ANOTHER UPDATE - I ALSO JUST WANTED TO TEASE WHAT'S COMING UP - I AM SO EXCITED TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK OF THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS!


The knock on the open office door pulled Henry's attention from the paperwork on his desk to his assistant.

"Yes?"

"Dr. McCord, you wanted me to let you know when it was time for your appointment."

Henry looked at his watch, and said, "Wow, time goes fast when you're reading case files…"

His assistant, with disbelief and a bit of sarcasm said, "I'll take your word for it."

Henry closed the files, and, as he'd done for years in his work, he imagined the information and visuals removing from his brain and hiding them under the top of the file. He knew logically it did nothing, but if there was ever a time he needed to create and maintain mental boxes for different parts of his life, now was the time.

As he walked out of the office, he told his assistant, "Will you call Blake and have him remind my wife of the appointment?"

"Of course."

"I should be back in an hour, but…"

"Understood."

He was thankful that at least the position of First Gentleman allowed for some flexibility. If he didn't come back into the office after the appointment, the world would continue to turn. Without nuclear war. Unlike his wife's job.

He tried to use the walk from his office to the White House doctor's office to prepare himself. After the experience this morning, they'd all been shaken up. Elizabeth had told him that Will was coming in that morning to talk. And he hoped that would help her. Just the fact that she was reaching out for help was a big step forward. And from her little brother, nonetheless.

And he'd been so afraid. For both Elizabeth and Emma. His daughter had looked so ashamed and embarrassed. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't her fault. It wasn't. He believed that. But there was a big different between it not being her fault and knowing how to fix it.

He was glad that they were going to the doctor appointment today. It would put things from the abstract of dealing with trauma to something more tangible. Hopefully her stitches could come out soon, and they'd talk about what came next, what his daughter needed next.

As he stepped into the small waiting room, he saw her sitting on one of the chairs, her attention completely caught up with the kitten in her lap. Will and Emma had stopped by his office that morning, and she'd shown him the furball. She'd looked so happy and different from that morning. While it was a bit of a surprise, Henry was glad to see her smile, even just a bit, as she'd introduced the little guy to him.

"So how's the newest member of the family doing?" He asked as he started to sit down next to Emma.

She didn't look up, but said, "He's good. Sleeping a bit now." She lightly ran her fingers around the curled-up kitten.

"Did you get all the stuff for him?" Henry asked, hoping to at least have a calm conversation with her.

She never looked at him, but just tucked her hair behind her ear, "Yeah. I don't know who did, but someone brought it to the Residence."

"Well, that's good." He said lamely. "Was it what you wanted?"

"Yep." Stated and punctuated with finality. And then, with an emotionless tone, she said, "I don't really want to talk right now."

While Henry felt the sting of her words, he felt a slight weight lift off his shoulders. At least she'd told him what she wanted. And he swallowed the hurt and said, "Thanks for letting me know."

He turned his attention to his hands, awkwardly twiddling his thumbs while he waited. Suddenly he was aware of each sound and movement he made. He wondered if he was breathing loudly. And he realized he was anxiously bouncing his left foot. He looked around the room, feeling like he should be doing something, but there really was nothing to do. He looked at his watch, and realized it had just been two minutes since he'd gotten there.

"Already checking your watch, Henry?" Elizabeth's voice startled him as he looked up to see her walking into the room, "I'm one minute late." The playful tone in her voice and smile on her face brightened the room. Maybe it was the sitting in silence part, but Henry was really glad to see her.

His wife wasn't in the room more than two seconds before the doctor walked in. No one had greeted him, but of course, his wife was too important to make her wait. And Henry was fine with that.

"We can all step into the exam room here." Doctor Westover gestured to the first of two rooms. As Emma stood up, the doctor asked, "Well, it seems you brought a guest with you today."

Henry watched as Emma just nodded and slinked by the doctor and Elizabeth into the room. Henry walked in, and heard the doctor and Elizabeth behind him.

"Madam President, I'm going to need to have the cat wait out here while we have the appointment." A second of silence before the doctor tried to explain his reasoning, "I don't have anything against it, but I'm just highly allergic."

Elizabeth flatly asked, "What kind of allergic? The go into anaphylactic shock or just a scratchy throat and runny nose?"

"Oh, nothing life threatening, Ma'am." The doctor assured Elizabeth.

Who responded, "Well then, Doc, you're going to just need to take some Benadryl after the appointment because I haven't seen my daughter happy like this in over four years, so you're going to need to deal with it." Then, pointedly, she said, "If that's not possible, we can get a different doctor. If you prefer."

Quickly, the doctor responded, "Then we shall continue with the appointment as planned, Ma'am. Please accept my apology if I offended. Not my intention."

Henry met Elizabeth's gaze as she stepped into the room, her eyes rolling just a bit before she turned her attention to Emma, who was sitting in one of the three chairs.

"So how's little Zazu doing?" She sat down next to Emma and reached out to touch the now squirming kitten.

Emma angled her body away from Elizabeth, and muttered, "He's fine, thanks." Then Emma slid the chair farther away from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's hand froze mid-air when Emma retreated from her touch, and Henry could see her body teeming with frustration as Elizabeth turned away from Emma and folded her hands in her lap as she crossed her legs.

The doctor pulled Henry's attention away from the scene as the door closed. "Emma, can you hop up on the table here for me?"

Without a word of acknowledgement, Emma stood up, holding her kitten tucked against her chest with her bad hand. She stepped up on the table, then set the kitten on her lap. Her hair looked disheveled, and she was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Even her converse shoes looked much too big for her, and Henry recognized them from one of the other kids, Jason, he wanted to say.

"So how are you feeling?" The doctor asked as he took the stethoscope from around his neck.

"Fine." Emma muttered.

Seemingly unphased by the short response, the doctor said, "Do you mind if I take a quick listen to your heart?"

Emma nodded. "Do I need to take off my shirt?" Henry heard the irritation in his daughter's voice in the question, and when the doctor said that would be preferable, a fleeting fear crossed her face before she covered it with the look of irritation. But she started to pull her right arm out of the sweatshirt anyway, and the kitten started to wiggle around.

Elizabeth, anxious to help, jumped up and said, "Here, let me hold little guy while you…"

"No." Emma snapped and turned away from Elizabeth. "I don't need your help."

Elizabeth held both hands up in mock surrender and sat back in her seat. Henry reached his hand over the arm of the chair and grabbed his wife's hand, squeezing just a bit. Her fingers wrapped into his, and she squeezed a bit.

Emma had set the kitten on the table behind her, turning and pulled the sweatshirt up and over her head. And Henry saw the dried blood along the left side of the shirt she had on underneath the sweatshirt. The way Elizabeth's grip intensified, he knew she'd seen as well.

And the doctor as well. "Let's look at those stitches first."

Emma, now turned back around, had the kitten pulled against her chest and she nodded.

From where Elizabeth and Henry sat, they couldn't see Emma's back, but as the doctor removed the bandages and set them on the medical cart beside the exam table, Henry could see it was soaked through with blood – dried – but still blood.

"It looks like some of the stitches ripped open." The doctor observed. Emma jumped a bit as the doctor touched her skin with his gloved hands. "Do you know what might have happened?"

"This morning." Emma said. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Emma." His wife said, "You need to tell the doctor and us, what happened. Did you run into something or?"

Emma locked her jaw as she looked up at Elizabeth. Her words were short and pointed. "You did it when you grabbed me."

Elizabeth looked like she'd been slapped for a second, like she'd gotten the wind knocked out of her.

Henry stepped in to explain it to the doctor while Elizabeth found her footing again. "Emma has having some nightmares, and she was having a hard time…"

"Don't tell him that." Emma said, looking at the cat in her lap, "It's fine. They can just stitch it back and it will be fine."

The doctor seemed to be reading the situation right, and he sat down on his chair and rolled it so he was in front of Emma and his back turned to the rest of the room. "You're right, we can stitch it back up and it'll heal up, but we should probably talk about what happened. So you're having trouble with nightmares?"

Henry waited for Emma to say something. But the seconds went on, and Emma seemed to be completely ignoring the doctor.

Still, the doctor pushed on, "Emma, if you're having trouble with nightmares or even just trouble sleeping that's completely normal for what you've gone through. And if you are, I can prescribe something to help you get some sleep."

As the doctor addressed Emma, Henry could see her shoulders relax just a bit, and she moved her eyes to look at the doctor.

"It's very important for you to get sleep." The doctor reasoned, "It is a short-term solution, but if we can get you sleeping good at night, you're going to feel so much better, have more energy, and just be able to function better in general. Does that sound like something you'd like to try?"

Emma nodded.

The doctor turned and looked between Henry and Elizabeth and asked, "I think that starting Emma on a small dose of trazodone for a short-period of time would be helpful." Henry looked at Elizabeth, who was nodding in agreement. And the doctor turned back to Emma, "You'll take one pill about thirty minutes before bedtime, and it won't knock you out, but it will help you fall and stay asleep." He pulled out his prescription pad from his coat and started writing, "When you see the therapist, make sure you let her know that you're taking the trazodone. And then we'll leave it up to her judgment whether you should continue, sound like a plan?"

Emma's brow wrinkled and she looked over the doctor to Elizabeth, "I'm not going to see a therapist. Why does he think I am?"

Elizabeth slightly shook her head in frustration, and it was evident that Elizabeth was trying to keep the frustration from her words as she said, "Em, it's not a negotiable thing. You've been through a lot, and it's just part of the healing." Then she sat up in her chair and closer to Emma, "It's to help you."

"Do I get a say in anything?" Emma asked with no intention of asking it as a question. "No one asked me if I wanted to go to therapy. No one asked me if I wanted to have this appointment." Then she held up her left hand and said, "No one asked me if I wanted reconstructive surgery."

Elizabeth turned to Henry and he could see frustration turning to anger. And, sarcastically, she asked him, "Am I such a bad person for wanting to help my daughter?" And she turned back to Emma, "Why am I the bad guy all the time? It's not that I don't want you to have a say in things – I do." Elizabeth took her glasses off and held her hands up, "But you never talk to me. You never tell me what you want." Henry reached over and touched his wife's shoulder, but she shrugged it off and continued, "What do you want, Emma? What?"

Henry could feel the heat from Emma's words, despite her lack of volume. She spit out, "You're embarrassed about me, aren't you?"

"No." Elizabeth stated emphatically, and she stood to her feet, her verbal sparring position. "I'm not."

Emma stood up, the cat in her lap now roaming around on the exam table. And Emma threw back, "You want to get my hand fixed because you're embarrassed by it."

"That is not true." Elizabeth stated loudly.

Henry knew things could get explosive, and, from watching the doctor literally in the middle of the fight, Henry stood up and tried to diffuse the situation, "Emma, I think your mother and I just assumed…"

"Stop." Emma interrupted. "I don't want to talk to you."

"You will not speak to your dad like that." Elizabeth countered.

Emma's eyes shot daggers at Elizabeth as she hissed, "He's. Not. My. Dad."

Henry chose not to process that comment at the moment. Right now he needed to calm the situation down, because when they started fighting with each other, they stopped listening to each other. And from Emma's response, his part of calming the situation would be to be quiet.

"If that's how you want to play this, then fine." Elizabeth countered loudly, "Let me change that to 'you will not speak to my husband like that.' Is that better?"

Emma's eyes narrowed, and she said, "I am not getting my hand fixed."

Elizabeth sarcastically laughed and said, "Fine. Do what you want. I was just trying to help you put what happened behind you."

"You were just afraid I'd ruin your …" Emma's strong voice faded out, and her eyes searched the ceiling frantically. Then she stomped her foot and yelled, "Fuck." Her lips moved but no words came out. Then she gritted her teeth and was silent.

Elizabeth asked, "Looking for the word 'reputation?' Well, that's just not true. But believe what you want."

The doctor tried to interject, "We can discuss the surgery at another time if it's too much of a…"

"Can I leave?" Emma asked the doctor. "I'm done with this."

Elizabeth shook her head in amazement and, even though she turned to Henry, he knew the words were directed at Emma, "Unbelievable. I try to help and end up getting yelled at." Henry wished the sarcasm wasn't so evident in the words.

"I do need to stitch up your back before you leave." The doctor quietly said, probably wishing more than Henry was that he could leave.

"Then make her leave." Emma said, her voice strong and angry.

Angered amazement dripped from Elizabeth's entire being. She turned her body and said, "No one is making me leave. I'll gladly leave."

Henry stepped aside to let Elizabeth go first, but just as she walked past him, she turned back to her daughter and said, "How about you think about what you want from me? Spend the rest of the day thinking about it. Because I'm tired of having this same fight over and over again. Figure it out, and then talk to me."

And she pulled the door open and was gone. Henry tried to think of something to say, but after a second just said, "I'll see you later, Em." And he followed Elizabeth out of the office.

She walked quickly down the hallway, but Henry called out to her while he followed her, "What the hell was that?"

She didn't stop walking. "I've got stuff to do, Henry."

Now it was his turn to be loud. "No!" He yelled, causing Elizabeth to stop and turn around. "No, you do not get to throw your to-do list in my face after what just happened."

Elizabeth whipped around, and she gestured back to the office, "That was not my fault, and don't you dare tell me that it was."

Henry walked towards her, and he spat back, "You did nothing but escalate that whole thing."

She ran her hands through her hair, "I bit my tongue so hard it should be bleeding. What else was I supposed to do?"

"Anything but that. You're a professional peacemaker." He said, "What were you thinking? She's defensive and uncomfortable and you just pushed and pushed her."

She shook her head and said, "Henry, I seriously do not have time for you to blame me for everything. Our daughter already does that, and so does more than half of the country it feels like." She turned away and said, "I have things to do. I'll see you at home."

Henry knew it was pointless to argue. So he just stood there, watching her walk away. And it was his turn to run his hands through his hair. He wanted something to punch, something to kick, something to take out his frustration, anger, and helplessness.