Red, White and True
Eventual Sam Seaborn/Maddie Bartlet
Summary: The White House was full of women. And two were at each other's throats. One daughter of the communications director and the other is the sickly niece of the President of the United States. Peyton wants to have her father's attention and to do that she starts hanging out with the deputy communications director Sam Seaborn. And Maddie is just trying to survive the bout of cancer and living in the White House.
Rated T -M for language
A?N I know this isn't something that would actually happen but for the sake of this story, its going to happen. I only own Maddie and Peyton
I am going to try something different with this and go back and forth between different characters point of view.
Chapter 1: Madelaine Bartlett
"Mad, what did you do?" Ellie Bartlet asked her younger sister as she grabbed a hold of her arm and twisted around to look at it. "Ow! El that hurt!" Maddie complained trying to wrench her arm out of her grasp, "I don't know what happened. I get bruises all the time." Worry flashed on Ellie's face. "Have you told Mom?" "No! She has enough to worry about with Uncle Jed and his MS.' She knew what was going through Ellie's head, she had the same thoughts about her lukiuema going out of remission. "You have to tell her." "I don't have too."
"Don't have to tell who what?' Jed Bartlet asked coming into the dining room. "That Maddie keeps bruising." Ellie answered. Jed raised his eyebrow. "It's not a big deal. It's just a couple of bruises here and there.' Maddie defended, "And maybe a fever or two.' "What else?" he asked, he was use to having to do this with Ellie and Maddie. She pulled the other sleeve of her baggy Notre Dame sweatshirt and showed him the still healing cut on her forearm. "what happened?" Jed asked going over to her and looking at the cut. "I fell and cut myself on a rock." She answered, tears filling her eyes, "I don't want to be sick again.' "I know. But we have to tell Mom and we have to make sure you aren't sick." Maddie nodded her head as he pulled her into a hug.
Two days later
"Ow." Maddie whined as the doctor inserted the needle into her hip bone to draw blood, bone marrow and plasma. "Sorry." The doctor said. "No you aren't but thanks." She muttered resting her head on her folded forearms. Her mother Abbey was sitting on the chair by the table watching her second to youngest daughter closely. She had been upset that she hadn't seen the signs of her struggling or being in pain. But in her defense everything had been so busy. With the campaign, the election and now the igurantion. Things fell between the cracks. Maddie fell through the cracks. "Aunt Abbey? Don't beat yourself up or this. I didn't want to say anything because I knew how busy and stressful things have been."
Abbey nodded her head, "I wish you would have still said something before now." "I didn't want to add more stress for you. I mean come on, Uncle Jed is going to be the president and you are going to be the first lady. You had enough to worry about without me whining about some bruises that just popped up." The doctor made a hum of agreement as he changed pulled the needle out and pressed a piece of gauze to the area.
The new first niece winced and squeezed her hand on her forearm. "We will have these back within the next couple of hours." "Thank you." Abbey said, the sooner they knew the sooner they could get her in treatment.
The members that Jed and his chief of staff Leo McGarry had chosen as their senior staff along with Jed and Leo sat around the dining room table, discussing the upcoming igurantion when the first lady and daughter came into the house. "Hello everybody." Abbey greeted as her daughter went over to the ringing phone. Jed stood up almost as quickly as his youngest and middle daughters came down the stairs.
Zoey went over to her cousin's side. "What's going on?" Josh Lyman asked confused looking at Sam Seaborn who sat across from him. He shrugged his shoulders just as confused. They hadn't seen a reaction like this out of the family before. "It's back." Maddie muttered hanging up the phone. "It's back.' Zoey put her arms around her and hugged her tightly. Her quiet sobs filled the room as the new president crossed the room and put his arms around the girls
"What's back?" Leo asked once Zoey and Ellie shuffled Maddie upstairs to her bedroom. "When Maddie was 6 she was diagnosed with leukemia." Jed answered, "She went into remission when she was 12 and a couple of weeks ago, she started bruising, running fevers and had a cut that wouldn't heal. Abbey took her in for the tests and you heard what the results were. I don't want this out there. I don't want her illness being thrown onto the news."