VI

Cameras flashed as he took the podium. Josh took several deep, slow breaths, willing the automatic panic to die down. His window on the world still shaky; it was all too easy for the flashes to stir recollections of flashing lights on police cars, the painful artificial lights of the hospital... But that was all they were. Recollections. Remembering, not reliving.

In control.

"Good morning." He risked a flicker of a grin. "I guess you're all here to take me to task for playing hookey from work these past few days."

He was rewarded with a small rumble of amusement from the crowd, and on CJ's advice he sought the eyes of Rick Maskey, the young journalist who'd leapt to his defence after his own unsettling encounter with a gunman just last week. The reporter gave him a subtle nod and an encouraging smile.

He could do this.

He took another breath. "Three years ago, I was shot. All of you know it. Most of you reported on it, and many of you were there. I'm sure any of you who were remember it well."

Josh looked down for a moment. "I didn't really remember anything. Not at first. I was in surgery for fourteen hours - I'm pretty glad I don't remember that, I can tell you - and then I woke up with the president standing over me. Fortunately he was in a magnanimous mood - or possibly still on painkillers - and didn't take it personally when I failed to stand up."

The press were smiling with him. This wasn't so bad. Like giving a lecture; he knew how to do that.

Of course, the question and answer session at the end was going to be a killer.

"The doctors sewed me back up, apparently without leaving out anything vitally important, and after a period of convalescence-" he glanced at Donna on the sidelines, "-a long and torturous period of convalescence, during which people who will remain nameless denied me visitors, phone messages and work - I returned to my duties as Deputy Chief of Staff. Aside from a little stiffness, and a hell of a backlog in my in-tray, I was as good as new."

He hesitated, and looked up to face the press head on. "Except I wasn't. It took everybody a long time to realise it, and I think I was last in line for a clue." This was it. He had to keep going. "I was moody, irrational, aggressive and short with people. Naturally, nobody realised there was anything wrong."

Okay, the press seemed a little too amused at that one. He glanced again at Donna, who gave him a soft smile. Apparently he was doing well.

"You see, after a while, what happened that night in May did start to come back to me. Except I wasn't remembering it. I was reliving it." Thank you, Stanley. "Something would happen, something would send me back there... And I would relive it. I was getting shot, in my head, over and over again, and I couldn't make it stop." The jokes were gone now, but the words were flowing, more clearly than he would have thought possible

"I couldn't make it stop, and I was throwing every bit of energy I had into trying, and it... it wasn't leaving me much space to be a human being. I could work, because work was a place to hide. But just being me... that was the difficult bit. I didn't know how to be Josh Lyman, because I was too busy being the guy who got shot."

Josh smiled. "Fortunately, I wasn't alone. The people who I have to stop me being an idiot began to notice I was being a bigger idiot than usual. And they did what they usually do, which is to ignore me. They ignored me when I told them I was fine. They ignored me when I tried to block them out and run away from them. And they ignored me when I decided it was easier to rant and rage and drive people away instead of try to deal with them on top of being shot."

Now came the big revelation. Put a name to your demons, and make them real. "Christmas of that year, I was dragged, pretty much kicking and screaming, to sit with a counsellor from the American Trauma Victims Association." On this much, at least, he'd listened to CJ; 'counsellor' sounded a hell of a lot softer than 'psychologist'. "Being somewhat experienced with idiots like me, he was able to tell me what was wrong before I'd finished telling him there wasn't anything."

A long breath of silence.

"I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

In the whole room, nobody moved.

"The reason I'd been stuck in that same hell of being shot for so long was because I wasn't accepting it. I wasn't willing to remember it, so I was forcing myself to live it over and over again. It was like... it was like I was trying to build a dam in my mind, block all the memories in, but there was so much of it that it just kept busting down the dam and rushing out all at once. I was never gonna fix it like that, but I kept trying, and that was what was tearing me up. He forced me to go over it in my mind, to remember all the things I was fighting so hard to try and force back." Josh gave a small, self-depreciating smile. "And then he pretty much told me to get over it. At which point, I asked for my money back."

A wave of quiet laughter rippled through the room like a breeze, driving out the tension.

"Needless to say, I didn't get it. Because he was right. I asked him if I was going to have to live the rest of my life running away from the things that might trigger me off, might send me back into a flashback, and he said no. Because we get better. I might never be cured, but I get better every day."

Josh took another breath. "Last Saturday was the first attack I've had in a long, long time. I was having a bad day, I was under stress... some people might say it was the fireworks, but personally I think it was the crab puffs. Anyway, something triggered me off, and there I was, back again."

He ran his eyes over the press corps, meeting everybody's gaze without flinching. "I won't lie to you. I can't tell you Saturday was the last time I'll ever have an attack - hell, I could have one tomorrow. But I can promise you that whatever happens, I'll do my job... and if there ever comes I time when I can't, there are people there who'll catch it before I do."

He looked again to the side, where Donna was looking suspiciously moist-eyed. He smiled, and extended a hand. "Donna. C'm'ere."

She pulled a 'what the hell, Josh?' face, but he didn't retract his hand. "Come on up here," he repeated. Someone, probably CJ, gave her a surreptitious shove.

Josh reached out to pull her up to the podium beside him, and gave her a reassuring smile. An instant of silent communication passed.

Don't worry, it's nothing embarrassing.

Hah, yeah. Forgive me if I don't like your track record being the judge of that.

Hey! I'm wounded!

Deal with it.

Relax, Donna, it'll be fine.

Sure. As soon as we get away from these cameras, you're a dead man.

Josh turned back to the press. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Donnatella Moss. Some of you here may know her. Most of you out there," he spoke to the cameras, "won't. Donna here is the Senior Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning - or, perhaps more accurately, the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff. I help run the country; Donna runs me. I think we all know which of us has the harder job. I can honestly say that I wouldn't still be here if it wasn't for her."

A storm of flashbulbs caught the brilliant smile that passed between the two of them. Then Donna lightly touched his hand in a show of silent support, and quickly fled the podium. Josh turned back to the waiting media.

"Okay," he said softly. "Any questions?"

"Who da man?" Josh demanded. He strode out of the pressroom, arms held high.

Sam slapped him on the shoulder manfully, then laughed and pulled him into a tight hug. He was quickly passed down the chain to be squeezed by CJ, Carol, Bonnie and Ginger. At the end of the row was Donna, who punched him in the arm.

"Josh! How could you do that to me?"

"No need to thank me," he said magnanimously, rubbing his injured shoulder.

"Not bad," Toby pronounced, about as ringing an endorsement as he was about to get. However, he spoilt his impassive aura by flashing a quick grin when he thought nobody was looking.

"I saw that smile, Toby!" Josh pointed at him accusingly. "You're happy!"

"I'm delirious with relief that you didn't manage to get us at war with Beirut," he quickly covered.

"Beirut?" Sam frowned at him.

"Anything's possible when Josh is in the press room," Toby pointed out. That reminded Sam of the reason for celebration, and he spun back to Josh.

"You did it, man!" he cheered, giving him another triumphant thump on the arm. Josh winced and retreated, clutching his upper arm protectively.

"Can everybody just, you know, leave the shoulder alone, okay?" He turned to CJ and grinned. "So what's cooking, Claudia Jean? Did I do good?"

CJ put on her stern press secretary face. "It's entirely possible you in fact managed to not make the situation worse." Then she giggled, and gave him another hug. "You did great, mi amor!"

"Hey!" Sam objected. "How come he gets to be your amor and I'm stuck with being Spanky?"

Toby turned to blink at him. "I think you just look like a Spanky."

They all dissolved into laughter. When was the last time they'd all giggled together like this? Reelection? No, Josh remembered, even then the laughter had possessed a kind of frantic quality, a whiff of desperation. Not the good, genuine, healing laughter of the group coming back together, the way they were meant to be.

He pulled free of an impromptu huddle involving CJ, Donna and Sam to see Leo smiling at him. For a moment something in his heart did a somersault, as he recognised a look that he'd seen more than once on the face of his father. Then Leo rearranged his face into his normal look of firm-jawed authority, and the moment was gone.

"Okay, everybody," he said loudly, "get back to work."