Title: What did he say?
Author: Ceindreadh
Email: Ceindreadh@eircom.net
Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters, I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished

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He lost his shirt.

Somewhere along the way from the crime scene to the hospital, his shirt disappeared. Gibbs knew that he'd had it when he'd been shot. He distinctly remembered DiNozzo ripping the shirt open and pressing his hands over the bullet hole in his shoulder. He also remembered DiNozzo alternately yelling at somebody to call an ambulance and then ordering him to stay alive. If the bullet wound hadn't hurt so much, Gibbs would have been quite amused at the thought of DiNozzo bossing him around, and would even have swatted him on the head...if he'd been able to move his arm of course. But that was too much effort and Gibbs just let himself float away.

So the shirt had been there then, but was gone when Gibbs regained consciousness in the hospital. His trousers were the next to disappear. The nurse who removed them wasn't the first woman to take his trousers off, but most of the others hadn't used a scissors to do it. Well except maybe for ex-wife number two, but then she hadn't exactly been aiming for the material with the blades, so maybe that didn't count.
Plus none of the others had smelled quite so much of antiseptic.

There had been machines beeping and people sticking needles in him and yelling about blood and cross matching and where the hell was the surgeon when you wanted one. And over it all Gibbs could hear Tony's voice, loud and insistent that he wasn't going to leave the room until he was sure his 'Boss' was okay. And then Gibbs heard the nurse mention the words 'put in a foley' and he knew enough about medicine to groan at the very thought of it, and Tony must have known what they were talking about as well, because the next thing Gibbs heard was somebody calling for a doctor to pick up this guy who had just passed out.

And then there was the nurse with the catheter and Gibbs decided that bravery be damned, he wasn't sticking around for this, and he let himself go again.

When he came back to his senses, his remaining clothing had vanished, and all he wore was one of those infernal hospital gowns that no matter how you tie them keep flapping open when you walk. Although Gibbs could feel from the amount of bandages on his shoulder that he wasn't likely to be doing much walking in the immediate future. But DiNozzo was there again and his eyes lighting up when he saw that Gibbs was awake. And Gibbs knew that there was something important he had to say but his voice was all scratchy and Tony had to lean in close to him to hear it.

And when Gibbs was once more lying back against the pillows, eyes closed and exhausted from the effort at communication, he could hear Tony on the phone and talking excitedly. "Yes Kate, he's awake and he's gonna be fine." And there was silence for a few seconds before Tony spoke again, "How do I know? Easy, he just upped and spoke to me and said "I need coffee."

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The end