Category: NCIS gen, angst, hurt/comfort fic

Rating: PG/13/R for comment in extract

Characters: Gibbs/Tony/Kate

Series: No

Spoilers: Assume all of Season One – especially Bete Noire and the season finale

Summary:

Archive: Just tell me where it’s going

Additional ‘stuff’: Written in response to a plea of a Yahoo Group member. I got the shingles information from a medical website. It might not be accurate.

Title: Rash decision

Gibbs sipped yet another mouthful of coffee and tried to concentrate on the report he was reading. He was tired. Not just the usual tired either. Over the previous few weeks he had grown used to the general feeling of tiredness which overtook him, usually by mid-afternoon. In the previous few days, however, the feeling that a heavy weight was pressing him down had begun to start earlier and earlier. His team had been working on one case after another, without the usual few days between cases. He hadn’t left the office before midnight in the past two weeks. He knew he needed a day away, to work on the boat or hire one to take out onto the water. But that just wasn’t possible, whatever anyone else thought.

Worried for him Kate and eventually even Tony had pressed Ducky into ‘having a word’. Kate had seen the increasing amounts of coffee and corresponding decreasing amounts of food Gibbs was consuming, and saw the deep dark circles under his eyes. Tony was just fed up with the yelling.

Gibbs had heard and dismissed Ducky’s increasingly short-tempered pleas for him to take a week off. Even a day. Half a day. Eventually, tempers frayed, the two men yelled at each other and, after that, Ducky refused Kate and Abby’s almost hourly requests to make Gibbs see sense.

Scowling, Gibbs rubbed the spot on his shoulder which had begun to ache badly earlier in the week. Suddenly he gasped, gripping his shoulder. ‘AHH!!’

Kate yelled across the room. ‘Tony!’

Looking up from where he had been chatting to one of the Middle East desk assistants, Tony frowned. ‘Yeah?’

‘Call Ducky! And call 911. NOW!!’

Gibbs was pale, shaking, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, his heart racing. Kate hurried across and pulled him to the floor, loosening the buttons at his collar. Trying to bat her hands away, Gibbs yelped as another wave of agonizing pain, worse, if that were possible, than the pain of being shot in the first place, surged through his shoulder, down as far as his knee as Kate held him down.

Tony behind her, Kate knelt helplessly beside Gibbs, resting her hand on his chest, feeling his heart thudding through his ribs. ‘Ducky’s coming…stay still.’

Gibbs looked up and gasped. ‘Get your…hand…off me.’

Stunned by the instruction, Kate sat back on her heels.

‘Hurts more.’ Gibbs explained through gritted teeth.

‘It hurts when I touch you?’ Kate asked.

Gibbs groaned as another bolt of agony lanced through his left side, managing to whisper: ‘Yeah. Tell…Ducky.’

The ME arrived at a run, black bag in hand. ‘What happened?!’

‘I think it’s a heart attack.’ Kate said, relieved Ducky had arrived. ‘He says it hurt more when I touched him.’

Ducky frowned, kneeling beside Gibbs, pushing his shirt and undershirt up, exposing his heaving chest, moving his hands over Gibbs’ torso, eliciting a pained groan from the man at his side. ‘Well, that doesn’t sound like a typical heart attack symptom to me.’ Slipping a thermometer between Gibbs’ lips he pointed a finger at the numerous raised angry red-colored dots over Gibbs’ left side. ‘And it almost never causes a rash.’ He pulled the thermometer from Gibbs’ mouth when it beeped.

‘Hmm…one-oh-two.’ Ducky looked at the man beside him. ‘Next time I tell you to go home, you’ll go home, yes?’

Gibbs nodded, the only movement that seemed to cause no additional pain. 

The wailing siren drowned out Ducky’s anecdote about how he had seen a similar case to this one in a young woman in Mexico.

************************************

Later…

Gibbs scowled at the IV line in his right arm. With the itching, burning pain in his left side, and the IV taped to his right arm he felt uncomfortably vulnerable. ‘What is it?’

Ducky walked across from the door where he had been chatting to the ER doctor. ‘Shingles. With all the extra hours you’ve been putting in, and the bullet wound, and your age…’

Gibbs scowled at that last point.

‘…together with your diabetes, you were at high risk for something like this.’

‘What the Hell is shingles?!’ Gibbs demanded.

‘Look down.’ Ducky said, waving at Gibbs’ left side.

‘This…rash…and the pain?’

Ducky nodded. ‘The rash will blister and itch for a couple of weeks, then they’ll dry up. In two or three weeks time you won’t even know you ever felt this bad. Unless they scar of course.’

‘Scar?’

Ducky nodded. ‘More likely to happen if you scratch.’ He leaned down, tapping Gibbs right hand. ‘So don’t scratch.’

Gibbs squirmed. ‘Easy for you to say. It itches like Hell.’ He scowled and huffed, making Ducky smile.

‘The doctor’s going to prescribe something for that. And you’re going to let the nursing staff take care of you.’

‘I’ve gotta stay here?!’ Gibbs began to sit up, but the IV line held him back.

‘Just for a day or two.’ Ducky reassured. ‘The doctor wants to make sure the rash doesn’t spread and your temperature doesn’t go any higher.’

‘You’re doing this to punish me for not taking time off.’ Gibbs said sulkily.

Ducky smiled and rested his hand on Gibbs upper arm, mindful of the IV line. ‘Shh…enjoy it. Being waited on hand and foot, not having to worry about anything except which of the lovely nurses will be in to give you a blanket bath each morning.’ He grinned, eyes half-closed at the mental image.

Gibbs’ facial muscles twitched. ‘Ducky, get me out of here in two days or so help me…’

Ducky chuckled and walked to the door. ‘I’ll be in to see you tomorrow.’

‘Bring coffee.’ Gibbs instructed.

Continued in Part Two…

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