It was the smell he noticed first: that biting clean smell that aggravated his allergies. Next came the booming feeling in his head and the horrible taste in his mouth. Nausea made a fleeting guest appearance. He prised his eyelids open and saw the white hospital bed spread out before him. Suspicions confirmed he let his eyelids fall again.

"McGee!" Abby's gravely voice wrenched him back to reality.

He opened his eyes a little more and turned his head towards the sound, "Abby?" he rasped.

"You took your time," she admonished him rising from her chair. "Here, squish over and I'll tell you what we got."

It was only when he saw Abby's steadily advancing studded clothing that he registered that she intended for him to move across the narrow bed to accommodate her body width as well as his own. Frantically, he heaved his un-cooperative limbs away from danger. Fortunately, the further side of the metal bed had been raised and he was able to rest against it, albeit at an uncomfortable angle.

She snuggled up to him, lying on one side, resting her head on his shoulder and laying her arm on his chest.

"That's better," she sighed, "I've been in that chair for hours."

"Abbs, why are you here?" his voice sounded thick and fuzzy but he felt much more alert on the inside. No really. He giggled lightly and tried valiantly to control himself.

"The drug they used on you? It was the same drug used on that sailor," Abby informed him.

He blinked for a moment to give his brain time to process the information. "Oh," was all it could come up with.

"It's very fast acting. Did anyone come into your house last night?"

McGee frowned in a manner he knew was too exaggerated but could not temper.

"I don't think so," he said slowly shifting through the hazy recollections floating tenuously across his mind.

He tried desperately to squeeze out a vision that was furtively poking its head out of some memory trough but then gave up. It was all too hard. He let his eyelids fall again and dozed. He could feel Abby's warm breath on his neck. His mind wandered to a rasping tongue across his cheek. A warm sensation spread out across his groin. What was Abby doing? They were in a hospital!

He woke groggily with a snort to find his mouth open and his chin lying against a wet patch on Abby's hair. He snapped his mouth shut with a grunt, jerking his head up a little to remove the threads of hair that seemed to be caught between his teeth. His head sank again he dreamt of damp hair in the rain.

Visions of fingernails assaulted him from all angles, red shiny, painted fingernails. Something was becoming increasingly obvious: the red fingernails clutching the green handbag were scratched. There was a scratch across two, maybe three fingernails. Jen would never have allowed that. She would have spot filled. He knew her well enough. In fact, she did; he had watched her remove the evidence. The handbag! It was Jen and the handbag and the fingernails. Where had he seen those fingernails recently? Clumsily, he tried to hold all the jumbled pieces together to form a coherent picture.

Suddenly, he was desperate to wake up. This was information he simply had to transmit to Abby. His mind flailed about, trying to break through dream state to reality. As he breached the surface of consciousness, his eyes flew open and he took deep gasping breaths. Abby was already up on one elbow looking at him with a concerned expression on her face.

"It was her," he gasped "The red fingernails. It's Jen."

He looked at Abby wide-eyed and panting waiting for a response. For a moment he feared that he'd said it all in gibberish or that this was reality number two not number one but after a minute's hesitation, Abby's eye's opened wide.

"She drugged you?"

"Yeah, I'm almost sure of it."

"How?"

"I think, she, ah, broke into my apartment…."

"You know you can buy chains, McGee," Abby pointed out.

McGee shot her an annoyed glare and continued steadily, "I'm sure she was in my apartment last night."

He squeezed his eye shut, trying to force the memories out: "I was typing, something happened, she was there, with those fingernails. ARRRGH!" He opened his eyes again and frowned in frustration.

Abby swivelled, sat cross legged on the bed and raised her finger to her chin in traditional "thinkers" pose.

"OK, I can see how she got the drug into you. You can get pretty focussed. You didn't even notice when I was pregnant with twins to Gibbs."

"What!"

"But," Abby continued unperturbed, "how did she get the drug into the Petty Officer? They were in a crowd, there were multiple witnesses and the attendant told Tony and Gibbs this afternoon that the guy seemed perfectly lucid when he got into the roller coaster. Tony and Ziva said every inch of the area was searched and no one was allowed to leave. There are no syringes in my lab, McGee."

"What twins?"

"Focus, McGee." She turned and grabbed him by the shoulders. "It's fast acting, how did in get in his system?"

McGee pulled himself a little higher in the bed but stopped as a wave of dizziness sent him toppling to one side. He was only saved from a complete plummet by the strength of Abby's supportive arms. As the room stopped spinning, a thought sprang into his mind and throttled his brain.

"Abby!" He knew he had dropped something in his mental juggling act; "The handbag!"

Abby understood his cryptic words immediately. She leapt off the bed and started pacing the room.

"She got him to hold the handbag on his lap!"

"Which is why the bar wouldn't lock at first," McGee confirmed.

"And I know where the needle was!" Abby exclaimed, triumphantly.

"In the handbag," said McGee woozily, struggling to get out of bed.

Abby looked crestfallen to have had her thunder stolen but recovered quickly.

"And that stuff I scraped off the bottom of the bar?" Abby continued whipping out her cell phone, "It contained metal, but also nylon and acetate."

She stopped pacing and looked up at him sharply with her finger poised to dial, "Nail polish."