BAND OF BLOOD
PG
Post-ITSOTG
You rush to the bathroom, scrubbing with weak soap and cool water, digging blood from under your blunt nails with the tip of a pen, but, like Lady Macbeth, the blood won't disappear. Only her guilt was real and yours is imagined, though the blood on her hands was no longer there and yours is as real as it can get.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own THE WEST WING and my only form of payment for writing this is the response I, hopefully, will get to posting this story.
After the doors swung shut you looked at Sam, feeling defeated and terrified. If you had been permitted you both would have gone with Josh to the trauma room, but, despite your job titles, you aren't what the hospital considers Authorized Personnel, and you both knew, though you don't want to admit it, that you would only get in the way if you were to push your way through to your fallen brother. You had been with him, you trailed his gurney until they lifted him onto a table and then you were all asked forcefully to leave the room. So you all go back out to the triage area even though you're all afraid to leave Josh's side lest his slip away in your absence.
You remember the story that Ginger told you earlier, about how Donna sent Josh's chair to 'the shop', whatever that means, and Josh being Josh was so focused on everything else that he didn't realize there was nothing there for him to sit in when he went looking for another bit of research for the Town hall prep, something you never saw even though the scene kept rolling over and over in your head, mixed with scenes with Sam and CJ and Leo and the President, as you thought about your family while staring out the window of your office before leaving for Roslyn. You can't pinpoint when exactly these people became your family. You know that Sam and Josh and CJ and everyone else at the White House annoy you more than David and Liat and Talia ever did, though Liat and Talia are ten and eight years older than you so you were usually the one to annoy them, not the other way around. Nonetheless, your chosen family annoys you more than your brother and sisters ever did, yet you only see your sisters on Thanksgiving and your relationship with your brother has been strained since he declared his support of your father and, though it would be hard to go on if you lost a sibling, the thought of losing Josh or Sam or CJ or anyone else in your White House family is debilitatingly terrifying.
Sam is devastated, and the big brother feelings you wanted so desperately to get rid of only a week earlier are back in full force. You were never good at being the big brother, the most recent evidence of this being that you forgot that your baby brother had a mission and that he and his astro-newts would be testing out his latest theory, and you know that Sam will need someone to turn to and you wish that you were better at emotions. You can't help but think that maybe if you help Sam get through this you won't feel so guilty yourself.
"What happened?" Leo demands, drawing your attention away from your deputy whose eyes won't leave the door that Josh was wheeled through moments earlier.
You struggle to explain, telling Leo how you saw Josh's profile, his body leaning heavily against a cement retaining wall that houses some plants that Andi would be able to identify if she were there, though you're immensely glad that she isn't. She wanted to come, you remember, but she had had a fundraiser to go to and, even though she is unchallenged in the midterms that are coming up, she still needs to raise funds because she won't always be so lucky.
You tell Leo how you chastised Josh for not answering you and your voice catches in your throat when you recount how you froze when you saw the blood on Josh's clothing and the pain in his eyes.
Leo, the unflappable political giant, pales and trembles until CJ and Gina take his arms and lead him over to a chair, sitting him down and asking if he wants water or something to eat, doting upon him because it's easier to focus on something and someone that they can fix rather than thinking about what they have no control over. Any other time you would tease CJ for acting like a mother hen—you don't know Gina well enough to tease her, and the gun at her hip is making you nervous even though you know she's one of the 'good guys'—but that is the last thing on your mind as you watch Leo allow himself to be taken care of by the two women.
If Josh is your brother, Leo is his father, at least as far as the family tree of the West Wing goes. You've never really understood, nor cared to understand, the relationship between Leo McGarry and Josh Lyman, only knowing that they knew each other before the campaign and that Leo brought Josh in from the moral ambiguity of the Hoynes campaign to work for the brutal honesty of the Bartlet campaign, something that you're infinitely thankful for because not only did you get Josh, but with Josh came Sam and, despite how you treat him, you know you would be lost without your young, idealistic deputy, even with his problematic friendships, questionable punctuation, and bizarre aversion to verbs.
You know that by now the First Lady has been informed and is probably on her way to the hospital in an armoured limo, maybe on the phone with Ellie and Liz who she won't want to find out about everything from CNN, but you think it's more likely that Dr Bartlet is talking to the doctors at the hospital even though she is going to ask them the same questions as soon as she arrives. You check your watch and realize that she has probably already arrived and you can't help but wonder where she is.
You know that the Vice President has been surrounded by Secret Service and taken somewhere, possibly the Situation Room, for a full briefing on what little is known thus far. Leo needs to get back to the White House, and CJ, too, because the press is going to be speculating until they're given a statement, and even then they're going to speculate but at least then they'll have quotes to truncate and a statement to spin.
You don't know when you found out that the President was shot. It must have come over the radio when you were in the ambulance, or maybe even when you were in the crowd—there were enough radios there for you to overhear something. You hear CJ ask Leo, hoping to distract him from the fact that she's touching his arm with hands that are covered in the blood of his surrogate son.
There was so much blood, you think, though you took physics not biology because your mother nearly had a heart attack when Talia came home from school in tears because her biology teacher made her dissect a foetal pig and your mother was sick enough by the time you reached high school and you didn't want to make her life any more difficult. You still want to know how physics was at all important to you, the way your guidance councillor always said it would be. Physics didn't help you get into law school—you almost didn't make it because physics in college brought your GPA down—and it certainly hasn't come in handy while working for the President.
You can't stop thinking about physics, though, because in April of grade twelve, when you were eighteen years old and wanted nothing more than to get out of your family's home, your teacher, Mr. Clode, started talking about ballistics, the science of a projectile in flight. You know that the term ballistics isn't limited to guns, but that is the reference that Clode always used and by the time you were eighteen you had seen four shootings, your family's tiny apartment being in the worst part of Brooklyn where people like your father did what they did best, so your frame of reference has always limited ballistics to guns and bullets and now all you can think about is that sweltering classroom with Mr. Clode standing by the chalkboard making sweeping James Bond-esk motions like he's holding a gun and things like 'terminal ballistics' and 'kinetic energy' and 'velocity' and 'sectional density' and 'ballistic coefficient' are racing through your already exhausted mind.
You find yourself thinking about things like whether the bullets had left hand twists or right hand twists, though all you know about those terms are that they're the way the lands and grooves turn and that somehow they help identify which bullet came from which gun, though not all the time because so much happens every time a gun is fired and it's not always possible to match things like that up properly. That won't be a big issue with this shooting, you thing ruefully, because the shooters were caught, though there was a signal guy on the ground. It's not clear if he had a gun or not, but it doesn't matter because the two kids in the office were the ones that shot Josh and the President and who knows how many other people and the kid in the crowd was an accomplice. You don't know what he'll be charged with when he's caught—because he will be caught, you don't shoot a sitting President in that kind of situation and not get caught—but you're almost certain that locking him up and throwing away the key is going to be one of the options come sentencing.
A nurse, accompanied by a Secret Service agent, comes over to the impromptu White House senior staff meeting—with the addition of Gina and the painful and hopefully temporary subtraction of Josh—and explains that Josh has been taken to surgery and that the Secret Service has cleared a room two floors up that you can all wait in. There is also a secure phone line being set up, which is probably a good thing, though you're not sure you can remember why at the moment. The nurse says that the ER doctor will go there as soon as the trauma surgeon takes over and that you will be able to get some answers from him.
Gina mutters something about a report and Leo gives her hand a reassuring squeeze before she can walk off. You're almost positive that she won't be coming back to work anymore, and if she does it won't be on Zoey's detail, and you feel sad about that because you were just starting to trust Gina with Zoey's life.
Sam is still standing where you left him, and you nudge him with the toe of your shoe, not wanting to put your bloody hands on his shirt even though it's already got more than its fair share of Josh's blood on it. He shakes his head and you cringe internally when you realize that his eyes are cloudy with tears. You've never pretended to know how long Sam and Josh had been best friends, and you've never really cared, either, because when they focus on what they're working on they are unstoppable and there are no two people you would want as blood enemies less than Sam Seaborn and Josh Lyman. They are brothers in the truest sense of the word and you'd be lying if you said that you weren't a little jealous. You've never had someone love you as unconditionally as Sam and Josh love each other, though sometimes you think that you might have enough people who care about you, love you even, to make up for the fact that you don't have that one person who makes all your battles easier because they are by your side without question. Despite rumours to the contrary, there is nothing romantic between Sam and Josh, but their love for each other is real and true.
"Come on," you say, motioning with your head the elevator that Leo and CJ are headed for. Leo's walking slower, like his fifty-two years of less than clean living are suddenly catching up with him all at once. "They've got a room upstairs for us."
The unspoken list of things that the room upstairs is away from—the press, the trauma unit, the streaks of oxidized blood on the floor that should be flowing through Josh's veins—hangs in the air between you and Sam and he nods, casting one more look at the double doors that Josh was wheeled through before moving slowly, as if wading through hardening cement, toward the elevator. You avert your eyes as he blinks multiple times to get his tear ducts under control, allowing him what little privacy you can, knowing that he won't be allowed much in the coming days. Not that he was ever afforded much privacy, being a highly visible and, apparently, visibly pleasing member of the administration, but after the picture with Laurie and now this with Josh… it's not right, and you wish there was something you could do to stop it—that big brother instinct coming out again, though this time you don't fight it but embrace it—but there isn't, not really, because everyone knows that Sam and Josh are close, that they've known each other for years, and there is bound to be one reporter who thinks that there's a story there, which will inevitably get other reporters thinking that there's a story there. The vicious circle of the press and professional politics.
CJ's pager starts vibrating against the metal rail she's leaning against and you all jump, the low rumbling sound echoing in the six-by-six-by-ten box that is slowly ascending to the third floor where the surgical waiting room awaits. She checks the screen and makes a face, something between a smile and a grimace, and you want to laugh at the absurdity of her expression except that her sigh of 'Danny' makes your heart ache just a little more, not because you love CJ that way because you haven't for a long time, but because even though what she and Danny have can't even be defined as friendship they still have more love between the two of them than you have in your life. The thought of that makes you feel very tired.
Once the elevator comes to a stop CJ rushes out and goes straight to the pay phone at the end of the hall. You don't question how she knows it's there—you know it's just instinct and that if the pay phone wasn't there she would use her cell phone even though it's against hospital regulations—or why she's in such a rush—you know it's because she loves Danny Concannon even though she can't be with him, though not more so because he's untouchable like some women would be.
The waiting room looks like every other hospital waiting room in the country, though the Secret Service agents are a unique touch. Leo goes over to where Charlie and Zoey are already sitting. He takes the girl's hand and she rests her head on his shoulder. You're not sure who is offering more comfort to whom, but you realize it doesn't matter either way. Charlie is clearly shaken, probably wondering how many people he loves will be taken from him by bullets, and you hope he's called his sister because she has no doubt heard what happened and has to be wondering the same thing.
Sam looks around the room for a minute and you're not sure he's actually seeing anything, but then he nods his head toward a corridor and heads off in the direction and you realize he's found the bathroom and is going to wash up, break down, and gather himself before the others start to arrive. He is gone for almost fifteen minutes, minutes where CJ returns and the First Lady arrives with orders for the doctors and nurses outside the private room you are all in and Leo leaves to meet with the Joint Chiefs and the Vice President, and when Sam returns he passes through the room without stopping, choosing to stand out by the nurses station, as if being that much closer to Josh will make a difference.
You hope it does.
"Mr. Ziegler, there's a phone call for you at the desk," one of the nurses says and you nod, getting up and heading out, unsure of who could be calling you because everyone who usually calls you is in the hospital with you already and most of them are in the same room as you.
Your voice shakes as you answer the phone. "Hello?"
"Damn it, Toby, would you get the damned Secret Service to let me into the building already!" your irate ex-wife yells without preamble.
"What are you doing here, Andrea?" you ask. Andi doesn't respond and the answer comes to you. Your divorce wasn't because you stopped loving each other, it was because you couldn't live in the same place anymore, and you know that if Andi was in your place you would be in hers, and so you promise she'll be let in and you hang up before you tell her you love her and you tell the nearest Secret Service agent to tell the guys downstairs to let Congresswoman Wyatt in and to send her up right away.
After you're assured that Andi will be up momentarily, you look down at your hands, stained with the blood of a man so vibrant and vital that it seems impossible for it to all be real. You rush to the bathroom, scrubbing with weak soap and cool water, digging blood from under your blunt nails with the tip of a pen, but, like Lady Macbeth, the blood won't disappear. Only her guilt was real and yours is imagined, though the blood on her hands was no longer there and yours is as real as it can get.
You're just coming out of the washroom—hands visibly clean even if the stain of blood goes so deep you can feel it altering your molecular makeup—when a flash of red hair blinds you. "Damn it, Toby, what the hell happened?" Andi demands as she throws her arms around you. She buries her face in your neck and you hold her close, needing to feel her heart beating against your chest, needing to know that this isn't a post-mortem hallucination.
Andi has always made the world real for you. When you were 0-for-6 in campaign wins and you were seriously considering taking the job teaching speechwriting at a small liberal arts college in Virginia, Andi mentioned that Leo McGarry was looking for a staff and that he was running a presidential campaign that hadn't gotten much wind in its sails thus far but that your writing style would mesh perfectly with the candidate's oratory—you remember her telling you this because you mocked her for almost half an hour for using the term 'mesh' and not meaning a woven net of fabric. Andi has also always made you feel loved. She made you believe that the children she wanted to have were your children when you weren't even sure that such a beautiful young woman would want to date a grumpy old man—because you were a grumpy old man even at thirty-one when you and Andi were married—with a disastrous family tree and more than a few ingrained insecurities about the people you let into your heart.
You explain the situation as much as you can, your voice low and rumbling, and your lips brushing against the shell of her ear. You feel her tears on your neck, soaking your collar, and you wish that you could cry, too, but you don't, you haven't, not since your mother's funeral twenty two years earlier. Your voice catches as you tell Andi that Josh was shot and that it's critical and the medical staff and Dr Bartlet all have grim expressions on their faces that they try to hide with platitudes about the procedure taking time and needing to wait and see. Andi's arms tighten around you when you recount how you found Josh and how you were frozen for those few moments and if those moments were the ones that cost Josh his life you know you'll never forgive yourself.
When you're finished Andi pulls back and kisses your forehead tenderly before stepping back. She lets her hands fall down your arms until your hands are joined and her thumb rubs over the wedding ring that you still wear despite the fact that, unlike the continuous band of gold, the marriage it signified came to an end. "What are you thinking about right now?" she asks, her voice low and husky with emotion, her eyes searching your face for the truth because she's always been able to read you like that. Lying only got you in trouble because she knew. She always knew.
When you met Andrea Wyatt she was an opinionated volunteer who wanted to escape the life her parents had planned for her, and working for an unknown Democrat who was fighting a Congressional race that no one expected him to win had done just that. She was twenty, you were twenty-nine, and while you were instantly attracted to her you don't remembering speaking to her until after the campaign was over and your guy had been officially declared the loser. You remember that she came up to you after the TV's were turned off because no one needed to watch the joys and defeats of others and you remember her asking, in that no-nonsense way she had that always appealed to you, if you were ever going to ask her out. Your romance was hardly a whirlwind, though you didn't exactly take it slow, either, and you were oftentimes unsure, especially when she invited you to her birthday party and the age gap, that you never noticed when you were alone because she was always so much smarter and more mature than everyone else her age and most people your age as well, became painfully delineated, but by the time she was twenty-two you were married in a small ceremony that twined your two religions in a way that her parents found distasteful, though you always believed that it was you that they found distasteful and not the ceremony.
The ceremony was—though you hate to use the term—lovely. Tiny white daisies were everywhere, a priest and a rabbi taking turns offering up the rites of marriage, vows you wrote yourselves that brought tears to the eyes of even those who didn't believe you were truly in love with each other. Your college roommate was your best man, though you never cared for him all that much, and you wish that you had known Josh and Sam back then because it would have meant a lot to have them standing at the altar with you when you married Andi—you'll never tell anyone that you feel that way, though sometimes you think that they know anyway—and Andi's sister was her maid of honour, though she and Andi barely spoke because Alicia had embraced her parent's plan for her while Andi had run from it as fast as she could. And Andi, eschewing many traditions, had walked herself down the aisle in a gown the palest green you could imagine, looking like a fairy princess with some kind of shimmering make-up highlighting her eyes and her smile so bright and beautiful that it almost broke your heart.
"I keep thinking about the day you put this ring on my finger. I know I should have taken it off a long time ago…" you trail off, shaking your head. "My hands were covered… covered in Josh's blood," you confess, you voice barely more than a whisper, more because you can't bring yourself to put any more force behind the words in case this is all just a horrible nightmare than because you want privacy, though you do want privacy and you have it because everyone knows that this is your catharsis, that this is how you're going to make it through the night. "I was scrubbing it out with soap in the bathroom… but it was everywhere. Especially under the ring."
Andi lifts your left hand up and inspects it carefully. Your skin is red and raw where you scoured with too much zeal, and the band of gold has a new ghastly reddish-brown tone to it that you think might require some kind of special gold cleaning chemical, if there is such a thing. You idly think that maybe the fresh bar of Ivory in your bathroom at home will do the trick, because you have some serious questions about the actual cleaning power of that pink liquid stuff the hospital has. Hopefully they use better soaps when preparing for medical… things.
The butterfly-light touch of your ex-wife's lips to the wedding band she slid on your finger over a decade before wakes you from your soap-musings. You watch her closely and note the signs that show how time has changed her. Her hair has darkened, less vibrant than it was when she was in her twenties, but you decide that the darker shade of red matches her passion better, slow burning and often surprising, but always coming a place so pure and true that you can't fight it. There are tiny lines around her eyes that weren't there when you met, but you can understand what put them there—congressional races, not to mention life with you, not making for the most stress-free life. Her shoulders slump a little, though her suits hide it well, and you're sure that it is life's disappointments that have prompted the change in her posture.
She is still so heartachingly beautiful that you are afraid to look directly at her, as if she is the sun and while staring at her is something you long to do you know it will only hurt you in the end.
Without a word Andi pulls you with her down the hall, the route circuitous enough that you avoid the White House staffers because you both want some time away from all of them, and she glances a few times at the Secret Service agent that follows you, though she knows enough to know that it's protocol for the Senior Staff—Chief of Staff especially, though the rest of you warrant an agent or two as well—to have Secret Service protection during times of crisis. That's the actual wording in the briefing you got when you took the job. 'Times of crisis'. An intentionally vague statement that someone more than twenty presidencies ago wrote down and gave to whomever their Ron Butterfield was and now, today, you have someone in a black suit with an earwig and a wrist mic and a Sig Sauer strapped to his hip following you and your ex wife as you move through the hallways of George Washington University Hospital. Andi was with you when you read your briefing package and you caught her reading it herself a few nights after you had memorized it, and when you asked she had said that she wanted to know what she would be able to do if something happened to the President. Spouses aren't listed as protected individuals during the 'times of crisis', she noted with a frown, and neither are children, which you both agreed didn't make sense because no one would be able to work effectively while worrying that their husband or wife or children had been caught in the middle of whatever crisis was coming down around the White House.
"Wait out here, please," Andi says firmly, a tone in her voice you know all too well, and it takes you a full minute to realize that she's talking to the agent following you.
"Ma'am, that's against protocol," the agent replies, his voice shaking slightly with regret and something else that you can't pin down and don't care to spend energy trying.
"I know," Andi said with a sigh. You wish that she didn't know that, that you didn't know that, and that none of you had to actually experience that, but there are so many things that you are wishing and hoping and praying for that you have lost count and you don't want to further confuse whatever high atop the thing that is listening with requests as stupid and trivial as that when there are honest-to-god life or death situations going on all around you.
The agent goes in to the small room ahead of you, checking it over quickly before emerging again and nodding curtly to Andi. She goes inside, her fingers still tightly twined with yours, and the agent stands outside the door. Logically you know it's because the room is small and that you and Andi take up most of the space, but you allow yourself to believe that he is standing outside because Andi asked him to and because he knows that you need a minute of privacy.
Andi wads up a paper towel and uses it to plug the sink. You remember her doing the same thing in the first apartment you lived in together after you were married. The dog devoured the kitchen sink's plug and your nephew needed a bath in the worst way. Andi had always been able to make her mind work in ways that you never could make yours and you're sure that you would have ended up letting your nephew go home with wet dog food covering every inch of his body if she hadn't figured out a way to turn the kitchen sink into a bathtub.
As the sink fills slowly with warm water Andi squirts a liberal amount of the weak pink soap substance onto her palm before letting the rushing water wash it off, turning the sink into a tiny bubble bath.
Without a word Andi started rolling up your sleeves until your forearms were bare to the elbow. You let her, willingly playing her full-sized human doll, and, not for the first time, you marvel at what a wonderful mother Andi would have been.
The next thing you know Andi has lowered your hands into the warm, soapy water, and she's using her fingers and another paper towel to gently clean off the remaining blood from your skin, even managing to get the blood that was only in your head.
You don't know how long your hands are in the sink, but by the time Andi decides you are finished your fingers are prune-like and the water is closer to cold than it is to warm.
"Better?" Andi asks softly as she helps you dry your hands. You nod and she graces you one of her big beautiful smiles as she rolls your sleeves back down and buttons them at your wrists with careful and precise fingers that have done the same thing hundreds of times before. She used to like to help you get dressed, buttoning buttons and tying your ties, and you would smile and laugh and allow her to have her fun because she would stand so close to you for several minutes every morning, her hair still wet from the shower, wearing her bra and a pair of panties, sometimes wearing garters and thigh-high stockings as well, but never anything more than that, and there is nothing in the world that you could deny her when she's standing in front of you with those pleading eyes and sexy tilt to her hips and so much creamy skin so close to you that it takes every ounce of restraint you have to refrain from pushing her back onto the bed and forgetting about work and the world outside of Andrea Wyatt-Ziegler.
Once she has fixed your tie and smoothed your hair down she presses her lips to yours briefly, just long enough for you to want more but not long enough for you to do anything about that desire. Sometimes you forget how much of a tease Andi could be at times.
"Josh is going to be okay," she says firmly, and you almost believe her. You nod, because you can't voice opposition to what you pray for with such fervour, but you know that your inability to believe that is clear to Andi who has always been able to read you better than anyone. Her hands come up and frame your face, forcing you to look into her eyes. "Hey. You have to believe that, Toby. Josh is going to be fine. Just like David is."
This throws you for a moment because the situation with the Columbia wasn't leaked, but then you remember that Andi and your brother's wife always got along and you're pretty sure they are still good friends so it makes sense to you that she would know that David was on the shuttle and that there were some problems but that he was back on land, safe and sound.
"What… what if he isn't, though?" you ask, feeling like a child needing to be reassured that the monsters under the bed really are afraid of the nightlight. "What if… what if…" you trail off, unable to put voice to thought.
"What if you've used up your allotment of safe returns for loved ones?" Andi asks, no hint of laughter in her voice. "That's not the way it works, Toby. David got home safely because NASA has a hundred redundancies in place for when things go wrong. And Josh is going to be fine because this is one of the best hospitals in the world and because the surgeons are top notch and because… because I know it. In my gut. I just… know it. Okay?"
"Okay," you whisper, partially because you want her to be right but mostly because you learned over the years that when Andi feels something 'in her gut' she's right nine times out of ten. She knew 'in her gut' that you weren't going to get fired after the Dairy Farmers Compact thing at the VFW hall and you weren't. She knew 'in her gut' that you were going to get Communications Director even though you knew that Bartlet wanted someone else for the position. She knew 'in her gut' that your sister Talia was going to have two girls and that David was going to have all boys and that Liat was going to leave her first husband within a year and she had been right. She knew 'in her gut' that Sam would work out and that you and he would end up making an unstoppable writing team and, though there are still times when you want to kick him through a plate glass window, you know that she was right about that, too.
She was, however, wrong when she told you, after you had been dating for a few months, that she knew 'in her gut' that you were going to be the father of her children.
You don't think about that, though, because you really want her to be right and you can't allow any negative thoughts to enter your mind lest they somehow come true.
"Why aren't you at your fundraiser?" you ask as you both leave the bathroom, your Secret Service agent falling in step behind you once again.
"I heard about the shooting but I couldn't find out if you were alright or if anyone was seriously hurt or anything. I… I needed to be sure that you were okay," Andi says shyly.
This makes you smile. Even though you both know that the reason your marriage ended wasn't that you stopped loving each other—you just stopped being able to live with each other—it feels good to have confirmation of the fact that you are still important to Andi. "I was going to call after I knew what was happening with Josh." This is the truth but you now realize that you probably should have called her as soon as you got to the hospital. "I didn't mean to worry you."
Andi offers up a small smile and shakes her head. "You had other things on your mind. I understand. But… can you not scare me like that again, please?"
You smile at that, your first real smile in what feels like weeks. "I'll do my best," you promise, though you know that, just like this wasn't something you controlled, any further 'times of crisis' will probably not be under your control, either.
"Good. Panic is not a good look on me," Andi joked with a lopsided smile, trying to inject some levity into the situation to keep you from going completely insane.
The two of you stood outside the waiting room for a few minutes before you regretfully told her that she should probably go. "I'll call with news when… when we have news."
She asks if you promise and for a moment you're thrown back to the first time you told her that you loved her. She had looked at you with wide, guileless eyes, and asked if you promised. You had laughed and said that, yes, you promised, and tears had filled her eyes that, to this day you still can't determine the source of. You managed to convince yourself they were happy tears, but some days the niggling fear in the pit of your stomach is worse than others and you're not so sure anymore.
You tell her that you promise and Andi smiles and nods. She knows what your life is like and that there will be statements and conference calls with Leo and the Joint Chiefs and leaders of Congress and a hundred other people who need to talk to you about things that she can't know about and even though the thought of Andi leaving and taking the small measure of comfort that she gives you with her makes you want to clutch her to your chest and never let go, you know that you have a job to do and that Sam is going to need you to be strong for him because his best friend—his brother—could die tonight and you need to be able to be strong for your family, something you can't do when Andi is around because at the moment her presence, while comforting, is making you want to curl up on her lap and hide your face in the crook of her neck.
Her lips brush yours again and then she's gone. You watch her until she disappears behind the elevator doors and then you go into the waiting room and roll up your sleeves as you sit down across from Sam who somehow managed to keep his leather folio with him even in all the terrifying excitement at the Newseum.
Dr. Bartlet comes in and tells you all what is happening with Josh, her medical-speak going right over your head for the most part. She assures you all that the doctors are top-notch and that Josh is getting the best possible care, though that doesn't mean much to you because even the best possible care could fall short.
People are in and out of the room, some bringing notes, other coming to sit vigil with the Senior Staff, but you don't notice any of them, your eyes trained on the floor between your feet. Their footsteps all sound familiar and hesitant, none of them catching your attention, until the door to the waiting room opens and the doctor who was working on Josh appears. "Uh, excuse me."
Sam looks up first, then CJ and Charlie, and then everyone else. You raise your head slightly, but not enough to meet the eyes of the doctor because you don't want to hate him but you will if he is standing there to tell you that Josh is gone.
"We can't make you very comfortable here," the doctor says and you breathe a small sigh of relief—they wouldn't be worried about making you comfortable if Josh was dead, "and Josh's procedure is likely to take 12 to 14 hours, so—"
The doctor stops talking when Donna enters the room. Your heart stops beating for a second. You can't believe that you forgot to call her. You're glad someone did, though. She should be here. Other than Sam she is the person who cares about Josh the most.
"I'm sorry, they told me I should come back here? I'm sorry. Is there word on the President?" Donna asks breathlessly.
CJ is the one who tells her the good news. "The President's going to be fine."
"Oh, thank God," Donna says, letting out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God, that's the best news I've ever heard. I got here as fast as I could. I had a hard time getting in. I had-I had to find an agent who knew me, and I was shaking. I was just—I didn't know—"
You want to scream and punch the wall and cry and run away because it is in no way fair that this is happening, nor is it fair that you be the one to tell Donna about Josh. It should be Sam, or Leo, but Leo is back at the White House and Sam is writing something down in his folio, probably the statement that you couldn't stomach writing, and doing everything possible to avoid eye contact with the young blonde who just said that the President being alright was the best news she ever heard.
"Donna," you say, waiting until she looks at you before you tell her what she obviously didn't find out from the news or where ever it was that she heard about the President. "Josh was hit."
It takes her a minute to dig in, and even then the shock of what you just told her is too much for her to comprehend. You understand that. You can't comprehend what is happening, what has happened, and you were there. "Hit with what?"
Quick and painless, like ripping off a band-aid, you decide, is the best way to do this. Blunt, to the point, with no room for misinterpretations. "He was shot—in the chest."
"He's in surgery right now," CJ adds, coming to your aid.
Donna is shaking by this point, and you hope that she doesn't cry. You saw her crying once before, after she took Josh to the airport the night his father died, and you remember that being the night that you realized that she wasn't just some blonde woman who talked her way into a job.
"I don't understand. I don't understand, is—is it serious?
You had never thought much of Donna, to be perfectly honest. She was there, and then she left, and when she came back you were sure it was only going to be a matter of weeks before she left again, but she didn't and every day she got better and better at what she did until one day you found her explaining electoral math to some of the interns. It took you forever to grasp electoral math. Even then you struggled with it, which is why you always had a cheat sheet in your beaten-up accordion folder. But Donna, a woman who had five majors and two minors in two years, who had no political experience other than running for student body president in high school, knew electoral math backwards and forwards and she was able to explain the complexities to a group of eighteen and nineteen year olds who were, for the most part, only there to pad their resumes.
"Yes, it's critical. The bullet collapsed his lung and damaged a major artery." That much you understood from what Dr. Bartlet told you all earlier.
Donna looks very shocked.
"I was just saying, we can't make you very comfortable here, and the procedure is likely to take 12 to 14 hours. We won't know anything until morning. I'm sure there are things you're supposed to be attending to right now, so if you like we can stay in contact with your homes and offices throughout the night," the doctor says.
As the doctor exits, Donna sinks into a chair and stares into space.
Sam tears a piece of paper out of his notebook hands it to CJ. She says something about briefing after Leo is finished meeting with the Leadership but you aren't really listening. Charlie says that he's going to get some things from the Residence for the President and he and CJ stand up and leave together to go back to the White House.
You start fidgeting with your ring, twisting it around your finger over and over again until it slides off your finger, falling to the floor with a pinging clang that makes everyone in the room jump.
It is in that moment that it becomes too much for you. You have to get out of there. Out of the waiting room. Out of the building. Away from the blood and the pain and the worry and everything else that is weighing so heavy on you at that moment.
"I should get back to the White House, too," you say as you scoop up your ring from the white tile floor.
Sam looks at his watch and nods distractedly. By the time you get back there Leo should be finished what will undoubtedly be the first of many meetings with the Joint Chiefs you will need to work on the message that the White House is sending out. You're going to need Sam, too, but he won't be any good to anyone now so you don't even consider asking him to come with you. He can work from the hospital until there is more news—any news at all.
You put your hand over Donna's shoulder on your way out of the room and she reaches up and gives your hand a squeeze before letting her arm drop back down. It is quite possible that Donna is the strongest person you know and you love her for it, but you are afraid that even she won't be able to hold it together through this.
It's not until you're in the car on the way back to the White House that you move to put your wedding band back on.
There is a band of rust-coloured blood circling your left ring finger.
And there, in the back seat of the car, you start to cry.
THE END
Notes:
1) Liat and Talia are two girls who grew up a few blocks away from me. I used to baby sit them, and when I was writing this I was struck with something. Liat and Talia have two brothers. David and Toby. Now, Toby's sisters were never given names on the show, and after SGTESGTJ the fact that Toby even had sisters was never mentioned again, so I took some liberties there.
2) Toby and Andi were never overly affectionate on the show, this much is true, but I don't think they ever stopped loving each other and, obviously, they have the kind of relationship where they turn to each other for physical release because otherwise Huck and Molly wouldn't be around. It was with that thought in mind that I turned Andrea Wyatt into Toby's safe person.
3) This was a hard story for me to write. Getting inside Toby's head was not easy, and writing a story that didn't rely on dialogue was nearly impossible for me, but it was something that I challenged myself to do and, in the end, I'm proud of what I wrote and I hope that you all enjoyed this blast from the past.