[Author's note: This is a recast version of a songfic I posted here briefly about a month ago and then took down once I was informed that songfics violate site policy. I have delyricized it, and I think the retool here probably makes it a better story. The song that inspired it is Hasn't Hit Me Yet, from the 1993 album Five Days In July by the Canadian country-rock band Blue Rodeo.]
Josh Lyman sat in his office, hiding from Marla, his temp assistant. His replacement assistant. His new assistant.
His old assistant had quit. She'd really quit. It was shocking, in a way. But is wasn't really a surprise at all.
Donna had been telling him she wanted to more for over a year now. He had tried giving her more to do, like the pardon assignment before the State of the Union. She always did whatever he gave her well, just like he knew she would, just like she always had. Even when things went terribly, like when Donovan Morrissey took his life, she kept on doing an excellent job.
He knew she could do more. He tried to give it to her, but it kept blowing up in their faces.
Sometimes literally.
After she got back from Gaza, he knew she was unhappy with her job. And more than that, unhappy with him. He didn't know why, although he suspected he had freaked her out rushing across the ocean to her bedside in Germany, and staying around so long when she probably wanted to be alone with Colin. That was the only reason he could think of for her being so cold, so detached to him these past months.
He thought things would get better. They didn't. And with CJ cutting him out of the loop, there wasn't much else he could give her to challenge her. And she just got more angry.
Then she left the White House. Left him, because that's what she really did. He was left behind again.
It wasn't really a surprise at all, in hindsight.
It felt terrible, Donna leaving him like that. After the events of the last year and a half – Zoey's kidnapping; Amy's return, refusal to define their relationship, and her leaving again; Chris Carrick's party switch and Josh's effective demotion in the White House; Gaza (oh God, Gaza); CJ being promoted to Chief of Staff over Toby, over him, for the job he'd been training for for seven years; her pulling the China trip from him – Donna had been the last sure thing in his once stable career.
And now last remnants of that stability had crumbled. The last reason he had to keep coming to work each day was gone. It was horrible. It was demoralizing.
But it was freeing.
There was no real reason for him to stick around anymore.
It's not like this was new to him. People leave. He knew that. For whatever reason, people leave. His sister died terribly in a fire. Mandy left him, and later after she returned to the Bartlet team, she left the White House. His father died unexpectedly. His mother left her home, left Connecticut. Sam left the White House. Amy left him twice. Leo had a heart attack and left his job (left it to CJ!).
People leave.
But for a while, he lulled himself into thinking Donna would never leave. She'd left once, but she came back. And he let himself think she wouldn't leave again. Wouldn't leave him.
He shook his head. She sure showed him.
He'd been right all along. People leave. Everyoneleaves, eventually.
Why shouldn't he leave?
He had to get out of there. He grabbed his coat, brusquely told Marla he was going home and deflected her comments about him leaving early. He had to do something else.
Maybe he should go visit his mother in Florida, someplace warmer and brighter. Someplace different.
Out of habit, he pulled out his cell phone to call Donna to book his ticket, but he caught himself before he hit "send". I really hadn't fully hit him yet that she was gone.
Toby had been badgering him to call her, but if she was so mad as to quit without notice, to quit but leave him thinking she was bluffing, she wouldn't answer his call – if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, she'd rip into him worse than she ever had before, and he didn't want that. He'd rather pretend she didn't hate him than have it confirmed for sure.
He shook his head, standing there by his car, looking at the streetlights as they began to turn on. It was really all over – the best years of his life. All that was left for him was a job that no longer challenged him, that he was being shut out of.
If someone had told him two years ago he would be bored at the White House, that he would begin to dread coming to work everyday, he would have called them crazy. But it wasn't the same. His job was going nowhere. There was no job advancement for him any longer – John Hoynes was right about that.
He wanted to leave himself, follow Donna out of the White House. He'd follow her to wherever she went if he thought there was any chance she'd let him.
But he knew there wasn't.
It was obvious she was sick of their old patterns, their old habit. Sick of him, really. She'd come right out and told him – he was like peppermint ice cream, like irritating chunks of candy in her teeth. He knew she used to love her job. Used to be enthusiastic. Used to watch for him out the window. Used to smile at him. But she hadn't in a long time, and he'd been too busy to pay attention, to do anything about it beyond noting it and hoping it would get better. But it hadn't, had it?
There was a Texas governor a few years back who had a habit of misspeaking. One of his statements that drove Toby to particular fury was one that Josh always found rather apt. "I think we all agree, the past is over." And it really was, now, wasn't it? He needed to do something new. An idea he'd been mulling suggesting to someone else. But if there was nothing keeping him there, why not him.
He wasn't going to Florida, he thought as he got in his car and headed over the river to Washington National Airport. The past was over, right? Just like the man from Texas said.
Texas. He was going to Houston.