A/N: Back again. Just got home from the Fair, and I would like a round of
applause-I did not throw up ONCE at the Fair! Thank you, thank you.
Glad to know that you still like it. Reviews make my day. Oh, and I actually looked up the spelling—it's Rosslyn. Thank you to all of the people who pointed that out. I'm sorry. The author lowers her head, and accepts beatings from all of the people who were right.
Disclaimer: Check it out at NBC. Not mine.
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Josh Lyman's POV
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I wish that I could say that I don't remember anything about the shooting. I wish that I could say that the only things that I remember are the meeting, and then the gunshots. I wish to God that I could say that. But I can't say that, because quite frankly, it's not true. I can remember almost everything. There are several blank spots in my memory, but the most part I can piece most of it together.
I woke up while the paramedics were working on me. I wasn't quite coherent at the time. I couldn't recall why I was there, or for that matter, where I was. There were people surrounding me, and a huge, consuming pain in my gut. Red, blue, and yellow lights blurred in my vision. The scene kept on changing right in front of my eyes. The sirens remained the same, as did the night, but everything else changed.
I was standing outside in the freezing cold, watching flames lick up on the roof of a house. People were standing beside me and looking at the fire in horror. I was aware of a coat being thrown around my shoulders. A car screeched into the driveway among the police cars and the fire trucks. A woman ran out of the car while it was still moving and sprinted straight towards me.
"Josh!" she screamed, throwing her arms wide and gathering me in a loving embrace. She swung me on her hip and kissed me on the cheeks and forehead many times. A man came and stood right beside her and smoothed back the hair on my forehead. "Oh Josh," the woman said, kissing me on the top of the head as I buried my face in her collar of her coat. "Josh, it's all right," she soothed. The sirens were muffled as she squeezed me tightly.
The man seemed to be nervously urgent, looking around at all of the people. He interrupted the hug, and made me turn to look at him. The woman whispered his name but he held up his finger to stop her from speaking. "Josh, I want you to tell me this," he said seriously, putting his hand on my forehead and pushing back my hair again. "Where's Joanie? Do you know where she is?"
I burst into tears again. The man screamed out a curse, and ran to the firemen, while the woman's face went white. I couldn't stop crying. The sirens matched the pitch of my wails as I cried and cried. I tried to talk, but I couldn't get the words out. On the third try, I finally succeeded. "Mommy, Joanie's still inside," I sobbed.
With a jolt I came back to the real world. I suddenly knew exactly where I was. I was at Rosslyn, still lying on the sidewalk. I think that Sam and Toby were there, but I know CJ was there. She towered over the paramedics. I made eye-contact with her, and I saw the fear and worry in her eyes. That made my heart start to pound.
What was wrong with me? Why was I still here? What was so bad that CJ couldn't tell me what was going on? I knew it had been shot, but it wasn't that serious...was it? I tried to maintain eye-contact for as long as possible, but I could feel my grip on reality slipping once more...slipping...gone.
I couldn't tell for certain how long I was out, but when I woke up they had me on the stretcher and they were loading me in the ambulance. Sirens were wailing, lights were flashing, people were screaming. The events were wildly unfocused to a numb brain, and the screams, fires, sirens, voices and lights just blurred together in a crescendo of noise and confusion that was completely unacceptable, even to me. I had spent time in a lot of chaos. But nothing like this. I just wanted it to stop. Kill me, save me, knock me unconscious, just make it stop. The fire, the gun, the sirens, Joanie...make it stop.
An oxygen mask was over my face, but it didn't really help with my breathing. Evidently the morphine drip wasn't it because the pain was still there. Instead of the regularly paced sharp stabbing, there was now a constant feeling like someone was scratching out my intestines. It was an overwhelming pain, but I could not pass out again. I wasn't that lucky. I had to stay awake in the shambles of reality, drifting in and out of recognizing where and I was, and being delirious.
I glanced over to my right. There was a person sitting on the small seat. He was trying to stay out of the way of the paramedics, and not doing a very good job. He looked oddly familiar. I searched around in my memory while staring intently at him. The brown hair, blue eyes, strong jaw...all of that was ringing a bell. He looked into my eyes with a great deal of concern. "Josh?" he asked me. The voice sold it for me. I now knew exactly who he was.
"Sam," I tried to say, but the oxygen mask stopped me from saying much of anything. If anything at all came out, it would have been a garbled mess of random syabbles. Sam was quite obviously very concerned.
"Josh, we're in the ambulance; we're going to the hospital," Sam said. "You just need to relax. Toby and CJ are in the car behind us. Everything's going to be all right, you just need to relax."
If I hadn't been so weak, and if I hadn't had all these tubes sticking out of me, I swear I would have strangled him. I had a very painful bullet in me, and he wanted me to relax? I wanted to say something incredibly sarcastic and biting, but was stopped by the fact that there was an oxygen mask over my face. It's probably a good thing too. I might have said some things that I would live to regret. But then again, maybe not. maybe I wouldn't live at all.
I was thinking this rather depressing thought when it happened. I felt myself sliding, except I knew that I wasn't moving. It was just my mind that was spiraling downwards. Sam saw this, and he knew that something was wrong. "Josh!" he cried out. "Josh, don't do this! Just stay right here!" But his voice was changing, becoming deeper and sounding older. My surroundings were changing too. Instead of the brightly lit ambulance interior, I was in a dimly lit bullpen. "Josh!" Sam cried out again, except it wasn't him calling my name anymore.
"Josh?" I started, and turned away from my computer. Senator Hoynes was standing behind me, and looking very patronizingly at me. I stood up, feeling the heat on the back of my neck that meant that I was deeply embarrassed.
"Senator Hoynes," I said, hating the tone that crept into my voice. It was a creeping, subservient tone that I loathed. It appeared whenever he looked at me. He was arguably the most powerful man in the Democratic party, and the favorite for nomination at the National Convention. So the tone kept creeping into my voice that said: "Please, please notice me. I'll do anything for you if you let me lick your shoes." I hated that tone.
"Are you having some sort of trouble?" he asked. I turned to see what he was talking about. He was gazing at the devil machine, more commonly known to most of the population as a computer.
"Yes sir," I said. "It's locked up, and I can't access any of the things that I need." Argh! The Tone! The Tone!
"Let's see if we can't get that fixed," he said. "Barbara!" a random woman came over. "See if you can get Josh's computer set to rights." She leaned over and tapped a few keys, and the computer was back to order again. And I was left with the possible future President of the United States looking like an incredible jackass. It was not my finest moment.
"Sorry about that sir," I said, sticking my hands into my pockets. "I'm just not very good with computers." Must...get...Tone...out...voice....Damn Tone! Get out!
"I actually came down here for a specific reason," he said. "Take a walk with me." As we walked down the hall, he started to talk to me. "I've always held you in very high regard Josh. You helped me to get where I am today. I'm coming to you with a job offer. Not exactly an offer, but a promotion." He waited for me to say something, but I couldn't think of anything remarkably impressive to say. Hoynes continued.
"Josh, this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but my name has come up in some discussion of a Presidential nominee. Now I remember the work you did for me in Texas, and I'd like to offer you this chance. Want to come help get a President elected?"
"Yes sir," I stammered out. Hoynes smiled, and then acted like he was going to say something else. Instead his eyes widened in surprise.
"Josh!" he cried out, except it wasn't his voice calling to me. With a jolt I came back to reality. The pain hit me again like a sledgehammer. The sirens wailed and horns blared.
Shouldn't we be there by now? I wondered. Shouldn't we be at the hospital by now? What's taking so long. I turned my head over to the side and groaned at the pain that it caused. Sam looked relieved. "Josh, we're about a minute away from the hospital," he told me. "You just need to hold on for a minute," he said again.
He said more things, but I couldn't understand them. My vision was holding two worlds at once. One of them was a meeting in a room with Senator Hoynes, the other was an absolute nightmare. Paramedics were pulling me out of the ambulance. Doors burst open and florescent lights were now overhead. I felt the same frustration in both situations. I couldn't make Hoynes listen to what I was saying, and I couldn't just get up and be all right.
Toby and CJ's faces filled my vision. They were at Hoynes's meeting! But why were they there? Come to think of it, why was I there? I should be somewhere else...but where else should I go? Someone else came up to the side of the stretcher. Leo! The Secretary of Labor! But now I was even more confused. Worlds were blending together, I was angry, and I shouldn't be anywhere that I was right now. Only one thing was clear in my mind, and I made that point as they took the oxygen mask off.
"I shouldn't be at this meeting," I said groggily. They had to understand! I shouldn't be here! I should be somewhere else...it was coming to me slowly.
"I'm here Josh!" Sam called as he ran up beside me. I muttered a few more words. Sam must have understood them, because I sure didn't. "No, Josh, it's all right," he said to me. "You came and got me, remember?"
"Senator," I mumbled out. "I need to get to New Hampshire!" I cried out in a burst of understanding. I tried to get up, but the nurses pushed me back down. Toby, CJ, Sam, and Leo tried to say some more things to me, but I either couldn't hear them, or couldn't understand them.
They lifted me up onto a bed. Machines beeped and buzzed around me, and a white mist obscured my vision. The doctors talked to me while they put an IV in and put some breathing tubes in my nose.
"Josh, the bullet collapsed your lung; I'm going to put in a tube to re-expand it." I could hear a heartbeat coming in stronger and louder, but the beats were becoming more regular and spaced out at larger intervals. It was echoing in my ears, along with the doctor's remarks. A collapsed lung? That was serious wasn't it....wasn't it? A vague hint of worry and fear crept into my brain about my lung. And then I was gone.
Glad to know that you still like it. Reviews make my day. Oh, and I actually looked up the spelling—it's Rosslyn. Thank you to all of the people who pointed that out. I'm sorry. The author lowers her head, and accepts beatings from all of the people who were right.
Disclaimer: Check it out at NBC. Not mine.
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Josh Lyman's POV
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I wish that I could say that I don't remember anything about the shooting. I wish that I could say that the only things that I remember are the meeting, and then the gunshots. I wish to God that I could say that. But I can't say that, because quite frankly, it's not true. I can remember almost everything. There are several blank spots in my memory, but the most part I can piece most of it together.
I woke up while the paramedics were working on me. I wasn't quite coherent at the time. I couldn't recall why I was there, or for that matter, where I was. There were people surrounding me, and a huge, consuming pain in my gut. Red, blue, and yellow lights blurred in my vision. The scene kept on changing right in front of my eyes. The sirens remained the same, as did the night, but everything else changed.
I was standing outside in the freezing cold, watching flames lick up on the roof of a house. People were standing beside me and looking at the fire in horror. I was aware of a coat being thrown around my shoulders. A car screeched into the driveway among the police cars and the fire trucks. A woman ran out of the car while it was still moving and sprinted straight towards me.
"Josh!" she screamed, throwing her arms wide and gathering me in a loving embrace. She swung me on her hip and kissed me on the cheeks and forehead many times. A man came and stood right beside her and smoothed back the hair on my forehead. "Oh Josh," the woman said, kissing me on the top of the head as I buried my face in her collar of her coat. "Josh, it's all right," she soothed. The sirens were muffled as she squeezed me tightly.
The man seemed to be nervously urgent, looking around at all of the people. He interrupted the hug, and made me turn to look at him. The woman whispered his name but he held up his finger to stop her from speaking. "Josh, I want you to tell me this," he said seriously, putting his hand on my forehead and pushing back my hair again. "Where's Joanie? Do you know where she is?"
I burst into tears again. The man screamed out a curse, and ran to the firemen, while the woman's face went white. I couldn't stop crying. The sirens matched the pitch of my wails as I cried and cried. I tried to talk, but I couldn't get the words out. On the third try, I finally succeeded. "Mommy, Joanie's still inside," I sobbed.
With a jolt I came back to the real world. I suddenly knew exactly where I was. I was at Rosslyn, still lying on the sidewalk. I think that Sam and Toby were there, but I know CJ was there. She towered over the paramedics. I made eye-contact with her, and I saw the fear and worry in her eyes. That made my heart start to pound.
What was wrong with me? Why was I still here? What was so bad that CJ couldn't tell me what was going on? I knew it had been shot, but it wasn't that serious...was it? I tried to maintain eye-contact for as long as possible, but I could feel my grip on reality slipping once more...slipping...gone.
I couldn't tell for certain how long I was out, but when I woke up they had me on the stretcher and they were loading me in the ambulance. Sirens were wailing, lights were flashing, people were screaming. The events were wildly unfocused to a numb brain, and the screams, fires, sirens, voices and lights just blurred together in a crescendo of noise and confusion that was completely unacceptable, even to me. I had spent time in a lot of chaos. But nothing like this. I just wanted it to stop. Kill me, save me, knock me unconscious, just make it stop. The fire, the gun, the sirens, Joanie...make it stop.
An oxygen mask was over my face, but it didn't really help with my breathing. Evidently the morphine drip wasn't it because the pain was still there. Instead of the regularly paced sharp stabbing, there was now a constant feeling like someone was scratching out my intestines. It was an overwhelming pain, but I could not pass out again. I wasn't that lucky. I had to stay awake in the shambles of reality, drifting in and out of recognizing where and I was, and being delirious.
I glanced over to my right. There was a person sitting on the small seat. He was trying to stay out of the way of the paramedics, and not doing a very good job. He looked oddly familiar. I searched around in my memory while staring intently at him. The brown hair, blue eyes, strong jaw...all of that was ringing a bell. He looked into my eyes with a great deal of concern. "Josh?" he asked me. The voice sold it for me. I now knew exactly who he was.
"Sam," I tried to say, but the oxygen mask stopped me from saying much of anything. If anything at all came out, it would have been a garbled mess of random syabbles. Sam was quite obviously very concerned.
"Josh, we're in the ambulance; we're going to the hospital," Sam said. "You just need to relax. Toby and CJ are in the car behind us. Everything's going to be all right, you just need to relax."
If I hadn't been so weak, and if I hadn't had all these tubes sticking out of me, I swear I would have strangled him. I had a very painful bullet in me, and he wanted me to relax? I wanted to say something incredibly sarcastic and biting, but was stopped by the fact that there was an oxygen mask over my face. It's probably a good thing too. I might have said some things that I would live to regret. But then again, maybe not. maybe I wouldn't live at all.
I was thinking this rather depressing thought when it happened. I felt myself sliding, except I knew that I wasn't moving. It was just my mind that was spiraling downwards. Sam saw this, and he knew that something was wrong. "Josh!" he cried out. "Josh, don't do this! Just stay right here!" But his voice was changing, becoming deeper and sounding older. My surroundings were changing too. Instead of the brightly lit ambulance interior, I was in a dimly lit bullpen. "Josh!" Sam cried out again, except it wasn't him calling my name anymore.
"Josh?" I started, and turned away from my computer. Senator Hoynes was standing behind me, and looking very patronizingly at me. I stood up, feeling the heat on the back of my neck that meant that I was deeply embarrassed.
"Senator Hoynes," I said, hating the tone that crept into my voice. It was a creeping, subservient tone that I loathed. It appeared whenever he looked at me. He was arguably the most powerful man in the Democratic party, and the favorite for nomination at the National Convention. So the tone kept creeping into my voice that said: "Please, please notice me. I'll do anything for you if you let me lick your shoes." I hated that tone.
"Are you having some sort of trouble?" he asked. I turned to see what he was talking about. He was gazing at the devil machine, more commonly known to most of the population as a computer.
"Yes sir," I said. "It's locked up, and I can't access any of the things that I need." Argh! The Tone! The Tone!
"Let's see if we can't get that fixed," he said. "Barbara!" a random woman came over. "See if you can get Josh's computer set to rights." She leaned over and tapped a few keys, and the computer was back to order again. And I was left with the possible future President of the United States looking like an incredible jackass. It was not my finest moment.
"Sorry about that sir," I said, sticking my hands into my pockets. "I'm just not very good with computers." Must...get...Tone...out...voice....Damn Tone! Get out!
"I actually came down here for a specific reason," he said. "Take a walk with me." As we walked down the hall, he started to talk to me. "I've always held you in very high regard Josh. You helped me to get where I am today. I'm coming to you with a job offer. Not exactly an offer, but a promotion." He waited for me to say something, but I couldn't think of anything remarkably impressive to say. Hoynes continued.
"Josh, this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but my name has come up in some discussion of a Presidential nominee. Now I remember the work you did for me in Texas, and I'd like to offer you this chance. Want to come help get a President elected?"
"Yes sir," I stammered out. Hoynes smiled, and then acted like he was going to say something else. Instead his eyes widened in surprise.
"Josh!" he cried out, except it wasn't his voice calling to me. With a jolt I came back to reality. The pain hit me again like a sledgehammer. The sirens wailed and horns blared.
Shouldn't we be there by now? I wondered. Shouldn't we be at the hospital by now? What's taking so long. I turned my head over to the side and groaned at the pain that it caused. Sam looked relieved. "Josh, we're about a minute away from the hospital," he told me. "You just need to hold on for a minute," he said again.
He said more things, but I couldn't understand them. My vision was holding two worlds at once. One of them was a meeting in a room with Senator Hoynes, the other was an absolute nightmare. Paramedics were pulling me out of the ambulance. Doors burst open and florescent lights were now overhead. I felt the same frustration in both situations. I couldn't make Hoynes listen to what I was saying, and I couldn't just get up and be all right.
Toby and CJ's faces filled my vision. They were at Hoynes's meeting! But why were they there? Come to think of it, why was I there? I should be somewhere else...but where else should I go? Someone else came up to the side of the stretcher. Leo! The Secretary of Labor! But now I was even more confused. Worlds were blending together, I was angry, and I shouldn't be anywhere that I was right now. Only one thing was clear in my mind, and I made that point as they took the oxygen mask off.
"I shouldn't be at this meeting," I said groggily. They had to understand! I shouldn't be here! I should be somewhere else...it was coming to me slowly.
"I'm here Josh!" Sam called as he ran up beside me. I muttered a few more words. Sam must have understood them, because I sure didn't. "No, Josh, it's all right," he said to me. "You came and got me, remember?"
"Senator," I mumbled out. "I need to get to New Hampshire!" I cried out in a burst of understanding. I tried to get up, but the nurses pushed me back down. Toby, CJ, Sam, and Leo tried to say some more things to me, but I either couldn't hear them, or couldn't understand them.
They lifted me up onto a bed. Machines beeped and buzzed around me, and a white mist obscured my vision. The doctors talked to me while they put an IV in and put some breathing tubes in my nose.
"Josh, the bullet collapsed your lung; I'm going to put in a tube to re-expand it." I could hear a heartbeat coming in stronger and louder, but the beats were becoming more regular and spaced out at larger intervals. It was echoing in my ears, along with the doctor's remarks. A collapsed lung? That was serious wasn't it....wasn't it? A vague hint of worry and fear crept into my brain about my lung. And then I was gone.