Chapter 5
As a rule, Abby didn't mind a good vacation, but spending her sick days in a hospital bed with more wires than some of her most complicated equipment was not on her agenda. In addition, between the oxygen, IVs, and the pulse oximeter taped to her index finger, even going to the bathroom wasn't an easy task. She tolerated the embarrassment of calling for assistance to do so only because she knew if she didn't she'd just find herself with one more tube in a very unacceptable place.
So despite her assurances to the nurse that if they'd just "unplug" her, she'd do it herself, she wound up being walked into the potty like her great Aunt Esther. It was humiliating. The only thing that would have been worse would have been if Gibbs had done it. That was why she had sent him on a mission to seek out a Caf-Pow at all costs. She'd wanted him gone until she could take care of business.
As the nurse helped her back into bed, she couldn't help but groan at her situation, whatever her situation was.
"Are you hurting, dear," the nurse asked with a voice of concern.
"Only my pride," Abby muttered, tugging the backless robe around her and yanking on one of the IVs in the process. "Can't we take at least one of these out?" she asked.
"Not yet," the nurse told her. "One is for fluids, and the other was for contrast. If we take it out, we'll just have to put in another if the doctor orders a second CT scan."
Thinking of the circular thing they had tried to stick her head in was not a recipe for comfort. She didn't remember a great deal about what had gone on since she had driven to work on Monday – she thought it was Monday – but she remembered them rolling her back into what she had felt was a tunnel and trying desperately to crawl out of it. After that, all she remembered was becoming aware that she was in a hospital bed with a magnificent need to pee.
No, this wasn't her idea of a vacation.
Gibbs had been there, though. That had been kind of nice. Ducky had been in and out, fielding phone calls from the team who were hard at work without her. And here she was, multiple tubes and wires protruding from herself, while they were doing all the work. If she weren't so tied down by the equipment, she might just sneak out, call a cab, and go back to work.
That was, of course, if she could find the strength to sit up.
Abby could never remember being so weak. She didn't know if it was the jello means they had offered her, or the medication that had made her so wonky, or if it was the fluid that continually poured into her from the bags above her bed. But something was messing with her head. It was better now – she knew who and where she was, and she was able to understand what was going on around her – but she wasn't right. That more than anything was why she stayed in the annoying bed which changed position every time she did to keep her from getting bedsores. She felt like crap.
She didn't even remember when it had all started. Saturday night she'd been fine. Okay, she'd headed home early from a date because she'd thought she was coming down with something. She'd had a scratchy throat and felt a little hot, and she figured a good night's sleep might help. She had woke up early after having a… nightmare, she supposed, where she couldn't catch her breath. Once she'd gotten up, gargled with some Listerine, and fixed herself a cup of tea she'd been fine. She had gone to church, come home early to rest – the lack of sleep the night before was just catching up with her, she supposed – and had taken a nice warm bath before bed.
She hadn't been able to get in the nap she'd been hoping for as she'd been called into the lab. She hadn't minded – the overtime was great – but she'd kept the mildly groggy feeling that she just couldn't get enough sleep. She had worked through Sunday night and into Monday. A few times she'd laid down on the futon to rest, but she hadn't been able to actually fall asleep. She kept the annoying feeling that something was sitting on her chest every time she began to doze off, as though she were having an echo of the nightmare that had awoken her Sunday morning. So instead of bemoaning her lack of sleep, she had worked. And worked.
And worked.
At some point, it had all blurred. She lost track of what was being done, and said, and put herself on autopilot. The next thing she had really been aware of was someone trying to shove her head into that damned machine, and her desperation to get back out. If there was no air in her dreams, there sure as hell wasn't any in that machine.
And then she'd been here. It was kind of like a drunken binge without the alcohol, she imagined. According to Ducky, she was missing several days of her life. Days during which she had done her job acceptably, but days which where missing, nonetheless.
She didn't like it.
"Here you go," Gibbs said as he entered the room with a large red cup in his hand. He set the cup on her bedside tray and leaned forward to give her a gentle kiss on the cheek. "Feeling better?"
"Feeling stupid," she said, reaching for the cup and trying to lift it. She didn't get far. The large glass began to topple, and it was only Gibbs' quick reflexes that saved her from a very cold bath. "Sorry," she muttered. "I was mentioning the stupid part?"
"Got that," he said with a small smile. "Let me help." Thankfully, he did not hold the large cup for her. That would have been just too humiliating. Instead, he dumped out the white, Styrofoam water cup and filled it about a third of the way with Caf-Pow. Putting the lid and straw back in place, he handed it to her.
"Thanks," she said, taking a sip. Like an addict getting his first hit in a week – or an alcoholic the first drink of the morning – she gave a sigh of relief. Caffeine was indeed her drug of choice.
"No problem," he told her.
She took another couple of sips, resting against the pillows. The best part about Gibbs, she thought, was that he didn't clutter things up with a lot of unnecessary words. He understood the value of quiet. Not since she'd grown up in a silent household had she enjoyed the precious commodity of silence.
Of course, she talked enough for herself and at least two other people. She talked to her machines, talked to herself, and talked to everyone around her with an enthusiasm that came from that same background of silence. Still, when she was sick, the silence was a comfort.
She closed her eyes and relaxed, thinking that maybe some sleep would be a good idea after all. Aside from the period of light sedation, she really didn't feel like she'd rested in weeks. So she lowered the back of her bed with the touch of a finger and answered Gibbs' raised eyebrow by bringing her hand with open fingers down in front of her face, closing the fingers as she went; the sign for sleep. Gibbs gave a gentle smile and leaned back in his chair to rest as well.
She was barely drifting into something between awake and asleep when she felt the weight on her chest again. As though some monster was wrapping its arms around her and squeezing the life out of her, she struggled to get in a breath. Meanwhile, a shrill whistle began that jolted her from sleep and had Gibbs standing over her bed even as nurses came running.
Still fuzzy, Abby wasn't quite sure what was happening as a mask was placed over her face and nurses began talking to her. Gradually, the haze cleared and she was able to see Gibbs, hear the nurses, and catch her breath.
"Heart rate is still normal," one nurse told another. "Sats are back up in the nineties. How are you feeling, Ms. Scuito?"
Abby couldn't answer, mostly because she didn't know. She shrugged a shoulder even as Gibbs stepped in. "She was taking a nap," he said firmly. "Then the alarms started going off."
The nurse gave her the once-over again, listening to her heart and lungs and then checking to be sure that the values on the equipment were within normal limits. "She was probably breathing shallowly," the nurse finally said. "Everything else appears to be normal, but for a moment her oxygen level was extremely low. How are you feeling now?"
Abby knew she couldn't get by with another shrug. "Fine," she said, and it was truthful. "Except this mask." She hated having the thing over her face.
The nurse nodded, and moved it out of the way, leaving the nasal cannula in place even as she turned up the level of oxygen that Abby was receiving. "I'll make a note of this in your chart," she said. "If it happens again, we'll contact your physician."
Abby nodded, still not in the mood for talk, and watched the nurse leave.
"You okay?" Gibbs asked her softly.
"I think so," she answered, truthful, if not addressing the fear factor that had just entered the scenario. "I thought it was another nightmare until everyone came running."
"Nightmare?" Gibbs asked.
She gave a shrug. "Nothing specific," she told him. "Just… variations on a theme. I dream that I can't quite get my breath. It's been happening for about a week. Probably one horror movie too many."
"You need to sleep," he said unnecessarily.
"Not so much," she replied. "When I was in college, sometimes I'd go three or four days on a couple of hours, and that wasn't so bad. Actually, that's when I got into Caf-Pow really hard, and…"
Gibbs put a finger over her lips to stop the babble. She knew as well as he did that she didn't really have anything to say but was instead searching for an argument. "Everyone needs sleep," he told her. "Even you. Try again; I'll be here to keep an eye on you."
She nodded even as he moved back and relocated his chair so that he could hold her hand through the railing. The touch of his hand was firm and comforting, and she knew he wouldn't let anything happen to her. With a small sigh, she squeezed his hand and closed her eyes.
This time, she made it into the dream. She drifted from the hospital bed and into a quiet clearing. She walked along, giving a happy sigh at the green grass and blue sky, the lovely red roses and the tiny blue flowers which grew along the sides of her path. Her feet were bare, but the grass was soft. She smiled at the peace of the day.
Without realizing it, the world around her began to dim. A cloud, she thought. It must be a cloud. The colors around her began to grey, and the darkness intensified at the edges of her vision. She gasped, trying to suck in air, but she wasn't able to do so. All of the air was gone, the gray air was solid and she couldn't breathe it in.
The shrill whistle was welcome this time, as was the plastic cone held over her face. Greedily she sucked in air, like a thirsty person getting their first drink in a month. She felt like she had when she'd gone swimming with her cousin Alice and they had decided to dive down and see if they could find any caves. Abby had caught her foot in a crack between the rocks, and it had taken her forever to get herself free. By the time she had broken the surface, each breath had been a burning relief to her aching chest. The felt the same way now.
Awareness came slowly, as did the knowledge that a nurse had replaced Gibbs' position next to her and was the one currently holding the oxygen mask in place. Another nurse was on her other side, listening to her chest with a stethoscope even as the automatic blood pressure cuff tightened on Abby's arm. At the foot of the bed, Dr. Hucker was watching carefully, even as he flipped through the pages of her chart. She looked frantically around the room until she saw Gibbs. He was standing next to the door, as though he were either leaving or returning, and he looked terrified. It had to be a trick of the dream, she decided, because Gibbs never took time to be terrified.
He didn't look any better though, when the doctor made him leave the room so that he could examine her. Eyes, ears, reflexes, throat, heart, lungs… the doctor seemed to check everything all over again. They brought in the EKG machine and once more tested her heart, and then the nurse took blood in the most painful way that Abby had experienced. Rather than entering the skin at an angle, as was necessary to access a vein, this nurse instead stabbed the needle in at a ninety degree angle to access the artery. Blood gasses, Abby thought. They were checking arterial blood gasses.
She wasn't stupid. And all her time listening to Ducky had ensured that she had a better-than-average knowledge of medical procedures. After all, she'd performed blood gas analysis on hundreds of cadavers. She knew quite well what they were looking for. She wasn't surprised when they found it.
The afternoon took forever, even with Gibbs making small talk beside her. Ducky came in just after dinner, bringing with him a large order of French fries. She didn't have an appetite, but she appreciated the sentiment. Just after seven, Dr. Hucker finally joined them, with his charts in hand and his blood tests ready.
We have answer, she realized. It was there in the certainty of the doctor's face and in the concern on Ducky's. They had an answer. She just hoped it was one she could live with. She'd never really been sick before, and she didn't want to start now.