XIII
Lunch proved difficult for him to stomach; he had neither an appetite nor much of a sense of taste with this infernal cold, and he wasn't sure he'd have enjoyed it much in any case. Too many of his favourite foods had been stricken from the menu after the worrying dip in his health a few months ago. He couldn't even muster more than a token effort to escape his new dietary restrictions when he knew in his heart Abbey was right. He couldn't afford to ignore it anymore.
His body was failing him. He hadn't fallen to the dreaded slippery slope of progressive MS just yet, but all the same, he was weaker than he'd ever been. How else to explain his current miserable lack of health? He would have laughed away this kind of cold when he was twenty - hell, when he was forty.
Zoey had been watching him worriedly throughout the meal. "Dad, are you all right?" she asked for the thousandth time when he finally pushed aside his plate, able to eat no more.
Jed bit back the urge to be harsh with her. "I'm fine, sweetheart," he smiled reassuringly.
"Did you take your pills?" she asked, relentless.
Rolling his eyes, which seemed entirely more painful than such a motion ought to be, he patted his breast pocket. "They're right here."
"Good. Take them now."
She really was turning into her mother. Maybe it was some instinct or hormone invoked by this pregnancy...
That reminded him of the real reason he'd scheduled this lunch, and suddenly he didn't have the will to argue any longer. Finally surrendering, he swallowed the medication, and washed it down with water. "Happy now?"
"Not really." She leaned across to feel his forehead. "Dad, are you sure you should do this dinner party tonight?"
"Honey, there are two trained medical doctors in this family, and you're not either one of them," he reminded her. "Zoey, I didn't bring you here to fuss about my health."
"Why did you bring me here, dad?" she asked, looking serious and a little nervous. He sighed.
"Come sit over here, honey," he suggested, moving them both to the couch where he could sit beside her. She looked up at him anxiously.
"Dad, what is it?"
He sighed again, knowing that there was no more chance for procrastination, however much he might want to. "Zoey, the Secret Service are... worried about some letters they've been getting lately."
Zoey looked more resigned than shocked - something that was a gut-punch in itself. When had this become an ordinary part of his daughter's life? "More death threats?" she guessed tentatively, and he nodded.
"But these are-" He finally managed to force the words out. "Zoey, they're worried about the baby."
He almost marvelled to see how her hand instinctively flew to her belly, a gesture so reminiscent of her mother in days when she was no more than that barest hint of a visible bump. "The baby?"
Her eyes were wide with horrified dismay, and he wanted to hug her close and reassure her that it was all a lie and everything was fine, but he knew he owed the truth. "There's a group. Calling themselves the Sons of Herod..." He didn't need to say anything more. She understood just fine. He wished she didn't. He wished he could live in a world where such things were too unthinkable to understand.
Zoey was shaking her head in mute denial. "Dad-"
"I know, honey," he said softly. "I know."
He pulled her into his arms, for what reassurance he could still give against the horrors of the world.
It felt like pitifully little.
It was strange how much the White House felt like home; far more so than a musty old apartment that hadn't been aired in far too long while he was on his travels.
Danny wandered through the corridors between briefings, reacquainting himself with the place. Funny how you forgot just how busy it was. Fifty-seven conversations going on at once around you, tantalising snippets floating by in the wake of fast-moving staffers. Around any corner you were as likely to run into a gaggle of bickering Senators as a group of interns.
Or, indeed, the Deputy Chief of Staff. "Josh!" he called out cheerfully.
Josh blinked around, as if startled out of deep thoughts. Of course, with Joshua Lyman, that could as easily mean woman trouble, contemplating junk food, or some convoluted train of trivia started by his assistant as anything political. "Oh, hey, Danny," he nodded vaguely.
Danny, always observant, noted that he was wearing his outside coat. Josh seldom got out of the building during daylight hours, and it was rather close to the time of the dinner party to be sneaking out for a meal. "Where are you going?"
"I have to meet a secretary."
"Oh. Secretary of Agriculture, Transport Secretary...?"
"One that types."
"Ah." Danny smiled in puzzlement, and fished a little more. "And you're missing the party to do this?"
"Believe me, Danny, nobody feels the pain of missing the Swedish Ambassador's company as keenly as I do." Josh smirked, and Danny didn't blame him. The Swedish Ambassador was a notorious tool. But given that - and knowing Leo McGarry's propensity for making sure his staffers suffered in equal measure when he had to - he doubted it was a scheduled absence.
"Isn't that gonna leave an empty seat at the table?" he prodded.
"Yeah- hey, you want to fill in for me?" Josh smirked suddenly.
"Josh, I hate to break it to you, but despite our striking physical resemblance, I think they'd rumble us pretty quickly," Danny pointed out dryly.
"Yeah, but the point is, I'd be pretty far away by then. Two seats away from CJ?" he attempted to entice. Danny shook his head, but had to smile.
"Josh, they wouldn't let me in."
"Ask Donna or Carol to sneak you in on the guest list," he suggested. "They can do it. They have secret list-altering powers."
"Josh, does it bother you that your assistant has considerably more influence in this building than you do?"
"It used to. But then Donna told me to stop worrying about it, so I did."
Danny shook his head as he bounded off; and decided that even if he couldn't get in to the dinner party, it surely couldn't hurt to be hanging about the place in a tuxedo...
"Hey."
"Leo." The president mustered a wan smile.
"What've you been doing to Charlie?" Leo wondered as he entered the Oval Office. It was far from uncommon for the young aide to look tired and over-stressed, but it was rare for him to be visibly pissed. If such a subtle expression even counted as visible.
He half expected Jed to begin blustering about people fussing over him again, but instead he sighed heavily. "I spoke with Ron earlier."
Ron Butterfield. Oh, that was never good. "Security issues?"
"Yeah. It turns out we've got a new group on our hands, a pleasant little society this, calling themselves the Sons of Herod. Dedicated to the destruction of my potential grandchild."
His stomach lurched. "Oh, Jed."
He barely registered the shift in address. "Yeah. I just had the fun duty of informing my youngest daughter of this. I guess Ron spoke to Charlie already."
"It's procedure, Mr. President," Leo reminded him. "Ron tells you these things, but-"
"Don't tell me it's not a clear and present danger, Leo," the president warned with a thunderous scowl, "you know better than that, and so do I. So does Charlie. So does my daughter."
Still, he had to try. "Sir, the odds of-"
"Don't come to me with odds, Leo, since when has this administration done anything according to the odds?"
"I can honestly say working for this administration has been nothing but odd, Mr. President." That worked, provoking a chuckle, and a lighter atmosphere prevailed. The president gestured to a chair and smiled.
"Take a seat, Leo."
He sat, and shifted more firmly into Chief of Staff mode. "I met with Selena McGann for lunch."
"Oh yes?"
Leo scowled at his old friend's pointedly raised eyebrow. "For business reasons, as you very well know," he added irritably. "Don't you start, I've had Margaret glaring at me all afternoon."
The president gave him an annoying smirk. "Selena McGann's a very attractive woman, Leo."
"Yes, and she's tried to set her hooks in me before, as you should certainly recall, and she knows better by now."
"You were married to Jenny then."
"And now I'm married to you!"
Jed gave him a wry look. "Are we speaking figuratively now, or have I been very drunk recently?"
"Selena McGann wants a date she can use for leverage, and I'm too close to you for her to play me. She knows that, and she won't even try. The woman's a barracuda, Mr. President, she never does anything that doesn't pay out."
"And you think she's the leak?"
"Josh is positive of it," Leo said.
"And you?"
"In the absence of any more intelligent course of action, sir, I'm forced to listen to Josh."
"You think she'd sell out this bill?"
"In a heartbeat... if I could only figure out what's in it for her." Leo's brow wrinkled in confusion. "She hates Joe Bridges for some reason-"
"Other than the fact the man's a toad?"
"Other than that," he agreed. "There's bad blood there of some sort. No way she hands him the key to this deal on a platter, it doesn't make any sense."
"Josh will ferret it out," the president shrugged, dismissing it from his mind. Leo took his cue and stood up.
"Okay, I'll leave you alone now. Did you-"
The president glared at him. "Yes, I took the pills, Leo. My youngest daughter already blackmailed me into it this afternoon."
"Good. Because, you know, the First Lady's going to be back in half an hour, and-"
"Get out."
Leo departed, smirking as he caught the tail end of a mumble about the illusion of who was really in charge of running the country.
