A window shattered above him.
CJ couldn't remember. So that was why she'd asked him to do the morning shows. She couldn't remember.
He wished he couldn't.
A window shattered above him.
He'd spent most of the night at the hospital, writing furiously as long as there was work to be done, then staring at the worn floor tiles and trying not to think once it was finished. He didn't want to remember.
Going home was out of the question, at least until they had news of Josh's condition. He had started to nod off once, briefly, despite the discomfort of the waiting room chair, but had quickly decided not to let himself sleep. He couldn't, because the problem was that he could shut it all out of his conscious mind - the sights, the sounds, even the smells - but he could feel it all there, hovering around the edges, around the walls he'd constructed to block it, walls made of the yellow pages of a legal pad and shaky lines of black ink and bare, pale floor tiles and the smell of disinfectant. As long as he stayed awake, he could use all of those things to block the memories, to keep them from getting in; he knew that as soon as he fell asleep, they would steal into his subconscious and twist themselves into his dreams.
A window shattered above him.
On the morning shows, everyone asked him how the President was. Everyone asked him what would happen next. Everyone asked him what the events of the previous night meant for their administration, for their country.
No one asked him how he was. No one asked him whether he'd slept the night before. (He hadn't.) No one asked him whether he'd been able to stomach the thought of eating anything that morning. (He hadn't.) No one said, "Sam, you were shot at last night. Are you feeling all right?" (He wasn't.)
So he told himself it didn't matter. He told himself he was fine. He told himself the country and the President and his best friend would be fine. And he did the morning shows.
A window shattered above him.
By the time three days had passed, he still hadn't slept - and he knew Toby could tell. But Toby, being who he was, never said anything. Instead, he pulled Sam into his office that afternoon, tossed a pillow and a blanket onto the couch, gave Sam a look that said quite plainly that this was an order - albeit a silent one - and left.
It turned out Sam had been right about the nightmares. Toby wasn't there the first time he woke gasping, sweating, shaking. He wasn't there the second time, either. He was there the third time. Sam lay still, trying to calm his breathing, his racing heart. Toby still didn't say anything.
A window shattered above him.
Months passed. Wounds healed. Josh came back to work, and the world continued to turn. Sam told himself he was all right. The staff moved on with their lives - until Christmas, when Sam stood in the Oval Office and watched his best friend blow up at the President and realized just how wrong he'd been. Josh wasn't all right, and Sam had missed it.
And when he lay in bed that night, consumed with guilt and unable to sleep due to the return of his old nightmares, he was forced to admit that maybe he wasn't all right, either.
A window shattered above him.
Josh was diagnosed with PTSD, and he got help. Ashamed of his failure at Christmas, Sam studiously learned everything he could about the condition. He learned all of the things that tended to trigger the flashbacks, how to recognize them when they occurred, and how to help Josh deal with them. He told himself he would never fail any of his friends in that way again.
A window shattered above him.
Time went on, and things once again returned to normal. CJ teased - and often ran circles around - the press in her briefings. Josh ruffled feathers and riled up congressmen and senators. Toby and Sam wrote and argued and compromised and wrote some more, then argued some more as well, just for good measure. The four of them laughed and teased each other and debated policy. They went out on a Friday night as they had often done in the past for well-deserved drinks after a hard week's work.
A glass slid off a tray nearby and broke.
A window shattered above him.
He'd been standing there barely half a second before, and now, from the ground, he listened to the sound of the glass breaking, felt it rain down on the pavement around him. Shots were still ringing out, but they were nearly drowned out by the pounding of his own heart and the echo of his rapid breathing in his ears.
In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out…
Silence.
Sirens.
The shots had stopped. He shook as he stood, and the glass crunched under his feet. For what felt like an eternity, he was aware of nothing but the multitude of lights flashing blue and red and the smell of gunpowder that hung heavy in the air.
Then CJ grabbed his arm, and everything snapped back into focus. He felt the pendant on her necklace digging into his palm and dropped it into his pocket without thinking. His ears were still ringing. He turned and looked at the car he'd been standing in front of and saw the bullet holes that riddled it, saw the fractured reflections of the red and blue lights from the police cars and ambulances in the glass on the pavement. He shook his head, and more shards fell from his hair. His stomach churned, and he had to fight back a wave of nausea.
Then Toby's voice pierced his reverie with uncanny clarity, and it took less than a second for Sam's blood to run cold when he realized that Toby was yelling for help. Sam found himself running as if on autopilot - until the sight of his best friend stopped him in his tracks.
Blood. There was so much blood.
This couldn't be happening. This wasn't real.
That couldn't be Josh. It just couldn't -
"Sam?"
He blinked. There was no blood. He looked away quickly, feeling the worried stares of the other three. A woman at the table next to theirs was helping the waitress clean up the broken glass. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw CJ start to reach for his arm, until Josh shook his head, stopping her.
Sam pushed his chair back and stood abruptly, still not meeting anyone's eyes. He didn't want to see the way they were looking at him.
"It's late. I'm - I'm tired. I'm going home."
A window shattered above him.
He was halfway down the street when he heard running feet behind him.
"Sam!"
Sam sighed and stopped walking; Josh caught up to him, breathing heavily. Still reluctant to look him in the eye, Sam stood with his head tilted down, focusing on Josh's shirt, reassuring himself that there really was no blood there.
"You know, it's funny," Josh said at last, breaking the silence. "You spent so damn long beating yourself up for not realizing what was going on in my head." He watched his friend shift uncomfortably, now staring at the sidewalk. "Beats the hell out of me how you ever thought you should've figured out my head when you couldn't even figure out your own."
Sam made himself look up at him then, and he realized that there was sincerity behind the teasing gibe.
"I might still be the guy in the hole, but at least now I know I've got someone good down here with me," Josh added seriously.
"Well, you know me," Sam answered, only half joking. "I'll follow you anywhere."
Josh considered him for a moment. "Yeah. I know." He turned and continued to walk down the street, and Sam fell into step next to him. "Wanna come over and see if there are any good games on tonight? I've got beer."
Sam relaxed as they walked, smiling slightly. "Sure."
And he started to let himself believe that in time, he just might be all right.