A/N: Here goes the next one … still very short, I know, but this was just something I wanted to write and consequently had to squeeze in somewhere … so I'm afraid you'll have to put up with it ;)
Emma
A few days into November, Kate drops by later than she usually does. It's begun to snow, and although the forecast said as much, she wasn't quite prepared for it. Not for such a load of snow, anyhow. It took her forever to shovel the feathery white cover off her car and, most of all, to scratch the ice from the windowpane. To top it all off, traffic was bedlam today. No one expected mud on the streets and no one set off for work early just in case those heavy clouds really meant winter, so everyone got stuck.
Because no one ever listens to the weather forecast.
Now she's here, however, sniffing quietly and fumbling for a tissue as she walks along the hospital corridors. Just as she's about to round the last corner, her reddened nose still buried in her Kleenex, Abby's familiar voice drifts over to her and she decides on a detour to the waiting room. Where she promptly walks in on a scene that leaves her undecided whether to laugh or to cry.
Emma, the head nurse (they know she's called Emma because Tony started running around asking all the female employees of the station for their names on the sixth or seventh day of their regular visits…neither Kate nor Abby nor anyone else would have bothered too much, but of course Tony did. Not that Emma is his type, though. She's a bit too…well, voluminous. He asked nonetheless.) is standing face to face with Abby, her arms folded in front of her chest, an expression on her face that is close to unreadable even to Kate. It could be everything from mild anger to amusement to annoyance to utmost bewilderment. Just the range of sentiments Abby sometimes provokes in people.
Abby, however, looks perfectly relaxed.
"Look, ma'am", Emma's just saying, a notion in her voice that tells Kate the nurse is probably repeating this very sentence for the hundredth time already now, like a mother to a stubborn child. "I really can't let you do this. This is a hospital waiting room, not an internet café."
"Don't ma'am me, alright?" Abby replies first of all, looking a tad irritable now. "Do I look like forty?"
Emma raises and eyebrow that clearly spells Hardly all over her full pink face. Pitch black pig tails, leather collars and plateau boots clearly aren't part of her image of a forty year old woman she'd usually call ma'am, but she obviously felt compelled to honour Abby's job at a federal agency.
"Listen," the Goth continues, "I work for NCIS, okay? We hunt down murderers and rapists and terrorists and all the other bad guys, and then we lock them up. Don't you kinda like that idea?"
Emma frowns and looks a bit uncomfortable. She's probably aware of the fact that there's no way out of this, after all she can't very well say she'd rather have the 'big bad guys' all set lose.
"Well, of course I do…", she therefore answers slowly, but doesn't get the chance to qualify her statement, because Abby's quicker.
"There you are!" she exclaims cheerfully, "So if you'll excuse me, I have to get on with my work." With that and her sweetest blood-red smile, Abby spins on her heel and bounces around the low table that's still been littered with magazines and a few matchbox cars the last time Kate was here, and is now the home of two of Abby's notebooks, a docking station for a headset and a few wires.
Abby sits cross-legged on the waiting room floor, her fingers already flying over the keyboard before Emma's even opened her mouth to protest. The nurse stares at her for a few moments, then at the NCIS logo that's attached to everything Abby's brought. Kate can almost hear her thinking something along the lines of blasted CSI-or-whatever-snobs, but eventually she seems to resign, probably no quite sure how far she's allowed to go with a scientist in government's pay who is converting her waiting room into a makeshift laboratory.
Shaking her head and muttering something under her breath, Emma leaves the room, her rather massive form almost squashing Kate, whom she's obviously decided not to notice at all.
Kate blinks a few times, but then she can't help a burst of laughter, and the sound of it wins Abby's attention.
"Oh, hi sunshine!" her friend greets her, grinning broadly.
"Turning everything upside down again, Abs?" Kate replies when her laughter's died away.
Abby shrugs and types some more. "Nah, just…", she pauses, as if to consider. "Just not wanting not to be here."
Kate smiles as she watches her Goth friend, finding herself whispering "Yes, I know", in return. Her Goth friend doesn't seem to have heard it, though.
She's staring fixedly at one of her screens, but Kate is pretty sure that not a single number or letter there registers with her. She chews at her bottom lip for a while, then she finally slumps back into her chair and sighs.
"I can't believe how long it's already been", she states quietly.
Kate nods and sits down next to her. "Almost three weeks." She pauses, as if she was turning her calculation over in her head. "Gosh", she says at length, "that sounds horrible."
"Yeah, doesn't it? I mean, a lot of things happen in three weeks." She shrugs. "It's gone five degrees colder, it's begun to snow." Abby begins playing with one of her rings, a silver band bearing a skull with fake rubies in its sockets. "The cinemas are showing new movies, my favourite band's new album is out." She sniffs quietly and delicately scratches the tip of her nose, as if she wanted to disguise her sadness as a sneeze. Her voice drops a bit as she goes on. "God, sometimes I feel like the whole world changed." She looks at Kate with huge green eyes. "How long you think –"
Kate smiles, meeting her friend's gaze with almost apologetic eyes. "I don't know, Abby."
She doesn't think Abby expected any other answer. Of course Kate doesn't know. Of course no one does. Not the doctors, not even Ducky. She keeps hoping she and the team, they're in for a surprise somehow. She keeps hoping that, sometime soon, maybe tomorrow or the day after, they will arrive here or Ducky will walk into their office, and they'll learn Gibbs is awake and everything will be fine.
"I just wonder", Abby's voice brings her back from her thoughts, "what else will happen until he wakes up again. It just feel so strange to see all of these things changing and the year getting older without Gibbs being around."
She exhales deeply and makes a few vague gestures, as if searching for words. "I'm just saying … I mean, I would've told him about that new album three days in a row before it came out and he certainly wouldn't have wanted to hear any of it but I would've played it in my lab still as soon as I got it – " She breaks off and looks down to the floor.
Kate sits beside her silently for a while, waiting until her friend has calmed down a bit. Then she leans in and peers into her face. "Why don't you take a break from work and go tell Gibbs about that CD now?"
Abby gives a quiet, lonely little laugh and answers: "Not sure if I should go bothering him with things he doesn't wanna know about now."
The other woman smiles. "You know what? I think you should. And I do think you're wrong believing Gibbs ever doesn't want to hear what you tell him. No matter what it is, Abs."
TBC