Katherine Marshall glared at the young man sitting in the bed. Once again, Anthony DiNozzo was proving to be that patient that the professors warned her about; the one who didn’t seem to care about his own health and would intentionally or unintentionally sabotage any efforts to help to him. It was a good thing that he had finished his conversation as she had been walking through the door or she would have grabbed the phone and tossed it in the trash.
She heard him mutter something about Agent Gibbs and then Abby had acknowledged the physician’s presence. Katherine smirked as she watched the agent shift uncomfortably under her scrutiny. He finally sighed and laid his head back on his pillow in defeat, seemingly waiting for her to chastise his foolish actions.
“So, what do you have to say for yourself, Agent DiNozzo?” she asked. Katherine didn’t bother to hide the annoyance in her voice; she wanted the young man to know that she wasn’t happy with his recent actions.
Tony shrugged and mustered his best grin. “You caught me, Kate. I was hungry and thought I’d order a pizza. Pepperoni, sausage, and extra cheese; it’s my favorite.”
“A pizza, huh?” Kate sat on the edge of the bed. “Judging by your expression when you hung up the phone, the pizza place must have been closed.”
“Yeah, so I guess I’ll have to call back later.”
“I don’t think so,” Katherine warned. “Right now, pizza is not on your diet.”
“It’s not?”
“Nope.”
“But I love pizza,” Tony countered.
“But your ulcer doesn’t. Now, let’s get back to the real reason why you found it necessary to commandeer a phone and why you’re so upset.”
She saw Tony’s mask slip back into place. The doctor had to admit that DiNozzo was an expert at hiding his true feelings; it was something that he had evidently been forced to master at a young age and this ability had been carried over from his youth throughout his adulthood. Katherine had promised that she wouldn’t recommend a psychiatric consult yet, but she was beginning to regret that decision.
“It doesn’t concern you, Kate,” the agent said.
“It does when it affects your health.”
“It’s not affecting my health.”
“Being a federal agent isn’t rewarding enough so you decided to get a medical degree as well?” she snapped, knowing that her sarcasm would probably do nothing more than agitate the agent. She was right.
“I’m not in the mood, Kate,” he warned.
“Neither am I, Agent DiNozzo. The next time you…”
Katherine was cut off by the ailing man. “There won’t be a next time, Dr. Marshall. I’m checking myself out.”
Her eyes widened in surprise at DiNozzo’s sudden formality; she had grown used to him calling her Kate and to hear him call her Dr. Marshall with such venom was unexpected. “You can’t do that!” she protested. “You’re still in ICU!”
“Not for much longer.”
“I’m not letting you out of that bed, much less this hospital.”
“You can’t stop me,” Tony pointed out. “Now, do you want to take this IV out or would you prefer I do it?”
Sighing in frustration, she glanced over at Abby, who was nervously playing with her pigtail with one hand while fiddling with her phone in her other hand. Evidently the young lady was not going to try and talk Agent DiNozzo out of checking himself out AMA, so she was on her own. Before she could continue with her reasons why Tony needed to stay in the hospital, Abby raised her hand.
Katherine acknowledged her with a curt nod. “Yes?”
“May I be excused Dr. Marshall? I have to uh…I have to go to the bathroom,” Abby informed her.
The doctor knew that Abby was lying, but she chose not to confront her. With a forced smile, she replied, “Of course.”
She watched as Abby placed a quick kiss on Tony’s cheek and then hastily left the room. Katherine turned her attention back to her patient. “Now, where were we?”
“You were about to take my IV out,” Tony said.
Shaking her head, she answered, “No, I wasn’t. I was about to remind you that your not ready to leave the hospital. Your body is still trying to recuperate from the constant abuse that you’ve subjected yourself to and if you leave before you’ve had the chance to fully heal, you’ll either end up right back in here or dead.”
“Gee, thanks for the pep talk, Kate. You really know how to cheer up a guy.”
“I’m stating the facts Tony,” she tried to reason. ”You may not care about yourself, but there are those who do care,” she pointed out.
“I can’t stay here and I can’t explain why. Now, I’ll sign whatever release forms you want me to and I’ll even take whatever prescriptions that you think I need, but I am leaving.”
The doctor knew that her hands were tied. If the agent was insisting on checking himself out against her medical advice, she would have to let him leave. Katherine could have said that his concussion was impairing his judgment, but in the end, a man as resourceful as Tony DiNozzo would have found a way to leave despite her efforts.
She was going to be forced to do something that she normally didn’t do; Dr. Katherine Marshall was going to have to bargain with a patient. “I’ll let you leave under one condition.”
“What’s that?” Tony impatiently inquired.
“You have to stay at Jackson’s house and you will come by my office daily so I can at least see for myself that you’re in one piece.”
After a few minutes of consideration, he nodded in agreement. “I’ll stay at Jack’s for as long as I can.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“I guess that’s all I’m going to get out of you, isn’t it?”
“It’s all I can offer right now,” Tony mumbled.
“What about coming by my office every day?”
“I’ll try,” the young man promised.
Katherine stood up and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with your discharge papers as well as your prescriptions and a strict diet you need to follow. The nurse will come in and take your IV out.”
“Thank you,” Tony said. “I’m sorry it has to be like this, but I really don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, Tony.”
The agent shook his head. “Not always, Kate. Not always.”
Sensing the despair radiating from the agent, she allowed a tiny smile to escape her lips. Katherine had to admit that she was worried for Anthony DiNozzo and that whatever was driving him to the point that he would risk his life must be important to him. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she finally assured him.
“Hey, Kate,” Tony called out. “One last thing.”
“What is it?”
She could have sworn that she saw Agent DiNozzo’s cheeks flush slightly.
“I was just wondering, where are my clothes?” he wanted to know.
“I’ll have the nurse bring them to you.”
“Thanks,” he sheepishly replied. “I’m sorry.”
Katherine nodded and walked out of Tony’s room, slowly heading towards the nurse’s station. As she picked up DiNozzo’s chart, a cell phone appeared in front of her face. She looked up to see Abby Scuito holding the phone out to her.
“It’s for you,” the Goth announced.
Confused, Katherine took the phone from Abby. “For me?”
“Yep.”
“Who is it?” the doctor asked.
“Gibbs.”
Katherine sighed. Could this day get any worse? Not only was Tony DiNozzo checking himself out AMA, now she had to talk to the enigmatic Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She would really have to thank Jackson Gibbs for getting her involved in this particular situation. She took a deep breath and held the phone up to her ear.
“Hello?”
She quickly pulled the phone away from her ear, but still managed to hear an irate Jethro Gibbs shouting, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Dr. Marshall had a feeling that as soon as she got through talking to Agent Gibbs, she was going to start planning a nice long vacation. She hung up the phone and handed it back to Abby. “When he wants to talk to me and not yell at me, tell him to call me.”
She couldn’t help but smirk as she started writing in Tony’s chart. Katherine could see Abby out of the corner of her eye, staring at her cell phone, her mouth hanging open. Within fifteen seconds, the Goth’s cell phone rang again. Abby answered it and cautiously handed it back to Katherine.
The doctor took it and nodded her thanks to Abby. “What can I do for you, Agent Gibbs?”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Jethro Gibbs glanced at the clock on the wall for the third time in the past ten minutes. He was waiting on Ziva and Vance so they could head back up to Stillwater. The team leader was having a difficult time getting a handle on why DiNozzo told Vance where he was. What was Tony thinking? His senior agent asked Gibbs to trust him and as much as he wanted to trust DiNozzo, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was making the right decision.
His cell phone rang and he saw that Abby was calling him. He flipped open his phone, knowing that he had a few choice words for the Goth scientist. “Gibbs,” he grunted.
“Okay, first let me say that I’m so sorry that I gave Tony my phone but he said that if I didn’t that he would just leave the hospital and find one and I knew that he would, so I let him have my phone. The only problem is that now he told Kate that he’s checking himself out and they’re in there arguing and so I asked to go to the bathroom, although I didn’t have to go, but I had to get out of there so I could call you.”
Amazingly, the former Marine was able to follow Abby’s verbal rampage enough to understand that Tony was trying to leave the hospital when he had no business doing so. “Surely, she’s not going to let him leave,” he seethed.
“I don’t know. I left before I found that out, but I’m standing here looking in his window and it looks like Tony’s about to convince her to let him go,” Abby said.
“Let me talk to Tony,” Gibbs demanded.
“I don’t want to go back in there,” she pleaded.
“Why not, Abby?”
“Well, I don’t want you to yell at Tony. He’s got enough to worry about.”
“I won’t yell at him,” Gibbs said.
“Yes, you will. You always yell at him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t mean anything bad, Gibbs,” Abby attempted to explain. “I just meant that...oh, wait a minute, here comes Kate now and she doesn’t look happy.”
“Let me talk to ‘Kate’ then,” he ordered.
The next voice he heard on the phone was that of Dr Katherine Marshall. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.
Gibbs heard a click. He looked at the screen and saw the words ‘call ended’ blaring at him. Clenching his jaw, he called Abby’s phone again. “Put her back on, Abs.”
“What can I do for you, Agent Gibbs?” Katherine Marshall inquired, her voice taking on a sickeningly sweet tone.
Releasing a frustrated breath, he said, “You can tell me why you’re letting DiNozzo leave the hospital, AMA.”
“My hands are tied, Agent Gibbs. I can’t force him to stay here. Even if I came up with a reason, Agent DiNozzo would find a way to leave if he wanted to,” she rationalized.
“Sedate him.”
“It’s not that simple, Agent Gibbs.”
“Of course it is. Give him a shot of something that will knock him out and keep him out until I get there. The safest place he could be right now is the hospital.”
“What do you mean the safest place he could be?” Katherine asked.
“Long story. Just don’t let him leave the hospital,” Gibbs repeated.
“I can’t do that. You’re asking me to go against my code of ethics, Agent Gibbs. I won’t cross that line.”
The team leader hit the wall with his fist. “Damn it, Doctor Marshall! I don’t need you to start spouting off a bunch of crap about ethics. I need you to keep DiNozzo in the hospital until I get there!”
“I can’t unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless as next of kin and medical power of attorney, you deem Agent DiNozzo incapable of making sound decisions regarding his own health. He would then have to have a psychiatric evaluation to dispute your allegations.”
“I won’t do that to him,” Gibbs vowed.
“Then like I said, my hands are tied.”
“You go and tell DiNozzo that I’m ordering him to stay put,” the ex-Marine instructed.
“And you think that will keep him here?” she wanted to know.
“He’ll do what I tell him to do.”
“Are you sure about that?” the doctor questioned.
“Yes.”
“It must be nice to be so sure of yourself and the power you seem to wield over your people. I’ll tell him, but I can almost guarantee that this time it’s not going to make a difference,” she stated.
“Just do it,” he growled. “I’ll be up there as soon as I can.”
He hung up and threw his phone against the wall. “What are you thinking, Tony? Are you trying to get yourself killed? What is Vance holding over you that you’re willing to risk your life for?”
Leroy Jethro Gibbs was determined to get the answers to those questions. He had a feeling that when he returned to Stillwater, that all hell was going to break loose and he was going to have to be sure that DiNozzo didn’t end up being the scapegoat for Vance’s actions. Gibbs had to wonder if Jack had been right; maybe he didn’t know DiNozzo anymore. When had Tony changed and why hadn’t he noticed it? Maybe if he had been listening, he would have realized the significant changes in Tony’s personality; then again, maybe if he had been listening, DiNozzo wouldn’t be in this mess at all.
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks again for all the support. I'm so thankful for such loyal readers and I really appreciate all your encouragement.