Chapter Seven
Gibbs was too wide awake following Tony’s health crisis to go back to sleep, so he buzzed the nurse and asked her for some more coffee and the phone so that he could phone Ducky and get an idea of what the dialysis would do. He had been listening to Dr. Foster, but at the same time keeping one eye on Tony to make sure nothing would happen to him while his back was turned and he needed to know the ins and outs as well as the reasoning behind the need for the dialysis.
The nurse smiled when she appeared with a cup of coffee - in a proper cup - and the phone. “The other nurses told me they’d been getting it from the cafeteria, but since it looks like you’ll be awake most of the night I brought you some from our staff room, much better than the crap they serve as coffee downstairs,” she said, handing Gibbs the cup, who seemed to inhale the first gulp.
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you, most relatives who stay demand all sorts of things like this is the Four Seasons or something, plus they never move without an explanation. It’s like they don’t realise that we’re asking them to move to save their relatives’ life or something. I noticed how quickly you got out of the way when Mr. DiNozzo had his attack and it’s a blessing to have a relative as compliant as you.”
“He’s my senior field agent, we both work at NCIS.”
“Well, I wish my boss would be as concerned as you are about Mr. DiNozzo if I were to be in the same situation. They’d probably just complain about me taking up the bed space!”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, believe me, Gibbs, it is. Anyway, I shall be back in a few minutes to check Mr. DiNozzo’s vitals.”
“Please call him Tony. If he could hear you call him ‘Mr. DiNozzo’ he’d think his father was present.”
“Okay, well you make your call and I’ll be back to check Tony’s vitals.” Gibbs watched her leave, taking another gulp of the coffee she had brought it. She was right, it was much better than the stuff they served in the cafeteria.
He dialed Ducky at the morgue, guessing that was the place he was most likely to be.
The phone rang twice before Jimmy Palmer’s voice sounded at the other end. “Morgue.”
“Palmer, it’s me, is Ducky around?” Gibbs asked, trying not to sound impatient, after all it wasn’t Palmer’s fault that Ducky hadn’t answered his own phone.
“Ah, Agent Gibbs, sir, he’s, erm, he’s with the Director,” Palmer stuttered.
“Why is he with the Director?”
“I don’t know, he, er, he just said he had to talk to her about something.”
“Do you have a case? Other than what happened to Tony?”
“Something happened to Tony?”
“Well, yeah, Palmer, something did. Didn’t Ducky tell you?”
“No, sir, he er, he was autopsying a body that came in late last night. A shooting at a marine base, I think one of the other teams is working it.”
“Right, well tell him that I need him at Bethesda when he’s done. Need him to explain some of Tony’s treatment to me.”
“Agent Gibbs, sir?”
“What, Palmer?”
“Is Tony going to be okay?”
“He will be if I have any say in it.” With that, Gibbs hung up the phone and took another gulp of coffee.
Gibbs finished the rest of his coffee and put the phone on the table, just as the nurse reappeared to take Tony’s vitals. “How’s he doing?” Gibbs asked, hoping for something positive for a change.
“He’s stable, which is good considering he just had a medical crisis,” the nurse told Gibbs, smiling. How could she smile when Tony was in such bad shape?
When she left, Gibbs took his place by Tony and reached for the hand that he’d been holding since all of this had started. For once, he was at a loss as to what to say to his senior field agent. There were no words to describe how he felt at that moment in time, emotions flooded him, but none of them were any use to Tony, so he kept them bottled inside. He couldn’t tell Tony that he loved him, that he pretty much always had because there was a chance that Tony wouldn’t hear him and he didn’t want to have to say it twice.
Gibbs didn’t know how long he sat in silence, just listening to the beeps of the machines keeping Tony alive, but when he next looked up at the door there were a team of medical personnel arriving, along with what must be a dialysis unit.
“Would you mind stepping outside while he connect Mr. DiNozzo to the dialysis?” one of them asked him. They obviously hadn’t spoken to the rest of the team treating Tony because if they had they would have known that Gibbs had no intention of leaving his side, that and the fact that they called him ‘Mr. DiNozzo’.
“I’m not leaving, I will step over here so you can work, but I’m not leaving him,” Gibbs informed them, giving one of his trademarked glares at anyone who dared make him do otherwise.
“Okay, you can stay where you are while we insert the catheter into Mr. DiNozzo’s jugular vein, but you’ll need to step back when we connect the dialysis.”
“That’s fine and please, call him Tony.”
The nurse smiled and set about preparing the equipment needed to get Tony on dialysis. Gibbs held Tony’s hand as they swab his neck, and inserted the catheter, it looked painful and he wasn’t sure if Tony could feel it so he wanted him to know that someone was there with him.
Once that was done, Gibbs stepped back and watched them work, connecting the tubing to the machine and setting it all up so that it would get rid of the toxins in Tony’s body that his poor kidneys could not. He silently said a prayer to a God he had long since forgotten that Tony would only need the disalysis whilst in hospital and that there would be no permanent damage done to them. If they were damaged then there was no chance of Tony returning to work as a full time Special Agent.
“I’ll be back in two hours to disconnect Mr ... I mean, Tony from the dialysis. The nurses will monitor his vitals, but if you’re worried about anything, please don’t hesitate in pressing the call button.”
“Thank you,” Gibbs called out to the nurse as she left, closing the door behind her. Once again, it was just Gibbs, Tony and the machines in the room.
Gibbs thought about catching a few hours sleep while the dialysis machine did its work, it was unlikely that Tony would need anything and although in the past he could have survived on little or no sleep, he was getting older and found that without at least four hours he was able to concentrate for long.
He lay out on the cot with his eyes closed, hoping that sleep would claim him because in his dreams, Tony had called and they’d tracked the attacker down and dealt with him, which was so far from what had happened in reality.
The beeping of Tony’s heart monitor calmed him, because it told him that Tony was still with him, that he hadn’t let him down by not being there, that Tony was still fighting and that hopefully the Tony they knew and loved would still come back to them.
~*~
When Ducky arrived at Bethesda, he took the elevator to the third floor and made his way to Tony’s room. He could see through the big window that allowed the nurses to keep an eye on what was going on that Gibbs wasn’t at Tony’s side - something that seemed unusual.
“Excuse me, but could you tell me where Special Agent Gibbs went?” he asked one of the nurses at the desk.
“He’s in with Tony DiNozzo,” the nurse replied, giving him a soft smile.
“I can’t see him.”
The nurse looked over to Tony’s room and through the window. “He might be lying down, we put a cot in there for him since he was so adamant about staying with Tony.”
“Ah, well I hope he is getting some rest, the last thing we need is Jethro dead on his feet.” With that, Ducky headed to the room and opened the door silently, his eyes cast over the room and he saw Gibbs sleeping soundly in the corner on the cot the nurse had mentioned. He wasn’t sure if he should wake him because after all the man had been awake since Tony’s arrival and it was near enough the middle of the night.
He thought it over and decided that with his mother being cared for by a nurse, he could let Jethro sleep and watch over Tony for the time being, he didn’t need to be anywhere else.
Tony had since been disconnected from the dialysis machine, but the catheter in his jugular vein still remained and so Ducky was able to fathom that he’d had some sort of procedure done in his absence.
He looked at his watch - it had been twenty-four hours since Tony had taken the overdose. The doctors had guessed that he’d taken it around midnight the previous evening. Eighteen since he’d been brought to the hospital, hopefully, having survived this far, Tony would start to show signs of recovery soon.
Ducky took hold of Tony’s hand and started to regale him with stories of past visitors to his table while Gibbs slept peacefully in the corner.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Who will catch DiNozzo when he falls?