Title: "Tikva"
Category: Angst-o-rama
Disclaimer: I don't own or create these characters, or even the circumstances the characters are in. I borrowed them for just a minute, and I promise to put them back when I'm done. Oh yeah, and I think I stole some dialogue from an episode of ER.
Summary/Spoilers: Just a post-ep snippet/"short-short" for Memorial Day. Yes, that's right, another ME post-ep. I know, I know. This was supposed to be my epic homage to "Two Cathedrals" but I just don't have time to finish it. So now it's just a few scenes. It leaves off right at the end of Memorial Day (during the last J/D scene) and continues immediately after, with some flashbacks thrown in for flavor and, possibly, confusion.
Feedback: love it, as long as my email cooperates.
Rating: PG, for one little bad word.
"There's been a complication," the doctor begins. Four words Leighton hated to say, especially to this Mr. Lyman; this nice, slightly rumpled man who had been so relieved to hear him say "no biggie" only a day or so earlier. Dr. Leighton's brown eyes narrow. "She's developed a pulmonary embolism. It's a--"
"--Blood clot." Josh Lyman knows the words too well.
"We're trying to remove it now." Abruptly, Dr. Leighton backs into the OR, letting the doors swing shut behind him. Leighton strides across the linoleum floor, ready to get to work, ready to forget the terror he saw in Mr. Lyman's eyes. He knew if he turned around, he'd see those same eyes through the windows on the door; the gaze of a man who was about to lose everything.
"What's going on?" Leighton asks the room as he approaches his patient.
"Administering heparin now. We've started a drip at 1000 an hour," another doctor answers.
"Watch her BP, and send off a hematocrit," Leighton begins. "We'll put in a Greenfield filter, and then we can reverse the heparin. But she might need to have another transfusion."
"BP's 112 over 78, pulse 102," a masked nurse reads.
Leighton nods at the news. "AP 14, tidal volume 600. 100 percent FIO 2. Another 2 of versed. We need her totally relaxed."
Amongst the surgeons and nurses, the sounds of beeps and whirrs can be heard accordingly. As Donna listens, sleepily, she wonders what each sound means. She then wonders where Josh is, and begins to worry for him, and her mother. Was her mom there yet? As she watches the small group of masked people gather around her, she knows that something has happened; something serious. She wonders if Josh knows what has happened to her; if he's nearby. She muses that he probably hasn't slept at all, while it's all she's seemed to be able to do lately. The idea of sleep begins to take hold of her as she feels herself sink deeper into her gurney. The bright surgical lights begin to dim as Donna hears someone say "we're ready to begin."
After that, silence.
On one of the red brick walls of the Mad Dog Tavern, a large University of Wisconsin banner hung lazily. Donna had the sudden urge to spit on it as she passed by, but she managed to hold herself back. She took a corner seat at the bar, underneath a buzzing television stuck on CNN.
"Rusty nail."
The bartender nodded without even looking up at the young blonde at his counter. He grabbed a glass and began his work on her order. When he set it down in front of her, though, he finally noticed her expression.
"You look like you've been hit by a truck."
Donna gave him a shaky smile. "Sounds about right," she says as she takes a long sip of her cocktail.
"You're Nick Calhoun's girlfriend, right?" the bartender cocked his head. "I saw you at the Kappa Sigma mixer. I have an anatomy class with him."
"Oh," Donna said, taking another gulp.
The bartender has seen this look on a girl before. "The name's Jeff," he offers. "You wanna tell me about it?"
"Do you know Nick very well?" Donna asked.
"Pretty well."
Donna picked up her drink again. "Then I'll give you one guess."
"He cheated on you," Jeff blurted out.
She nodded and took another gulp.
Jeff hesitated. "..with a classmate?"
She nodded again and took one more gulp before setting her empty glass back down on the bar with a satisfying clink. "I caught them in our apartment, 'cramming' for the anatomy final," Donna deadpanned as Jeff mixed her another.
"Everyone's a med student," Jeff sighed.
"I'm beginning to understand that," Donna replied. "I guess I should have known. She's brilliant and brunette and beautiful.. Well, I think she's beautiful because I only saw her back, but it was a nice back… and what do I have to offer him? I have no degree, I have a hundred dollars in my bank account, and.. and.. and a bony back."
"I'm sure you have a great back," Jeff said to her, setting another drink in front of her, before adding, "on the house."
Donna gratefully brought the glass to her lips. "I guess I'm just tired of feeling worthless."
"BP's down to 60, pulse ox 72," the nurse said, nervously eyeing the machines. Dr. Leighton scowled at the news. "Shit. Donna, come on," he said to his unconscious patient.
"No carotid pulse!" the nurse was shouting now.
"God Dammit, she's thrown another clot. Start chest compressions."
The doctors and nurses began to work with increased urgency. Leighton notices a nurse pass by and calls to her. "You! Get over here and bag her. Come on, come on, come on! Right now!"
Another doctor turns to the woman next to him and says quietly, "Find Cheryl. Tell her we need two more nurses."
She nods, and backs away from Donna's gurney, pushing her way through the OR doors and breaking into a run down the hall.
"What happening?" another nurse asks.
"She's in PEA," Leighton answers breathlessly. "We need to start internal compressions as soon as possible."
"The right ventricle's dilated."
"Side-biting clamp," Leighton barks. He looks down at Donna; he sees that her face is unnaturally pale and motionless. "Come on, come on," he murmers.
"Should we use a fogarty?" the other doctor asks.
"No, just a yankauer for the time being. Scalpel. We'll just try and get out what we can."
The other doctor nods at Leighton, and they continue their work.
"Suction!"
Just at the President predicted, Fitzwallace's funeral was attended by D.C. in its entirety. Senators, Generals, Heads of State. The royalty of Washington was on bended knee in the national cathedral in honor of this great man.
The president hadn't prepared anything to say beforehand; he was still deep in his thoughts as he and Leo rode to the funeral in the limousine. Leo didn't expect the President to speak to him at all, actually, but suddenly, Bartlet looked over at him from his empty gaze out the window.
"Is there any news on Donna?" he asked his Chief of Staff.
Leo shook his head. "No, sir. She's in surgery, but nobody knows anything."
The President nodded. "How's Josh?"
"Not good." Leo answered.
The President looked down. "Yeah," he sighed.
Not long after the President arrived at the Cathedral, he found himself walking slowly down the center aisle towards one of the large pulpits on the wreath-filled altar. He stepped up to the iconographic podium and paused briefly, taking in the hushed audience that sat before him.
"Admiral Percy Fitzwallace was my best military advisor. He was my best because he was loathe to the business of war, the business of death as much as I. He knew that his job was that of prevention, not instigation. The necessary evil of conflict, of defense, was an evil that should be married always with consequence.
"Quick to laugh, slow to anger. The kindest and best of men. And what kind of tragic irony is it that this great man should fall to the whim of fools?
"I want to go to Gaza and blow it from the Earth. I want to wipe any trace of that country and the evil there with a swift and steady blow with the stealth and power that only the United States military could deliver.
"But then I think of Fitz. I think of him in the sitting room, giving me a look that lets me know that he knows I'm in one of my moods again. If Fitz were here, he'd say, "I know you want to hurt somebody, Mr. President. We all do. But walk it back, sir. Walk it back."
"My friend, my advisor, is dead. My eyes are numb now to the beauty of the world. I cannot see it for its life. I can only see it for its death. I am king in a world of fickle men."
President Bartlet paused again, grabbing both sides of the pulpit and leaning his full weight onto his thick arms. "What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a God. The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust." Bartlet let the sound of his voice hang heavy in the air, as if his very words could break into particles and cloud the room with its vapor.
He looked out, tightening his grip on the pulpit as he scanned the drained faces in the congregation. "Man delights not me," he whispered.
"And apparently, it looks like we have another Democrat throwing his hat into the ring for the presidency," a coiffed anchorwoman declared from one of the Mad Dog Tavern's televisions that hung above the bar. "Jed Bartlet of New Hampshire, the progressive Governor with a Nobel prize in Economics, was interviewed by a local Manchester news outlet earlier this morning. And, John, from the sound of it, it definitely seems as if this Bartlet has set his sights on the White House. Here's a clip from the interview."
The tv screen faded in to a close-up shot of a stout, powerhouse of a man with a broad smile. A woman with a microphone appeared next to him and asked, "Governor, your opponents in this election call you an intellectual elitist. What do you have to say in response?"
Governor Bartlet chuckled. "Aw, hell, Vicki, I'm not elitist in the sense that I expect to be smarter than everyone in the room. I'm elitist in the sense that I expect everyone else in the room to be smarter than me. And that doesn't always mean having a degree hanging on the wall. I'm talking about different perspectives, different beliefs. I don't care if you've got 50 million dollars in your bank account or just a hundred. I don't care if you're a college dropout or have a doctorate in environmental law. All I care about is that you care. Apathy is poison to the dream that is the United States. I want to see Americans who want to change this country for the better, and I want them to come and help me form a more perfect union.
"The backbone of our nation is its capacity for reinvention; to adapt over centuries to the swinging pendulum of politics and social issues that reflect the beliefs and ideologies of the Americans of that time. The 15th amendment, the 19th, the 26th; these are rights we take for granted today. But they didn't always exist. They were borne of the tenacity of regular American citizens like ourselves, standing up and saying, "Hey, I don't think that's right. I'm going to change that." The vote gives us that voice.
"Citizenship in this country is not a spectator sport. The American Revolution isn't over. This country needs all the help it can get. From everybody. Even elitist bastards like myself."
Donna Moss found herself staring wide-eyed up at the television, enraptured and enthralled by this strange, powerful governor from halfway across the country. She smiled to herself as she reached into her pocket to throw a few bills of currency on the bar, turning slowly to slide herself off of her stool.
"Hey, where are you off to?" Jeff said as he abandoned his dishrag from the far side of the bar.
Donna shrugged and smiled. "New Hampshire." She gave Jeff a little wave, and strode through the double oak doors and into the white Wisconsin sunlight. Donna gulped the fresh air, feeling as though the very machinery of her soul had switched gears and now was pushing her towards New England with a compass-like exactness.
Not long after Fitz's funeral, CJ found herself again in the habit of sticking her head in Toby's office on her way through the West Wing corridors. She knocked once, and finding the door open a crack, leaned her torso almost halfway in, while holding the rest of herself back in the doorframe.
Toby looked up from his desk as he held a small silver cell phone to his ear. Ever since the Gaza bombing, it seemed as though that cell phone had become an unofficial appendage to Toby's head. CJ guessed it was Andi on the other end.
"Hey," CJ whispered.
"Hey," Toby whispered back. After a moment, he looked down, frustrated.
CJ tried to be quick. "Listen, Leo's called a meeting. I think we may finally be getting somewhere."
Toby met her gaze again. "Yeah, I know. I was just trying Josh again."
CJ nodded, her eyes a reflection of understanding. "Still no answer?"
Toby sighed and shook his head.
CJ took a step inside Toby's office. "You know, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad news."
Toby gave her a quiet, solemn stare. "Have you ever known Josh to not pick up his phone?"
A passerby might think Josh was asleep, the way he was positioned in the chair. His body looked as though it supported the weight of the weary world above it; a brokenhearted Atlas trapped in a military hospital waiting room.
It's not that he didn't hear his cell phone ringing. It's continuous, tingy tones were almost impossible to ignore. No, as Josh stared dejectedly at the wall, lost in a haze of fear and exhaustion, it's not that he didn't hear the phone ringing. It's that he didn't care. He was too busy remembering her.
"I can't get that for you this time," Donna, dressed in a simple gray suit, sits down next to him. "You'll have to answer your phone today."
Josh doesn't look at her. He can't. He's terrified by the hallucination, yet oddly, he begins to feel comforted by its presence.
Donna keeps staring at him. "It's not that hard. You just hit the 'talk' button and say your name."
Josh sighs. Donna is persistent, as usual.
"Have you slept at all?" she asks.
Josh realizes she's not going to go away, so he answers. "Not really."
"You should."
"Yeah, the hallucination is kinda a big give away." He rests the back of his head against the wall.
"Josh." Donna's voice is almost a murmur now. "What's going on?"
Josh swallows. "You had a pulmonary--"
"No," Donna interrupts. "I mean, in Gaza. In the White House."
"Well.. An Israeli missile killed twelve people, which lead to a bus bombing, which will probably lead to another attack, and away we go."
"You should be back in D.C."
"No, I should be here."
Donna sighs. After a moment, though, her eyes soften. "This is your way of not stopping for a beer."
Josh finally looks over at her. Her hair is down, and as she starts to smile at him, a tendril or two falls across her shoulder.
"I think I need to call Stanley," Josh says, not really caring that a passing nurse has probably already noticed that he's talking to an empty seat.
Donna nods and looks down. Josh rubs his temples.
"You didn't need to fly halfway around the world out of guilt--"
"That's not why I'm here."
"Why are you here?"
"Is this you asking me, or me asking me, by using you as I see you in my head?"
"You're dodging."
"I'm dodging myself?"
Donna changes her tone. "You didn't know I went this deep."
A moment passes. Josh wrinkles his brow as his eyes shift upward. "That I did not."
"If I bleed to death, you bleed to death."
"Something like that," he whispers wearily.
"You get it now?" Donna smiles again, and Josh marvels at how real she looks, like he could reach out and touch her. Down the hall, someone has left the adjacent operating room, and the sound of the doors opening makes Josh abruptly look over. A brunette woman wearing OR scrubs lets the doors swing behind her as she runs down the corridor and disappears behind a corner. After a moment, Josh realizes that he had been holding his breath. He recognizes the harsh fact that the blood on the woman's uniform was Donna's blood.
"The roses are beautiful," Donna whispers to him.
Josh turns back to find the seat next to him empty. He exhales, rubbing his face and eyes with his hands. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out his cell phone, and begins to dial. He places the phone to his ear, and after a moment, someone answers.
"Stanley?" he says, his voice wavering slightly. "It's Josh Lyman."
End.
Category: Angst-o-rama
Disclaimer: I don't own or create these characters, or even the circumstances the characters are in. I borrowed them for just a minute, and I promise to put them back when I'm done. Oh yeah, and I think I stole some dialogue from an episode of ER.
Summary/Spoilers: Just a post-ep snippet/"short-short" for Memorial Day. Yes, that's right, another ME post-ep. I know, I know. This was supposed to be my epic homage to "Two Cathedrals" but I just don't have time to finish it. So now it's just a few scenes. It leaves off right at the end of Memorial Day (during the last J/D scene) and continues immediately after, with some flashbacks thrown in for flavor and, possibly, confusion.
Feedback: love it, as long as my email cooperates.
Rating: PG, for one little bad word.
"There's been a complication," the doctor begins. Four words Leighton hated to say, especially to this Mr. Lyman; this nice, slightly rumpled man who had been so relieved to hear him say "no biggie" only a day or so earlier. Dr. Leighton's brown eyes narrow. "She's developed a pulmonary embolism. It's a--"
"--Blood clot." Josh Lyman knows the words too well.
"We're trying to remove it now." Abruptly, Dr. Leighton backs into the OR, letting the doors swing shut behind him. Leighton strides across the linoleum floor, ready to get to work, ready to forget the terror he saw in Mr. Lyman's eyes. He knew if he turned around, he'd see those same eyes through the windows on the door; the gaze of a man who was about to lose everything.
"What's going on?" Leighton asks the room as he approaches his patient.
"Administering heparin now. We've started a drip at 1000 an hour," another doctor answers.
"Watch her BP, and send off a hematocrit," Leighton begins. "We'll put in a Greenfield filter, and then we can reverse the heparin. But she might need to have another transfusion."
"BP's 112 over 78, pulse 102," a masked nurse reads.
Leighton nods at the news. "AP 14, tidal volume 600. 100 percent FIO 2. Another 2 of versed. We need her totally relaxed."
Amongst the surgeons and nurses, the sounds of beeps and whirrs can be heard accordingly. As Donna listens, sleepily, she wonders what each sound means. She then wonders where Josh is, and begins to worry for him, and her mother. Was her mom there yet? As she watches the small group of masked people gather around her, she knows that something has happened; something serious. She wonders if Josh knows what has happened to her; if he's nearby. She muses that he probably hasn't slept at all, while it's all she's seemed to be able to do lately. The idea of sleep begins to take hold of her as she feels herself sink deeper into her gurney. The bright surgical lights begin to dim as Donna hears someone say "we're ready to begin."
After that, silence.
On one of the red brick walls of the Mad Dog Tavern, a large University of Wisconsin banner hung lazily. Donna had the sudden urge to spit on it as she passed by, but she managed to hold herself back. She took a corner seat at the bar, underneath a buzzing television stuck on CNN.
"Rusty nail."
The bartender nodded without even looking up at the young blonde at his counter. He grabbed a glass and began his work on her order. When he set it down in front of her, though, he finally noticed her expression.
"You look like you've been hit by a truck."
Donna gave him a shaky smile. "Sounds about right," she says as she takes a long sip of her cocktail.
"You're Nick Calhoun's girlfriend, right?" the bartender cocked his head. "I saw you at the Kappa Sigma mixer. I have an anatomy class with him."
"Oh," Donna said, taking another gulp.
The bartender has seen this look on a girl before. "The name's Jeff," he offers. "You wanna tell me about it?"
"Do you know Nick very well?" Donna asked.
"Pretty well."
Donna picked up her drink again. "Then I'll give you one guess."
"He cheated on you," Jeff blurted out.
She nodded and took another gulp.
Jeff hesitated. "..with a classmate?"
She nodded again and took one more gulp before setting her empty glass back down on the bar with a satisfying clink. "I caught them in our apartment, 'cramming' for the anatomy final," Donna deadpanned as Jeff mixed her another.
"Everyone's a med student," Jeff sighed.
"I'm beginning to understand that," Donna replied. "I guess I should have known. She's brilliant and brunette and beautiful.. Well, I think she's beautiful because I only saw her back, but it was a nice back… and what do I have to offer him? I have no degree, I have a hundred dollars in my bank account, and.. and.. and a bony back."
"I'm sure you have a great back," Jeff said to her, setting another drink in front of her, before adding, "on the house."
Donna gratefully brought the glass to her lips. "I guess I'm just tired of feeling worthless."
"BP's down to 60, pulse ox 72," the nurse said, nervously eyeing the machines. Dr. Leighton scowled at the news. "Shit. Donna, come on," he said to his unconscious patient.
"No carotid pulse!" the nurse was shouting now.
"God Dammit, she's thrown another clot. Start chest compressions."
The doctors and nurses began to work with increased urgency. Leighton notices a nurse pass by and calls to her. "You! Get over here and bag her. Come on, come on, come on! Right now!"
Another doctor turns to the woman next to him and says quietly, "Find Cheryl. Tell her we need two more nurses."
She nods, and backs away from Donna's gurney, pushing her way through the OR doors and breaking into a run down the hall.
"What happening?" another nurse asks.
"She's in PEA," Leighton answers breathlessly. "We need to start internal compressions as soon as possible."
"The right ventricle's dilated."
"Side-biting clamp," Leighton barks. He looks down at Donna; he sees that her face is unnaturally pale and motionless. "Come on, come on," he murmers.
"Should we use a fogarty?" the other doctor asks.
"No, just a yankauer for the time being. Scalpel. We'll just try and get out what we can."
The other doctor nods at Leighton, and they continue their work.
"Suction!"
Just at the President predicted, Fitzwallace's funeral was attended by D.C. in its entirety. Senators, Generals, Heads of State. The royalty of Washington was on bended knee in the national cathedral in honor of this great man.
The president hadn't prepared anything to say beforehand; he was still deep in his thoughts as he and Leo rode to the funeral in the limousine. Leo didn't expect the President to speak to him at all, actually, but suddenly, Bartlet looked over at him from his empty gaze out the window.
"Is there any news on Donna?" he asked his Chief of Staff.
Leo shook his head. "No, sir. She's in surgery, but nobody knows anything."
The President nodded. "How's Josh?"
"Not good." Leo answered.
The President looked down. "Yeah," he sighed.
Not long after the President arrived at the Cathedral, he found himself walking slowly down the center aisle towards one of the large pulpits on the wreath-filled altar. He stepped up to the iconographic podium and paused briefly, taking in the hushed audience that sat before him.
"Admiral Percy Fitzwallace was my best military advisor. He was my best because he was loathe to the business of war, the business of death as much as I. He knew that his job was that of prevention, not instigation. The necessary evil of conflict, of defense, was an evil that should be married always with consequence.
"Quick to laugh, slow to anger. The kindest and best of men. And what kind of tragic irony is it that this great man should fall to the whim of fools?
"I want to go to Gaza and blow it from the Earth. I want to wipe any trace of that country and the evil there with a swift and steady blow with the stealth and power that only the United States military could deliver.
"But then I think of Fitz. I think of him in the sitting room, giving me a look that lets me know that he knows I'm in one of my moods again. If Fitz were here, he'd say, "I know you want to hurt somebody, Mr. President. We all do. But walk it back, sir. Walk it back."
"My friend, my advisor, is dead. My eyes are numb now to the beauty of the world. I cannot see it for its life. I can only see it for its death. I am king in a world of fickle men."
President Bartlet paused again, grabbing both sides of the pulpit and leaning his full weight onto his thick arms. "What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a God. The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust." Bartlet let the sound of his voice hang heavy in the air, as if his very words could break into particles and cloud the room with its vapor.
He looked out, tightening his grip on the pulpit as he scanned the drained faces in the congregation. "Man delights not me," he whispered.
"And apparently, it looks like we have another Democrat throwing his hat into the ring for the presidency," a coiffed anchorwoman declared from one of the Mad Dog Tavern's televisions that hung above the bar. "Jed Bartlet of New Hampshire, the progressive Governor with a Nobel prize in Economics, was interviewed by a local Manchester news outlet earlier this morning. And, John, from the sound of it, it definitely seems as if this Bartlet has set his sights on the White House. Here's a clip from the interview."
The tv screen faded in to a close-up shot of a stout, powerhouse of a man with a broad smile. A woman with a microphone appeared next to him and asked, "Governor, your opponents in this election call you an intellectual elitist. What do you have to say in response?"
Governor Bartlet chuckled. "Aw, hell, Vicki, I'm not elitist in the sense that I expect to be smarter than everyone in the room. I'm elitist in the sense that I expect everyone else in the room to be smarter than me. And that doesn't always mean having a degree hanging on the wall. I'm talking about different perspectives, different beliefs. I don't care if you've got 50 million dollars in your bank account or just a hundred. I don't care if you're a college dropout or have a doctorate in environmental law. All I care about is that you care. Apathy is poison to the dream that is the United States. I want to see Americans who want to change this country for the better, and I want them to come and help me form a more perfect union.
"The backbone of our nation is its capacity for reinvention; to adapt over centuries to the swinging pendulum of politics and social issues that reflect the beliefs and ideologies of the Americans of that time. The 15th amendment, the 19th, the 26th; these are rights we take for granted today. But they didn't always exist. They were borne of the tenacity of regular American citizens like ourselves, standing up and saying, "Hey, I don't think that's right. I'm going to change that." The vote gives us that voice.
"Citizenship in this country is not a spectator sport. The American Revolution isn't over. This country needs all the help it can get. From everybody. Even elitist bastards like myself."
Donna Moss found herself staring wide-eyed up at the television, enraptured and enthralled by this strange, powerful governor from halfway across the country. She smiled to herself as she reached into her pocket to throw a few bills of currency on the bar, turning slowly to slide herself off of her stool.
"Hey, where are you off to?" Jeff said as he abandoned his dishrag from the far side of the bar.
Donna shrugged and smiled. "New Hampshire." She gave Jeff a little wave, and strode through the double oak doors and into the white Wisconsin sunlight. Donna gulped the fresh air, feeling as though the very machinery of her soul had switched gears and now was pushing her towards New England with a compass-like exactness.
Not long after Fitz's funeral, CJ found herself again in the habit of sticking her head in Toby's office on her way through the West Wing corridors. She knocked once, and finding the door open a crack, leaned her torso almost halfway in, while holding the rest of herself back in the doorframe.
Toby looked up from his desk as he held a small silver cell phone to his ear. Ever since the Gaza bombing, it seemed as though that cell phone had become an unofficial appendage to Toby's head. CJ guessed it was Andi on the other end.
"Hey," CJ whispered.
"Hey," Toby whispered back. After a moment, he looked down, frustrated.
CJ tried to be quick. "Listen, Leo's called a meeting. I think we may finally be getting somewhere."
Toby met her gaze again. "Yeah, I know. I was just trying Josh again."
CJ nodded, her eyes a reflection of understanding. "Still no answer?"
Toby sighed and shook his head.
CJ took a step inside Toby's office. "You know, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad news."
Toby gave her a quiet, solemn stare. "Have you ever known Josh to not pick up his phone?"
A passerby might think Josh was asleep, the way he was positioned in the chair. His body looked as though it supported the weight of the weary world above it; a brokenhearted Atlas trapped in a military hospital waiting room.
It's not that he didn't hear his cell phone ringing. It's continuous, tingy tones were almost impossible to ignore. No, as Josh stared dejectedly at the wall, lost in a haze of fear and exhaustion, it's not that he didn't hear the phone ringing. It's that he didn't care. He was too busy remembering her.
"I can't get that for you this time," Donna, dressed in a simple gray suit, sits down next to him. "You'll have to answer your phone today."
Josh doesn't look at her. He can't. He's terrified by the hallucination, yet oddly, he begins to feel comforted by its presence.
Donna keeps staring at him. "It's not that hard. You just hit the 'talk' button and say your name."
Josh sighs. Donna is persistent, as usual.
"Have you slept at all?" she asks.
Josh realizes she's not going to go away, so he answers. "Not really."
"You should."
"Yeah, the hallucination is kinda a big give away." He rests the back of his head against the wall.
"Josh." Donna's voice is almost a murmur now. "What's going on?"
Josh swallows. "You had a pulmonary--"
"No," Donna interrupts. "I mean, in Gaza. In the White House."
"Well.. An Israeli missile killed twelve people, which lead to a bus bombing, which will probably lead to another attack, and away we go."
"You should be back in D.C."
"No, I should be here."
Donna sighs. After a moment, though, her eyes soften. "This is your way of not stopping for a beer."
Josh finally looks over at her. Her hair is down, and as she starts to smile at him, a tendril or two falls across her shoulder.
"I think I need to call Stanley," Josh says, not really caring that a passing nurse has probably already noticed that he's talking to an empty seat.
Donna nods and looks down. Josh rubs his temples.
"You didn't need to fly halfway around the world out of guilt--"
"That's not why I'm here."
"Why are you here?"
"Is this you asking me, or me asking me, by using you as I see you in my head?"
"You're dodging."
"I'm dodging myself?"
Donna changes her tone. "You didn't know I went this deep."
A moment passes. Josh wrinkles his brow as his eyes shift upward. "That I did not."
"If I bleed to death, you bleed to death."
"Something like that," he whispers wearily.
"You get it now?" Donna smiles again, and Josh marvels at how real she looks, like he could reach out and touch her. Down the hall, someone has left the adjacent operating room, and the sound of the doors opening makes Josh abruptly look over. A brunette woman wearing OR scrubs lets the doors swing behind her as she runs down the corridor and disappears behind a corner. After a moment, Josh realizes that he had been holding his breath. He recognizes the harsh fact that the blood on the woman's uniform was Donna's blood.
"The roses are beautiful," Donna whispers to him.
Josh turns back to find the seat next to him empty. He exhales, rubbing his face and eyes with his hands. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out his cell phone, and begins to dial. He places the phone to his ear, and after a moment, someone answers.
"Stanley?" he says, his voice wavering slightly. "It's Josh Lyman."
End.