Series: Snapshots of the Past

Story: Endings and Beginnings

Chapter 6

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1

Previously: Jed convinced Liz to return to school despite her fears; After being confronted by protesters, Liz's bus crashed; Abbey began her shift at the hospital only to realize droves of injured school children were about to be brought in

Summary: Jed and Abbey rush to their daughter's beside; After a bitter argument with Abbey, Jed's guilt motivates him to look for a solution

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Abbey's dash through the halls was perfectly normal for a hysterical mother, but for a doctor-in-training, her emotions would have to be kept at bay. That was the tricky part. She found herself circling around in one spot as her eyes scanned the gurneys rushing past her.

It was a nightmare she had already confronted on the first day of school, but this time, there was a difference. This time, she recognized some faces. She knew this was Lizzie's bus and it was only a matter of time before her own daughter would be wheeled in.

A pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders, causing her to shudder in terror.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you," Millie assured her.

"Where is she? Where's Lizzie?"

"I don't know. But we need to get you out of here."

"NO! I'm not going anywhere without my daughter."

The rapid exchange was interrupted by a stretcher carrying Elizabeth into the emergency room. Abbey pushed Millie aside and ran to the young girl.

"Lizzie! Lizzie, Sweetie, it's Mommy!"

She didn't dare touch her or the straps that kept her glued to the stretcher. Cuts and bruises outlined every feature on her face, her chestnut hair was stained by blood, and her small body looked limp and broken.

"Abbey, we need you to get out of the way!" Millie insisted.

"I said NO! I want to be with her!"

"You can get out of the way so we can help your daughter or you can prevent us from giving her the medical attention she needs!" She regretted having to use such an edgy tone with her friend, but a harsh dose of reality was exactly what Abbey needed.

It pained her to do so, but she relented, forced to stand motionless in the confines of the chaotic activity that surrounded her. She took in the movement around her. The sounds of familiar hospital equipment used to treat or resuscitate patients. Her daughter's peers, some clinging to life, were scattered around the room and the terrifying thoughts that consumed her were crippling her with fear.

Jed. She had to call Jed. She couldn't allow him to hear about it through the broadcast media. Dialing a phone was a task that never took much effort, until now. Her hands shaking violently, she dug deep inside herself to pull out the strength she needed to stabilize her emotions.

"Jed?"

He could hear the alarm in her voice, immediately alerting him to the fact that something was terribly wrong. "Abbey, what is it?"

"I need you to come to the hospital. Please hurry. And don't turn on the radio."

"What's going on?"

She paused, subconsciously wondering how she would break the news without causing another accident. "Lizzie's bus crashed." That wasn't the way to do it.

"What?" He shouted into the phone, hysterically.

"Jed, it's okay. I saw her and I think she's going to be okay, but I need you here."

"I'm on my way!" A move to hang up the phone was quickly retracted. "Abbey?"

"Yeah?"

"Is she hurt badly?"

"I don't know yet," she choked out. "But you need to come. Please."

The fact that her words were broken, that her breath was defined by a trail of tears convinced him not to question her further. He had the relevant information and the rest he would learn when he arrived at the hospital.

Abbey put the phone in its cradle, her attention now captivated by the swarm of police officers who stormed the E.R.

"Excuse me?" she called out to one of them. "My daughter was just brought in...the bus accident. Can you tell me what happened?"

Her shaky demeanor caught the officer's eye immediately. "We don't really know. There was a mob of protesters, the bus driver lost control. That's all we know right now."

"Did they cause the accident...the protesters? Did they overturn the bus?"

"No, the bus hit a tree and was struck by another vehicle. A couple of witnesses say they threw rocks at the kids and the driver was trying to get them out of there. I'm sorry, Ma'am, we just don't have any other details."

Right now, she didn't need details. She may ask for them later, but for the time being, she had her answer. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Lizzie had begged her not to make her go to school and now, she'd have to live with the overwhelming guilt that came with not listening to her daughter's plea. And guilt wasn't the only thing clouding her judgment. Once she saw Jed, it was blame.

He ran from his car, pushing the double doors with full force. Abbey caught the commotion and sprinted towards him. He practically leapt into her arms, his erratic thoughts overshadowing his concern when she didn't return his tight embrace.

"What happened?"

"Her school bus..."

"I know. The announcer said the police are investigating?" It was more a question than a statement.

"I told you not to listen to the radio," she replied coldly.

He separated their bodies and gripped her shoulders in an effort to lock into her gaze. "Abbey, you have to level with me here. How bad is it?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "She was unconscious. There was so much blood, I couldn't even tell where her injuries were located."

He walked away from her, clinching his fists at his side. "This is my fault." She didn't respond. "They said those damn protesters...they surrounded the bus. They caused this accident."

The guilt that ate away at him made him physically ill. He ran to the bathroom several times, unable to control the tangible sensations that came with the remorse. Abbey stood outside the door, pacing back and forth rapidly while teetering on the brink of a meltdown.

"Abbey?" Millie waited by the entrance that led to the main hospital.

Abbey ran to her with eyes lit by hope. "How is she?"

"Doctor James is taking good care of her. She's still not awake, but if you want, I can take you back."

"Yes, please."

Millie followed her eyes to Jed. "Would you like to join us?"

"Yeah, okay," Jed replied. He had stayed back for fear he would get sick again, fear that Abbey wouldn't want him close, fear that he couldn't face Liz. But he had to. He had to see her with his own eyes.

It was a long walk down the gloomy hospital corridor. Liz had been taken to a triage room where patients were separated by only a thin curtain. She was stretched out over the big, white bed, her body looking particularly small and fragile. Her face had been cleaned of the blood, making way for the appearance of prominent cuts and the unmistakable cast that covered her nose. Her right cheek was bandaged with white gauze, obviously masking a deeper wound.

Abbey skirted around Jed to make her way to the bed. She ran her fingers over Liz's skin lifting her tips around the edge of the various scrapes and bumps. Jed stood on the other side and bent down, allowing his lips to gently graze her face, careful not to press them into her flesh.

"Please tell me she's going to be all right," Abbey pleaded with the doctor.

"She doesn't have any life-threatening injuries, but she's pretty banged up. She's still unconscious..."

"Any major head trauma?"

"No. She'll be fine in that respect. But she does have a broken nose and her face was cut by flying glass. We had to stitch her up. She's going to have quite a scar."

"My poor little baby," Her words were stunted by overwrought emotions.

"We can deal with all of that, but our first priority is getting her to wake up."

"How?" Jed asked.

"Excuse me?"

"How do we wake her up? Tell me how to do it."

"Once we get her to her own room, you can talk to her, sit with her, whatever it takes. But we'd prefer she wake up on her own," the doctor replied. "If you'll allow me a few more minutes, we just need to finish up a couple of tests and then we'll see about getting her moved."

Jed grasped Abbey's hand to lead her out of the room. Once the door closed behind them, she slipped her fingers from his and parted direction, heading towards the portico outside.

He approached her slowly as watched her lean against the pillar closest to the building. He needed reassurance and Abbey was the only one who could give it to him. "I shouldn't have sent her back to school. I should have listened to you."

Reassurance isn't what he got. "Jed, please. I don't have the time or the energy to help you ease your conscience right now."

Stung by her reaction, he lowered his head and paused to gather his thoughts. But that didn't stop Abbey from continuing.

"I told you she was scared."

His head snapped up as if jolted back to reality. "Abbey."

"I told you it wasn't safe."

Every word cut his heart. "Please don't do this, not now."

"You told me it was. You promised me it was going to be fine!" She raised her voice slightly, the way she usually did just before a major explosion.

"I had no way of knowing..."

She walked rapidly towards him, closing the gap between them. "Oh really? What about all the pictures on the news? What about all the stories I told you about the kids at the hospital? Did you think we were immune to it? Did you think it wouldn't happen to us?"

"This isn't about being right, Abbey."

She tilted her head in the same direction as his, forcing him to make eye contact. "You're damn right it's not. It's about the fact that you're so obsessed with making a point that you've lost touch with the reality of the situation!"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that there is a war going on right outside our apartment and you can't do a damn thing to stop it, so you sent Lizzie into the battlefield to fight it for you. That's what this is all about."

She couldn't really believe that, he reasoned. "No, I'll tell you what it's about. It's about the bigots in the world who think that by targeting kids they can continue to spew their venomous hatred! It has to stop!"

"You see, this is exactly what I mean! You're so concerned about the world being a better place. Guess what, for once, I don't give a damn about the rest of the world. All I care about is the fact that my daughter could have been killed!"

"That's what I care about too," he countered in a tearful response.

"No, you don't." If there was a dangerous line not to cross, she had just crossed it. She stepped closer to him as he turned from her furiously. "Your first priority is ensuring Boston is a safer place years from now, for everyone else's child! To hell with your own!"

Jed whirled around to face her. "You know that isn't true."

Millie took small, careful steps towards the feuding couple and gingerly tried to intervene. "The last thing Lizzie needs is you guys blaming one another."

She was ignored.

"I told you to pull her out of that school," Abbey reminded Jed. "I begged you. Your response was that if we do, then they win."

"They do win!" He struck back, a bit more forcefully now.

"Making a political statement was more important to you, and it still is! Well, congratulations. Now you have a visual aid. Lizzie will come in quite handy when you start booking speaking engagements on the hazards of racism." Obviously, he didn't hold the patent on sarcastic retorts.

His lips were pursed together tightly to restrain himself from saying something he'd later regret. "Maybe I will do that. And on the way, I'll pick you up a few signs so you can join all the other ignorant protesters out there." So much for that.

He turned sharply away from her and practically sprinted down the hall.

"Jed!" Millie called out as she ran after him.

He stopped and approached her swiftly. "Do me a favor. If Lizzie wakes up, tell her I'll be back?" he asked.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to get out of here for a while. I can't stay here."

"Lizzie needs you here, Jed."

"I can't face her right now, and I really can't face Abbey."

It was the silent agony that came through in his body language that persuaded Millie to back away and allow him to leave.

As much as he hated to admit it, Abbey was right. He was guilty of every accusation she threw at him. It was Jed Bartlet's rose-colored glasses that sometimes tainted the reality of the world. He truly believed that change begins with every person, no matter how young or how old, how tiny or how tall. It didn't matter.

Until now.

His little girl was terrorized and he could no longer allow himself to overlook the sinister danger that stirred around Boston. Busing was mandatory. If he were to keep her in the public school system, there was no way around it, no loophole in the system, no recourse for a worried parent who couldn't come to grips with the menacing atmosphere around the city.

He repeatedly drove around the block for a short time before arriving at a place he would try to find comfort -- his university. His first priority was to call the hospital only to be told that Liz hadn't woken up.

A quick sweep of the halls immediately after, helped him round up the colleagues with whom he had built a relationship. They gathered in an empty classroom, eager to hear what they were told was going to be a controversial proposal.

"This is going to be quick because I have to get back to the hospital," he started. "My daughter, Elizabeth was injured in a school bus accident this morning."

His audience had already heard the troubling news.

"Abbey told me not to send her back to school. She said it would be dangerous and I disagreed with her and now I wonder how many other fathers are making that same mistake." He struck a chord with some of the other parents in the room. "We all love our children and the city has left us with no options, especially now, in the middle of the school year, too late to start private school. I hear some parents are pulling their kids and simply sacrificing the rest of the year."

They were listening attentively with nods and looks of agreement. Many had had similar discussions with their spouses.

"It's true. My Julie was hit in the stomach with a rock yesterday. Her mother and I kept her home today. We don't know what we're going to do tomorrow." Alan Miliken was a Jamaican man whose daughter was transferred from her all-black school in Roxbury to a school in South Boston, the exact opposite situation from the Bartlets.

"I'm hearing it too. So what's the solution?"

"I'm not sure it's a long-term solution, but I, for one, won't send my kid back to school and it's unfair -- to her and to the other students who are going to be a year behind," Jed answered. "We're professors, highly educated individuals. Every night, we could bring the kids here. Every night, we could teach them, on our own time, in our own classrooms."

A novel approach to a rising problem was always worth a try. And so they discussed the details of Jed's suggestion. How would it work? What grades would they teach? Would it be underground or would the public have easy access? But logistics aside, there were two obstacles they'd have to overcome fairly quickly.

"Can we do it here? Will the university allow us to?"

Jed had already sketched out an answer to most of the questions. "I doubt that'll be a problem. The President has two sons in public school."

"What about legal ramifications? Is this legal?" That question lingered in the air, as the men exchanged glances.

"It can be," one of them finally said. "I know a couple of state senators who are on our side. They've been itching for a chance to call an emergency session, introduce a bill to help alleviate the chaos."

After briefly contemplating the idea, Jed was reenergized. "There's protocol here. This is a municipal issue first. If we get nowhere with city leaders, then we'll get the senators on the phone and start lobbying the state house."

"What makes you think the Mayor is going to listen all of a sudden?"

"Because we have something we never had before -- an alternative," Jed replied.

"We'll arrange a meeting with the architects of the plan and the presidents of the other universities," another professor added.

"Absolutely. We need to build a network of university professors around Boston, each university will be involved with a particular school. If we can do that, the city officials will be forced to at least listen to us."

So it all came down to this - seven professors, five of them fathers, huddled in a room, exchanging the names of various other professors in the city who could offer them support in rallying for change. Jed knew it would be an uphill climb, but the image of Lizzie lying in a hospital bed, battered and bruised, now shaded those unforgettable rose-colored glasses. It was time to take a stand.

TBC