A/N: Well, I'm back. And I'm really glad to see that this story has its own
little band of followers. You guys make my days happy. You really do. So
here I come with another chapter. Glad to hear that you liked Zoey.
Also, I've been watching over my tapes of WKODIB, ITSOTG, and Noel—from what I can piece together, Josh ran to the gate first, someone ran into him, and Toby found him at the stairs that were BEHIND the gate. That's what I'm assuming happened. To get full details, one would probably have to talk to Aaron Sorkin.
Disclaimer: Do I honestly have to do one of these for every single chapter? Gets repetitive after a while.
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CJ Cregg's POV
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All right, so I screamed. It was a typical womanly thing to do. But I couldn't help it. it was one of the cases where you speak exactly what you're thinking without even realizing what you're thinking/saying. If I had the chance to replay that moment over again, would I scream? Probably. It's just lucky that there were no reporters there. There would have been a mention in the morning report about CJ Cregg, press secretary, screaming out the Deputy Chief of Staff's name (the wonderful and accomplished Josh Lyman) and running towards him. Or maybe I'm flattering myself.
But it was an emotionally draining night. The President had delivered an absolutely stunning performance. The pilot had been returned home safely, and the Columbia had landed. So everyone was in an extraordinarily good mood. I think that even Toby had a little smile on his face as he walked out beside the President. Leo was right beside them, and Sam was beside me. I think that Josh might have been beside us at one point, but when I turned and looked, he was gone. We were all simply standing around, laughing and joking without a care in the world. That's when we heard the warning shout.
"Gun!" I had no idea who screamed it out. Loud blasts rang through the small plaza. "So those are gunshots," I told myself. "Wow. The sound effects on Roger's movies were worse than what I thought." After I had that thought, another one came to me. Here I was, standing straight up while gunshots were being fired all around me. And I'm a tall woman, and therefore an easy target. Yet for some reason I could NOT make myself move.
A Secret Service agent barreled into me. He was holding his gun upright and focused on a high window. He just ran into me, and pushed me aside. I guess that Press Secretary isn't very high up on the Secret Service's priority list. A police car light on the top of the car was shot away right in front of me. A piece of glass hit my hand and made a shallow cut.
Almost immediately after that, someone tackled me to the ground. I had no idea who it was, but whoever it was probably saved my life. The police car's windows were shot out right after the person knocked me down. I think that the fall to the ground knocked me unconscious, because I don't have any other recollection of the entire shooting. The next thing I remember is getting up shakily. There was no sign of my unnamed rescuer.
There was a roaring pain in my head. Evidently when your head hits the ground at a high velocity, your head is prone to hurt. There was blood on my hand from where I touched my head. Everything was an absolute mess. People were running around with no real purpose, and the people who were actually hurt stood a very good chance of getting run over by the people who were simply panicked. It was like the energy and insanity of the press room had been unleashed on the population at large.
I tottered around shakily. Ambulances flowed in a steady stream. The quiet town of Rosslyn had woken up. I felt curiously detached from everything that was happening. There was an echoing in my ears, and I felt like I had just gotten off a double Ferris Wheel. My stomach and head were spinning around, and up and down. My vision was blurry, and I deduced that my glasses had fallen off.
I stumbled forward and ran into someone. I stepped back and saw that it was Charlie. He put an arm out to steady me. "CJ, are you all right?" he asked. He seemed fine. He wasn't like everyone else. He was perfectly settled, and calm and focused, in contrast with the mass hysteria.
"Um, yeah, yeah I am," I said, shaking my head to clear the pain. It just made the pain slightly worse. Not just slightly. It made a fire in the fireplace roar into a blazing forest fire in California.
"Are you sure? Because it looks like you're bleeding," he said, motioning to my head. "Here. There's some EMTs over there; they'll get you fixed up." He led me over to where a paramedic was working on a man with a cut on his arm. The paramedic finished with him and turned to me.
"If you'll sit down here ma'am," he said. he poked around the wound and put some antiseptic on it.
"Ow!" I cried out. The sting was ten times more painful than it usually was. "It's tender!" He ignored me and focused on the cut. "I'm really fine," I said in a thick voice. "I hit my head on the ground. Somebody pushed me down." I don't think that he was even listening to me.
"Are you CJ Cregg?" he yelled into my ear. Interesting how they can be so politely mean. I had a huge gushing head wound, and he was yelling into my ear.
"Yes!" I yelled back. Turns out that if you spoke in a normal voice, no one could hear you.
"Can you tell me what day it is?"
"It's still Monday," I replied. My god was it really the same day? Shouldn't time have moved faster than that? It's not really quite fair. It shouldn't still be the same day. Not when all that had happened.
"All right CJ, you're more shaken up than anything else. I don't think that you're going to need stitches, but you should probably find somewhere to lie down." He picked up some of his supplies that he needed. I had a sudden thought, and a flying concern.
"Is the President dead?" I asked as he started to move away.
"I wouldn't know anything about that ma'am," he called over his shoulder as he jogged away. I was confused and woozy. I walked to where I had been knocked down. My glasses were lying there, but one of the lenses had been knocked out. Shaking my head, I put the glasses back in my pocket. I ran my hand over my neck and felt a sharp sting. I then felt around my collarbone and realized that I couldn't feel my necklace. It must have been torn off when the person that had saved my life knocked me down. I turned around and saw Sam coming towards me.
Sam! He was all right! He was the second person I had seen from the staff. So I had Charlie and Sam checked off my mental list of people who were all right. The only other people I had left were the President, Toby, Zoey, Leo, and Josh. Well actually...that was a pretty big list.
Sam said something and I couldn't make it out, so he repeated himself. "Are you all right?" he asked again. That seemed to be the main question of the night. Everyone was asking it. Are you all right? I've just been shot at; no, I don't think that I'm all right.
"Yeah," I said, and then quickly changed gears. "Where's the President?" Please, oh God, let him be all right, please, please, let him be all right...
"He's on his way back to the White House," Sam said, and I silently rejoiced. "So's Zoey, they just put Leo in a car. Are you all right?" The same question, yet again!
"Somebody pushed me down," I said. Police cars drove around, and the sirens were about to drive me insane. They never shut up, and they were so loud.
Sam ignored that, and then turned. Gina, one of Zoey's Secret Service people ran by us. She was the one that had shouted, I now realized. She saved all of our lives. "Gina!" he yelled at her.
"Can't talk right now," she quickly replied, and ran to where several people in suits were standing. Sam and I didn't say anything. We tried to look like we weren't eavesdropping on a Secret Service conversation. Who knows? We might end up spending some time in jail for that.
I was checking more people off my list. Sam and Charlie were all right, and I knew now that the President, Zoey, and Leo were all right. So now I had to concentrate on Josh and Toby. Please let them be all right, I prayed yet again. But maybe there's a limit on how many times your prayers will be answered. Maybe I had already used up my quota on the President, and there was no more left for Josh or Toby.
I was pondering this rather disquieting thought when I heard the shout. There seemed to be quite a lot of shouting going on tonight. "I need a doctor!" Toby shouted. Sam and I both turned. First thought: Toby was hit! But no, he would have screamed long before that. Second thought: Toby's helping a member of the crowd. How sweet. But I never, ever dreamed that the situation would be what it was. "I need help!" Toby yelled again. This time he seemed oddly urgent.
And then I saw why. The recognizable head of Josh hit the ground. There was way that I couldn't recognize that crazy hair after almost two years of working together. I sprinted over to Toby while screaming out, "Josh!" I was over there in a matter of seconds. Lucky I work out and wear sensible shoes.
I knelt next to Toby and turned Josh's head to face me. He was unconscious, and his slack face looked oddly like he was dead. His mouth hung open a fraction in what my mother always liked to call the 'dead fish face'. It felt like I'd just been punched in the stomach. All of the air went out of my lungs, and dread and fear hit me. Had I used up all of my prayer power on the President? Was there none left for Josh? Did Josh get ignored by God? How come Toby, Leo, Sam and I weren't hit? We were right there at the shooting. Josh was behind us. How come he got hit and we didn't? Does God just have a sense of sick humor or something?
"What happened?" I asked as I looked more closely into his face. Sam cautiously put his hand over the wound. He didn't touch the wound. His hand just hovered over the huge bloodstain.
"I think that's fairly obvious," Toby responded tartly. I drew back from him a little. I know it was a stupid question, but he didn't have to snap at me. Then again, maybe sarcasm is Toby's virtue of defense.
The doctors and paramedics came rushing over. They shoved us aside. We were looking on helplessly as the paramedics began work. It was horrible to watch, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. They checked his pulse and blood pressure while they tore open his shirt. I almost gagged. The bullet wound looked ten times worse than it did when his shirt covered it.
The bullet had torn apart his entire chest. Blood was pouring out of the wound. The flesh was torn and mangled. I could see all of the destruction from my vantage point of six feet. but the wound itself wasn't the worst part. The worst part happened about halfway through the procedure.
Josh opened his eyes. I don't know if Sam saw it; I know Toby didn't see it. He was, for fifteen seconds, completely conscious. There were two emotions that I could see warring in his eyes. The first was total and absolute confusion as to who was surrounding him and where he was. It was clear that he had no idea what was happening. The second emotion was the most gut-wrenching. There was a brief shift when I looked into his eyes, and I could see the raw feeling behind the deep brown pools. And it was terror. It was the kind of terror that wakes you up screaming at 2 in the morning in a cold sweat and wanting to pee your pants. It was just for a second, and then the confused look slid over his features again. He coughed as the paramedics probed around the wound, then someone put an oxygen mask over his face. And then he passed out again.
The paramedics started saying things that I couldn't understand because I went to school for 22 years for a media consultant degree instead of a medical degree. Also, I don't watch ER. The main gist of their talk seemed to be that they were taking Josh to the hospital. Sam volunteered to ride in the ambulance, and neither Toby nor I contested it. We were soon in a car and driving right behind the ambulance. The flashing lights seared into my eyelids and the siren hurt my already pounding head. I looked at Toby, and could find nothing comforting to say. My chest was feeling tight, like I couldn't draw enough oxygen. Toby bent his head for a short moment, and then looked straight ahead.
I looked at Toby, and Toby looked at me. Neither of us could say anything that would be comforting and not sound like a lie. I just swallowed and squeezed Toby's forearm tightly. He waited for a second, and then squeezed my hand back.
Also, I've been watching over my tapes of WKODIB, ITSOTG, and Noel—from what I can piece together, Josh ran to the gate first, someone ran into him, and Toby found him at the stairs that were BEHIND the gate. That's what I'm assuming happened. To get full details, one would probably have to talk to Aaron Sorkin.
Disclaimer: Do I honestly have to do one of these for every single chapter? Gets repetitive after a while.
,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,..................................................................................................................
CJ Cregg's POV
..............................................................................................................................
All right, so I screamed. It was a typical womanly thing to do. But I couldn't help it. it was one of the cases where you speak exactly what you're thinking without even realizing what you're thinking/saying. If I had the chance to replay that moment over again, would I scream? Probably. It's just lucky that there were no reporters there. There would have been a mention in the morning report about CJ Cregg, press secretary, screaming out the Deputy Chief of Staff's name (the wonderful and accomplished Josh Lyman) and running towards him. Or maybe I'm flattering myself.
But it was an emotionally draining night. The President had delivered an absolutely stunning performance. The pilot had been returned home safely, and the Columbia had landed. So everyone was in an extraordinarily good mood. I think that even Toby had a little smile on his face as he walked out beside the President. Leo was right beside them, and Sam was beside me. I think that Josh might have been beside us at one point, but when I turned and looked, he was gone. We were all simply standing around, laughing and joking without a care in the world. That's when we heard the warning shout.
"Gun!" I had no idea who screamed it out. Loud blasts rang through the small plaza. "So those are gunshots," I told myself. "Wow. The sound effects on Roger's movies were worse than what I thought." After I had that thought, another one came to me. Here I was, standing straight up while gunshots were being fired all around me. And I'm a tall woman, and therefore an easy target. Yet for some reason I could NOT make myself move.
A Secret Service agent barreled into me. He was holding his gun upright and focused on a high window. He just ran into me, and pushed me aside. I guess that Press Secretary isn't very high up on the Secret Service's priority list. A police car light on the top of the car was shot away right in front of me. A piece of glass hit my hand and made a shallow cut.
Almost immediately after that, someone tackled me to the ground. I had no idea who it was, but whoever it was probably saved my life. The police car's windows were shot out right after the person knocked me down. I think that the fall to the ground knocked me unconscious, because I don't have any other recollection of the entire shooting. The next thing I remember is getting up shakily. There was no sign of my unnamed rescuer.
There was a roaring pain in my head. Evidently when your head hits the ground at a high velocity, your head is prone to hurt. There was blood on my hand from where I touched my head. Everything was an absolute mess. People were running around with no real purpose, and the people who were actually hurt stood a very good chance of getting run over by the people who were simply panicked. It was like the energy and insanity of the press room had been unleashed on the population at large.
I tottered around shakily. Ambulances flowed in a steady stream. The quiet town of Rosslyn had woken up. I felt curiously detached from everything that was happening. There was an echoing in my ears, and I felt like I had just gotten off a double Ferris Wheel. My stomach and head were spinning around, and up and down. My vision was blurry, and I deduced that my glasses had fallen off.
I stumbled forward and ran into someone. I stepped back and saw that it was Charlie. He put an arm out to steady me. "CJ, are you all right?" he asked. He seemed fine. He wasn't like everyone else. He was perfectly settled, and calm and focused, in contrast with the mass hysteria.
"Um, yeah, yeah I am," I said, shaking my head to clear the pain. It just made the pain slightly worse. Not just slightly. It made a fire in the fireplace roar into a blazing forest fire in California.
"Are you sure? Because it looks like you're bleeding," he said, motioning to my head. "Here. There's some EMTs over there; they'll get you fixed up." He led me over to where a paramedic was working on a man with a cut on his arm. The paramedic finished with him and turned to me.
"If you'll sit down here ma'am," he said. he poked around the wound and put some antiseptic on it.
"Ow!" I cried out. The sting was ten times more painful than it usually was. "It's tender!" He ignored me and focused on the cut. "I'm really fine," I said in a thick voice. "I hit my head on the ground. Somebody pushed me down." I don't think that he was even listening to me.
"Are you CJ Cregg?" he yelled into my ear. Interesting how they can be so politely mean. I had a huge gushing head wound, and he was yelling into my ear.
"Yes!" I yelled back. Turns out that if you spoke in a normal voice, no one could hear you.
"Can you tell me what day it is?"
"It's still Monday," I replied. My god was it really the same day? Shouldn't time have moved faster than that? It's not really quite fair. It shouldn't still be the same day. Not when all that had happened.
"All right CJ, you're more shaken up than anything else. I don't think that you're going to need stitches, but you should probably find somewhere to lie down." He picked up some of his supplies that he needed. I had a sudden thought, and a flying concern.
"Is the President dead?" I asked as he started to move away.
"I wouldn't know anything about that ma'am," he called over his shoulder as he jogged away. I was confused and woozy. I walked to where I had been knocked down. My glasses were lying there, but one of the lenses had been knocked out. Shaking my head, I put the glasses back in my pocket. I ran my hand over my neck and felt a sharp sting. I then felt around my collarbone and realized that I couldn't feel my necklace. It must have been torn off when the person that had saved my life knocked me down. I turned around and saw Sam coming towards me.
Sam! He was all right! He was the second person I had seen from the staff. So I had Charlie and Sam checked off my mental list of people who were all right. The only other people I had left were the President, Toby, Zoey, Leo, and Josh. Well actually...that was a pretty big list.
Sam said something and I couldn't make it out, so he repeated himself. "Are you all right?" he asked again. That seemed to be the main question of the night. Everyone was asking it. Are you all right? I've just been shot at; no, I don't think that I'm all right.
"Yeah," I said, and then quickly changed gears. "Where's the President?" Please, oh God, let him be all right, please, please, let him be all right...
"He's on his way back to the White House," Sam said, and I silently rejoiced. "So's Zoey, they just put Leo in a car. Are you all right?" The same question, yet again!
"Somebody pushed me down," I said. Police cars drove around, and the sirens were about to drive me insane. They never shut up, and they were so loud.
Sam ignored that, and then turned. Gina, one of Zoey's Secret Service people ran by us. She was the one that had shouted, I now realized. She saved all of our lives. "Gina!" he yelled at her.
"Can't talk right now," she quickly replied, and ran to where several people in suits were standing. Sam and I didn't say anything. We tried to look like we weren't eavesdropping on a Secret Service conversation. Who knows? We might end up spending some time in jail for that.
I was checking more people off my list. Sam and Charlie were all right, and I knew now that the President, Zoey, and Leo were all right. So now I had to concentrate on Josh and Toby. Please let them be all right, I prayed yet again. But maybe there's a limit on how many times your prayers will be answered. Maybe I had already used up my quota on the President, and there was no more left for Josh or Toby.
I was pondering this rather disquieting thought when I heard the shout. There seemed to be quite a lot of shouting going on tonight. "I need a doctor!" Toby shouted. Sam and I both turned. First thought: Toby was hit! But no, he would have screamed long before that. Second thought: Toby's helping a member of the crowd. How sweet. But I never, ever dreamed that the situation would be what it was. "I need help!" Toby yelled again. This time he seemed oddly urgent.
And then I saw why. The recognizable head of Josh hit the ground. There was way that I couldn't recognize that crazy hair after almost two years of working together. I sprinted over to Toby while screaming out, "Josh!" I was over there in a matter of seconds. Lucky I work out and wear sensible shoes.
I knelt next to Toby and turned Josh's head to face me. He was unconscious, and his slack face looked oddly like he was dead. His mouth hung open a fraction in what my mother always liked to call the 'dead fish face'. It felt like I'd just been punched in the stomach. All of the air went out of my lungs, and dread and fear hit me. Had I used up all of my prayer power on the President? Was there none left for Josh? Did Josh get ignored by God? How come Toby, Leo, Sam and I weren't hit? We were right there at the shooting. Josh was behind us. How come he got hit and we didn't? Does God just have a sense of sick humor or something?
"What happened?" I asked as I looked more closely into his face. Sam cautiously put his hand over the wound. He didn't touch the wound. His hand just hovered over the huge bloodstain.
"I think that's fairly obvious," Toby responded tartly. I drew back from him a little. I know it was a stupid question, but he didn't have to snap at me. Then again, maybe sarcasm is Toby's virtue of defense.
The doctors and paramedics came rushing over. They shoved us aside. We were looking on helplessly as the paramedics began work. It was horrible to watch, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. They checked his pulse and blood pressure while they tore open his shirt. I almost gagged. The bullet wound looked ten times worse than it did when his shirt covered it.
The bullet had torn apart his entire chest. Blood was pouring out of the wound. The flesh was torn and mangled. I could see all of the destruction from my vantage point of six feet. but the wound itself wasn't the worst part. The worst part happened about halfway through the procedure.
Josh opened his eyes. I don't know if Sam saw it; I know Toby didn't see it. He was, for fifteen seconds, completely conscious. There were two emotions that I could see warring in his eyes. The first was total and absolute confusion as to who was surrounding him and where he was. It was clear that he had no idea what was happening. The second emotion was the most gut-wrenching. There was a brief shift when I looked into his eyes, and I could see the raw feeling behind the deep brown pools. And it was terror. It was the kind of terror that wakes you up screaming at 2 in the morning in a cold sweat and wanting to pee your pants. It was just for a second, and then the confused look slid over his features again. He coughed as the paramedics probed around the wound, then someone put an oxygen mask over his face. And then he passed out again.
The paramedics started saying things that I couldn't understand because I went to school for 22 years for a media consultant degree instead of a medical degree. Also, I don't watch ER. The main gist of their talk seemed to be that they were taking Josh to the hospital. Sam volunteered to ride in the ambulance, and neither Toby nor I contested it. We were soon in a car and driving right behind the ambulance. The flashing lights seared into my eyelids and the siren hurt my already pounding head. I looked at Toby, and could find nothing comforting to say. My chest was feeling tight, like I couldn't draw enough oxygen. Toby bent his head for a short moment, and then looked straight ahead.
I looked at Toby, and Toby looked at me. Neither of us could say anything that would be comforting and not sound like a lie. I just swallowed and squeezed Toby's forearm tightly. He waited for a second, and then squeezed my hand back.