DISCLAIMER: Not mine, although I would have Vinick and Santos on the show without separating Josh and Donna. John Wells, Warner Brothers, and a whole bunch of other people get the credit and the rap as well as the money.

-

Her careful, strong writing, much different now than in her days as the "Deputy Deputy White House Chief of Staff", looked stark on the aged white heart, but it said what she needed it to say. Donna folded the fractured page along the ancient crease lines and tucked it back into her pocket just as Noah, Seth's younger identical twin, knocked on the door.

"I'm sorry I don't have anything snappy to say, Mom. It's time." Noah's green eyes showed the strain of the past two weeks, the twelve days of Josh's steady decline after his stroke and the two days since his death.

"Just you being here is enough, sweetheart. Do I look okay?"

Noah stepped in and, like his brother, enveloped her in his arms. "For a woman who just lost her heart, I'd say you look pretty damned good."

Donna gave a little laugh as his words brought back a memory. "You heard your father say that to me when Jed was born."

He nodded against her cheek. "Yes, I did. And I'll bet he said it when Leah was born and again when Seth and I were born, too."

"He did, actually. Those were happier times . . ."

Again mimicking his brother, Noah kissed her hair. "Yeah, Mom, they were. But remember what Dad said the other day. He's waiting for you on the other side and he promised to wait patiently."

"You remember how hard we all laughed at that." Despite herself, Donna could feel some of her sorrow lifting a little.

"I remember that Dad was offended that we laughed, until he laughed so hard his nasal cannula fell into his mouth and he nearly choked." He shook his head. "It's a good thing that was documented or no one will believe me at school. Anyway, I know it's not exactly a common Jewish belief, but I personally am grateful that Dad will be there for you when we have to let you go a very long time from now."

Donna huffed a little to hide a sob.

Noah shook his head and kissed her hair again. "This is getting morbid even for a funeral. Are we ready to go?"

Donna squared her shoulders within his arms. "As ready as we can ever be under these circumstances."

"Okay. I love you, Mom." He let her go, then took her hand as they exited the room and began the journey to the sanctuary of the synagogue.

"I love you, too, Noah."

-

During the five weeks between "mini Tuesday" and Super Tuesday, she and Josh were in the same cities at the same time nineteen times. Fifteen of those times, they had hotel rooms on the same hallway and two others just a floor apart. Even when their hotels were across the city from each other, she got a letter, once again a series of anecdotes and insights into his personality.

And once again, on the eve of the voting, he turned to his most deeply held secrets in his missive, delivered to her room in the Hilton San Diego Resort by messenger an hour after they shared another silent, emotionally laden elevator ride.

That elevator ride set every nerve in her body humming with something she couldn't quite identify and left her unable to focus long enough to accomplish anything. She thus tore open the envelope before the door had closed behind the bellboy, not caring that the young man had gotten quite a view of her cleavage in her anxiety to know what gem of insight she might receive into the only man she had ever really loved and now loved even more than she had in the best of times.

She unfolded the paper to reveal the larger part of a ragged heart torn out of a sheet of plain white photocopy paper. Josh's handwriting filled the center of one side and she could see a couple of places where the paper had been wet enough to smear the ink. She wouldn't speculate out loud, but she wondered if Josh had been crying as he wrote.

Beloved,

At the end of the day today, we will know which of our candidates will survive to challenge Hoynes down the stretch. It won't matter to me how it ends up.

I have my candidate, my future president even if he bows out now, but I have lost something vital in the process.

I don't know how else to say this.

I'm broken, Donna. I drove my own heart away, leaving only the smallest part to beat lonely night after lonely night to sustain me.

I am incomplete because you hold the greater part of my heart in your hands.

I promised myself I would wait to say this until I could look into your beautiful blue eyes to make sure you know how serious I am, but I find that I can't wait any longer.

I love you.

I'm tired of running my life by what others might think, and you've proved yourself to the world now. There is no White House to think of right this moment, no "how will this play in Peoria" to consider. As soon as this is over for one of us, you and I are going to talk.

Yours forever for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, and not even death will part us but for a time.

Joshua

She was crying after the first word. By the time she got to the end, her tears threatened to obliterate the rest of the writing. "I love you, too," she said to the heart, and threw herself onto the bed in giddy, overwrought relief.