Part 6 - Business As Usual
~~~~~
"Now if you can stand
I would like to take you by the hand
And go for a walk
Past people as they go to work.
Let's get out of this place
Before they tell us that we've just died."
~~~~~
Zoey meandered through the corridors of power without much of an idea of where she was going. She had stayed away from college since the accident: it wouldn't have been productive to go; everyone was far more interested in asking her the inside story on CJ and Toby than in learning.
Now she was staying at the White House to keep an eye on her father. As the only Bartlet sister who lived close to home, it was the unspoken rule that she was the First Lady's right-hand woman when it came to mother- henning.
Tonight however she had nothing to do. The President had all the care and attention he could take without starting a war. Charlie had received a Presidential order to go home and get a few hours sleep. Everyone else seemed to have done the same thing.
As she passed the Oval Office Zoey marvelled once again at how different the place looked without people in it. She didn't like it.
During the day she'd had Mrs. Landingham to swap home baking recipes with; Donna to run a few hastily-invented errands for; anything to keep her from thinking too hard. She paused outside Leo's office. Margaret, she reflected, Margaret had been a godsend.
Zoey flinched on seeing a tiny mark on the carpet. Blood. Just a drop - she knew well enough it wasn't bloodshed she had to be concerned about - but it was enough to remind a person of their own mortality.
Zoey sat down at Margaret's desk and wondered if her father remembered his.
* * * * *
"Yes... No – no, I cannot hold! No... Do I need to remind you again who I work for?"
It's not like me to lose my temper, it really isn't. It must just be the stress of doing half my boss's job as well as my own.
Not that I'm criticising Leo – I'd never do that. The man deserves a medal for holding up under the pressure he's putting on himself. I don't think he's been home in days.
It's just that it's not easy. It's never easy. Under optimum conditions working here is extremely challenging. With a senior staff consisting mostly of one man, it's not far off impossible.
I must say it surprised me that Josh is the one that got back on top of things so quickly. He's always been Leo's fiery, tough sidekick, the one they send in to do the posturing and fight the battles that are too dirty for the President to handle himself.
He's always been passionate and if there's one thing that has been inclined to make him lose his head it's been threats to the well-being of his friends.
He was the first to promise Leo his support when his addictions went people. Even before the President, Josh was there with his pledge to stand at Leo's side and never let him fall.
I've liked Josh a lot more since that time.
With what's happened to CJ and Toby and the toll of all he's been through himself, I would have thought now would have been an excellent time for him to fall apart.
But instead he's outdone us all. He's been working longer hours than even Leo. He's doing his job better than ever before; he's the unofficial Acting Chief of Staff when Leo is at the hospital; he's even done some of the briefings without leading to an overthrow of government, which is a minor miracle for Josh.
Leo is splitting his time between the office and the hospital, at the request of the President who can't be there for security reasons. He has to phone in a lot of work to me and he has to keep the President informed. I must guiltily admit that I'm glad he's kept that responsibility for himself and not passing it on to me.
Sam is turning up for work but he's taking breaks to go to the hospital and he obviously isn't sleeping. Josh realises that he's probably doing more good there than he would here in his current state and is covering for his absences.
I've got Ginger working on finding suitable junior staffers to edit his attempts at speeches. God bless him, diplomacy still isn't one of his strong points, but there's no stopping him trying to do five jobs for the price of one.
What's more, he's not even using work to bury his emotions. He *is* reacting, he's punching walls and yelling. I even heard him having a deep and meaningful with Charlie a couple of days after this happened.
Maybe bizarrely enough for something like to happen was what it took to get him back on his feet.
Still in spite of all his superhuman efforts one man cannot run the White House alone.
This is why great men (and women) need assistants.
Let me tell you, Carol, Bonnie and Ginger are absolutely devastated about what's happened to their bosses and it's had no small effect on Charlie, Donna and Kathy either. Or me for that matter.
But all the assistants have turned up for work early every morning since the crash and each one of us has stayed late into the night trying to fix what we can and hang a picture over what we can't.
That is why I am in the process of losing my temper and that is also why the White House is surviving this incident.
This impotent fool I'm on the phone to seems to think I have nothing better to do with my time than listen to a bad reproduction of 'Greensleeves' until someone can be bothered talking to me.
Well, I'm speaking on behalf of the President's right-hand man, I don't have to put up with this.
"You get up and you get your fat-assed boss and you tell him the President of the United States has a message for him!"
Yes, the stress is taking its toll.
I so dearly want to see CJ. She woke up almost a week ago and I still haven't been able to visit. The hospital won't let me in by the time I've been leaving work lately.
They still don't know what kind of recovery she'll make. Impossible to say, the doctors have been telling us over and over. The First Lady's going crazy but the Secret Service are saying it would risk the health of the hospital's other patients to put in place the security measures that would be necessary for her to go there.
I so want to see her, CJ I mean. I don't think she realised what it means to the rest of us to see her achieve so much. She is immediate proof that being a woman means more than 'not a man.'
We run around, chased by our male bosses and doing their bidding and we watch her on TV keeping the press corps on a leash, or see her stride past making Josh run to keep up, or listen to her throwing witty insults back at Toby and it reminds us that anything is possible.
Or at least it did. I need to see her to know if there's any possibility of all that happening again.
As for Toby, I can only pray (and I do) that the call I passed to Leo this morning was good news. He came in, took the call and was gone within two minutes. He didn't tell me anything except to not tell the President about the call and he hasn't been in contact. I don't even want to think about what it means if it isn't good news.
I gave the operator too much credit. I hang up at the first bar of 'Betty Davis Eyes'.
I took ten minutes out at lunchtime today, I know I shouldn't have with all this work piling up on my desk and Leo's, but I had to go to my favourite health food store to order a gift basket to be sent to the hospital.
The gifts the public have been sending are being donated to charity; the flowers are being handed out in the geriatric wards but I know how to address it to make sure it reaches CJ and I signed Leo's name perfectly on the card.
I suppose that seems despicably insensitive, to send someone bran muffins and vitamin pills when they've just lost the sight in one of their eyes – but I'm not brilliant like Sam or Josh or Leo, or CJ herself. I don't know how to make an appropriate gesture, especially when I haven't even seen her, so I'm just being me. It's all I can do for them now.
I'm so worried about Leo. He'd never forgive me for saying it but he isn't well enough for this kind of stress. He has two terrible diseases, drug addiction and alcoholism and I know how hard it is for him to control them on the best of days.
On days like these I get very scared.
There are several bars on the route he takes between here and the hospital but he would know better than to go to a bar where he might be seen.
If he drinks he'll do it here in the middle of the night, after he's pretended to go home so that I will leave and come back again as soon as he sees my car pull out of the parking lot.
I go into his office to have a rummage through the cabinets and drawers.
Some people would be shocked if they knew I did that but I make a point of it every time things get this bad.
I don't give a damn about civil rights and privacy; I've dedicated my life to serving this man and I'm not going to lose him like that.
I always feel much better after I've checked. Unless he's developed much better hiding places since his Labor Department days he's clean.
I always know he will be – but I have to check because too much is riding on him staying that way.
I'm considering calling Mallory to come and look after him but I don't want him to think I think he can't cope.
I've never quite forgiven Jenny for giving up on him. He needed her support more than he will ever admit and although I've tried to compensate for it since she's been gone I am no substitute.
I just think Mallory's being there could make it a little easier for him.
Back at my desk Zoey Bartlet is standing looking lost.
Oh dear. I really do have too much to do to babysit as well.
"I just wondered if Leo had a minute for a talk."
"I'm sorry, he's... out just now. Do you need to get a message to him?"
"No." She looks so forlorn. "I was just feeling lonely."
I suppose I really should keep her out of trouble.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that entertaining a depressed teenage girl is no easy task, particularly when the girl in question is the President's daughter.
She does however come in handy for sealing envelopes and updating me on all the celebrity gossip I miss out on because I'm too busy helping run the country.
I think all the poor kid wants is to talk to someone, any subject will do. I suppose no-one has a lot of time for her amongst all the craziness.
Oh darn, now her father's appeared. I've been steering well clear of the President since the accident as his wrath is something I can quite well do without.
He's as twitchy as Toby at a party – Leo's unreadable expression as he left this morning crosses my mind and I immediately feel guilty about thinking of Toby in that light.
The President is hyper though. He doesn't seem to be able to keep still.
"Daddy, you should be resting. Does Mom know you're down here?"
"I gave your mother the slip, Zoey, and given the amount of times you and I have collaborated on that you have no right to lecture me."
"We're worried about you, Daddy."
I consider slipping away before I get drawn into this conversation.
"I'm fine."
I'm backing up towards the door. Neither of them seems to notice.
"You haven't been looking well the last few days."
Made it! I'm out of their field of vision, I can run...
"I'm fi-"
I hear a thud and Zoey scream and fly back in. The President is on the floor; he seems to be unconscious.
Hysterical aides come running when they hear the screams and stand flapping their hands wildly and getting in the way of the Secret Service agents.
I'm on the carpet beside him.
"His pulse feels okay," I inform anyone who happens to be listening.
"You," I say imperiously, pointing at one of the secretaries. "Get the First Lady right now. Nancy – get Charlie, ask if he knows if the President took his pills today. Mr. President? Mr. President, can you hear me?"
I see his eyelids flicker just before the SS agents push me out of the way and take over.
I give Zoey a hug and tell her he's going to be fine. She responds but and I make comforting noises but I'm not really listening. I'm just trying to think of ways to keep this from Leo for as long as possible. It won't be very long, but I can't bear to let him worry about this too.
It's barely a minute before the President and Zoey have been cleared out and I've been left behind wondering how to pick up the pieces this time.
I start by reaching for the phone and dialling Mallory's number.
TBC
~~~~~
"Now if you can stand
I would like to take you by the hand
And go for a walk
Past people as they go to work.
Let's get out of this place
Before they tell us that we've just died."
~~~~~
Zoey meandered through the corridors of power without much of an idea of where she was going. She had stayed away from college since the accident: it wouldn't have been productive to go; everyone was far more interested in asking her the inside story on CJ and Toby than in learning.
Now she was staying at the White House to keep an eye on her father. As the only Bartlet sister who lived close to home, it was the unspoken rule that she was the First Lady's right-hand woman when it came to mother- henning.
Tonight however she had nothing to do. The President had all the care and attention he could take without starting a war. Charlie had received a Presidential order to go home and get a few hours sleep. Everyone else seemed to have done the same thing.
As she passed the Oval Office Zoey marvelled once again at how different the place looked without people in it. She didn't like it.
During the day she'd had Mrs. Landingham to swap home baking recipes with; Donna to run a few hastily-invented errands for; anything to keep her from thinking too hard. She paused outside Leo's office. Margaret, she reflected, Margaret had been a godsend.
Zoey flinched on seeing a tiny mark on the carpet. Blood. Just a drop - she knew well enough it wasn't bloodshed she had to be concerned about - but it was enough to remind a person of their own mortality.
Zoey sat down at Margaret's desk and wondered if her father remembered his.
* * * * *
"Yes... No – no, I cannot hold! No... Do I need to remind you again who I work for?"
It's not like me to lose my temper, it really isn't. It must just be the stress of doing half my boss's job as well as my own.
Not that I'm criticising Leo – I'd never do that. The man deserves a medal for holding up under the pressure he's putting on himself. I don't think he's been home in days.
It's just that it's not easy. It's never easy. Under optimum conditions working here is extremely challenging. With a senior staff consisting mostly of one man, it's not far off impossible.
I must say it surprised me that Josh is the one that got back on top of things so quickly. He's always been Leo's fiery, tough sidekick, the one they send in to do the posturing and fight the battles that are too dirty for the President to handle himself.
He's always been passionate and if there's one thing that has been inclined to make him lose his head it's been threats to the well-being of his friends.
He was the first to promise Leo his support when his addictions went people. Even before the President, Josh was there with his pledge to stand at Leo's side and never let him fall.
I've liked Josh a lot more since that time.
With what's happened to CJ and Toby and the toll of all he's been through himself, I would have thought now would have been an excellent time for him to fall apart.
But instead he's outdone us all. He's been working longer hours than even Leo. He's doing his job better than ever before; he's the unofficial Acting Chief of Staff when Leo is at the hospital; he's even done some of the briefings without leading to an overthrow of government, which is a minor miracle for Josh.
Leo is splitting his time between the office and the hospital, at the request of the President who can't be there for security reasons. He has to phone in a lot of work to me and he has to keep the President informed. I must guiltily admit that I'm glad he's kept that responsibility for himself and not passing it on to me.
Sam is turning up for work but he's taking breaks to go to the hospital and he obviously isn't sleeping. Josh realises that he's probably doing more good there than he would here in his current state and is covering for his absences.
I've got Ginger working on finding suitable junior staffers to edit his attempts at speeches. God bless him, diplomacy still isn't one of his strong points, but there's no stopping him trying to do five jobs for the price of one.
What's more, he's not even using work to bury his emotions. He *is* reacting, he's punching walls and yelling. I even heard him having a deep and meaningful with Charlie a couple of days after this happened.
Maybe bizarrely enough for something like to happen was what it took to get him back on his feet.
Still in spite of all his superhuman efforts one man cannot run the White House alone.
This is why great men (and women) need assistants.
Let me tell you, Carol, Bonnie and Ginger are absolutely devastated about what's happened to their bosses and it's had no small effect on Charlie, Donna and Kathy either. Or me for that matter.
But all the assistants have turned up for work early every morning since the crash and each one of us has stayed late into the night trying to fix what we can and hang a picture over what we can't.
That is why I am in the process of losing my temper and that is also why the White House is surviving this incident.
This impotent fool I'm on the phone to seems to think I have nothing better to do with my time than listen to a bad reproduction of 'Greensleeves' until someone can be bothered talking to me.
Well, I'm speaking on behalf of the President's right-hand man, I don't have to put up with this.
"You get up and you get your fat-assed boss and you tell him the President of the United States has a message for him!"
Yes, the stress is taking its toll.
I so dearly want to see CJ. She woke up almost a week ago and I still haven't been able to visit. The hospital won't let me in by the time I've been leaving work lately.
They still don't know what kind of recovery she'll make. Impossible to say, the doctors have been telling us over and over. The First Lady's going crazy but the Secret Service are saying it would risk the health of the hospital's other patients to put in place the security measures that would be necessary for her to go there.
I so want to see her, CJ I mean. I don't think she realised what it means to the rest of us to see her achieve so much. She is immediate proof that being a woman means more than 'not a man.'
We run around, chased by our male bosses and doing their bidding and we watch her on TV keeping the press corps on a leash, or see her stride past making Josh run to keep up, or listen to her throwing witty insults back at Toby and it reminds us that anything is possible.
Or at least it did. I need to see her to know if there's any possibility of all that happening again.
As for Toby, I can only pray (and I do) that the call I passed to Leo this morning was good news. He came in, took the call and was gone within two minutes. He didn't tell me anything except to not tell the President about the call and he hasn't been in contact. I don't even want to think about what it means if it isn't good news.
I gave the operator too much credit. I hang up at the first bar of 'Betty Davis Eyes'.
I took ten minutes out at lunchtime today, I know I shouldn't have with all this work piling up on my desk and Leo's, but I had to go to my favourite health food store to order a gift basket to be sent to the hospital.
The gifts the public have been sending are being donated to charity; the flowers are being handed out in the geriatric wards but I know how to address it to make sure it reaches CJ and I signed Leo's name perfectly on the card.
I suppose that seems despicably insensitive, to send someone bran muffins and vitamin pills when they've just lost the sight in one of their eyes – but I'm not brilliant like Sam or Josh or Leo, or CJ herself. I don't know how to make an appropriate gesture, especially when I haven't even seen her, so I'm just being me. It's all I can do for them now.
I'm so worried about Leo. He'd never forgive me for saying it but he isn't well enough for this kind of stress. He has two terrible diseases, drug addiction and alcoholism and I know how hard it is for him to control them on the best of days.
On days like these I get very scared.
There are several bars on the route he takes between here and the hospital but he would know better than to go to a bar where he might be seen.
If he drinks he'll do it here in the middle of the night, after he's pretended to go home so that I will leave and come back again as soon as he sees my car pull out of the parking lot.
I go into his office to have a rummage through the cabinets and drawers.
Some people would be shocked if they knew I did that but I make a point of it every time things get this bad.
I don't give a damn about civil rights and privacy; I've dedicated my life to serving this man and I'm not going to lose him like that.
I always feel much better after I've checked. Unless he's developed much better hiding places since his Labor Department days he's clean.
I always know he will be – but I have to check because too much is riding on him staying that way.
I'm considering calling Mallory to come and look after him but I don't want him to think I think he can't cope.
I've never quite forgiven Jenny for giving up on him. He needed her support more than he will ever admit and although I've tried to compensate for it since she's been gone I am no substitute.
I just think Mallory's being there could make it a little easier for him.
Back at my desk Zoey Bartlet is standing looking lost.
Oh dear. I really do have too much to do to babysit as well.
"I just wondered if Leo had a minute for a talk."
"I'm sorry, he's... out just now. Do you need to get a message to him?"
"No." She looks so forlorn. "I was just feeling lonely."
I suppose I really should keep her out of trouble.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that entertaining a depressed teenage girl is no easy task, particularly when the girl in question is the President's daughter.
She does however come in handy for sealing envelopes and updating me on all the celebrity gossip I miss out on because I'm too busy helping run the country.
I think all the poor kid wants is to talk to someone, any subject will do. I suppose no-one has a lot of time for her amongst all the craziness.
Oh darn, now her father's appeared. I've been steering well clear of the President since the accident as his wrath is something I can quite well do without.
He's as twitchy as Toby at a party – Leo's unreadable expression as he left this morning crosses my mind and I immediately feel guilty about thinking of Toby in that light.
The President is hyper though. He doesn't seem to be able to keep still.
"Daddy, you should be resting. Does Mom know you're down here?"
"I gave your mother the slip, Zoey, and given the amount of times you and I have collaborated on that you have no right to lecture me."
"We're worried about you, Daddy."
I consider slipping away before I get drawn into this conversation.
"I'm fine."
I'm backing up towards the door. Neither of them seems to notice.
"You haven't been looking well the last few days."
Made it! I'm out of their field of vision, I can run...
"I'm fi-"
I hear a thud and Zoey scream and fly back in. The President is on the floor; he seems to be unconscious.
Hysterical aides come running when they hear the screams and stand flapping their hands wildly and getting in the way of the Secret Service agents.
I'm on the carpet beside him.
"His pulse feels okay," I inform anyone who happens to be listening.
"You," I say imperiously, pointing at one of the secretaries. "Get the First Lady right now. Nancy – get Charlie, ask if he knows if the President took his pills today. Mr. President? Mr. President, can you hear me?"
I see his eyelids flicker just before the SS agents push me out of the way and take over.
I give Zoey a hug and tell her he's going to be fine. She responds but and I make comforting noises but I'm not really listening. I'm just trying to think of ways to keep this from Leo for as long as possible. It won't be very long, but I can't bear to let him worry about this too.
It's barely a minute before the President and Zoey have been cleared out and I've been left behind wondering how to pick up the pieces this time.
I start by reaching for the phone and dialling Mallory's number.
TBC