Chapter 2
Glad you enjoyed chapter 1, here is chapter 2, Elizabeth and her office.
"Threats can be a shocking surprise and unite individuals"
Elizabeth McCord, the United States Secretary of State was completely exhausted. It had been a long few months since her time in Iran, and her body was deciding that it needed a break. She had told Henry that morning that she had planned an early night for today as there didn't seem to be a huge amount of work to do. However, she did not follow her own golden rule and actually tell Blake that information because, as often happened, the hours slipped away and before she knew it, it was around 10pm. If she had spoken to her assistant then she would have surely been parcelled into her motorcade and safely home by early evening. Her office was quiet by the time that she was planning to leave but just as she gathered her coat and briefcase, her world seemed to take another spin as she received a call from the White House, summoning her to an immediate intelligence briefing in the situation room.
Four hours after leaving her office for the meeting she was back. The intelligence briefing had been disturbing. Multiple threats, varying locations and yet nothing concrete. They could cause more damage with panic than they could by protecting the potential sites. There was debate over whether the intelligence was even credible. It was sketchy at best and although her office had been mentioned, no-one at the briefing saw any real threat in the middle of a secure building like the State Department. However given the briefing, no matter how vague, Elizabeth had called her security from the White House to ask the non-critical staff members to leave for the night. As she had expected, she returned to an office where her senior staff had very quickly stated they were not leaving without their boss so Nadine, Jay, Daisy, Matt and Blake would stay. Elizabeth was always a cautious person and she ordered her staff to get their overnight belongings and begin arranging a move to a safer location at some point during the night. They then spent the next few hours securing the office, including backing up all their work in case the intelligence which had been so brief actually proved to be correct and they were all under threat. Time went by and nothing else was heard, it was almost two hours after she arrived back from the White House before anything happened.
When she came to look back on it Elizabeth would note that perhaps what surprised her the most was that the intelligence had been correct. So much of her life through her job at the CIA in particular had involved rumours and suspicions that never turned in to actual threats. However this was not the case in this situation, the word of the incident in the UK had come directly from her ambassador there. He had succinctly told her of a bomb in the Houses of Parliament at a time when many people; MP's, staff and civilians had been present. It was as if time stood still but also sped up. Suddenly phones were ringing all over the office, many simply reporting events in the UK and then in Germany but it was one call that panicked Elizabeth the most. The National Security Advisor reported that the State Department was definitely under threat. Upon hearing this Elizabeth and her detail then made the decision to evacuate the State department completely.
Frank, her senior agent, was in charge of getting them all out of the building but Elizabeth decided to send Frank, to get her family, they were the most important thing to her at that point. The threat that had been presented to her in the situation room had not just been against her or the other members of the cabinet but had been potentially against their families and she was taking no risks. To say the least, Frank was unhappy but Elizabeth made the point that she had a motorcade filled with agents and her family had only the man on the door. She needed to get them out. They would be taken from the house to a safe place and she would meet them there. She made the same arrangements for Jay's family, none of the others had close family at home and she wanted to give Jay the same reassurance as she was giving herself.
Her detail had just got Elizabeth and her staff into cars when there was a loud explosion that rocked the car and shook her to the core, the bright ball of flames seeming to cover the whole window of the vehicle where once her office had been.
Despite her public persona of a strong and healed woman, inside Elizabeth had not recovered completely from Iran. She was generally fine, if a little more hyper aware of her surroundings, but had not had a full panic attack complete with flash back since the first occurrence. However, with the bomb so close and the car shaking, Elizabeth was thrown into a full flash back which she had no way of controlling. She became sweaty and all she could see was the glass around her in that house shattering and the eyes of the little boy that she couldn't get to. Her breathing became laboured and she began to panic. She could feel her chest tightening and there was little she could do to stop it. As the car she was in squealed from the edge of the kerb and moved into the flow of traffic she was catapulted back to the car in Iran and it took all her effort not to start screaming or sobbing.
Blake, her constant companion lately and one of the only people apart from Henry and the therapist to know her struggle noticed the change in her. Blake looked across the car, still in shock himself at what had happened to their office, and could see that his boss was not coping and was in fact about to have a full on panic attack. He was always able to read her mood, even more since the attack in Iran when she was less able to hide when the panic struck. He knew he would have to be discreet but it was just the two of them and Nadine in the car and it would be far more important to calm the Secretary now than have to make a stop at George Washington hospital. Blake quickly leaned over the space between them and pulled her hand into his and calmly stroked his thumb over her knuckles. Although he had only witnessed her first attack, Henry McCord had been insistent that Blake learn how to cope with them. Henry had instructed him to keep her calm, orientated on something in the room where she was which would involve touching her, they had all agreed that her hand was the least embarrassing place for him to touch, rubbing her back would be a little too intimate for their relationship. He understood that he was not Henry McCord but hoped that the action would have the same effect even if he wasn't the man she would wish was there.
At the feel of the fingers touching her hand Elizabeth finally took a full breath and looked up, almost expecting to see Henry and a little confused when it was actually her assistant she saw. Despite agreeing to this action over a month ago, she had to stop herself from pulling her hand away from his and allowing the comfort that Blake was trying to give her. She looked around, her eyes wide with panic as she tried desperately to stop the pictures spinning through her mind, willing herself to be somewhere else, only to be confronted with a very scared Nadine.
Elizabeth couldn't talk but she realised that the other woman was feeling almost like she was, although Nadine had a firmer control on her heart and breathing rate. Elizabeth took the surprising step of reaching out her empty hand to grasp that of her Chief of Staff. Even in her state she could acknowledge that the simple action Blake had taken was helping her, perhaps if by holding her hand Blake could help her then she could, in turn, help Nadine. Nadine grasped the hand offered to her and smiled at both her boss and at her boss's assistant as they all realised that they needed each other.
As the car drove away they could hear the noise of the sirens around them, building more and more as the emergency services approached their position and the scene of a bomb. Elizabeth had no real idea where they were going immediately but knew that eventually her detail would ensure they were somewhere safe probably in communication with the White House Secret Service. She was almost in control of her breathing and her panic was decreasing but completely lost it again when she heard the second explosion which made her jump and finally she felt the attack fully come upon her and she began to sob.
AN: Thanks for reading, let me know what you think. More to come towards the end of the week.