III

"Mr. Vance? Hi." Sam shook hands briskly with the charity representative. He was a handsome black man in his thirties who just seemed to exude that teacherly, guidance-counsellor vibe.

"Sam Seaborn?"

"That's right."

He sat down, and gestured for the other man to do the same. To his amusement, Vance did so gingerly, as if a little afraid someone might come rushing in at any moment and demand he get off the furniture.

"First time in the White House?" he guessed gently.

Vance gave a slightly embarrassed smile. "Shows, huh? Yeah, it's just... if mom and pop could see me now, you know?"

"I know," Sam smiled. He would have said 'you get used to it', but... you really didn't. Some days it was just the place you worked, and then other days... it could whack you up the side of the head without warning.

He pulled his papers toward him, professional habit although he'd read them over before coming to the meeting. "You're here as a representative of the Shield of Innocence children's charity, correct?" He flipped through the pages. "We gave your organisation funding eight months ago for a television advertising campaign to run-"

Vance leaned forward in his chair, interrupting him with an apologetic smile. "Actually, Mr. Seaborn-"

"Sam, please," he extended automatically.

"Thank you." He smiled, then grew serious. "Sam... I'm not here to talk to you about funding."

He frowned, and sat back in his chair. "Okay. What are you here to talk about?"

Vance looked him in the eye. "I want to talk to you about the president."

Donna caught the phone on the second ring, still typing with her other hand. "Josh Lyman's office."

"Donnatella."

She grimaced at nobody in particular, but kept her voice neutrally cool. "Alexia." Ah, yet another haughty phonecall from big sister. Fun.

"Have you spoken to Joletta yet?"

Donna rolled her eyes ceilingwards. Her middle sister's divorce had been in the works for months, but now that it was finally clear that she was fully intending to go through with it, Alexia had decided it was her place to step in and 'save her from making a terrible mistake'.

That was Donna's mission too. However, so far as she was concerned, the terrible mistake had happened eleven years ago, and involved getting married to Mike Vincent.

"Alexia, last time I spoke to her she was perfectly happy-"

"So she wants you to think," her sister cut her off imperiously. "Honestly, Donna, if you were home, you'd be able to see-"

"This is my home, and I see fine from here," Donna informed her shortly. Once she wouldn't have dreamed of fighting against the way her mother and older sister bullied her, but years of deflecting Josh's best efforts had taught her valuable new skills. "She's made up her mind, she's getting rid of Mike, and I say go Joletta!"

"That's easy for you to say. She's throwing her whole life away, and you're just letting her do it!"

"Yeah, well, frankly if her whole life is Mike Vincent, it's better off thrown away."

Alexia let out her breath in a dissatisfied huff. "You're a fine one to talk."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Despite herself she was tensed for a jab to the still-sensitive 'Dr. Freeride' area, but her sister had a different target in mind.

"The way you threw away everything you had in Wisconsin to go chasing after your goodfornothing boss. I thought you'd come to your senses when you came back home to us, but no, you didn't last a matter of weeks before you had to go chasing after him like a puppy. It's embarrassing."

Donna barked a short laugh, amused. "I've got to tell you, Alexia, if you really think the only thing keeping me in Washington is Josh Lyman, you know a whole lot less about me than you think. It happens that I have a very good, very important job here, and I happen to think I play an important part in the running of a nation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I actually have to get back to it, so goodbye."

She put her phone down, and in rolling her eyes met Josh's. He gave her a faux-wounded look.

"I'm hurt, hurt I tell you."

"You'll get over it," she shrugged casually.

"That was your sister?"

Donna heaved a heavy sigh. "Yeah. She's bugging me because Joletta's finally had the good sense to go through with ditching Mike, and she wants me to put a stop to it."

Josh frowned. "And you're supposed to stop her getting divorced how?"

"Well, you know. We crazy people know how to talk to each other."

"Ah." He gave her a sympathetic shrug, and headed towards his office.

"I called Congressman Walters," she called after him. He half-turned.

"Yeah?

"Monday, late afternoon."

He nodded. "Okay, thanks.

Sam's eyebrows were somewhere up around his hairline. "I'm sorry, you want to talk to me about... the president? President Bartlet?"

"We watch the news, Sam," Vance told him with a slight smile. "We've been following his story after that book came out."

Sam rocked back in his chair warily. "Well, now-"

"Sam, you have no idea how huge it is to see a public figure like the president admitting to something like this is his past."

"Oh, we have a pretty good idea," he said dryly.

Vance ignored his aside to continue earnestly. "The single biggest problem we face with the victims of child abuse is self-imposed isolation. Children believe that what's happening to them is normal, that it happens to everybody else and there's nothing out of the ordinary to report - or, conversely, that it's something so strange and terrible they must never tell anybody. That's why we run campaigns like the one your administration helped us get the funding for. We have to get the message out to as many children as we can that when things like this happen, they need to tell somebody about it."

"And that's admirable, but-"

"Sam, despite our best efforts, a lot of abused children continue to suffer from the lethal misconception that there's something wrong with them - that the beatings, or punishments, or sexual abuse, wouldn't happen to them if they were better sons and daughters. Their parents indoctrinate them with that belief, and it's a very difficult and painful thing to shake, even after they've come to terms with the reality of what has been done to them."

"I understand that," Sam said softly. He'd seen for himself the president's reflexive desire to speak up for his father's good name, the crazy dichotomy between cold truth and the bonds of family relationships.

"Most of the time, we're reliant on concerned outsiders to save these children - neighbours, teachers, doctors, social workers. It's terrifying to think how many more are slipping through our nets all the time because nobody sees. If we're ever going to take steps towards eradicating abuse, we need to reach out to those children and convince them to come forward for themselves."

"Well, okay, but I don't see quite how-"

"The president is a symbol, Sam," Vance said earnestly. "A very powerful symbol. We teach our children from an early age to aspire to the presidency, that it's something powerful, that you have to be a very special kind of noble and wise person to do it." He gripped Sam's sleeve. "Can you imagine the good it would do for those children to hear the president speak out honestly about his childhood? If they could be shown that these things can happen to anybody - not just the bad kids, or the useless kids, or the unimportant kids, but anybody, up to and including the most respected man in this country?"

Sam was silenced, slightly stunned by this torrent of impassioned words. Vance continued, more softly. "It could be an incredible thing, Sam. If you could only convince the president to speak out, it could help to blow so many of the myths about child abuse wide open. He could help so many people."

Sam got slowly to his feet, a little dazed. "I- I'm sorry, I... You're gonna have to give me some time with this. I can't just- you're gonna have to give me some time."

Vance stood too. "I understand that," he said with a nod. "I'm not asking you to just-"

"I'll, uh- I'll talk to some people," Sam interrupted. "I'll... can you come back later in the week. If we could meet again on... Tuesday - I'll ask Ginger to set something up..."

"Sure," he agreed gently, shaking Sam's hand. "Thank you. Thank you so much for considering this." He turned to go, but paused in the doorway. "He really could... he could save a lot of lives with this, Sam. He could save a lot of children's lives."

He left, and Sam was left staring after him.