VII

"Hey, Ellie."

Karen gave her a commiserating smile as she arrived at the hospital. She tried to match the expression, but it wasn't easy. It was hard to pretend everything was normal when you'd just been rushed into the building with a wall of Secret Service bodies around you. The number of people approaching her at random on the street had risen sharply since Wednesday's revelations, and her agents were taking no chances.

It would have been nice to stay hidden away at home for a few days... weeks... years, possibly. But life at the bottom of the medical food chain was the same for everybody, whether you were the daughter of the president or not. If she wanted a hope of getting anywhere in the hospital, she was going to have to grit her teeth and bear it.

Gritting her teeth and bearing things, Ellie would be the first to admit, had never been one of her strong points.

"Dr. Acton's on the warpath," Karen warned her as they started walking together. The Secret Service followed discreetly behind, and for once Ellie was glad of the shield instead of mortified by their incongruity.

When Ellie only grunted vaguely in response, the other girl glanced across and gave her a sad smile.

"Oh, Ellie... You've got to stop beating yourself up," she sighed. "I keep telling you, don't read the press coverage."

"I know, I know, I just..." She trailed off in despair and frustration. How could she begin to articulate the solid weight of guilt that had built up in her chest? The knowledge that for years she'd been snubbing and turning away from her father, never seeing his pain, only loading him up with her own invented miseries.

Maybe if she'd been a better daughter, a proper daughter to him like Zoey and Elizabeth...

But that was a familiar thought, although one that never seemed to lose any of its power with the repetition. The spectre of her father's disappointment, real or hypothetical, had dogged her whole life.

Usually, though, it wasn't quite so easy to imagine she saw echoes of it stamped on every face she passed.

Toby appeared, like some particularly lugubrious wandering spirit, in his doorway. Leo sat back and gave him a wry look, removing his glasses.

"Toby."

"Leo."

There was only one possible subject of discussion. "Don't come to me for presidential updates," he warned preemptively.

"We have to come to you, because we can't go to the president," Toby reminded him.

Leo sighed.

"Well, really, Toby, how do you think he's doing?" he snapped. "You think any part of this is fun for him? It's his life they're ripping apart out there - it's his family."

"That depends on how loosely you define family," Toby corrected.

"Nobody defines family, Toby, it defines itself for you, whether you like it or not."

"He has to understand that his father can't be defended from this," Toby said forcefully. "He shouldn't be defended from this."

"Well, hell, Toby, you think I'm about to argue that point with you?" Leo scowled. "But you know what? He wasn't my father, and he wasn't yours, either."

"He forfeited his right to be called anybody's father the first time he went with his fists as the easy answer," Toby said, eyes flashing with an almost surprising depth of venom. Not the emotion, but the fact that it was visible so close to the surface.

"Yeah, well, Toby, nobody checks your licence at the door when you become a parent. And yes, the guy was a scumbag, but the moment anybody starts saying guys like that shouldn't be allowed to have kids, the rebuttal to that argument is sitting on the other side of that door in the Oval Office." Toby had gone oddly silent, but Leo was working up to a full rant from the force of his suppressed frustrations.

"If that man was still alive, then I'd be the first one out the door lighting torches for the lynch mob, but he's not. He's dead, and he's buried, and all the righteous moralising in the world isn't going to undo sins that were written in stone forty years ago." He scowled at the Communications Director.

"You know what? I don't care about John Bartlet. I don't care that he was alive, I don't care that he's dead. I don't care if they paste his name up there next to Adolf Hitler's or canonise him as a saint - the only thing I care about is what it's doing to the president. And what it's doing to the president, Toby, is forcing him to relive things that should have been long buried and long forgotten. The media can be self-righteously horrified all they like, but they're not conducting this witch hunt for the benefit of the victims, and they know it. So don't talk to me about John Bartlet, because frankly, I don't consider him worth the contemplation it would take to vilify him."

Leo was aware, in the silence once he'd cut off, that he had been shouting.

Toby took the outburst as impassively as only he would. He gave a brusque nod, and left without speaking. There was a longer than usual pause before Margaret tentatively appeared to fill the open doorway.

"Leo?"

He dismissed her with a swift hand gesture, and sighed heavily to himself as the door once again swung closed.

"I still say Sam would be perfect."

"I think they could use Toby."

"Sam's better."

"Or even Leo."

"Sam is universally acceptable."

"Plus, Sam is unisex," put in Ginger, leaning over his shoulder. He smiled at her.

"Thank you, Ginger." Sam paused, and the smile faded a little. "I think."

Bonnie rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, come on. Sam Bartlet-Young? It just doesn't work."

"Samuel Bartlet-Young," he corrected firmly. "It has dignity."

"Not if they called him Sammy."

"I don't think they would do that." Sam frowned, slightly perturbed.

"I think we should do that," Ginger decided.

"I don't think you should do that," he said hastily.

Bonnie smiled tigerishly at him. "Well, we'll take that under advisement, Sammy."

Fortunately for Sam, at this point Toby returned. "Hey, Toby," he called across the bullpen. "What d'you think Charlie and Zoey are going to name their baby?"

"Little Leo," Bonnie insisted.

"Josiah junior," Ginger responded.

"Samuel Bartlet-Young."

"Shut up." Toby continued on his way and closed the office door behind him.

Nobody was surprised.

"What about if it's a girl?" Ginger spoke up after a moment of silence.

"I think Bonnie Bartlet-Young has a rather sweet ring to it."

"Samantha Bartlet-Young would also work..."

Donna knocked cautiously on the door before pushing it open - an unusual gesture when the only person in the office was Josh himself, but lately he was jumpy and she didn't want to startle him any more than she had to. Despite the advance warning, he was staring vaguely at the wall when she came in, and didn't glance to meet her.

"Josh?" she said hesitantly.

That caused his head to whip round, and after a blank moment he pasted a smile in place and pushed back his dishevelled hair. "Hey."

"It's nearly eleven, you've got Paul Baker and Jason Jones in the Roosevelt Room...?"

"Yeah. Thanks." His distracted acknowledgement spoke volumes; most days, he'd be refuting any need for a reminder, be it snappishly, playfully, or woefully unconvincingly.

She crossed over to his desk, and recognised the page of figures he'd been poring over. Hardly a surprise; the same ones he'd been obsessing over all week.

At least the pamphlets were gone, or at any rate buried beneath other parts of the pile. Those photographs of burned out rooms and awful, brutal images like partly-scorched teddy bears gave her chills, and she didn't like to think of him sitting in here staring at them.

Josh followed her gaze, and slid the open folder closer to him. "I've been going over the numbers again. I've found some places we can make cuts, and-"

"Josh." She cut him off, and gave him a sad look.

"Donna, I'm not- This is..." he sighed heavily. "I know you think I'm... this is because of Vicky Henderson's little girl and everything. But I'm not... I just... this is important. This is an important thing here."

She smiled tentatively. "I know," she said gently. "And it's good that you're trying to do this. But just don't- don't throw everything into trying to get it, okay? You're looking at the figures and you're trying and that's good, and don't... don't beat yourself up, okay?"

"I'm not- I'm not doing that." He refuted her too quickly, and the way his eyes flickered away from hers said everything. Donna smiled again, sorrowfully, and gently squeezed his hand. He squeezed back for a moment, and then she had to pull away.

She returned to her desk with a heavy heart, knowing that whatever she might wish and whatever she tried to tell him, it would only be a matter of moments before Josh once again returned to the US Fire Administration's data, searching for a way to fix the world.