"Ehh-chushh! Eh-heh-chushh! EH-SHOO!"
Donna could hear Josh's sneezing echoing down the corridor as he hurried toward his office. She came to lean against his doorframe and watched as he dropped his backpack and collapsed heavily into his chair, grabbing a tissue from the box on his desk as he sneezed twice.
"Morning," she said sunnily. "How are you feeling?"
"Donna," Josh moaned thickly, "I think I'm dying." He blew his nose forcefully and dropped his head onto the desk with an audible thump.
"No better?"
"No, Donna, that's why I think I'm dying." He lifted his head, opened a file folder and began to leaf through its contents.
She cocked her head slightly and observed him. He had been sneezing, blowing his nose and coughing for the past four days, since he arrived on Monday morning. She had done her best to ignore the constant sniffling coming from his office and didn't ask him about it, as Josh was private about his health; he didn't like people knowing when he was sick or making a fuss over him. It smacked of being merely mortal and was consequently beneath him. But he had looked terrible all week and was looking worse; his hair stood up on end, his eyes were puffy, and his nose was red and chapped from all the wiping and blowing.
" Don't you think it's time you went home and looked after this cold of yours? Because I really don't want to catch it."
"There's no point. I don't have a cold."
"It's not SARS, is it?"
"No, it feels like allergies." As if to make his point, he rubbed his eyes vigorously with his thumb and forefinger and sneezed tiredly.
"I didn't think you were allergic to anything."
"I'm not, or I wasn't. Well, except horses, but I doubt that someone's figured out a way to smuggle a Clydesdale past security. But it feels the same – I'm sneezing, my eyes itch, I'm all stuffed up-"
"I can go and pick you up some allergy medicine," Donna interrupted the litany, jerking a thumb toward the bullpen.
Josh shook his head. "Stuff like that makes me sleepy, and I have to work."
"There are non-drowsy kinds, you know -"
"Even those. I have a-"
"-sensitive system, yes, I know." She watched with a mixture of concern and distaste as Josh was caught by surprise and sneezed wetly on his papers. He swore irritably and mopped at them with a kleenex.
"Well, you can't go on like this forever."
"I know, I know. Sam has an allergist friend in D.C., he gave me her number. Could you call and make an appointment for me, please?"
"Sure," Donna said, taken by surprise. Josh had never asked her to set up a medical appointment for him and he despised visits to the doctor. He must really feel terrible if he was allowing her to help now. She took the slip of paper he held out to her. "Do you want me to cancel your meetings so you can take a sick day?"
"No." He sounded appalled at the suggestion. "I don't feel any better at home. I need to be here working." He coughed, blew his nose again, and picked up the phone, signalling he was done talking and wanted her to leave.
Around 9:30, after an hour of listening to Josh sniffling and trying to clear his throat, she tapped on his door.
"Come in," he called, somehow sounding even more congested then before.
"I called Dr. Patel's office," she said, approaching his desk and passing him an appointment slip. "I said you were a friend of Sam's and she agreed to fit you in after-hours. Tonight at 5:30."
"Thank God. I can't take much more of this."
"She said the appointment will take an hour or two because she'll have to do a skin-prick test."
"Skin-prick?" Josh cut in abruptly. "Why?"
"They prick your back in different places and add trace amounts of different substances-"
"With a needle?"
"No, Josh, with a rusty nail. You'd think they'd use a needle, though, wouldn't you?"
"Why?" he repeated.
"To find out what's causing the reaction. They stick you in different spots and see where you break out in a rashy thing, and that tells them what you're allergic to."
"But I thought she could just write me a prescription or something."
"She says it's important to diagnose you accurately. She described the whole procedure, and it's actually sounds kind of neat. The human body fascinates me – what do you think, could you see me as a nurse someday? I think I'd make an excellent nurse."
Josh ignored her. "But all this? A few hours she said this skin-prick thing is going to take? Is all that really n-ne-necessary –" Josh's face crumpled and he grabbed another kleenex. "Eh-chushh! Heh-shoo! Ehh-chushh!"
"I think that's your answer to that," Donna said as he continued to sneeze, inhaling convulsively in between spasms.
Josh straightened up, watery-eyed and hoarse from the sneezing fit. "It just seems like a waste of time over a minor allergic reaction. Call her back and cancel, would you? Or I'll call her."
"Josh," Donna admonished in amazement, "you asked me to make this appointment for you, it's obvious that you're miserable, why do you suddenly have such a problem with it?"
Josh stared down at his paper-strewn desktop and shook his head. Without looking up, he motioned to her with his hand. "Shut the door."
Wondering what he could possibly want, she closed the door and sat down across from him, moving a box of files off of the chair. "What?"
"This stays in this room."
"Sure."
"I mean it, Donna. No one hears about this. Not Toby, not CJ, not Leo, not Sam, no gossiping in the bullpen –"
"When have I ever gossiped about you?"
"Whatever. I'm telling you this in confidence." He laced and unlaced his fingers nervously. "I'm don't like needles."
"Nobody likes needles, Josh, but they're no worse than a bee sting. Not even as bad as a bee sting."
"I know, but...okay, it's not that I don't like needles, I'm really honestly afraid them, like a phobia-type thing. I can't even have a blood test without almost passing out. I've been afraid of them for as long as I can remember. I don't know why, it's stupid, but I just am."
Donna came perilously close to laughing, the confession seemed so out of character for Josh. Her mirth faded, though, when she saw the look on his face; he seemed genuinely upset just speaking about it. His shoulders were tense and he had started to breathe faster, brow puckered with anxiety.
"It's okay, calm down. They don't even put the needle in all the way, they just prick your skin a very little bit, with the very tip. I doubt you'll even really feel it."
He studied her with worried brown eyes, evaluating her sincerity. "You think so?"
"I know so."
"All right," Josh muttered, staring down at his clenched hands. "I guess I don't really have a choice."
"No you don't, and it's better that you just accept it."
"How many needles are we talking about here?"
"Not that many."
Immediate suspicion. "Define 'not that many'."
Mumbled response.
Mounting agitation. His warning tone. "Donna –"
"Oh, OK, about thirty, but don't freak-"
"DONNA!" Josh howled. "Thirty? Are you kidding me? Are there even thirty substances that humans can be allergic to?"
"Apparently. But it's just a little prick on your back, you won't even see it going in. And it's not even really a needle, it's a 'sterile lancet'."
"What's the difference?"
"I don't know exactly."
"Then why do I doubt that I'm going to care?" Josh exclaimed in real distress, and Donna feared for a moment that he was actually going to cry.
"Josh." She leaned across the table and grasped his shoulders. "You're going to have the test and it's going to be fine. You have to do this so you can get better. You don't like being sick, do you?" She felt like she was talking to a five year-old, and momentarily wished the American people could see what their politicians were really like.
"Okay," he conceded in a small voice. Then, with that vulnerable look on his face, "Donna? Will you come with me?
"But it won't be done till, like, seven o'clock, and I have stuff I want to do tonight," she protested.
"But the human body fascinates you."
"This hardly fits my job description. You wouldn't ask Toby or Sam to do this."
"Because I don't want Toby or Sam to know. And they have work to do."
"I resent your implication." But his expression beseeched her. She tightened her grip on his shoulders and looked him hard in the eye. "Oh, all right, I'll come, but I want extra time off to compensate."
"Done." Then, urgently, "Donna, I have to sn...heh-eh-..."
She managed to scoot back just in time.
"I can't believe it! I definitely regret swearing to secrecy!" Donna crowed, laughing so hard she could barely focus on the road ahead.
"I'm glad my suffering amuses you. If you could stay in our own lane, that would make me even happier," Josh groused, wiggling around in the passenger seat as he tried to reach the itchy spot on his back. He clutched a bottle of steroid nasal spray and one of Dr. Patel's cards with an appointment for the following Friday. He didn't know whether to be annoyed at Donna for laughing at him or grateful to her; she had held his hand the entire time, spouting random conversation to distract him, gently reminding him to relax and breathe deeply whenever hyperventilation threatened. She'd discreetly turned her back when he removed his shirt to put on the paper gown, and again when it was time to get dressed. At the end of the appointment, he had almost sprinted out the door and waited in the car, composing himself while Donna made his next appointment and got his prescription filled at the pharmacy. She even bought him a bubble-gum lollipop; he knew she did it to tease him, but it still felt nice. The mixed emotions confused him and made him irritable with her.
Donna giggled, unbothered by his sulking. "I just think it's absolutely hilarious that you're the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, it's your first spring at the White House, and it turns out you're deathly allergic to cherry blossoms. So I guess you're pretty much allergic to Washington."
"First of all, it's the pollen from the cherry trees, not the blossoms." Mixed feelings also made him imperious with her. "I'll convince the President to have them all slashed and burned, and create more parking spaces. Second, I hope you realize I'm going to be miserable every year for the rest of this administration. Think about that before you laugh at me."
"Oh, stop whining. The spray will help the symptoms without making you so out-of-it, and you'll start getting your allergy shots on Friday. If you go for one every week like you're supposed to-"
"That's 52 needles a year," he interrupted.
"If you go every week like you're supposed to, you may not even have this problem next year. Or not nearly as badly, at least."
"Yeah," Josh grudgingly acknowledged, reluctant to stop feeling sorry for himself. In a way, he was also hesitant to have Donna stop fussing over him; he would ordinarily hate that kind of attention, but coming from Donna it felt good, like a soothing balm.
Donna's lips twitched mischievously. "And you withstood that very well, by the way. I'm very proud of you."
"And you're not at all patronizing, either. Well, thank you."
"Well, you're welcome."
A few seconds passed as they drove in silence.
A bit tentatively, "Donna?"
"Mmm?"
"Will you come with me for my shot next Friday?"