Author's Note: Today was probably my biggest challenge to date in the fic-a-day project, aside from last Tuesday and last Tuesday does not count. Back to back doctors' appointments (not even for me!), a steady diet of bribery to make those appointments go smoothly, and roughly fifty rounds of the Skylanders online CCG game (also not my idea) meant I didn't even start on my fic till after 3pm, and without even a prompt in my head! This is an idea that has been rattling around amorphously in my head ever since I wrote Recovery, and I think it meshes pretty well with that story. In any case, it's not midnight in my time zone, so the fic definitely still counts. =D Hope you enjoy!
…...
In the White House, the overhead lights in the bullpens of the West Wing shut off automatically at 11pm unless overridden, part of the administration's commitment to energy conservation. Charlie approved of this plan in theory, but in practice it meant being very careful as he dashed around retrieving things late at night, lest he trip over a lost fax or a stray Spaldeen ball. Tonight the President couldn't sleep, despite Abby's threats to sedate him, so they'd compromised on him reading in bed. Now the hunt was on for HR 6271, the Farming Supplementation and Subsidies Bill, guaranteed boring enough to put a convalescing head of state into a deep and restful sleep. It hadn't been in the pile on Leo's desk, so Charlie kept looking.
There were lamps on around the edge of the Operations Bullpen, not unusual at any hour of the day or night. Charlie used them for a burst of speed as he darted into Josh's empty office and tried to sort among the confounding stacks of files piled six inches deep all over the desk. Somebody was obviously making an effort to keep everything straight, but there was only so much desk space, and there were only so many assistant deputies to share the load. He'd never have thought that Josh's office would get messier without him in it, but that did indeed seem to be the case. Charlie ignored the guilty twist in his stomach, same as he did every time he didn't go to the hospital, same as he did every time he saw the President laying in bed instead of sitting in his office.
Several minutes of searching failed to reveal the elusive House resolution, but he did manage to turn up a briefing book on the Rural Highway Reauthorization Act, slim enough not to challenge stitches, but bulky enough to look important. It would do the job. He stepped out of the office, flipping off the light behind him, and then jumped what felt like a foot in the air when he realized he wasn't alone in the dark.
"Jesus, Donna, you scared me," he said with a slightly breathless laugh. "I didn't even see you... there." His words died away as he realized that Donna wasn't paying attention to him, hadn't even seemed to notice him at all. She was sitting at her desk and staring off in the direction of the file cabinets, but she wasn't looking at them, or anything at all. "Donna, hey! Are you okay?" He walked around the glass partition and into her line of sight, leaning down for a better look at her. That caught her attention; she jerked backwards with a cry that sounded as much like terror as surprise.
Charlie reached forward and grabbed her arms seconds before she overbalanced her chair and tipped over, releasing her the instant she was steady. "Hey, it's just me," he assured her quickly. "You looked like you were a thousand miles away."
Donna stared at him for a moment with no recognition in her face, like they were strangers. She looked exhausted, like she hadn't slept in days, which might well have been true. Then suddenly animation flooded back into her face, along with a sudden well of tears. "Oh my god, Charlie," she murmured, wiping hastily at her eyes. "You scared me half to death. What are you doing here?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing," he parried, picking up her box of tissues and handing it to her before sitting down in the cubicle's other chair. "It's almost midnight, and I haven't seen you here all week." Since the shooting, he didn't need to add.
"Oh, they kicked me out of the hospital," she said dismissively, as though this were the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. "He's... he had another procedure on his lungs and so he's sedated right now anyway. The doctor said he won't wake up until morning, so I thought I should try and get some work done here. The temp doesn't know anything, and the assistant deputies are useless without somebody riding herd on them all the time, and I know Leo is taking the most urgent stuff but there's still so much that's just piling up and nobody's taking care of anything-" She was talking too fast, her voice thickening as more tears threatened.
"Hey, hey!" Charlie interrupted, reaching out for her hand. It was clenched tight around the crumpled tissue, but her hands were small enough that his could still nearly engulf her fist. "Everybody understands that some work's not getting done right now. You don't need to be worrying about that."
She glared at him. "Well if I don't, who's going to? The assistant deputies?" Technically, the assistant deputies all outranked Donna in the White House hierarchy, and most of them had at least five or six years experience on her in politics, but nobody would've ever guessed it by the workings of the Operations staff. In fairness, Charlie wouldn't have trusted the assistant deputies with actually running the department either. "Josh- he's going to ask who's taking care of things when he wakes up and is coherent again. I don't want him to worry. It's not good for him."
"Donna," Charlie asked gently, "how come they kicked you out of the hospital tonight?"
She shrugged. "Hospital rules, I guess. They told me to go home and get some sleep and come back in the morning. Sam was there too, for the procedure, he took me home and I caught a cab to come back here."
He scoffed, just a bit. "So in other words, they told you to go home because you look like you're about to collapse, you let Sam take you home because he wouldn't stop worrying otherwise, and then you snuck out like a teenager to come back here and put the office in order instead of sleeping or eating actual food."
That just earned him another glare. "Like I could sleep at a time like this."
He raised his eyebrows at her. "Time like what?"
Donna waved her arms, freeing her hand from his in the process. "This! All of this! Everything is a disaster! The President is still on bed-rest because horrible people shot at him, Operations is in complete disarray, the media is everywhere and Josh is... Josh is..." She paused to blow her nose.
"Josh is getting better," Charlie reminded her. His own stomach gave another painful twist, Donna's obvious anguish only making things worse, but at least here maybe he could do something to help. "The President will be back in the Oval Office tomorrow morning, and he's already been doing stuff from the Residence. The guys who did the shooting are dead. Now seems like the perfect time to get some sleep."
"I can't," she admitted abruptly, looking down at her hands. "I didn't mean to lie to Sam, it wasn't like that. I went home and took a shower, got into my pajamas, started a load of laundry, and went to bed. But as soon as I closed my eyes I saw-" She pursed her lips tightly, gave him a helpless look. "It's ridiculous," she told him. "I wasn't even there."
"Sometimes I think that's worse," he told her, his own voice quiet. "You know my mom was a cop, right?"
Donna nodded, her eyes filling with fresh tears as she instantly recalled and made the connections she hadn't before. "Oh, Charlie..." This time she took his hand.
He swallowed hard. "After it happened, I asked her partner for copies of the reports. I read them all, but it wasn't the same as being there. I would close my eyes at night and see it, but it was twisted, you know? Everything even worse than it was, as bad as my imagination could make it. They said-" He choked for a second, fought past it. "They said it was instant, but it was never instant in my dreams. Sometimes not being there just means you see it worse, and you see it wondering if you could've done something different if you'd been there."
She nodded in frantic agreement and leaned forward, giving him an impulsive hug as she started to cry in earnest. Charlie was not at all comfortable with crying women, despite or because of living in a mostly-female household, but this woman needed to cry pretty badly. And if he shed a few tears as well, letting them roll down and absorb into the blue cotton of Donna's blouse while they held onto each other, there was nobody around to see it. After several minutes passed, she finally murmured into his ear "Does it get better?"
He pulled back a little, still holding her arms, but enough so he could look her in the eyes. Her face was swollen now, blotchy red all over in the way very pale people got, but she'd lost that awful distant stillness from before. "You learn to live with it," he finally said, giving her all the truth he had. "Hopefully this will be easier. He's getting better."
"Yeah..." She pulled out a tissue and scrubbed her face, offered him the box as well. He took one and wiped his face, but only to be polite. "This must be so hard on you. How's Deena?"
"She's pretty spooked," Charlie admitted. "Half from the shooting, and half from staying in the Residence this week. Hell of a story to tell her friends at school, though." Ordinarily Charlie would've resisted the President's offer to stay in the Residence until the worst of the attention from the shooting had blown over, but he's accepted for Deena's sake. Until they were absolutely sure nobody was planning a second attempt on Charlie, he wanted her in the safest place in the world. "She thinks Ron Butterfield's like Superman, though. When he tells her it's safe to go home, she'll believe him."
"I think he might be Superman too," Donna admitted with a faint smile. "I definitely want to believe that."
"You should go home," Charlie encouraged her. "I gotta get this binder up to the President, and you need to finish your laundry, even if you don't get any sleep. I used to turn on those nature documentaries on Animal Planet, you know, the Mutual of Omaha stuff, and watch all night. Sometimes I fell asleep."
"Maybe I'll give that a try," Donna agreed. "Or maybe QVC, no little animals getting eaten."
"Dangerous," he warned her with a smile. "Your judgment might be impaired from no sleep. You could wind up with five blenders."
"I guess I'd have Christmas taken care of," she parried, smiling a little more herself. She looked at the binder Charlie had dropped on her desk. "The Rural Highway Reauthorization Act? What on earth do you need that for at this hour?"
"The President wants a little light bedtime reading," Charlie informed her. "I'm pretty sure this will make him go to sleep. And that it's not thick enough to cause any damage if the First Lady hits him over the head with it."
"That's good thinking," Donna told him. She looked at the clock, then began to gather her things. "Are you going to come by the hospital tomorrow?"
"I'm not sure yet," he equivocated. "I'll have to see how the schedule goes." Comforting Donna was one thing, trying to face a hospitalized and incapacitated Josh trying to recover from a bullet that should have hit Charlie was another thing entirely. Charlie wasn't sure his stomach would stand the torsion.
Thankfully, Donna seemed ready to accept that answer. She picked up her purse and the oversized messenger bag that was her version of Josh's ubiquitous backpack, then gave Charlie a sisterly kiss on the cheek. "You get some rest too," she reminded him. "Thank you for talking to me."
"You're welcome," he told her. "I'll see you later." He watched her head towards the lobby, knowing that the guard on duty would help her find a cab, then turned off her lamp, leaving the bullpen in darkness as he headed back towards the warmth of the Residence. With his luck, the President would already be asleep.