Ducky packed up his field case as he watched Jimmy Palmer begin to wheel away the two corpses piled onto one gurney. Two identifications and then two autopsies would keep him, Palmer, and Abby busy for the rest of the day at least, but he intended to make a very important stop before going back to NCIS to deal with those. "Mr. Palmer," he said as the other man narrowly missed clipping a police officer with the corner of the gurney, "have a care, please. Those are valuable relics!"

"Sorry!" Palmer pulled the gurney to a halt and looked over his shoulder apologetically. "Sorry, Doctor, I kinda lost control going over that curb, and -"

"No matter. Just take better care driving back, please."

"I..." Palmer blinked. "I'm driving?"

Ducky smiled regretfully and used his case to lever himself to his feet. "You'll have to, unless you plan to push them back on foot. I will not be riding with you."

Palmer waited until Ducky caught up with him, then started walking again. "Well, how are you going to get back?"

"By way," Ducky said, using one hand to clap his hat onto his head, "of Bethesda."

Understanding now, Palmer nodded and opened the back of their truck. "Tell Ziva we're all pulling for her."

"I shall," Ducky replied, lifting the gurney's legs with the ease of long practice as Palmer locked its support bar onto a hook on the truck's floor. "Assuming I can get in to see her. However," he added as Palmer's face fell, "if I cannot see her, I will be sure to pass the message on to Agent DiNozzo, who, I'm sure, will be happy to pass it to her at his first opportunity."

Palmer managed a weak smile at that. They both knew that a bullet wound to Ziva's head meant there very well might never be an opportunity. But he put that out of his mind and determined to think only positive thoughts. "As long as she gets the message. When can I expect you back to start the examinations, Doctor?" he asked, slamming one of the rig's doors, then the other, and accepting the case the doctor held out to him.

Shaking his head, Ducky followed him around toward the driver's seat. "I shouldn't think it would be too long. She won't be up to long visits. Have things ready in an hour or two, let's say."

"Yes, sir." Palmer climbed up into the truck's cab and started the engine. "Will do!" he called out the window as he began to maneuver the truck through the crowd toward the break in the police barriers.

Ducky watched the truck go, then heaved a sigh and turned back toward where Gibbs and McGee stood in conversation. "Gentlemen," he called as he approached, "I'm off to visit our fallen heroine. Are there any messages you'd like me to pass along?"

The two men exchanged glances. "Tell her we'll be by to see her as soon as we can," McGee offered.

"If she's up to it, see if she remembers anything about the robbery," Gibbs, ever the pragmatist, added. "And," he went on more gently, "tell her we'll be by to see her as soon as we can."

"Duly noted." Ducky doffed his hat to them. "What do you plan to do next?"

Gibbs looked pointedly at the uncomfortable-looking senator's aide standing a few yards away. "We're taking our shooter back to NCIS," he said.

"He'll be spending some quality time with us and Abby until we get this straightened out," added McGee. He shook his head. "Still can't believe the robbers got the drop on Ziva but this guy took out two of them."

"Maybe he didn't," Gibbs pointed out.

"Well, I'll leave you three to your work, then," Ducky said. "Now, where's the best place to catch a taxi in this area?" he mused, looking around. "You'd think they'd be eager to pick up all the gawkers at scenes like this."

"Duck -" Gibbs tossed him a set of keys. "Take mine. McGee and I can go back in one car."

Ducky barely managed to catch the bundle. "Much appreciated," he said, and saluted the pair. "Enjoy your drive."

"Um, Boss," he heard McGee speak up as they turned away, "maybe you should let me drive this t-"

Gibbs just held out his hand for the keys McGee was holding.

Ducky walked into the ER waiting room at Bethesda unsure of the best tack to take. Depending on the mood of the receptionist handling the room, he might be allowed immediately into the ER or he might be ordered to sit and wait. He was willing to pull rank, or possibly phone the director of the hospital, whom he knew socially, if he had to, but he decided to first try a polite approach at the desk. "Hello," he said to the receptionist, who looked up from her computer screen and blinked, "I wonder if you could assist me. I believe you have an NCIS agent inside. Ziva David. She sustained a head wound. Might I be able to see her?"

The woman blinked again, her eyes magnified behind the lenses of her glasses. "Family?" she asked, looking at him consideringly.

"Something like that, yes."

She looked back down at her monitor, clicked the mouse a few times, and nodded before looking back up at him. "She just got sent up to OR. You can sign in and go up to their waiting room, if you want." She offered him a binder filled with sign-in sheets and a pen. "It's up two flights, and -"

"Yes, thank you, I have been there before." He added his information to the list and accepted the laminated plastic "VISITOR" badge she handed him. "Agent David had a friend with her when she came in. Would he have been directed to the operating room waiting area also?"

"Oh, the nice, worried guy." The woman smiled, then shook her head, remembering him. "He was a mess - had her blood all over him. I think one of the doctors offered to set him up with some scrubs. They were trying to keep him clear of her while - well," she interrupted herself, realizing she was sharing too many details, "they would have sent him up to OR after that."

Ducky managed a nod of thanks at that. 'All over him' could be an exaggeration, he reminded himself as he turned away from her and headed for the elevators. But the fact that Ziva was being sent to an operating room short-circuited most of the benign outcomes he'd come up with on his way from the scene. An operation meant there was some involvement inside her skull, and that wasn't good news. Absently pressing his hat to his chest, he allowed the elevator to do the work of getting him upstairs while he stayed lost in thought, running through the possibilities. The worst, of course, was that the bullet had penetrated her skull and destroyed vital brain tissue or her brain stem; the good news, considering what he knew, was that if that had happened, she would probably never had made it to the OR. The bullet could also have hit peripheral brain tissue, something that was not immediately necessary to her survival; if that was the case, neurosurgery was a good possibility, as the doctors might need to remove the bullet or make room for swelling. A third, even better possibility, was that she simply had a skull fracture and the surgeons were piecing her back together in the operating room. There was even an outside possibility that what the witnesses claimed to have seen had been mistaken, and the bullet hadn't even hit her head. She could just be having a broken arm fixed in the operating room, for all he knew.

He decided that for the remaining time before he found out for sure, he would choose to believe the last possibility. Concentrating so hard on his positive thinking, he didn't even see Tony pacing outside the surgical waiting room until the younger man stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Ducky?" Tony asked, letting go of the doctor's arm when he looked up in surprise.

"I'm sorry, Tony, I was lost in thought. The front desk told me that Ziva is being prepped for surgery. Tell me what's happened," he urged. "How is she? How are you?"

Tony shook his head and wiped a sweaty hand on his borrowed scrubs. They bagged on him, obviously made in a one-size-fits-all mold that would fit a doctor fifty pounds heavier. "Not good. We thought she was fine, but then she started saying weird things and then she had a . . . a seizure. They kicked me out then." He swallowed. "They said they need to drill a hole in her head to relieve the pressure."

"Come on." Noticing how lost Tony looked, Ducky decided to take charge. He put a hand on the younger man's back, urging him back into the waiting room. "Let's sit down, and you can tell me everything from the beginning. Tell me what the doctors said about the gunshot wound. How bad was it?"

Tony moved with distracted obedience, and the two men settled onto a padded bench against one wall inside the room. "They said it wasn't bad," he said, looking around the room in the hopes that a doctor would appear. "When he was examining her, the doctor was surprised that there was 'no penetration'."

Ducky leaned forward, his attention caught. "The bullet didn't penetrate her skull?" he asked. When Tony, eyes fixed on the door that led to the operating suite, didn't answer, Ducky snapped his fingers in front of his face. "Anthony!"

"What? Sorry." Tony looked back at him, blinking. "How long do you think it will take?"

"I can see you're worried, and you're not the only one, but I can't tell you how long it will take until I know what's been happening. Tell me the rest of it, please."

With obvious effort, Tony picked up the tale again. "The doctor said Ziva must have been a ninja, because the bullet just tore a strip off her scalp but didn't go any deeper. But then they said it's like being hit hard in the head. The neurologist said she could have bleeding in the brain, and they wanted a scan, but they wanted to give her a blood transfusion first. I was talking to her and she was ok, but then she started cursing and repeating herself and she, um . . ." He drew in a deep breath and shook his head. "She had a seizure. The needle came out of her arm, and she started bleeding again . . . the neurologist said it was what she had been afraid of. They said they had to drain the blood out of her skull."

"A hematoma," Ducky summarized, nodding as things became more clear. "Probably epidural, considering the lateral force of a bullet. Yes, that's a not-unlikely result of a gunshot wound. But she was awake, you said?"

"Um." Tony froze as the door opened, then slumped back in his seat as he saw that it was just an orderly pushing a cart. "What?" he asked, forcing his attention back to Ducky as he belatedly realized he'd been asked something.

"Was she awake, Anthony," Ducky repeated impatiently. It was an important point; chances of survival with an epidural hematoma increased when there was a lucid interval before the patient succumbed to the pressure on their brain.

"Oh. Yeah. She was talking, to me and the nurses and the doctor." He half-smiled. "She even made fun of me a little. But then she just kind of . . . lost it."

"That's good." He patted the younger man on the hand in a fatherly gesture. "Her chances are good, Tony. She has a top medical team working on her, and there's been no delay. It's so often the delay that kills, with epidural hematoma," he went on thoughtfully. "Like that actress who died last year, after hitting her head while skiing. If she had just gone to the hospital immediately -"

"Natasha Richardson?" Tony's head whipped around, and for the first time since Ducky had found him, he focused totally on the doctor. "Ziva has the same thing she died of?"

"Well, yes," Ducky admitted, regretting the comparison immediately, "but as I said, there's been no delay for Ziva as there was for her. It's a different situation."

Wordlessly, Tony dropped his face into his hands and groaned.

Ducky watched him, realizing just how close to the edge Tony was. "I'm going to go call Mr. Palmer and tell him to put the bodies on hold," he said briskly, standing up, "and then I will wait here with you until we know."

Tony looked up. "Ducky, you don't have to -"

"No arguments, Anthony." He rested a hand on Tony's shoulder for a second and offered him a reassuring smile. "You don't have to sit through this alone."

Tony closed his eyes, heaved a sigh, and leaned back against the wall. "Thanks."

A/N: I might be without internet for the next week or so (Moving sucks. Moving sucks even worse during an insane snowstorm that delays all cable installations), and if that happens, there will be no way for me to update any of my stories (including the regular Tuesday night chaps of Tales from the Men's Room). Keep an eye on my twitter feed, FluffyFanFic, which I can update from work, to see what the situation is.