SUNDAY – early hours of the morning
When the doctor leaves and he's alone with a sleeping Kensi, Deeks exhales, rolls his shoulders, and starts to think. No longer in crisis over her health, and unable to clear up any of the surrounding details for a few hours he thinks it might be the right time to swing by the house. He kisses her and checks for any sign that she might be awake. Seeing none, he says goodnight, promises his sleeping princess coffee in the morning, and heads for the hallway.
As the door closes behind him he realizes he doesn't even have a car, and it's too late to have anyone from the team run around to help him. He takes the little power left in Kensi's phone that he's been pocketing for close to two days since he got it in her personal belongings and opens Uber. A quick pick up and a trafficless drive have him opening the door to home in less than an hour.
He heads right to the bedroom. He tries to call the burner cell once with no success and starts the phones charging. Then he pulls together a quick go bag for himself and a bag of necessities for Kensi. He stands under an unnaturally hot shower, trying to let some of the fear and tension he's held onto for the last forty-eight hours wash away. When he realizes he might be falling asleep standing up, he dries off, trims up, and collapses in bed holding Kensi's pillow.
SUNDAY MORNING
Morning hits him like a freight train. Deeks thought he would struggle to settle, but he was actually asleep in a blink and didn't move. As the morning greets him, the pillow with the scent of Kensi's shampoo still tight in his arms tricks him into believing she is there. And then it all clicks. Panic hits him as he realizes that he's at the five hour mark from when he left the hospital. The sun is rising in the sky, and he didn't want her to wake alone. He throws on some clothes, grabs the bags he packed and heads to the hospital.
Traffic is not his friend. A twenty-five minute drive takes twice that. The team said they would be there in the morning to chase him away, so he's both hopeful that that they are there and desperate to talk to her before anyone else does. He knows how crazy that it – that there is no true version of the story where Kensi did anything other than the right thing, but he wants to know what the thing was, and if he's being honest, he wants to know first, even if that isn't reasonable.
Right as he is about to pull into the parking lot, he remembers his promise to bring her coffee, and isn't prepared to let her down. He thinks that she was sleeping and might not recall the promise, but he isn't willing to chance it. Once he has coffee in hand, he parks and double times it to her floor, finding Callen in the waiting area. He tries to fly by with a nod and head straight into Kensi's room, but Callen waves him down.
"Hey. You look a million times better," Callen observes.
"Yeah – well her waking up last night helped a lot," Deeks says, realizing that his mental state today, even with running late and traffic is still a world above where it was yesterday.
"Did she get to tell you anything about what happened? Who the baby is?"
Callen is family, and Deeks still hedges and shakes her head. "We had about thirty seconds before the doctors took her for more tests and the pain meds put her to sleep. She was still getting her bearings when I was with her. Did you talk to her this morning?"
"No. Fatima and I were here. They let Fatima sit with her for a few minutes, but then when she woke up they kicked us out to check her out. Fatima left her a emergency kit from Ops and headed back to the mission. I was in there for a few – told her you were on your way and that we bullied you into going home and showering. She said she was sure that 'smelled like a good idea'."
"Ah – the Kensilina charm," Deeks joked. "Listen, thanks so much for being here, but I'm going to, you know…" Deeks gestures to Kensi's room, trying to sneak away.
"She's not there."
"What?" Deeks asks, his shoulders falling and his head falling back in frustration with his timing. "Head scans?"
"Neurologist consult. They put in her a wheelchair and took her about ten minutes ago."
Somone on her care team locks the wheelchair in place in Dr. Ellison's consultation area, and Kensi is anything but settled. She looks right and left over her shoulders to get a sense of the space and tries not to show her obvious annoyance that when she asked if this could wait until after she'd seen her husband the medical team said the doctor's schedule required it happening now.
He seems pleasant enough – a kindness to his approach and a manner that was, well, approachable.
"I'm a neurologist, Kensi. I'm here today to assess cognitive and behavior presentation after getting a knock to the head."
"That's one way to describe it," Kensi returns, her hand going to the side of her head where impact occurred.
"Let's not call it anything more than that until we talk it though. Physical indicators are good, so we'll head into the discussion with a positive outlook."
"I like that," Kensi says through a nervous laugh that betrays her dislike for situations that require focused doctor care.
"And I am not a therapist, or a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I understand from what I've seen in your paperwork that your 'knock to the head' came as part of a pretty stressful event."
"Uhh, that would be a yes," Kensi agrees. "Although that isn't uncommon in my line of work."
"I'm not here to make judgements on any of what happened. We'll talk through it in assessing memory string, temporal relations, and cognitive health. How you got there, the choices you made, trauma from things that happened, there is plenty of time to address any additional concerns you have with the right team."
"OK," Kensi tells him, feeling better about the boundaries.
"Think of this as a book report. I'm just here to see how you recall the book."
Kensi reaches up and rubs the side of her head gently. Deliberately. On the way back to her lap, her hand smoothly taps the side of the earwig she's taken from the emergency kit and put in her ear.
"So how do we start?"
"We walk back to Thursday afternoon, and you recall for me what you can remember in the most organized way you can retell it. If you need to take a break, you just raise your hand or say the word 'elephant'. If you are uncomfortable at anytime, stop me and we'll work through it or reschedule the session. We only need to go as far as you are good with."
In Kensi's hospital room, Deeks gets a text from Callen telling him to turn his ear piece on. He digs it out of his pocket and puts it in quickly, believing he is about to get an update. What he hears instead is the voice of his wife.
"What the hell.…" Deeks says before he can stop himself, but Kensi can't hear him.
"Kensi activated her comm unit," Fatima tells the group.
"Why does a woman recovering from a head injury have a comm unit?" Deeks asks, his opinion clear.
"It was in the Ops bag I left with her this morning. I have her unit on broadcast only so we won't disturb."
"She in a session with her doctor," Deeks says pointedly. "It's a protected communication. You can't record it or use it...…"
"Deeks, I would never. But she turned it on. Maybe there's something she wants us to hear."
Deeks is filled with anxiety. As a partner, he absolutely wants to know the details of what she went through. As her husband, he has so many questions about the baby and her fleeting thought that the baby was theirs. As an investigator, he wants to understand the sequence of events in that house. But as a lawyer, he's terrified to have her account broadcast in real time. Even if it's irrational, he hates not knowing what she's going to say.
He leans against the wall in her empty hospital room and slinks down until he's on the ground. He puts his legs out in front of him, crosses his ankles, and listens.
"I was so congested," Kensi is telling Ellison about Thursday. "My boss even told me to go home and that if he heard me blow my nose one more time, he was going to transfer me to another office."
"Would he really do it?"
"He hasn't been there long enough for me to know. I think it was hyperbole, but no reason to test him. My husband brought me home, made me soup, and got me upstairs. He went back down to make me tea, but I started to think maybe I should be working."
"Don't take a lot of time off?" Ellison asked.
"Ehh. My team had to work late on a special project that night, and I felt bad not helping. Deeks came upstairs and I was starting to get ready so I could go in with him, but he wasn't having any of it."
Ellison laughs. "You're doing great, Kensi. What happened next?"
Kensi closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and begins…..
FLASHBACK
THURSDAY 2030
Kensi is too sick to hide her annoyance that Deeks doesn't want her to go to Ops, but the tea is delicious and feels good on her throat. She listens to him hum to himself while he trims up his five o'clock shadow. She wants to stay awake long enough to get a kiss goodbye, but she can't keep her eyes open. Eventually she gives in to her sleepiness and lets go.
FRIDAY 0010
Kensi vaguely hears a sound that pulls her out of her slumber. She isn't sure what it is, and then it's done. She adjusts the pillow beneath her head and lets her eyes close again, but the noise returns. She's annoyed as she realizes that her phone is buzzing. She puts a hand over her ear and makes a sound a little like a growl and the noise stops. It isn't until it starts a third time that she puts the pieces together and worries that maybe it was Fatima and something happened on the Op.
She reaches for her phone. Looking right at it, the screen is dark, but the low vibration of the phone against the wood of the nightstand continues. She thought it was her phone at first, but now realizes it is the phone on Deeks' nightstand that's buzzing.
She reaches over and grabs his phone. She feels the vibration but by the time she tries to answer it the call is gone. She thinks about turning it off, but whoever it is has already called three times. Kensi is worried and curious and keeps the phone in her hand until she feels it buzz the fourth time. This time she answers it.
"Hello?"
"Kensi?" she hears, but doesn't recognize the voice.
"Yeah, who is this?"
"Tiffany. Tiffany Williams."
