Strange Happenings

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A/N - Sorry for the long delay in updating, have been away. Hope everybody hasn't given up on this :( Please please just leave a small review at the end :)

Chapter Nine - Family

It felt like they had waited for hours for news on Ziva. In fact, it had been practically the whole night. Ziva had been in theatre from the moment she had arrived at the hospital, and although a member of staff would come by every couple of hours with updates, the whole team were worried. Ziva was managing to battle through the surgery, but how much of her would remain afterwards?

Gibbs was now the only one still awake. Abby had cried herself to sleep, and was cuddled up next to McGee, who was also dozing. Ducky and Palmer had been at the hospital for most of the night, but had since gone back to the office to wait for news. Tony had stayed awake for the longest besides Gibbs, but tiredness had eventually overwhelmed him. He had fought it, but relented when Gibbs told him they all needed to be strong for Ziva, and that meant getting some rest. Gibbs himself had tried to sleep, but he couldn't get the image of Ziva's scared face before she had been shot. Gibbs looked up the corridor, and willed someone to come down and tell them Ziva was alright. Normally, his gut would speak to him, but Gibbs was not willing to listen to bad news.

Another hour passed, and Gibbs had fallen into a light sleep. He was woken by Tony.

"Boss, the surgeons here. They've finished Ziva's surgery"

Gibbs leapt out of his seat, making everybody jump.

"How is she?"

"Ms David's surgery went as well as could be expected. It was a very long procedure as I'm sure you are aware. We managed to extract the bullet, which I have already sent to your lab. The bullet impacted itself on the back of the skull, causing quite a lot of damage. Ziva has three skull fractures, and we removed a large amount of blood that had accumulated there. On the good side, there appears to be no further bleeding, although we will be monitoring that closely. The main thing we are worried about is swelling. We ran an MRI scan after the surgery, which appears to be normal. This is good news. We will be scanning Ziva again tomorrow. At the moment, we are keeping her sedated and ventilated, to give her the best chance of survival. I don't know how long for, probably the next few days at least, but as long as she continues to be as stable as she is, I would give her a good chance of pulling through this. We also found numerous bruising over her body, and she had various drugs in her system which should now have been flushed out. I know this is a lot to take in, but do you have any questions"

"If she pulls through, what about brain damage?" Gibbs asked.

"I'm sure as you can appreciate, this is something we will only know with time. With any severe head trauma, there is always a risk of damage, and Ziva's injury is the most severe I have ever worked on. But for now she is stable, she is young, and I cautiously hope that any damage will be minimal. It is a question of time I'm afraid"

"Can we see her?" Tony asked.

"We are just settling Ziva into ICU at the moment. She remains critical but stable, and at the moment, she needs a lot of care. If she makes it through the night, I would be happy for one of you to visit tomorrow"

"Thank-you Dr"

"My pleasure. You have one hell of a fighter on your team" The surgeon shook Gibbs's hand and then walked down the corridor.

"Right, I want everybody to go home and get some proper sleep. No objections" Gibbs added the last part for Tony. Abby and McGee stood up and said their good-byes. Tony remained sitting, daring to go against Gibbs's orders.

"Dinozzo, I meant you too"

"I know Boss, but I can't leave her. She's my partner, and I need to be here. Please don't make me go"

Gibbs could see the Tony was close to tears. This was a different side to Tony that nobody ever saw.

"What's up Dinozzo?"

"You want the truth? I love her Boss, I love Ziva. Ever since we pulled her out of that African hell hole, I have wanted to tell her how I feel. I wanted to wait for the perfect moment. Now she may never know"

"Ah hell Dinozzo. Don't write her off yet, she's a fighter, and she will fight her way through this. Besides, she'll want to be there to witness the large headslap I'm going to give you for breaking my rules"

"You're right Boss, I just hope she's listening to you"

Ziva was swimming in a world of black. She had no knowledge of what had happened to her, or even where she was. She felt at peace, as though nothing could hurt her now. But she was also alone, and she didn't want to be alone. She wanted to be with her family. Her NCIS family.