A/N: I'm fairly certain my mom thinks I have a health issue and that anyone who passed me at school while I had the internet open thinks I'm pregnant. What I go through for you people... ::winks::

Disclaimer: I do not own Thompson Hospital, if I mentioned it..I can't remember now.

When I wake up, I am nearly blinded by fluorescent lights, and can hear the faint beep-beep-beep of a vitals monitor next to me. The pillow under my head is too firm for how I feel right now, and I feel like the rest of my body is floating on air. Two men are holding a hushed conversation in the corner and as I turn my head to look at them, I let out a moan, my neck sore.

"She's awake, Boss," one of them murmurs. If my vision were not fuzzy, I would have at least been able to decipher who the speaker is. I see the indistinct figure of the other man stand and leave the room. The first man picks up the chair he was sitting in and carries it over to set next to the bed. "Ziva?" he asks. His voice is easier to identify now. Tony.

"Mm," I hum, blinking a few times in a feeble attempt at clearing my eyes.

"How're you feeling, Zeev? You…you scared us." Tony reaches over and takes my hand in his.

I cannot think of anything to say other than, "I do not know." Even that comes out almost incomprehensibly. My mouth is dry, but do not have the strength to reach over and take the cup off of the table next to the bed. Tony, as if reading my mind, hands me the cup. "Thanks," I croak.

"No problem." He stares at me for a moment before murmuring, "The doctor's coming in soon to tell us what your blood tests said. Gibbs told him to only tell us when you woke up, but Ducky knows." I nod, too disorientated to answer. "Happy Thanksgiving, right?" he chuckles, a small smile on his face.

A nurse passes and notices that I am awake, calling a doctor over to my room. He is the same man who I have been seeing, so I am thrown off when he walks up to my bed.

"Miss Ana," Doctor Owens greets me, his blue eyes twinkling, "How are you today?" I give my shoulders a shrug and look away. "Well, I have your blood results here, and also took a look at you earlier as a preliminary exam, and it looks as though you have a small uterine infection. Have you been having any pain or nausea?"

"She's been peeing like a racehorse…" Tony mutters, but immediately silences himself at a stern look from Doctor Owens. "What? It's true!" I nod, but only because it is true. I had blamed it on the pregnancy pack pushing in on my bladder, but there could have been another reason.

The doctor sits on the edge of my bed and pats my knee. "I think there's something you aren't telling us, Ana." I glance at Tony briefly and then shake my head, not because I am tired, but because I do not want to voice the story again. "Ana, you need to be honest with us, because we want to help you."

"Just give me the antibiotics and let me go home," I whisper, and Tony squeezes my hand. "Please?"

Doctor Owens shakes his head. "Unfortunately, Ana, we're going to have to keep you for a few days. We don't know what's causing the infection yet and if we let you go home with a generic antibiotic, the infection may get worse."

"But…but, Doctor, I—"

"This is not up for debate."

Tony jumps in. "Sir, my uncle is a doctor…he could probably take care of Ana just as well as anyone else."

"We need to run the tests." A flush rises in the doctor's cheeks and he storms from the room.

That man is very strange.

"So then," Tony struggles to get out as he laughs, "Tommy shoved the cupcake in Bean's face, and the dog ran after him at full throttle. Nailed him in the groin." I wince, but let out a soft chuckle. "Well, it's a good thing we haven't slept together yet, right?"

I blink several times. "Pardon?"

"I was kidding…Just trying to get your attention."

"Oh." Well, you certainly succeeded.

A nurse brings in my dinner tray and sets me up to eat. "The nice man in the trench coat told me you like Indian food." I look at the plate hopefully but when she lifts the lid, I am disappointed by the sight of Salisbury steak and green beans. "I know, hon, I love it too. But this is all we've got."

She hovers until I begin to open the package of silverware and then flits away back to her cart to deliver another dinner. As soon as she cannot see me, I shove the rolling table away and turn my head to stare at the wall.

"Didn't you hear them saying earlier that you've gotta keep your strength up, Ana?" Tony pushes the gravy around in the dish. "Mm…"

"This is absolute malarkey," I mutter darkly. "I am not sick. I have an infection. Is that not what medicine is for?"

He nods. "Well, yeah, but why couldn't your body fight it off? You've been eating and exercising well…it doesn't make sense."

"I'm fine, David," I state firmly, not meeting his eyes. "Absolutely, completely, entirely fine."

"Then why is your body infected, hm? There has to be something wrong…"

"No, there doesn't. It's probably just a little bit of a pH issue. Let me go home. Please? Sign for me?" I turn to him and look him dead in the eyes. "Actually, I could just sign for myse—" Gibbs rushes into the room, gesturing for Tony to follow him into the hall. My partner does so and slides the door shut. I can, however, still see them.

Our boss is telling him something very important, something that has him very concerned. They discuss this for several minutes before Tony returns to me and Gibbs whisks down the hall.

"Where is he going?" I ask, pulling the table back to sit in front of me and picking at the green beans. When I look up, I notice that Tony, too, looks rather flustered. "Is there something wrong?"

"Mm, I guess Adam and Tommy hung back at the house and someone tried to break in. Dad's going to check the damages." As I struggle to reach my knife, Tony pulls the table toward him and cuts the steak in small pieces, beckoning me to lean closer to him. Eyeing him suspiciously, I obey. "Open." I let my jaw drop slightly and he gently pushes a piece of the steak between my lips with the fork. As he draws it away, a drop of gravy lands on my lip. Instead of laughing, he wraps my napkin around his forefinger and dabs the gravy away.

"Thank you …"

"No talking. Eat." Again, I am met with a forkful of food, this time green beans. The innocence of his feeding me instigates a soft blush in my cheeks. "Babby's bringing in a bag of all your stuff. Like a brush and another set of clothes." As I chew, he cut the beans into smaller bites, as if feeding a child. "And—" Tony's phone rings loudly. "Ugh, be right back. It's dad."

As he traipses out of the room, his seat is refilled with Doctor Owens.

"I see you're eating, so you must be feeling a bit less aggressive, Miss Stadelvard." He smiles haughtily. "I need you to do me—and you—a favor. Comply with all of my tests and we'll have nothing to worry about. Mm-kay?" The glint off of his teeth and the gleam to his eyes set me on the defensive again. "Now, sweetie, get some rest."

"There is nothing wrong with me, is there?" I ask venomously. "You are in on all of this, too, aren't you?"

He only smiles and leaves the room at approximately the same time Tony returns. "What was that all about?" my partner murmurs, suddenly very cheerful. "Did he get the results of the test?"

"No. I have a weird feeling about him."

Weird is an understatement.

As Tony helps me finish my dinner, I cannot defy the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.

On the way back to the house four days later, after I have been poked and prodded with all sorts of equipment and asked humiliating and upsetting questions, Tony has been unable to take his eyes off of me for more than five minutes, in what seems like fear that I will pass out again.

Suddenly, he softly says, "Zeev, I'd like to take you to dinner."

I draw my eyes from staring out the windshield to look at him. His eyes sparkle and there is a trace of concern in them.

"Why?" I murmur, absentmindedly rubbing the spot my IV had previously been attached to my hand.

"Because, you've been through hell this week and I feel as though you deserve something better than a night at home." He gently takes my hand in his and murmurs, "Hey, you're okay now. You can smile."

Despite the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, I shoot him a small smile. "That sounds lovely. Thank you." Tony gives my hand a soft squeeze and lets it go. "Tony, I just…I just feel as though this is one of the most complex and misleading cases we have ever dealt with."

"How do you mean?"

"Look," I murmur, turning to him, "first, Director Vance directed us here, to Canandaigua, because Navy and Marine personnel had gone missing. Not only have we not found them, but now Buck—our first suspect—has also disappeared. His father is incredibly … sketchy, and Doctor Owens is not much better." My heart is racing as I finish speaking, and for a second I worry I am going to faint. After a few deep breaths, however, I am fine.

Tony glances at me and then pulls into the driveway of our house. "What did the doctor say to you?" Putting the car in park, he turns toward me and gives me, 'Tell-Me-Everything-You-Know' look that Gibbs mastered years ago.

"He threatened me and said that if I complied with all of his orders, nothing bad would happen. He refused to tell me what was wrong."

"When was this?" Tony withdraws his cell phone from his jacket pocket and begins dialing a number.

"It was the first night I was at the hospital, but…" I trail off as the recipient of his call answers.

"Yeah, Bridget.—Hi, yes, Ana's fine. Listen, could you do me a favor and run a name for me?—Thanks. It's 'Peter Owens.' I'll wait." While this Bridget person runs Doctor Owens' name through the database, Tony mutters to me, "I had a bad feeling about him." Bridget comes back. "He what? Okay, thanks." His phone beeps several times and he presses a button on the touch screen.

As I watch, he dictates, "Doctor Peter Owens, PhD. Won some awards in College…basketball, soccer—blah-blah-blah—Purple Heart in `Nam…okay, well, seems he has a clea—Whoa."

"What is it?"

"Ziva, we've got ourselves some new incriminating evidence." Turning the phone toward me, he points toward a paragraph. "Read that."

The text reads that after he returned from the Vietnam War, he suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and was treated at New York State Psychiatric Institute. After a brief psych evaluation, he was hired at Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua as an obstetrician/gynecologist. He almost lost his job, however, when a woman declared he murdered her father.

The woman's name was Martina Jackson.

"We have our killer, then, and the man who kidnapped Buck," I state matter-of-factly. "But why was there marijuana in the stall? And why is Buck's father so obsessed with the goings on of our farm?"

"And why," Tony wonders, "don't we know the locations of the servicemen we were sent here to find?"

"Let me get this straight," Gibbs asks from his stance behind the counter. "You think this case is linked to another case from Israel?" Tony and I nod curtly. "Give me reasons."

"Well, you see, it all revolves around the one drug cartel out of Colombia." Tony crosses the room, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator. "Looks like, surprisingly enough, the case from Ziva's past in Mossad." Gibbs looks at me and I bow my head, slowly beginning,

"In Israel, I investigated a drug cartel that, as Tony mentioned, was based in Colombia. The Secretary General of the Knesset was found dead in his bathroom two days after he stated that there would be no more trade between their country and ours—or, rather…Israel." Gibbs nods for me to continue. "In his lungs, our medical examiner found traces of arsenic and belladonna. During the investigation—which I led alongside Michael Rivkin and his father—we found that he received a box of cigars the night before he died."

My boss nods. "So you're saying this may be another attempt by that cartel?"

"Yes, Gibbs. I do."

"So, what do you propose we do about it, Boss?" Tony asks, sipping his beer. "Do we make ourselves? Let ourselves be made?" He dips his chin in my direction. "And what about Ana's pregnancy?"

Gibbs thinks about it for a moment before softly stating, "There isn't a 'David and Ana Stadelvard' marriage anymore. There is no pregnancy. Owens knows everything. We need him to think we don't know he does."

"What's that mean? We're going undercover while undercover?" My partner laughs. "Yeah, that's gonna go well."

"It means," the older man snaps, "you're pretending he doesn't know. Both of you. You're leading him into a trap. Sooner or later, he's going to fall into it."

Tony and I exchange disbelieving looks. If Doctor Owens knows I am not pregnant—since he always has—and now also knows we are up to something potentially harmful to his illegal operations, why should we be pretending to be a newlywed pregnant couple still? Before we can question Gibbs, however, Abby runs into the room.

"Guys! There's something going on with a cow!" the eccentric woman cries. "I think it's having a baby!" She stares pointedly at Gibbs and Tony. "Well, come on, you two! It's your job!"

Four and a half hours later, on the straw-and-dirt floor of the warm barn, safe from the freezing rain and chilling winds, Gibbs has—with the help of Tony and a certified veterinarian—delivered a beautiful Black Angus calf. We at NCIS can now add that to the list of things Leroy Jethro Gibbs can do, making him appear to be even more of a super hero. For a moment, we can all forget the danger at hand and revel in the sight of new life and the beauty of innocence. As the mother licks her baby clean, Tony wraps an arm around my waist, resting on the side of my pregnancy pack.

Five-and-a-half months. Fantastic. In two weeks, we would continue the case as NCIS agents. The connection between Tony and myself would be gone. We would no longer be able to play house and get away with stolen kisses, massages, lounging on the couch all day, or flirting with each other as we have been.

Laying in bed, I consider sleeping on the couch in order to acclimate myself to once again sleeping alone. As I roll over in an attempt to leave the bed without disturbing my partner, a hand snakes around my—rather large—waist. Into my neck, Tony whispers, "Don't go."

Turning my head a centimeter, I murmur, "Why not?"

"Because," he tells me, "I can't sleep alone."

Neither can I.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it...I'm thinking there'll be two or three more chapters. It's coming to an end...but don't worry. I have many more ideas in store for one-shots. Ooh rah! Love, Kat