'Babysitting

Hi, sorry about the tardy posting of chapters! We had a few dramas but now all is well. More regular posting has hopefully now resumed, LOL! Thanks for the lovely reviews and PM's so far. Love, Zan.

Chapter 3

Once the door closed behind the team, a hush fell over the room. Gibbs moved to the foot of the bed, cast his eyes over the patient in it and then turned his gaze to Tony's medical chart. He wouldn't have been able to make sense of the doctor's writing if he'd tried, but he did not even attempt to focus on any of the scrawled words. Gibbs was thrown. He felt incredible anger towards his number one field agent, but he didn't quite understand why. Dinozzo hadn't asked to have his gallbladder removed, nor had he asked to get framed for murder, be drugged by a killer, contract the pneumonic plague or get shot in the line of duty. Tony brought none of these things upon himself, yet part of Gibbs wanted to deliver a verbal onslaught that neither of them would ever forget. Gibbs knew that if it was Ziva or McGee in the hospital bed, his reaction wouldn't be like this. Tony somehow managed to elicit conflicted and intense feelings within Gibbs that other agents did not.

From Tony's perspective, a long, uncomfortable silence had fallen on the room since the team had left. He knew that Gibbs was still in the room but he was out of his limited field of vision. Tony finally summoned the courage to lift his head slightly to see what his Boss was doing. He was puzzled to see Gibbs staring at the foot of the bed, his face serious. Under other circumstances, it was the kind of expression that would have had Tony scurrying out of the room. This time there was nowhere to go. He had a sudden yearning for Abby to come back. Sinking back onto the pillow, Tony shut his eyes. Maybe if he feigned going back to sleep, scary Gibbs would eventually leave and more benign Gibbs would come visit him in a couple of days. That plan, however, was scuttled by an involuntary cough that caused Tony to give a small groan of pain. Gibbs was immediately at his side.

'Need the Doc?' Gibbs asked, his finger poised over the call button.

'No,' managed Tony, keeping his eyes shut as he worked through the unpleasant sensations the cough had caused. No, I need you to either lighten up or leave, he thought. Once the pain had settled, Tony opened his eyes and was shocked to see Gibbs still standing beside the bed, death glare directed right at him.

'What?' he demanded, his own voice sounding strangely weak to his own ears. Damn the anesthetic! It always played havoc with him.

'What if you weren't at my place?' demanded Gibbs, angrily. 'What if you were watching a movie at your apartment by yourself? What if it had happened while you were asleep in bed? What if you were out at some bar in a drunken crowd?'

'Come on,' protested Tony as vehemently as he could. 'I can take care of myself, Boss.'

'No you can't!' snapped Gibbs. 'It's not enough you have a dangerous job, Dinozzo. You put yourself at risk by not knowing enough about your own damn medical history!'

Before Tony could articulate any kind of reply, the door opened to reveal a familiar face.

'Can't keep out of here, can you Tony,' commented Dr Brad Pitt as he entered the room. 'Although I am slightly confused,' he added, his eyes twinkling. 'The staff who admitted you last night said that your father accompanied you in the ambulance. I guess they just made an understandable assumption.'

Gibbs, clearly in no mood to explain to the good doctor why the staff hadn't assumed anything, picked up the chart and thrust it towards Brad.

'Give us a summary,' he said. 'In English,' he added.

Brad took the chart and cast a look at Tony in time to see the patient roll his eyes.

'Let's see,' Brad began. 'Surgery was straightforward. Minor infection. Antibiotics as a precaution. Out of here in a few days. Home and taking it easy for a couple of weeks at least.'

'Hear that, Dinozzo?' said Gibbs. 'Don't even think about coming back before you're given the all clear. You even come near the office I'll get security to escort you back home. Speaking of which, you'll be staying with me so I know you won't be doing anything stupid and ripping out your stitches.'

'Well, talking like that, maybe you ARE Tony's father,' commented Brad jovially, unprepared for the glare from Gibbs and the peculiar expression on Tony's face.

'Believe me, he's not,' managed Tony eventually.

'No,' said Gibbs. 'If I was, I would have been able to tell you about the family medical history and maybe you wouldn't even be in that bed!'

'Your point?' asked Tony.

'You should find stuff out about medical problems in your family', Gibbs told him. 'You could have prevented last night from happening.'

Yeah, like you keep regular contact with your family, thought Tony. And you look after yourself, don't you? And I already know more than enough about the 'medical problems' in my family. And it will be a cold day in Hell before I try and re-establish contact with my father to shoot the breeze about gallstones.

'Fine,' whispered Tony, shutting his eyes.

'He needs to rest,' Brad told Gibbs, slightly worried by the tension between the two men.

Gibbs seemed as though he was going to say more, but Tony's acquiescence and stopped him in his tracks. He nodded at the doctor.

'Later,' he said to Tony by way of taking his leave as he left the room.

Brad waited a while before speaking quietly.

'He's right, you know,' said Brad. 'You'll need some time to recover from this.'

'Yeah,' was Tony's reply. 'I got that – from Ducky, the Boss and now you.'

'And it's great that Agent Gibbs is going to accommodate you at his own house,' continued Brad. 'Not everyone has a Boss who's prepared to do that.'

Tony sighed as he thought of Gibbs' usual bedside manner, and the fact that he seemed to be particularly pissed at Tony.

'Yeah,' he breathed, sarcastically. 'I'm really lucky.'

………………………………………………………

'What have we got?' barked Gibbs as he entered the bullpen to see McGee tapping furiously at his keypad and Ziva moving the cursor across a map on the plasma.

'How is Tony?' asked Ziva, turning to Gibbs and seeing the epitome of lack of sleep.

'He'll live, now what's happening?' demanded Gibbs.

'Uh, we've had some calls about possible drug dealing in a Somerton neighborhood,' explained McGee.

'We're not the drug squad,' spat Gibbs.

'No, but one of the cars seen in connection with the exchanges is registered to Petty Officer Paul Williams who went AWOL several months ago,' said Ziva.

'So find him,' said Gibbs, tersely as he sat down heavily at his desk and reached for the phone.

'He's disappeared,' said McGee. 'He's not been seen at his last known residence, there's no record of recent bank transactions, and we have no cell phone to trace.'

'We have put out a BOLO on the car,' added Ziva.

'People don't just disappear,' Gibbs told them. 'Stop looking at the plasma and get out in the field.' Do what Dinozzo would do he nearly said, aware of Tony's preference for leg work over geek work.

'Go!' he barked when neither of the agents moved quickly enough.

Once in the elevator, Ziva glanced at McGee.

'This always seems to happen when Tony is sick,' she said, ruefully. 'Gibbs becomes like a bear with a sensitive cranium, yes?'

'As much as Tony annoys the crap out of me when he's here, it's preferable to putting up with Gibbs like this,' agreed McGee in a hushed voice, worried that Gibbs would somehow overhear their conversation. 'And it's bear with a sore head, by the way.'

'Noted,' said Ziva. It was going to be a long few weeks.

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