Truth and Consequences
Toby
Season 7
Disclaimer: We're still doing this, right?
He has always been good at puzzles. Well, perhaps obsessed would be a better word. He knows there's something here, and he can't let it go without the answer. The repetitive sounds of his rubber ball against the floor and wall for the last three days have both Ginger and Bonnie ready to scream. He closes his eyes, but the image of David gasping for air fills his mind. He's unsure if he's imagining his brother's last breath, or substituting David's face for those of the trapped astronauts that are currently passing over Gambia.
He slides his fingers up and over the phone, tracing the same patterns through the push buttons, over and over. This isn't the first time in this Whitehouse that he's been out of the loop. There's a sickening familiarity to this feeling; the half-formed sensation that there is something more here, a piece of information that has been denied.
Toby prefers bourbon over kool-aid, but he loves Jed Bartlet like a brother, and C.J. Cregg… well she's his own personal version of the road less travelled. And that's the problem with family, whether by blood or by choice… your love for them leaves you vulnerable, and the wounds they can inflict are so deep.
He slides his hand off the phone and reaches for the red ball that nestles next to the pencil holder and the paperclip dispenser. He rolls the ball back and forth on his desk as an idea begins to nibble at the edges of his consciousness. Half remembered conversations, shrouded with misdirection. He's hoping against hope that all the unguarded statements will fit together to become a complete picture. He rifles through his memories.
Josh Lyman at the Hawk and Dove, some time in their first term, swigging down a mouthful of Sam Adams before shaking his head and saying "I think the Pentagon has much deeper secrets than either you or I have ever dreamed of, Toby."
President Bartlet, looking past him out the window this afternoon and saying in a voice so low he was almost inaudible, "There are other options…"
And then that curious conversation with C.J., her blue-grey eyes wide with burdens of guilt… "Did David ever mention anything about another kind of space shuttle?... a non-civilian shuttle?" And his instant memory of David, his eyes squeezed shut against the late summer sun, while Toby sits in a suit that's too hot for Orlando; David says "All we thought about was getting home. We either get that door closed or else… 'cause we knew the Pentagon just wasn't going to bail us out on this one…and God knows none of us would have wanted them to…"
He punishes the wall with the ball, over and over. The rhythm driving to the back of his skull; his knuckles white as he grabs it from the air, but the images won't stop.
David, his bright and sunny younger brother, really the only person other than Sam Seaborn who could make him both proud and angry at the same time. His flesh and blood brother David, who has had the unforgivable gall to sit in his closed garage with the car running until he slipped quietly into that oxygen deprived sleep…by his own choice…and that's the final unforgivable part…by his own choice…and the three live and breathing bodies in the International Space Station, waiting for what they all know will happen, have no voice, no option, no choice to be made, except to frantically attempt to solve their own version of the puzzle….how to make these pieces fit, as the oxygen depleted air wraps itself around and into their lungs.
The pale blue post –it with Greg Brock's number on it curls itself against the base of his desk lamp. He pretends not to see it, raking his eyes across the desk to the pair of glasses, half hidden under a memo about social security.
The David he knew as a child would have fought. Fought the cancer, fought the doctors, hell, fought Toby himself if it was necessary. Unlike Toby if someone called David a kike-jew-boy-Christ-killer in the schoolyard there'd be all kinds of hell to pay. And Toby, who spent his early years of formal education keeping his head down, had to admire that hard edged determination. But that was years in the past and Toby can't blame this on a loose shoe lace or a crack in the sidewalk the way he explained away his brother's bloody nose or ripped shirt to mollify his mother. Where was that David, when the car engine turned over?
Rain is driving against his office window, and if he believed in a god that tended to such small things he'd swear it was the heavens weeping with frustration. Looking out at the slate grey sky he's struck by an instant flash of understanding, startling in its clarity. The pieces drop into place with a terrifying finality, and he forgets to grab the ball as its bounces back towards him. He waits; his own breathing harsh in his ears.
There's a picture on his desk of his children; Molly, her arm slung around her brother's neck, head tipped back, mouth wide with laughter, while Huck looks deeply, solemnly, straight into the camera lens. He runs his fingers along the polished wood frame, and just for a moment sees in his mind's eye a young David with his light-hearted infectious laugh; the bright streak to counter Toby's dark clouds. David at age nine, wrapping an arm around Toby's shoulder and saying, "C'mon Toby, lets head down to Yankee stadium and see if we can get the maintenance guys to let us in." David, warm hearted and fearless, chatting to the man at the deliveries entrance… David should have been the one in politics.. .a Senator, a Congressman. He was someone most people loved and trusted on first meeting…a bright boy, with a volatile temper that blew over like a spring rain storm. Someone who loved back easily, forgave readily, protected his own, yet trusted with an open heart.
There are those that can be saved and those that can't, and the line between them stretches tight as a trip wire. He touches the picture of his children gently with one finger…Molly's nose, Huck's forehead. He wonders if they'll ever really forgive him, no matter what he chooses. He wonders if he'll ever forgive himself.
End