The Director's office was in chaos. After McGee had collapsed Abby had screamed and crouched next to him, trying to shake him awake. Tony and Ziva had turned around and Ziva quickly ran to get Ducky whilst Tony crouched down next to Abby, trying to calm her as he quickly and efficiently checked his vitals. Jen watched as Gibb's- no Tony's- team went into action. Realising she was doing nothing she strode to the phone on her desk and quickly called for an ambulance.
Ziva soon returned with Ducky and Jimmy in toe, Jimmy still wearing his plastic booties and scrubs. Joining Tony next to McGee's prone body they shared a look that spoke volumes.
They had to deal.
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Three days later and he was still in hospital, and had still not woken up.
Abby had flipped out. Kate was gone, Gibbs had left and now McGee hung in the balance. Ziva had gotten in touch with her ‘contacts' to speed up McGee's tests and scans and to find out what could be done. Tony thought it was a waste of time himself. He had been to busy anyway, hafting to ring McGee's family to inform them what had happened. Now that had been a surprise.
Tony had always wondered why he never mentioned his parents. He had found out they didn't speak, much like his own parents. Tony was shocked to hear that they had disowned him after he had informed them that he wanted to do law enforcement and not cryptography and research, not the ‘big bucks'. yet Tony still liked to think that if he was unconscious in a hospital room his father would visit.
He had spoken to McGee's sister though, his next of kin who flew from California immediately. Turns out she had money, and lots of it, having made her way as a very well known lawyer on that part of the coast.
Next he had spoken to McGee's doctors.
A brain tumour.
They weren't sure what from. Going through his medical records they couldn't tell whether it was form the car crash he had been in as a teenager or a few years later when the seniors a year above him had punched him so hard he had been knocked out and woke up in a locker in the middle of a deserted school. Or the time when he was in his twenties working at Norfolk and a crazed anti-war protester had gone through the base, and shot anything that had moved.
Sure, Tony knew that McGee had worked there at the time it had happened but he had never pieced it together. That night he had gone home and called up the articles that had run at the time.
‘…an anti-war protester stormed a navy base in Norfolk yesterday, firing at everything he could. He did several hundred dollars worth of damage and managed to injure three people. The most critical of them is a member of the computer forensic team who narrowly escaped death by ducking just in time yet still managed to get clipped by a bullet to the left of his head. He is now in ICU at the Norfolk Base Hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. Officials say the gun man…'
Tony closed the window, not wishing to know more.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
What is wrong with McGee?