Chapter 2: Black and White Static
The Illinois Primary is a state election. I freely admit, for us, it's a big deal. Just like 1998, this is going to be our High Noon. Nonetheless, there are really very few high-ranking Democrats here. However, Leo being Leo, we got re-election dangled over our heads and then Toby and I were told that should go into the ballroom for half an hour and play nice. And since Donna seems to have appointed herself Leo's gofer – which I thought was strange, being that I was under the impression that she received a paycheck in return for being my gofer, but then I remembered that she needs a raise – the ballroom is in fact where I have ended up. I want to kill them both. I've been standing around for the past ten minutes making polite chit-chat with Senator Haskell, and all I really want is to be back in the suite, downing endless cups of coffee and waiting for the first exit polls and trying very hard to keep my eyes and hands off Sam. It's very difficult to conduct a clandestine relationship while living in a hotel, surrounded by campaign staffers and four or five of your closest friends at all hours of the day and night. You can translate that as, I haven't gotten laid in a while.
I'm staring morosely into my apple juice – the reason I'm drinking this is because it looks enough like bourbon that the whole of the Beltway doesn't start thinking I'm a wuss, and the reason I'm not drinking actual bourbon is that I'm a responsible adult for whom the working portion of the evening is not yet over, plus, the mere concept of having to be polite to this many public officials, many of whom understand that were it not illegal, I would have poked their eyes out with forks a long time ago, is killing off more brain cells than straight-up IV pure alcohol would ever have a hope of doing. This abstinence has nothing to do with the fact that Donna has threatened to hide my car keys if I so much as look at alcohol. But yes, I'm staring morosely into my apple juice while the aforementioned Senator drones on about the Marriage Recognition Act. I have very little idea why he's talking about this, particularly since I distinctly remember the President vetoing it eighteen months ago. I seem to recall a disastrous meeting with Congressman Skinner on the subject, immediately preceded by an even more disastrous conversation with Donna during the course of which I may very possibly have made a comment regarding her lack of self-worth. Sam, at that point, was at 37,000 feet in Air Force One trying to talk Toby into including a quote from Mao in a speech. I had seen him reading The Little Red Book earlier in the week and had wondered when it was going to crop up in a speech, but…
"…do you think, Josh?"
What do I think about what? I drag myself back to the present and try to remember what he had been droning on about. Marriage Recognition Act. Nope, that's a non-starter. He could have said anything. He could have said homosexuals should be burned in hell. I go for a suitably generic, 'I certainly think that's worth considering, Senator', and I get the hell out of there.
"Leo," I announce, throwing myself into a chair in the Presidential suite, "Next time you need someone to do the polite conversation thing, send Sam and Donna, okay?"
"Who'd you get stuck with?" CJ looks as if she'd like to crawl into the nearest bed and sleep through re-election.
"Haskell." I blow out a small hurricane. "That man could bore Avogadro without trying too hard."
"Avogadro?"
"He was a chemistry guy. He sat in a darkened room and divided lots of masses of chemicals by the number of molecules in them." That doesn't sound quite right. "Or something like that. Anyway, he found a constant. He was on hallucinogenics, I swear to you. It's what drugs did in those days, they sent people into dark rooms to come up with stuff that would torture college students in centuries to come."
"What?"
"I'm just saying." I polish off my drink. "I'm thinking Avogadro would be pretty much immune to boredom, but Haskell could manage to bore even him to suicide without too much effort."
"You took Chemistry?"
"I minored in it for a while. It's evil. Also, he dated Marilyn Monroe."
"Haskell?" CJ's starting to look as though she's losing the will to live.
"Avogadro." I twirl a pen. "No, wait, maybe that was Einstein."
"Josh?" She looks far too amused. "I know I said we didn't pay you to be eloquent, but the sheer psychotic kangarooness of this conversation defies belief."
"Yeah."
Because this is what we do when we're waiting for the exit polls to come in. We pretend we're not nervous and as a result, we end up having the most inane conversations imaginable about absolutely nothing. I haven't thought about Avogadro in years. I can't even remember the damn constant, other than that it's some ridiculously high number. I sound drunk. I'm beginning to wonder whether someone spiked my entirely non-intoxicating apple juice.
"Josh. Calm down."
I didn't notice Sam put his hand on my shoulder, and I turn around sharply when I hear his voice.
"I'm fine."
"Like hell you are."
"Yeah, well…"
"Yeah, well nothing. We're doing okay. 72 hour returns are good, numbers from the north-west and mid-east are good…"
"Run out of adjectives there, Spanky?"
"Something like that."
With no warning, the TV blares out from across the room. "With sixty-four percent of precincts reporting, we are now prepared to call the election for President Josiah Bartlet…"
He says more, but we don't hear any of it. The room erupts. We've won, and now, no matter what happens in New York and California and even though it's not official, we're going to the Convention and we've crushed Hoynes to the ground again. Hey, I'm not at all vindictive in any way.
"Mmmmph."
I've been hugging Sam so hard that he can't breathe, and I think I may have actually bruised some of his ribs. I don't think either of us care. Somebody's popped a bottle of champagne, there's music and dancing and whooping, and if I thought earlier in the day that the noise level was high, it had nothing on the volume now. We're so damn loud that I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we were actually breaking some kind of law. The next thing I know, Leo's hitting us both on the back.
"You did it, guys. You won the Illinois Primary."
We're all getting slapped and high-fived by various people. This is the second time we've done this in four years, and it means more this time, if that's possible. Sure, last time was hard and we didn't even know if the voters knew who we were. I had said it myself, that the Democrats weren't going to nominate another liberal academic former-Governor from New Hampshire, and it was overwhelming that they did. This time… this time we had different hurdles to overcome. In the first election, we were just unknown and we could do something about that. In this election, we were corrupt and we had Healthgate hanging over our heads, and we weren't sure that we could do anything about that. We spent ten months and a lot of money educating the voting public about MS, and for the nomination at least, it's paid off. And through it all – through Healthgate and Congress and everything – Sam was the one who kept me grounded. I owe him for that. I remember our first Illinois Primary, and I catch his eye across the room and my lips form the words.
"Thank you."
He smiles and gives me a thumbs up, and then I feel another thump on my back.
"You did good, Josh."
"So did you, Mr President."
"We're not through with this yet."
"No sir, but we will be." He takes my hand in a steel grip. "You've got two hundred people next door waiting for a victory speech."
"Yes, we do."
He goes to Sam, who is gleefully ripping up the 'we have to say something if we lose' speech, to get his copy of the victory speech, and we follow him out of the suite, all five of us – me, Sam, CJ, Toby and Leo – on cloud ten. That's one higher than cloud nine, so you can imagine it's pretty damn cool up here. The ballroom erupts when he goes in, as the Bartlet For America supporters rise to their feet en masse. After the last year of worrying and waiting and not knowing whether Healthgate was going to kill our credibility with the Democratic Party, never mind the rest of the country, it feels good. And we may not be there yet, but hell, we're a lot further on than we were last May.
We're on cloud ten. Someone should give me some kind of warning about the fact that we're about to be sent plummeting to earth with a crash, in a freefall that begins when the President stops moving and then sits down heavily in the nearest chair.
"Mr President?" Leo sounds worried.
"Leo. My eyes. I can't see properly. My legs… they don't feel right.."
"Jed?!" And now he just sounds frantic. I haven't heard Leo call him Jed since election night 1998. "Somebody find Abbey!"
His vision is going. His legs don't feel right. In the past year, I've read more journal articles and briefing books and Internet sites than I can count about relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. I was there for the State of the Union 2000 – I knew what his symptoms had been and eighteen months later, I found out what they had meant. What I'm saying is, I've never seen one first hand, but I am more familiar than I'd like with the theoretical progression of an episode. The senior staff have scattered – I heard Toby mutter something about finding Dr Bartlet and I saw CJ and Donna disappear with a couple of Secret Service agents to exercise crowd control. I can see the top of Sam's head over the crowd. Leo's talking to the President. I'm the only one left. I suppose it's inevitable that I'll be the one grabbed by a reporter.
"Josh Lyman?"
I nod dumbly. My head is spinning and I'm starting to see fuzzy lines in front of my eyes and I can hear music playing on on the CD player regardless. I think it might be Hail To The Chief, but I couldn't tell you for certain because it's strobing between music and sirens, and I pray to God to not let me have an attack. Not here, not now. There's a reporter standing in front of me, and if I give in to West Virginia White Pride now, every paper in North America will be running a story above the fold that, not only did the President of the United States have a flare-up of his multiple sclerosis at the Illinois Primary, it also came out that the Deputy Chief of Staff is mentally unstable. I can't afford to let that happen. I try to force the sirens out of my head and I catch a glimpse of Sam heading my way as the reporter starts to speak again.
"Mr Lyman, can you tell us anything about the President's condition?"
The Illinois Primary is a state election. I freely admit, for us, it's a big deal. Just like 1998, this is going to be our High Noon. Nonetheless, there are really very few high-ranking Democrats here. However, Leo being Leo, we got re-election dangled over our heads and then Toby and I were told that should go into the ballroom for half an hour and play nice. And since Donna seems to have appointed herself Leo's gofer – which I thought was strange, being that I was under the impression that she received a paycheck in return for being my gofer, but then I remembered that she needs a raise – the ballroom is in fact where I have ended up. I want to kill them both. I've been standing around for the past ten minutes making polite chit-chat with Senator Haskell, and all I really want is to be back in the suite, downing endless cups of coffee and waiting for the first exit polls and trying very hard to keep my eyes and hands off Sam. It's very difficult to conduct a clandestine relationship while living in a hotel, surrounded by campaign staffers and four or five of your closest friends at all hours of the day and night. You can translate that as, I haven't gotten laid in a while.
I'm staring morosely into my apple juice – the reason I'm drinking this is because it looks enough like bourbon that the whole of the Beltway doesn't start thinking I'm a wuss, and the reason I'm not drinking actual bourbon is that I'm a responsible adult for whom the working portion of the evening is not yet over, plus, the mere concept of having to be polite to this many public officials, many of whom understand that were it not illegal, I would have poked their eyes out with forks a long time ago, is killing off more brain cells than straight-up IV pure alcohol would ever have a hope of doing. This abstinence has nothing to do with the fact that Donna has threatened to hide my car keys if I so much as look at alcohol. But yes, I'm staring morosely into my apple juice while the aforementioned Senator drones on about the Marriage Recognition Act. I have very little idea why he's talking about this, particularly since I distinctly remember the President vetoing it eighteen months ago. I seem to recall a disastrous meeting with Congressman Skinner on the subject, immediately preceded by an even more disastrous conversation with Donna during the course of which I may very possibly have made a comment regarding her lack of self-worth. Sam, at that point, was at 37,000 feet in Air Force One trying to talk Toby into including a quote from Mao in a speech. I had seen him reading The Little Red Book earlier in the week and had wondered when it was going to crop up in a speech, but…
"…do you think, Josh?"
What do I think about what? I drag myself back to the present and try to remember what he had been droning on about. Marriage Recognition Act. Nope, that's a non-starter. He could have said anything. He could have said homosexuals should be burned in hell. I go for a suitably generic, 'I certainly think that's worth considering, Senator', and I get the hell out of there.
"Leo," I announce, throwing myself into a chair in the Presidential suite, "Next time you need someone to do the polite conversation thing, send Sam and Donna, okay?"
"Who'd you get stuck with?" CJ looks as if she'd like to crawl into the nearest bed and sleep through re-election.
"Haskell." I blow out a small hurricane. "That man could bore Avogadro without trying too hard."
"Avogadro?"
"He was a chemistry guy. He sat in a darkened room and divided lots of masses of chemicals by the number of molecules in them." That doesn't sound quite right. "Or something like that. Anyway, he found a constant. He was on hallucinogenics, I swear to you. It's what drugs did in those days, they sent people into dark rooms to come up with stuff that would torture college students in centuries to come."
"What?"
"I'm just saying." I polish off my drink. "I'm thinking Avogadro would be pretty much immune to boredom, but Haskell could manage to bore even him to suicide without too much effort."
"You took Chemistry?"
"I minored in it for a while. It's evil. Also, he dated Marilyn Monroe."
"Haskell?" CJ's starting to look as though she's losing the will to live.
"Avogadro." I twirl a pen. "No, wait, maybe that was Einstein."
"Josh?" She looks far too amused. "I know I said we didn't pay you to be eloquent, but the sheer psychotic kangarooness of this conversation defies belief."
"Yeah."
Because this is what we do when we're waiting for the exit polls to come in. We pretend we're not nervous and as a result, we end up having the most inane conversations imaginable about absolutely nothing. I haven't thought about Avogadro in years. I can't even remember the damn constant, other than that it's some ridiculously high number. I sound drunk. I'm beginning to wonder whether someone spiked my entirely non-intoxicating apple juice.
"Josh. Calm down."
I didn't notice Sam put his hand on my shoulder, and I turn around sharply when I hear his voice.
"I'm fine."
"Like hell you are."
"Yeah, well…"
"Yeah, well nothing. We're doing okay. 72 hour returns are good, numbers from the north-west and mid-east are good…"
"Run out of adjectives there, Spanky?"
"Something like that."
With no warning, the TV blares out from across the room. "With sixty-four percent of precincts reporting, we are now prepared to call the election for President Josiah Bartlet…"
He says more, but we don't hear any of it. The room erupts. We've won, and now, no matter what happens in New York and California and even though it's not official, we're going to the Convention and we've crushed Hoynes to the ground again. Hey, I'm not at all vindictive in any way.
"Mmmmph."
I've been hugging Sam so hard that he can't breathe, and I think I may have actually bruised some of his ribs. I don't think either of us care. Somebody's popped a bottle of champagne, there's music and dancing and whooping, and if I thought earlier in the day that the noise level was high, it had nothing on the volume now. We're so damn loud that I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we were actually breaking some kind of law. The next thing I know, Leo's hitting us both on the back.
"You did it, guys. You won the Illinois Primary."
We're all getting slapped and high-fived by various people. This is the second time we've done this in four years, and it means more this time, if that's possible. Sure, last time was hard and we didn't even know if the voters knew who we were. I had said it myself, that the Democrats weren't going to nominate another liberal academic former-Governor from New Hampshire, and it was overwhelming that they did. This time… this time we had different hurdles to overcome. In the first election, we were just unknown and we could do something about that. In this election, we were corrupt and we had Healthgate hanging over our heads, and we weren't sure that we could do anything about that. We spent ten months and a lot of money educating the voting public about MS, and for the nomination at least, it's paid off. And through it all – through Healthgate and Congress and everything – Sam was the one who kept me grounded. I owe him for that. I remember our first Illinois Primary, and I catch his eye across the room and my lips form the words.
"Thank you."
He smiles and gives me a thumbs up, and then I feel another thump on my back.
"You did good, Josh."
"So did you, Mr President."
"We're not through with this yet."
"No sir, but we will be." He takes my hand in a steel grip. "You've got two hundred people next door waiting for a victory speech."
"Yes, we do."
He goes to Sam, who is gleefully ripping up the 'we have to say something if we lose' speech, to get his copy of the victory speech, and we follow him out of the suite, all five of us – me, Sam, CJ, Toby and Leo – on cloud ten. That's one higher than cloud nine, so you can imagine it's pretty damn cool up here. The ballroom erupts when he goes in, as the Bartlet For America supporters rise to their feet en masse. After the last year of worrying and waiting and not knowing whether Healthgate was going to kill our credibility with the Democratic Party, never mind the rest of the country, it feels good. And we may not be there yet, but hell, we're a lot further on than we were last May.
We're on cloud ten. Someone should give me some kind of warning about the fact that we're about to be sent plummeting to earth with a crash, in a freefall that begins when the President stops moving and then sits down heavily in the nearest chair.
"Mr President?" Leo sounds worried.
"Leo. My eyes. I can't see properly. My legs… they don't feel right.."
"Jed?!" And now he just sounds frantic. I haven't heard Leo call him Jed since election night 1998. "Somebody find Abbey!"
His vision is going. His legs don't feel right. In the past year, I've read more journal articles and briefing books and Internet sites than I can count about relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. I was there for the State of the Union 2000 – I knew what his symptoms had been and eighteen months later, I found out what they had meant. What I'm saying is, I've never seen one first hand, but I am more familiar than I'd like with the theoretical progression of an episode. The senior staff have scattered – I heard Toby mutter something about finding Dr Bartlet and I saw CJ and Donna disappear with a couple of Secret Service agents to exercise crowd control. I can see the top of Sam's head over the crowd. Leo's talking to the President. I'm the only one left. I suppose it's inevitable that I'll be the one grabbed by a reporter.
"Josh Lyman?"
I nod dumbly. My head is spinning and I'm starting to see fuzzy lines in front of my eyes and I can hear music playing on on the CD player regardless. I think it might be Hail To The Chief, but I couldn't tell you for certain because it's strobing between music and sirens, and I pray to God to not let me have an attack. Not here, not now. There's a reporter standing in front of me, and if I give in to West Virginia White Pride now, every paper in North America will be running a story above the fold that, not only did the President of the United States have a flare-up of his multiple sclerosis at the Illinois Primary, it also came out that the Deputy Chief of Staff is mentally unstable. I can't afford to let that happen. I try to force the sirens out of my head and I catch a glimpse of Sam heading my way as the reporter starts to speak again.
"Mr Lyman, can you tell us anything about the President's condition?"