XIX

The president stormed in at the head of his Secret Service escort like some kind of military invasion. With eyes for nobody else in the waiting room, he rushed towards the two girls seated together and pulled them into his arms.

"It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay honey, I'm here. I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner." He dispensed comforting squeezes and kisses to Zoey and Deanna in equal measure.

The two girls still secure in his arms, he now took the time to look around the rest of the room. Toby, Sam and Donna had sprung to varying states of attention; he waved them irritably back into their seats.

"Enough of that." He surveyed his troops with a clinical eye. "Sam, you look like you slept in a dumpster. I want you to go home and get some proper rest."

"Sir, I-"

Jed quickly cut through his objection. "Sam, I know you want to be here for Charlie, but you're not doing him or anybody else any good in the state you're in now. You'd be dead on your feet if you could actually stand on them."

"I'd prefer to stay until Charlie wakes up, Mr. President," he tried to politely refuse.

The president was having none of. "And if I thought you could stay conscious more than five minutes I might let you. But you won't get any rest here, and I am not prepared to have one of my staffers collapse from nervous exhaustion on my watch. Now go, before I have Toby pick you up and carry you."

"Yes. Go before he does that," Toby said dryly.

Sam cast around for support, but didn't find any. "Go home, Sam," Zoey urged him worriedly.

"I'll get you a cab," Donna offered, standing up.

He closed his eyes briefly, too close to the point of exhaustion to argue further. "Okay, but-"

"We'll call you if anything changes," the president promised, gently patting him on the arm. "But seriously, son, you need to get some rest. You've had a tough week, and Charlie'll kick your ass as hard as I will if you push yourself until you collapse."

"Okay," he nodded again, blanking on what to do next. Donna smiled fondly at him, and slipped an arm around his waist.

"C'mon, Sam, let's get you out of here."

As the two of them left, their place was taken by the doctor who'd spoken with the group before. The president straightened up and looked him in the eye. "Okay. Tell me the truth, doctor; how's my boy?"

"Okay. Okay, thanks, Donna." Josh shut off the phone and looked across at CJ. She probably knew from his tone what the news was, but he told her anyway. "That was Donna; she say the president's still at the hospital. They're still waiting for Charlie to wake up." Donna hadn't said that the longer he was unconscious, the less good his chances were, but he knew it anyway.

He and CJ exchanged a long and understanding look. They both knew that they wanted to be where Charlie was - and that duty dictated otherwise.

"Leo's gonna need us at the White House," Josh admitted, and CJ nodded. Even considering the night they'd had, they'd probably got more rest than the staff who'd been in their offices all day. Josh had slept briefly on the plane, though he suspected that CJ hadn't. But when he looked at her, she was standing as tall and determined as ever.

"You okay?" he asked gently. "I mean, I know... it was family."

The gaze that she levelled at him was as cool as any she used in the press room. "So is this," she reminded him.

"Hey, mister. You're gonna sleep there all day, I'm gonna have to start charging you rent."

Sam gradually stirred out of a surprisingly restful sleep to discover he was still in the back of the cab. He stretched, blinking, and the driver grinned at him.

"Feeling better, sleeping beauty? You've been out like a light all the way from the hospital."

"Yeah, actually," he admitted, yawning, as it penetrated that he was outside his own apartment block. He hadn't wanted to leave the hospital, but now he was forced to accept that the president had been right. The brief nap on the way home had got his synapses firing just enough for him to realise quite how braindead he'd been before.

He paid the driver and picked his way wearily through the lobby to the elevator, exceedingly grateful that the press pack had apparently abandoned him in search of fresher news. In the state he was now, he doubted he could have made even a pretence of mustering any political savvy.

Sam half crawled out of the elevator and slumped against the door of his apartment as he fumbled for the key. Actually inserting it in the lock was an exercise in hand-eye coordination that took him several minutes.

When he got inside he didn't bother to remove his shoes, let alone undress. He just fell forward onto the bed and dropped instantly into a deep sleep.

The scene in the press room was playing on all the monitors as they walked past. Questions were flying thick and fast at an obviously flustered Carol, but she was holding it together and keeping her dignity - considerably better, Josh was forced to admit, than he had on his own ill-fated attempt at briefing.

"She's doing fine," he observed softly.

"She is," CJ agreed, with a certain note of pride in her voice. Josh wondered if all their assistants could step in at a moment's notice and take on their bosses' jobs. There was no question in his mind that Donna could handle his, and there were rumours floating around about Margaret's ability to forge signatures...

"She could take the next one as well," Josh suggested gently. CJ gave him a knowing smile.

"Yes, she could." She looked him in the eye. "But that's my job."

He smiled back. "Okay." He knew only too well from personal experience what a blow CJ had suffered that night. Grieving was a private thing, and not to be done with in a matter of hours, days or weeks... but CJ was CJ, and she was down but not out.

He nodded his acceptance, knowing she would hold it together now that he had to reluctantly leave her side.

"I'm gonna go kick Leo out on the streets," he told her.

CJ grinned back, the first flash he'd seen of her usual playful self. "Good luck with that," she said dryly.

"Yeah."

In times of crisis, Leo and his office went together like some sort of burrowing mammal and its... burrow. Leo both solved and ran away from his problems by throwing himself into his work. Things like food and sleep - minor issues in the McGarry consciousness at the best of times - ceased to register on his radar at all.

Josh didn't miss the way Margaret straightened up as he approached - he was guessing his own absence had been fairly high on Leo's excuse list for why he had to stay. The fact that Margaret was still here, considering it was now beyond the twenty-four hours at work mark, was troubling enough. Leo's tendency to send her home was as much self-defence as altruism - if she wasn't there to mark his comings and goings, nobody knew whether he ever left the building or not.

He frowned worriedly at the secretary. "He didn't send you home?"

Margaret bobbed her head in quick nod. "Four times," she said, in a tone that suggested it could be four hundred more for all the effect it would have.

Josh nodded in understanding, and went in.

"Leo?"

"Josh." He removed his glasses and looked up. "How's CJ?" To Josh's eyes, he looked deathly tired and somehow smaller than usual. Leo McGarry was not a big man, yet most of the time he projected an aura of being one. Seeing him stripped down by stress and fatigue to the mere human being beneath was both troubling and uncomfortably invasive.

"She's holding up," Josh nodded. "What about Charlie?"

"We're still waiting." Leo rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Leo, you need to go home and get some sleep. I can handle things this end."

"You just got off a plane," Leo reminded him.

"On which I actually slept, so, I'm saying, I can handle things this end."

"Josh," Leo began, obviously starting to get irritable, but he wasn't backing down.

"Leo, you're going home," he said firmly. "Now, we can do this the easy way, or I can get Margaret in here."

Leo glowered at him. "You don't play fair."

"Aren't you glad I'm on your side?"

He snorted. "That's debatable."

"Leo..." He turned serious, and played his trump card. "The president's gonna need you top of your game when he gets back from the hospital. You gotta get some rest."

"Yeah." In other circumstances, Josh might have found it amusing how Leo greeted that statement like a prison sentence. But then, who was he to talk about preferring the office to home? He hadn't had any call to want to return home promptly since he'd been with Amy - make that the early days with Amy, before he'd lost absolutely any desire to be on the same planet as her, let alone in the same apartment.

Much like his relationship with Mandy, in fact. Hmm; maybe there was something to this staying at the office twenty-four hours a day, after all.

He hustled Leo towards the door. "I'll take care of everything, Leo. We'll call if anything happens with Charlie. Margaret?" She was already ready to leave, handing Leo's coat to him as he lingered reluctantly in the doorway. "Make sure he actually, you know, leaves the building?"

Leo glared, and Margaret gave him a grateful smile. Josh headed back to his own office to place another call to Donna and pray for good news about Charlie.

Sam slowly blurred into wakefulness with sunlight warming the back of his head. He pushed himself up and remembered he was still wearing yesterday's clothes. He contemplated them, contemplated the effort involved in changing them, and opted for the simplest option of a fresh shirt. Nobody was going to be caring about what he was wearing this morning.

Or maybe somebody would. He smiled as he registered a familiar voice outside his bedroom door.

"...Yeah, I got here about half an hour ago. Took a quick peek; he's sleeping like a baby. I didn't have the heart to wake him."

Steve. Though they hadn't actually been dating all that long - the chaotic events that had been going on all around them made it seem longer - Sam had seen fit to furnish him with a key. It had been so long since he'd had somebody in his life, he didn't want his erratic hours to be any more of a stumbling block than they had to.

And apparently, the key-supplying approach was paying dividends. He finished tying his tie with greater speed, guessing that Steve had probably answered his phone to stop it waking him.

But the automatic smile died on his lips as he pushed open the door and saw that Steve wasn't talking on the phone at all. He was talking to somebody already in his apartment.

His father.