Senior's face fused with confusion as he stared at the unusually prone figure. Before he could find words to string together, machines began beeping with a pressing tempo. Ashen though he already was, Gibbs paled even further as a hand unconsciously twitched to lie over his gut. A bustling doctor suddenly emerged in the mouth of the door, shooing Senior out impatiently. "This man needs rest," the thirty-something instructed sharply, unhooking his stethoscope, "Please leave, a nurse will inform you when you can return."

Sighing in frustration, Senior spun on his expensive heel and stalked from the room.

Gibbs scowled as hands probed his stomach, sending pain into the higher peaks of endurance. Unperturbed, Dr Mensen continued his examination. "Have you been following the dietary regime your doctor would have recommended for you?" he asked quietly, pressing against the rigidity under his hands. "Been avoiding alcohol and stress?" Throwing the young man an incredulous look, Gibbs rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath. "Oh yeah…been having a whale of a time. I took time out from writing my memoirs to be here today, as a matter of fact."

Dr Mensen pursed his lips.

"Mr Gibbs, we've-"

"Agent Gibbs."

The medic nodded, impatiently. "Agent Gibbs, you truly need to start treating your condition with the attention it demands. You simply cannot continue to be so cavalier. I've only met you a handful of times since your admission, and never before that, and I must say…I've never met a more disinterested patient." He shook his head slowly, with a tad of condescension that only his youth and education could muster. "Surely you want to fight? Surely your regular doctor laid out for you that this truly could go either way. A positive mental attitude is half the battle, in and of itself. This is the third time I count that I've asked you routine questions that you simply refuse to answer."

Gibbs glowered.

"Hey, doc…there's a young man with bullet holes, yanno…actual mortal wounds, just down the hall there. You know who could use your help? He could. Tony DiNozzo could. So would ya please take your hands off me and go and help someone who can be helped." Nodding sagely, Dr Mensen continued his prodding. "I am not Mr DiNozzo's physician," he countered, "I am however, yours. So, in that vein…could you please answer a few questions? Pretty please?"

Gibbs threw the man's hands off of him in a bout of his now habitual rage.

"Are you deaf or just stupid?" he snarled, "I don't want your help. I don't want anyone's help. I just want it to be over, you understand? That's it. No more, no less. I forgot to take my meds for a couple of days, like I already told you. I'll take em' and I'll get the hell out of here. Can you follow that much or do you need some kind of written aid?"

Dr Mensen sighed loudly.

"Agent Gibbs, that medication is designed to alleviate your symptoms. It is not designed to treat the underlying condition. You need surgery, major surgery. Yet, I see from your records that you failed to show for all pre-op procedures and information giving. The more time goes on…the more your chances dip. Significantly so. Do you understand that? Do you know what that means?"

Gibbs thrust his chin upwards in defiance.

"I do."

Dr Mensen chose his next words carefully, though he really needn't have bothered.

"I think a consultation with a doctor from our psychiatry team might be helpful here, Agent Gibbs."

Gibbs stared with glacial eyes as he shook his head with an eerie slowness. "I don't want to see any quacks in this room. I told you, I understand what you are saying. I made my decision a long time ago, and now it's come to roost, and I'm ok with that. What I'm not ok with, is going down in the field. If you got some magic solution to that that you can hit me with until…until the field is done for me, then let me know." He straightened his bed clothes and stared steadily out the window. "If not, then get the hell out."

The frown on the young doctor's face was at engraving levels.

"Agent Gibbs," he countered lowly, "I do not think you received the adequate counselling you need to make an informed decision. Please, allow me to arrange a consult for you. It does not necessarily have to be this way, you still have a chance. A fighting chance. If you had engaged with your doctors sooner, like last year, when this became operable…you would have had a better chance. But as it is, you still have a limited window of time in which to change your mind. Please, allow me to have a colleague to drop in for a quick chat with you?"

Gibbs glared.

"Are you stupid or something, doc?"

Dr Mensen didn't miss a beat.

"Well, my mom say's I'm the smartest person she's ever met, so no, I don't think so."

Gibbs was slapped in the face with nostalgia at the tongue in cheek remark, reminding him of someone else. A different time. Breathing in deeply, he pushed away those hazy memories. They would do him no good now, and he knew it. "I don't want your shrinks," he muttered, "I know what's coming down the tracks for me, and I'm ok with it. Alright? I am ok with it. I will take whatever damn pills will stop me collapsing in the field and spending the days thereafter sleeping my ass off. Got any?"

"Agent Gibbs," the younger man sighed, "There is no magic pill for that. The toxins are building up in your body, day by day. Your kidneys are no longer functioning in a manner that can keep you getting by. That is why you collapsed. We gave you dialysis while you were under, but it was minimally effective given the deterioration that has occurred." He paused for breath, levelling Gibbs with a stare he had never before used with a patient. "This is going to happen again. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow…but it is going to happen again. Maybe when you're driving, maybe not. You are going to pass out, the toxins are going to flood your body, and next time…I don't know will we be waking you up."

He sat down on the bed, frustration gripping him.

"Please, Agent Gibbs. You must think clearly. You are not an old man; this is not your time to pass peacefully away from old age. There are interventions, surgical interventions that may prolong your life until a donor is found. You need to agree to them, to engage with us." He scrubbed a hand through his thick hair, and tilted his head in sincerity. "You need to fight for your life, Agent Gibbs, you need to fight. And, I might not be your regular doctor and I might not know you from a hole in the wall. But… you don't strike me as a man who ever backs down from a fight. Why start now?"

The ghost of a hundred regrets suddenly swam in Gibbs' eyes as his lips twitched at the corners.

"I've been fighting all my life. I'm done with fighting, doc. For me, or for anyone else. I'm done."

Dr Mensen quirked a brow.

"What about those two that have been in an out of here like a yo-yo since you got here? Your agents, right? What about them?" He shook his head. "You don't strike me as a regular guy, Agent Gibbs, or a regular boss. It's quite clear that you're more than a superior to those two, no matter what else is going on. You really ready to give up on them, when there's a chance?"

Gibbs stared with a tautening jaw.

"What makes you think I don't got a loving wife and kids to give up on?"

The doctor shrugged.

"Like I said, you don't strike me as a regular guy." He held up Gibbs' chart in his hands. "That and the fact that your listed next of kin is also a patient here, the one you mentioned. A… Mr Tony DiNozzo?"

Glacial eyes turned even frostier.

"Agent DiNozzo."

Should have seen that coming, thought Dr Mensen as he nodded obligingly. "I take it Agent DiNozzo is opposed to your decision to refuse treatment?" He felt his frustrations rise when Gibbs merely looked over his head in answer. "He doesn't know, does he?" he surmised sagely. "None of them know, you've told no one at all about your condition?"

Gibbs managed a roll of the eyes.

"Had a psychic like you consult on a case with me once. They never did find his body."

Dr Mensen smiled ruefully.

"That's a risk I'm willing to run. Given that you are currently so lethargic you can't even get out of bed, and are relying on a catheter to relieve yourself." Gibbs scowled with a snarl. "Isn't it unprofessional to mock patients? Or am I still under here?" Shrugging unapologetically, knowing that conventional routes were lost on this particular patient, the doctor tapped the chart in his hands. "It isn't exactly the norm for the patient to threaten the doctor, so we'll call it quits."

A low grumbling filled the room.

"As your next of kin," the doctor continued over the snarling, "Agent DiNozzo really ought to be apprised of the…situation. It is highly unusual to have an emergency contact in this scenario who is completely in the dark." Silence spiralled for a moment, as a weight seemed to settle on Gibbs' shoulders. "Take him off," he eventually muttered, his tone emotionless, "The forms, take him off all your forms. I don't…I filled out all that stuff a long time ago. Tony… he's not my next of kin or emergency contact, or whatever you want to call it. Not anymore."

Well manicured brows shot up.

"Do you have a replacement in mind?"

A gripping, powerful and all consuming loneliness overcame Gibbs as he shook his head slowly.

"Nope."

Dr Mensen opened his mouth, but quickly bit back his original thought.

"Well…I'll let you mull it over a little while longer, as it is, you need rest right now. I'll check in on tomorrow mornings rounds. Please, Agent Gibbs, use the night to really think about your options here. We can act, but we need to do it quickly. The odds and the clock are against us now, please don't waste anymore of your time. Make the right decision."

He stood, unsure as to why he was so hell bent on helping the cantankerous patient.

But there was….a certain something about him.

A certain depletion that suggested he had given so much of himself to others, that he had nothing left for himself.

Turning to leave the room, Gibbs' cough had him swivelling back. "That whole doctor-patient confidentiality guff. That stands, right? I don't want…none of them are to know. None of them." He shot a baleful look from now tired eyes, as he slumped against the pillows, a fatigue coursing through him. "Don't want them to know…"

Sadness fluttered over Dr Mensen as he nodded and conceded to the obligations of his profession.

"They'll never hear it from me, Agent Gibbs."

As the last reassuring smile that was unprofessionally and uncharacteristically tinged with emotion was smiled, the doctor was gone. Slumping fully into the pillows as the pain once again pricked in his gut, Gibbs felt his ever heavy eye lids slip down. Beeping machines lulled him into an uneasy sleep, interrupted with hazy faces flitting in and out of his mind. Shannon, Kelly. Mike and Jenny. Abbs, Ziva, Kate…Tim and Bishop. All wore looks of sympathy that made him want to vomit into his own subconscious.

The last face however, the clearest face, wore a look of scorn and of rage that burned into his groggy mind.

Tony's.

So lost was he to that face, and that expression, and all that went with it that he didn't feel the presence that stepped into the room. Conscious or not, he was always alert to not being alone. But not this time. He didn't sense the entrant, didn't see the shocked expression they wore. Didn't see the bitter cascade of hot, salty tears as they began to fall in stupefied horror down pale cheeks. Trembling where she stood, Abby Sciuto felt her whole world fall apart. Her tears splashed onto the floor, the only visual remnants of her splintered being. Her torn voice was infused with denial as it wavered around the room, never to get an answer."

"Gibbs, you can't…die. You can't die, Tony… he needs you. Now more than ever."

…

Batch Update A/N: Haven't posted for a while due to worrying health issues of a close family member/job pressures. Things look good on both fronts now thank God, and I should be back to my normal updating, now that I have a lighter headspace. A huge thanks to everyone for the reviews/messages asking how I was. I truly appreciate them, you guys are great, and thank you for your patience! All other stories will be updated soon!

A/N(2): I have absolutely *no* medical knowledge. Apologies to those in the know if this makes no sense! Grey's Anatomy can only go so far!

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