"Her vitals are returning to normal. She should be back with us soon."

The words meant nothing to Ziva, but their sound shook her out of unconsciousness. She was freezing, she realized, colder than she'd ever been in her life. She could feel her teeth chattering, and tears of pain came to her eyes. Oddly, even her tears weren't warm against her skin as they trickled down toward her ears.

Why were her tears running toward her ears instead of her chin? That meant she was lying down. Why was she lying down? She tried to sit up, but she couldn't quite seem to get her elbows under her, and anyway, there was a hand locked around her wrist. As she struggled, another set of hands suddenly touched her shoulders, pushing her back down. Ziva tried desperately to open her eyes. Where was she? Had she been taken captive again? An image of the things that had been done to her the last time she was captured rose to her mind, and through sheer will, she forced her eyes open.

She expected to see leering faces, guns, ropes, and a dirt floor. Instead, she saw a sterile white ceiling. There was none of the muted, angry conversation that had filled the terrorist camp in Somalia; instead there was a quiet murmuring above her. Blinded by a light shining directly down at her, she couldn't see any faces, but she sensed they were there. She blinked slowly, trying to clear the tears from her eyes, but the effort was hampered by the fact that she was shivering so violently that her vision took on the jerky quality of an old movie as she tried to close her eyelids.

"She's cold," said a suddenly-clear voice to her left, one that sounded oddly familiar. Immediately, she felt the weight against her breasts increase as another blanket was unfurled over her.

Her captors were concerned with whether she was warm or not? That was odd. She tried again to focus her sight, squinting against the blinding light. This time, she almost managed it, and a face swam into her line of sight. Some automatic part of her brain recognized it as one she should know, but then her eyes fluttered closed again and she couldn't seem to recall what the face looked like or who it belonged to. Another tear trickled down her cheek.

"Why is she crying?" the voice demanded, and her mind finally conjured up an image of a ruddy face smiling at her. She couldn't quite retrieve the information on who it was, but she knew that face went with the voice, and she knew that if that face was there, she had to be safe. "Is she in pain?" the voice went on, rising nervously.

"No, she couldn't be," said another voice. "The local anesthetic will be with her for a while yet." The new voice was shockingly close to her ear and sounded like a gong in her quiet, muffled world. Ziva jerked in surprise at the sudden volume. "I think she's hearing us now," the second voice said. "Ziva? You with us? Can you open your eyes?"

She tried her best, fighting another battle of wills with her eyelids. She finally managed to crack them open, but all she could see was the bright light again. "Ba'hir," she rasped, slamming her eyes closed again. Bright. She couldn't look at anyone until they stopped blinding her with that damn thing.

"What did she say?" the second voice, one she could now identify as female, asked.

"I think it was Hebrew," said the first, male, voice. "Unfortunately, I only know the dirty words, and that wasn't one of 'em." The voice moved closer, and she imagined its owner leaning over her. "Give us that again in English, Ziva?"

English? Hadn't she spoken in . . . well, she realized, she didn't quite know what she had spoken in. And what was English? She sorted through jumbled thoughts and impressions, searching for what these people wanted of her, but everything seemed to be covered with cobwebs. Alarmed by her inability to access the information she needed, she quickly tried again with whatever she could grab that seemed associated with what she was trying to say. "Satea'a." Neither voice responded to that and she desperately tried again, terrified by the prospect of not being able to communicate: "Yarkii! Hell!"

"Did she say 'hell'?" asked the female voice.

"I think so." The male voice moved farther away again. "Save the cursing for later, David. Come on, open your eyes talk to us in English."

"Bright!" She knew she'd finally hit on it as it came out and she pried her eyes open again to see their reactions. Immediately, one face moved away and the light dimmed. The other face became clearer without the halo of light behind it, and she managed to focus her eyes on the man. She still couldn't put a name to his face, but her heart gave a leap as it came into focus.

"Hey there," its owner said with a smile. "Welcome back."

She frowned and groped through her brain for something that felt like a response. "Yes," was what she came up with, so she said that.

The man looked away from her, toward the owner of the other voice. "Is this normal?" he asked.

"She's still coming out of it," the woman said. "All the cylinders aren't quite firing yet."

"A car metaphor," the man said, smiling. "I like that."

Ziva felt a sudden sensation of wrongness at the sight of the man smiling at the woman. "No!" she croaked.

Both people looked down at her in surprise. "What?" asked the man, but Ziva couldn't coax any more words out of her mouth, which felt like it was filled with cotton.

"She probably has the dry mouth to end all dry mouths," the woman said, and reached behind her to pick up a cup. She brought the straw to Ziva's mouth. "Take a sip, slowly." She looked back at the man. "She'll sound clearer once she's had a drink." She pried the cup out of Ziva's greedy fingers after a second and put it down on the table she had gotten it from. "There, better?"

"Ken."

"That's Hebrew for 'yes'," the man said quickly. "And now we've pretty much exhausted all the Hebrew I know, so you'd better switch to English, Ziva. Or else start cursing the nurses out again."

Nurses? Ziva blinked slowly, trying to bring the woman into the same focus as the man. After a second, her eyes cooperated and she could make out a stethoscope around the woman's neck. "Nurse?" she repeated, out loud this time. The word felt like it had no meaning, as if she were just repeating back the syllables.

The woman nodded. "That's me. Do you know where you are, Ziva?"

Slowly, awkwardly, she rolled her from one side to the other in a negative motion. "Doctor?" she ventured.

"Close. You're at a hospital. You have a head injury. Do you remember being here?"

She shook her head.

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

She wetted her lips. "No. What?"

"Well," the woman backpedaled, "we'll get to that. Can you tell me your name?"

Ziva blinked at her. Did the nurse not realize that she already knew it, had been calling her it every few words? "Ziva."

"And who's this handsome guy over here?" The nurse waved a hand toward the man.

It was right there, on the tip of her tongue. She reached for his name, missed, then caught it. "Tony!" she exclaimed, more proud of herself than she could remember ever being before.

Tony's face split into a relieved smile. "That's me. How do you feel?"

She took a second to query her body, still unsure what parts, exactly, she should expect to pain her. "Fine."

The nurse leaned forward. "Wiggle your fingers for me, Ziva?" Ziva did. "Good. Now your toes?" She lifted the sheet to peek underneath at Ziva's feet, and nodded when they moved. "Good girl. I'm going to go grab your doctor. In the meantime -" She turned to smile at Tony. "She can have some more water if she wants it, but don't let her gulp down the whole thing."

Tony nodded. "When can she have visitors? There's a - I mean - she has friends waiting outside. A doctor."

"Once we get her out of recovery and booked into her own room, she can have whatever visitors she feels up to. But let's let her doctor check her out first." And giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, she left the room.

With a sigh, Tony sat down in a chair beside the bed and looked down at his hands. "You scared the living hell out of me, you know that?"

Ziva blinked slowly. The cobwebs in her mind were starting to clear, but only enough so that she could see what words she was reaching for; actually grabbing hold of them seemed to still be beyond her. "Scared?" she repeated, feeling like an echo.

Surprised at her failure to engage with her usual vigor, he looked back up at her. "Yeah, scared. As in, we thought you might die. It might surprise you to know that thinking things like that kind of sucks."

The vehemence in his words was foreign enough that she made another effort to lift her head off the pillows to look at him. I am surprised you admitted to being frightened, is all, was what she meant to say, but again, the system failed somewhere between brain and mouth. What came out was, "Surprise . . . you, you . . . worrying."

He raised his eyebrows. "What, you think I don't worry?"

"Nooo," she drew out. It didn't tell him quite what she had intended, but the words to communicate what she did mean just weren't there. She settled for shaking her head and reaching out to touch his arm where he was resting it against the bed.

Automatically, he drew his arm back, thinking it was in her way, but Ziva carefully wrapped her fingers around his wrist, holding his hand in place.

Tony looked down at her hand, pale and with its fingertips still stained with blood, then back up at her. Ziva offered him a tentative, tight smile and opened her hand. Responding to her gesture, he clasped her fingers in his and gave her hand a squeeze.

Ziva sighed and leaned back against the pillows. They sat in silence, each comforted by the fact that the other was touching them.