(September 2, 2007)

Donna sat at her desk, gathering up her papers, getting ready to go home. She was exhausted. It had been the longest, most emotionally draining day she could remember since 6/16, or the weekend she had driven to see Josh in Connecticut and ended up in bed with him. And yet nothing particularly unusual had happened during most of it—not since she had stepped through the doors of the White House, anyway.

Her news briefings had been distressing but predictable: a helicopter carrying twelve U.S. troops had been shot down in Qari'stan, at least sixty Qari'stani had been killed or injured in a mortar attack by U.S. forces on one of their cities, and she had had to announce another heightened anti-terrorism domestic security alert. Will, Swayne, and Porter had been sequestered in the Oval Office most of the day, apparently working on the final language of a new anti-terrorism bill—a revision of the War Measures Act, which was about to expire—that they were planning to take to Congress the next day. She'd asked to see it when they were finished so she could prep for her press announcement, but had been told she'd have to make do with a synopsis instead. "I'll wait till you're finished," she'd told Will in Senior Staff that morning; "it really helps if I'm familiar with the language, and all the clauses." He'd hesitated, blinking behind his glasses, but Porter had stepped in smoothly: "You'll have to do without it, Donna. We won't be finished until the wee hours, and I'm sure you like to get your beauty sleep to look your prettiest for the press." Donna had glared at him, Will had cleared his throat, but Porter had settled back in his chair and crossed his hands over his considerable stomach, smiling. Will frowned, but said nothing, and Donna's heart had sunk. She was still thinking about the incident as she looked over the files on her desk, putting the ones she needed in her briefcase to take home, and trying not to let her thoughts dwell on that other, pressingly personal thing that had been hovering on the edges of her mind and threatening to overwhelm her all through that long day.

Nobody really understood the relationship between Will and Harold Porter, or between either man and Bob Russell, but everyone had suspected for some time that there had been some shift in the balance of power, and the Deputy C.O.S. had come to wield at least as much sway with the President as his actual Chief of Staff had. Perhaps it had happened as long ago as that day Donna had been called into the Oval Office and dressed down by both Porter and the President; Donna had thought at the time that Will was simply busy somewhere else and had asked Porter to speak to her for him, but when she had finally told Josh about it, he had found everything about the incident disturbing, including Will's absence. They both hoped things would change, and Will would find a way to reassert himself with the President. The country had always needed good leadership, but never more than it did now.

Everyone had expected the war to be over quickly, but the Qari'stani people had not taken kindly to their country being invaded, many of them apparently preferring life under an oppressive dictator to having foreigners blowing up their cities and marching through their streets. Two months after the invasion, large parts of Qari'stan still remained out of U.S. control, the Qari'stani dictator had escaped capture and was on the run, and—most disconcerting of all-no camps for training terrorists and no secret sites for manufacturing chemical or nuclear weapons had yet to be found. To make matters worse, terrorist threats against the U.S. appeared to be on the rise. Swayne had devised a system of color-coded security alerts that were supposed to put citizens on their guard at times when the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. thought from the "chatter" they listened to that another terrorist attack might be imminent. Donna dutifully announced each change from yellow to orange or orange back to yellow as she was asked to, trying to appear calm and resolute for the press and the cameras, all the while wondering almost every day whether she was really helping the situation or whether her announcements were doing more harm than good. If being on the alert could help prevent another day like 6/16 then she wanted to do everything she could to alert people, but the announcements she was given were always so vague that it was impossible to know what sort of "suspicious activity" one was supposed to be looking for. Tension in the country was at an all-time high, watchdog groups were reporting many incidents of harassment and outright violence against Muslims, and virtually anyone who looked even vaguely Islamic or spoke with any kind of foreign accent was a target for hostility and exclusion. Donna was becoming seriously concerned that Americans might end up doing to themselves what the terrorists wanted but couldn't achieve alone, destroying the fabric of American society with suspicion and hate.

One might have expected a Democratic administration to be alert to that sort of thing and take a stand against it. But Bob Russell, Donna had come to realize, was a Democrat primarily because the western Colorado miners who'd first elected him trusted a blue candidate more than a red one on labor issues. On social ones they were fundamentally conservative, and Russell had met their requirements well. He had been quite brilliant at one thing, finding a way to appeal to both the mining families he needed to vote for him and the mine owners he needed to fund his campaigns—which was precisely how his name had made its way onto the shortlist of candidates for the Vice Presidency after Hoynes resigned, when Bartlet and Leo were being strongarmed by the right. Harold Porter had known him back in his Colorado days, had won his trust on the campaign by supporting his centrist (and sometimes even right-of-centrist) tendencies, and Russell had insisted on giving him a plum job afterwards as one of his chief advisors. Will, Donna suspected, had never been comfortable with Porter as his Deputy, but hadn't been given much choice. Donna wasn't comfortable with him, either, and the idea of his voice actually influencing the President more than Will's disturbed her deeply. And yet what could she do? She thought about resigning every day, but she knew it would make very little difference to the way things were done. She might really be able to do more good staying where she was. The President liked her personally—she knew that, and Porter had confirmed it. Even if he didn't encourage her to advise him on policy matters there might still be opportunities to give Will some support in encouraging Russell to go in a better direction. No, she shouldn't resign: staying in her job and doing what good she could there was surely more important than ever.

But could she stay in her job? With the whole White House so caught up in concerns about terrorism and fighting a war, she had never found the right moment to talk to Will about her relationship with Josh, and now was obviously not the right time. And yet she had to talk to him; she had to. She really didn't have a choice anymore. Not after what she'd learned that morning. She'd been a whirl of emotions about it all day, and whenever she'd let herself drop her focus on work and think about herself and her own life she'd felt as if the whirlwind was sweeping her away. She'd never felt so confused by her own feelings: terror was probably the most dominant one, but there was joy there too, wild, dizzying joy that seemed completely irrational and dropped away into terror whenever she stopped to probe the logic behind it, but kept springing irrepressibly back again in the strangest, most confusing way. Yes, whether it was a good time or not, she really did have to talk to Will. But first she had to talk to Josh.

She flipped through the files she'd been putting into her briefcase, checking to make sure she had all the ones she needed. Being the compulsive she was, she pulled out the two or three most important ones to make sure their contents were complete. Yes, everything was here—but wait. What was this, in the folder she'd made for her prep work on the anti-terrorism bill? There seemed to be a lot more here than she remembered putting in. Here was the brief, uninformative summary of the bill that Porter had given her that morning, along with his irritating comments about getting her beauty sleep. But here, underneath it, was a fat stack of papers that looked like . . . yes, it was: a full-text copy of the bill. It hadn't been there before. She wondered when it had come in: she'd been in her office most of the day, even eating lunch there—this must have gone in during her briefing, or else one of the times she'd left for a few minutes to use the bathroom. It had today's date on it, and a stamp, "Final Copy." They must have finished early, and either Will or Porter had brought it by. Whichever one had done it, it seemed odd that he'd put it directly into her file like that, under the other papers. Jennifer, her assistant, wouldn't have done that—she always left important papers in Donna's inbox or directly on her desk, and she always put a yellow sticky note on them telling what they were, who had brought them in and when, and anything else that might be helpful. She was a very good assistant; Donna had trained her herself.

Well, now she would have to read this tonight, as well as talking to Josh. Maybe she should put off talking to Josh? No, she couldn't do that. For once the personal would have to take priority. She'd work on this afterwards, even if she had to lose some of that sleep Porter had been so condescending about. She put the newly-fattened file carefully back into her briefcase, gathered up her purse, and walked out of the building to her car.

oooooo

"So, how did it go today?" Josh asked her, giving her a quick kiss and handing her a glass of wine before turning his attention back to the stir-fry he had going on the stove. It smelled delicious.

"Oh, okay," Donna said, hearing the exhaustion in her voice. She started to take a sip of the wine, then blinked, stopped, and set the glass down. Josh stuck a fork in the pan and tasted what was on the end of it, then took a knife out of the block on the counter and started to chop some ginger root. "Needs more ginger," he said, giving her a dimpled grin. "This will just be a couple of minutes; why don't you go sit down?" She took his suggestion gladly. The joy and terror she'd been feeling all day had grown exponentially during her drive home. She had no idea how to start this conversation—no idea what she should say, no idea how he was going to react when she'd said it—and she was glad to put it off a little longer.

He brought their plates in and set them on the coffeetable, then flopped down on the couch beside her. "Hard day?" he asked, his voice concerned and tender. She nodded wordlessly, suddenly afraid that if she said anything at all she might start to cry. He swung his arm around her and pulled her close to him, taking her hands in his free one, squeezing them reassuringly. She looked down at them. It was his left hand wrapped around hers, and he had his sleeves rolled up from cooking. She could see one of the scars running down the inside of his arm.

"Josh," she said suddenly, her voice sounding choked. "Have you told your mother?"

"About us?" he asked, sounding puzzled. "No, I haven't. I thought you wanted to wait until you talked to Will. You haven't told your family, have you?"

She shook her head, and swallowed.

"What's the matter, then?"

She swallowed again.

"That wasn't what I meant," she said, her voice tighter than before. She was still looking down at his hand wrapped around hers. "I meant, have you ever told her about—what happened? About what you did, last summer?" Her chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe. She glanced up at his face: Josh flushed, and dropped his eyes to their joined hands too. There was a long pause.

"No," he said at last, so quietly she could hardly hear him. "No, I haven't."

"Why, Josh?"

His flush deepened. "I—just couldn't, Donna. You know why. It would—upset her. It would upset her a lot. I just couldn't do that to her, not after—not after everything else. I just couldn't."

"Won't she be more upset when she finds out, if you haven't told her?"

"She won't find out, if I have anything to say about it."

"What did you tell her, then, about where you were, last summer?"

"I told her the truth, mostly, at first—that I was taking a couple of weeks' vacation at a place Leo recommended, down in Virginia. That I was taking hikes, working out, eating well, getting plenty of sleep. She was delighted."

"You were there a lot more than a couple of weeks."

"Yeah, I was. I always called her from my cell phone. After a while I maybe sort of let her think that I was back in D.C."

"So, you lied to her, Josh? You weren't honest with her? To your mother, about something that important, something like that—you lied to her? You're still lying to her?"

Josh pulled his arm away from her shoulders and untangled their hands.

"Yeah," he said, his voice sounding rough, "yeah, that's what I'm doing, more or less. What does it matter, Donna? Why do you care? What should I have done? Said, 'Mom, I just had this breakdown and I tried to kill myself. I cut my arm open with one of the kitchen knives you gave me, that you'd sharpened the last time you were visiting and told me to be careful not to cut myself with, that was still sharp because I never used it, I never ate a meal in my house that wasn't take-out from the Chinese place down the street or the pizza place around the corner?' How would that make her feel? 'Mom, I know I'm your only son, the only child you have left. I remember how you cried when you lost my sister, I remember how you cried when you lost my father, but I'm such a goddamned selfish bastard that didn't matter to me, I didn't care anymore whether I hurt you or anyone else, I just wanted to stop hurting myself. I hated myself and I just wanted it to stop, damn it, and I was so screwed-up the only way I could think of to stop hurting was to hurt myself worse. So you almost lost your son and guess what? He's a fucked-up son-of-a-bitch, which you've known for a while now, I guess, but you thought he'd gotten over it, you thought you could breathe again and not worry every waking minute about your boy who came through that fire a twisted-up mess, and then he got shot and got PTSD, but now you can't. But you really can, because it's all right, I went to this place and talked to a bunch of people for a really long time, much longer than I did before, and I've changed my life and now you don't have to worry, it isn't going to happen again.' And it's not, it's really not. But what do you think the chances are of her believing that, Donna? She's my mother, for God's sake, of course she's going to worry, of course she's going to be upset. Why would you want me to do that to her? What would be the point? What good would it do?"

By the time he finished, his breath was coming in ragged jerks, and Donna had started to cry.

"I'm sorry, Josh," she choked out. "I shouldn't have asked that. I'm sorry."

He took a deep breath.

"It's okay," he said wearily, leaning back against the cushions and rubbing his hands over his face. "It's okay. But—why did you? Why were you even thinking about it? With everything else that's going on, I'd have thought that would be the last thing on your mind."

Donna looked down at her hands, still folded together in her lap. She squeezed them together tightly to keep them from shaking, but she could see them trembling a little anyway. Her voice shook, too.

"I guess—I just—was thinking about what it was like, to be a mother, Josh. I've been thinking about it all day. About everything that can happen to children, everything that does happen to them, every day. Young children, grown-up children. They can be walking to school or sitting on the subway or having a fun time at Disneyworld with their parents, and get blown up by a bomb. They can walk into their office in the most protected building in the world, and have a plane fly into it and die. They can walk out of a building and get shot, or step into a car that blows up and almost die. They can be safe in their own homes and a fire can start and they can die. They can end up hurting so much they want to hurt themselves and die. I don't know how my mother copes with the things that have happened to me, and she's had so much less to have to deal with than your mother has. I was wondering how your mother managed, how anyone manages. How I would manage. How I will manage."

He looked at her, bewilderment mixed with the beginnings of comprehension in his face.

"Donna?" he said, reaching out to touch her hands again. "What are you telling me? Are you—" His voice choked and he couldn't finish the sentence, but his eyes finished it for him.

She looked down at his hand folded over hers, and then up at his face, full of emotion. She could see concern in it, and questioning, but there was something else there too, a spark of joy in his eyes that his worry about her couldn't quite keep down, and through all her fears and doubts she felt an answering spark of joy light up inside her in response.

"Yes," she said. "I am." She looked at the smile starting to spread across his face and smiled back, adding, "We are. I guess there were those couple of times . . . ."

"Are you . . . okay with it?" he whispered, and she could see his smile fading and the anxiety taking its place. "Because if you're not—I know this is a bad time for you—it has to be whatever you're comfortable with, whatever you want."

She thought she'd never loved him quite as much as she did then.

"I have no idea how I'm going to do this, Josh. I'm totally terrified, but—I'm so excited, too. I want it. I really do."

He started to smile again.

"We, Donna," he said softly. "How we're going to do this. You don't have to manage by yourself. We'll be managing together."

"Are you . . . okay with it too?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "I am. More than okay; it's—something I've wanted for a long time now."

"You have?"

"Yeah, I have."

"You've never said anything."

"I didn't want to pressure you, Donna. You had to decide what you wanted. You still do. If you don't want this—"

She put a finger over his lips.

"I do," she said. "I really do."

"But there's just one thing."

"What's that?"

"We're really going to have to let people know about us, you know."

"I know."

"Before they can figure it out for themselves."

"Yes."

"Which means . . ."

"Which means soon. I know. I'll talk to Will about it tomorrow. Oh, Josh—you're sure about this? About having a baby? With me?"

"Donna," he said, in the most tender voice she had ever heard, "I've never been surer about anything in my life."

He put out an arm and pulled her to him, and for a little while they were both perfectly happy, just holding each other and talking softly about everything they hoped and dreamed their child could have and be.

oooooo

Josh propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Donna, sleeping beside him. The long curtains on her bedroom window were parted a little, letting a shaft of light from the streetlamp outside slant into the room. It traced the outlines of her face and glowed softly on her hair, spread out like moonshine on the pillow around her. The clock on the table beside the bed told him it was just after one; he had three or four hours yet before he had to slip out and go home. He should be sleeping, he knew, but he couldn't sleep. He was glad she could get a little rest. Without whatever her hormones were doing to her, he didn't have a chance of it.

His emotions were about as mixed as it was possible for them to be. Part of him was giddy with elation: Donna was pregnant; they were going to have a child; he was going to be a father. But another part was almost sick with fear. Donna was pregnant; they were going to have a child; he was going to be a father. How was he going to do that?

He didn't know if he was ready for this; he didn't know if either of them was ready for this. He was sure Donna would be a wonderful mother—but was this the right time for her? Her White House job meant so much to her, and she'd had it for less than a year. She might not have to give it up, of course: maybe Will and the President would be okay with this; maybe the press wouldn't give her too hard a time for having a child with one of the administration's most biting critics and her former boss; maybe she could take maternity leave for a couple of months and then go back.

But that meant that he, Josh, would have to step up to the plate and do the at-home-dad thing, and that was a truly frightening thought. He had no preparation for this, no experience at all. He'd never been good with babies—they howled for no apparent reason, he didn't know how to get them to stop, and whenever he'd had to hold one he'd been scared stiff he was going to drop it and it would break. He wasn't even sure he'd be any good with bigger children, but at least you could talk to them and they could talk to you and tell you what was the matter when they were crying in the middle of the night. Living in the house in Connecticut he'd discovered that he wanted a family of his own, but wanting something and being suddenly confronted with the reality of having it were two very different things.

Breathe, Josh, he told himself. Take a long, deep breath. It will be all right. You can do this; you know you can do this. But he wasn't so sure. What if he messed up? He wasn't really what he considered prime dad material. Look at the mess he'd made of so much of his own life so far: he'd been pretty successful in his career, of course, until last year, but in just about everything else . . . .

And then there was the problem of his career. He'd been finding it harder than he wanted to admit, being on the fringes of things here in Washington, with Donna going off to the White House every day without him. It had been easier in Connecticut and New York, where inside-the-Beltway gossip wasn't on everybody's lips in every coffeeshop, and politics wasn't the main thing on everyone's minds. He liked what he was doing with the Foundation and thought it had a lot of potential to make a real difference in the world, but he'd never envisioned doing it for the rest of his life—he'd thought of it as something that would keep him busy and useful while he put himself back together after last summer's flame-out, but he'd always expected that he'd end up back in Washington doing something significant in politics again someday.

And maybe he still could, but it was certainly going to be a lot harder to do if he was going to make bringing up a child a big part of his day. There was day-care, of course, or a nanny, but he wasn't sure he wanted this child to be brought up by a day-care worker or a nanny. He wanted this baby to have the best, and nothing but the best, and in his mind that meant a parent at home while it was small, even if the parent was as inept as he was likely to be. This baby—Donna's baby, his baby. His baby. It was really just the most incredible thought, that inside the beautiful woman lying beside him was his baby, his child. He was glad Donna was asleep and couldn't see him looking down at her and his eyes starting to fill with tears of joy and fear and what seemed like every other shade of emotion in between.

Because she was asleep he let himself go for a minute, but then he pulled himself together and went into the bathroom to wash his face. He looked at himself in the mirror afterwards, wondering again how he was going to do this, but knowing he would probably manage, just because he had to. It was as simple as that, really. Donna needed him to, this baby would need him to, and he wasn't going to let himself let either of them down.

He wandered into the living room and stood by the couch, looking at the papers Donna had left on the coffeetable. They'd spent an hour snuggling and talking about the baby and the future before she'd sat up and said she really had to try to get some work done before tomorrow. She'd read for a little while, but could hardly keep her eyes open. The fifteenth time he'd heard her yawn, Josh had finally suggested she get some sleep and get up an hour earlier to read the most important stuff in the morning. It was a sign of how exhausted she was that she hadn't argued with him at all.

One fat stack of paper was sitting on top of the others, obviously the one Donna was most concerned about getting through. The title caught his eye: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act." The reason for this unwieldy nomenclature was obvious when he ran his eye down the page and saw the acronym it produced: U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. There was no "classified" stamp, so he picked it up. He wasn't going to sleep, and it might help Donna in the morning if he'd done some of the detailed reading for her. He could make a summary and put stickies on to show her which passages she needed to look at and which she didn't, the way she used to do for him. He opened the cover and started to read.

oooooo