Chapter 3: Two Centimeters of a Miracle
Tonight has been a night of extreme panic and chaos, although Sam assures me that Rosslyn was worse, and even though the sirens have receded somewhat, I'm still feeling like I have the potential to be the guy who falls in the hole. The result of this is that Sam has been sticking to me like glue for the past hour, and I've been leaning on him both physically and emotionally. I haven't thought anything of it until a reporter for one of the conservative papers starts grilling me, ostensibly about the President, but adding in a couple of thinly-disguised questions about my relationship with Sam. I may be teetering on the brink of a PTSD attack, but I can spot an 'are you gay' question a mile off. I fumble out an answer of the no comment variety and get rid of him. Ten seconds later, I realize that I was holding Sam's hand the whole time he was talking. I look down at our linked fingers and swear, and immediately I drag my boyfriend into the nearest men's room.
"We have to tell them," I point out unnecessarily.
"This might not even be a thing."
"On the other hand," I run my fingers through my hair. "If he runs an op-ed piece on, oh, gay men in government, with a few not-so-oblique references to us, someone in the press room's going to pick up on it."
"Maybe we're being overly paranoid."
"He was already asking questions – we're unlikely to have quelled his suspicions by holding hands while I said no comment. I dunno." My shoulders slump. "Maybe we are being overly paranoid, but at the same time, this could be on the front page of the National Enquirer next week. I'm just saying that they deserve to hear it from us and not from Danny Concannon."
Frankly, I'm amazed we managed to keep it a secret for this long. But tonight? Tonight when the President had an MS episode not two hours ago, when Leo's climbing every wall in the building, when Toby's yelling at anyone who comes within ten feet of him, when CJ's doing a remarkably good impression of a rampaging bull. Given the choice, these are not the circumstances in which either of us would choose to dump this on them. We haven't been given the choice. So Sam goes to look for Toby, I round up CJ and Donna, we drag them into the Presidential suite, and we prepare to throw two perfectly good political careers out of the window.
"Sam and I have a thing we need to give you a heads-up on," I announce. "We just want to warn you in case anyone gets the question, and sir…" I direct my final point at the President. "If you want them, our resignations will be on your desk first thing Monday morning."
"You create another secret plan to fight inflation, Josh?"
"No, sir." I manage a smile at the familiar sarcasm.
"Josh and I are in a relationship," Sam interrupts, having clearly decided that if I'm left to them, we'll all be stuck here through re-election. "Since Rosslyn."
I don't think I've ever heard this particular group of people go this quiet for this long – even Donna, who knew about us already but seems reluctant to be the first one to talk. The President breaks the silence.
"I don't accept your resignations."
"Sir…"
"Don't argue with me, Josh."
"Can I say something?" CJ asks, somewhat redundantly since she then doesn't actually wait for permission before she starts talking. "Why are we only now finding out about this?"
"There's a possibility that suspicions may have been aroused tonight," I admit. "That's all. We didn't want you to get this when you opened the paper."
"I'm tempted to ask how it happened, but I'm afraid you'll tell me that you were drunk and fell into bed together."
"Alcohol," Sam begins defensively, "Had nothing whatsoever to do with it. For this, you have Carl Leroy and his cronies to thank."
I sit down and rub my temples, trying to ward off the oncoming headache, and I let Sam tell the story. Because not only is he about ten times more articulate than I can ever hope to be, for much of this I was a little bit unconscious and under general anaesthetic so really, I can't give much of a first-hand account.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
George Washington University Hospital
Two Years Earlier
Toby had driven them to the hospital, running three red lights, breaking at least seven city traffic ordinances, and ditching the car in the first, illegal, spot available, choosing to worry about potential fatalities now and parking tickets later. By the time the paramedics had reached the ER door, he and CJ and Sam had caught up with the gurney and could hear him mumbling and trying to pull off his oxygen mask. The third time, Sam heard it, pushed through Toby, CJ, Leo, Zoey, and the crowd of random medical personnel who had materialized out of nowhere, and he grabbed Josh's hand.
"You went to New Hampshire. We both did. You came and got me."
He was shoved out of the way then, but only when the nurse crashed into him did he realize that he was shaking and that his hands were covered in Josh's blood. Then Leo laid a hand on his shoulder and he jumped three feet in the air. He was edgy, to put it mildly.
"You okay, man?"
Okay? Sam considered the question. He was hearing gunshots and seeing flashes in his head, he had no real idea how the President was, and his best friend's lung was collapsed and blood had stopped flowing to his brain.
"I will be," he answered as honestly as humanly possible. "How's the President doing?"
"Making bad jokes." Leo shrugged. "He'll be fine, they just want to do a bit of digging around. But Josh… man, I thought we were all okay."
"Yeah."
"I gotta meet with Hoynes and Nancy and Fitz in a half hour. Have CJ brief the press when I'm done, and I'll be back in a little bit. He'll be okay, yeah?" He rubbed the day-old stubble on his chin. "This is Josh. He's too damn stubborn to die."
"Yeah."
"Sam, you got some blood…"
Sam nodded. He didn't tell Leo that he didn't want to wash the blood off because in an irrational corner of his brain, if Josh was bleeding then he was still alive. He washed his hands and wrote the brief, he avoided telling CJ that he pulled her down, did the morning shows, and worried about Donna. In between times, he hid in his office and tried not to break down. It had just hit 7:30, having only just arrived back from the TV station when he got the call. It was Dr Keller, telling him that Josh's heart had stopped beating in surgery, that they were using all of their capabilities but that it didn't look good. Sam hung up the phone and collapsed limply into his chair, tears welling up in his smoky eyes. That was where Donna found him half an hour later. The clock on his desk flashed 8:06, the hum of the Washington public beat in his head, a dull throb reminding him of what he didn't think he could ever return to. He could scarcely believe that little more than a day ago, that had been him, and in ten short hours their lives had collapsed; neither of them sure that they would ever feel whole again.
That morning, Sam discovered that Donnatella Moss, Madison Community College drop-out and Josh Lyman traffic cop, had more perception than the rest of the senior staff put together.
"You're in love with him," she said flatly, "And he's in love with you, and you both have been for God knows how long, but you both dance around the issue like it's going to attack you."
"He's not in love with me."
"What makes you think that?"
"'Cause he's in love with you."
"Sam, I love Josh like a brother, but I would sooner sleep with the President." She wrinkled her nose up. "Okay, maybe not quite, but I mean, Josh is so much like a brother that it's actually bordering on incest."
"You would've taken the bullet."
"We all would've taken the bullet." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "How long?"
"How long what?"
"Have you been in love with him."
"On some levels," Sam shrugged. "That first day I met him on the Hill. Head over heels… since he rescued me from the corporate vortex of Manhattan that day he showed up in my office at Gage Whitney, soaking wet, to tell me he had found the real thing. That was the second time in two days he had been in New York, and you know what? The first time, if he had been able to honestly tell me that he thought Hoynes was the real thing, I would have chucked everything in right then. Then the Illinois Primary, when C-SPAN called it for the Governor and I just looked at him, and all I could do was tell him thank you. I owe him everything."
"Then you should tell him that."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because… because this is not the kind of thing that this administration wants debated on Meet the Press, goddamit!"
"Screw Meet the Press." Donna sat down on the floor. "Life's too damn short, Sam. I'm just saying, it would be wrong if he never heard it."
The phone rang then, to tell them that the surgical team would be taking Josh off bypass soon. He had crashed twice since they had called Sam two hours ago, and they had very little idea whether he would survive coming off the machine, but it was a risk they had to take, and all they could do was hope. He left Donna in the bullpen and ran into CJ outside the press room. Somehow, she managed to get it out of him that he had pushed her down and had her necklace, and all he could think of to say was, 'I didn't want you to feel beholden to me.' He babbled, for a good few minutes, about it turning into an episode of I Dream Of Jeannie before actually giving CJ her necklace back. Then she asked him if he had been scared.
"Yeah."
There was a lot in that one word. He had heard Gina's yell and had reacted, and only after the rear window of the police car had exploded did he start to feel actual terror. About ten minutes later, that had turned into fear for Josh's life, a feeling that had settled around his heart like ice and was showing no signs of letting up. It wasn't going to let up until Josh was out of surgery and he had seen for himself that he was okay. So the truth was, he was still scared. He didn't tell her that.
"I'll be in my office."
He and Donna were still in his office when the call came through from GW at noon. Josh was out of surgery. He was groggy and he had a long road ahead of him, but he was going to be okay. Donna pushed him through the bullpen and the labyrinth of corridors in the West Wing and into the parking lot. She opened his door, started the ignition and sat him down. He shut the engine off again, leaned over, and opened the passenger door.
"Get in."
"Why?"
"Because you're not going to rest until you've seen for yourself that he's okay, and because he'll want to see you as well."
Twenty minutes later, Sam entered the private recovery room past the Secret Service agent stationed outside, listening for a minute to the reassuring beep of the monitors before sitting down. Josh had fallen back asleep. Sam held his hand, telling him everything he had told Donna, and finishing up,
"You saved me from the quagmire of corporate law and you saved me from Lisa, and I owe you for that. And the only reason I just told you everything there, other than it being true, is because Donna's outside and the first thing she's going to ask me when I go out there, before she even asks me if you're okay, will be 'did you tell him?', and if I tell her no, I'll be called a wuss or a chicken or something equally derogatory. So I've told you, and you know, just because you're asleep doesn't mean I didn't say it."
He stopped there and was getting up when Josh's grip on his fingers tightened and a voice, raspy from having had a tube down his throat for fifteen hours, spoke to the ceiling.
"Love you too."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I experienced first hand only the last five minutes of what Sam is now describing to the President and the White House senior staff, and although you may have trouble believing it, neither he nor Donna had ever told me the rest of it until tonight. I had been so busy recovering from the near-fatal gunshot wound, and later, spiralling into that rather spectacular meltdown that climaxed on Christmas Eve, I had never really thought about the hell those two must have gone through that night, two years ago now, not that anyone would ever imagine that it's been that long. I check my watch. Though Donna may mock me for its time-keeping abilities or lack thereof, the date function has always been fairly reliably. May 17th, 2002. My brain takes a second to catch up to my subconcious, and I realize, somewhat belatedly, that Rosslyn was exactly two years ago today. It's not an anniversary I care to celebrate, but for a minute I turn my attention to whoever it is out there who was looking out for me – maybe God, maybe Joanie, maybe my dad – and I thank them for whatever intervention they sent to me. For what Sam refers to as my brilliant surgical team and my two centimeters of a miracle.
I turn my attention back to the room, where Sam has wound up his story with a comment that I missed, but that appears to have prompted CJ to ask a question.
"You live together?" she asks.
"I go to my apartment a couple of times a week to pick up my mail and check my messages, but since last year's Big Block Of Cheese Day, more or less."
Sam's more or less moving into my apartment was more my decision than his. That week, I hadn't seen him outside of work at all, he was sleeping at the office, and he was on edge. Stephanie Gault's grandfather pushed him over. So Toby and Donna and CJ and I went out and got him drunk, as we discussed. I took him to my place, I put him to bed, and he kind of just didn't leave. It wasn't something we discussed. It just happened.
"Well…"
"Sam, Josh." I look up at Leo. "Put together a statement that CJ can give to the press if she gets the question. In the meantime, if it's what you want, stop hiding and let people draw their own conclusions."
I wait for the other shoe to drop. Seriously, these people just found out that their Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Communications Director have been in a homosexual relationship for almost two years. They're taking it far too calmly. After two full minutes of silence, it would appear that there isn't another shoe.
"Technically, this isn't the business of the White House press corps or the American people, but if we get asked and we don't answer, it's going to get blown up out of all proportion. If they ask, we tell them exactly where this relationship stands, and after that we go back to not commenting on the private lives of White House staff. Right now, you have a country to run and a nomination to win."
I notice that people around me have taken this for the dismissal that it is, and that everyone else is starting to collect their things and stand up. I get to my feet and pull my jacket on as we move towards the door. Sam and I are stopped halfway out the door by the President.
"Guys? For want of a better word, and although it may be coming a bit late in the game, congratulations."
Tonight has been a night of extreme panic and chaos, although Sam assures me that Rosslyn was worse, and even though the sirens have receded somewhat, I'm still feeling like I have the potential to be the guy who falls in the hole. The result of this is that Sam has been sticking to me like glue for the past hour, and I've been leaning on him both physically and emotionally. I haven't thought anything of it until a reporter for one of the conservative papers starts grilling me, ostensibly about the President, but adding in a couple of thinly-disguised questions about my relationship with Sam. I may be teetering on the brink of a PTSD attack, but I can spot an 'are you gay' question a mile off. I fumble out an answer of the no comment variety and get rid of him. Ten seconds later, I realize that I was holding Sam's hand the whole time he was talking. I look down at our linked fingers and swear, and immediately I drag my boyfriend into the nearest men's room.
"We have to tell them," I point out unnecessarily.
"This might not even be a thing."
"On the other hand," I run my fingers through my hair. "If he runs an op-ed piece on, oh, gay men in government, with a few not-so-oblique references to us, someone in the press room's going to pick up on it."
"Maybe we're being overly paranoid."
"He was already asking questions – we're unlikely to have quelled his suspicions by holding hands while I said no comment. I dunno." My shoulders slump. "Maybe we are being overly paranoid, but at the same time, this could be on the front page of the National Enquirer next week. I'm just saying that they deserve to hear it from us and not from Danny Concannon."
Frankly, I'm amazed we managed to keep it a secret for this long. But tonight? Tonight when the President had an MS episode not two hours ago, when Leo's climbing every wall in the building, when Toby's yelling at anyone who comes within ten feet of him, when CJ's doing a remarkably good impression of a rampaging bull. Given the choice, these are not the circumstances in which either of us would choose to dump this on them. We haven't been given the choice. So Sam goes to look for Toby, I round up CJ and Donna, we drag them into the Presidential suite, and we prepare to throw two perfectly good political careers out of the window.
"Sam and I have a thing we need to give you a heads-up on," I announce. "We just want to warn you in case anyone gets the question, and sir…" I direct my final point at the President. "If you want them, our resignations will be on your desk first thing Monday morning."
"You create another secret plan to fight inflation, Josh?"
"No, sir." I manage a smile at the familiar sarcasm.
"Josh and I are in a relationship," Sam interrupts, having clearly decided that if I'm left to them, we'll all be stuck here through re-election. "Since Rosslyn."
I don't think I've ever heard this particular group of people go this quiet for this long – even Donna, who knew about us already but seems reluctant to be the first one to talk. The President breaks the silence.
"I don't accept your resignations."
"Sir…"
"Don't argue with me, Josh."
"Can I say something?" CJ asks, somewhat redundantly since she then doesn't actually wait for permission before she starts talking. "Why are we only now finding out about this?"
"There's a possibility that suspicions may have been aroused tonight," I admit. "That's all. We didn't want you to get this when you opened the paper."
"I'm tempted to ask how it happened, but I'm afraid you'll tell me that you were drunk and fell into bed together."
"Alcohol," Sam begins defensively, "Had nothing whatsoever to do with it. For this, you have Carl Leroy and his cronies to thank."
I sit down and rub my temples, trying to ward off the oncoming headache, and I let Sam tell the story. Because not only is he about ten times more articulate than I can ever hope to be, for much of this I was a little bit unconscious and under general anaesthetic so really, I can't give much of a first-hand account.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
George Washington University Hospital
Two Years Earlier
Toby had driven them to the hospital, running three red lights, breaking at least seven city traffic ordinances, and ditching the car in the first, illegal, spot available, choosing to worry about potential fatalities now and parking tickets later. By the time the paramedics had reached the ER door, he and CJ and Sam had caught up with the gurney and could hear him mumbling and trying to pull off his oxygen mask. The third time, Sam heard it, pushed through Toby, CJ, Leo, Zoey, and the crowd of random medical personnel who had materialized out of nowhere, and he grabbed Josh's hand.
"You went to New Hampshire. We both did. You came and got me."
He was shoved out of the way then, but only when the nurse crashed into him did he realize that he was shaking and that his hands were covered in Josh's blood. Then Leo laid a hand on his shoulder and he jumped three feet in the air. He was edgy, to put it mildly.
"You okay, man?"
Okay? Sam considered the question. He was hearing gunshots and seeing flashes in his head, he had no real idea how the President was, and his best friend's lung was collapsed and blood had stopped flowing to his brain.
"I will be," he answered as honestly as humanly possible. "How's the President doing?"
"Making bad jokes." Leo shrugged. "He'll be fine, they just want to do a bit of digging around. But Josh… man, I thought we were all okay."
"Yeah."
"I gotta meet with Hoynes and Nancy and Fitz in a half hour. Have CJ brief the press when I'm done, and I'll be back in a little bit. He'll be okay, yeah?" He rubbed the day-old stubble on his chin. "This is Josh. He's too damn stubborn to die."
"Yeah."
"Sam, you got some blood…"
Sam nodded. He didn't tell Leo that he didn't want to wash the blood off because in an irrational corner of his brain, if Josh was bleeding then he was still alive. He washed his hands and wrote the brief, he avoided telling CJ that he pulled her down, did the morning shows, and worried about Donna. In between times, he hid in his office and tried not to break down. It had just hit 7:30, having only just arrived back from the TV station when he got the call. It was Dr Keller, telling him that Josh's heart had stopped beating in surgery, that they were using all of their capabilities but that it didn't look good. Sam hung up the phone and collapsed limply into his chair, tears welling up in his smoky eyes. That was where Donna found him half an hour later. The clock on his desk flashed 8:06, the hum of the Washington public beat in his head, a dull throb reminding him of what he didn't think he could ever return to. He could scarcely believe that little more than a day ago, that had been him, and in ten short hours their lives had collapsed; neither of them sure that they would ever feel whole again.
That morning, Sam discovered that Donnatella Moss, Madison Community College drop-out and Josh Lyman traffic cop, had more perception than the rest of the senior staff put together.
"You're in love with him," she said flatly, "And he's in love with you, and you both have been for God knows how long, but you both dance around the issue like it's going to attack you."
"He's not in love with me."
"What makes you think that?"
"'Cause he's in love with you."
"Sam, I love Josh like a brother, but I would sooner sleep with the President." She wrinkled her nose up. "Okay, maybe not quite, but I mean, Josh is so much like a brother that it's actually bordering on incest."
"You would've taken the bullet."
"We all would've taken the bullet." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "How long?"
"How long what?"
"Have you been in love with him."
"On some levels," Sam shrugged. "That first day I met him on the Hill. Head over heels… since he rescued me from the corporate vortex of Manhattan that day he showed up in my office at Gage Whitney, soaking wet, to tell me he had found the real thing. That was the second time in two days he had been in New York, and you know what? The first time, if he had been able to honestly tell me that he thought Hoynes was the real thing, I would have chucked everything in right then. Then the Illinois Primary, when C-SPAN called it for the Governor and I just looked at him, and all I could do was tell him thank you. I owe him everything."
"Then you should tell him that."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because… because this is not the kind of thing that this administration wants debated on Meet the Press, goddamit!"
"Screw Meet the Press." Donna sat down on the floor. "Life's too damn short, Sam. I'm just saying, it would be wrong if he never heard it."
The phone rang then, to tell them that the surgical team would be taking Josh off bypass soon. He had crashed twice since they had called Sam two hours ago, and they had very little idea whether he would survive coming off the machine, but it was a risk they had to take, and all they could do was hope. He left Donna in the bullpen and ran into CJ outside the press room. Somehow, she managed to get it out of him that he had pushed her down and had her necklace, and all he could think of to say was, 'I didn't want you to feel beholden to me.' He babbled, for a good few minutes, about it turning into an episode of I Dream Of Jeannie before actually giving CJ her necklace back. Then she asked him if he had been scared.
"Yeah."
There was a lot in that one word. He had heard Gina's yell and had reacted, and only after the rear window of the police car had exploded did he start to feel actual terror. About ten minutes later, that had turned into fear for Josh's life, a feeling that had settled around his heart like ice and was showing no signs of letting up. It wasn't going to let up until Josh was out of surgery and he had seen for himself that he was okay. So the truth was, he was still scared. He didn't tell her that.
"I'll be in my office."
He and Donna were still in his office when the call came through from GW at noon. Josh was out of surgery. He was groggy and he had a long road ahead of him, but he was going to be okay. Donna pushed him through the bullpen and the labyrinth of corridors in the West Wing and into the parking lot. She opened his door, started the ignition and sat him down. He shut the engine off again, leaned over, and opened the passenger door.
"Get in."
"Why?"
"Because you're not going to rest until you've seen for yourself that he's okay, and because he'll want to see you as well."
Twenty minutes later, Sam entered the private recovery room past the Secret Service agent stationed outside, listening for a minute to the reassuring beep of the monitors before sitting down. Josh had fallen back asleep. Sam held his hand, telling him everything he had told Donna, and finishing up,
"You saved me from the quagmire of corporate law and you saved me from Lisa, and I owe you for that. And the only reason I just told you everything there, other than it being true, is because Donna's outside and the first thing she's going to ask me when I go out there, before she even asks me if you're okay, will be 'did you tell him?', and if I tell her no, I'll be called a wuss or a chicken or something equally derogatory. So I've told you, and you know, just because you're asleep doesn't mean I didn't say it."
He stopped there and was getting up when Josh's grip on his fingers tightened and a voice, raspy from having had a tube down his throat for fifteen hours, spoke to the ceiling.
"Love you too."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I experienced first hand only the last five minutes of what Sam is now describing to the President and the White House senior staff, and although you may have trouble believing it, neither he nor Donna had ever told me the rest of it until tonight. I had been so busy recovering from the near-fatal gunshot wound, and later, spiralling into that rather spectacular meltdown that climaxed on Christmas Eve, I had never really thought about the hell those two must have gone through that night, two years ago now, not that anyone would ever imagine that it's been that long. I check my watch. Though Donna may mock me for its time-keeping abilities or lack thereof, the date function has always been fairly reliably. May 17th, 2002. My brain takes a second to catch up to my subconcious, and I realize, somewhat belatedly, that Rosslyn was exactly two years ago today. It's not an anniversary I care to celebrate, but for a minute I turn my attention to whoever it is out there who was looking out for me – maybe God, maybe Joanie, maybe my dad – and I thank them for whatever intervention they sent to me. For what Sam refers to as my brilliant surgical team and my two centimeters of a miracle.
I turn my attention back to the room, where Sam has wound up his story with a comment that I missed, but that appears to have prompted CJ to ask a question.
"You live together?" she asks.
"I go to my apartment a couple of times a week to pick up my mail and check my messages, but since last year's Big Block Of Cheese Day, more or less."
Sam's more or less moving into my apartment was more my decision than his. That week, I hadn't seen him outside of work at all, he was sleeping at the office, and he was on edge. Stephanie Gault's grandfather pushed him over. So Toby and Donna and CJ and I went out and got him drunk, as we discussed. I took him to my place, I put him to bed, and he kind of just didn't leave. It wasn't something we discussed. It just happened.
"Well…"
"Sam, Josh." I look up at Leo. "Put together a statement that CJ can give to the press if she gets the question. In the meantime, if it's what you want, stop hiding and let people draw their own conclusions."
I wait for the other shoe to drop. Seriously, these people just found out that their Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Communications Director have been in a homosexual relationship for almost two years. They're taking it far too calmly. After two full minutes of silence, it would appear that there isn't another shoe.
"Technically, this isn't the business of the White House press corps or the American people, but if we get asked and we don't answer, it's going to get blown up out of all proportion. If they ask, we tell them exactly where this relationship stands, and after that we go back to not commenting on the private lives of White House staff. Right now, you have a country to run and a nomination to win."
I notice that people around me have taken this for the dismissal that it is, and that everyone else is starting to collect their things and stand up. I get to my feet and pull my jacket on as we move towards the door. Sam and I are stopped halfway out the door by the President.
"Guys? For want of a better word, and although it may be coming a bit late in the game, congratulations."