Chapter Six

"DiNozzo, you look like hell."

Tony couldn't hear him, and wouldn't have been able to even if he hadn't been sedated. Gibbs had arrived just as Dr. Marquardt had starting checking his vitals and running another series of chest x-rays, so he hadn't been allowed to go in yet. He was standing in the hallway, drinking a cup of the black swill that passed for coffee in the waiting room, and looking in through the window, waiting for the nurse to come out and get him. They'd just wheeled the x-ray machine away from Tony's bed, and he was willing to give them a few more minutes to make sure everything was okay. As long as the curtain was open and he could see Tony, he'd be fine.

Under normal circumstances, he might have felt a bit ridiculous talking to himself. But circumstances weren't normal. Even by the MCRT's normal standards of bad luck, the current situation was FUBAR. And besides, DiNozzo really did look like hell.

The thick plastic mouthpiece held the breathing tube in place as it passed between his lips and down his throat, and a large machine next to him pumped oxygen into his lungs. Another clear tube, this one filled with blood, disappeared under a swath of bandage and tape high on his right collarbone. The small white monitor on his finger checked the oxygen in his blood, and the cuff around his upper right arm took his blood pressure every five minutes. There was an IV in the back of his right hand, and he had a bag of saline just like Gibbs' hanging above him, though his had antibiotics, Versed, and morphine mixed in. He was going to hate that morphine when he woke up, but he was going to need it, too. The muscle damage alone would cause enough pain to warrant narcotics, and if he tried to move his arms, it would be a hundred times worse.

His left shoulder was bare, his upper arm was strapped to his side, and his left hand was strapped down across his stomach. Both of his wrists were bandaged almost halfway to his elbow. The dark red mark on his throat had turned several shades darker, and the gash above his right eye was swollen. Where the gown was pulled back and didn't cover his chest, the electrodes for the EKG and the sutured cuts were visible. His skin, in the few places not mottled and marred by dark purple and red bruises or covered by bandages, was too pale for Gibbs' liking, but at least he wasn't that sickly shade of bluish-grey anymore.

"Absolute hell."

He didn't know if he was talking about DiNozzo's appearance, or the whole damn situation, but it didn't really matter. He'd leave it up to the person who'd heard him say it to decide what he meant.

"Timothy showed me the photograph of Anthony's back."

"Yeah." He didn't turn away from the window, didn't take his eyes off the steady rise and fall of Tony's chest. He just took another sip of his coffee. "I figured he would."

"Jethro …"

"Don't." He heard Ducky's footsteps as the older man walked up beside him, but he didn't turn toward him. "Don't try to convince me this isn't my fault, Duck. I won't believe you."

Ducky stopped at his side and joined him in watching Tony through the ICU window. "There is no doubt that you're involved," Ducky said softly. "The people who did this have made that abundantly clear. But you have no idea how you're involved, do you? And even if you did, that still wouldn't make it your fault."

Gibbs turned away from the window just long enough to shoot a sidelong, incredulous look in Ducky's direction. Ducky kept his eyes on Tony.

"Tell me, Jethro. Were you the target, or were you the weapon?"

"What?"

"It's a simple enough question." Again, Ducky didn't look at him. "You feel that what's been done to Tony was a message to you, right?"

Gibbs ground his teeth together, turned, and pointed at Tony's bed through the window. "They carved my name into his back!" Ducky nodded silently. "My name. In my house. In my basement. With my tools. What else could that mean?"

"To whom?"

Gibbs dropped his arm and tilted his head. "What?"

"You are upset and hurting and feeling guilty because of what those things mean to you. But have you stopped to think what they mean to him?"

The nurse was moving around the side of DiNozzo's bed again, looking at the numbers on the monitor above his head and writing them down in his chart.

"Your house, Jethro," Ducky continued. "Your basement, your tools, your name. What do those things mean to your team? To Tony?"

Gibbs closed his eyes and let his head fall forward. Ducky was right; he hadn't thought about that.

"Safety," he whispered.

"As we both know full well, one of the first things any torturer will seek to do is to isolate his victim, to make him feel alone, to eliminate all feelings of hope and safety." Ducky finally moved, and he turned his whole body toward Gibbs. "So I ask again. Were you the target or the weapon? Did they use him to hurt you, or did they use you to hurt him?"

He shook his head without opening his eyes. "I don't know."

"Were they trying to take him away from you, or were they trying to take you away from him?"

He lifted his head slowly, opened his eyes, and looked back at Tony, so still and pale and bruised, surrounded by wires and tubes and monitors. He'd fought so hard to make it that far, and he had so much farther to go, so much to overcome, so many battles left to fight, all of it just to survive. And that was just his physical condition. How would he be mentally? Emotionally?

"Does it really matter, Duck?"

"Yes, it does," Ducky insisted. "It matters to the people who did this. It will matter to Anthony, and it should matter to you."

"Why?"

"Because if it is the first, then they have failed. If it is the second, then you cannot allow them to succeed."

Gibbs huffed out a breath. "I'm right here."

"A good start, but simply your presence will not be enough." Ducky stepped closer, until he was only inches away. Gibbs kept his eyes straight ahead. "You know that boy better than any of us do, Jethro. It's quite probable that you know him better than anyone on the planet. You know what he needs."

Dr. Marquardt was back in the ICU, looking at the same numbers on the monitor that the nurse had just written down. She didn't look happy.

"He needs you. The you that he depends on, the you that never wavers, the you that means safety, in all of your stubborn, pig-headed, obsessed bastard glory. And if you can't be that, if you can't give that to him, then they've already won."

Gibbs straightened his shoulders and turned his head toward Ducky. "They haven't," he vowed through clenched teeth. "And they won't."

"See to it that they don't."

Gibbs took a sip of his coffee and glanced through the window once more. He wished he knew what was going on in there, but he trusted that if it was serious, Dr. Marquardt would tell him. "Are you going back to the Yard?"

"I am." Ducky turned his back to the window and faced the elevator he'd ridden up on. "Mr. Palmer and Abigail are waiting for me downstairs. There is much work to be done, after all."

"McGee?"

"He and Agent Fornell have already left. Timothy was going directly to the office, and Fornell said something about stopping by the Hoover Building to get some evidence sent to Abby, but he did tell Timothy that he would be to the Yard shortly."

"Good. That's good."

The elevator dinged, and behind him, Gibbs heard the doors opening. "Hold the elevator, please," Ducky said. He started moving toward it, but he stopped long enough to put his hand on Gibbs' shoulder. "We will do our jobs, Jethro." He tilted his head in Tony's direction before walking away. "You do yours."

"Will do, Duck." He didn't know if Ducky had heard him or not, but it didn't matter. It was as much a vow to himself, and to Tony, as it was to anyone. "Will do."

The activity on the other side of the ICU window was starting to pick up, and it was all concentrated around Tony's bed. Dr. Marquardt was already there with one nurse, and two more hurried to her side when she beckoned them over. He couldn't see what they were doing, but they looked a bit frantic. Dr. Marquardt looked worried, and that was more than enough to scare him. He took a step toward the window and raised his hand to the glass.

Dr. Marquardt looked up at him, flashed one of her quick, tight smiles, and raised her finger to indicate that she'd be out in a minute. He didn't move away from the window until she stepped away from Tony's bed, but when she walked through the door, he was standing on the other side of it, waiting for her.

"What is it, Doc?" he asked before the door had even closed behind her. "What's wrong?"

"It's all right now." Her voice was calm, as was the expression on her face. He knew it was meant to reassure him, but it wasn't working. "Agent DiNozzo was starting to exhibit some symptoms of TACO …"

"Taco?"

The smiled that earned him was one of amusement. "Yes, I know. It's a silly acronym. T-A-C-O. It stands for transfusion-associated circulatory overload."

"What's that?"

"Patients who receive rapid blood transfusions, as Agent DiNozzo has, are at risk for a number of complications. These are well-documented and not uncommon, and we watch patients very carefully to ensure that if they do start to develop symptoms, they are caught early."

"He was fine," Gibbs said. "You told me he was fine. You just needed to do a chest x-ray"

"Yes. But when I reviewed that x-ray, I saw signs of the early stages of congestive heart failure."

"What?!"

She held her hands up, and then gestured toward the couch across the hall from Tony's window. "Why don't we sit down?"

"No," he said. "I'm fine. Tell me what's wrong with Tony."

She put her hands on her hips and locked eyes with him. "I am fully aware of what happened in the waiting room downstairs, Agent Gibbs. I know that my patient isn't the only one having trouble keeping his blood pressure up right now. You will not be doing Tony any good if you pass out again, because this time, you will be admitted and you won't be allowed to stay with him. Now, please, sit down and let me explain."

Gibbs took a deep breath and blew it out. She was right, and he knew it. He sat down on the couch and leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, holding his coffee with both hands. She settled on the arm at the opposite end.

"Congestive heart failure is a scary term for something that, in Agent DiNozzo's case, is relatively minor."

"It's fluid around his heart," he said. She tilted her head, and he shrugged. "I've seen a lot of dead bodies in my time, Doc. Not all of them were murdered, and a whole lot of them had heart problems. I know what it is."

"Do you also know that in its early stages, it's usually easily treatable?"

He nodded his head silently.

"It's a small amount of fluid, and we did catch it early. We raised the head of his bed to encourage it to drain away from his heart, we added a diuretic to his IV to help, and I'm going to repeat the chest x-ray every half hour until I'm satisfied that it's going away. I'm going to stay on top of this, Agent Gibbs. He's come too far on his own for me to let something like this take him out."

Gibbs took a drink of his coffee as he watched the nurses that still hovered around Tony's bedside.

"Because it's the rapid infusion of blood and fluids that is causing the problem, we've temporarily suspended the blood transfusion. We've maintained his other IVs, because we cannot and will not discontinue the antibiotics, the Versed or the morphine, but we've slowed them down. Once his body acclimates to its current condition, we'll resume transfusing, but we'll do so at a much slower rate. Because he's on the vent, we don't have to worry about any pulmonary complications or a further drop in his oxygen saturation levels. We've already got those under control."

"Is that all?"

"I wasn't happy with his last blood pressure reading, either. Again, it's a symptom of TACO, and I was expecting it to happen."

"Still too low?"

"No. The opposite, actually. It's jumped rather significantly in the past few minutes."

He looked at her in confusion. "I thought we wanted it to go up."

"We do, but not that far and not that fast. As I said, we were aware it might happen, and we caught it early. Right now, we're adjusting his medications and seeing if it will level off and even out on its own. If it doesn't, we may need to do a therapeutic phlebotomy to get it back down."

"You might have to take blood out of someone you've just spent the last three hours putting blood back into?" She shrugged, and he sighed. "Only DiNozzo could manage that one."

That made her laugh, and for the first time, he saw her as more than a doctor. She was young, in her mid-30s at the most, with short brown hair and green eyes. She was a real person, one that he was going to be seeing a lot of in the next few days, and it would make things easier on him and DiNozzo both if he treated her like one. Besides, she was the reason Tony was still alive, and the reason he would stay that way. He owed her more than basic respect; he owed her more than he could ever repay.

"What's it all mean, Doc?"

"It may not seem like it right now, but it means that he's getting better," she answered. "His body is trying to fix itself. It's just going too far in the opposite direction. It also means that it's going to be a few more minutes before you can go in and see him." She pushed herself to her feet and looked back down at him. "I'm going to run another chest x-ray, but as soon as it's done, I'll come back out and get you myself, all right?"

He leaned back, crossed his leg over his knee, and put his arm across the back of the couch. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Of that, Agent Gibbs," Dr. Marquardt said as she pushed the button to open the heavy glass door, "I have never had any doubt."

Gibbs was still sitting on the couch waiting for Dr. Marquardt to come back when the next person got off the elevator and walked toward the window over Tony's bed. He looked familiar, but Gibbs couldn't think of how he knew him. He was on the tall side, big and broad, and he was wearing a dark suit that marked him as some sort of federal officer.

"Damn," the man muttered. "He's still alive?"

Gibbs cleared his throat, and the man turned toward him. "Excuse me?" he said as he stood.

"Agent Gibbs." He was surprised, and it showed clearly on his face. "I just meant that I, I mean, with everything that's happened, I'm just … I'm surprised he made it through. I guess he's stronger than I gave him credit for."

Gibbs walked across the hallway and came to a stop a few inches from the newcomer. "DiNozzo's stronger than most people think he is," he said. "Now, who are you?"

"Rivers, Bruce Rivers." The name sounded familiar, too, but he still couldn't place the man. "You broke my nose last week."

Then he recognized him. "Right." He thought Rivers might have been fishing for an apology for the nose thing, but if he was, he was going to be sorely disappointed, because he wasn't getting one. "You're Fornell's guy."

"Yeah." Rivers didn't look too enthusiastic about that, but he nodded anyway. "Fornell's guy."

"So, Agent Rivers, what are you doing here?"

"Um …" He glanced over his shoulder nervously, and then looked down at the floor. "Overnight protection detail. The hospital's handling the security, but we thought that overnight should have some more. Just in case."

"Ah." Gibbs' lips twitched. "You're the babysitter."

"Yeah." Rivers smiled, an expression that struck Gibbs as completely out-of-place on his face. "I drew the short straw."

Gibbs' glare shut the attempt at humor down quickly, and when he stepped forward, Rivers backed up.

"As I recall, Rivers," he said, with a sarcastic emphasis on the name, "the last guy you babysat knocked you out cold, stole your weapon, stole your car, crashed through my gates, and murdered someone with your gun."

Rivers dropped his head again. "Yes, sir."

"Don't call me 'sir.'" It was an automatic response, one that he'd been giving for so many years that he didn't even have to think about it.

On the other side of the ICU window, Gibbs saw Dr. Marquardt moving away from Tony's bed and toward the door, and this time she had a smile on her face.

"Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to be in there with DiNozzo." He pointed at Tony's still form, and Rivers followed with his eyes. "You're going to be out here, watching that elevator …" He pointed again. "… and that door." And again. "No one comes onto this floor without permission, you got it?"

"Yes, sir," Rivers said quickly. "I mean, Agent Gibbs."

"I'll get a list of everyone who's authorized to go through that door, and you check it against everyone who tries."

The door opened from the inside, and Dr. Marquardt leaned out. "Agent Gibbs? You can come in now."

"Be right there, Doc," he said. He turned back to Rivers one last time. "And if anyone gets within ten feet of DiNozzo without my permission, I'll knock you over the head and steal your weapon, too." He leaned in close, so that only Rivers could hear what he said. "But I'll shoot you with it."

He turned his back and walked away. "How's he doing, Doc?" he asked Dr. Marquardt as he neared her.

"Better," she said. "A lot better. At this rate, he'll be off the vent and in his own room before breakfast."

He was almost smiling when he stepped through the door, but it only lasted until he saw DiNozzo across the room. He was already moving toward Tony's bed when the door slid closed behind him, leaving Agent Bruce Rivers alone in the hallway.

"Hey, Abby."

"Timmy!" Abby turned away from her computer and ran toward Tim as he walked into the room. He held his hands up, and she squealed in delight. "You brought me breakfast!"

He looked down at his hands and back up at her again. "I brought you Caf-Pow and a candy bar."

"Yep," she said as she took them from him. "Breakfast."

He shook his head as she walked away. Then he noticed the stacks of boxes against the walls, in some place three or four boxes high. Those hadn't been there an hour earlier.

"You're busy," he said. "I'll come back later."

"Oh, no," she argued around the bite of candy in her mouth. "I'm not busy. I just got this really big delivery from the FBI." She swallowed, took a drink of her Caf-Pow, and smiled at him. "I hear you had something to do with it."

"Yeah, I did. Sort of. I guess." He walked forward, taking in the dozens of boxes as he did. "I had no idea there was this much, though. It didn't seem like this much when we were gathering it."

"Oh, this isn't from Gibbs' house." Abby walked over to one of the boxes and pulled the lid off. "This is twenty-five years worth of evidence. Everything they've ever had about Rick Azari and everyone who's ever worked for him."

Tim's eyes widened in surprise. "Really?" Abby put the lid back on the box she'd opened and he blinked at her. "What did this have to do with me? I couldn't access any of their files yesterday. I thought they had them all locked down because Jack Kale killed Azari with an FBI agent's gun."

"They did," Abby said. "But Fornell thought it would be a good idea to give it to us, because there might be something in these boxes that will tie Stefano DelMar to what happened to Tony." She grinned at him. "He was very thorough."

"Yeah?" He was still looking at the files, and he wasn't quite over his surprise that they were there. "I wonder why."

Abby's grin grew wider. "He said you scare him."

That took him by surprise. "Me?" he said. "I scare Fornell?"

"Yes, sir," Abby said with a nod. "His exact words were, 'When that kid is pissed, he's as scary as Gibbs has ever been.'"

"Huh." He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face as he looked around at the boxes of evidence and files one last time, and he shook his head. "Okay, so, are you going through all this right now?"

"No." Her voice lost all traces of good humor and cheerfulness as she gestured at the lab table and the much smaller pile of evidence bags on it. "I've started running the … the Tony stuff."

He walked over to her and pulled her into a hug. "He's going to be okay, Abby." He tightened his arms around her, and was rewarded by her doing the same to him. "You heard what the doctor said."

"I know," she answered softly. "But he's not okay right now, and I'm just … I want to see him, Timmy. I want him here where he belongs."

"Yeah. Me too." He'd never have admitted it to Tony, even though after everything that had happened, he probably should. Annoying though he may have been, Tony DiNozzo was the best partner anyone could ask for, and Tim hated the man who'd hurt him so badly. Just twelve hours earlier, he'd been teasing Tony about not being able to keep his mouth shut, and now, he'd have done anything just to hear his voice.

He pulled away from Abby quickly when a thought occurred to him. "Hey, your machines are all running, right? There's nothing you need to be really doing right now?"

She nodded in response.

"I know a way you can see Tony, if that would make you feel better."

"How?"

"I was getting ready to watch the security footage from the parking lot. I was just going to grab a timecode from it, so I can start building a timeline for figuring out when … yeah. But anyway, do you want to watch it with me? I could use the company, and it would almost be like Tony was here, right?"

"Yeah." Her smile was small at first, uncertain, but the more she thought about it, the bigger it got. "I think that's a great idea. He'd love that we were watching a movie with him in it, wouldn't he? I should make popcorn."

Tim laughed as he walked over to her computer, sat down, and loaded the security footage. "I don't think it's going to be quite that long, Abs."

She pulled her chair up next to his and sat down. "Maybe Tony's a really slow walker. Or maybe he dances to his car. Or does cartwheels. I mean, you never know, do you?"

They already knew that Tony had left the Squad Room around 8:00, so Tim jumped to 20:00 hours before he started scanning manually. The timecode said 20:09 when Tony first appeared on the edge of the frame, and Tim hit the play button. "That looks to me like he's walking." He turned his head slightly and smiled at her. "I never pegged Tony for a random dancer any …"

Abby screamed.

Tim snapped his head back to the computer screen just in time to see a large man throw a length of rope over Tony's head and pull back on it. He slammed his hand down on the pause button, stood up, grabbed Abby by the shoulders, and turned her away.

"Timmy!" Her voice was shaking as badly as the rest of her was, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly from behind. He wanted to hold her, but he couldn't let her watch any more than she'd already seen.

He buried his face in her hair as he whispered in her ear. "He's okay, Abby. Just remember that. It's all over, and he's going to be fine."

"No, no, no. This isn't supposed to happen here. How'd they get here? They're not supposed to do that!"

"Abby, listen to me …"

"We're safe here," she insisted. "He was supposed to be safe here!"

"Calm down, Abby. Tony's safe now, remember? He's at the hospital, and Gibbs is with him, and everything's going to be …"

"But they took him from here! They stole him from us!"