author's note. So, here I am writing in the first person again. It seems to be working for me, so I'm just going to go with it and hope I don't annoy my readers too badly. This and two other stories dealing with SWAK have been sitting partially completed on my computer for months now; it feels good to be getting something done, finally. Switching perspective may be the thing it takes to get the creative juices flowing again and finish up my own little trilogy.

I'm not generally known as a patient man. Shannon used to tease me about it all the time. When she was in labor - seventeen hours, and I swear, it was longer for me than it was for her - she kept telling me, "It's not like delivering a pizza, Jethro. Babies don't have to come in thirty minutes or less or they're free."

Not only that, but I hate hospitals. Enough time spent on my own behalf and others' has guaranteed that. The smell, the disembodied voice of the PA, the strained faces of family members pretending to read old Newsweeks. It's not for my own benefit that I left, though. If I thought it would do any good I would have stayed for hours, stayed all night if it would matter, no matter how much it chills the soul. I'm not the one with the bedside manner - really, that's more Kate's thing - but I am their team leader and I know sometimes a leader has to make sacrifices. That's not the reason. I left because my presence would send a stronger message than my absence does.

If I stayed, then Tony would believe he really is dying.

And maybe he is. Fifteen percent doesn't leave much room for hope, which is why I won't drive all the way back to Navy Yard. It's why I've been calling Dr. Pitt for updates, every hour on the hour, and each time he tells me 'no change' I swear my fingers are itching to smack someone. Weird. I've interviewed Sarah Lowell, interrogated her now completely loopy mother, yelled at her neurologist, yelled at Abby and McGee over the phone and staked out every coffee shop within a twenty-mile radius. And every time I've convinced myself to go home, to calm my nerves with a few hours sanding the boat, my mind calls up the image of my senior field agent. Struggling to breathe, lips turning blue, choking on phlegm and maybe dying. And I stop just short of leaving.

Abby can't believe that I haven't stayed, and she would come too if I'd let her, black pigtails bouncing. While her Goth attire would be considered wildly inappropriate for a hospital, it always makes me smile. But I order her to stay in her lab, pretending that there is a mountain of evidence more important than seeing her coworker - her friend - on what could be his deathbed. If Tony dies - which he won't - Abby won't want to remember him pale and coughing under the eerie blue lights. She'll remember him sneaking into her lab and fluffing her pigtails, messing with her equipment, very irrevocably alive. Abby is bizarrely in touch with Death for someone her age, and yet I can't let her witness Tony's.

And McGee? I think the kid has enough guilt already.

Too much coffee makes anyone jittery, even me, though my consumption is the stuff of legends. It's a little past eight-thirty, more than seven hours since I cruised into the isolation unit and ordered DiNozzo not to die. I've never known Tony to disobey a direct order, but then, the kid's always had an attitude problem. I'm sure that's why we got him at such a bargain from Baltimore P.D.

Another reason he can't die is that I'd have to train up another senior agent, and I'd rather sit through a half dozen communications seminars than do that. Kate has too much confidence, McGee doesn't have enough. It took me three years and about a million smacks to the head to get Tony just the way I need him. I never thought someone so annoying could become so irreplaceable.

I've gotten a hotel room in Maryland, eight minutes away from the hospital - I've timed it - and I'm laying on top of the disturbingly shiny bedspread and there's nothing good on TV. Before I realize what's going on, my fingers have flipped open my phone again. They seem to be disconnected from my brain, which is fine, because I can dial the number without thinking about it.

Dr. Pitt doesn't seem the least bit surprised to hear my voice, though it's only been thirty-three minutes since my last call. "He's hanging in there, Agent Gibbs," the doctor says, tersely but not unkindly. "Look, we're doing everything we can."

I hadn't meant to make him defensive; I just need him to understand. "I know." My voice sounds far away.

"He's a fighter," Dr. Pitt adds, and a vision of Tony dragging that half-conscious Marine through the sewers of Alexandria springs unbidden to my mind.

"He is."

"Look, why don't you come in here and see him?" And stop pestering me every half-hour, I'm sure Dr. Pitt wants to add. I have to give him points for diplomacy.

But I'm instantly alarmed. "Do I need to?" Is he worse? Is he dying?

Brad Pitt sighs. "He knows you've been calling." Of course he does. Just like he always knows when I am coming around the corner - I think it's a game for him, seeing what unbelievably clever remark he can make in the nick of time for me to catch it. The kid has my number, and he always had.

But fifteen percent is not a number of which I am particularly fond. "Just tell me," I press, "is it the same? What's the chance he will survive this?"

"Look," Dr. Pitt explains through the phone, "I don't deal in percentages. I don't believe in gambling or giving false hope, and I wouldn't treat him any differently if his chances were zero."

Throw me a bone, Doctor. "Is it better or worse?"

I hear him sigh again. "Better, I guess. If you want a number that badly, I'd say he has at least a fifty percent chance, now."

Fifty percent. That's as good as a certainty for me - Tony has battled through the bleakest odds already. I flip off my phone, set it carefully on the nightstand, and kick off my shoes.