Falls the Shadow

By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew

Part 14/14

After observing the two doctors quietly for a few minutes, Ziegler could not help remarking dryly, "Well, we're not going to be able to hide that."

The President grunted in ironic agreement.  Hackett and Abbey had swathed his damaged hand in layer after layer of gauze and bandaging. His lower arm was almost as thickly wrapped, leaving him totally unable to bend or flex his wrist. "Admiral? You nearly done? As it is, I'll barely be able to get this hand through a shirtsleeve. Any more and the press are going to ask if I'm taking this whole 'sparring with Congress' metaphor a bit too literally."

Hackett regarded his patient good-humouredly. The man did have a point after all. The wrapping encasing his hand might not be as bulky as a boxing glove, but it wasn't all that far off. "Almost done, sir," he reassured him with a smile, adding yet another layer to the already thick wrappings. "I know it's a bit unwieldy, but if we give your hand enough support and protection now, I won't have to come back and do this all over again because you managed to tear your stitches out. It's quite easily done, you know. Especially on such a flexible area of the body. There!" He held down the end of the final bandage to allow the First Lady to tape it securely in place. "Done. How does that feel?"

Bartlet regarded his mummified appendage without enthusiasm. "Like it doesn't really belong to me. When will the locals wear off?"

"Don't be in too much of a hurry for that to happen, sir," Admiral Hackett warned him. "With a dozen stitches and all that damaged tissue and impact trauma, it's going to hurt like blazes. And trust me, that bandaging won't seem so thick if you bump it off anything. We'll need to keep an eye on you as well to make sure you don't develop an infection. There was a lot of foreign matter in those lacerations."

Bartlet made a face, distinctly under-whelmed at the idea of remaining under close medical scrutiny.

"Remember to keep it elevated, Jed." Abbey was beginning to clear up the debris of their efforts at repairing the President. "It'll help with the pain and reduce swelling."

"Yes, ma'am," replied her husband glumly. Watching his two physicians withdraw into a huddle on the far side of the room, he scowled. Why did doctors have to be so pathologically secretive around their patients?  He shifted uncomfortably, wincing. 

"Sir, are you okay?" Ziegler, at least, hadn't abandoned him. 

"I'm fine, Toby." Bartlet shifted again wearily. "Guess I've been lying too long in the one position, though. I need to stretch my legs. Give me a hand up."

"Sir?" Ziegler's tone was alarmed, and he shot a furtive glance at the two medics conferring near the door. "I'm not sure that's a good idea..." 

Bartlet sighed heavily. He was getting very sick of being told that, and he had a presentiment he was going to hear more rather than less of such sentiments in the following days. "No doubt, Toby. But if my wife gets her way, I'm going to be tied to this bed at least until tomorrow morning. In which case..." He tugged at his open pajama front. "… I'd like to at least finish changing and wash some of this blood off my chest.  Now, give me a hand."

Ziegler stood irresolute, caught between the rock that was his President and the hard place that would be the First Lady's retribution. Sympathy for the man's point of view swayed him, and he took the extended right hand, helping his Chief Executive rise to a sitting position.

Bartlet swung his legs down off the bed and sat quietly on the edge for a moment, waiting out the wave of fatigue and slight dizziness. Taking a deep breath, he looked up at his worried companion and, summoning his resolve, extended his hand again. "Once more Toby, if you wouldn't mind. Then do me a favor and fish out some bottoms from the drawer behind you. It'll make Abbey happy. I'm going to get a wash cloth."

"I'll get that." This time Ziegler's tone brooked no argument as he helped his President stand, continuing to support most of his weight. Feeling the man steady, taking a bit more of his own weight, he inquired with some concern, "Can you manage, sir?"

"I think so..." Bartlet cautiously loosened his grip. "Yeah, I can make it."

Abbey glanced up from her discussion with Hackett, noticing that her husband was standing. "Where do you think you're going?"

"The bathroom," Bartlet snapped with an annoyed frown. It was starting already. She didn't need to know everything, and besides, he was going to the bathroom, eventually.

Abbey considered him carefully for a moment, and then exchanged a questioning look with her husband's attending physician. Hackett took only a moment to give her a quick nod of permission, and she said, "Fine, Jed. Just be careful, all right?"

The President's only response to their condescendingly given permission was a grunt. For the moment, words escaped him, but he was fairly certain both his wife and Hackett were going to be giving him plenty of inspiration for more colorful responses in the days to come.

Shrugging off Ziegler's support and cradling his left hand, Bartlet started to take a tentative step towards the bureau, then another. A bit more confident, he called back over his shoulder, "Toby..."

His voice choked off abruptly.

Ziegler, who had started to turn away, whirled back just in time to grab the President's arm as he wobbled. Alarmed, he barely had time to absorb the man's shocked expression before Bartlet's legs buckled and he dropped heavily ground-ward.

Ziegler grabbed frantically for the other arm, managing to slide his hand under Bartlet's armpit, but he couldn't arrest the fall of the sheer dead weight in his grasp. The man's knees hit the floor with a thud, and Ziegler found himself driven down to one knee as he attempted to prevent the President's upper body from striking the floor as well. 

The Communications Director heard a cry from Abbey, followed instantly by a crashing and muffled cursing from Hackett as the latter upset a small table in his efforts to reach the two men as fast as possible. Looking down at the man in his arms, he felt his sense of dread begin to grow. 

The President's expression was blank; he seemed stunned. But his eyes revealed to his senior advisor a dreadful mixture of fear, anguish and dull defeat. Even as Abbey and Hackett reached them, Ziegler found himself responding to the message in those eyes in the only way he could think of. 

"Leo!"

The bellow had hardly left Ziegler's throat before the bedroom doors once again crashed open as McGarry and Butterfield hurled through them, to be quickly followed by the agents stationed in the hallway. It was a good guess Hackett's encounter with the table had already given them a heads-up that the excitement wasn't quite over.

The President's friend led the charge towards their group even as the Admiral slid his arm under Bartlet's shoulders in an attempt to ease some of his weight off the Communications Director.  

"Jed?" McGarry practically skidded to his knees alongside Abbey as she knelt in front of her husband.

Cupping her husband's face in her hands, Abbey tried to force him to look at her. Despite her best efforts, he was refusing to meet her gaze, closing his eyes and jerking his head back out of her grasp.

McGarry didn't fare any better. "Jed? Talk to me, damn it!" he called again. No more than the curse, even hearing the sound of the man's own name received no response. Frustrated, he turned to the woman beside him. What he saw frightened him as nothing previously. "Abbey?"

The lines of Abigail Bartlet's face were tightened by an old, familiar fear. She shook her head, reluctant yet to give it a voice. "We need to get him back on the bed."

"Oh, right." McGarry nodded to Ziegler and reached out for his friend. "Okay, let's..."

"Permit me, ma'am."

McGarry blinked in astonishment. Even as he spoke, Ron Butterfield had stepped forward, displacing Hackett, and crouched down to slide his arms under the President's back and legs, rising with the man cradled in his arms and carrying him towards the bed.

Even allowing for the disparity in height between the lanky Security Chief and his more compactly built Commander in Chief, it was an impressive performance. Sneaking a sideways look, McGarry was relieved to see the Communications Director was taken aback as well.

Professional reflexes have their uses. Both Abbey and Hackett shook off the sight as if seeing the President carried like a child was a normal occurrence and hurried after Butterfield, who was even now gently depositing his burden on the bed.

The experience seemed to have shaken Bartlet out of his temporary fugue, and the eyebrow that he cocked at his Secret Service agent conveyed both wry amusement and more than a touch of affronted dignity. "Thanks for the ride, Ron. Let's not do it again soon, okay?"

"Mr. President." Butterfield offered as a murmured apology and stepped back, letting the doctors swoop in on his protectee. His ferocious expression suggested he considered this particular withdrawal to be a dereliction of duty.

"Mr. President?" Hackett's own features were carved with the same grim realization as the First Lady's. "Talk to us."

"It's nothing, I just got dizzy." As he had expected, Bartlet found his protestations ignored as Hackett applied a stethoscope to his chest, even as Abbey strapped a pressure cuff to his upper arm and clamped a finger on his wrist. Sighing, he tried another approach. "I guess everything just caught up with me."

"Mr. President..." Hackett began, his tone disapproving.

He was interrupted by the First Lady. 

"Don't get cute, Jed!" Abbey snapped with real heat. Her stubborn husband wasn't the only one on whom events were catching up. Addressing her colleague, she asked "Pupils?"

Hackett whipped out a penlight and, ignoring the patient's attempt at protest, shone it into the President's eyes. "Pupil response is abnormal." His tone was bleak.

"Abnormal?" McGarry's alarm spiked. "What does that mean?"

Abbey closed her eyes briefly, then squarely met her husband's headstrong gaze, able to read the frustration contained in the blue eyes. "Jed?  Please, talk to me."

"It's okay, Abbey."

Abbey's mouth tightened in anger and she stood back from the bed, forcing McGarry and Ziegler to scramble out of her way. "Oh, it's okay is it? Don't be a jackass, Jed!  All right, then..." she said, directing the full force of her exasperation and helpless fury at him, "... stand up."

Her husband continued to regard her mutinously.

Hands on hips, she challenged him again. "Prove it, buster. Stand up and take a walk." 

Eyes narrowed, Bartlet seemed to consider calling her bluff. Suddenly, he startled his anxiously watching companions by slamming his fist down on his leg with such force that they all winced at the impact. 

"Not now!  Damn it all to hell, not this. I don't have time for this now!" Drained by the explosion, the pain, he let his head fall back against the pillow. 

Abbey's features softened, and she moved to sit beside him, quietly threading her fingers around his undamaged hand. Not now. Dear God, but she couldn't help but agree with him.

"Mr. President?" Hackett's tone was sympathetic but insistent.

Eyes closed, Bartlet tightened his grip on his wife's hand and began to wearily rhyme off the familiar catalogue. "Dizziness, difficulty in focusing my eyes, tingling and some numbness of my legs, particularly the left. My right leg is aching too, but I think that's the torn muscles cramping again, not this." He sighed heavily. What was the point in fighting it? "And I feel incredibly... tired."

"Oh, God." McGarry's prayer was heartfelt.

Ziegler turned away, running a hand agitatedly over his head.

Turning to the hovering agents behind him, Butterfield inclined his head towards the door, silently ordering them to withdraw. Holstering their weapons, they began to file out, followed closely by their Chief.

Before pulling the door closed behind him, Butterfield raised his eyes to find McGarry watching him, eyes colored with concern and helpless fury. For a long moment, he looked back at the Chief of Staff, and then nodded.

This was far from over.

McGarry turned back to the scene being played out on the bed. Hardening his resolve, he forced himself to listen.

"Thank you, Mr. President," Hackett was saying, letting his shoulders slump. Looking down at the man lying before him, he smiled encouragingly. "Get some rest, sir. As soon as the locals have worn off completely, we'll run some tests. Find out for sure if it's a relapse, and how severe. In the meantime, try not to worry."

Bartlet snorted, but nodded his appreciation. "Thank you, Admiral."

Abbey nearly gave in to her grief at the defeat in his voice, the dull hopelessness glazing his eyes. "Jed, don't..." 'Give in,' she was about to say, but choked on the words. She touched his cheek, the torn skin cold beneath her fingertips. He didn't respond.

Don't give in.

He already had.

Clearing his throat, uncomfortably aware of the hidden meaning behind the words and gestures, Hackett stood up and turned away. Startled, he found himself accosted by a clearly agitated and concerned Chief of Staff.

"Is it the MS?" McGarry demanded harshly. "Has he had a relapse?"

The naval doctor studied both McGarry and Ziegler, then signaled with his eyes that they withdraw to the far corner of the room. "Yes, I'd say he has. Just how severe, we'll find out over the next few hours or days."

McGarry bit his lip, stifling a curse. "How long before he recovers?"

"Hard to tell. Hours, days, weeks. We'll have a better idea after we run some tests." Hackett regarded the Chief of Staff curiously. His tone became darker and he warned, "Mr. McGarry, you do know that it can be a question of if as much as when the President recovers, don't you?"

"If?" Ziegler spoke sharply. "But he has relapsing/remitting MS. That means that he always recovers from attacks, doesn't it?"

"So far he always has. But MS is a very unpredictable disease. We really know very little about it." Hackett spoke with quiet intensity, trying to make his companions understand. "The President has been fortunate to experience full remission after attacks, but MS sufferers do not always recover fully from each new episode. Sometimes the symptoms, or a less severe variation of one or more of them, can remain. And we have no idea yet just how severe this present relapse is."

McGarry felt his heart sinking. He remembered the words, spoken over and over again both before Congressional committees and reporters. Fever and stress can sometimes trigger an attack.

Stress. Far too much stress in a relatively short period of time. Had it been planned that way? He wasn't sure of anything at this point. Rubbing his eyes, McGarry asked, "What's your own feeling, Admiral?"

Hackett shrugged helplessly. "I really don't like to say. With some luck, good care and a chance to relax and recoup after all he's been through..."

McGarry gave a choked laugh. "Chance would be a fine thing!"  He smiled bitterly at his companion's quizzical expression. "Take my word for it, Admiral. This whole mess has barely gotten started."

The End