The Chosen One - Chapter Four
Fornell strode down the hospital hallway, his heels angrily clicking on the hard laminate floors.
“Didn’t see him? Didn’t SEE him! There was no way that he got that close and didn’t see anything. The guy held a gun to his face. Somebody got to him. Dammit. The whole case will collapse if we can’t get his testimony. Sacks! Did you get those photos? I need to..”
Fornell screeched to a halt as the familiar eyes of the patient at the far end of the hall finally registered.
“Holy shit”
He turned quickly and slammed straight into Sacks who had just jogged up behind him.
“What the hell are you doing?” Fornell growled down in frustration at his confused junior agent who was scrambling off the floor before he disappeared back up the hallway.
Sacks sighed and started to follow the senior agent as he muttered under his breath. Fornell seemed to get more crotchety every year.
Fornell stood in the open doorway and stared at the man lying face down in the hospital bed. He was skinny, burned, bandaged, and surrounded by untold machines but those distinctive large green eyes gazing blankly out of the familiar face told Fornell all he needed to know.
“Is that…..?” Sacks couldn’t even bring himself to say his name, the shock was too great. Every agency in the country knew that Gibbs’s team was missing a man but to simply stumble across him in the hospital while working another case?
“Get me a nurse” Fornell’s voice was urgent and angry as he took in the devastation that lay unmoving before him. Sacks disappeared and Fornell stepped further into the room and picked up the hospital chart from the end of the bed.
“Patient - John Doe. John Doe my ass.”
Fornell snapped his fingers in front of Timothy McGee’s face and watched as his eyes slowly blinked but did not register any other change.
“What did they do to you kid?” His voice was soft as he looked for an undamaged spot to lay a comforting hand and paused awkwardly as he realised he could not find one.
Sack bustled a nurse into the room and Fornell pointed with authority at the prone figure in the bed.
“Tell me about him.”
“He was brought in last week. Terrible shape. The sole survivor of a warehouse fire. You might have seen it? It was on the news, nearly spread to the whole neighbourhood.
He was brought in naked, no identification, no jewellery or wedding ring although he does have what could have been a tattoo on his buttock. He has had multiple surgeries, mostly to try and repair the extensive nerve and skin damage to his back. He has been pretty unresponsive, although to be honest he has spent a lot of that time under heavy sedation.
We tried to find out who he was but his hands were too burned and blistered for fingerprints. To be honest we have been concentrating more on keeping him alive than finding out who he was. He lost a great deal of blood and he is still very weak. He has been battling a fever as well which hasn’t helped”
The nurse paused and took in the two Federal Agents tense demeanour before she asked cautiously.
“Is he a criminal?”
Fornell slapped the medical chart into her hand.
“No he is NOT a criminal. Change the name on that. His name is Special Agent Timothy McGee. If you want confirmation check the Naval Records not the criminal ones. “
Fornell pulled out his phone before he looked across at Sacks.
“Stay here and keep an eye on him. I’m going to call Gibbs”
Sacks nodded as his eyes strayed in a sort of fascinated horror to the young man he had come to know as a member of Gibbs’s team and who now lay on his stomach staring at the hospital wall. McGee had been younger than him, DiNozzo’s perpetual Probie but now his recognisable eyes were fever bright and blank in a way that made them painful to look at.
Chill needles of dread swept up his spine and made his scalp tingle and he found himself turning away from the slow harsh steady breathing and looking out the window, swallowing convulsively as he fought off visions of what had been done to the bright, young agent to reduce him to such a damaged state.
A warehouse fire? Did they torture him and then leave him to slowly burn to death inside? The sounds of the destruction covering up his screams as his flesh was....
A tree. There was a tree in the distance. Study the tree. Don’t think about it.
F.B.I Agent Sacks stood in the room, the silence broken only by the sounds of two men breathing and fought off the growing desire to run from the room. For some reason he didn’t like to turn his back on the figure in the bed. He flicked a look across at the still unresponsive man. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t like McGee was suddenly going to rise out of the bed and attack him.
But that’s what it felt like.
Sacks took a single step away from the bed and refused himself anymore. He shouldn’t allow himself to succumb to any irrational fears. He was a Federal Agent and shouldn’t be afraid of an injured man, a fellow agent.
Besides Fornell would be back soon.
Fornell stood in the empty hallway and opened his phone. He found himself simply looking at the screen for a moment trying to frame his thoughts. He didn’t actually know given the condition McGee was in if this was a good call or a bad call.
“Gibbs”
********************************************************************************************************
Tony glanced across to McGee’s empty desk for the thousandth time that day and sighed before returning to the report in front of him. Nothing had changed. Tim wasn’t there typing away or giving him one of his patented looks because he had thrown another wad of paper at his head.
When they had first discovered he had gone missing, the hole in the bullpen had been so obvious, the absence of Tim had felt like a physical object occupying the room with them. An empty void that occupied the same shape and size as the young agent yet seemed to demand constant attention in a way the man himself never had.
But in the beginning they had hope which Tony carried with him like an optimistic bright and shining sword to fend off the all consuming nothingness that sat like a growing blight in the corner of the bullpen. They were the best team, the best investigators and this wasn’t some stranger. This was Timothy McGee. The pace had been furious and they had worked through the long days and nights searching for some clue, some reason why or to where McGee had been taken.
As the weeks had worn on, the trail grew colder and Tim had stubbornly refused to be found, the presence behind his desk had slowly changed, turning malignant. Now instead of a static solid absent space that Tim should have occupied, the area had turned into a spreading black hole, sucking in and feeding on all hope and joy. The negative space had even started to turn vicious and Tony swore he could hear the low level continual hiss as it sucked away their energy and ideas leaving them all exhausted and anxious.
All powerful, vastly misunderstood Dark Matter had taken up residence at McGee’s desk and in Tony’s exhausted over active imagination it was going to slowly consume them all. What sleep he got was often disturbed by nightmares of relentless, unfeeling spreading Nothingness slowly, slowly absorbing the floor, filing cabinets, his desk, his chair, his legs until he woke with a start, panting and dripping in sweat. The Nothingness was slow but he could never seem to escape its continual advance.
Tony blinked his itchy eyes again rapidly and tried to concentrate again on writing up the most recent dead end. He was growing accustomed to blocking out the sounds of Tim’s absence, the silence of the keyboard, the nonexistent Umm’s and that in itself concerned him. It had been too long already. Nothing could be said to anyone without feeling McGee’s absence and the tired eyes that met Tony’s own told him he wasn’t the only one struggling without his ‘Probie’
It shamed Tony that as his friend was potentially struggling for freedom he was pouring on the charm and trying to find out some college girl’s star sign.
A week. McGee had been missing a week before anyone even knew he was missing. It made their job that much harder. Who remembered some insignificant detail from the previous day let alone the previous week?
Tony had been riding McGee hard the week before he left for his writers retreat and Tony had practically heard the sigh of relief as Tim headed for the elevators that night. Tony had promised himself he would give his friend some peace and so he hadn’t called the entire time. He had even talked himself out of prank calling him at 2.00am one particular night after a busy case. How many times had he regretted that action over the last few weeks? Why did he choose THAT time above all others to try and be sensible?
Perhaps if he had called and not received an answer he might have started to worry and insist on a follow up call to apologise? Perhaps those extra few days might have been what they needed to find something that would lead them to him? Perhaps.....
Tony shook his head. No. No more perhaps. He couldn’t afford the sleepless nights. He needed to be at the top of his game.
It seemed obvious that whoever took McGee was aware of the timing of his break away from the team. It was too perfect to be a coincidence. But why McGee? Why was he of all people targeted? From what they could tell McGee had never even made it into his apartment. His Porsche was found in the garage, his apartment untouched.
Round and round they went without a single decent lead. All they had was that whoever it was appeared to be professional. This was no poorly planned, coincidental mugging.
Tony flicked his eyes around the tense and silent bullpen taking in the other remaining members of his team. Ziva knew better than anyone the reality of what could have happened to McGee and the effort of suppressing the horror in order to allow the team to function as it should was wearing on her. Gibbs was driven and angry, Vance was curt, Abby was distraught and even Ducky’s stories had faded into awkward nothingness.
*********************************************************************
Gibbs wondered if he should order Tony home for some sleep as he watched his Senior Agent almost twitch away from looking yet again at McGee’s desk. Then again the dark smudges under his eyes seemed to indicate that he wasn’t getting very good sleep anyway. He heard his phone ring and he impatiently snapped it open, pulling his eyes away from Tony.
“Gibbs”
Fornell was brisk and to the point.
“I found McGee. He’s in Providence hospital. They had him as a John Doe. He’s been badly hurt but he’s alive”
Gibbs sat down suddenly as his legs suddenly threatened to give way underneath him.
All this time, every day reducing the chances that he would be found alive. Every day reducing even the chances that they would find his body.
Fornell’s voice continued but Gibbs barely heard.
McGee was alive.
It was impossible. It was too easy. Fornell of all people had simply stumbled on him? McGee was free? Already in the hospital?
Where was the fight? The crackling commands? The splinter of doors caving in? The tear of Velcro as they secured their Kevlar vests?
Of all the calls he had expected to get, this was not one of them.
Suddenly an irrepressible grin split his face and he looked around at what remained of his family. His exhausted team.
“We’re going to Providence hospital”
“What for Boss?” Tony looked up tired and pale and Gibbs grinned wider
“To see McGee”
**************************************************************************************************
The Man blinked again through the fuzziness and pain and waited for the instructions he knew must come.