VI

"Hey, Sam." Donna offered the Deputy Communications Director a tentative smile as he arrived in the White House mess. "Hey, are you okay?" she asked, when he didn't immediately respond.

"Yeah." He dropped into the seat opposite her and sighed heavily. "I just- I've just been talking to my mom."

"Oh."

Oh. Sam had admitted to her he was procrastinating over talking to his parents about Steve. She could definitely commiserate over parents with their own ideas about what your destiny should be, and even if Sam's parents were more sympathetic than her mother - not spectacularly difficult - there was still the fact that he was an only child. Even the most hip and understanding parent would probably be taken aback to abruptly discover that their chances of ever having grandchildren had suddenly plummeted.

Especially if they found it out from the morning news.

Donna briefly squeezed his hand. "Bad?" she asked.

Sam met her eyes, and she could see he looked pained. "My mom called me to commiserate over the press telling lies about me... looking for a denial. Which she... didn't get, and it kind of went downhill from there."

Donna gave him a smile. "She'll come around," she assured him. Not that she'd ever met either of his parents, but hey - anybody who could produce a Sam Seaborn had to be a pretty cool mom, right? "She's probably a little bit... surprised, is all. She'll get over it."

Sam sighed. "Maybe..." He didn't sound convinced.

"What about your dad?" she asked cautiously. Sam immediately scowled.

"I'm not calling him," he said fiercely.

She held her hands out in surrender. "Hey, I'm not trying to make you."

"Sorry," he apologised quickly. "I'm just a little-"

"I hear you." She pushed aside her empty plate and wrapped him in a brief hug. "It'll all be okay. You'll see. Your mom'll come around, and the press'll find something new to wig out about... it'll be fine."

"Yeah."

He smiled in thanks, but behind it he looked fragile, and she wished she didn't have to abandon him so quickly. But she was the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff, and the White House didn't stop for anybody.

Jed scowled at the doctor. "Okay, I still don't understand. You're telling me that my MS hasn't progressed - but I've got the blurry vision and the fatigue, and you're saying they're not going away?"

Keeble held up a hand to forestall him. "Well, it's not quite as, uh, as clear cut as that." He hesitated, and knitted his fingers together. "Mr. President, as I'm sure you're aware, you've experienced, uh, an exceptionally benign course of MS. To put it simply, most people, even in the relapsing-remitting phase of the disease, don't enjoy, uh, perfect health between attacks. There are symptoms which appear and disappear during an exacerbation, but others may be more, uh, permanent in nature."

He closed his eyes briefly. "So you're saying this won't clear up like my symptoms usually do?"

"Mr. President... you have multiple sclerosis. We don't know what it's going to do. Your condition may worsen. It may remain steady. And yes, it may improve; but, in all honesty, the third option is the, uh, the least likely. Sir, although your symptoms may appear and disappear, the fact of the matter is that MS doesn't do the same. There is a cumulative effect."

"But there's no reason it has to be excessively debilitating." No reason it had to stop him doing his job.

"No, sir. However, Mr. President - might I be permitted to be frank?"

Abbey spoke up from beside him, where she'd been uncharacteristically silent so far. "Oh, be frank," she suggested, dangerously sharply.

Keeble blanched. "If I could possibly make, uh, a mild suggestion-"

"Franker than that," she told him.

He hesitated for a beat. "Mr. President... as your doctor, I feel obligated to warn you that your current lifestyle is very likely to be having a negative effect on your health."

There was a long pause, during which Jed almost felt the world shrinking, until there seemed to be nothing in it but these four walls and the three of them... and this conversation.

And a question that had to be asked.

"Are you telling me you think I should resign?"

"Sir, I... wouldn't possibly feel qualified to comment."

"And yet you're commenting," he said sharply.

Keeble pulled off his glasses and polished them rapidly. "Mr. President, the, uh, the plain fact of the matter is that your lifestyle puts you under a great deal of stress and doesn't afford you enough opportunity to rest when you need to do so. I cannot guarantee you that the removal of these factors will cause your condition to improve, or even slow any, uh, any future deterioration. But I can tell you that their continued presence is almost certainly a danger to your health."

He hesitated. "How much of a danger?"

The doctor looked him in the eye. "It's impossible to say."

Abbey took his hand, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"CJ?" Carol cautiously poked her head through the doorway.

Her boss gave a harassed scowl. "I've got the Washington Post, I've got the New York Times, I've got three different Out Now organisations, I've got a whole bunch of Congressmen who, for reasons past understanding, appear to think this is their business-"

"It's your brother."

CJ massaged her temples for a moment. "Peter?"

"No, Robert."

"Okay."

She sighed and reached for the phone, and Carol beat a retreat to her area outside. She was far enough away not to overhear, but she was still conscious of CJ's tone of voice as a murmur on the edge of her hearing.

The calls from her brothers were getting more and more frequent. It used to be only Peter who called, checking in with their father's condition after he became too vague and confused to do so for himself. Her older brother, Robert, was some kind of big businessman who ran his own company; if this was bad enough for him to drop everything to be at his father's bedside, well... It had to be bad.

She wished there was something she could do, but of course there wasn't anything. Toby and Josh were both hanging around, but there was nothing they could do either, and she wasn't sure Josh even knew what was going on. And Sam had problems of his own.

Which were also CJ's problems.

Carol sighed, and quickly decided that there was some photocopying that needed to be done that would take her away from the painful, muted conversation going on the next office. And if any reporters should happen to wander in while she was away... well, it was their funeral.

Charlie wondered whether he should feel proud of himself or bothered by the fact that it was so difficult concealing something from the woman he was going to marry. He'd wanted to blurt it out a hundred times through dinner, but the thought of Zoey going through the same hell of anxiety he was helped to keep him silent.

He'd hoped that the president would be back in the office before the time he'd arranged to leave, but it hadn't happened. Which meant that it was eating away inside of him, but he didn't know anything. He was sitting across from the daughter of the man who had become his hero, and he didn't even know what he was hiding from her - a minor health scare to rattle a few nerves, or something a far deeper and darker.

The trouble was, there was no way he could spin a lie, and he couldn't so much as hint at anything going on with her father - the unspoken nightmare had been shared amongst them all for so long that there was no way she wouldn't guess what it was about.

Which meant he was left with avoiding her eyes and muttering "It's nothing." And she knew him far too well to believe it.

He could see it in her eyes as he kissed her cheek goodnight; hurt, and not a little fear. He wondered what Zoey thought he was concealing from her - second thoughts about their engagement? The thought of letting her believe that was like a knife through his heart, but he still couldn't blurt out the truth. After all, this was her father. Charlie might have never known his own father, but the president was more than substitute enough, and if the thought of anything happening to him was this paralysing for him...

No, it was better that Zoey didn't know. Not until they knew for sure there was anything she needed to.

"I love you," he said, because it was the only thing he could say right now that was completely true.

"I love you too. Charlie-" she added pleadingly.

He silenced her with a gently kiss. "I have to go now. I'm sorry."

He didn't look back as he walked away; not that it helped. He couldn't see her expression, but he could still picture it, and it haunted him anyway.

The streets had grown dark during their time in the restaurant. The president had to be back by now, didn't he? The truth had to be waiting for him at the White House. He'd been given the rest of the evening off, but the president would have to be crazy if he thought Charlie wasn't coming back.

One way or another, he had to know how this was ending.

Charlie moved through the streets in a fog of introspection, barely conscious of the world around him. One time, he thought he heard a scuffling of footsteps as if someone was following him.

But maybe it was just his imagination.