Blood and State

By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew

Part 4/22

Bartlet looked helplessly at their entreating faces. Once, just once, it would be nice to be able to offer a solid reassurance. But he knew that option didn't hold. He had lost his ability to sell glib reassurances on this topic. No one was buying. Bartlet scowled. They would turn to just about anyone else for an opinion rather than ask him for his judgment on the state of his own body. 

Sure enough, the staffers rotated their heads as Abbey leaned forward and spoke from her rear vantage. "We're not sure yet. There are no quick answers with MS. For now, the President's..." - deliberately, she chose the emphasis of office rather than family - "... relapse seems to be following its usual pattern. We're hoping recovery won't be protracted, but we can't promise that with any degree of reassurance. What he needs to do most right now is to rest."

The faint tone of reproach that leached into her final words was probably accidental, but the others picked up on it and began to edge away from the bed. Certain signals, when given by the First Lady, were a matter of course.

"We should let you sleep, sir." Seaborn was flustered. "It's been a long day."

"I guess," Bartlet spoke ruefully and again adjusted his position, unable to find a comfortable angle. "Listen," he halted them as they began to turn away, his wife moving to meet them at the door. "I want to let you know we can handle this. What happened today seems hard to believe, but we'll weather it, and this whole crisis. I'm just sorry you didn't have more time to deal with it."

"That's okay, sir." Lyman tried to be reassuring. He didn't feel very successful. "I guess we all kind of sensed that something was wrong for sometime now. All the extra security for one thing."

"Hard to miss, wasn't it?" Even now, the President's tone showed some irritation at the suffocating security of recent months, and no doubt for some time still to come. He couldn't help grinning though. "You guys seemed to be doing your best to help Ron out too, with all that hovering. What did you think you were going to do?  Play amateur secret agent if anything went down?"

"Oh, that wasn't why we were hovering." Seaborn, still lingering near the foot of the bed as if reluctant to leave his Chief Executive's presence, spoke absently.

"I'm sorry?"

The Deputy Communications Director suddenly flushed up to the roots of his hair and began to stammer.  "I... I meant..."

"You meant?" The President's tone was becoming a little testy. "Then just why has my entire senior staff been fluttering around me like demented mother hens for the last several weeks?"

"Well, you see..." Seaborn glanced at his colleagues desperately. They carefully avoided his eye. No life ring there, or the prospect of one either. Callously abandoned to sink or swim alone, the Deputy Communications Director opted for the desperate choice of candor, never safe idea when dealing with a politician. "We didn't know about the security threat, sir. Not for sure. We were worried because... because you looked so crappy lately. We were afraid you might fall ill."

Bartlet regarded his youngest senior staffer wonderingly. "Crappy?" he repeated weakly, unable to muster a suitable comeback. 

By the door Abbey looked both frustrated and amused.

"Yes, sir." Seaborn swallowed miserably. "Sorry sir, but... you really did."

Bartlet waved the apology aside somewhat numbly. Hell, it wasn't as if he could offer a convincing refutation right now anyway, not when his own wife had so lovingly informed him that he looked awful. Only slightly better than crappy. Where was the dignity in that?

"Never mind, forget it. Oh," Bartlet looked up, smiling gamely if not convincingly. "I may not appreciate the phrasing, but I do appreciate the thought."

"Thank you, sir." Seaborn looked relieved and stepped away from his colleagues, moving slightly closer to the President, feeling an obscure need to atone somehow. "Anything I can do for you before we go?"

"Just toss me that pillow at the foot of the bed." Bartlet began to hitch himself up awkwardly, not an easy task with one hand throbbing painfully at the slightest movement. "I need to change position, sit up for a while.  My back is starting to kill me."

"Here you go, sir." Seaborn slid the pillow behind the President. As the man struggled to sit up, he impulsively reached out to grasp Bartlet's shoulder. "Let me help you..."

He snatched his hand back as if burned when the President twisted away with a strangled gasp. "Sir? Oh, God! I'm sorry!" He desperately willed the shake from his voice, even as Lyman, C.J. and Abbey rushed to the bed. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

Bartlet raised his own hand to his shoulder, probing tentatively, a puzzled and slightly anxious expression on his face. "No, Sam. Sorry to have scared you. No harm done. I guess..." His voice trailed off uncertainly.

Everyone waited in tense expectation for his next words.

"I guess I'm still a little sore all over." Bartlet looked up and smiled cautiously. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

Plainly unconvinced, and with anxieties renewed but reacting to the clear tone of executive dismissal, the staffers murmured their goodbyes and turned to leave the President with his wife.

"C.J.?" the President called.

Pulled up just short of the door, the Press Secretary allowed Seaborn and Lyman to pass her before turning back towards the bed. "Sir?"

"Could I talk to you for a minute?" Alone, the President's tone and expression clearly conveyed. 

Confused C.J. glanced at the First Lady, almost as if to ask permission. Abbey seemed taken aback, and the concern and irritation were writ clear upon her features. Suspicion was there as well, but something passed between her and her husband.

Whatever it was, Abbey sighed her frustration and yielded. 

"Okay, but only for a few minutes," she said warningly, and there was no doubt who she was warning. "Then, so help me, Jed you are going to get some sleep. No more meetings."

"Thanks, Abbey." Her husband followed her with his eyes as she crossed the room. Only when the door closed on her, did he direct his gaze back to his Press Secretary. "C.J., come sit down, would you?"

~ooOoo~

Abbey heard the door click shut behind her, but it didn't really register on her mind.

It was only her imagination it had to be. She was reading too much into a simple reaction from a man who only hours before had nearly lost some fingers, if not his hand, to an explosion. Abbey remembered the aftermath with a shiver of vivid recollection. He was bruised and battered, probably in areas his doctors weren't even aware of. And knowing Jed, he wouldn't tell them if he were.

Recoiling from an inadvertent touch in the wrong place was only to be expected, right? It was the simplest explanation.

The man was hurting.

The man was her husband.

Abbey couldn't help it. It may not be anything, but she found little consolation in that reminder.

Her musings were interrupted by a cautious, male voice.

"Ma'am?"

It was the evening shift, so the man who was tentatively requesting her attention was not her Head of Detail, Emil Torres. This man's obvious unease was much the same, though. Abbey was used to the agents approaching her with extreme caution. However, this time there was something else in the man's voice that gave her pause. "Yes, Henry?"

He perked up a bit at his name, eyes brightening and losing a bit of that hunted quality. It never failed. When the President couldn't get it right, it was a serious treat when his wife did. Still, he shuffled uncomfortably, hand to his earpiece. "We have a situation."

"A situation?" She tried to keep her fragile control. Please, God. Not another one.

"No, ma'am, nothing like that," Vaughn quickly reassured her. He hadn't missed the flash of anxiety. Quickly getting to the point, he explained, "Your daughter just blew through gate security. She's on her way to the Residence."

"My daughter?" Abbey experienced a surge of mixed emotions. She'd had this out with Jed already. This was supposed to have been handled. A mother's fury quickly won out over the shocked frustration. "Zoey! Damn it! Charlie was supposed to keep her..."

Vaughn winced. Yep, that had set her off. "Not Zoey, ma'am."

"Not Zoey?" Abbey hesitated, blinking with bafflement. Baffled wasn't a state of mind she enjoyed. "Elizabeth?"

 "No, ma'am, it's..."

"MOTHER!"

Caught off guard by the sheer unexpected volume of the bellow, Abbey jumped. With some satisfaction, she saw Vaughn jump as well, and felt just a little better at being taken by surprise.

She gave the poor agent a side-long glance of utter surprise and dead-panned, "Ellie?"

Vaughn nodded and sighed. "Ellie, ma'am."

"Oh, dear."

The First Couple's middle daughter blasted through the door, leaving a trail of confusion in her considerable wake. Watching her leave the agents scattered behind her, Abbey's astonishment was genuine. Of all her children, Eleanor was the last she would have expected to see so flushed and angry, so ready and willing for a confrontation.

She was looking for a fight, and Abbey had a pretty good idea about what.

"How could he do this?" Ellie didn't bother with any preamble, brushing past a clearly startled Vaughn and confronting her mother. "I don't count?"

"Eleanor!" Abbey's voice cracked like a whip. It wasn't a tone she'd had use on this daughter, ever. Ellie was usually so subdued and quiet. This spitfire, eyes flashing, body-language screaming defiance and fury was a surprise she could have done without. "Lower your voice - now."

Ellie knew better than to argue with her mother when she used that tone of voice. However, lowering her volume levels was the only concession she made to the parental order. "How could he do this?" she repeated, the anger in her voice barely bridled.

"He is your father, young lady, and he did what he thought was best." Oh, yes. Abbey knew exactly what had set her middle daughter off.

"They," a furious toss of her head included Vaughn in that growled statement, "told me Dad ordered them, he ordered them, to keep me away!"

Vaughn shuffled his feet - a bad habit he really needed to stop, but one most of the First Lady's agents had acquired - and mutely appealed to the lady in question for a quick, merciful release.

Taking pity on him, Abbey inclined her head towards the door. "A bit late, but thanks for the warning, Henry. I'll take it from here."

His relief more than apparent, Vaughn made his rather hasty escape. He raised his hand, giving the rest of the agents the quick heads-up that the situation, for the moment, was under control.

Ellie continued to confront her mother; hardening her heart by reinforcing the enraged barriers she'd been building brick by brick all day. That much she could control and hold on to. The hurt she couldn't control. "He didn't want to see me."

"Oh, no. Not that." Is that what she thought? How could she? Abbey reached out and framed her daughter's face with her hands, felt and saw the hurt. "He would never do that."

"But..."

"Listen to me. He kept you all away, for your own safety." And he would have sent his wife away as well, if he'd thought he could get away with it. To Jed's credit, he hadn't even tried. Not that Abbey had given him the opportunity.

Ellie's eyes were bordered with tears she refused to let fall. "Even Zoey?" she sniffed, dropping her gaze from her mother's, trying to hide the hurt.

Abbey saw it anyway. "You know better than that."

"Bet she didn't stay away." The hurt was now colored with something else.

"Yes, she did." Jealousy? Was that what she was hearing? Brushing her hand gently across her daughter's cheek, Abbey took her hands and led her to the sofa. Thankfully, Ellie didn't protest as they sat down. "Your father sent Charlie to sit on her."

Ellie blinked, then shook her head with a harsh laugh. "Sneaky."

"That's your father."

Her father. Some of the bricks she'd so carefully laid began to crumble. "Got Charlie out, too, didn't he?"

Abbey squeezed her daughter's hands. "If he could have emptied the White House, he would have."

Another brick shattered. "Even you?"

Her own feelings on that subject were too raw to discuss. Thickly, Abbey answered, "I didn't give him the opportunity to try."

"Really?" Ellie tried to hold on to the anger, to keep the hurt. It wasn't easy. She could feel her throat closing up, the tears she'd been desperately fighting escape and run hotly down her cheeks. "I saw the news, Mom. The reports... I tried to listen, to call, but I couldn't get through..."

Abbey winced, wondering which poor staffer had borne the brunt of Ellie's rage. Guilt was there, too. Jed had been the center of her attention; she hadn't a chance to spare a thought for her children. After that first, abortive attempt, she'd staffed it out.

No wonder Ellie was furious.

"Nobody would tell me anything. Nothing, not one word. And you weren't there."

There was no mistaking the accusation there, the implied abandonment. "They didn't know anything." She didn't know anything. Abbey opened her mouth, trying to explain, but Ellie didn't let her.

"Then those... people came, wouldn't let me come."

"The agents were just following orders." Up until that moment Abbey had no idea a simple little word like people could be uttered with such vindictive enthusiasm, especially by Ellie.

"He's my father!" The last brick crumbled into dust.

Abbey stared at her daughter, could find no words to give her. My husband, she wanted to say, but couldn't. It was a shared pain.

Ellie stared back, looking for something in her mother's eyes, she wasn't sure what. Disappointed, she realized that maybe a little bit of everything was what she was looking for. Her mother had always seemed to have all the answers before. Added to her disappointment was a feeling of guilt. This was her father. Her father...

And she was angry with him.

"Mom?" Another tear rolled down her cheek.

A flash of wild grief ripped through her and Abbey drew her troubled daughter into her arms. She felt her relax and give in to the quiet sobs she'd been fighting. She'd never understood why Ellie and her father clashed the way they did. They were so different.

Yet so much alike. Perhaps that was part of the answer. Abbey swallowed and bit back her own tears. She'd thought she'd cried herself out, given the fear and grief its due. Never had she been more wrong.

Mother and daughter clung to each other, conscious only of their own fears and the relief given by simple, familiar comfort. For one, long timeless moment, it was all they needed.

To be continued…