PART TWO
Josh's apartment
Toby didn't pause to knock before entering Josh's apartment. He could still hear Sam's voice, panicked on the other end of the line, less than half an hour earlier. "Toby, Josh is unconscious, can you come?"
It had taken a few minutes for Toby to get the rest of the story out of his deputy. By the time he had finally understood that Sam had knocked Josh out accidentally, Josh was beginning to come around. Sam's voice was shaking as he asked Toby whether he should call an ambulance.
"Does he know his name and where he is?" Toby had asked.
There had been a muffled discussion, then Sam had answered, "Yeah, do I call an ambulance?"
Hoping not to make a mistake, Toby had told him to keep Josh awake, and that if he passed out again, he should call. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he had promised, hanging up before his deputy could say more, and jumped into his car, not bothering to check his speed as he was rushing to Josh's place.
When he entered, Sam was pacing the living room, and Josh was sitting on the couch. "Sam, I'm fine, I told you," Josh said in a tired voice.
"You were unconscious for several minutes," Sam said. He spotted Toby and relief crossed his features. "Toby, can you drive - "
Toby cut him off. "What the hell happened?"
Sam froze in mid sentence, and Josh closed his eyes, resting his head on the cushions.
"Don't fall asleep," Toby barked at him, and Josh's eyes flew open again. Turning back to Sam, Toby asked again, more gently, "What happened?"
"I... I don't know. I was... Josh came to get me at the bar, and I didn't mean to hit him, I just... I don't understand." His hands flew to his head, pushing his hair back mechanically.
Josh's voice rose. "The barman called me, Sam was too drunk to drive. I brought him here because he was about to get sick. I don't know, I think I fell asleep, and when I woke up, he was having a nightmare. He was thrashing, I tried to hold him down, and he hit me."
"I'm sorry," Sam repeated, his gaze fixed on the floor. His hands were shaking, Toby noticed.
"Okay, I'll drive Josh to the hospital and have him checked out," he decided. "You'll stay here, and we'll talk about all this when we're back."
Josh was obviously about to protest the idea, but a glare in his direction was enough to make him reconsider. He got up and followed Toby to the door. Before leaving, Toby turned to Sam. "He'll be fine, don't worry, okay?" he said.
Sam looked in his direction, not making eye contact. "Sure," he nodded.
"He will," Toby insisted, ushering Josh in the hallway and closing the door.
"What do you know that I don't?" Josh asked softly.
"Let's get you to the ER," he said, evading the question.
"Toby."
"Josh... It's not my story to tell, okay. Does your head hurt?"
"A little," Josh admitted.
"Okay, let's go," he said, dragging him outside. The sooner they were back, the sooner they'd be able to reassure his deputy, he thought.
Then, they would have a talk.
A long talk.
Three hours later
Josh's place
"I told you I was fine," Josh repeated.
"For God's sake, Josh, if you say that one more time, I swear, you won't be fine anymore," Toby growled. He knew that Josh didn't like hospitals, no one did, but he had been unbearable for so long now that Toby was just about to snap.
The fact that the doctors had confirmed that he was fine hadn't helped either. The 'told you so' look hadn't left Josh's face since.
"Fine, whatever," Josh said, apparently realizing that Toby was dangerously close to explosion. "Now, what do you know about Sam that I don't?"
Toby had been expecting that question since they had left the hospital. He had also wondered how he was going to answer it. He couldn't betray Sam's confidence. Not on such a sensitive matter. But on the other hand, Josh wasn't oblivious to subtle signals, sometimes. He was bound to have noticed something, even before tonight.
"I told you," he said finally. "It's not my place to answer that."
"So you * do * know something," Josh completed.
It would have been futile to deny it.
"Is he all right?" Josh asked.
Good question. He didn't think so, but he lacked a scale of comparison. He knew that Sam lived with it as well as he could, and that most of the time, it was enough. Toby had never asked Sam if he had gone through times where it had become unbearable, but it would have been surprising if he hadn't.
Was now such a time?
He needed to talk to Sam.
He supposed - he hoped - that his deputy had gone back to his place. When Josh and him had come back from the ER, Sam was gone, only leaving a note. "I'm sorry. See you guys later." Toby was reluctant to leave Josh alone, Josh wouldn't hear of calling Donna - "She'll mother me to death," he had protested - and he didn't want to wait until the next morning to deal with the situation.
"Go find him," Josh said, as if reading his thoughts.
"You shouldn't stay alone."
"Toby, I have a bump, nothing more. I'm perfectly fine. Go find him."
Toby looked at him, gauging his state. He did look fine, and there was a hint of guilt in his eyes. Toby knew what he was thinking; Sam had problems and he hadn't known anything about it. Once upon a time, he was his confidant. Not anymore, obviously, although he didn't know what had happened, and now he was wondering if Sam would be where he was today had he been more present. "He'll be okay too," he said, in an attempt to put Josh's mind at ease.
"Yeah, right. Look, go, and I'll call you later, okay."
Toby nodded and left him, wondering what he would find at Sam's place.
Monday
Sam accepted the stack of messages Ginger was handing him and dropped his briefcase into his office, noting gratefully that Toby wasn't there yet. They had spent the weekend arguing about what had happened, and he was exhausted.
When Toby had arrived, Saturday night, Sam was already asleep. He had woken up in the morning, a bad headache preventing him from focussing too long on what was going on, Toby sprawled on a chair, watching CNN with the sound turned off.
"Josh?" Sam had asked.
"He'll be fine. You didn't hurt him."
That was open to debate, Sam had thought, but he needed to go be sick before he could truly participate in any conversation, so he had left Toby and gone take a shower and change his clothes. His boss was still waiting in the living room when he had come back, clearly not in the mood for more evasion techniques. Sam had sat down, and told him everything, his run in with Kevin, his drinking, his nightmare, Josh.
"We need to tell the others," Toby had said. Again.
The discussion had lasted most of the week end, each man unwilling to come back on his position, until they had agreed to let it drop until Monday.
If his boss still wasn't here, though, that meant he still had a few moments of quiet. Sitting down, he went through the messages Ginger had given him. Not important, not important, to call back ASAP, who the hell is that guy, call back soon, and -
Steve?
What was Steve doing, calling him?
Picking up his phone he dialed the number Ginger had written down, her writing neat and precise.
"Steven McKay," Steve said.
"It's Sam."
"Oh."
That did nothing to reassure him. "You called?" he insisted.
"Yeah, I... sorry, I didn't have a private number, and - "
"What's wrong?" he asked. Steve was always short and to the point. He was a high ranking lawyer, he was busy, and he didn't have any time to lose on idle chat, especially with someone he hadn't spoken to since college. Even if back then, they had shared a secret.
"I got drunk last week," Steve said. "Kevin was in town."
"In Chicago? What was he doing - "
"I don't know. Sam, the thing is... I have no idea what I told him. It was the first time I drank in ages, I quit some time after we graduated, and I'm not used to it anymore. It's... I can't remember what we talked about."
"But you think it might have been about..."
"I do know we talked about you," Steve said hesitantly. "He said something about a tape, I don't know what, and..."
He didn't finish, he didn't need to.
He didn't know anything else, but it was possible that Kevin had remembered that Steve and him had been friends at some point, and come to grill him - informally of course.
And that would give a lot more weight to the veiled threats he had made Saturday night.
Oh God, he thought.
"Sam?"
"I'll call you back," he said absently, hanging up.
He saw that Toby had arrived - he was busy asking Bonnie something.
Feeling the walls of his office close down on him, he sat down heavily and tried to control his breathing.
It wasn't sure yet.
Maybe Kevin was just pushing randomly at buttons, in the hope that something would come out.
Maybe he was just trying to push Sam to make yet another mistake.
Or maybe he did have something.
"Sam, are you okay?"
Toby was concerned again.
He was so sorry he kept worrying Toby these days.
"Sam?"
He shot a look at his boss, who frowned, closed the door and the blinds before coming to a stop in front of him. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head. How would he know what was wrong, no one could give him any certainties.
"Sam?"
A knock on the door preceded Ginger. "Staff now."
"One minute," Toby growled.
"Leo insisted that - "
"I said one damn minute," he barked.
Ginger retreated without a comment, and Sam wondered fleetingly when the rest of the staff had gotten used to Toby's manners. Was it before or long after the end of the campaign?
He frowned. Why was he even wondering about that now?
Toby looked at his deputy, who was regaining some color. That had to be a good sign, he supposed.
"Sam, are you having a panic attack?" he asked, to make sure.
Sam shook his head, confirming Toby's suspicion. Panic attacks lasted longer.
"You can't go out like that," Toby pointed out. "You have to calm down a little."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Toby said automatically, upset that the first words his deputy had said since he'd found him were an apology. He wasn't sure he liked that.
Correction, he was sure he didn't like it. Sam spent too much time apologizing, he had always thought so. Once upon a time, it had annoyed him - and amused him on a few occasions. Now that he had an idea what Sam's past had been like, though, he didn't find it so amusing anymore.
He had told himself that he wouldn't try to interpret all Sam did in terms of what had happened to him, but he wasn't entirely successful.
"But - " Sam tried to insist.
"It's * not * your fault," Toby said forcefully.
"You don't even know why I'm saying that."
"I can guess, though."
There was another knock on the door.
"We have to go to staff," Sam said.
"I know. Then, we'll - "
"Have to talk, yeah."
He nodded and ushered Sam out of the room. He then spent the next ten minutes watching him, in Leo's office. Everyone could see Sam's mind wasn't on the meeting. As soon as Leo sent them away, Toby trailed behind Sam, following him to his office.
"Hold our calls," he told Bonnie when he passed her in the bullpen. He closed the door to Sam's office, sat down in one of the visitors chairs, and asked, calmly, "Okay, what's up?"
Sam looked at him, clearly torn, then at his phone. "Steve, an old friend of mine, told me he saw Kevin recently. He doesn't remember what he told him, but he knows they talked about me."
"And Kevin accosted you Saturday," Toby completed.
Sam nodded jerkily. "It's possible that he knows."
Toby bit his lip. He knew, and understood, why Sam didn't want the story to come out. He just didn't think it would be that big a story. He had been the victim, not the criminal.
"Are you kidding?" Sam yelled when Toby said as much. "What the fuck do you think people will think when they know that a senior staffer to the President is in therapy?"
"Josh sees a psychiatrist."
"No one knows that. And there's a reason we didn't make an announcement. Damn it, Toby, you know how people see therapy. They'll just think I'm nuts, or unbalanced, or whatever."
"Sam, we educated the public after the MS. We could do it again."
He snorted. "Right. Do you seriously think that I'd let things go that far?"
"You'd quit?"
"Hell, yeah."
Toby was about to argue when he saw the way Sam was clenching his fists, as if ready to smash something, and kept quiet.
"Toby, if they dig, they could find out about Josh. They already know that Leo is a recovering addict. They may even find out that the President..."
Toby grimaced. He had hoped Sam wouldn't think about that.
"How do you think that's gonna look? How do you think Ritchie will spin it?"
Imagining the headlines Ritchie could cause if he got proof, he sighed. "I know. Okay, let's... Can they prove that you're seeing someone?"
Sam shrugged. "They can prove that I did. They can... Okay, when I see Joyce now, she doesn't take notes, I only pay her cash, she never does an official receipt, nor bill -"
"Why?" Toby suddenly wondered.
"Because I was afraid of the way it might look if the press got a hold of this," Sam put in, bitterly.
Toby grimaced.
"Anyway, that's not really the point, is it?" Sam went on. "If they ask, we'll have to answer. Because if we lie, and they prove it..."
"We could refuse to answer."
Sam shook his head, not bothering to answer that. Not answering would be an answer in itself.
"Okay. What about your previous therapist?"
"I didn't see him too often, but yes, he must have kept records."
"They're sworn to secrecy, Sam".
"I know."
"It's gonna be okay," he said.
"Not if it leaks, no, it won't."
"It won't come to that."
He couldn't be sure. He needed to say it anyway.
He was going to have to bring up the 'let's tell CJ' point again soon, he had to, but first, he needed Sam to concentrate.
And calm down.
Toby sighed. The day was going to be long.
Josh's apartment
Toby didn't pause to knock before entering Josh's apartment. He could still hear Sam's voice, panicked on the other end of the line, less than half an hour earlier. "Toby, Josh is unconscious, can you come?"
It had taken a few minutes for Toby to get the rest of the story out of his deputy. By the time he had finally understood that Sam had knocked Josh out accidentally, Josh was beginning to come around. Sam's voice was shaking as he asked Toby whether he should call an ambulance.
"Does he know his name and where he is?" Toby had asked.
There had been a muffled discussion, then Sam had answered, "Yeah, do I call an ambulance?"
Hoping not to make a mistake, Toby had told him to keep Josh awake, and that if he passed out again, he should call. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he had promised, hanging up before his deputy could say more, and jumped into his car, not bothering to check his speed as he was rushing to Josh's place.
When he entered, Sam was pacing the living room, and Josh was sitting on the couch. "Sam, I'm fine, I told you," Josh said in a tired voice.
"You were unconscious for several minutes," Sam said. He spotted Toby and relief crossed his features. "Toby, can you drive - "
Toby cut him off. "What the hell happened?"
Sam froze in mid sentence, and Josh closed his eyes, resting his head on the cushions.
"Don't fall asleep," Toby barked at him, and Josh's eyes flew open again. Turning back to Sam, Toby asked again, more gently, "What happened?"
"I... I don't know. I was... Josh came to get me at the bar, and I didn't mean to hit him, I just... I don't understand." His hands flew to his head, pushing his hair back mechanically.
Josh's voice rose. "The barman called me, Sam was too drunk to drive. I brought him here because he was about to get sick. I don't know, I think I fell asleep, and when I woke up, he was having a nightmare. He was thrashing, I tried to hold him down, and he hit me."
"I'm sorry," Sam repeated, his gaze fixed on the floor. His hands were shaking, Toby noticed.
"Okay, I'll drive Josh to the hospital and have him checked out," he decided. "You'll stay here, and we'll talk about all this when we're back."
Josh was obviously about to protest the idea, but a glare in his direction was enough to make him reconsider. He got up and followed Toby to the door. Before leaving, Toby turned to Sam. "He'll be fine, don't worry, okay?" he said.
Sam looked in his direction, not making eye contact. "Sure," he nodded.
"He will," Toby insisted, ushering Josh in the hallway and closing the door.
"What do you know that I don't?" Josh asked softly.
"Let's get you to the ER," he said, evading the question.
"Toby."
"Josh... It's not my story to tell, okay. Does your head hurt?"
"A little," Josh admitted.
"Okay, let's go," he said, dragging him outside. The sooner they were back, the sooner they'd be able to reassure his deputy, he thought.
Then, they would have a talk.
A long talk.
Three hours later
Josh's place
"I told you I was fine," Josh repeated.
"For God's sake, Josh, if you say that one more time, I swear, you won't be fine anymore," Toby growled. He knew that Josh didn't like hospitals, no one did, but he had been unbearable for so long now that Toby was just about to snap.
The fact that the doctors had confirmed that he was fine hadn't helped either. The 'told you so' look hadn't left Josh's face since.
"Fine, whatever," Josh said, apparently realizing that Toby was dangerously close to explosion. "Now, what do you know about Sam that I don't?"
Toby had been expecting that question since they had left the hospital. He had also wondered how he was going to answer it. He couldn't betray Sam's confidence. Not on such a sensitive matter. But on the other hand, Josh wasn't oblivious to subtle signals, sometimes. He was bound to have noticed something, even before tonight.
"I told you," he said finally. "It's not my place to answer that."
"So you * do * know something," Josh completed.
It would have been futile to deny it.
"Is he all right?" Josh asked.
Good question. He didn't think so, but he lacked a scale of comparison. He knew that Sam lived with it as well as he could, and that most of the time, it was enough. Toby had never asked Sam if he had gone through times where it had become unbearable, but it would have been surprising if he hadn't.
Was now such a time?
He needed to talk to Sam.
He supposed - he hoped - that his deputy had gone back to his place. When Josh and him had come back from the ER, Sam was gone, only leaving a note. "I'm sorry. See you guys later." Toby was reluctant to leave Josh alone, Josh wouldn't hear of calling Donna - "She'll mother me to death," he had protested - and he didn't want to wait until the next morning to deal with the situation.
"Go find him," Josh said, as if reading his thoughts.
"You shouldn't stay alone."
"Toby, I have a bump, nothing more. I'm perfectly fine. Go find him."
Toby looked at him, gauging his state. He did look fine, and there was a hint of guilt in his eyes. Toby knew what he was thinking; Sam had problems and he hadn't known anything about it. Once upon a time, he was his confidant. Not anymore, obviously, although he didn't know what had happened, and now he was wondering if Sam would be where he was today had he been more present. "He'll be okay too," he said, in an attempt to put Josh's mind at ease.
"Yeah, right. Look, go, and I'll call you later, okay."
Toby nodded and left him, wondering what he would find at Sam's place.
Monday
Sam accepted the stack of messages Ginger was handing him and dropped his briefcase into his office, noting gratefully that Toby wasn't there yet. They had spent the weekend arguing about what had happened, and he was exhausted.
When Toby had arrived, Saturday night, Sam was already asleep. He had woken up in the morning, a bad headache preventing him from focussing too long on what was going on, Toby sprawled on a chair, watching CNN with the sound turned off.
"Josh?" Sam had asked.
"He'll be fine. You didn't hurt him."
That was open to debate, Sam had thought, but he needed to go be sick before he could truly participate in any conversation, so he had left Toby and gone take a shower and change his clothes. His boss was still waiting in the living room when he had come back, clearly not in the mood for more evasion techniques. Sam had sat down, and told him everything, his run in with Kevin, his drinking, his nightmare, Josh.
"We need to tell the others," Toby had said. Again.
The discussion had lasted most of the week end, each man unwilling to come back on his position, until they had agreed to let it drop until Monday.
If his boss still wasn't here, though, that meant he still had a few moments of quiet. Sitting down, he went through the messages Ginger had given him. Not important, not important, to call back ASAP, who the hell is that guy, call back soon, and -
Steve?
What was Steve doing, calling him?
Picking up his phone he dialed the number Ginger had written down, her writing neat and precise.
"Steven McKay," Steve said.
"It's Sam."
"Oh."
That did nothing to reassure him. "You called?" he insisted.
"Yeah, I... sorry, I didn't have a private number, and - "
"What's wrong?" he asked. Steve was always short and to the point. He was a high ranking lawyer, he was busy, and he didn't have any time to lose on idle chat, especially with someone he hadn't spoken to since college. Even if back then, they had shared a secret.
"I got drunk last week," Steve said. "Kevin was in town."
"In Chicago? What was he doing - "
"I don't know. Sam, the thing is... I have no idea what I told him. It was the first time I drank in ages, I quit some time after we graduated, and I'm not used to it anymore. It's... I can't remember what we talked about."
"But you think it might have been about..."
"I do know we talked about you," Steve said hesitantly. "He said something about a tape, I don't know what, and..."
He didn't finish, he didn't need to.
He didn't know anything else, but it was possible that Kevin had remembered that Steve and him had been friends at some point, and come to grill him - informally of course.
And that would give a lot more weight to the veiled threats he had made Saturday night.
Oh God, he thought.
"Sam?"
"I'll call you back," he said absently, hanging up.
He saw that Toby had arrived - he was busy asking Bonnie something.
Feeling the walls of his office close down on him, he sat down heavily and tried to control his breathing.
It wasn't sure yet.
Maybe Kevin was just pushing randomly at buttons, in the hope that something would come out.
Maybe he was just trying to push Sam to make yet another mistake.
Or maybe he did have something.
"Sam, are you okay?"
Toby was concerned again.
He was so sorry he kept worrying Toby these days.
"Sam?"
He shot a look at his boss, who frowned, closed the door and the blinds before coming to a stop in front of him. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head. How would he know what was wrong, no one could give him any certainties.
"Sam?"
A knock on the door preceded Ginger. "Staff now."
"One minute," Toby growled.
"Leo insisted that - "
"I said one damn minute," he barked.
Ginger retreated without a comment, and Sam wondered fleetingly when the rest of the staff had gotten used to Toby's manners. Was it before or long after the end of the campaign?
He frowned. Why was he even wondering about that now?
Toby looked at his deputy, who was regaining some color. That had to be a good sign, he supposed.
"Sam, are you having a panic attack?" he asked, to make sure.
Sam shook his head, confirming Toby's suspicion. Panic attacks lasted longer.
"You can't go out like that," Toby pointed out. "You have to calm down a little."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Toby said automatically, upset that the first words his deputy had said since he'd found him were an apology. He wasn't sure he liked that.
Correction, he was sure he didn't like it. Sam spent too much time apologizing, he had always thought so. Once upon a time, it had annoyed him - and amused him on a few occasions. Now that he had an idea what Sam's past had been like, though, he didn't find it so amusing anymore.
He had told himself that he wouldn't try to interpret all Sam did in terms of what had happened to him, but he wasn't entirely successful.
"But - " Sam tried to insist.
"It's * not * your fault," Toby said forcefully.
"You don't even know why I'm saying that."
"I can guess, though."
There was another knock on the door.
"We have to go to staff," Sam said.
"I know. Then, we'll - "
"Have to talk, yeah."
He nodded and ushered Sam out of the room. He then spent the next ten minutes watching him, in Leo's office. Everyone could see Sam's mind wasn't on the meeting. As soon as Leo sent them away, Toby trailed behind Sam, following him to his office.
"Hold our calls," he told Bonnie when he passed her in the bullpen. He closed the door to Sam's office, sat down in one of the visitors chairs, and asked, calmly, "Okay, what's up?"
Sam looked at him, clearly torn, then at his phone. "Steve, an old friend of mine, told me he saw Kevin recently. He doesn't remember what he told him, but he knows they talked about me."
"And Kevin accosted you Saturday," Toby completed.
Sam nodded jerkily. "It's possible that he knows."
Toby bit his lip. He knew, and understood, why Sam didn't want the story to come out. He just didn't think it would be that big a story. He had been the victim, not the criminal.
"Are you kidding?" Sam yelled when Toby said as much. "What the fuck do you think people will think when they know that a senior staffer to the President is in therapy?"
"Josh sees a psychiatrist."
"No one knows that. And there's a reason we didn't make an announcement. Damn it, Toby, you know how people see therapy. They'll just think I'm nuts, or unbalanced, or whatever."
"Sam, we educated the public after the MS. We could do it again."
He snorted. "Right. Do you seriously think that I'd let things go that far?"
"You'd quit?"
"Hell, yeah."
Toby was about to argue when he saw the way Sam was clenching his fists, as if ready to smash something, and kept quiet.
"Toby, if they dig, they could find out about Josh. They already know that Leo is a recovering addict. They may even find out that the President..."
Toby grimaced. He had hoped Sam wouldn't think about that.
"How do you think that's gonna look? How do you think Ritchie will spin it?"
Imagining the headlines Ritchie could cause if he got proof, he sighed. "I know. Okay, let's... Can they prove that you're seeing someone?"
Sam shrugged. "They can prove that I did. They can... Okay, when I see Joyce now, she doesn't take notes, I only pay her cash, she never does an official receipt, nor bill -"
"Why?" Toby suddenly wondered.
"Because I was afraid of the way it might look if the press got a hold of this," Sam put in, bitterly.
Toby grimaced.
"Anyway, that's not really the point, is it?" Sam went on. "If they ask, we'll have to answer. Because if we lie, and they prove it..."
"We could refuse to answer."
Sam shook his head, not bothering to answer that. Not answering would be an answer in itself.
"Okay. What about your previous therapist?"
"I didn't see him too often, but yes, he must have kept records."
"They're sworn to secrecy, Sam".
"I know."
"It's gonna be okay," he said.
"Not if it leaks, no, it won't."
"It won't come to that."
He couldn't be sure. He needed to say it anyway.
He was going to have to bring up the 'let's tell CJ' point again soon, he had to, but first, he needed Sam to concentrate.
And calm down.
Toby sighed. The day was going to be long.