XIX
The evening was everything he'd been expecting, and more. More humiliating. More hideously boring. More damaging to the facial muscles that he thought he must have strained making fake smiles at Congressmen he hated.
The worst ones were the ones who came up and oozed insincerity as they commiserated over the loss of the healthcare vote. So sorry, Josh. Bad luck, eh, buddy? Still, that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Never mind, I'm sure you'll be able to get a new bill through pretty soon.
Nobody here was his friend. Still, in a way, he was almost glad. He was very relieved he hadn't accepted Donna's offer of accompanying him. The last thing he wanted was a witness to this exercise in humiliation.
Every minute he spent felt like one more nail in his political coffin. He knew better than anyone what reputations meant out here in Washington. He was Bartlet's attack dog, the guy who ate recalcitrant Congressmen for breakfast. Except now here he was, pandering to them all in the hope he could suck up enough to stop his incredibly stupid remarks being splashed across the newspapers. While they grinned at him smugly, smirkingly convinced that they held the power to have him fired if they wanted to.
Would Leo fire him, if it came down to it? Should Leo fire him? The questions chased each other through his brain again and again in what wasn't so much a circle as a death spiral.
The outside air should have been a blessed relief compared to the stuffy confines of most conference halls and the like, but he felt overexposed and almost naked in his defencelessness. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run from the mocking crowd. His head was spinning, and there was a painful tightness in his chest. And everywhere he turned there was another Congressman ready to pin him down, remind him over and over again of his own failure, his own stupidity.
And when was this hellish evening ever going to be over? They hadn't even started the fireworks yet.
He staggered over to the refreshment stand, desperate for a drink. Not alcohol, though, not tonight - wouldn't Donna be proud of his self-control? Sensitive system aside, his head already felt so dangerously foggy that he didn't dare. All he needed now was to get drunk in front of all these people and embarrass himself further.
And what the hell kind of stupid idea was a firework display? But that was Congress all over; their idea of raising funds always involved lavish spending and monster parties. He was willing to bet none of them had ever fought their way through a campaign run from somebody's front room, stitched together an entire government out of promises and clever schemes. None of them would have the first clue about how to take a hopeless failure and spin it into a political victory.
The question was, did he? Once upon a time, he could have said yes without hesitation, but now he wasn't so sure. Had he lost his touch? Was he, Joshua Lyman, master strategist, already doomed to be a punchline, a political joke who ran around trying to use power and influence he no longer had?
He had no idea. He had no idea of anything much, except for a fairly strong suspicion that he was going to be sick.
Josh took a few deep breaths and sipped his water shakily. This was stupid. He was fine. He'd made dumb mistakes before, and plenty of them had been worse than this. In fact, some of them had been downright-
Oh, right. Confidence-building, yes.
He'd made worse mistakes, and he'd recovered. So things were bad right now; it wasn't all on his shoulders. The entire administration was suffering one hell of a slump, and it was more down to the way they'd scraped through reelection by the skin of their teeth than anything he had or hadn't done.
And this bill had been supposed to be the thing that turned it all around...
Somehow, all this positive thinking wasn't quite working the way it was supposed to.
He took another breath, another sip of water. One step at a time. Not everyone was out to get him. There had to be some genuine sympathy out there. Think. Who here had supported the bill from the start, on its merits more than for any political reason? If he could only spend the rest of the fundraiser in vaguely friendly company, then surely...
Alan Tavestock was coming towards him.
Kill me now.
It was probably his imagination that the bloated Congressman's beady little eyes had a satanic red glint to them, but the cruel smirk of triumph that creased his lips was real enough. "Ah, Josh, so glad you could join us."
Die. Die. Choke on your hors-d'oeuvre. Have a heart-attack, already.
Tavestock remained obstinately non-deceased. Josh nearly choked on the blatantly false smile he pasted into place. "Congressman."
"It's good to know the White House cares enough about our cause to send along a player of your magnitude." He heard the emphasis on the final part, but couldn't let himself wince.
And people say I have no poker face.
"Oh, we always take this kind of thing very seriously," he grated through what bore more resemblance to a grimace of pain than a grin.
"Well it's good to know you value our goodwill so highly," the Congressman smirked, and Josh didn't miss the knives.
Tavestock looked at his fixed rictus for a long moment, and then laughed. He patted Josh companionably on the shoulder, leaning in closer as he did so. "Payback's a bitch, isn't it, Josh?" he said quietly. Pulling back, he smiled again, and said more loudly. "Enjoy the fireworks."
He sauntered away. Josh's fingers tightened on his glass convulsively until it shook and water dribbled over his fingers.
Despite the coolness of the night air he suddenly felt like he was burning. A sour taste rose in the back of his throat, and he stumbled towards the buildings with some vague thought of finding a restroom stall to collapse in, some quiet place where he could just lock himself away for a few moments...
And then the fireworks started.
The explosions were loud, too loud, and the long, drawn out whistle of the rising rocket slashed a sharp line straight through the centre of his nerves, mingling with the-
-Sirens, sirens everywhere, and the tightness in his chest and why couldn't he breathe, why was it so cold all of a sudden, why couldn't he breathe-?
Water slopped out across his fingers and the glass fell to shatter explosively upon the concrete. Josh didn't hear it, any more than he saw the turning heads or the people who began to rush towards him as he sank without thinking to the ground. Suddenly he was three years in the past, stepping out into the dark, and listening to-
Sirens.
Donna grabbed the phone halfway through the first ring, despite the mouthful of jelly doughnut she'd just taken. "Josh?" she demanded, even though part of her was sure it must be her mother. Josh hadn't called her once all day, and she was more bothered by the isolation than she'd like to admit. But this had to be him, calling her to abruptly reverse his position and demand that she come to join him at the fundraiser.
But it wasn't Josh's voice at the phone; nor was it her mother's.
As she listened to what was being said, the rest of the doughnut dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers and bounced across the bed, oozing its filling like blood across the coverlet.
She didn't even stop to pick it up as she grabbed her jacket and ran for the door.
Josh wondered what he was supposed to be feeling. Shock, fear, horror, dismay?
Mostly, what he felt was embarrassment.
All these people flocking around him, and he didn't know what to say to them. How to explain what they'd just seen, elaborate that no, he wasn't about to have a heart attack or a stroke, that it was nothing physical at all... just his good old psychological problems.
When he'd come back to himself amidst a crowd of the Democratic party's most influential Congresspeople, it had taken every bit of persuasion that he had to convince them that he didn't need an ambulance. He hadn't wanted them to call anyone at all, but apparently that wasn't an option, so he'd asked them to call Donna.
Hopefully, when she got here she'd reinstate the Rules. If anybody could make these people stop trying to talk to him, it was Donna.
He sat with his head down, trying to pretend no eyes were on him, taking deep, steadying breaths that were shakier than he would have liked. A flashback. A real, honest-to-goodness flashback - though, in truth, that word seemed almost too mild for the way he'd been plunged right the way back into that evening in May. Reliving, not remembering, as Stanley would doubtless have told him.
'We get better,' Stanley had also told him, and unlikely as it had seemed that Christmas, it had been true. He'd learned to listen to music without hearing the sirens anymore - though he would never, he suspected, fully learn to appreciate Yo-Yo Ma - and the nightmares had become less and less frequent. Oh, they still woke him sweating and shaking from time to time, but it didn't matter all that much when there was nobody at his side to be disturbed by it.
But this had been a real flashback, every bit as bad as the ones he'd suffered at the Congressional Christmas party. That time he'd been safely ensconced in his seat with no eyes turned his way, and he'd stumbled out of the door without anybody really noticing anything more than he didn't look so good. This time... This time, he'd fallen to his knees in the middle of a crowd of Democratic Congressmen, and God only knew how long it had been before he started to come back to himself and even realised people were trying to talk to him.
Stress, and fireworks. Stupid, stupid, stupid combination. Why had he ever agreed to come?
Oh, wait, yes. Because his own arrogance and short-fused temper had sent him skating entirely too close to the end of his career in the White House.
Well, he reflected as he finally spotted a familiar head of white-blonde hair through the crowd, at least he no longer had to worry about what he'd said being front-page news.
"I'm resigning tomorrow morning," Josh told her during the cab ride home. Donna ignored him.
"Don't be stupid, Josh," she said matter-of-factly. She ran through her mental checklist. "I called CJ and explained what's happening. I tried to call Sam but he's not home and he's not answering his cell, so I guess you're stuck with me."
"I'm... stuck with you?" he questioned, with the first faint tremor of a smile.
Donna turned to look at him. "I'm not leaving you on your own, Josh," she said seriously.
Josh closed his eyes and sighed. "Donna, I'm not... I'm not gonna put my fist through anything."
"Yeah, well, isn't that what you said last time?"
"I didn't say anything last time!"
"Exactly!" she said fiercely. Josh met her eyes for a moment, then quickly slid his gaze away as if he was fascinated by the car's upholstery. She reached out and quietly smoothed back a disobedient curl of his hair. "Josh..." she said pleadingly. "Why didn't you say something?"
"I didn't, I..." He shrugged angrily. "I didn't even know there was anything to say."
"Fireworks." Donna shook her head. "What was I thinking? I never should've let you go."
Josh gave her an amused look. "What were you thinking? Maybe that you're not actually, you know, the boss of me?"
"Yeah, well, Leo's the boss of you, and I don't know what he was thinking, either," she said sharply.
"Well, maybe he was thinking that he should've already fired my ass, and he can order me to do whatever the hell he wants!" Josh's voice grew too loud in the cramped confines of the back seat.
"Nobody's firing anybody, Josh."
"Well no, he won't need to, because I'm resigning tomorrow morning."
"No you're not. Now pay the nice driver and get out of the car," Donna ordered.
But later, after she'd hustled him into his home and ordered him to bed, Donna couldn't quite suppress a niggling thread of worry. Oh, Leo would never fire Josh, that much she was sure of. But Josh had sounded dead serious about resigning, and she knew that once the inevitable truth of this evening's events came out, nothing on earth was going to persuade him that it wasn't the best course for the administration that he do so.
However, that was tomorrow's worry, and one that felt a long way away as she lay curled up on Josh's couch, straining her ears to catch any muffled sound that might hint at nightmares going on behind the bedroom door.