Part 2—Blue Ridge
The Appalachians are old mountains . . . . The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 680 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain-building plate collisions. As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris downslope to be deposited in nearby lowlands . . . .
By the end of the Mesozoic era, the Appalachian Mountains had been eroded to an almost flat plain. It was not until the region was uplifted during the Cenozoic Era that the distinctive topography of the present formed. Uplift rejuvenated the streams, which rapidly responded by cutting downward into the ancient bedrock. Some streams flowed along weak layers that define the folds and faults created many millions of years earlier. Other streams downcut so rapidly that they cut right across the resistant folded rocks of the mountain core, carving canyons across rock layers and geologic structures . . . .
(-Wikipedia, "Appalachian Mountains: Geology")
Leo drove Josh to the clinic himself. "You don't have time, Leo," Josh protested, but Leo just fixed him with a look and said, "I can take the time," and Josh knew he wasn't going to win that argument. He didn't really want to. If he was going to keep this quiet there wasn't anyone else who could take him, and he wasn't in any shape to drive himself yet. His left arm was still in a cast, and, while he didn't think he'd deliberately drive off the road and wrap his car around a tree, he was tired enough and taking enough painkillers that it could happen accidentally. Though, if he was being completely honest with himself, he wasn't really sure what he'd do if he had to spend a couple of hours on his own again, with nothing to think about except what a mess he'd made of things. A mess that he'd now made dramatically worse by slicing his arm open with a very sharp kitchen knife.
He was particularly grateful to have Leo with him when he had to go back to his house to get his things, though he was also acutely embarrassed by the other man's presence. "Do you want to stay here while I go in and get what you need?" Leo asked, quietly, when they pulled up in front of the townhouse. Josh shook his head. "I can do it," he said. "I'll just be a minute." But Leo got out and climbed up the steps just behind him. "It's all right, Leo," Josh said, wishing he didn't sound so tense. Leo just shot him another of those looks, and put a hand on his back. Josh was ridiculously glad to feel it there as he turned the key in the lock and walked into the home he hadn't expected to see again.
The morning light was pouring into the living room, which was clean and tidy and smelled quite strongly of lemon cleanser. The rug was missing, and the seat cushions on the couch, which had been neatly covered with a blanket. Otherwise everything looked the way it always did. Josh wondered how much you paid your cleaning lady for tying a tourniquet around your arm and calling 911 to save your life, and then coming back to scrub the blood off your furniture and your floor. Did it matter that you hadn't wanted the life saved? But you were grateful that she'd known how to do it so you didn't lose your arm? He realized he was standing still and breathing too fast, and Leo's hand had tightened on his back. He made himself look away from the couch, and walked more quickly than usual across the room towards his bedroom, where he got his suitcase out of the closet and started pulling the things he was going to need off hangers and out of drawers. Leo stood in the door, watching silently. It was strange going through his things in the bathroom and wondering what the other man would think if he packed the sleeping pills, the nail scissors. He held his breath as he crossed the living room again on their way out, hoping Leo wouldn't notice, studiously avoiding looking at anything but the door.
oooooo
The place was a little over an hour south and west of Washington, nestled among the gentle and affluent hills of what everyone called Hunt Country. They turned off the highway and onto a quiet paved road, then off that into a drive marked only by a sign that said "Private," and wound their way for several minutes through copses of trees and rolling fields dotted with Jersey cows or crisscrossed with rows of corn. Josh noted with a certain amount of cynicism how very discreet the whole approach was. It bugged the hell out of him that he was also deeply grateful for the privacy and the discretion.
Leo pulled the car to a stop in the circular gravel driveway in front of a perfectly-kept old plantation house shaded by enormous pin oaks and magnolias and surrounded by immaculately manicured lawns and flowerbeds, with a couple of barns in the foreground and a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge in the distance. "I feel like I'm going on my honeymoon," Josh joked lamely. Leo snorted. "I'm not sticking around for the wedding night," he said, clicking the trunk lid open as he climbed out of his seat.
The elegance continued inside, in a cleaner and more contemporary style than Josh was expecting: there seemed to be a lot of big windows along the back of the building, taking in the view, and a merciful absence of axe-faced nineteenth-century slaveowners peering down from the walls, though there were enough antiques and oriental rugs to make it clear what kind of clientele the place was catering to. Josh wondered how much it was going to cost him, and which of his investment accounts he'd have to break into to pay for it. He didn't really think his insurance would cover much of the bill. If, in fact, they covered anything for an attempted suicide. He hadn't thought about that before, and winced at the thought of the hospital bills he'd run up, and now this. Of course, he hadn't been planning to be around to have to think about things like that.
The staff member who greeted them was polished and professional. The room she took Josh to to put his suitcase in was a lot nicer than any place he'd stayed during the Santos campaign, and even had a piece of the mountain view. Nobody took away his shoelaces or his belt, though the woman waited outside the door and accompanied him and Leo downstairs again afterwards, showing him into a small sitting room with a couple of comfortable chairs in it, and telling him one of the administrators would be with him shortly. She left the door open and went back to her desk in the front hall, where Josh could see her looking through some papers, and realized she also had a clear view of him. Leo said goodbye then, and left. Josh had never wanted so badly to run after someone and beg them not to go.
But then, he hadn't really believed Donna was leaving until it was too late.
oooooo
Leo got into his car and started it, half-relieved to have got Josh to his destination without any of the resistance he'd been expecting, and half wishing the boy—he always thought of him as a boy—was still sitting in the seat beside him, where he could keep an eye on him. Josh had been unusually quiet during the drive, sitting with his head back and his eyes closed much of the time, his hands resting on his knees instead of fidgeting with the controls around him the way he usually did when he had to be a passenger, the edge of the fabric cast poking out from the cuff of his left sleeve, which he hadn't been able to do up. It was summer, hot and humid, and Leo had pointed out that he could wear a polo shirt if he wanted to, but he'd chosen a long-sleeved dress shirt and a tie; Leo wondered if the familiar formality bolstered his confidence, or if he just wanted to hide his bandaged arm as much as he could. Josh hadn't said much, except a few stupid attempts at jokes, but something about the expression in his eyes when he'd said goodbye had cut Leo to the heart. He couldn't remember ever seeing anyone look so lonely.
It had been a bad few days. As bad as that night in the hospital six years ago, when he'd just gotten over the horror of his best friend being shot and had been basking in the relief of knowing that Jed wasn't badly hurt and thinking that all the rest of the staff were fine, when the emergency room doors had burst open and Josh had been carried in on a stretcher, bleeding from a hole in his chest. This should have been easier, because by the time the hospital had called him this time Josh had been stabilized and was obviously going to survive. But that had been offset for Leo by the shock of going to GeorgetownUniversityHospital after the phone call and being told that the man he loved like a son was in the psychiatric wing because he'd quite clearly tried to commit suicide. It had been a serious attempt, the doctor had warned Leo. Not a hand through a window this time, bandaged up so the man could try to keep going with nobody the wiser, but two deep gashes down his left arm made with a very sharp, three-inch kitchen knife, the second one having found the vein he was after. It was pure luck that he'd been found in time, and found by someone who knew what to do. Leo was going to make sure that particular Filipina never had to scrub another floor again.
But he couldn't stop thinking about what might have happened, the call he might have got instead. And, after the visit to Josh's apartment, he couldn't stop thinking about what actually had happened, Josh sitting on his couch in his living room—a comfortable corner by a reading lamp, where Leo had seen him sitting countless times before—and dragging a sharp knife down his arm, trying to open a vein, trying to end a life he'd fought so hard and endured so much to keep after those racist boys with their guns had almost ended it the last time. A life that had done so much good for so many people. Leo shook his head, and wondered if it was his fault for telling Josh to find his own guy and run him, or for not doing more to help that guy win the nomination. Maybe it would have been better to have let Josh serve out the job he loved in Jed's White House. Or to have given him the one he must have expected when Leo had his heart attack. He'd never really explained that decision to Josh. He wished he'd done things differently now, talked to the boy more, at least, both then and at the end of the campaign. But Josh had been in this game a long time; he'd weathered job disappointments and political losses before. Leo didn't really think that could be the whole story behind what had just happened.
oooooo
Josh stood in his room, looking out the window, trying to feel something and wondering why he couldn't. It really was a beautiful view: the gardens, the gentle swell of fields and farms rolling away beyond them, that line of deep blue hills—mountains, whatever—beyond that. He'd always liked these mountains, liked the long blue line of the Catoctins coming into view when they travelled up 270 to Camp David, liked these higher ones on the odd weekends he'd taken over the years to drive with friends or girlfriends down to Shenandoah or Skyline Drive. Partly he'd been intrigued by their age and their history. It was ridiculous to call them mountains, really, but he knew they had been once, dramatic, jagged peaks as tall as the Rockies, or taller, that had been worn down by the wind and the rain for millennia after millennia until they'd become these softly rounded hills where Indian tribes had hunted and European settlers had met their first frontier. They were among the oldest rock formations in the country. He'd read about all that somewhere—National Geographic, probably—and been fascinated by it. And then there was the color, that soft, deep blue that always drew him, wherever he saw it: in the ocean he'd grown up beside, in a clear summer's sky, in Donna's—he didn't want to think about that. Couldn't afford to think about that. But except for the stab of pain the thought of Donna's eyes had given him for a second, he couldn't seem to feel anything at all, even standing here looking out at this beautiful view.
He'd spent the last couple of hours signing papers and feeling nothing as he signed away a small bookful of personal privacies and freedoms for the duration of his stay here. Feeling nothing and thinking about nothing, except on the simple, functional level of reading and listening to what the administrator was saying and moving his hand with the pen in it across the paper. He didn't want to feel anything or think about anything, really, and yet he was going to have to, if he was going to keep the promise he'd made to Leo, and not upset everyone he knew and make a total, crashing fool out of himself all over again. He didn't know how he was going to do it. Presumably the people in this expensive place were going to help him, but he wasn't really convinced they were going to succeed. It wasn't like he hadn't had plenty of therapy before. He'd crashed before—if not quite so dramatically—and fought his way back before, but it hadn't stuck, obviously. The thought of having to do it all over again was unutterably dreary. It didn't help that he kept thinking how much better things would be if he hadn't succeeded in making it back the first time. Matt Santos would be sitting comfortably with his wife and children in his attractive house in Texas, without the stigma of "loser" attached to his name and with a lot more money in his bank account, and Donna . . . .
There was a knock at his door. He looked around. A staff member—one he hadn't met yet—was looking in enquiringly. There weren't any locks on the doors. "Is everything all right, Mr. Lyman?" she asked. "You'll want to come down to lunch now." "Sorry," he said, "I didn't realize what time it was." Showing up to things on time was one of the promises he'd signed an hour ago. "That's perfectly all right, Mr. Lyman, but if you'll come with me now." He straightened his tie, and followed her down the hall and the stairs to the dining room, where the other fucked-up people staying in this expensive place were starting on their soup. It was a relief when he didn't recognize any of them. He chose a table by the wall where he could sit by himself, and hoped none of them recognized him, either.
oooooo
"So, Mr. Lyman, why are you here?"
"You can call me Josh."
The doctor smiled at him. She was a few years older than he was, and had an attractive smile. She was, he supposed, an attractive woman. It was odd how one could be aware of that and yet not feel a twinge of attraction or response.
"Josh, then, if you'd rather. Now tell me why you're here."
"You have it in the admission papers, don't you?"
"Of course I do, but I want you to tell me about it."
"Okay. I, um, cut my arm." He gestured vaguely with his left arm, in its bandage and stiffened fabric snap-on cast.
"How?"
"With, um, a knife."
"Why did you do that?"
Josh shrugged, and looked around the room. For all the therapy he'd had, some of it voluntary, he'd never gotten comfortable answering the therapists' questions. A girlfriend had got him to go the first time, and he'd gone back on his own a few times after that, usually after a particularly nasty breakup when a relationship he'd cared about—and he cared about his relationships far more often and more deeply than the women on the other side of them ever realized—had ended with his about-to-be-ex-girlfriend screaming that he was the most fucked-up son-of-a-bitch she'd ever had the bad luck to get involved with, and if he didn't get help he'd end up having to pay for sex, because no woman who wasn't that desperate would ever look at him again. He'd never stuck with it long enough to really get anywhere, although he'd found it helpful sometimes: that time Stanley—he couldn't remember his last name—had helped him figure out what was bothering him so much about that card the NSA had given him, for instance. He hadn't come back for more, but still, that day it had been a good thing. And that day with Keyworth, when he'd first developed the PTSD and hadn't known what was happening to him, and had been terrified that he was losing his mind. He'd begged for more therapy after that, and had had some sessions with one of the people Keyworth had recommended, but his enthusiasm had tapered off quickly. He'd managed to get control of the worst of the symptoms in a few weeks, and had dropped the therapy as soon as he could get away with it. The whole focus then had been on Rosslyn, on accepting the feelings of helplessness and anger that came with being a victim of violence, and learning to control the flashbacks to the shooting; there'd been quite a lot of stuff they hadn't gotten into, because Josh didn't want to get into it and the man Keyworth had sent him to wasn't as tough on him as Keyworth had been—though even the top shrink from ATVA hadn't called him on all his crap. As hard as he'd found it to talk about what it felt like to have someone try to kill him, it was infinitely harder to talk about what it felt like to want to kill himself.
"I don't know," he said.
"You must have some idea."
Josh shrugged again.
"Well, the guy I'd been campaigning for had just lost the Democratic nomination. Now we've got to choose between a Republican and Bob Russell for President. Isn't that a good enough reason?"
oooooo
He had a schedule. He kept it folded in his shirt pocket for the first couple of days, so he wouldn't screw up and miss being someplace when he was supposed to be. It wasn't that he cared that much about doing the things he was supposed to do or being where he was supposed to be, but it made him uncomfortable to have a staff member knock on his door when he was three minutes late to something. He didn't like being reminded that he couldn't be trusted with something as basic as keeping himself alive.
The mornings began at 7:00, which was late for him. He was supposed to be at breakfast by 7:30, then go for a hike with a group of other "guests" around the property for an hour. A staff member always accompanied them, usually an athletic young man who also supervised workouts in the gym later in the day; he was really a sports therapist, but Josh couldn't help thinking of him as their keeper. Josh would rather have jogged by himself, but he wasn't supposed to jostle his arm that much, and they weren't supposed to leave the garden area by themselves. There was a beautiful swimming pool in one of the outbuildings—a converted barn that had had skylights let into the roof and its big doors replaced with two-storey sheets of glass to take advantage of the views—but he wasn't allowed to use that until the wounds had healed up. The brochure on the desk in his bedroom stressed the idea that the pool was indoors to make it available for exercise year-round; Josh suspected that the real reason was because the barn doors could be locked anytime there wasn't a staff member around to act as a lifeguard and keep the clientele from drowning themselves on a bad day.
After the exercise they were allowed half an hour to shower and change in their rooms. Josh wondered at first how the place could afford to trust them that long alone, but realized after a day or two that the staff kept a pretty keen eye out for changes in people's moods, and wouldn't hesitate to send someone in to be with them if they thought it was necessary. It was an interesting balancing act, he thought, the way the administration tried to maintain the illusion of running a high-class spa that anyone rich enough might choose to go to for a relaxing vacation, while still looking after the safety of the "guests" who were really patients, and had all in one way or another demonstrated themselves to be whack-jobs in need of serious help.
At ten he was due in one of the private offices downstairs where the doctors met with their patients, followed by half an hour in his room, an hour in the dining room for lunch, an hour to read in the library or stroll around the gardens (remaining in sight of the building at all times), then an hour's workout in the gym, which for Josh included time with the physical therapist to regain strength and flexibility in his arm and hand. After that there was an hour in one of the barns for art therapy, if you wanted it; Josh didn't, and spent the time watching CNN on the t.v. in the lounge or reading the papers in the library instead. Then a group motivational session, featuring lectures and discussions led by a variety of mental health professionals, many of them quite distinguished; the place's emphasis on privacy and discretion allowed Josh to skip these too if he wanted to, so he did. Then dinner, and t.v. or games in the lounge. It made for a pretty dull day, but the morning sessions with the psychiatrist were gruelling enough that he was almost glad to spend the rest of the time being bored out of his skull. He couldn't really summon the energy to be interested in anything, anyway.
The therapy sessions were longer than he was used to from his other experiences: two hours minimum, and sometimes longer if the doctor thought they needed to go over. Josh felt a bit like a murder suspect being grilled by the police, and suspected the long sessions were intended to soften him up and wear him down. The analogy was pretty apt, he realized, though he couldn't remember whether suicide was still on the books as a statutory crime in Virginia or the District of Columbia.
On the first day they rounded up the usual suspects: the shooting, his PTSD. The doctor was surprised to hear that no, he hadn't been experiencing any flashbacks to Rosslyn in the days or even weeks before his suicide attempt, or any afterwards, either. She looked a little disappointed, he thought; she'd probably glanced at his file and thought she could get this one over with quickly. He imagined she was there on retainer, and got paid whether she was seeing patients or not. Or maybe she'd been looking forward to hearing more about the most recent assassination attempt on an American president—which, of course, hadn't really been an assassination attempt at all—and probing the psyche of the man who'd made the covers of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and People all in the same week, to find out what its effects on him had been. Josh knew that he was probably being unfair to the woman. He didn't care. It was easier to critique his doctor than it was to turn that same kind of analytical searchlight on himself. That was her job. She was certainly getting paid enough for it.
What had he been thinking about, then, before the incident? What could he remember? Josh shifted a little in his seat, uncomfortably. "Um, the convention, I guess. The nomination. Bingo Bob running for president." Sue Thornton looked at him sardonically. She really didn't seem to want to buy the idea that the possibility of Bob Russell occupying the Oval Office might be enough to make a hardened politician like Josh Lyman slit his wrist, and half his arm with it. She was more interested in talking about how Josh had felt about leaving the White House, and what kind of impact Matt Santos's loss was likely to have on his career.
"Toby Ziegler lost every election he ever worked for until he joined the first Bartlet campaign," Josh told her. She raised an eyebrow.
"So you're saying that failure doesn't matter in politics?"
"It doesn't matter if you're good enough," Josh said.
"And you're good enough?"
He'd smiled at her then. "Oh yeah, I'm good enough."
She hadn't realized the man had such devastating dimples—or such confidence in his professional skills. She was pretty sure that was the real thing; she knew bravado when she heard it, and she didn't think she was hearing it now. But if the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff hadn't been seriously worried about his future in politics after the convention, and hadn't been suffering the aftereffects of having been shot at Rosslyn, why had he tried to kill himself less than a week ago?
oooooo
Family was next. His feelings about his mother, his father? Loved 'em both: great parents; they'd spoiled him rotten, but who ever complains about that? No, just his mom now; his father had died during the first Bartlet campaign. Yes, his death had been unexpected; he'd had cancer, but he'd been responding well to the treatment, and the prognosis had been good. Yes, he still missed him, but that was life, wasn't it? He was lucky he'd had as much of his dad's time as he had; he'd known plenty of people who'd lost theirs early, as teenagers or even little kids. That was tough. How often did he see his mother? Not as much as he'd like, certainly not as much as she'd like, but they emailed or talked on the phone once a week or so. Yes, of course she'd been upset when he'd been shot, very upset, she was his mother, what would you expect? How was she dealing with this? Well, he hadn't actually told her yet. He was waiting till he was better and out of this place, so she wouldn't worry as much. Yes, he still talked to her regularly; he'd called her last night. How did he feel about deceiving her like that? Well, he wouldn't call it deception, exactly. He'd told her he was taking some time off to regroup after the campaign, that he was spending a few days in a place Leo had suggested, down in Virginia near the mountains, taking hikes, working out in the gym, eating good food. She'd been thrilled. A bit misleading? Not the full truth? He didn't have a problem with that: he was a politician, remember?
Does he have any siblings? No. How does he feel about that? It's fine, really: he's forty-five, that's been his life, he's used to it. He'd been lonely sometimes growing up, sure, but there's always something, isn't there? He'd had friends who fought with their brothers or sisters all the time. And there were advantages to being an only child and getting spoiled rotten.
Girlfriends? Oof, a list of them. A few women, yeah. Serious relationships? Well, some of them had lasted for a while. No, he'd never wanted to marry any of them. God, no. Would he like to be married, have children? Well, yeah, sure, he probably would, but he didn't really expect to. He had a pretty demanding career, and the women he dated tended to have pretty demanding careers; it was hard to imagine how comfortable domesticity would fit into that picture. It wasn't a big deal; he could have if he'd wanted to enough. Still could: he had his own fan club, did she know that? Yes, seriously! A handsome and powerful man. Okay, he'd stop smirking. . . .
oooooo
"We're not getting very far with this, are we, Josh?"
Josh sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face. He was so tired. He, who could go for weeks on three or four hours of sleep a night when he had to and still keep a spring in his step and a pretty clear head, felt like he could barely drag himself down the stairs in this place in the morning, or up them at night. The food was excellent, the bed was comfortable, the sleeping meds they doled out at bedtime were doing their job, but he was just so damn tired. Even the mandatory hike every morning and the gym workouts in the afternoon weren't making much of a difference to his energy level. All this talking must be wearing him out. It seemed to have been going on forever. They were doing it twice a day now; Dr. Thornton had found out that he wasn't attending either Art Therapy or Group Motivation in the afternoons, and had commandeered those timeslots for more sessions with her. She pointed out that she was only being ethical in putting his time to maximum use: the sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could leave, and the better off his bank account—or his insurance company's—would be. He felt like the mountains outside, worn down by the steady drip and blow of all this talk about himself, until there was almost nothing left of what he used to be. He felt like a limp rag. He wanted to climb into bed and go to sleep and never have to wake up. He wanted to—
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just can't think of anything more to say."
"Do you want to know what I think?"
"Sure." Well, that's something new, he thought. Shrinks never tell you what they think.
"I think you know exactly what to say. I think you know exactly why you tried to kill yourself, why maybe you still want to. But you're too scared to say it."
"Why would I be scared?"
"You're probably scared of losing control. You're scared of what will happen if you put it into words, say it out loud. You're used to keeping your guard up around everyone. You don't want to break down in front of me, even though I'm a highly-trained professional and you're paying through the nose to get me to sit and ask you questions and try to get you to talk to me."
"I'm not afraid," Josh protested, and knew he was lying even as he said it.
"Are you sure?" she asked. He bit his lip and dropped his eyes, but didn't answer.
"Josh, I've seen lots of grown men cry. Lots of very successful, wealthy, sometimes even famous men break down and cry. It isn't going to bother me. It isn't going to make me think any less of you. And I'll never tell another person about it. This is my job; you can trust me."
"Maybe that's why," Josh muttered, still not raising his eyes. The doctor raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Because," he burst out. "Because this is your job. Because I'm paying you. It's like—like—paying for sex. I know you don't give a damn about me, not really. You don't even know me, and you can't. You can't afford to give a damn about a client; you have to keep your professional distance, that's part of your job. You couldn't do this every day if you didn't. And I just can't—can't—" His voice shook, and he stopped abruptly.
The woman sitting across from him brushed a strand of hair back from her face, and sighed. This was the trouble, she thought, with the really intelligent ones, and this man was one of the most intelligent she'd worked with: they saw the whole picture. The most intelligent ones were usually the ones who felt things the most, but they were also the most isolated, by their very ability to see what other people didn't and understand the things they'd be better off not understanding. She felt, more acutely than she had in a long time, the limitations of her profession, and was saddened by them.
"I do care, Josh," she said quietly. "I do give a damn." He jerked his head impatiently. "But I also understand what you're saying. You don't want to sit in that chair and cry by yourself. You want someone to cry with you."
"No," Josh protested, mortified. "No, I didn't mean that. I don't want that."
"It's pretty natural, Josh. We all of us want to be loved, you know. And I'm sure you are. I'm not saying you did this to try to hurt anyone else. I am saying that you need to learn to trust the people who love you, to trust them enough that you'll let them cry with you when you need it."
"I—" Josh said, and stopped again.
"Are you afraid they won't? Afraid they'll quit on you if you show them your weaknesses and not just your strengths? That they won't care any more, that you'll drive them away?"
"No," Josh said, dropping his head back in his chair and running his hands over his face. "No, I'm not afraid of that."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I'm sure."
"Then let me ask you something else. Why aren't you afraid of that?"
There was a long silence. Finally, in a very small voice, Josh said, "Because they've already left. I've already driven them away."
oooooo
Well, now we're getting somewhere, Sue Thornton thought to herself.
"Who?" she asked, her voice more gentle than it had been. "Who is 'they'?"
Josh flushed. "I—" he started, and stopped.
"Go on," she probed. They'd already covered a list of his romantic relationships in an earlier session; there hadn't been anyone who seemed to raise the temperature in the conversation. He must have been leaving someone out.
"I—just, someone."
"Just someone?"
"Yeah."
"Come on, Josh. You can give me a few more clues than that."
"Just—someone I used to work with."
"A woman?"
"Yeah, a woman." He gave a kind of self-conscious half-laugh. "I'm not gay."
"A romantic interest, then?"
"I—no. Not—it wasn't like that. We never went out or anything."
"A friend, then?"
"Yeah."
"A good friend?"
"A pretty good friend. I mean, I thought we were pretty good friends."
"You never dated her?"
"No. I couldn't; we worked together."
"Together how?"
"She worked for me."
"On the Santos campaign?"
"No."
"At the White House?"
"Yeah."
"And that was why you didn't date her? Or didn't you find her attractive?"
"Attractive? God yes, she's beautiful."
"So the reason you didn't date her was because she was working for you."
"Yeah. She was my assistant, I couldn't—and anyway, I don't think she was interested in me that way."
Sue Thornton raised an eyebrow again. She might know how to keep an emotional distance from her clients, but she was female and she wasn't blind. Even dragged down by depression, she thought, Josh Lyman was an attractive man. His smile, when he used it, was really something. She thought it would be an odd woman who could spend a lot of time with the man and not be at least a little interested, though of course everyone's tastes were different, and you couldn't really tell what someone would be like to be with under normal circumstances when you were seeing them a few days after a suicide attempt.
"Are you sure?" she said. He flushed again.
"Yeah, I—I'm sure. I wasn't always; I thought, once—if we hadn't had to work together—but that was a long time ago now, after I was shot, and—then things changed."
"What changed?"
"I don't know. She changed. Or maybe she didn't; maybe I was wrong that there was ever anything . . . . Though there were other times . . . . But I could never do anything, never find out, and there was always some other guy she was talking about, or going out with. Most of them complete losers; she's got terrible taste in men."
"Really?"
"Insurance lobbyists. Republicans—short Republicans. You have no idea." He was smiling a little, shaking his head, which intrigued his doctor.
"You seem very fond of her." He stopped smiling at once.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, I am. I really am."
"So—tell me again why you never tried to find out what she thought about you?"
"I told you—she was my assistant."
"There are ways around that, surely."
"You don't understand. You don't understand what our jobs were like, what my job was like. It was—crazy. It was the White House. I was Deputy Chief of Staff; I had over a thousand people under me that I was responsible for keeping on track. I was the President's chief domestic policy advisor, and the main guy he depended on to try to push our bills through Congress. I had to be on top of everything, every minute, all the time. And I couldn't have done it without Donna. I've had other assistants—quite a few, actually—and she was just in a different category, a different class. It's not that they weren't good, they were, but—she's smart—really smart—and she learns quickly, and I could depend on her to get me the information I needed when I needed it, and to do it right. To make sure I went where I needed to go, when I needed to be there. To tell me when I was going wrong on something. To keep track of—everything. And—"
"And what, Josh?" Sue probed.
"And—I don't know how to explain this, but—she—just—"
"Just what, Josh?"
"Just—made a difference. Just by being there."
"Made a difference to how you did the job?"
"No," he said softly. "I mean, yes, of course, but that's not what I meant."
"What did you mean then, Josh? What did she make a difference to, besides the job?"
"To me," he whispered. "Just—to me."
oooooo
"In other words," Sue said gently, "you loved her."
There was a long pause.
"Yeah," Josh said at last, very quietly, looking down at his hands and fingering the edge of his cast where it was poking out of his sleeve. "Yeah, I did. I do."
"You've known her how long?"
"Eight years. Just over eight years."
"And how long have you felt like that about her?"
"Probably about eight years."
"And what happened?"
"She—left."
"Left?"
"Left. Got another job."
"Why?"
"She wanted to do something different."
"Was it a better job?"
"Yeah. I guess it was. She's Bob Russell's press secretary now, so yeah, I guess it was a better job."
"So, what happened then?"
"When?"
"After she left. What did you do? Did you go out with her then?"
"No."
"You asked her out and she said no?"
"No."
"You didn't ask her out?"
"No. I didn't ask her out."
"Why didn't you, since you felt that way about her, and the thing that had been stopping you wasn't there any more?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because I knew—she was angry with me."
"Did she tell you that?"
"No."
"How did you know, then?"
"I just knew."
"Why did you think she was angry with you?"
He didn't answer, but stopped fiddling with the cuff of his cast and pushed the injured arm down against his leg, holding it there, tightly, with his other hand.
"Why did you think she was angry with you, Josh?"
Still no answer.
"Why, Josh?" Josh started rubbing his right hand down across his left arm, hard.
"Why, Josh?" He kept rubbing his hand across the cast under his sleeve, harder than before. Sue Thornton had a sudden image of that same hand holding a paring knife and gouging it into the arm under the cast.
"Josh," she said, with a new urgency in her voice. "Tell me. Why did you think Donna was angry with you?"
His whole attention seemed to be focused on his arm.
"Josh," Sue said, with all the authority she'd learned in twenty years in her profession, "Tell me. Now. Why did you think Donna was angry with you?"
Josh pushed himself abruptly out of the chair, smashing his arm down against the desk between them, his hand in a fist. The cast crashed against the edge of the desk with enough force to break any stitches that hadn't healed yet, and snapped open inside his sleeve. "Because," he shouted, his voice cracking, his face contorted with a pain beyond anything the blow to his arm could have caused. "Because I'd almost killed her. Isn't that a good enough reason? I almost killed her. I sent her to Gaza. Gaza. She didn't need to be there, but I sent her. I got her her ticket and her passport, and there was a bomb, she could have burned to death, she almost bled to death, she almost died. She had a pulmonary embolism, like my father; it killed him, it almost killed her. She's got scars from here to there, on her chest, her leg, everywhere; a beautiful woman, scarred, do you think she'll ever forgive me? She almost had brain damage. She almost bled to death. There was a bomb and she almost burned to death like my sister, she almost bled to death, don't you understand? And I did it, I did it to her, I sent her there, me, I gave her her ticket and her passport, and there was a bomb, it blew up, and she got hurt, she bled. She was bleeding. Donna, bleeding. Severe bleeding, they said. Severe bleeding. Severe bleeding, don't you understand?" His voice was cracking and he was gasping and sobbing, but even now, Sue saw, he couldn't seem to allow himself the release of tears.
"Yes, Josh," Sue said quietly. "I think I do understand."
He squeezed his eyes shut for a minute, his chest heaving, his breath coming in ragged jerks. Then he opened his eyes again. "And now she's working for Bob Russell," he said. He took two steps across the room and swung his good arm at the window before Sue could hit the emergency button under her desk.
oooooo
"Josh."
Yeah?
"Josh."
"Yeah?"
"Tell me what happened there."
What happened where?
"Do you need some water?"
Yeah. Guess I do. "Thanks."
"Okay. Now. Tell me what happened."
"When?"
"While we were talking this morning. In my office. Before you took a swing at my window."
Oh, that.
"What happened?"
"Yes, Josh, what happened. Why you did it. You've bruised your hand up quite nicely, and broken a couple of fingers. We use safety glass here, you know."
That figures.
"Not your brightest move."
Guess not.
"You were pretty upset there."
Guess so.
"We need to talk about that, don't we?"
Like you're going to give me a choice?
"Do you remember what you were saying, before you took that swing at the window?"
More or less.
"You know, Josh, the non-verbal thing isn't working for me right now. I asked if you remembered what you were saying before you hit the window?"
"More or less."
"There were a couple of things there I'd like to hear more about."
Naturally.
"Okay."
"What do you suppose they are?"
What is this, Read My Mind?
"I don't know."
"You said something about your sister."
Oh. That.
"It's interesting you haven't mentioned her before. We did spend a couple of mornings talking about your family. At length, I'd have said. Exhaustively, even."
So we did.
"And the other one?"
"Bob Russell."
oooooo