Author: Cynthia Arrow
Disclaimer: Sorkin gave birth to them; Wells juggles them (and often drops them on their heads)
Rating: PG
Note: Delving into Josh's already well-mined brain. This is a post-ep for "Gaza," or maybe a mid-ep (if such a thing exists) for the finale (certainly taking place well before the grating ER-style ending)
In Pieces
Okay, so I try not to remind myself of the obvious comparisons here. Wounded in the line of duty. But that doesn't mean her convalescence will be as long, as arduous, as Herculean a task. Donna is much better at… shit, let's just go with Donna's better. She's calm when I'm a lunatic, she's patient when I'm insufferable, she's hard nosed when nobody else will be.
God, you know you can't take her, right?
Right.
So when she comes back, she's going to need me to help her. God, you know I suck at helping people. I always screw up.
But then I hear Sam telling me that Donna knows this. He says, Lucky for you, she's better at taking help than you were.
I cannot be in that room any longer. I just can't. God, I know that's selfish, but I'm trying here. Really. I watched them change the bandages and I even watched them put a new IV in…even with the needle, and you know I hate needles. Mom would be proud. But when they drew blood, and I saw that red coming out of her, it was too real. If she wakes up, I might throw up, because I'll hear how she's feeling. I'll know when she's in pain. I can't stand watching anyone in pain. Sam always joked and said I was touchingly feminine that way. I don't care. That's me. I can't stand it. And when it's someone I know…
I told Donna once, once when I was really tired, when she was playing amateur shrink in that sneaky way she has of trying to figure me out, as if she didn't already know every move I'll make before I make it, except the trip over here. It just wasn't characteristic of me. God, why did I send her?
As mom would say, is there a story, old man? I told Donna once that I was almost glad I didn't see my father when he died. I'd have died, really. I expected her to call me selfish. She smiled and told me it was all right. Feeling that way about people's pain was normal. But, she said, Until it actually kills you, you have to be there.
It's just that I didn't understand. I'm not very bright, sometimes. When anything happens, I call Donna. Okay, in the beginning, I told her about my life because she was arranging it, and because I was, let's face it, a little lonely and really deep down a little terrified about my job. How is it that Donna was never scared? She didn't have any business doing what she was doing, but she did it anyway. And I know my charm and intelligence and reassuring tone didn't do that. Anyway, I call her now. Right after mom. Mom even knows. She says, Better let you go now, so you can call that wonderful assistant of yours.
The one I tease and harass and annoy because I know she'll put up with it. Why does she? No, thank God…thank You that she does. She's a part of my life, like family at this point. Sam explained it all to me once. He said, No man is—
An island, I said.
He smiled with that same exasperated tolerance that CJ hasn't mastered but Donna had when she met me. He said, No man is made of just himself. Everyone in his life makes up a piece, so that without those people, he can't really be himself very easily.
Get this, God: according to Sam, even Toby's bad attitude is a part of me that has to be there. I can't manage without Leo's patience or CJ's easy-under-stress smile. Or even Mrs. Bartlet's brashness and Charlie's understated strength and persistence. Amy, she's still there, this small piece that tells me I'm likeable enough, that a woman could want to be with me, warts and all.
But then some people are bigger than parts, Sam, I told him. Some people are parts so big, so important that you can't comprehend your world without them, literally. They're the eyes and ears and hands with which you encounter things. You don't even know that they're that big unless they leave you.
Like, God, I think part of my laughter left me when my sister died. Is that possible? I was so young, and I lost my laughter. And losing my father did things to me that I still don't understand. That's how big an impact it had on me—comprehensive. I think he was in all the parts.
My mother would say this theory of Sam's is crazy, that after people die their influence on you isn't gone. But in some ways it is. In some ways once a person is out of your life, it gets hard to fit their pieces with yours anymore. Like I'm already having a hard time without Sam. We talk, but talking is only part of being with someone. It's like a shadow of Sam I get to talk to. He's there, but I can't see him or touch him. His pieces of me just seem like they're missing a lot of the time.
Dear God, I don't like being in here with her. I can't leave, and I can't stay. She's not really Donna. That woman in the bed is not the person that fits into slots in me that maybe I didn't realize I had. I guess that's the point. I have never met anyone else who could fill those spaces in me. What that means, I don't know. But I know that person in the bed, not smiling, not talking, not even opening her eyes, is not the person that I've just realized must be such a big part of me that losing her would be too much.
You spared me. Only you know why. But I really think…God, I really am sure now in a way I wasn't capable of being before…she was a piece of you sent to help me when I got shot. I would have died without her. Let me just remind you that it's possible I still can't get along without her.
If I'm worth saving, you know, God, that she is. You know it.
Donna would say that I'm completely full of myself. Well, don't tell her this, but she's rarely wrong. But I think I'm right this time, justifiably. She's too important. She is a part of too many people for you to let her go. When she wakes up, I'll try not to die. Because then it really will be Donna, and if she cries, I will cry. If she calls them for morphine—Oh, God, don't let her be in pain. Please, God.
God, don't tell Sam, but I think he was right.