She started to walk away, but paused, turning back. "Oh, and Jethro, I'd advise you not to work on the boat. Get some sleep."
He glowered at her retreating back and left the building.
Early the next morning, Tony woke up to find Ziva sitting next to him. He blinked over at her. "I thought you were working with Fornell," he murmured, his voice hoarse.
"I was," she said. "But Director Sheppard sent me here today. I hope you do not mind."
"No, it's fine. Where's Gibbs?"
"I believe he went home," Ziva said. "I am supposed to ask if you feel up to working with a sketch artist."
Tony nodded. "Sure."
Jesse Salazar showed up thirty minutes later and Tony sighed. He'd hoped they'd send Abby with a laptop, but he supposed the default eyes and noses were just not coming up to snuff. Ziva left to check in as Jesse sat down next to Tony and presented him with a selection of sketches based off the composites of Lola that had been done by the hospital staff. "Here, which one comes the closest?" he asked.
There wasn't much to choose between them. The differences were slight. A narrowing or widening of the nose, a trifling difference in eye shape. Tony pursed his lips, a little worried that he was being contaminated by looking at so many similar pictures, not to mention the hundreds of women he'd looked at the night before, but he made his selection and they started from there. He kept closing his eyes and envisioning her face as she'd stood there, telling him that she was glad that Peter liked him better than her.
Salazar leaned back and looked at the final version when Tony declared it finished and whistled. "She's one cold bitch, isn't she?" he asked.
Tony grimaced. "No kidding."
"Now for the guy. Peter?"
Tony shook his head. "Peter looked like Peter MacNicol."
"Exactly like him?"
"Like I'm going to have trouble watching Ally McBeal after this, he looked so much like him."
"Ally McBeal?" Salazar repeated. "What about NUMB3RS or 24? Or say . . . Dragonslayer?"
"Wrong age," Tony replied. "And I think his eyes are slightly darker, but aside from that, he looks like Peter MacNicol. So much so that I wondered if he took the name Peter as a joke."
Salazar did a few internet searches and finally pulled up a cast picture from Ally McBeal. Tony looked at the smiling face and grimaced. "That's him. Eyes a little darker, face maybe a little narrower, but otherwise, that's him."
Following those instructions, Salazar drew up a sketch. Tony made a few slight alterations, but it was not comfortable looking at the face. "How's this?" Salazar asked, finally.
"You got it," Tony said, turning away.
"You sure?" Salazar asked.
"He's sure," said a familiar voice from the doorway, and Tony looked up. It was amazing what a difference it made to his sense of security to have Gibbs in the room. Muscles he hadn't known were tense relaxed. "Let me see?"
Salazar relinquished the picture to Gibbs, who looked at it with an unreadable expression. "Get it to Fornell and make sure we have it, too. Is the other one done?" Salazar handed him the sketch of Lola and Gibbs raised his eyebrows. "Good," was all he said, though. He handed the picture back to Salazar and the sketch artist left with a nod to Tony. "How are you feeling, DiNozzo?"
"All ready to come back to work," Tony said. His voice cooperated right up until the last word, where it utterly failed him and the croak led to a mild coughing fit.
"Yeah, you sound it," Gibbs replied, sounding amused. He poured him a glass of water and Tony took it gratefully. "Dr. Pitt says he's probably going to release you today, but that you intend to go back to your apartment?" The words and tone carried no emotional baggage, but there was a guarded look in Gibbs' eyes.
Tony bit his lip. "I just didn't want to cause a ruckus. It's not that I don't want to stay at your place, honestly, I'd rather, but my dad can be so competitive and I just didn't –"
"This for your protection, DiNozzo, or for mine?" Tony shrugged helplessly. He didn't know the answer to the question. Gibbs gazed at him for a moment, then sighed. "I'll have Ziva start laying in provisions at your place. I'll feel better about things if someone stays with you." Tony nodded, feeling obscurely let down. "I'm going to go check in with Fornell. I'll be back here after lunch to drive you home."
Tony smiled weakly. "Thanks, Boss."
Miranda, the morning nurse, arrived and said, "You're scheduled for an x-ray in half an hour, so let's get you into a wheelchair."
"I could walk," he suggested. She smiled and shook her head. While Tony didn't particularly want to go in a wheelchair, it beat being wheeled around on a gurney, so he let her guide him into the seat. "You just like to drive," he said, giving her a flirtatious look.
"True enough," she said. They took a left going out the door, and Tony wondered where his babysitter was. Ziva had left when Jesse came in, then Gibbs had come and Jesse had gone. Gibbs had said something about sending Ziva to stock Tony's place, so maybe there wasn't a minder at the moment. Bethesda was a military base, though, so he figured he was probably pretty safe. His panic hadn't so much died as gone into abeyance. Gibbs was looking for Peter and Lola. That meant they would be caught. He put out of his mind the knowledge that even Gibbs didn't solve every case.
Miranda left him in the radiology waiting room and returned to the floor with the promise that she'd be back when they let her know he was done. The wait was only five or so minutes. He tolerated the cold room, the positioning, the holding still, the whole process of being x-rayed as well as he could. The cold air of the room made him want to cough, but he held it in because he wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. It wasn't even as if the technician gave him anything to look at. His name was Rodney. Ordinarily he would have chatted with the man anyway, but the effort to keep from coughing robbed him of that distraction.
As soon as Rodney clicked the last x-ray and told him they were done, Tony doubled over in a paroxysm of coughing. "Nice," Rodney said irritably. "Let's get you back in your chair and I'll let your nurse know you're done."
Tony glowered at the man, but his breath was too short to waste on an annoying prick of an x-ray technician. He got himself a cup of water at the cooler in the waiting room and then wheeled outside to wait in the hall. Another fit of coughing overtook him as he reached the hall, so he merely turned right and moved forward a few feet to get out of the way of the door to the waiting room. This left him with his right side to the wall, parallel to it. He rode out the coughing fit and took a swallow of the water, then leaned back in the chair. It would be nice to get home where he could cough in peace without annoying anyone.
A hand landed on his neck very gently, but he felt a sudden stinging in the skin there. He started to look up, but dizziness swept him, and he slumped back against the chair, closing his eyes against the way the world spun. The cup fell from his hand, and he felt hands pick up his arms and put them in his lap. Alarm bells rang in his mind, but he couldn't speak or even raise his head. He felt the wheelchair start to move and a familiar voice spoke above and behind him. "Tony, dear, I'm so glad you're feeling better."
Tony's heart rate picked up. How had Peter gotten in here? That was the whole point of moving him to Bethesda, to get into a secure hospital. Had no one noticed yet that he didn't have a minder? He forced his eyes to open, he had just that much control, and he could see that they were heading towards the elevators. Someone would surely notice it if Peter rolled him out of the hospital. Of course, for all Tony knew Peter was dressed like a corpsman.
As they approached the elevators, they opened, and Tony saw Joyce among those exiting. Hope stirred briefly, but she was looking the other way. Peter murmured something that sounded vaguely profane and turned into the hallway opposite the elevators. Tony struggled to move, to make some kind of gesture to let the people leaving the elevator niche know that something was very wrong, but though his mind remained largely clear, his body wouldn't respond to his commands.
Peter opened a door and backed him inside what appeared to be a storage closet. Tony watched the door swing closed in front of him on its pneumatic hinge and felt his stomach sinking.