Sam walked into his apartment entirely wiped out. He only wanted to eat maybe a quarter of the sandwich the First Lady had given him and fall asleep for 9-10 hours. He noticed the blinking light on his machine and played the messages.

"Hi, Sam. It's only me." He smiled at the sound of her voice. "I just wanted to see how your day went. Call me whenever you have time. I should be up until about 11."

He stopped the machine and picked up the phone to call her back. Now was the perfect time to act on some of Abbey's advice.

The phone only rang twice before she picked it up. "Hello?"

"Hi, Katie, it's only me." She smiled to herself, "Long day, Sam? You sound worn out."

He sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair as he dropped onto the couch.

"Yeah, you could say that."

She sat up in bed. "OK, you. Start talking. What happened?"

'Pushy, as always,' he thought. "Well, I was working on the speech for the NEA dinner next month, and of course the Blue Ribbon Commission came up when I was discussing things with Toby..."

The conversation went on for nearly an hour. It hurt him not to tell her why he felt the way he did, but knew that he had no real choice in it. He heard Kate stifle a yawn on her end.

"Hey, why didn't you tell me you were tired, sweetie?"

"Sam, I'm really not..."

"Don't give me that. You need to go to sleep. I don't want my little sprite to be tired tomorrow."

"Sa-am." He laughed quietly when she said that. The lilt in her voice came out as she drew out his name. He knew what she was trying to do, and he wasn't going to let her.

"Yeah?"

"I'll be OK. You sound like you still need to talk, though."

"I'll make you a deal. You go to sleep and we'll go out to dinner tomorrow night?"

"You sure? I mean, I know that you're really busy over there." It hurt him to hear the uncertainty in her voice.

"Katie, stop it. I want to take you to dinner. We haven't seen each other in a while, and I'd like to remind you what I look like. Besides, I miss you."

"Oh, OK. I didn't realize. Should I dress up for this?"

"Nah, it'll just be someplace casual. Just bring an overnight bag. If we get back too late, you're crashing at my apartment. I don't want you to go back to your place that late. I'll call you from my office once I know where we're going and what time. I'll also call Security so that you can just come to my office. Just remember to bring some ID, OK?"

"Sure. I'll talk to you tomorrow?"

"Definitely, my little sprite. You go on and get some sleep now, OK?"

"OK. Um...Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you." He could hear the tremor in her voice.

"You're welcome, sweetie."

After hanging up, he fell into bed as well. Looking at the ceiling, he couldn't help but wish that she were there next to him. He wouldn't have cared if she had nothing on or was wrapped up in a snowsuit; he just wanted to hold her close, make her feel safe and wanted and tell her how he felt about her.

The information he'd received that afternoon still echoed in his head. She'd been raped, tormented for her intelligence and reticence, taken from her childhood home and all that was familiar and thrown across the ocean to a family that kept her at arm's length during her formative years. She gave anything that she could to anyone that asked and even to those that didn't, because the only thing that she knew was that if she gave, someone would care about her, even if it was just for a little while, they'd care. But after all those years of giving her kindness, support, efforts and, in some cases, her love, she didn't have much left to give, much less to care for herself, and yet she continued. He could feel the tears sting in his eyes as he started to cry for her and all of the pain she'd been through. He felt all of this as keenly as if it had happened to him, and it tore him apart inside to know that she felt like this, probably even worse. As his tears subsided, he whispered to their game picture, "Angel mine, please, let me in."