A Frightened Peace
By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew
Part 7/12
"Leg." McGarry was equally succinct, battered by the intense emotions this new crisis had engendered.
Butterfield seized the flashlight and directed its beam into the narrow gap between the girder and the President's body. The wind's howling seemed to increase its derision and the creaking of torn metal added a counterpoint that almost drowned out the sound of the agent's hissed intake of breath.
"What's happening?" McGarry supported his friend's head, reaching his hand around to press the palm against the President's forehead in a hopeless attempt at comfort. The fingers of his other hand were being crushed between Bartlet's own as the man tried to ride out another wave of agony.
Butterfield sank back and rested his hand supportively on his charge's shoulder, squeezing lightly in empathy. He briefly met the President's pain-glazed eyes in mute sympathy and apology for his inability to do his job and protect this man from harm. He was rewarded with a faint smile of understanding before the President's eyes once again slid closed and he seemed to deflate, panting and exhausted.
Butterfield looked up to meet a gaze of helpless entreaty that mirrored his own emotions. His expression darkened further and he said, "Wind and rain are giving us another problem besides merely delaying rescue. Add in mud and torn up trees, a position on a steep mountain ridge and it doesn't give us anything good." He waited for realization to dawn in the other man's eyes, and nodded curtly. "The wreck is shifting."
McGarry shook his head in numbed disbelief. This was just too much. Maybe the President really had been right about a divine Providence being out to get him. Events certainly seemed to be stacking up that way. "And when the wreckage moves…"
"…the spar is moving around in the wound, tearing it up." Butterfield finished the thought. "Mr. McGarry, it is further aggravating his injury, to say nothing of being painful beyond belief. Add in the fact that we have a dangerous drop below the wreck site…"
McGarry's head snapped up, giving the agent an incredulous look. "A drop? You've seen this?"
"No, sir. But…"
"Then how…"
"Leave him be, Leo," a weak though still forceful voice grated out. Bartlet swallowed, then managed to offer with a hint of sarcastic humor. "He's learning his lessons."
McGarry blinked. "Sir?"
"What else would there be below the wreck?"
"What else," McGarry sighed. The logic, however twisted, was inescapable. Despite his fears, he felt an awful joy at those words. If Bartlet could still manage to point out the ridiculous, then all wasn't completely lost. "Good point, Mr. President."
Butterfield's logic hadn't been quite that attuned to the unreasonable demands of fickle and spiteful fate, but rather to his last view of the ridge before they went down. But still, either point had been well made, if the one was being somewhat paranoid. What else could they have expected?
He wondered briefly if that sort of thinking was contagious, before calmly pointing out the inevitable. "Mr. President, Mr. McGarry, we may not have the luxury of waiting here for rescue."
That statement's meaning wasn't lost on McGarry, or the implications. "You mean, just pull him out?" He shook his head in protest. "That's insane! What if we can't stop the bleeding? And do you know how much that's going to hurt him?"
As if to underscore the irony of that concern the wreck shifted again and Bartlet suddenly let out another sharp cry, twisting helplessly under McGarry's hands. The Chief of Staff watched as Butterfield added his support and tried to hold the President still. Dreadfully aware that it made little difference, he gave what small comfort he could, praying it would end quickly. Finally, and to his unspoken relief, he felt the man relax slightly, a sheen of perspiration breaking out anew on his pale features.
Bartlet licked dry lips and forced his eyes open to meet the worried gaze of the two men leaning over him, whose features evinced their own peculiar brand of agony. He smiled unconvincingly and said, "Things just keep getting more and more interesting, don't they Leo?"
The wreckage creaked again, and Bartlet tensed, drawing in his breath with a hiss in anticipation of yet another session of that hideous tearing, burning sensation. He relaxed slightly when this time it did not materialize. "So…what's next? Are you…" he closed his eyes and swallowed painfully at the prospect, "…going to haul me out of here?" He smiled faintly up at his Chief of Staff. "You know…I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm not sure I exactly relish the idea, even for the prospect of getting out of this box."
"It's just a last resort, Mr. President." Butterfield spoke reassuringly; amazed that even now the man could find something to joke about. "Hopefully, the debris will stop moving and we can wait for the professionals to do it properly, and more comfortably for you."
"But you're afraid that may not be possible."
It was a statement, not a question. Bartlet watched as both men exchanged troubled glances, blinking slowly and unable to offer any kind of hopeful rebuttal. The President's mouth curled wryly at the somewhat comic sight. "No positive thoughts? Oh, fellas! And after this truly impressive streak of luck we've been enjoying so far?"
McGarry regarded the trapped man with a touch of incredulity. He would never, never be fully prepared for the odd ways and times Josiah Bartlet's sense of humor chose to manifest itself. Still, he gladly seized on the momentary lessening of tension to offer his friend a genuine smile and a squeeze to the hand that had finally relaxed enough to release its crushing hold on his fingers.
Suddenly, the wind rose to a positive howl and the whole wreck creaked ominously. All three men tensed in agonized anticipation.
McGarry gasped in shock as he felt the entire cabin jerk and move slightly, before coming again to rest.
His attention was wrenched back to his immediate surroundings by the screeching, groaning sound of shifting metal, followed by a cry of helpless rage from Butterfield and a frightened gasp of pain from Bartlet.
McGarry saw to his horror that the debris on which the girder had been resting its full weight had moved and slid, causing the heavy metal bar to come down against the President's chest. Bartlet was breathing in short gasping pants, restricted by the weight bearing down on him, and his eyes were wide with unshielded fear.
Butterfield had his hands under the bar and was struggling valiantly to lift some of its weight off the man beneath. McGarry flung himself forward to join efforts with the agent, but it was like trying to hold back an entire mountain face.
The two men struggled in frantic silence, aware of the increasingly desperate and shallow breathing of the man at their feet, whose free hand pushed hopelessly at the weight pinning him down.
"Ron!" McGarry blinked some of the perspiration from his eyes. The moisture felt cold on his skin. "What can we do? He'll be crushed!"
Butterfield's lips were drawn back from his teeth in rage and physical effort. He snatched a second to shake his head in despair.
No! The word screamed inside McGarry's disbelieving mind. He looked down at his friend. Bartlet's respiration was growing ever more painful and strained. His eyes were slits, and his hand now simply rested on the girder, bracing against it as if somehow attempting to banish its reality.
McGarry glanced up in terror as he felt the cabin shudder and jerk again. He forced himself to look back down, sickly certain that he would see the girder had settled even further, crushing his friend's chest.
Instead, he found himself gaping stupefied at the sight before him. Somehow, with the second shift, something in the tangled mass before him must have weighed down on one end of the girder, see-sawing it up into the air. It still partly pressed down on Bartlet's side, but was now clear of his chest and torso.
"Hurry!" Butterfield had dropped down to a crouch and slid his hand under the President's arm. "Before it moves again!"
McGarry seized the man's other arm, but felt impelled to voice an objection. "But…his leg."
"The lesser of two evils! If that girder comes down on him again, we won't have to worry about the leg. Now, move!" Butterfield was at his most pragmatic, focused on removing his charge from the greater danger.
Following the agent's lead, McGarry gritted his teeth and hauled back on the President's arm. He heard Bartlet give out a bellowing cry of agony, then his head fell back and he went limp in McGarry's hands.
Both men hauled him backwards frantically, finally clearing his body of the beam. They dragged him back towards the entrance and Butterfield slipped under the overhang, reaching back to drag the limp body through the opening and out into the cabin.
McGarry scrambled hastily out behind.
Butterfield eased the body into the angle formed by the cabin wall and the floor. Bartlet was still and ashen and his leg was a bloody mess of torn material and flesh. Grimly, the agent began to rip away the damaged trouser leg in an attempt to put pressure on the wound underneath.
"Compress…I need something to form a compress on the wound." Butterfield peeled back the sides of the rip in the material and carefully probed the damaged flesh underneath.
At the touch, the President tensed, his eyes fluttering open, and groaned.
McGarry looked around blankly, then dived back under the overhang to snag one of the blankets he had wrapped around Bartlet. Using the jagged edge of a piece of metal he started a tear and awkwardly ripped away a long strip of the thick material and handed it to Butterfield, who then began to wrap it swiftly around the President's thigh.
"How bad does it look?" McGarry was almost afraid to ask. He swallowed his nausea at the memory of what they had just done to his friend, and the tortured sound of Bartlet's cry.
Butterfield was unbuckling his trouser belt and sliding it out of the loops. Incredibly, the grimness of his features had eased slightly. He looked up at the Chief of Staff and actually gave him a small smile of reassurance.
"Unbelievable as it may be, I don't think it's critical. The bleeding's fairly heavy, but not excessive. I think I can slow it. The wound's pretty torn up, but doesn't look to be as deep as we feared. No major veins seem to be severed. There's a fair amount of muscle damage; I don't know what the prognosis will be there. At least he isn't in immediate danger of bleeding out." Butterfield paused to loop the belt over the blanket compress and, with a quick jerk, pull it tight. "Still very painful though."
A sharp yelp of protest from the President as the belt tightened seemed to lend credence to that particular diagnosis.
"Sir?" McGarry leaned forward, feeling the first real sense of hope in a long time. The President was free of the debris, if not the wreck itself, and they were now in a position to do something, however little, about his injury. Surely things were looking up?
Seeing the baleful expression just visible in his chief executive's blearily cracked eye, he wondered if he would shortly have to revise the injury count. Bartlet was still woozy and disoriented from cold and pain, but there was no mistaking that glint. His oldest friend was fighting mad.
"That's it! That is absolutely it!" Bartlet angrily tried to hike himself up a little along the wall he was resting against, only to stop short with a groan as he jarred his leg. He paused for an instant to catch a pained breath, then let fly with all the pent-up fury, hurt and fear engendered by this ordeal.
Caught off guard by the strength and sheer ferocity of Bartlet's outburst, McGarry drew back in stunned surprise. To say that his old friend's reactions to any given situation were –at the very least—unpredictable was an understatement. But this? He could only stare wordlessly at the clearly enraged man, astonished and more than a bit uneasy. What followed next bordered on revelation.
The President of the United States was just getting started.
"I don't know what the hell I've done to piss You off recently, You malicious thug, but I can't think of anything worth a vengeance on this scale!"
There was no mistaking the target of Bartlet's diatribe. The very elements seemed to calm momentarily as if impressed, despite themselves, at this mortal's challenge to Providence.
"So I kept the MS a secret. I never deliberately set out to lie, never intended to hurt anyone. I just wanted some privacy, to avoid having people look at me and see the condition, not the man. Wanted to deny its existence. Was that hubris? If so, I've been paying for it ever since, and not just me but every one I care about." Never one to keep his hands still when on a righteous roll, Bartlet's left hand came down on the cabin floor with a resounding smack. "Isn't that enough for You?"
McGarry winced at the sound and shot an alarmed glance at Butterfield, whose attention seemed fully engaged in further tightening the bloodstained lining that was covering the President's head wound. He couldn't help but note that the agent was carefully avoiding direct eye contact with his charge. They both were.
Finding himself in a situation with no precedent, the Chief of Staff could only listen. On the one hand the evidence of mental awareness and energy on the President's part relieved him. On the other, the display of uncharacteristically raw, naked emotion was disturbing. Bartlet was obviously running on sheer nerves and adrenaline brought on by pain and fear. It was sustaining him for the moment, but McGarry dreaded the crash that would surely follow.
"All my life I've respected Your name, honored Your teachings," Bartlet continued to rant, although his voice was hoarse and his energy visibly beginning to flag. "I've kept Your Commandments; hell, yes, even the fourth and even You have to acknowledge that one wasn't easy."
The President's oldest friend stirred in uneasy surprise. McGarry felt more and more that he was eavesdropping on a conversation of which he had no part. Clearly dazed and in discomfort, Bartlet was being unusually unguarded in his speech, and the implications he was garnering from this catharsis both confused and distressed McGarry. Adding it to the small store of impressions he had already gathered, he was getting a faint picture whose outline left him oddly reluctant to strain for detail.
He wasn't even sure he should stop it. And if so, how?
Without looking up, Butterfield skillfully ducked one waving presidential hand and brought the tirade and McGarry's clear indecision to an end by bringing his own hand down gently on Bartlet's shoulder. For the first time making eye contact, he waited for the man to take a deep breath and calm down.
Blinking slowly, the President took that deep breath, added a few more for good measure and nodded.
McGarry relaxed as well.
Satisfied that his charge had replenished his oxygen supply, if not his emotional balance, Butterfield stopped just short of pleading and said, "Please, sir, take it easy. Try to relax. We need you alert but getting worked up will only tire you out, to say nothing of causing your injuries to bleed more." As if in illustration, he gently dabbed with his fingertips at a small trickle of blood that had escaped from under the sodden compress on the President's head to run down his temple.
Seeing the blood --his blood-- on the agent's fingertips, reality reared its ugly head and the small world he was trapped in began to close around him. Bartlet drew another ragged gasp, grimacing and wrapping his arms around his chest. The girder might not have crushed him, but it had left a more than adequate reminder of how closely he had approached that fate. Even now the sharp pain across his ribs and sternum offered an almost tangible recollection of its presence, and filling his lungs was almost as difficult as when he had lain imprisoned beneath it.
Fury dying as the adrenaline in his system leveled off, Bartlet let his head fall back against the cabin wall and sighed wearily. Without the rage pumping through his veins, he was becoming more aware of the blinding throbbing in head and leg, and the dull ache that assailed him all over. He regarded his Chief of Staff tiredly.
"I swear to God, Leo, I am never taking a vacation again. I don't care if I have to run the rest of this administration sleepwalking." Acknowledging the absurd, a glint of dark humor flickered in his eyes. The accompanying laugh had a sharp edge to it. "Hell, why not? The opposition claims that I do it with my brains dribbling out my ears."
McGarry winced at that off the cuff statement. That was one topic wherein he had never been able to find any humor, not even of the black nature his friend sometimes indulged in at his own expense. It was far too easy to visualize that possibility, the loss of a friend not through a clean ending but gradual mental degradation.
It hadn't happened yet, might never happen, but just the very thought gnawed away at his spirit.
The President easily read the unhappiness on the features that were as familiar to him as his own. Reading his mind was just as easy. McGarry had proved even more reluctant to accept the possibility of that grim future than Bartlet himself, and he felt a twinge of guilt for having brought it up, however casually. Drawing on his rapidly depleting inner reserves, he offered his friend a whimsical smile.
"Cheer up, Leo. You guys got me out of that makeshift coffin, and with my leg still relatively intact." He brought his hand down on the limb, and then hissed as the incautious gesture reminded him that the crucial qualifier had been relatively. "Assuming my little attack of snippiness just now didn't totally queer our pitch with fate, we're over the worst."
McGarry couldn't help but grin in reply. "Snippiness?" He arched an eyebrow in amused query.
Bartlet smirked. "That's how Mrs. Landingham would dignify even the most righteous ranting on my part." His smile faded as he reflected on the memory of his deceased secretary, who had known him even longer than his Chief of Staff and had done so much to influence the man he had become. "I think it was her way of reminding me that there is a fine line between constructive anger and self-indulgent rage."
McGarry sobered in turn. Of all the bad tidings he had been forced to bear to his friend in recent months, the news of that indomitable old lady's death, that grand dame, had been the worst. He was pulled from those dark memories by the sound of Butterfield patiently clearing his throat.
"Yes Ron?" The President peered up from under the makeshift bandage crossing his brow. The usually expressionless agent had a surprisingly puzzled look on his face.
"Sir…" Butterfield paused, clearly at a loss as how to express himself. Finally, he asked with perfect deadpan composure, "Queer our pitch?"
McGarry's mouth twitched with ill concealed disgust at the question and he shot the President one of the dirtiest looks he'd thrown the man in three years. "He's been hanging around Marbury again."
"Oh my God." For a brief moment a look of absolute horror crossed Butterfield's face, to be quickly replaced with one of calculating resolve. "Not on my watch," he growled under his breath.
Neither Bartlet –who was laughing as best he could with bruised ribs, nor McGarry –who, by the look of loathing on his face Butterfield figured had just come to the realization that he had clearly understood the euphemism, heard his ill advised grumbled oath.
A situation the stoic agent considered all well and good. He did have a reputation to maintain after all and eccentric ambassadors were not going to ruin it. Not if he had anything to do about it.
Getting back to the business at hand, he said, "Mr. President, if you have no objection, I'd like to ask for Mr. McGarry's assistance in forcing the forward hatch." Once again professional to the core, the agent had been assessing both the storm levels and the slight rocking of the wreck and was not happy with his conclusions. "Now that you're free of the debris, I think we should seriously address the question of evacuating the craft."
McGarry looked up in sudden trepidation as the wind's howling increased, amazed that he had managed to forget even for an instant those heart stopping shifts from earlier. He scrambled to his feet with alacrity. "Ron's right, sir. Now that we can move you we need to get you out of here while our luck continues to…"
He broke off abruptly and fell to his knees as the cabin shuddered and bucked beneath him. Cursing, he grabbed what was left of a nearby seat as the wreck started to roll, then slide at a sickening angle. He heard the sound of branches snapping, rocks scraping against the battered fuselage.
Butterfield seized the President's shoulders and pressed him back against the wall, leaning over him protectively. For a few seemingly endless seconds, the wreckage continued to slide sickeningly downward and he gritted his teeth in agonized anticipation. Not on my watch! He held on to that thought, determined to do his duty.
All the while, the thunder raged outside. The lightening danced and rain beat against the wreck.
Their progress finally halted an eternity later. The remains of the craft continued to creak and sway gently but for that instant final disaster seemed to have been postponed. Although it was several long moments before any of those inside dared to move.
Finally, Butterfield gingerly eased himself off the President and looked down at his main responsibility in concern.
Bartlet's eyes were closed, his mouth drawn into tense lines. His face appeared even paler, if that were possible, and he seemed to be holding his breath. Feeling the weight lift off him and realizing that their motion had stopped, he cautiously opened his eyes and exhaled explosively.
Looking up, he met McGarry's anxious gaze. The Chief of Staff's complexion was pasty and he was panting slightly from strain and tension. Bartlet cast an importuning eye heavenwards. "I suppose saying I'm sorry would be classed as 'too little too late'?" he murmured, only half-ironically. A sudden snort of involuntary amusement from his friend assured him that he had at least succeeded in one of his objectives. Now it remained to see if fate had a similarly receptive sense of humor.The President gestured to his security chief. "Ron? Forcing that hatch is sounding more and more like a plan I can get on side with. What say you go see what you can do? Leo," he turned his head towards McGarry. "Do you feel up to giving him a hand?"
To be continued…
