The only magazines in the waiting room were three months out of date. Jenny Shepard had looked them over when she'd first arrived and cast them aside. Given her level of security clearance, anything she read in Newsweek would likely be five to eight months behind or seriously lacking in detail and she never had time for the recipes from Good Housekeeping. Cooking wasn't exactly her strong suit anyway. Not even pictures in Sports Illustrated, which she could normally appreciate on a strictly gratuitous level, had been able to distract her.

She checked her watch and tapped on its minute, glass-covered face. It had been one of her gifts to herself after being named Director of NCIS. She'd only noticed the lack of a second hand in the last nine hours. Time moved slowly without a threadlike ticking hand to confirm a watch's functioning. The surgeon had spoken to her almost twenty minutes previous (only twenty minutes ago?) and neither of the two things she'd expected had occurred in the interval since – no one from the medical staff had updated her and Gibbs hadn't arrived.

Her coffee cup had been empty for over an hour, but she again attempted to sip from it. She'd managed to make it last for almost two hours, barely minding the cold dregs she'd swallowed with the last few mouthfuls. It was when she'd come back from getting this fourth cup of coffee that she'd realized how long she'd been waiting, how long Ziva had been in surgery.

Jen unwillingly flashed back to the ER. She hadn't had to throw around any clout; the staff had practically tripped over themselves to accommodate her. A nurse had stood outside the trauma room with her, explaining what the doctors and nurses inside were doing. She could have lived without the play-by-play, but it was better than watching and not knowing. They'd even allowed her speak to the patient on her way to surgery, a privilege they assured her they would grant to none less than the director of a federal agency.

Ziva had been heavily medicated at that point and nearly unresponsive, but conscious. Still, she'd smiled as they'd left the elevator, returning a squeeze of the hand and softly saying, "Shalom, Jen."

"Good shalom or bad shalom?"

Ziva hadn't answered, but she hadn't been smiling as they'd taken her where Jen could not follow. She chose to believe it had been a 'hello' and not a 'goodbye.' And she wished she'd taken the opportunity to say something meaningful just in case her choice proved wrong.

Eight hours in an empty, sterile waiting room with only dog-eared copies of old magazines for company had done little to allay her regrets.

She stood, arching her back as she stretched her stiff muscles. She lobbed her empty cup toward the garbage can. It bounced off the rim. Gibbs was picking it up and placing it in the trash before she could react. "Aim's off, Jen. Means you need a refill."

"Funny how I haven't had time." She glanced around the room, her eyes drawn to the clock on the far wall. It didn't have a second hand either. "I've been sitting here doing nothing, but I haven't had time." She tried not to sound as tired or upset as she felt.

"You've been busy waiting. It takes effort, I know." Gibbs sounded sympathetic, which she appreciated. "That's why I brought you this." He passed her a cardboard tray containing four full cups.

"You can't expect I'm going to drink all that."

"I expect you to drink one, me to drink one, Ducky to drink one and McGee to drink one." He pointed over his shoulder to the two other men.

Jen nodded to them. She hadn't even seen them standing there. She took a long drink from the hot coffee, warming her hands on the cup. "Tony didn't come?"

"He stopped in the men's room," McGee said. "He should be up in a minute."

A weighty silence followed in which coffee was consumed at a rapid rate. Jen looked at each man's face in turn. "No one's going to ask?"

"You haven't exactly volunteered anything."

She locked eyes with Gibbs for a moment, assuring herself that he wasn't just trying to play games. "She's still in recovery. They won't let anyone see her until she's been moved to her own room. They'll let us know once they've settled her."

"So she's in the clear after that?"

Jen ran a hand through her hair, mentally rephrasing what the surgeon had told her about potentially fatal complications. "They're concerned about infection."

"Given her injuries, I suspect they'll be particularly keen on preventing any peritoneal inflammation. Tell me, did the surgeon mention if the bullet perforated the intestine?"

"You can ask him yourself, Ducky. Here he comes." She pointed to a man in scrubs approaching the small group.

"I see Ms. David has quite the fan club."

"Dr. Patil, this is Special Agent Gibbs, Special Agent McGee and Dr. Mallard."

He shook hands with each before saying, "She's all set up in ICU. We'll keep her there for twenty-four hours then reassess her condition. I'll take you down." He turned his head back as he pushed a door open and held it as they passed through. "One of your friends is already there."

"Hm." Gibbs shook his head. "I just assumed DiNozzo got lost."

As they stepped into the elevator, Ducky began questioning Dr. Patil about the procedure and extent of the damage. Jen was glad someone had a head for medical detail; she'd stopped processing the meaning of the surgeon's words three sentences into their first conversation. The last thing she wanted to wrap her head around were numbers that sounded too large to be positive – pints of blood transfused and inches of small intestine excised.

The tiny chime of the elevator brought her back to reality. The ICU was active but quiet. Nurses whispered, machines beeped quietly with regular rhythms, lights were low. It was like being underwater. Dr. Patil led them down the hall to a room directly across from the main nurses' station. Jen stared through the window, trying to believe that everything she saw was helping Ziva. Wires ran under her hospital gown. Small circular patches were affixed to her temples. An IV pole supported several bags of clear liquid and one of dark red, all connected to tubes that ran into the veins on her arms.

Despite the circumstances, Jen wanted to tell the doctors that Ziva didn't need all this. Ziva wasn't one to demand constant attention and accept physical limitations. Ziva could survive on stale crusts of bread for two weeks in the least appealing slum of Rome after setting a fracture in her own arm, and still complete her mission. Jen had finally dragged her to a hospital once they'd neutralized the target on that occasion. The doctors had been amazed by how well she'd reduced the fracture; it had already started to heal and no infection had developed. They'd simply replaced the torn fabric and scrap metal strips she'd been using as a splint with a real cast. Jen was having trouble reconciling that Ziva with the one lying helpless in a hospital bed now.

The surgeon was explaining that she wouldn't be entirely conscious for at least few hours. "But she'll hear you if you talk to her, as your friend seems to have already figured out."

In the room, Jen finally saw that Tony sat next to the bed, his lips forming an unheard monologue. His eyes were red-rimmed, but he wasn't crying. His face was solemn.

McGee made a move for the door. Gibbs caught the back of his coat. "Wait, McGee."

"Oh. Right, boss."

Tony appeared to stop speaking in mid-sentence as he looked toward the window and saw he had an audience. Jen suddenly felt very uncomfortable. They were intruding. He came out into the hallway. "She's not awake yet, but she seems like she knows what's going on. I might just be imagining that."

McGee gave Tony's arm a brief squeeze as he passed him of the way into the room, Gibbs close on his heels. Ducky was still conversing with Dr. Patil. That left Tony looking at her with a pained expression. "Jenny, were you here before she went up to surgery?"

"Yes."

He rubbed his neck and looked at the floor as he asked, "Did…did you talk to her?"

"Briefly. She got a lot of pain meds in the ER and I don't think she was very aware at the time." She winced as she realized she was using her Director voice.

"She didn't say anything?"

Jen remembered her earlier instinct. "Just hello."

"Oh." She couldn't tell if he was disappointed or relieved. He fumbled with the zipper of his coat before getting it to catch. "I'll see you back at the office."

"You can stay a little longer."

"No…I…" He looked longingly through the window. Gibbs and McGee stood by Ziva's bed. McGee appeared to be doing most of the talking. "No. I just had to tell her I'm sorry."

Jen called after him as he walked away, "Tony!"

He waved his hand over his head without turning around and continued down the hall. She decided to let him go.