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Tony hated waiting. Unlike his lover, Jethro, who could seemingly wait for eons for just about anything, Tony really hated waiting.
He remembered about three and a half months ago when his leg began to swell and hurt for no explicable reason. He’d been limping and Ducky had insisted on checking him out and then, with a grim look on his face, had sent him to the hospital for an ultrasound of his leg. He’d gone for the test, more to humor Ducky than anything else.
Back then, the wait had been fairly short. The ultrasound had shown a blood clot in his leg, otherwise known as a DVT (deep vein thrombosis). The doctor had assured him that kind of thing was common in someone who’d recently been on a long plane ride (and Tony flew a lot). It had been caught early, so there was little chance of it traveling to his lungs. Tony just had to spend a few days in the hospital and then take a blood thinner for three months; nothing to worry about.
Jethro had been supportive; more supportive than he’d expected. He’d even bought Tony a watch with an alarm so he wouldn’t forget to take his pill every day. More importantly, Gibbs had convinced Abby to quit punching Tony in the arm whenever she was unhappy with him about something, so he wouldn’t get any unnecessary bruises.
He’d been so happy two weeks ago when the three months were up. No more blood thinner, no more nosebleeds, no more bleeding like a stuck pig when he cut himself shaving, and Abby was once again free to punch him as much as she wanted to.
But here he was again, just two short weeks after he quit taking the blood thinner, back in the hospital with another DVT. This time his doctor had called in a blood specialist, who was running a lot of tests, but the specialist had a fairly good idea what he had; Factor V Leiden (Factor V for short), an inherited blood clotting disorder.
The doctor had asked Tony all kinds of questions, most of which he couldn’t answer. He wasn’t close to anyone in his family, and he had no clue about the medical history of most of them. His mother had died young, and Tony would rather pull his own teeth than talk to his father about this, or anything else for that matter.
Now he was waiting - waiting to find out if he had Factor V, and waiting to find out if he would have a job if he did have it.
As if sensing his morbid thoughts, Jethro squeezed Tony’s hand. As usual Gibbs didn’t need any words to convey his thoughts, and Tony knew at least one thing in his life was certain right now; Gibbs had his six.
But he still hated waiting.