Chapter Nine
Epilogue

Abby's screams startle Gibbs, DiNozzo and Sammy Sky as she bursts up from the bed. The insensate shrieks gradually reduce to words no less wild.

"JIMMY! OH GOD JIMMY! HE SHOT HIM!"

Gibbs, closest to her, grabs her shoulders to restrain her onto the bed as she keeps screaming. The door to his left flies open and two white uniformed women rush in.

Abby looks past Gibbs's arm, finally feels him holding her, her startled and distressed friend in the way of two nurses and

x

"He shot him, Gibbs! He shot him."

He holds her down, the wild distress in her eyes frightens him. "Abby, who shot who?"

"McGee! McGee shot Jimmy! He thought he was trying to save me but–"

She looks around, taking in the white room, the hospital bed next to hers and Gibbs presses the realization.

"Abby, McGee didn't shoot anyone. He's at NCIS, Jimmy and Michelle Palmer are at home and you've been here in Bethesda since last night. You and Sky were hurt during the storm. She recovered first–"

"I'm smaller," the blonde woman quips from the foot of the hospital bed.

"She called 911 and you were brought here.

x

She looks around again, at the room, at Gibbs, at Tony, at Sammy, at the nurses, and can't deny what he says.

"It was horrible, Gibbs," Abby says. "It was some weird Bizzaro-Earth nightmare I just couldn't wake up from."

"Well, you were awake until you just conked out on the bed and woke up two seconds later screaming," Tony tells her, index fingers stuck in, working to clear his ears. "Lord, you could give lessons to Scream Queens."

"Gibbs - what happened? It was all so real."

"From the minute you woke up you were hallucinating. You kept insisting your name was Gail, you called me 'Major' and said you were trying to..." He stops at the mounting horror on her face. "Abs?

Her eyes are painfully wide. "I was trying to what?" It wasn't a dream?

It wasn't a dream!

"You kept saying you could prove Drake was innocent. That the webbing prints we need to lift from around the necks is more important than the fingerprints on the sides of the bottles."

"Of course!" For a moment she tries to put aside the madness - it couldn't have been real, could it? For a moment she puts aside the madness in favor of simple Forensic Science. "I get it now. I know what she was trying to do."

"Abby?" Sammy sounds really scared.

"The webbing between the thumb and forefinger, where someone would hold a bottle when drinking! Anyone can handle a bottle, but not many will wrap their–"

"Except we're not investigating anyone named Drake," Tony tells her.

x

His words almost silence her, but now that she knows she's right - how can it be real? - she knows he's wrong. "Yes, you are. You just don't know it because it's not on this Earth."

"Abby," Gibbs tries to interject reality into this too-long-running delusion, "you've been here since last night."

"That too. But trust me, Gibbs, I wasn't." She reaches out to Sammy, who comes up on the other side of the bed to hug her. "At least you don't hate me anymore."

Sammy pulls back. "I've never hated you."

"You did when I cut your breast in half."

Sammy exchanges bewildered looks with the men, not just a little mingled with fear.

"I can't believe this was all real. But I think Jimmy - if Gail can save him, her ex-husband McGee is toast, even if her career is shot."

Sammy pulls back, the fear in her pale blue eyes vying with terror. "Abby, are you still hallucinating?"

"Never did, hon." She looks past Sammy's shoulder to take in her equally worried friends. "I'll tell you all about it but believe me, Major," she looks to Tony, "Sergeant," to Sammy, "Doctor, you are not ready for Bizarro-Earth."

Fin... or is it?