It's been four years since President Bartlet died. Well, four years, seven months, 15 days and about six hours, give or take Daylight Savings Time. I'm not even taking into account New Hampshire Time Warp Savings Time.

I wear jeans now, because she wears jeans. It's okay. I like jeans, although sweats are more comfortable. But jeans are more comfortable than corporate, so it's six of one, right?

We never discussed the terms of my staying on after President Bartlet died. My paychecks never stopped coming, and my duties just transferred over to her. Her own PA decided to go back for her doctorate about fifteen seconds after the President passed on, which in retrospect might sound fishy, but at the time seemed perfectly understandable.

I filled in the blanks. And it's good, because I'm a good blank-filler, and I am really starting to dig the country life.

It only took me ten years to get here.

We never discussed her staying on. Well, Debbie and I didn't. Jed and I talked about it at length. He had a thing about her, see, and I didn't discourage it. Jed was Jed at his finest when he was caring about his friends, and he knew where Debbie Fidderer had come from. She didn't talk about it much, except through the occasional snarky comments about her "hopefully late ex-husband," but Jed was the President of the United States. He read the background information, and he wasn't about to put her back where he'd found her. Not after years of loyal service.

If Dolores Landingham was still alive, we'd have to build a second guest house on the place.

I never told her he knew. Not about her past, and certainly not about what she and I had discussed that night years ago. It would have embarrassed her, and an embarrassed Debbie Fidderer is not something I want to deal with. So I kept my mouth shut, and she stayed, and I'm glad of it.

I know I'm of use to her. Former First Ladies, especially popular and still-attractive ones, are very busy women. She keeps me hopping and as long as my hopper is still on go, I'm her girl. But there are days when I feel that maybe I should have stayed in D.C. Maybe I should have just…not come here.

She's never exploited it. Not once, in all these years. I'm grateful for that.

I'm grateful for her kindness. Her laughter, even when it's aimed directly at me and my so non-country ways. I'm grateful for New Hampshire and the farm and how her daughters just accept me as a normal part of their lives, like oxygen and the ubiquitous Secret Service details.

Maybe I should have stayed in D.C. instead of taking my chances with country life.

On darker days, I wonder if I was right to back Jed. He asked me, God, we were still back in the White House, to talk to her. "For God's sake, Abbey, what's she going to do? Take a job in the steno pool?" Jed hated being rejected. He hated seeing people take the more self-destructive path.

"She's got another offer." It was a lie, and we both knew it at the time. She had no offers, and she had no plan. She just point-blank refused his offer to come with us when we moved back to New Hampshire. "Maybe she doesn't want to leave D.C."

"I don't know, Abbey. Something's up." Of course, when Jed said something like that, in that particular tone of voice, I could smell a fact-finding mission a mile away. And since he was saying it to me, and not to Leo or Charlie, I got the sinking feeling I was going to be the fact-finder.

I've been sniffing a lot. Hay fever. Great. The horses and I have a deal. They can have their stupid hay as long as I can have my prescriptions delivered out here in Green Acres. So far, it's worked out okay. The horses seem fine with it.

She's working her autobiography now. I suppose it's inevitable. When you're the former First Lady, you need to write an autobiography. God said so, and you don't piss off God.

I guess that's what's got me walking in these fields instead of hanging out in the main house with her and the Secret Service crew. I needed to clear my head.

So much information, so much research. Old pictures, birth certificates, love letters.

I thought I was over this crap.

I took her on a three-day trip to New Hampshire, ostensibly to help me with organizing things for the President's return. I'm sure she saw through it, but it was the best I could do on short notice. I was the soft sell, and my job was to sell her on New Hampshire.

It wasn't really a hard job. New Hampshire in the fall is breathtaking, and I made sure to give her all the best views as I took her on tours of the farm. We had lots of good country food, and I introduced her to friends both human and non as I tried to figure out just what exactly was preventing Debbie Fidderer from keeping her job with my husband.

He wrote her constantly when he was courting her. I'd find it charming, if it didn't hurt so much. Who knew I could still hurt after all these years?

I've never gotten a single love letter in my life, and she has boxes full. You might think I'm jealous, but I'm not. She deserves love letters.

The Sixties had been a great time for Deborah Fidderer. That great time extended into the early 70s and crashed around the time Disco took hold. After that, she was on, as she put it, a continuous bad trip.

I found this out over several glasses of wine on that fact-finding mission of ours. It was the first time I got her to call me Abbey. She still calls me "Dr. Bartlet," most of the time, this because "Mrs. Bartlet" defines me in terms of my husband and she'd prefer to define me in terms of my own accomplishments, thank you very much.

Back then, she wouldn't call me Abbey at all.

The styles were the kicker. I vaguely remember the Sixties, and I know I never wore prints the way she wore them. Picture after picture of Abigail Bartlet, circa 1968, gorgeous.

I remember how surprised I was when I found out she was only five years younger than me.

She could drink me under the table if she wanted to. Debbie talked so freely of her past vices—vodka stingers for lunch, drug use in the Sixties, hints at sexual exploits so wild I needed my medical journals to figure some of them out—that it never occurred to me that a bottle of wine would affect her.

I didn't know it wasn't the wine.

I told her, years ago. She got it wrong at first. She got it wrong.

"Call me Abbey," I laughed. I was feeling the buzz of a good bottle of vino and no visible signs of protection. The Secret Service knew better than to bug me on the farm, and they had become blessedly invisible while Debbie and I relaxed. I knew they were there, but I could pretend they weren't. I could pretend I was just a good old girl having drinks with a friend instead of the First Lady of the United States trying to wheedle information out of her husband's secretary.

She was buzzing, too. I could tell, because she'd stopped making jokes. In fact, out there on the porch, with the first cut of autumn in the night air, that was the first time I ever saw Debbie Fidderer serious.

"I can't call you Abbey," she said.

I pressed. "Dr. Bartlet is too formal, and Mrs. Bartlet…" We both chuckled, this on the heels of our extremely long and spirited discussion of feminism earlier that day.

I liked Debbie Fidderer, eccentricities and all. After only a day or two, the mission had become less about keeping Jed's secretary and more about getting to know this quirky, brilliant woman. I found, over several glasses of Chablis, that she was quite a remarkable person.

I didn't want her to quit when Jed's term was over.

"I can't call you Abbey." I remember that moment so clearly. It was almost ten years ago, and I can still feel the words forming in my mouth.

I remember the look in her eyes as it slowly dawned on her, and she still got it wrong. She thought it was about him. She fell into the stereotypes without examining the players.

I'm not sure when I realized she had a crush. It just suddenly became obvious to me as she stared at me that night in the cool New Hampshire dusk, that Debbie Fidderer had feelings. Unrequited and somewhat embarrassing feelings.

"Oh, Debbie!" I remember being compassionate, open-minded. I couldn't blame her for having feelings for Jed. Who wouldn't, right? Jed was charming and brilliant and quite handsome. I couldn't imagine working for him on a daily basis, basically nurturing him through one of the hardest jobs on the planet, without developing some affection for him. "Debbie, it's okay. I understand." At this point, I vaguely remember her trying to stop me, but I was on a roll. "I can understand if you are fond of Jed. I'm fond of him, and I know he can be—well, somewhat irresistible in a geeky sort of way. I don't have a problem with it. I love my husband, and I don't have any feelings of insecurity where he's concerned."

"No, you don't get it at all."

That's when she leaned over, with that intensity of hers, and repeated. "No, Dr. Bartlet. I can't call you Abbey."

She blushed as it hit her, full-force, what I'd been trying to tell her.

And still, a decade later, my stomach melts at the thought of that blush. At how incredibly beautiful she was in the rising moonlight, her cheeks flushed with the beginning of a fall night in New England. My heart still beats a little faster remembering her touch, as she took my hand in hers, so kind and gentle.

She spoke to me, softly, for a long time that night. About my past, about The Ex, about the demons that haunted me. She never addressed my feelings for her outright, because I knew she didn't want to hurt me by saying no, by saying aloud what I'd known from the beginning. Instead, Abigail Bartlet drew me into her that night, took a burned-out ex-hippy from Detroit into her world, and made me her friend.

We never discussed it again. But I took the job. I stayed with them through the transition, through the break-neck pace of lecture tours and personal appearance, through his book, through hers. I was there when he fell, and I was the one who pushed the panic button. I held her when she cried, hysterical, on the couch six weeks after the funeral.

I never discussed my feelings for her again. I just lived them. I lived my admiration for her, my utter humility in the face of her beauty and strength, my determination to honor her husband's memory. He was a brilliant, good man, the kind who deserves a woman like Abigail Bartlet.

She flirts with me now, and I tease her. We've become friends over this past decade. I wear jeans, because she wears jeans. I even learned to ride a horse.

I wonder now, if I was wrong to let it ride. Have I used her? Have I exploited her feelings for me over all these years? I don't know.

She's out there, in the middle of Allergy Hell as she calls it, because this is hurting her too much.

Pictures of me and Jed. Pictures of our family at holidays.

Maybe it was too much to ask. Maybe I've been selfish. I like her. No, I love her. Not in a sexual way, because I'm just not wired for that. But I love her like a sister, a kooky older sister who tells awfully wicked stories and who never fails to make me laugh. A kooky older sister who protects me against the world, and who loves me so sweetly it hurts sometimes.

I wish I could give her what she wants. I wish I could just send the Secret Service away and take her to my bed for a night of wild passionate monkey sex. Relive the Sixties from a Fidderer Point of View.

But I don't even know if that's what she wants.

I just know I can't bear to hurt her.

The book is coming along. An Autobiography of First Lady Abigail Bartlet, complete with never-before-seen pictures of her life with the late President and their children.

My nose is running, and now I'm getting a headache. Time to get in gear, old gal.

Get back to work, blow off the gloom. Don't let her worry about you. She will, and she'll blame it on The Thing.

She'll think you're mooning over some unrequited love for her, and she'll be right.

But she doesn't need to know that. All she needs to know is that you're on the case, and everything is A-OK.

End