Blood and State

By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew

Part 8/22

"You did good," McGarry told Butterfield, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "Hauling C.J. back like you did."

Butterfield didn't bother dignifying that with an answer. C.J. Cregg's reaction to what she'd been told to do tomorrow morning had been no more or less than what he'd expected. Toby Ziegler had almost seemed tame by comparison.

"It was the truth," was the only response he felt safe giving the Chief of Staff.

McGarry snorted. "The truth isn't exactly at a premium right now, Ron." From behind the safety of his desk, he eyed the tall Secret Service Agent warily. "You having second thoughts?"

"Second thoughts, thirds, fourths..." He turned a cool gaze on McGarry. "It's my job to second-guess fate, Leo, and we're tempting the hell out of it."

"Give me an alternative, and I'll take it."

Butterfield said nothing.

"I thought as much."

"You're getting way too good at pushing my buttons, Leo."

Taking the implied rebuke in stride, McGarry smiled thinly. "Scary thought, isn't it?" He ignored the responding growl that one earned him. Leaning back in his chair, he stared up at the ceiling. "I hear Eleanor Bartlet gave your people a run for their money."

Butterfield winced. Not one of the United States Secret Service's most shining moments. "She... surprised them." It was the only excuse he would allow the agents in question.

"She put on quite a show at the front gate."

Stopping himself just short of an exasperated groan, Butterfield snarled, "Lucky for you there were no press in sight. Would've made for some interesting pictures."

"The nose?" Maybe he was more drained by events than he'd originally thought. There was a certain reckless disregard to safety in the way he was picking at Ron's armor. A dangerous form of entertainment at best.

Sort of like poking a hungry lion with a very short stick.

"Heard about that, did you?"

"Most of the White House has." McGarry shrugged, hiding a smile. Yep. Ron was definitely not amused. Why he was finding this so much fun, he had no idea. The thought occurred to him that maybe it was because his usual sparring partner wasn't available. "News travels fast."

"Too fast," Butterfield muttered.

"Broken?" McGarry asked innocently.

"Messily rearranged, but not broken."

McGarry tsked sympathetically. "Nick Haefy, wasn't it?"

"Buttons, Leo." The warning was dangerously close to that familiar, low growl.

"I like pushing buttons."

"I am not the President."

"For the moment, you'll have to do." McGarry stirred uneasily in his chair, remembering his last meeting with the President, his oldest friend. It was becoming harder and harder to separate the two.

"Do it, Leo." He'd said. At the time, McGarry hadn't been sure if that was determination in his voice, or pained exhaustion. "You'll brief C.J.?"

"You understand the possible consequences?"

The question had been empty rhetoric. How could he, when his closest advisor couldn't even tell him? It was a game, one they couldn't afford to lose, and the stakes were beyond counting.

"Do it." And that was that. Executive decision made. "Inform the Chairman and the NSA. They need to be in the loop."

Maybe he did understand. If so, McGarry wished with all his heart that the President would please explain it to him. He had started this, and he would have sold his soul at that point to see how it would end.

If it would ever end.

"Leo?"

McGarry blinked, snapped out of his darker musings by the concern in Butterfield's voice. "I'm here."

"You had me worried there for a minute."

"Just for a minute, right?"

In spite of himself, Butterfield chuckled.

McGarry joined in, finding some small relief in the action. However little it was, the day and its events needed it. As verbal sparring partners go, Ron wasn't so half bad an opponent.

A commotion from the outer office, one raised voice in particular, carried through to the occupants within. Both men exchanged similar knowing and cornered glances.

Butterfield's brows rose in surprise. Everyone in the White House knew that voice. There'd been no warning traffic about her coming on his transceiver. Yet another hole that needed to be plugged. He had a pretty good idea who had put the lid on that warning.

Still, he had to cautiously ask, "Is that…?"

"It is." McGarry stared at the main door to his office, then gave the door to the Oval Office a wary glance. He quickly dismissed that idea. Despite Margaret's obvious delaying tactics - like that would work for long - Abigail Bartlet would have absolutely no compunction about following her prey in there.

And from the sound of her voice, McGarry knew that she was on the hunt, and who her intended target was. Hell, he was getting used to it.

"I think the First Lady is about to make an entrance," McGarry observed dryly.

"Damn," Butterfield swore with honest sincerity and admiration. "Good timing, though. She's almost as good as her husband."

"Who do you think taught him?"

"Now that's a scary thought."

In the grandest manner, the lady in question made her entrance. The door didn't quite slam open, but it came close. She stood there, giving both men the full brunt of her angry glare.

Margaret, hovering nervously over the shorter woman's shoulder, gave her boss a frightened yet still poignantly apologetic glance. "Leo, the First Lady..."

"Yeah, yeah." McGarry stood up and waved her off, making a mental note to give his long-suffering secretary a raise. God knows she'd earned it. "I can see that she's here, Margaret."

"You can? Really?" The sarcasm was thick and, to Margaret's mind, not entirely unwarranted. "I was afraid you wouldn't notice."

"You'd best leave, Margaret," Abbey told her gently but firmly, never once taking her eyes off the two men. "You can't be here for this."

Margaret hadn't really thought she would be, but the polite dismissal from the First Lady gave her the means to depart with not only dignity but also hide intact. One last silent communication with the Chief of Staff, a quick nod promising no interruptions of any kind, and she left, pulling the door shut behind her.

Whatever was about to happen was not going to be pretty.

Wisdom had little to do with the wary caution that Leo McGarry and Ron Butterfield offered the glowering First Lady. Given the day's events, the depths to which she'd been taken, they'd both expected this. Accusations, recriminations and the demand for answers. Love made little allowance for political power and the rules of state.

McGarry saw something disturbing replace the smoldering look in her eye. There was more to this than a wife's well-founded fears and concerns. Alarmed at what he saw, his own emotions bottomed out and he demanded, "Abbey, what happened?"

"What happened?" Defiance was there, challenge as well. She pretended to not understand the surprise that flashed across the features of her husband's oldest friend. "Somebody tried to kill him, Leo."

McGarry couldn't rally quick enough to offer more than, "Abbey..." before she ran right over his protests.

"And the rest of you," - she included the grimly silent Butterfield in that accusation - "are finishing the job."

"They failed, ma'am." Butterfield had stiffened as though she had struck him. The fault had been his, nobody else's. "It won't happen again."

"Won't it? Your sterling track record to date is not at all reassuring. No -" Abbey met their gazes head on, shutting them both down and finding a perverse pleasure in the fact that neither of these accomplished men could hold her stare for long. "I don't want to hear it. No more excuses, no more lies..."

McGarry's spine went rigid at that last word and he exchanged a guilty, sidelong glance with Butterfield. The blank, emotionless expression on the man's face did little to reassure him.

Abbey didn't notice, or chose not to. "... it stops here. Now. You two are going to listen to me and by God, if I don't hear the right words after I've had my say, I'm leaving. And if you don't think he'll follow..."

"Nobody is leaving, Abbey," McGarry snapped, a sudden chill frosting the edges of his words. This had gone too far. "Please, calm down. Threats won't accomplish anything."

"I'm not making threats, Leo. I'm taking him home." She glared at him with burning, reproachful eyes. "Try and stop me."

McGarry jerked back, knocking his chair and sending it sliding into the back wall with thud that rattled the shelves. She wasn't threatening, wasn't making an empty gesture of misdirected rage and frustration. He had to fight a battle of personal restraint not to ask her why.

He knew why. With a shaky, defeated hand he reached back and pulled up his chair, collapsing onto it with suddenly weak knees.

Abbey saw that, the raw grief etched on his face, and she relented, just a little. He understood, some of it at least. Some of her anger towards him disappeared at that point. Her heart squeezed with anguish as she remembered how much this man did care for her husband.

"You can't do that, ma'am," Butterfield said softly, his calm voice shattering the brittle silence that had settled across the office like a dark shroud. "It isn't safe."

"Safe?" Turning the full force of her re-ignited fury on him, defying him to try and contradict her, Abbey snapped, "Don't you dare use that word. Not here. Not now. Safe?" her choked laugh was bitter. "Was he safe on Marine One? Was he safe in his own office? Please, tell me because I'm confused, how do you define the word safe?"

A muscle twitched convulsively in Butterfield's tightened jaw. There was more to this than met the eye. "What are you afraid of, ma'am?"

"You. All of you."

Mercifully, McGarry managed to keep his face blank. It was the best he could do. The hurt and betrayal lay naked in her eyes. The anguish, the fear she was radiating was almost physical in its intensity.

But still, cowardice perhaps, he didn't ask why. Not yet.

Butterfield carefully assessed the depth of her anger, the anxiety and sheer heartache underlying it all. He wasn't indifferent to her or her fears. In many ways he shared them, and it wasn't just his job. Dredged up from somewhere beyond logic and reason, he realized that he had become involved. There was no way back, not anymore.

He asked what he knew Leo McGarry couldn't. "What happened?"

Such a simple question. Abbey's throat was raw from shouts and protests she couldn't utter. She wanted to scream, to lay into them with all fury and indignation she could muster. What happened?

"I can't touch him." She forced the words out, the calm, even tone only a thin facade over her churning emotions. "His daughter can't touch him. Do you want to know why? You did ask why, didn't you?"

Frozen in limbo where decision and action was impossible, McGarry wavered, trying to comprehend what he was hearing. An effort of will and he asked, "Why?"

Abbey blinked, momentarily thrown off balance, almost surprised that he had spoken at all. "Don't you know everything, Leo? You and your people have done such a wonderful job educating the public about MS, covered all the conceivable bases, I'm surprised you can't guess."

"I won't guess, Abbey." Not about him. He looked away.

Butterfield stared at his feet. He didn't shuffle; he hadn't quite picked up that bad habit yet.

"No, you won't." Abbey glared first at one man, then the other. Then it was gone, the fury, the righteous indignation she'd so wanted to fling at them, defeated by their helplessness. A helplessness she shared. "You can't possibly understand it all. I don't and I have lived with it. This... thing, it changes, is different for every patient, every victim. Symptoms, new and old, come and go without warning. Ellie saw it. I saw it."

"I can't touch him." She paused, gathering her determination, making sure that this time they'd listen. She could care less if they understood. "Dysesthesia. That is your why. A symptom common to many MS sufferers, but until now, not to him."

Half in anticipation, half in dread, McGarry asked, "What does it mean?"

"It means the slightest touch to the skin, gentle or otherwise, is distorted. The nerve pathways misfire. It can feel like a fierce burn, or an electric shock. Sometimes it goes away," she drew in a deep breath and despite her fears felt a hot, awful joy at the shock on both men's faces "sometimes it doesn't."

"Oh, God." McGarry closed his eyes, shoulders slumping in despair. "It's progressing?"

"Maybe. I can't say. Only time will tell. You want him to heal? To be the man you need him to be? Then let him go home, to rest. Not Camp David, not the Residence, not any of your damn safe houses." Abandoning all pretenses to civility, not that she'd really tried in the first place; she forced her lips into a stiff, false smile. "I'm taking him home. I leave it to you two to work out the details."

Ultimatum given, Abigail Bartlet didn't give them a chance to respond. If she did, it would have been her undoing. With stiff dignity, she opened the door and left, leaving them to work out the solution to their problems. Her problems were only beginning.

This time, she didn't slam the door. Her point had already been made.

Ron Butterfield stirred as the door shut, almost shaking himself out of a numb shock he found unfamiliar. This was not in the books. "I'll get the ball rolling," he said softly. "We can leave in the morning."

McGarry looked at him in surprise. "You agree?"

"Yes, I do." He shrugged, trying not to reveal the frustrated anger threatening to escape his iron control. "Manchester, here, it doesn't matter. The lady's right. Our definition of safe is painfully relative. They got into the Oval Office, Leo. What difference does it make where he is?"

"Where," McGarry muttered, running a shaky hand across his face. "You think we should call it off?"

"Like I said, it's all relative. Here, there, the reaction will be the same. Location won't mitigate the circumstances." Butterfield's expression became calculating. "Truthfully, Manchester is the better of the two options. Smaller, tighter. Strangers will stand out more. It'll give them... him - pause."

"Is that enough?"

"It'll have to be, won't it? You've got me playing with fate here, Leo, and she can be a bitch. Besides, if we can't keep him healthy enough to sit in that chair, in that office, what's the good of keeping that chair safe?"

"Shit," McGarry swore hotly. "What the hell have we started?"

Butterfield didn't bother to point out that it wasn't what they had started, but what Leo had started. That he had agreed, let it continue, had little bearing on his conscience. He had a job to do, and damned if he wouldn't do it well.

"I'm still trying to figure that one out," was all he said.

To be continued…