Good News or Bad News

Gibbs snapped out of a daze as he felt a hand on his knee, the woman sitting beside him gently touching it as she stood up from their couch. He ripped his eyes away from the awful film that she had begged him to watch to look up at the copper-haired woman. "Where ya goin?" He regretfully asked her, unsure of whether or not his words might upset her, as everything he said did these days.

"I'm not feeling too well, I'm gonna go to bed." Diane Gibbs told her husband, a knot in her stomach that she'd felt since their earlier fight had only gotten worse since they sat down to watch one of her favorite movies.

"I thought you wanted to watch the movie." Gibbs said with a hint of resentment in his tone, considering coming upstairs to watch the movie with her had cut into precious time with his boat in the basement. A fact, that had started their earlier argument in the first place.

"I did, but my stomach feels off, Woodchuck." Diane said, placing a hand over her abdomen. She first began to feel sick during the yelling and the screaming half an hour before, thus giving Diane the impression that all the fights with her husband had been making her nauseous from the stress and ugly emotions. But when the nausea and fluctuating body temperature did not subside, she decided that perhaps she truly was coming down with something and she should get some rest before she spent the next day leaning over the toilet. "You coming to bed with me?" She asked quietly, the fear of whatever his answer would be making her start to feel worse as her body temperature rose once more though her nausea made her body start to shiver.

"I'll be up in a bit." Jethro told her.

Diane then headed for the stairs, though she didn't believe him, knowing that he most certainly was about to go back down to that damned boat. But her stomach hurt too much for her to argue anymore and she slowly made it to the staircase, grabbing the railing with one hand while the other stayed on her aching belly. The tears she felt forming in her eyes only made her feel more sick as she longed for her husband just to hold her and tell her she'd be okay and that he'd take care of her and make her some tea. But she knew better. Instead, he was probably going to ignore her and her requests for the next day and go to work at NCIS while she stayed home turning green...as usual.

Diane was surprised to make it to the bedroom without a stop in the bathroom to vomit on the way. She mustered up enough strength and agility to remove her bra, skillfully, from under her light-long-sleeved shirt and carefully climb into the bed under the covers without bothering to even change her clothes.

Two minutes. That's how long she lasted under the covers before having to remove them to try and bring her body temperature back down.

Five minutes. That's how long it took before she had to pull the covers over herself yet again as she begun to shiver.

It wasn't long before her tears rolled down her temples and she curled up into a ball, just the stress of her body temperature changing so drastically over and over again causing Diane to wish she were dead. Maybe if she died, Jethro would finally feel the same way about her as he did his first wife. Diane refused to even think the woman's name.

She'd never be good enough. How could she ever be good enough?

She awoke the next morning, only then realizing that she had cried herself to sleep when she felt the dried tears on her face. Carefully blinking her eyes open, she thought to herself that her stomach finally felt better and it was a lack of sleep or all the fighting after all that caused her nausea the night before. She sat up in the bed and stretched out her arms with a hum, taking in a deep breath, nowhere even near surprised when she saw that the bed beside her was empty and Jethro was either already gone for work or asleep downstairs. Once she exhaled her deep breath out into the air in front of her, that nausea came back full force and stronger than before as she immediately threw the covers off herself and rushed to the bathroom down the hall, barely making it to the toilet to vomit.