Tony's head was half-buried under blankets, still in the very same position it was in when he wearily collapsed into his bed the night before, and he pulled those blankets further over himself when his 6:00 AM alarm went off, squeezing his eyes closed and willing it to stop. Unfortunately, his mental powers were no better than they were when he was five and tried to use them to turn the ground into a trampoline as he flew off a swing set from a particularly alarming height, and so he regretfully shoved a hand out of his blanket cocoon and turned off the alarm. He stretched, eyes still squeezed shut, ignoring the pain in his head, and opened his eyes.
And immediately closed them again.
He kept his eyes closed and willed his heart to beat normally. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes once more, and all hopes of keeping his heart rate normal were shot to Hell. Gibbs was going to kill him.
He couldn't see.
Well, he could, but this was not his usual 20/10 vision. This was like he was looking through a fogged lens. Everything was indistinct, hazy, and cloudy. The numbers on his clock were like fuzzy red blobs, and when he glanced out his window, he just saw a vague array of dim colors and sort-of shapes with no sharp edges in the early morning light.
He squeezed his eyes closed again and rubbed them, hoping perhaps he was just still too tired to see clearly, even though that had certainly never happened before-but when he opened them again, he could still barely make out the number of fingers on his hand.
"Shit," he said, his voice shaky. "Shit. Shit."
He gripped his bed sheets and sat up, looking around his bedroom and not really seeing much of what was there.
He remembered Gibbs dropping him off at his apartment the night before, shaking him awake with a warm hand on his shoulder, making him commit to calling him first thing in the morning and letting him know if he could come into work. For a brief moment, he considered going into work and pretending he could see. Then, he realized, that was a terrible idea.
He reached out a shaking hand and fumbled around on his bedside table for his phone, knocking a tube of Chapstick and a DVD case to the floor in the process. He grabbed the phone and held it in front of him, first far away, then close, so close that the tip of his nose touched the screen as he tried to make out anything written on it, but couldn't.
He held it further away again and his fingers slid over the keys. In his mind, he could see each one of them, and he quickly pressed his speed dial number one.
It rang loud and clear in his ear, but he could hardly hear it over his heart, pounding even louder.
"Gibbs." His voice was rough and impatient as ever, and Tony was so relieved to hear him that he sagged back against his headboard, pinching the bridge of his nose as a breath he didn't realize he was holding escaped through his lips.
"DiNozzo?" Gibbs said. "DiNozzo, you there?"
It almost sounded like Gibbs was speaking through a tunnel, and Tony laughed, a high pitched, thin laugh.
"DiNozzo!" Gibbs said again, this time, sounding like a command.
"Gibbs," Tony said, and he was alarmed to hear it come out like a plea, his voice cracking.
"Gibbs," he said again. "Gibbs, I can't-" He stopped talking and focused instead on breathing, because his breath was coming in short, panicky gasps. This was not right.
"DiNozzo, what's going on?" Gibbs asked. He sounded urgent and impatient. Tony could hear the TV in the background, and he heard a few things being knocked around.
"Farm Report?" Tony asked, between gasps for breath, even as the sound of the TV stopped abruptly and he heard quick footsteps and a slamming door. "You-you building a boat, Gibbs?"
"Been building one for years," Gibbs said. "DiNozzo. What is going on?"
"Boss, am I having a heart attack?" Tony asked, gasping for breath.
Tony heard an engine turn over, and a car door slam. Gibbs was driving. He must be going to work.
"Can't make it to work, Boss," Tony said. "I think-I-"
"DiNozzo!" Gibbs barked. "You will tell me right now what the hell is wrong with you! That is an order!"
Tony heard a car horn pressed down for a long time, but before he could wonder about it, he recognized the order.
"I-I woke up," Tony said. Again, he was alarmed to hear how shaky and strange his voice sounded. "Woke up and I couldn't-I can't-"
"Can't what, DiNozzo?" Gibbs said, followed by a muffled curse under his breath and the sound of tires squealing.
"I can't see, Boss," Tony finally said. "Everything's all blurry." He closed his eyes and ran his free hand through his hair. "I think...I think I might be p-panicking," he said, still gasping for air, his fingers and toes starting to tingle from lack of air circulating.
There was silence for a moment, then Gibbs' voice came across the line, surprisingly soothing against the backdrop of traffic sounds that Tony could hear across the line. "Deep breaths, DiNozzo," he said. "Breathe in, hold it, and let it out."
Tony followed Gibbs' orders, as usual, but even as he breathed in he could feel his heart beat faster and his panic continue to rise.
"I'll be there in five minutes," Gibbs said. His voice was still oddly gentle, like he was talking down a frantic witness. "I need you to keep breathing."
Tony did his best to follow directions and kept focusing on his breathing, knuckles clenched white around his phone. It was pressed against his cheek and growing slick with sweat.
"S-sorry, Boss," he said, still grasping at air. He felt out of breath, like he'd been chasing a suspect for miles.
"Don't apologize," Gibbs said, voice gruff again. "It's a sign-"
"I'm feeling kind of weak, Boss," Tony admitted before taking a breath and holding it in, closing his eyes and counting to eight in his mind.
"Exhale, Tony," Gibbs said. His voice switched back to the gentle tone again, and Tony kept his eyes closed and focused on breathing. He kept the phone clutched to his ear, and Gibbs carefully talked him out of the panic attack as he sped to Tony's apartment.
Tony gradually got his breathing under control and flexed his fingers and toes, which had regained their feeling. He still felt like there was a fog over his brain, like this wasn't actually happening, and then he would look around and realize when he saw nothing but blurry shapes that it was happening, and Gibbs' voice would come through the line, talking him down from the panic. He knew the embarrassment would come later; for now, he was grateful for the support.
"Tony," Gibbs said, "I'm pulling up to your apartment building. Can you get to the door and take down the chain?"
Tony looked around, his eyes reflexively squinting and widening, trying to put things into focus and failing. "Yeah, Boss," he said, flipping the covers off of himself and shivering when the cold morning air hit him. He stood up slowly, and stayed absolutely still until a wave of dizziness passed over him and moved on, then hesitantly walked towards the door, one arm outstretched, fingers poised to feel wood beneath them. After a few steps they felt it, smooth and polished oak, and he trailed them down to the doorknob and opened the door. He hesitantly stepped into the hallway, things becoming even fuzzier since there was less light there without the luxury of a bedroom window to bring in the pale early morning light, and he swallowed thickly.
"Doin' all right, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked.
"Yeah, almost there, Boss," Tony said. He hesitantly stepped forward, one arm trailing along the wall, one clutching the phone. He did walk into a discarded shoe once, but caught himself from falling. He got into his living room and stayed along the wall until he got to the door, and slid the chain off with relief. He unlocked the door, too, even though Gibbs had a key, and wasn't surprised to hear heavy footsteps coming towards him quickly as he opened the door.
"Boss?" he said, squinting at the blurry shape moving in his direction.
Gibbs came in and pushed Tony into the closest chair to the door-Tony's favorite, an overstuffed recliner perfect for watching movies in.
"I'm going to get you some pants," Gibbs said. "And take you to the hospital."
His face was inches away, but Tony still could not make out anything more than a Gibbs-shaped blob. He nodded. "My sweatpants are in the top dresser drawer," he said. He rubbed his hands over his arms, wishing he had more than a T-shirt and boxers on. "Sweatshirt, too?" he called out.
Gibbs didn't reply, but instead, pulled out his phone as he walked away and had a short, terse conversation, even by Gibbs' own standards. Tony gathered from the snippets he heard that he was calling Ducky to meet them at the hospital, but he couldn't bring himself to focus much on anything besides what he could not see around him.
Gibbs came back a moment later with some clothes, and Tony wondered about what kind of expression he had on his face. Gibbs held them out and Tony embarrassingly missed when he reached out for them, and had to feel along the fabric to figure out whether he was holding a shirt or pants. He could feel panic rising again, but Gibbs laid hands on his shoulders.
"Easy," he said soothingly. "Relax. We're gonna get you taken care of in just a minute."
He couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed when Gibbs helped him into his sweatshirt, nor when Gibbs helped him get his pants up to his knees, shoved his feet into sneakers, and helped him stand up, letting him clutch his arm for balance, as he pulled his pants up over his hips.
"Keys and phone?" Gibbs asked. "Wallet?"
"My keys are on the table next to the door. Phone's here," he said, reaching next to him and fumbling along the seat of the chair until it was secure in his hands. "I think my wallet's in my pants from yesterday. On the floor."
Gibbs pushed him into the chair again, and Tony closed his eyes while he listened to Gibbs move around his apartment, getting his belongings. All too soon, Gibbs was in front of him again, hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake. Tony hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep. Gibbs helped him stand again, and dropped his belongings into his pockets for him once he was upright.
"Come on, I'll help you to the car," Gibbs said. He grabbed Tony's closest hand and guided it towards his own elbow, then helped him out of the apartment, shutting off the lights and locking the door behind him.
Tony had always prided himself on his observation skills, even before he worked in law enforcement, and he was glad for them as he followed Gibbs out of the apartment. Even with his clear memory of the faded wood floors, lined with nicks and stains, and the walls, with dents in the plaster every here and there, and the drawing of a fairy in the corner next to the old lady's apartment at the end of the hall, he still found himself clutching at Gibbs' elbow, walking too close and not caring.
"I don't think I know a movie where someone wakes up blind for no reason," Tony said to Gibbs as they carefully maneuvered down the narrow staircase that led them to the main floor of the building.
"Probably not for no reason, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied. "Watch that next step," he added, "there's a crack in the wood."
Tony stepped carefully onto the next step, the third, he remembered from the many times he'd walked those stairs and looked at them, and as he followed Gibbs out to his car, he wondered desperately what the reason was that he could suddenly barely see, and whether or not he'd be able to do so again.
--
Tony had been to many ER waiting rooms. Sometimes with blood oozing out of a stray bullet wound, or some sort of twisted ankle or knee or wrist, or, usually, a pretty serious head wound. And all of those injuries came with an accompanying story of heroism-how he had leapt onto a suspect just in time to avoid his team getting shot, or he got into a spectacular fight, or he jumped into churning, freezing cold waters to save someone. And he would sit in the ER waiting room, looking around at the other waiting patients, seeing the worry and distress and pain on their faces and deep in their eyes, and listen to them talk, a murmur of languages and voices that floated over his head, and he would think-at least I'm here because I was putting some asshole behind bars.
But this time, he was sitting with his arms wrapped around himself, eyes closed, worried because this time, he hadn't gotten shot in the line of duty, or saved his teammates-he'd merely woken up with a mysterious loss of vision and accompanying dizziness and headaches, and he didn't even want to think about the implications of those symptoms. This was not a cold or flu. This was his vision. Thoughts of brain tumors and strange diseases flitted through his brain, and he didn't even realize that his leg was bouncing up and down frantically until Gibbs put a steady hand on his knee.
"Calm down, DiNozzo," he said, and his voice was still that strange timbre somewhere between soothing and gruff.
"Sure, Boss," Tony said. "No problem. I just won't worry about the fact that I can't fucking see-"
"Hey," Gibbs interrupted, and this time, the soothing was gone from his voice. In fact, his voice was such a command that Tony immediately opened his eyes and turned his head in Gibbs' direction.
"Hey," Gibbs repeated, and Tony was embarrassed to think that there must be some sort of very un-DiNozzo-like emotion displayed on his face because Gibbs' voice went back to soothing. "You can see, DiNozzo," he pointed out. "Just not very well."
"Thanks, Boss, that was helpful," Tony muttered, facing forward again and closing his eyes, feeling unusually taciturn and vulnerable.
"You beat the plague, DiNozzo, you can beat this," Gibbs pointed out, and Tony could hear the skritch-skritch of his pen rapidly filling in the forms.
"Insurance card?" Gibbs requested.
Tony nodded and pulled his wallet out of his pocket and thrust it in Gibbs' general direction. "In there," he said.
Gibbs pulled it out and filled in the necessary information, then automatically held it out for Tony to take. Only, he held it out to his side for a few moments, still writing on the admittance forms, before realizing that Tony had no clue that it was being held in front of him.
"Hey, Tony," he said, and Tony opened his eyes and squinted at him.
"Here," Gibbs said, wiggling the wallet. Tony's eyes squinted to track the movement of the dark blob he knew must be his wallet, and his hand reached out and connected with it on the third try.
"Thanks," Tony said sullenly, lifting himself off the chair slightly to shove it back in his pocket.
A few moments of silence passed between the two of them, and Tony listened instead to a crying baby and a woman, who he judged to be elderly by the thin tone of her voice, letting out a string of swears in Spanish.
"What time is it, Boss?" he asked.
"6:45," Gibbs replied, sounding distracted. Tony heard a rustle accompany those words, and before he could reply, Gibbs was up and gone from the chair. He fought down the panic that came with that, and opened his eyes, looking in the direction of the desk but not sure whether he was looking at Gibbs standing there, or perhaps some decorative column, or something else entirely. He tried squinting, but that did nothing, and he kept looking at the object, thinking it was Gibbs, until he felt a rough hand on his arm-Gibbs, he thought.
"I'm right here," Gibbs said, and his voice was gentle again. It made Tony think that maybe things were worse off than he thought.
"Don't you have to go to work, Boss?" he asked, still looking at the strange not-Gibbs that he'd been looking at before.
"I'm over here," Gibbs said, taking Tony's chin and turning his head towards him. "That's a bum trying to get painkillers."
Tony was aware of Gibbs' way of avoiding questions and pretending they were never asked in the first place, and so he tried again. "Don't you have to go to-"
"Don't leave my men behind," Gibbs said, and it sounded gruff once more.
While Tony was glad to hear Gibbs sound like himself again, he couldn't let that slide. "I'm not a kid, Boss, you can go to work. I'll be fine," he said, though even as the words left his mouth, he knew that they were a token plea, and that Gibbs would see right through them.
Gibbs didn't dignify that with a response, and Tony could just imagine the glare he would receive if he could see the man's face.
Tony heard Gibbs pull out his cell phone and dial, and he listened as Gibbs filled the Director in-told him Tony was sick and wouldn't be in, and that Gibbs would probably be in later.
Probably be in later. So he was planning on staying a while, anyway. Maybe just until they figured out what was wrong with Tony. Tony realized that Gibbs hadn't told the director the actual problem-just that Tony wasn't feeling well. Tony hadn't felt well before, but this was not just "not feeling well." This was waking up without your prided 20/10 vision, but instead, something completely awful in its place.
Soon, a doctor was calling his name, and he heard the elderly Spanish woman cursing him out, complaining that she had gotten there first and this young punk was getting seen before her. If he was feeling more normal, he probably would've spoken back to her in Spanish with an easy grin, and he would've loved to see the shock on her face when she realized he could actually understand her-but since he was absolutely not feeling anywhere near normal, he just stood up and after taking two steps and almost falling, gratefully clutched at Gibbs' arm and followed him to wherever the doctor was leading them.
It was strange walking through somewhere totally unfamiliar and seeing only blurry shapes around him. Inside his apartment was one thing, but here, in the hospital, was something totally different-it didn't help the strange anxiety of the situation when every step he took he could hear another unfamiliar voice, holding another unfamiliar conversation, wafting over his ears in a cacophony of noise that made his fingers tighten on Gibbs' arm.
Gibbs kept murmuring things like "Watch your step," or, "a little to the left," and so Tony tried to focus on his voice instead of all the others, and he was eternally gratefully when he was suddenly inside a small room, and Gibbs was helping him sit on the side of a bed.
"Mr. DiNozzo-"
"Agent DiNozzo," Gibbs interrupted, sounding pissy and bossy and just like Gibbs, and that made Tony smile a little bit.
"Agent DiNozzo," the doctor continued, unperturbed, "My name is Doctor O'Reilly. It says here that you have suddenly lost your vision?"
The man's voice was confident, but he didn't sound that old. Tony hoped that he wasn't some cocky kid just out of med-school. When he stared in the man's direction, he seemed vaguely, well, orange, so that explained the name-typical Irish-red hair, pale skin. Tony thought he could probably give a pretty good description even without seeing him.
"Yeah," Tony said. "I can kind of see colors," he added. "Red hair, Doc?"
"Yes, quite," the doctor said, sounding unamused. "What other symptoms?" he asked.
"I wrote them down," Gibbs interrupted.
"Yes," Dr. O'Reilly said again, "but I would like to hear them from Agent DiNozzo's perspective."
Tony didn't hear anything from Gibbs after that, so he answered the doctor's questions. "Headaches," he said. "Pretty bad ones. And I've been pretty dizzy."
"It says here that you once had the plague? Is that right?" Doctor O'Reilly asked, sounding torn between appalled and intrigued.
Tony nodded.
"Hmm," he said. Tony could tell from the silence that followed that the doctor was itching to know more about it, but knew he should stick to the symptoms at hand. "Have you had any recent head injuries?" he continued.
"No," Tony said. "Not in a few months, anyway."
"I'd like to examine your eyes," he said, stepping closer. Tony heard him pull something out of his pocket. "I'm going to shine a light in your eyes. It will be bright," he cautioned, before holding Tony's eyes open, one by one, and shining a light in, asking Tony to look in various directions. Tony flinched back from the light, but did as requested, hoping the doctor was seeing what he was supposed to see.
"And how many fingers am I holding up?" Doctor O'Reilly asked, holding his hand in front of Tony's face.
Tony squinted, then opened his eyes wide, and squinted again. "Um...two?" he guessed.
"Well," Doctor O'Reilly said, after a moment's pause where he jotted down a few notes, and Tony got the distinct feeling he'd been wrong about the fingers, "the best course of action would be to admit you and run some tests."
"What kind?" Gibbs asked, just as Tony simultaneously asked, "How long?"
"Depending on the outcome of the tests, I would estimate an admittance period of approximately two days," the doctor said, and before Tony could express his outrage, which he was sure showed on his face, the doctor continued, "First we'll perform some basic neurological exams, then an MRI, and if needed, a spinal tap."
"That's a great movie," Tony said, avoiding the anxiety that was building steadily inside him. "Classic. Have you seen it, Doc? Best rockumentary-"
"DiNozzo," Gibbs interrupted harshly, instantly putting a stop to nervous babbling.
"I have seen it," the doctor said, and Tony thought he heard a smile in his voice. "Any questions, Agent DiNozzo?"
"Can't we make it shorter than two days?" he asked, and again, he was dismayed to hear his voice come out like a whine.
The doctor sighed. "These are serious symptoms," he said. "I am well aware that two days can feel like a long time, but it is just an estimate. It could very well be shorter, or longer. The most important thing is that you stay here long enough for us to conduct tests and determine what is causing your vision loss. I'll be honest with you, Agent DiNozzo. That is not a common symptom, and usually indicates something much more serious."
"Do you think it's permanent?" Tony asked after a moment, not quite wanting to hear the answer.
"At this point, I can't answer that. We'll have to wait until we run some tests. It is very likely a swelling of the optic nerve," he said, "In which case, we simply have to make the swelling go down."
For some reason, Tony didn't think it was going to be that simple.
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