A/N: Oh god. I hope that no one's given up on this. I know I haven't, but to be quite frank, I've had A LOT of stuff going on. I'm sorry that I made you guys wait for so long (I feel bad, I really do!) I did get West Wing Season Three for Christmas (and spent most of it cursing at the stupid people for killing off Simon. I still haven't forgiven them for that. Oh well).

Anyway, I'm back and I'm not dead!

Quick note to Catherine: Yes, I know that Josh's father and Leo were good friends and Leo would probably call Josh's mother by her first name. Hopefully this chapter will explain why he doesn't(I hope anyway).

Disclaimer: I actually wrote this without a disclaimer and then I went back to look at the top…it looked somewhat empty. So I came up here and wrote one. I don't own it. That's why it's called FANfiction?

-------------------------------

Leo McGarry's POV

---------------------------------

I walked into my office and shut the door. The way Margaret had looked at me when I walked in made me think that I was the one who was undergoing surgery. There was so much to do. How could there be so much to do? It was unreal. The President had just been shot; we shouldn't be worrying about stupid Constitutional things! All right, so Iraq might attack us and if they decided to do so within the next twenty-four hours we officially wouldn't have a President, but come on! It wasn't going to happen. Nancy was just being paranoid.

I sat down behind my desk and tried to think for a moment. It was hard. It would be so much easier with a drink…I looked at the door to the Oval Office. I knew that Jed kept a bottle of scotch in one of the desk drawers. Mrs. Landingham was at the hospital and Charlie was either at the hospital or in the Residence. There would be no one to see me. It would be so easy. I could sneak in there…take a drink…I could almost taste the sharp burn of scotch going down my throat.

I actually half-rose out of my chair before sinking back down again. No. I could not wreck it. Noah had always been telling me not to give it up. Noah…I sank back down into the chair as I thought over him. Noah was dead…and it looked like his son might follow him. No. No, no, no, no. Josh was not going to die. There were good people at GW. They would take care of him.

Noah…I wasn't even there when he died. I never even went to his funeral. I had tried to pass it off as "I was busy getting the President elected" but the truth was that I didn't want to go. Over the years Noah and I had grown apart. I grew more and more absorbed in politics and started pulling away from my old friend. I had barely known Josh before he started to work for me.

I stared at the phone, thinking over Ruth's call. When I had started pulling away from Noah, I had pulled away from her as well. It had gotten to where we hardly ever saw each other. I had no doubts that she still harbored hidden dislike at me for missing her husband's funeral. Once upon a time I'd have called her Ruth, or one of the pet names that I had created for her and long since forgotten. But now I just called her Mrs. Lyman. It felt strange, but I couldn't call her Ruth. After everything that had happened…no. I could not claim the privilege of calling her by her first name.

"Leo?" I looked up at Margaret's voice. She looked at me with her worried eyes again. I hated that look. She looked like a frightened dog that's been hit one too many times.

"Yeah?" I asked, putting my feet back down on the floor and clasping my hands. Who in the world wanted to see me now?

"I just wanted to make sure that you're all right," she said before quickly disappearing back to her desk. I shook my head and rubbed the bridge of my nose. This was all too much to deal with. I needed to take a break. It would be so easy…just walk into the room…my eyes darted into the small doorway between my office and the Oval Office. No. I looked up and imagined that I saw Noah up in heaven, looking down at me disapprovingly. I glared up at the ceiling.

"Shut up," I said before looking at the door. I winced as Margaret came into the office again. Is she going to do something else strange again? I wondered.

"You've got a call from the First Lady," Margaret told me. She pointed at the phone. "Line one." She swept out of the room and I picked up the phone.

"Abbey," I said when I picked up the phone.

"Leo," she said. Her voice sounded composed and very polished. She had her "First Lady" voice on, the voice that the nation saw. She was in control of the situation now. "They took him out of surgery," she said.

"Yes, I know," I said. It might have been rude, but I wanted to know if anything was wrong.

"He just woke up from the anesthetic a moment ago," Abbey continued. "It was just for a moment and we didn't get to talk to him. The doctors say that he's going to be fine."

"All right. Thank you," I told her. I already knew that he was going to be fine, but I could never get tired of hearing that wonderful phrase. "The President's going to be fine." It was such a beautiful phrase. There were some of the most glorious words in the English language, and they were all together to make this superb sentence.

"Is there any-"

"We still don't know if Josh is going to be all right." Her polished voice suddenly faltered and then it was back with a snap. "Leo, we'll call you again when the President wakes up." We both said our goodbyes and hung up. I felt slightly better, and much worse at the same time. I shook my head.

"Margaret!" I called out to her. She came to the door, almost as if she had been waiting right beside it. Knowing Margaret, she probably had been waiting right beside the door.

"Yes," she asked promptly.

"Margaret, I'm going to need the Security Report of 1942," I said, leafing through some papers on my desk. "I'm also going to need to be updated on what's happening downstairs every fifteen minutes, make sure that Nancy McNally knows that. I'm also probably going to need to see John Hoynes sometime tonight, just in case…"

What was I going to say? Just in case the Republican Guard attacks us? Just in case the President dies? Oh God. This night kept on getting more and more complicated. It was difficult enough just believing that your best friend in the world, and the man that you look on as your son had gotten shot. It got more complicated when you realized that the second man might die. It got even more complicated when your best friend was the leader of the free world, and there were things like countries that didn't like us getting ready to attack.

There are some times when I wish that Jed had slapped me silly when I told him to run for President.

-----------------

Short I know, but I figured you needed something. Have fun, and don't forget to review!