And the Band Kept Playing On - Part 3 of 4
Part Two
Tony used to find amusing people’s reactions whenever he told them he’d had the plague. Doctors especially were fun to watch when he added that they needed to contact his doctor, Brad Pit. They would get this look, like they were contemplating the fastest way they could get him to the psych ward. Though he never doubted for a moment they would lock him away unless he provided evidence of his passing acquaintance with the plague. Usually an x-ray gave them a nice little picture of his web infested lungs and then the fun would really start.
Tony didn’t find it funny anymore, especially since McGee had decided that he was related to Florence Nightingale and wouldn’t leave him alone for more than five minutes. He was seriously considering a restraining order just to be able to go to the bathroom without McGee standing guard outside his bathroom door - and not inside for which he should consider himself lucky - asking about every two minutes if he was okay. His privacy was already nonexistent what with his entourage’s siege of his apartment - he almost saw tears in Gibbs eyes at their sheer efficiency - but he drew the line at his bathroom. Not that counted for much with his stalker/personal nurse. At this point he would need a crowbar and a pack of C-4 to pry McGee off of him.
“Hey, Tony, do you want your pain medication? Doctor Stevenson said you needed to take them even if you didn’t feel you needed them.” Enter McGoo, carrying a nice little tray which he would had sworn before today that he didn’t own. It contained a bowl of the orgasmic soup Ziva had made that afternoon, the fresh bread they gotten from the family owned bakery down the street, and two glasses, one filled with orange juice and the other - yep, you guessed - water.
Tony had arranged his bedroom with a mountain of pillows propping him to ease the strain on his chest and Abby had tucked a blanket carefully around him before leaving. She’d also placed a pitcher of water on the nightstand along with a stack of his favorite magazines. He really, really loved that woman.
The tray was placed carefully on his nightstand. “You know, McGoo, you’re going to make someone a very nice wife someday.” And McGee did that thing when his face went all annoyance and long-suffering that he had mastered on his second year as Gibbs’s official probie.
Wordlessly, he was handed two vicodin which Tony swallowed with an deep rooted relief. Though he kept most of the inappropriate noises locked inside his throat. He was an ass, but even he had limits he wouldn’t cross.
McGee stood over him like a good little mother hen, waiting until Tony had swallowed. Tony even opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to show that yes, he had actually taken the pills and he was not hiding them somewhere inside his mouth.
McGee, predictable as he was, rolled his eyes then placed - shoved - the bowl of soup into his hands, spoon and all.
Tony, because he was an ass, gave him a wide eyed look. “What, you’re not gonna feed me?”
McGee didn’t take the bait. Maybe he’d become immune by prolonged exposure to Tony’s assness and Gibbs’s bastard. In that case, Tony really needed to change strategies, one couldn’t have an unruffledable probie; it went against the laws of nature and humanity.
Tony grabbed the soup and yes, it was heaven but Tony had learned that anything Ziva made was close to perfection. “So, McGeek, when is the next changing of the guard?” He gulped down his food, which turned out to be a bad idea since it had left him more than a little breathless. His lungs were already burning as thought he’d swallowed creosote and a lit lighter down his throat.
It took a while before he regained some semblance of control over the air entering and exiting his body. And even longer for the dark spots that had popped out in his sight to fade completely. He hated this. He hated it as much as the first time it had happened, during his recovery from the plague, where he couldn’t do a whole lot of anything without getting winded. Even after, when he ran his normal ten miles, it would take him longer and leave him ready to collapse when before he would had barely broken a sweat.
Tony hadn’t realized he’d double over until he felt McGee’s hands on his back and his frantic voice buzzing in his ear.
“He just started wheezing. No, I tried but he’s not responding to me. I don’t think he passed out, hold on . . . Tony, can you hear me?”
“Stop shouting in my ear, probie.” It took a lot of effort just to get half those words out, the rest were nothing more than a hiss but it got the message across.
“He’s talking, yeah, that would be great, thanks, Ducky.” If he had the energy, Tony would have pushed McGee off of him. As it was, he was equal parts shaking and sweating. His body weighed more than it should. “Can you lean back, Tony?”
He tried for a glare, but his eyes wouldn’t focus long enough for him to aim it. With McGee’s help, he was able to lie back on his assortment of pillows - one great step for mankind, one pathetically giant leap for Anthony DiNozzo. Even that simple task left him gasping.
McGee, like the good nurse maid he’d transformed into, rearranged his pillows. All he needed to was to start fluffing them to make the mental image complete.
“Ducky said he was on his way.” Tony noticed now that he wasn’t suffocating to death, that the bowl that had been previously in his hands had somehow migrated to the nightstand.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, but his lungs were still fighting him. It would have been more convincing if it didn’t feel like he was going to drop dead any moment. “Just a little breathy.”
“Right,” and was that disbelief in the probie’s tone?
“Just need a minute.” More like five or ten, maybe half an hour at the least. He was still woozy from the meds. Even if he was only taking vicodin, it still left him feeling as if his head wasn’t exactly on right.
“Whatever you say, Tony.” Things were starting to fade, blurring.
“Just a couple of minutes -” But his body was weighing him down, pulling him under and upward until he was floating and the pain had faded.
*O*O*O*O*O*O*O*
Tim jerked awake. He was already on his feet and by the bed, shaking Tony’s sweaty shoulder before he was fully conscious. The moaning wasn’t all that loud. Mostly, it was breathy mummers but McGee had gotten remarkably good at waking up to even the slightest disturbance.
Three days straight of the night shift - and he knew that Ziva and Abby had cheated, not that he would say it to their faces, he wanted to keep all his limbs in place - had lightened his sleep. So far, Tony had kept a predictable schedule, forty to forty-five minutes into his sleep, the nightmares would start followed by flinging limbs and muttered nonsense. And it would only take shaking Tony’s shoulder to make him settle back down. That last part had been Abby’s discovery although she wouldn’t say how she had come into that particular knowledge. Tim knew better than to ask.
Timothy waited a beat, but when Tony didn’t show any sign of waking, he went back to his padded chair and curled up for the glimpses of sleep that were waiting for him.
The days had worn on everyone. Despite the division of labor, their daily routines had taken a toll. Tim hadn’t slept in his own bed for more than a couple of hours. Abby chugged down seven to eight Caff Pows a day and was so jittery she was practically vibrating. Ziva had lost the little grasp on the English language she’d had to the point they needed a dictionary to understand anything she was saying. Gibbs had been alternating between growling at everyone and patting them on the head. So far Ducky was the only one acting even remotely normal, or as normal as any of them got. He stopped by at least twice a day to check on Tony and was only a phone call away in case they needed anything.
Normally, this kind of care was reserved for the dying or someone who was at death’s door. Tony really wasn’t either, but with the attack he’d had on his first day out of the hospital, no one wanted to take the chance that something would happen and Tony wouldn’t be able to get help.
“Hey, McGee.” Tim nearly fell out of the chair, but he managed to recover his equilibrium at the last minute. Abby stood at the doorway to Tony’s room, looking far too chipper for it to be natural. She quietly, well, quietly for Abby slipped into the room and plucked herself on Tony’s bed with a kind of familiarity that had Tim reviewing the last few months of interaction between the two. She tucked Tony in thoroughly, stretching out next to him.
“How’s the Tony sitting?” The smile she gave him was too predatory. Tim could admit, at least to himself that sometimes with Abby, he felt like a mouse in the presence of a very large, very hungry cat. It was similar to the feeling he had with Tony and Gibbs.
“He’s fine.” Which was, in Tim’s opinion, what Abby really wanted to know. “Ziva said he took his pain pills before he fell asleep.” Code for Ziva had to essentially shove them down Tony’s throat.
Abby placed a palm on Tony’s brow. “He feels cold.” And hopped down from the bed, slipped into the hall, coming back with a thick, wool blanket and spreading it over Tony, before repositioning herself on the bed; all this and Tony didn’t so much as twitch. That’s what his meds did to him, made him sleep even if Tony insisted that he wasn’t tired. Privately, Tim thought that the doctor had read Tony right and knew if given the choice, Tony would toss the pills as soon as he had the chance of not getting caught. Reason number two for these 24 hour vigilances. There was a third one there, too, one that he didn’t want to dwell on.
Abby lied next to Tony, curled, propped up with one arm, looking as comfortable as only she could while literally being in bed with one of her friends. She was like that, Abby, comfortable in her own skin in ways Tim had never even thought possible; a force of nature that could destroy everything in her path but chose not to.
“You look beat,” she whispered, casual the same way she lied on the bed. The room was mostly dark, moonlight piercing through the blinds and casting Abby’s face into a myriad of shadows. Tony was a large lump of blankets behind her.
“The night shift three days in a row can do that.” Tim could almost feel the grin directed her way, a perfect Cheshire replica.
“I can make some coffee?” A peace offering, maybe, and Tim was exhausted to the point were he would happily delude himself into believing there was even a hint of remorse in her tone.
“I think Ziva made a pot before she left.” On second thought that had been, a quick glance at the nightstand’s clock, five hours ago. As though reading his mind, Abby grimaced, “Maybe you could make a new pot?”
Tim expected Abby to head off with her usual exuberance, but instead he found himself the center of an intense gaze. It was the one she gave him just before she dumped some innate, if accurate observation on him. He brazed himself for whatever little trinket would be thrown his way.
“Tony’s apartment’s really clean.”
That was not what he expected, but with Abby, there were no limits to where a conversation could lead. “Uh, yeah.”
“I mean, you should have seen it when he first moved in, not that I did, see it that is, he and I didn’t exactly get along back then. But it was a pig sty, I know because Gibbs once said so, well, not said, per say, more like he kinda grunted and then mentioned Tony, DiNozzo, and said something along the lines that he’d been in really disgusting places, but Tony’s place took the cake.”
McGee felt himself slipping into a state between lucidity and drooling comatose. He supposed this was what being high must be like, drifting between stages of awareness.
“Come to think of it, I didn’t even realize Tony’s carpet was a light brown, it really goes well with his pearl colored walls.”
“They look kinda white to me,” he found himself muttering before he’d thought about it.
Abby’s look turned into a glare. “That’s because you’re not looking very hard, McGee!” And then she went on as though she hadn’t just snapped at him for no good reason other than disagreeing with her. Sometimes Abby’s mood swings resembled psychotic episodes to a disturbing degree. “But yeah, I like his apartment now. You know he had a spare bedroom, that was full of stuff and I do mean stuff; boxes and boxes of stuff. He wouldn’t let anyone near them for some reason. It’s clear now, all he needs to do is a buy a bed, a desk, and a nightstand. I should take him shopping for one.”
Abby flipped over, staring at the ceiling, “I really like this bed. It’s soft but has great back support.”
He really wanted to ask how she knew that. How the she knew so much about Tony’s apartment. It was at the tip of his tongue, luckily Abby started talking again and his common sense prevailed so he kept his mouth firmly shut on the subject.
“The pillows are just as great. And his couches, you do like his couches, right, McGee?”
Perplexed, he looked over at Tony, who slept just as deeply as he had the past week. “Uh, yeah, I guess.” They really were quite comfortably. He shifted on his not so comfortable chair, his back muscles protesting from his tail bone to his neck.
“But you like the chairs better?”
“What?”
“Chairs, McGee, try to keep up. You’re always in one.”
McGee stared hard at the chair, then back at Abby as though by some force beyond his understanding, Abby might start making sense.
Abby sat up abruptly, crawling slowly toward him, like a giant cat bearing down on its prey. McGee, acting on both an instinct as old as time and a working knowledge of Abby at her worst, tried to scoot back, but the chair stalled his movement. Before he knew it, Abby was already at the edge of the bed, peering down at him as though contemplating which part of him to devour first.
“McGee!” she said it in a tone that made it seem like Tim was the one that wasn’t making sense - a bit of a whine with a touch of exasperation. “You’re clinging to Tony.”
“How does my liking chairs have anything to do with Tony?” Any attempt to understand anything said in the last half an hour was useless, not to mention futile. Abby was a universe all onto herself.
She plopped down, arms crossing over her chest and legs in a lotus position. “Listen, it’s not your fault, Tim,” she said almost gently.
“What’s not my fault?” Changing topics would probably have been a wiser tactic, but Tim could count on one hand the number of hours he’d slept in the last four days. And even before that, and Tony being in the hospital, there had been the case.
Abby sighed loudly, “Tony getting shot! It’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t think it was.” He needed coffee. There was no way he wanted to have this conversation without at least being able to comprehend part of it, though if he had a choice - and he didn’t - he wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.
“He doesn’t blame you, you know?”
Tim practically jumped up from his seat, “I think I’ll go and start up that pot right now.”
“Tim!”
“Don’t, Abby, okay, please just don’t.” He wanted so badly to leave this room, to leave this apartment, but he wasn’t going to run away from this, he couldn’t. “Tony got shot because of me, I should’ve done better, and I will, but I don’t expect Tony to forgive me. That’s not Tony. He never forgives and doesn’t forget and it’s fine. He’ll get even and hold it over my head for as long as he can, and that’s fine. I’m okay with that, things will go back to the way they were and that’ll be that.” He was already halfway through the doorway.
Abby sighed loudly, “You’re wrong, McGee, you’ll see.”
There was a note in her tone, a promise thrown out like a gauntlet. Tim felt a shiver run down his spine as he left the room and was swallowed up by the darkened apartment.
Part Four
A/N: The last part will be posted sometime tonight. I hope you guys are enjoying the story!