Chapter Seventeen

Josh took the envelope and, like Sam, recognised the handwriting. Sam had been trying desperately not to fall asleep while waiting for Josh and he blinked to clear the fog that kept appearing before his eyes.

Seeing his struggle to stay awake, Josh opened the envelope and began to read. He pulled his chair closer to the bed so the words he spoke were just between the two of them. "Dear Sam, I want you to know that you are constantly in my thoughts. In all of our thoughts I should say. Toby refuses all offers of help and locks himself away in his office. Water Cooler gossip has it that he's being a lot nicer to his staff at the moment so we are all a little worried about that. Josh, just between us is-" Josh stared at the letter unbelievingly, "take this with a pinch of salt, Sam," Josh said before carrying on. "Josh, just between us, is acting like a loop-case, obviously that isn't worrying us all that much; it's not much more than his usual level of loopyness." Josh stopped reading again, mumbled something and then continued. "So, what I'm trying to say here, Sam, is that you are missed a great deal as a colleague and more importantly as a friend. I know it's a longer fight than anyone imagined it would be but I also know you are one of the strongest people I know and I don't just mean physically. This is a fight you will win.

Now, as you're reading this, I gather that Charlie has already given you the chess set.

I'll wait until you're up to it but I thought a game might while away some hours for you. My board is ready to go- just tell me when you're ready. You make the first move." Josh stopped reading and scanned the first few words of the next paragraph while taking a swig of water from a bottle. "Oh man!" he moaned and rolling his eyes, he told Sam he was going to love the next bit. "Now to the chess set itself. It's a Lewis chessman set named after the Isle of Lewis, actually pronounced Lews, in the northernmost of the Outer Hebrides. In the spring of 1831, the sea eroded a sandbank on the West coast at the South shore of Uig Bay, uncovering a stone building formed somewhat like a baking oven. This curious structure caught the eye of a peasant, who proceeded to break into it. Inside were 78 pieces, carved in Morse ivory which are thought to belong to eight or more incomplete chess sets. These Romanesque visages are unique in the annals of Medieval Art. Nothing quite like them has been found before or since. The replica set that you have was made on the Isle of Lewis by local craft workers using local stone - Lewesian Gneiss, a form of granite - which is crushed and cast to a unique finish. When you're back at work I'll tell you the whole story and the myths which surround the Lewis chess pieces.

Well, I should sign off. Leo is standing in the doorway and I have a feeling I'm meant to be somewhere else. Now Charlie is standing in the other doorway so I should definitely be somewhere else. They've got me surrounded, Sam.

I'll say goodbye for now but my thoughts and prayers stay with you. Ron was very happy to hear of my request to visit you again. I will see you soon. My very best wishes, Jed Bartlet." Josh folded the letter carefully and placed it back in the envelope. There was silence for a while.

Sam nodded towards the table by the window where Charlie had left the chess set. "Take a look."

Josh was able to lift the lid of the wooden case without taking it out of the box. He lifted one of the pieces up and studied it. "Hey, shall I set it up?"

Sam's eyes were closed but he nodded. He could hear the slight whooshing sound as the case was pulled out of the snugly fitting cardboard box, then the board being laid on the table and finally the sound of the pieces, one by one, being placed on it. "I'm not a chess man," Josh said as he worked, "I'm more of an outdoorsman. Do all the same colours go the same side?" Sam's eyes opened at that and he stared across the room at Josh. "Just kidding," Josh sent a lopsided grin back at him and Sam smiled and closed his eyes as sleep finally claimed him. Josh scratched his head and looked again inside the mahogany box in hope of finding a diagram or illustration of where the pieces went. He settled back into the chair, glanced at his watch and smiled at the realisation that Michael would be arriving soon. His smile vanished as he imagined the chess jokes that Michael would now add to his sea leg ones.

CJ woke with a start. She listened to the intermittent beeping but didn't recognise it. Still groggy she reached for the alarm clock and the phone before realising it was neither. A hand snaked out from beneath the covers beside her followed by a very sleepy head. Like CJ, Richard Keel moved his hand over the contents of the bedside table. He knew what he was looking for. He pulled the pager under the covers and CJ laughed and pulled them off him. He shot her a look but it didn't have much affect combined with his sleep tousled hair and squinting eyes.

CJ laughed again at the sight of him. "Read the bleeper before I bleep you!"

"Hmm, bleep me…" he rolled towards her, "that sounds like fun." He kissed her softly and then reluctantly looked at the number to call. He snaked one arm out and around CJ and reached for the phone with the other. CJ closed her eyes and relished the feel of Richard's arm tight around her and then his fingers absently swirling in her hair. "If I let you bleep me will you let me bleep you after?" CJ's reply was cut off as the phone at the nurses' station was answered. "Dr Keel here…yes I was asleep, it's 2am…who…when…no that's fine I told you to call me if there was any change…about twenty minutes…who's on call…okay…see you I'll be about twenty minutes."

CJ expected Richard to turn to her and apologise for having to go back to work. She couldn't care less. If he could live with her work schedule then she could certainly live with his. She felt the bed dip slightly as he turned back towards her, placed his hand on her cheek and softly said, "It's Sam, we need to go."

Toby had had a hard time getting to sleep, so when the phone rang at ten past two he answered it with a voice that expressed his displeasure at being woken.

"It's Josh. We need to go to the hospital."

For a brief moment Toby saw the wall opposite him zoom towards him and then back again. For a brief moment he lost all sense of time and motion. Then, he heard Josh call his name again and he took charge, knowing instinctively he would only get through whatever this night was to bring if he did. "I'll pick you up. Wait for me on the stoop, I'll be five minutes. Does CJ know?"

"Yeah, she phoned me."

"Okay. Five minutes." Toby swung his legs over the side of the bed. He took two deep breaths and whispered a prayer before rising.

It was a coincidence that the night Toby, Josh and Sam's parents were called into the hospital was the same night that Bartlet chose to pay a late night visit to Sam. Josh would later say that it was more than a coincidence, that it was fate and nobody who was in Sam's room that night would disagree.

When Toby and Josh arrived CJ was already there. Neither man stopped to think how she had got there before them nor did it occur to CJ that they would. Everyone was too focused on Sam to pay attention to trivialities of who was sleeping where or with whom. CJ was pacing the corridor her arms folded around her as Toby and Josh exited the elevator.

"What's going on?" Toby asked.

"I don't know. Richard got a call to say that Sam was worse but that's all I know. He's been in with him since I got here." It wasn't a clever way to steer away from the fact they arrived together, CJ had parked the car and followed Richard up to Sam's room but had found Richard already in with Sam and had been waiting for ten minutes for news.

"So, he's been in for a while then? That's got to be good. He wouldn't be in there so long if…" Josh trailed off. "That's got to be a good sign, right?"

Toby looked at him and then across at the elevator as it pinged again by way of introducing Michael and Diane. This time everyone did wonder why they were arriving together but again, thoughts of Sam quickly made any others irrelevant.

Michael looked at Toby questioningly but Toby told him that they didn't know anything. The five placed themselves around the corridor. Josh studied the contents of the vending machine while CJ paced and Toby hovered by the door to Sam's room. Michael and Diane sat a chair apart but seemed closer than anyone had yet seen them. They had been with other people when they had first heard the news that Sam had been admitted to hospital but this time they were both alone when they had received the call and both had instinctively reached out for the other. It was Michael's partner that had told him to call Diane. 'She's alone, Michael. Put it all away for just this night' she had urged him and he had. A phone call to a hotel and a shared taxi later and they were actually speaking civilly to one another.

Everyone spun around when the door to Sam's room opened. Richard Keel came out and scrubbed at his eyes. He walked over to Michael and Diane and the others followed forming a tight circle around him. "About an hour ago Sam's blood pressure dropped. His breathing is extremely laboured. He's conscious but very confused. He's very weak now, weaker than he's ever been. I said at the start that if someone survives the initial hours of strychnine poisoning they have a good chance. Sam has amazed us all, he's survived six weeks but that survival has come at a cost and-"

"Oh, God, he's dying."

Josh's words halted Keel who seemed to slump slightly on hearing them. He sighed heavily, "You should go be with Sam."

Diane Michael caught hold of her and guided her to a chair. Toby and Josh stared at each other and CJ walked to the far end of the corridor where she started to pace slowly from side to side. After a few moments Michael stood up and cleared his throat. "Diane and I will go in first. Maybe we can ask Dr Keel how long we can spend in there and how many of us can go in?"

"Just go to him," Toby told Michael. "Take as long as you need, none of us are going anywhere." Michael nodded and walked towards Sam's room closely followed by Diane.

It was a sort of in-between world that Sam found himself in. He heard snatches of conversation around him. The constant whir of the fan by his bedside was unnerving and he couldn't even feel the cool air which issued from it. When he opened his eyes he could only make out shapes and as the voices grew more distant, the shapes around him did too. He had no strength left. He was sinking, he knew he was but he couldn't stop it. Everything was growing more distant. He closed his eyes and turned his head away from the voice beside him. He ignored it. It was in the distance.

Toby sat in the dayroom and stared at the poster in front of him. 'Give Life- Give Blood' the motto read. Toby read it and reread until it became an endless string of words.

"Do you think I should phone him?"

"Who?"

Josh sat down beside him and rubbed his hands together nervously. "Leo, I was thinking we should call Leo."

"I don't know. Maybe we should call Charlie?"

"They'd want to see him to say… They'd want to see him."

Toby nodded and went back to staring at the poster but all eyes turned to Sam's room when Diane emerged from it. "Michael wants a few moments and then you can go in. Dr Keel wants no more than two at a time." Diane was wearing the first thing she could lay her hands which happened to be a pair of sweatpants and a sweater. She wore no makeup and was not trailed by the overpowering perfume she normally wore. In the subdued night-time lighting of the corridor she looked, for the first time, like a vulnerable and frightened person. Toby stood up and offered her his chair and Josh asked if she'd like him to get her something to drink. CJ walked over and gestured for Josh to move. She took Diane's hand and held it in both of hers. Diane looked up at her in surprise and tensed slightly before slowly allowing herself to be comforted by Sam's friend who she had paid so little attention to before.

Toby went first. On seeing Michael exit Sam's room he had glanced at Josh but he had shaken his head, indicating that he wasn't ready. Toby opened the door quietly. Everyone was being very quiet tonight. He stood at the end of the bed and stared at Sam for a while. The oxygen mask, fan and bleeping machines were the only sounds in the room. Toby had hated it when he could hear Sam's raspy breathing but now he longed for it. Anything was better than the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. His eyes were closed although the lids tried to flutter open sporadically. Toby let go of the bedrail, surprised to find his hands were wrapped so tightly around it. He sat down and reached for Sam's hand. With his other hand, he gently stroked the hair away from Sam's forehead. He whispered a prayer and then leaned closer to Sam so that his mouth was beside his ear. "Fight." It was an order and a prayer and a plea in one urgent word. Toby kissed Sam's forehead and then quickly left the room. He walked past everyone and kept walking until he was outside. It was raining. Toby was glad as it meant his tears wouldn't be so obvious when he went back inside.

Josh didn't sit on one of the chairs but lowered the rail and perched on the side of the bed. He too took Sam's hand in one of his and placed his other on Sam's head. "The doctor said you could probably hear me so hear this. I'm here, Sam. I'm not going anywhere and neither are you. I told Toby you're fighting and you're not giving up." Josh gently stroked Sam's face. "Prove me right, Sam."

CJ went in next. She had little to say. She had planned a whole string of encouraging words but once sitting next to Sam's bed she found they deserted her. She rubbed his hand gently and placed a kiss on his forehead. "We'll be here in the morning, Samshine." The strength of her tone implied that she knew Sam would be too.

Then there were no more visitors. Sam had heard the voices, heard them trying to break through to him. A part of him had tried to respond but a bigger part knew he was beyond that now. The dark that had always been so comforting before was trapping him. He wasn't afraid of floating anymore, he was afraid of sinking. He was being pulled down now and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Outside, his friends and mom and dad sat. Mostly in silence, but occasionally one of them would make a comment or try to offer some words of comfort to the others. Josh stayed alone at the far corner of the corridor. The fluorescent light from a fish tank beside him sent a rippling pattern along the wall but his eyes were focused on the cars' lights that passed along the street below. He hadn't phoned Leo, Charlie or Donna. He had decided to wait another hour and for another prognosis. He hoped in an hour keel would be able to tell them Sam had improved and there would be no need to phone anyone. He lifted his finger to the glass and drew shapes in the condensation. His finger slipped and drew a sharp line as he heard a voice behind him that he knew well.

"Taking the stairs isn't a security measure, Ron, it's a way to pay me back but I hope you are noticing my healthy demeanour and lack of breathlessness after three flights."

Ron was about to answer Bartlet when he rounded the corner and saw the group sitting and standing outside Sam's room. Bartlet saw them too and stopped causing an agent behind him to nearly topple into him. "Toby?" Bartlet questioned.

Diane watched as Toby stood up and walked over to the President and quietly told him what was happening. A tall, moustached man spoke to the President clearly trying to persuade him to do something. But Bartlet shook his head. "Well then you better do just that because I'm staying right here." Without another word he walked over to Diane and sat beside her. "Mrs Seaborn, I'm Josiah Bartlet. I hope the presence of Sam's friends will be of some comfort for you and him tonight."