They left the room, and a glance at his watch told Tony it was almost midnight. Thinking back to Gibbs' earlier words, he almost hoped some nurse would go militant on them and refuse entry. But he knew from experience that there wasn't a nurse in the world who wouldn't break under his boss's icy blue glare. So much for that, he thought, looking up at the hospital looming out of the darkness. Approaching from this direction, he recognized the building and felt his heart start to hammer in his chest.
"Oh, shit," he whispered, stopping short in the middle of the sidewalk.
Gibbs turned to his agent at the soft epithet and saw that Tony's face was bone-white and he was shaking so hard his teeth were rattling in the warm night.
"Tony?" Gibbs asked, pushing him out of the light foot traffic and onto a bench.
Tony found himself hyperventilating for the second time that day and felt his face burn with shame as Gibbs calmly pushed his face between his knees again.
"Breathe, Tony," he said again, one hand on the back of Tony's head, one on his knee, not caring about the people staring at them as they walked by. "It's okay, Tony. Just breathe."
Tony recovered quickly, but he clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from throwing up as he looked up at the horribly familiar building. He breathed through his nose for a moment and lowered his hand. His eyes dropped to Gibbs' hand on his knee and he felt another rush of shame.
"I'm sorry, Gibbs. I—"
"Quiet, DiNozzo," Gibbs said firmly but without bite. "I've seen you stare down the barrel of a gun without blinking. You've got nothing to be ashamed of with me. Got it?"
Tony closed his eyes and drew a shaky breath. "Yeah. I got you."
Tony was expecting the reassuring warmth of Gibbs' hand to leave his knee so he was surprised when the man's grip tightened slightly. "Talk to me, Tony," he said, his voice low and concerned. Tony tried to remember the last time he had heard that tone and couldn't come up with anything.
"I can't go in there," Tony said, hating how pathetic his strangled words sounded.
Gibbs felt the quivering in DiNozzo's taut muscles under his hand and saw the haunted pain in his eyes. "This isn't just about him, is it?"
Tony's eyes flew up to meet his gaze. The corner of his mouth quirked upward for a half-second before he frowned and asked, "How do you do that?"
"Experience," Gibbs said, lifting a shoulder. "You'll terrorize junior agents with it someday, too."
Tony blocked the compliment from his mind as soon as he registered it for what it was because he couldn't handle the thought that Gibbs wouldn't be around someday. He knew it would happen; he just couldn't think about it right then.
Tony spoke, wondering how this was suddenly the easier topic and wondering if that was why Gibbs had planted that thought in his head. "You know how my mother died?"
Gibbs shook his head, answering honestly. "No. Wasn't ever my business to know."
Tony nodded. "Bone cancer," he said, trying to find the best way to describe the long months of agony that cause of death represented. "It took, uh, a long time to kill her. She was here for months, suffering through the worst pain I've ever been a witness to—and I watched a guy get tortured half to death by a mafia maniac in Philly. She was so brave through it all, the tests, the treatments we all knew wouldn't work, the pain that got so bad near the end that I actually wanted to go back to school just to escape it. But I couldn't leave her. Not when she was suffering like that."
Gibbs didn't speak. He had known Tony hadn't had an easy childhood, but he never imagined what he'd endured while just trying to grow up.
Tony took another deep breath, still staring at Gibbs' hand on his leg, feeling pathetically grateful for the contact because it gave him the strength to continue. "Her last few days were the worst. Not because of the cancer—we had been through hell with it already and as much as you think it's not possible, you eventually start to get used to the horror of it—but because he left three days before she died. I remember sitting there in her room, watching her breathe, watching the nurses come and go, and I felt so alone. It was like she was already gone because she was beyond communicating. But she was still aware. I just wanted him to come back. So we could be together when she finally let go. I hated him because I thought she was hanging on, even though she was suffering so much, waiting for him to come back. And he never did."
A single tear rolled down Tony's face, but he seemed unaware of it. Gibbs felt like his heart was being ripped from his chest even as he felt boiling rage surge through his veins. No wonder the kid craved attention so badly: He had been orphaned at age eight, one parent taken by disease and one gone by selfish choice.
"My last words to her were 'I'll tell him you said good-bye,' " Tony whispered, completing the forced extraction of Gibbs' heart. "Then the monitors all went crazy and I bolted. It took security a couple hours to find me, sobbing my face off in a storage closet. He sent one of the housekeepers to get me. One of the mean ones who didn't like me because I was the spoiled brat who always tracked mud into the house."
Tony scrubbed his hands against his face and looked down at the moisture on them in amazement that turned quickly to embarrassment. "Hell, Gibbs, I'm so sorry—"
Gibbs blinked in shock. He tried to imagine turning his back on Kelly if she had lived while her mother died. He couldn't even begin. "You're going to apologize to me? After that?"
Tony flinched, misunderstanding his rough emotion. Tony sounded almost frightened when he spoke, and Gibbs started seeing red. "I didn't… I'm s… I…"
"Tony," Gibbs said, managing to pull calm out of thin air. "It's okay. I just had no idea. I'm the one who's sorry, Tony. That you had to go through that. Alone."
Tony looked back up at the building and shuddered in the warm night air. "I just can't go in there. I said I'd never set foot in that hospital again. And I didn't mean to dump all that on you."
"You can talk to me, Tony," Gibbs said, waiting for DiNozzo to look at him. "Whatever you need to get out, I can handle it. And if you don't want to see him, I don't blame you. I never would have guilted you into coming if I had known what he did to you. We'll go get some sleep and go home in the morning, if that's what you want."
Tony rubbed his hands over his eyes tiredly. "I'm here. I should just go in there." But he choked on the words before they even left his mouth.
"Tell you what," Gibbs said, standing. "It's been a long day. You're exhausted and upset. Go get some sleep and make a decision in the morning."
Tony debated that, feeling as tired as he had ever felt in his life—including the long days spent recovering from the plague. "What if he's … gone … in the morning?"
Gibbs drew a slow breath. "Then we'll stay for the funeral and you can get closure there." He softened his tone even more. "If he's as bad as she said, then it probably won't be much different."
Tony nodded and stood on shaky legs. He looked back at the looming building and shivered in the humid darkness. Gibbs almost put a hand on his arm to steady him, but he didn't. He was fairly sure DiNozzo would shatter at the gentle show of support.
They made their way back to the hotel in silence and both collapsed as soon as they walked through the door. Tony was out before his head hit the pillow, but Gibbs found himself suddenly unable to sleep. He stared at the ceiling in the darkness and couldn't help thinking of his own daughter.
Maybe it was because he had spent so much of her short life deployed, but he couldn't remember a single time when he hadn't been glad to spend time with her, to play with her, to watch her sleep or color or complain about bedtime. He imagined a world in which he had lost only Shannon and all he could think of was how much he would want to cling to his remaining family—his child. Even though he knew seeing his daughter's eyes, so much like her mother's, would probably hurt, at least they could share their grief, their memories.
The idea of turning his back on a child in pain was too much for him, and Gibbs felt his anger's swift return. It was probably for the best that Tony's father was near death; Gibbs wanted to kill the man himself.
Gibbs turned on his side, catching sight of Tony's face in the moonlight streaming through curtains neither had bothered to close. Tony looked untroubled and Gibbs was glad for the rest he was getting. He was going to need it. Gibbs knew Tony wouldn't back down in the morning. He had meant what he said about Tony staring death in the face without blinking. And he knew his agent would face his fears once he was more well-rested and distanced from the agonizing memories of his mother's painful death.
Because it was the right thing to do.
Gibbs watched Tony's right hand twitch in his sleep and a soft smile curve his mouth, and Gibbs wondered what he was dreaming about. Whatever it was, it must have been pleasant, and Gibbs rolled over with a smile of his own. Tony was strong. He would get through this. And if he needed to be not strong, then Gibbs would be there for him.
It was the right thing to do.