XVI
"Okay, sir, can I ask... does your- do your symptoms... interfere with your cerebral functions at all?"
Jed shook his head firmly. "No." His discussion with Stanley had been going nowhere fast, not least because he'd been called away in the middle of it to briefly visit the Situation Room. Thank God that hadn't been anything world-shattering; Josh and CJ were several states away, Leo was looking as stressed as he'd ever seen him, and he'd given Charlie the rest of the evening off.
He reeled off his symptoms with a kind of flippant ease that he had to inject to be able to do it. "Stiffness in my back, sometimes in my legs; blurry vision; fatigue."
Stanley shifted in his seat. "Okay. And these are... constant? Occasional?"
"The fatigue is... fairly constant," he admitted. Oh, why don't we go the full distance? Add crushing, overwhelming, incredible, unbearable in there... maybe you're getting a little closer to the truth. "The others generally come towards the end of the day, when I've been sitting too long, concentrating too long... it's easy to assume they're just your everyday signs of getting older."
The psychiatrist nodded slowly. "But you don't think they are."
"My doctor tells me they're not," he pointed out.
"And he thinks that remaining in office is likely to make these symptoms worsen, maybe cause others to linger?"
Jed shrugged pointedly. "He doesn't know."
Stanley frowned. "But reducing stress and getting more rest will help them to improve?"
"He doesn't know that, either."
Stanley let out a slow breath and sat up. "Mr. President... with respect... I don't know how you can ask me to make any kind of informed decision with no concrete information."
Jed gave him a wry smile. "Yeah, that's a real son of a bitch, isn't it?"
They exchanged a look for a long moment, which was interrupted by a knock at the door. Jed sat upright with a scowl. "Dammit," he muttered vaguely, heading towards the door. Apparently strict instructions not to be interrupted didn't count for much when you were the president.
He pulled it open, and frowned when he saw that it was Margaret. "What is it?" he asked, a little more brusquely than he would normally do. Then he registered her expression. "What's wrong, Margaret?" he asked more gently, with panic beginning to rise in the back of his throat.
"It's Charlie," she said fearfully.
Sam and Toby were both kicking back in Toby's office, several beer bottles open on the coffee table, as he approached. "Hey, Leo." Sam froze, and slowly straightened up as he registered the look on his face.
"What's happening?" asked Toby abruptly.
The smell of alcohol was a distraction, but not the kind he needed right now.
"Did CJ's father die?" Sam asked tentatively.
"No- I, I don't know," he stuttered out. Both of them got to their feet, exchanging nervous glances. "It's Charlie."
"What happened?" asked Sam urgently.
That's what I'd like to know.
"We don't, uh- he was brought into GW. He's been badly beaten up, no one's sure-"
"Is he gonna be all right?"
"I don't-" He shrugged. "We're literally just, we just heard this now."
"Did somebody call Zoey?"
"She's on her way," Leo nodded. "She was the first one to get the call, he had her number in his jacket."
"Aw, hell," Sam groaned. Having been the one to deal with the semi-hysterical young woman on his phone when she couldn't get through to her father, Leo could definitely second that emotion.
"Is the president still in the building?" asked Toby.
"He's, uh-" Leo stumbled for a moment as he realised how close he'd come to just blurting out a not inconsiderable secret. "He was in a meeting, I sent Margaret."
"It'll be a while before security clears him to leave," Sam said.
"Yeah." Toby nodded. "We should get down there." They both grabbed for their suit jackets.
"Josh is still in Ohio, I gotta stay here," Leo reminded them.
"Leo-" Sam began.
"We've got no senior staff, guys! I know it's Saturday night, but somebody's gotta stay in the building." Not so long ago, he and the president had been called down to the Situation Room - so far, it was nothing requiring urgent attention, but what if that changed? The way everything seemed to be exploding in his face right now, that felt almost guaranteed.
Toby's words from the tension-filled evening when he'd been let in on the president's MS floated back up. He'd stated flat out that Leo taking charge in the absence of the president was pretty much a coup d'etat - but Jesus, who else was going to do it? Hoynes was on the other side of the country, and the chances of persuading the president he had to stay put while Charlie's life might be on the line were so close to zero a statistician couldn't argue it.
"Did someone call Josh and CJ?" Sam wondered.
"Uh, Donna's still in the building, so-"
"Okay."
"Go," Leo told them, half giving permission, half ordering. "Call me if-"
"Yeah." They both ran for the door, and Leo wished he could be running with them almost as much as he was currently wishing he could curl up in bed and have the past - oh, ten or fifteen years ought to do it - just not happen.
Everything was just... too much. It was all coming down around his ears. The president was maybe seriously sick and pretending he wasn't, Charlie was lying in hospital with God only knew what injuries, Zoey was completely hysterical and babbling about how this was all her fault for agreeing to marry him, Sam was getting shredded in the tabloids, CJ's father was dying...
And he couldn't do a thing about any of it. Not a single damn thing. Here he was, Chief of Staff of the White House and man behind the most powerful leader in the free world, and he'd never felt so useless.
Leo ran a hand through his hair and tried to breathe, tried to find the centre of calm that had guided him through all the other crises they'd faced. But those were easy, that was politics - this was personal. And you didn't have to look very far into his fractured family life to know what Leo McGarry was like with personal.
He needed to get a grip on himself. He was supposed to be the cool, calm, collected one, that Jed and the staff both could lean on. He needed to get a hold of himself. He needed to-
He needed to not be somewhere there were open bottles of beer.
The smell was enticing, in a darkly insidious way that quietly suggested it was just beer, not real alcohol, barely alcoholic at all when you got right down to it, certainly not enough to make you drunk, maybe just enough to blunt that edge off a little, get your head together, smooth your nerves out so you could do your job in the cool, efficient way everybody was accustomed to...
Not that those were thoughts he was going to follow up on, of course. But somebody really ought to do something about those open bottles of beer just sitting there, where anybody could come upon them. Wouldn't do to have open bottles of alcohol littering the offices of the White House, might give people the wrong impression. Somebody really ought to pick them up, and dammit, Margaret wasn't a slave, she was a secretary, it certainly wasn't her job to do the fetching and carrying. And besides, he could only imagine the look she'd give him if he asked her to do something about those open bottles of beer lying around.
No, that would give her entirely the wrong impression about what was, after all, a fully justified desire to avoid any possible embarrassment. It wasn't as if he was in any danger of giving in to temptation or anything.
No, not at all.
Not even slightly.
"Leo?"
It was definitely the chaotic events of the last few days that caused him to jump when Donna appeared in the doorway. Since, after all, there was no reason why he should have any kind of a guilty conscience.
"Donna. Why are you still here? I thought you'd gone with the others?"
She gave him a cautious smile. "I want to wait in case Josh calls in. I've been trying to reach him but his cell's turned off. I guess he and CJ are at the hospital."
Leo nodded. "Okay." He hesitated, then gestured to the office behind him. "Sam and Toby were in here. Could you get somebody to-?"
Donna took in the bottles on the coffee table at a glance, and nodded efficiently. "Sure."
"Okay."
Margaret would have given him a suspicious look for being anywhere near the presence of unguarded alcohol, but maybe Donna was more casually trusting, or just less prone to worrying about nothing.
Because after all, there hadn't been anything for her to worry about.
At all.