It was after one in the morning when Josh finally dragged himself up the steps to the apartment and let himself in. He was surprised to find a light on, and Donna curled up on the couch, the coffee-table in front of her covered with papers. She opened her eyes when he came in, and he saw that they were red and swollen, and her face splotchy, as if she had been crying. He felt his chest constrict, as if someone had suddenly started to tighten an iron band around it so he couldn't breathe properly.

"Donna?" he said, dropping his backpack onto the floor. "Why are you still up? What's the matter?"

"Oh, Josh," she said plaintively, sitting up. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course I am," he said, bemusedly. "Pretty tired, but it's all over now, and the world hasn't come to an end and probably won't for a while yet—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" she burst out. "Oh Josh, why didn't you tell me?"

The iron band tightened a little more.

"I'm sorry I couldn't call, Donna!" He was still standing in the door, watching her with something like desperation in his eyes. "It's been just crazy. But Margaret should have—"

"Not that," she said, waving a hand in the air as if to brush aside Kazakhstan and the Sit Room and Josh's four nights and five days away from home as insignificant trivialities. "Not that!"

"Then—what?"

Her lower lip trembled.

"That you—that you—oh, Josh!"

She got up suddenly and ran towards him, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his neck. He closed his arms around her automatically and held her to him tightly, swaying a little with exhaustion as he did.

"Shhh," he said, softly. "Shhh, Donna, shhhh."

"Oh, Josh," she said again, into his neck. "Oh, Josh."

"What's the matter, Donna? What's wrong?"

"You . . . you . . ." She couldn't get the words out. He pushed her gently towards the sofa and sank into it beside her, rubbing a hand over his face to try to wipe the tiredness away.

"I'm sorry I haven't been home, Donna! I hated being away from you for so long, but we knew this would happen sometimes. And I'm sorry I haven't been able to call. I wanted to, but there just hasn't been a minute; every time I took my cell phone out, someone would grab me for something. But I told Margaret to keep you posted—she did, didn't she?"

"Not at first," Donna said.

"You're kidding!"

"It's all right. Teddy was sick, and her sister was away until today; she had to go on leave, and Darlene forgot, I guess, or didn't understand. But it's okay. I knew something big was happening—the whole building knew that—and that was why I hadn't heard from you."

"Damn it, I've told Margaret always to let you know if I can't get away. The others are supposed to know that, too. I'm sorry, Donna—"

"It's all right, Josh. Don't be angry with her, please. It wasn't her fault."

"But what's wrong, then? You seemed upset about something just now."

"I was," she said. "I am."

Josh took a deep breath, and dropped his eyes dropped to the floor.

"What did I do?" he asked, roughly. "I mean, what else did I do, besides that?"

"You didn't do anything," Donna said. "But—oh, Josh! You haven't been well. And you never told me. I didn't realize, I didn't know, so I haven't been helping, I haven't been doing anything—oh Josh, why didn't you tell me you haven't been feeling well?"

He glanced up at her for a moment, and then away.

"I haven't been sick, Donna," he said, rubbing a hand over his face again. "I'm fine. Pretty tired, after the last few days, but otherwise I'm fine."

"You're not. You know you're not. You've been having headaches, bad ones. And chest pains—chest pains, Josh! Margaret said—"

"Margaret said?" Josh ground out. "She's not supposed to—"

He stood up abruptly and walked across the room to the window, the need to move suddenly much greater than the exhaustion he'd been feeling just moments ago.

"Damn it!" he said, slapping his hand against the window-frame, "Can't anyone in that place do anything I ask them to?"

Donna winced. She hadn't meant to break Margaret's confidence. But it was too late to go back now.

"Please don't be angry, Josh. She didn't have any choice—you'd run out of your medications there, and she couldn't leave the office to get them, things were so busy, so she called me—"

"She's not supposed to call you!"

"I thought you said she was supposed to call me any time you couldn't make it home?"

"For that!" Josh turned around, gripping the window-frame as if for support. "For that! To let you know when I can't be home for dinner, so you won't have to wait for me! Not for other things. It's her job to take care of all that stuff; she's not supposed to bother you with it, she knows that!"

"Josh—"

"I'm sorry, Donna! I'm sorry! She shouldn't have done that. I've told her not to do that; I'll talk to her tomorrow and make sure it doesn't happen again."

"Josh, what are you talking about? Of course she should have called me. Why ever not?"

"You know why not, Donna. You're busy. You have more important things to worry about; I promised you I wouldn't bother you with things like that anymore—"

"You were sick,, Josh! You think I don't want to know about that?"

"I wasn't sick, Donna! It was nothing, it's not important—"

"It wasn't nothing! Margaret said you had to leave the Sit Room. She said you were doubled over; you couldn't breathe. . . ."

"I could breathe. I just had to take a few minutes—"

"You needed your medication."

"It helps, but I don't need it. I don't even want it. I hate the damn stuff, I just—"

"I know you do. I know you hate it. I thought you'd gone off it years ago, Josh—why did you have to start up again? And why didn't you tell me?"

He leaned against the window-frame. His face was pale, and he was breathing hard.

"Donna, don't make a thing out of this. I'm not sick. It's not that big a deal; it's not going to kill me; it's just—just—you know what it is."

"The PTSD?"

He hesitated, nodded briefly, and looked away.

"A flashback?"

He bit his lip, and hesitated again before answering.

"No. Not—like what you're thinking, Donna; not like before. I know where I am; I've got it under control. I'm not going to freak out and do anything I shouldn't. There's nothing to worry about; it's no big deal."

"Margaret said you'd had attacks like this before. Since she's been working for you."

"It's not a big deal."

"She said you warned her about it, on her first day. So you'd done this before. Recently enough that you thought you might do it again, not just years ago."

He shrugged.

"A couple of times. It's nothing."

"Did you see a doctor, Josh? Are you sure you're not—not—" She couldn't finish.

"Going to have a heart attack? I'm fine, Donna, I told you. Yes, I've seen a doctor about it. It's just a reaction to stress. It's nothing to worry about."

"But that kind of reaction to stress has to be bad for you! And you're in pain. When it happens, you're in pain."

Donna's voice was distressed. She couldn't bear the idea of Josh being in pain. It had been so terrible to watch, after Rosslyn. . . .

"It doesn't matter." He was pacing across the room now. "It's not real. And the medication helps."

"When you have it. You'd run out."

"I'm sorry! You shouldn't have had to go for it. I'll make sure you don't ever have to again."

"That's okay, Josh; I didn't mind that. Of course I didn't mind it. Why would you ever think I would mind?"

Josh ran his hand through his hair, and dropped onto the couch again, shaking his head and looking completely bemused.

"Why, Josh? Tell me—why?"

"You said—" he started, huskily. "I thought—you didn't want to bother with things like that anymore."

Donna stared at him, wide-eyed with disbelief.

"Why, Josh? I said something? What did I say? When?"

"That last night in Barbados. You know. You said you didn't want me to treat you like my assistant anymore."

Donna swallowed, hard.

"You thought I meant—about things like this?"

"I thought you meant about everything. You said so. You said you'd gotten sick of having to look after me; you didn't want to be my assistant any more at all. I promised I wouldn't do that to you any more. And I've tried to keep that promise, Donna, I really have. I told Margaret not to bother you with anything for me. That's her job; you have a more important job now—"

"Oh, Josh," Donna said, swallowing another lump and trying to keep from crying. "I didn't mean—I never thought—and anyway, Margaret doesn't do it right. She let your prescriptions run down, Josh; she should be keeping track, making sure you've always got enough on hand—"

A hint of a smile crossed Josh's face.

"Of course she's not as good at it as you were, Donna," he said, softly. "Nobody could be as good at looking after me as you were. But she's not that bad, you know; today was my fault, really. She's been asking me for months to bring in my prescriptions, and I keep forgetting. And then I ran out."

Donna sniffed.

"Of course you forgot," she said. "You've got too many other things to worry about every day, and you never do take the time to think about yourself. That's why you need someone to—oh, Josh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry I made you think I didn't want to do anything to help you. I never meant that. I meant—I don't know what I meant, really, what I was afraid of. Just—that you wouldn't take me seriously, I guess. I was afraid of that."

"Of course I take you seriously, Donna!" Josh said, startled. He wasn't smiling anymore. "Why would you doubt that?"

"I was your secretary, Josh!"

"My secretary?Donna, you were never my secretary. You were always my assistant, always, right from the start."

"It's a pretty title for the same thing, Josh."

"Donna, how can you say that?"

"I answered your telephones. I did your filing. I kept your schedule—that's what a secretary does."

"You did those things because that's part of what a White House assistant has to do, Donna, but you did so much more than that. You researched issues for me all the time. You—I can't believe you don't know how much more you were to me than just a secretary. You were like my partner, damn it! My junior partner, maybe, but not just my secretary; never just that. We worked together. I always thought we were working together. For Leo. For the administration. For the President."

Donna thought she was going to cry again.

"Oh, Josh," she said. "How can you say that? I know you let me do some research for you, and I'm grateful for that, I learned a lot from it, I really did. But I had to work so hard to prove myself to you. You couldn't believe Will had given me a real job; you thought he was just using me to get at you. Make-work, you said—you thought he'd given me make-work. You didn't want to hire me when I came to you for a job after the convention. You were furious when Lou did."

"Oh, God, Donna," Josh cried, his voice agonized. "I'm sorry I said those things; I'm sorry. I was angry that you'd left like that. I was—it bothered me, a lot. And—I couldn't deal with having you come back like that, and having to be with you all the time, and wondering why you'd done it and when you were going to leave again. I—"

"I left so I could get a better job, Josh!" Donna said, not entirely truthfully.

"But—like that? You didn't tell me. You didn't give notice, or anything. You just—left. After all those years, you just left. You didn't let me do anything, to try to stop you or to help you or—or anything."

The iron band around his chest seemed to have pulled tighter; he was almost panting with the effort to breathe. Donna didn't notice; the anger that had been simmering deep down in her all this time suddenly bubbled to the surface, flooding every other thought away in the heat of the moment.

"I tried to! I asked you to have lunch with me seven times, Josh! You kept canceling. You couldn't have found a clearer way to say, 'You don't matter, Donna,' if you'd thought about it for months beforehand!"

"I'm sorry!" he said wildly. "I'm sorry! I screwed up. I know I screwed that up; I screwed everything up. But it wasn't because you didn't matter, Donna! Of course you mattered! You—you—"

And then the pain came. It knocked what breath was left out of him. He put a hand to his chest involuntarily, and bent over, gasping. Donna's eyes flew wide.

"Josh! Josh—what's wrong? What—?" Then she realized. She started to run towards the bathroom for what was left of his medications, but stopped, realizing he must have already had all he could of them that day.

"Can you take anything?" she asked, hoping she was wrong.

Josh shook his head, still unable to speak. His face grimaced in pain. He was still holding his chest—not low and on the side, where the bullet had hit him, but higher up. Where his heart was, Donna thought, panicking.

"I'll call 911," she said, desperately, but he shook his head so violently that she thought he was going to make himself pass out.

"'S'all right," he gasped. "I'll be—all right—in a minute."

Not knowing what else to do, she sat down again beside him and rubbed his back.

"Sorry," he said, still breathlessly.

"It's all right, Josh. It's all right. I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to make you upset. All that stuff doesn't matter any more, Josh; it really doesn't matter any more at all."

After a few minutes his breathing grew quieter. He leaned back against the sofa cushions, his face white and beaded with sweat, and closed his eyes. Donna couldn't rub his back any more, so she took his hand in hers and squeezed it. He turned his over so he could squeeze back. His grip was fainter than usual. She felt another spurt of fear.

"Josh," she said, hesitantly, after a minute. "You've got to see someone about this. This isn't right."

"I have," he said, without opening his eyes. "I told you. I have."

"What did they say?"

"That I have a stress disorder."

"That's all?"

"More or less."

"You can't keep going in this job if stress makes you do this, Josh. You've got to find a better way to handle it, or you're going to have to quit."

"I can handle the job, Donna. The job doesn't—it's not the problem, I—I don't do this that often. And not on the job; it's never been like this on the job before today. I'm just tired. It's been a hell of a few days."

Donna thought for a minute. Then she said, quietly,

"Josh, you haven't been going to therapy for this, have you?"

"Donna—"

"You haven't, have you?"

"No," he said, sounding very tired. "No, I haven't."

"Why not, Josh? It could help, couldn't it? The attacks might not be so bad if you were doing it. You had good people to go to; it helped you before."

"I haven't had time."

"You need to make the time, Josh."

"Right," he said, wearily. "How, Donna? Out of what? This job takes every waking minute when I'm not with you, you know that. And we need time together. When I don't absolutely have to be somewhere else, I need to be here with you. That's what you said you wanted, and it's what I want, too."

"I didn't mean every second, Josh! Of course, if you need time to go to therapy—"

"I don't need it, Donna! I told you, I'm fine, I've got this under control. I know what they'll tell me, anyway; I know what I'm supposed to be doing to deal with this. I've done it before."

"I thought it had stopped."

"It did, for a while. Then it started up again. But it's different this time; I don't lose track of where I am or what's going on; I don't lose control and do things I shouldn't. I don't need to go back to Keyworth's guys and get them to tell me all the same stuff all over again."

"They might—" Her voice faltered. "Wouldn't you be able—to talk—about what's—really causing this? What the real problem is?"

"The real problem? Donna, I have PTSD; I process stress differently than other people do; that's the real problem. I've seen therapists about it; they've told me how to deal with it; I'm doing those things, as well as I possibly can. There's nothing more they can tell me. It's not worth going back to be told the same things all over again, even if I had time—"

"But you're having these attacks!"

"I have a stressful job, Donna. I have a stressful life. There's nothing I can do about that except deal with it, which is what I've been doing. It's fine—"

"But—" Donna wrinkled her forehead. There had to be some way to make things better; Josh couldn't just go on like this. The medications alone obviously weren't enough.

"Donna, trust me, it would just be a waste of time. And money. Do you have any idea how much Keyworth and his pals cost? My insurance doesn't even begin to cover it."

"That doesn't matter. Not if it would help."

"Of course it matters! I—"

And he stopped, and swallowed.

"Why, Josh? Why does it matter?" Donna asked, surprised. Josh had never worried much about money, as far as she knew. His government salary had never been particularly large, but he wasn't a big spender, and his father had left him something, she knew, though she had no idea how much. She'd only looked at his check registers and credit card statements that evening when she'd been trying to find out whether he'd been going to therapy or not; she hadn't touched his tax records, or the ones from his savings accounts or investments.

He sat up a little, and started fidgeting with the binding around the edge of a sofa cushion.

"I—" he started again, and swallowed.

"Why, Josh?"

"I—"

"Josh! What's the matter?"

He ran his hands through his hair, and bent over again, not looking at her.

"I'm sorry, Donna. I guess I should have told you this before, but—"

"But what, Josh?"

He swallowed again.

"I—you know Matt didn't have much money for the campaign at first. I took a pretty big salary cut to work on it. But I still had this place to keep up, and expenses—the travel was pretty steep for a while there, until we got the nomination. After that I took expenses, but . . . well . . ."

"You didn't increase your salary?" Donna was stunned.

He looked embarrassed.

"I couldn't, Donna. We needed every penny for the campaign. I was having to make the most ridiculous calls on ad buys; we almost lost Illinois because there wasn't enough to do everything we needed. I—"

"Josh," Donna said, almost sternly. "What were you getting?"

He scuffed at the carpet with his shoe.

"I, um . . ."

"Josh!"

"I—nothing, basically."

"Nothing!"

"You can't contribute more than a thousand in cash to a campaign, but you can donate your time."

"So you donated yours?"

"I wanted us to win, Donna. I really, really wanted us to win."

Donna stared at him for a moment, stunned.

"How much—did it cost you?"

"A couple of hundred."

"Thousand?"

"Yeah. The travel, hotels. . . ."

"Josh!"

"I know," he sighed. "But I didn't know what else to do. We needed every dollar we could get. I figured I'd make it up later. It didn't clean me out—I've still got some investments, and the apartment, of course. And my salary, though that's not much more than I was making before. We'll be all right in the long run; I'll have plenty of opportunities after we leave the White House; I should be able to make some real money then. And we're all right now. But we're not going to go on being all right unless I can save some money. You're not going to want to stay in this apartment; it's too small, I know that; you're going to want a house. You should have a house. I'd like to get us a nice one, but you know what that means: we'll get a good price for the condo, but it won't even begin to cover the cost of a house in a decent neighborhood—"

"Josh!" Donna said again, sounding as stunned as she felt.

He didn't seem to notice, but just kept talking as if she hadn't said anything.

"And it's got to be a decent neighborhood, Donna! Even if we could afford a place around here, this isn't where we'll want to be. You know what the District schools are like, even here; we'd have to go private, and that's another twenty or thirty thousand a year, at least. And there aren't any parks or places to play outside, or that many kids to play with. We should probably look at Bethesda or Chevy Chase, where we can still get downtown fairly easily but there's some green stuff around the houses and the schools are pretty good. Though even then, I'm not sure they'll be good enough—"

Donna's mouth was hanging open now.

"But Bethesda's through the roof now, you know that, and Chevy Chase is worse. And before that—there's the ring, I want to be able to get you a really nice one. And the wedding—your parents shouldn't have to pay for that. And the honeymoon. That trip in November cost plenty, and a honeymoon should be nicer than that. I want it to be the best—"

"Josh?" It came out as a strangled squeak. "A wedding? Honeymoon? Schools?"

He stared at her, startled, as if he hadn't really realized that he'd been talking out loud.

"I—" he said again, and flushed to the roots of his hair. "I mean—if—you—decide—you want. . . ." His voice trailed away.

Donna's face was as scarlet as his.

"We haven't—you haven't ever—I didn't know you wanted—"

He bit his lip, which was trembling, but met her eyes steadily.

"Of course I want," he said, huskily. "Of course I want to marry you. I know you wanted time to decide how things were going, and I wasn't assuming anything, just trying to make sure we'd have what we'd need, if things work out and you say yes—"

She never knew later whether she leaned towards him first, or he leaned towards her, but somehow their lips met. After that neither of them could say anything else for a very long time.

"Does that mean yes?" he asked, a little shakily, when they both came up for air.

"Of course it does," she answered, her voice shaking too.

He pulled her to him and kissed her again. And again. And again. And again. . . .