Hour 18
Ellie restlessly tossed and turned, before she relinquished any hope of sleep and decided to wander the residence. She had privately toured the various rooms within it, in efforts to occupy herself whenever she visited and her father was preoccupied with presidential matters, so much so that Ellie almost felt at home. As she wandered in the direction of the kitchen, she noted the dim light that beamed from the Yellow Oval Room. Her instinct drew her into the room, "Dad?" Her father was slumped haphazardly in his favoured chair and the tie she had earlier corrected for him had been loosened from his neck.
A half-empty bottle of Scotch sat on the table beside him and Jed wearily looked toward her. "Did you see Annie and Gus with your mother?" The vision of his wife and the two smaller bodies huddled in the bed had warmed his heart but it was also validation that Abbey didn't desire the comfort of his body beside hers.
Ellie nodded her head; the day had exhausted them all. "You look tired. You should try to rest." Since her parents were at odds, Ellie had taken the initiative to instil his condition at the forefront of her mind. "Dad…" He avoided her eyes wide with concern and strolled out onto the Truman Balcony, an unlit smoke in his hand. She followed him, silently stood as her father admired the Washington Monument, glowing proudly in the distance.
"Did you know it was in that room that Franklin D. Roosevelt learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor?" Jed motioned to the doorway of the room they had exited from.
She shook her head, continually astonished by the endless reel of knowledge her father had acquired and how much he depended on it. "No, but did you know that the Monument stands at 554 feet and nearly 8 inches?" She attempted to mirror him with a reference of her own. Jed smiled, his first since Zoey had been abducted. They both leaned forward on the rails of the balcony and surveyed the obelisk, which had been constructed to commemorate the first President, and stood east of the Lincoln Memorial. "Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt… they must be hard shoes to fill." Both of her parents had always seemed to thrive on pressure and expectation, very unlike herself, but Ellie had recently discovered another side to her father. Guilt had eaten away at him, as his decision to have Abdul Shareef assassinated came into play in the media and he resembled a lost child. "One bad decision doesn't counteract all the good you've done." Had he consulted with Abbey, Ellie suspected, the situation would never have escalated quite so far but hindsight had always been twenty-twenty. "I am still proud of you, dad, and mom will always love you."
Jed's eyes darkened with the threat of tears and he lowered his head. "I'm scared, Eleanor."
Her body stiffened, at three words that she had never before heard her father speak. His face became contorted, as he battled to contain the emotion, and Ellie curled her arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. "I am, too," she confessed. On the drive to St. Joseph's, just hours earlier, the motorcade had bypassed the public shrine that had been created outside the Whitehouse in Zoey's honour and the possibility of her sister's death occurred to her. She wasn't sure even the Bartlet family could come back from that.