A/N: What can I say about this one? It was high time, wasn't it? So … just enjoy!
random chick: I'm very sorry to disappoint you, but I think there won't be any more Jibbs in this one, unless something unexpected should happen. I hope you'll keep reading all the same!
Trumpet Lover: I haven't been to D.C. either…so this might be the right moment to say sorry if I got anything wrong.
Thank you all for the reviews!!
A Long Time
Dr. Mallard had been here in the morning, Laura told her, but since her shift began, Emma hasn't seen any of them. Which is strange, because she can hardly remember a span of time longer than two or three hours, when there wasn't at least one of them dropping by. This time, however, it's been many more hours, something like sixteen or seventeen, actually.
She found herself wondering why, then making up scenarios, then hoping that nothing had happened to another one of them. And she mentally scolded herself.
It's not a rule for medical staff not to become involved, but it makes many things a lot easier if they don't. It is, anyhow, a rule Emma set up for herself long ago. Usually she's fairly good at keeping to it. She's been a nurse for years on end, and as it is widely known, people can adapt to pretty much anything. You can get used to frantic relatives, sobbing wives and girlfriends, grieving parents. You can get used to all the ugly wounds, all the tragedy and injustice, unbelievable as it may sound.
It would be wrong to grow indifferent, or even cold. But a certain professionalism is helpful, and necessary most of the time, too.
Once in a while, however, something will come your way and professionalism and being used to it all won't work anymore. Something like this peculiar bunch of people.
They spent enough time here to make a fine case study for Emma, were she a psychologist or something of the sort. She isn't, of course, but that doesn't diminish her interest and curiosity.
If it hadn't been obvious anyway, it would as least not have been hard to guess they're coworkers. A team.
The way they respond to each other, seem to be able to interpret each other's actions and words correctly, and also able to support each other. The way they seemed perfectly determined not to move an inch from where they were that first, very long night here at the hospital. A if a silent agreement existed. It was because of their colleague – she'd automatically thought colleague then, now she knows he's their boss – naturally, but it also was because they didn't intend to leave each other.
Still, how they actually manage to function as a team, eludes Emma to this day. Even more so after she's had a little time to get to know them.
If you ever had the chance (and the rather disputable pleasure) to gather experience in watching people like Emma does – people in hospital waiting rooms waiting for someone, anyone to tell them how the surgery went, how their friend, relative, spouse is, if it's good or bad or hopeless – you'll know that the first few hours never tell too much.
People are under shock, they are hysteric, absurdly composed, sometimes even aggressive. They react to the fact that their world has been turned upside down in one or the other way, and that's something that doesn't happen everyday, so they're not their everyday-selves.
It was the same with these five, but it was different as well.
They were very calm at the beginning, restrained, as if they could keep something from escalating by their own composure. As if they could retroactively defuse the situation.
As if panic wasn't good for anything as long as no one actually told you there was a reason to panic.
But Kate had dissolved mascara on her cheeks and clotty lashes, and they all had patches of dust and dirt scattered across their windbreakers and pants. She had blood on her hands and Tony had, too, and they hadn't bothered much to clean themselves up.
They looked liked they'd been through this kind of thing a couple of times before, which even might be so, given the jobs they do. But they tried to make it look like it was a procedure that always consisted of the same stages, and always turned out the same way.
It was an almost desperate attempt to reassure themselves nothing was as bad as it had probably looked.
That a group of so young people could even give such an impression, made her a little sad.
It made her wonder how many severely injured and dead people they must have already seen, how many colleagues they already had to worry about or grieve for, and how many stories about what happened to others they already heard.
It isn't right, she thought, that someone could get professional about such things.
Since that first night a lot has changed and Emma has seen a lot more of them. And – and there's your trouble – she realized she's come to like them.
They're such a lively crowd, actually, and they seem so determined not to lose hope.
Although, standing here in the door tonight, she thinks she finally perceives a change there, too.
Not that that wouldn't be understandable. She knows what has been the big issue for weeks now, and which decision was taken, and how Dr. Morris' counsel and Dr. Mallard's complying somehow left them hanging in the air, somewhere between relief and just more worrying.
Emma wishes she could help them. Tell them something to make it better.
She groans inwardly. Dear Lord, she really should take better care. She likes them way too much.
And if she sums it all up, the whole thing in the end just makes her sad.
There's a bunch of people who, at first sight, don't fit together because they banter and squabble like teenagers all the time, and seem to have characteristics that shoot off into the most opposite directions possible.
Kate appears to know where she's going with her life and what she wants, she's calm and mature, but as soon as Tony strolls into the picture, she turns into a fourteen-year-old. Tim generally just seems to be frightened of them, Abby's – well, Abby, and Dr. Mallard is a British gentlemen who likes bow-ties and is at least twice their age.
Whether it's been some sort of destiny, someone who saw their potential as a team or just administration that put them all in one place, Emma can't tell. But she can tell that, whatever their differences, they've become a family.
She doesn't know about their boss. She doesn't know if she would be as fond of him as much as she is of his team (if she were to meet him, that is; right now, she has somehow adapted those five people's fondness of him; couldn't help it), but she knows she thinks that whatever led to those gunshot wounds, was unfair.
Unfair, because those agents spend their time chasing people who haven't got anything to do with them or their lives, and then one of those nutters gets hold of a gun, cracks up and pulls the trigger.
And this is where the whole story ends: in a hospital, a little over three months later, a couple of lives that have gone completely out of order, and a fragile, black-haired young woman in funny clothes who's been sitting there cross-legged and mute for the last two hours.
Emma only knows her with her lips constantly moving, Abby's made her chuckle more than once through all those days.
She seems to have run out of stories today, though.
Emma sighs again and finally steps through the door. She's somehow reluctant to disturb the young Goth, but she need to check on her patient.
So she does, takes notes, adjusts the dose of the medication he gets through the IV, casts another habitual glance at the monitors and leaves again as quietly as she can.
Normally, she would have said something. Struck up a conversation with Abby, she's such a pleasant girl.
But not today. Somehow, Emma doubts Abby even realized she was there.
And although she can't know it, naturally, the nurse is right about that.
Of course, Abby noticed her presence. But she didn't have the heart or the strength to react, and anyway she's too deeply lost in thought to really decipher the meaning of her brain's message Emma's here.
She's thinking about the day. It's replaying in her head, morning via lunchtime and afternoon up to now. Evening slipping into night. It's late.
This morning, they told Ducky that they'd go with any decision he takes now.
"Keep your promise", Tony said, and that was it. The words jumped off his tongue with surprising ease, but most likely it was the same as when you're in a shock: the adrenaline keeps you from panicking, but you know that once the effect wears off, you'll have a whole lot of panicky thoughts to deal with.
"Well, I'm grateful you said that", Ducky told them in return, and then he smiled. "No, I'm not. But that isn't of such great importance, is it?"
He sent them back to their work as if they'd only come to see him for the results of an autopsy, not giving a single hint as to what exactly he meant to do next. Or when.
They left the morgue together, like a small flock, all with the same dull feeling somewhere in the pits of their stomachs.
Somehow, they'd expected it to be different. Maybe they thought there would be something more said. Some tears, some we'll be fine, a little talking it over once more to make sure they knew what they were doing. Or that there wasn't some argument they'd forgotten to consider, and that might rescue them.
But it was just a calm conversation, a few quiet words, a nod and a smile and get back to your work. And they actually did. Left Ducky again, walked to the elevator in silence, then Abby got off at the next level, the others returned to their desks, switched off the screensaver and tried to concentrate.
All through the day, no one mentioned the conversation in the morgue again. It was like they were afraid that if they did, the meaning and the irreversibility of it all would jump at them and fling them all to the ground.
Blinker and go on. That's better than to stop and start thinking.
That was two and a half days ago. Since then, everything's been turned upside down (once again), in a way. Coming to think about it, it's probably even happened twice.
It started with Ducky coming in this morning, grabbing her hand and taking her up to the squad room to break the good news to everyone.
Yes, they switched off a few things, but that's because they're not necessary anymore.
Kate hugged Tony, who happened to stand next to her at the time (otherwise she would probably have hugged her file cabinet, or whatever else she'd have gotten hold of), McGee looked like he'd just learned he got an A instead of A-. and Abby herself remembers being so relieved she maybe let a tear or two escape.
Somehow you could almost think they'd missed the part about That doesn't mean we can be sure he'll wake up, though, or when, or what permanent damage might have been done.
Abby thinks they deliberately missed it then. They'd been waiting for something uplifting for such a long time, they just yelled First the good news, and you can keep the bad ones 'cause we're tired of them!
It's been ten hours since this morning, or perhaps eleven, and their relief turned into another sort of worry at best, and their hopefulness into fear of itself.
After all, they realized, nothing changed that much.
The respirator's gone. That makes it all look a little less worse from the outside. Gibbs isn't that far away anymore, maybe. He's sleeping, or unconscious, but not in a coma.
Abby's been lying with her head on the bed for God knows how long already, close to him, just because it felt so very reassuring to hear him breathe again, not some machine.
But, like the others, she's afraid to get her hopes too high, and that's what makes to whole thing so damn stupid.
Before Ducky told them about the minute changes in Gibbs' condition, they were all just afraid, worried, uncertain, and reluctant with regards to many things.
Now they still are all of this, but they're also fighting not to get too optimistic, and to accidentally start saying things like Oh, that can wait till Gibbs is back.
Because even if he wakes up soon, he still might never be coming back.
They're fighting to neither loose hope nor to think too hopefully at the same time. That's a hard job, and tiring.
Abby's been sitting in the hospital chair mutely for the last two hours. She's never been so silent when she was here alone.
Usually, she talked to him.
About the greatest rubbish that came to her mind, if she had to. If Gibbs had heard all of that, he'd be an expert on the bands she likes now, her friends and the bands they like, Washington's nightlife, and internet chat rooms. And a lot more that even she can't remember now. The viciousness of hair dye, probably.
She knows she started babbling about something when she arrived, but after a while her own voice began to annoy her, and everything she said sounded so utterly meaningless in her own ears that she felt Gibbs would give her a look or say something if she went on any more.
So it's very quiet, peaceful in a way, and she's got her knees pulled up to her chin, and stares stubbornly at something that, for a change, doesn't have a meaning.
She's avoiding tubes, monitors, blankets, the drawings on the wall. Unfortunately, after over three months, everything kind of carved itself a meaning out of a faceless chunk of wood. Even the mottled blue of the damn linoleum floor. It's part of the picture, part of their last about one hundred days, part of all the worrying and confusion and all the saying Everything will be fine and silently thinking I don't know if I believe it'll ever be.
Abby closes her eyes. If she can't look at a simple window or a chair, blackness is fair enough.
And if she really makes the effort and listens to her feelings, she has to admit that they have evened out again. She's just being a little dramatic, and she tells herself that's just the strain and tiredness and the way the intensity of the last quarter of a year wore her out a bit.
It may be five minutes later, or fifty, when she opens them again, not quite sure why. Perhaps it was a reflex, triggered by whatever.
Outside, it's begun to rain, or to snow, or both. The sound of the drops and particles of ice against the window is soft an irregular, and makes her sleepy.
Automatically, she looks at Gibbs.
Something tickles her nose, and she sniffs quietly.
Abby lets her feet slide to the floor and leans forward, taking his hand in hers. She's become so used to taking care not to stir the IV needle, she doesn't even have to look.
"Hey", she says softly, smiling through tears she's not quite sure when they began to roll down her cheeks.
He blinks slowly, and it takes a while before he manages to keep his eyes open. They sweep through the room randomly for a few seconds, then they briefly settle on Abby before fluttering shut again.
Briefly, but apparently long enough.
He smiles, it's very week but it's there when you know him.
"Abs." It's more lip reading than actually hearing it for Abby, but that's more than enough at the moment. A lot more, actually, because aside from everything else, this one-syllable-word means he recognizes her. And that's a good sign. Very good.
Abby realizes only now that she really had convinced herself all this would never, never happen.
She leans in a bit more and whispers: "Hello, my hero."
Another smile, and she can feel he's drifting off again. Abby knows she should let him, but she can't.
She gently tugs at his finger and waits for the time it takes until her plea for attention registers with him, and he opens his eyes again.
"Stay with me for a little while?" she asks, smirking almost shyly. "Just a tiny, tiny little while? It's been one hell of a long time since you've been around."
He frowns slightly. How long? his lips ask.
"Ahm…", Abby swiftly brushes away the tears that blur her vision, not caring what will
happen to her makeup. She glances at her watch and takes a brief moment to calculate.
"Three months, twelve days, twenty-three hours, eight minutes and twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,…" She stops and smiles. "A long time." The way she's sitting, she only has to crane her neck a bit to be able to give him a gentle kiss on the cheek. "It's enough now, 'kay?"
Gibbs looks a little confused, which is very understandable. She's sure he doesn't remember the shooting, plus it's not like she's exaggerating when she calls October to January a long time.
She reaches out and places a cool hand on his forehead. "Go back to sleep", she tells him softly. Explanations can wait, and question too. Everything can wait, now it really can.
"But come back, alright? Before April."
TBC… but I'll have to take a break now. I'll be on holiday for the next three week and have no intention of dragging my notebook around a beach on the Bahamas ;)
I sincerely hope you'll return to this story when I do! See you all!
Hoping to find a few reviews when I come back,
robin