Epilogue, Version 1:
So, this is the ending as the story originally came to me. It's the hard-to-take one, and while there are some good things that happen here too, if you can't deal with character death, you shouldn't read it.
Nobody needs to read it to finish the story, though. This is a 'What if?" story in an alternative universe: there's no reason it can't have "what if?" alternative endings, so I've provided a second possibility that I'll be posting in the next chapter. There are probably many other ways this story could come out as well, but everyone's time and patience are limited here, so these two are the ones I've come up with—feel free to imagine others, if they don't satisfy. I hope at least one of them will, though.
But for this ending, the "what if?" goes like this: what if, in a climate of political fear, in which those in power in government have shown a willingness to suspend certain basic guiding principles, one or two people at least were willing to suspend them a little further in order to silence opposition and achieve their political ends? This is my idea of what could happen then.
Epilogue, Version 1:
Donna got home late that night. There had been a terrorist threat on the Hill, and the entire Capitol building had had to be evacuated. She called a late press briefing and assured them that the situation was now under control. A suspect had been apprehended. No, the Capitol Police were not releasing his name. No, she had no other information at this time.
When she left, she didn't know whether the House Leader was going to call a vote on the Patriot Act that night or not. The threat against the Capitol made the anti-terror law seem all the more urgent, but he was being pressured by some of his most influential members to hold off until they had time to give the measure proper consideration and debate. Porter was locked up in his office, shouting into his phone. Will was shut up in his, but he wasn't shouting and Donna wasn't sure what side of the problem he might actually be coming down on.
It sounded as if Josh had managed to stir up enough voices of protest that there was at least a chance that the vote would be delayed—or, if it was called, might fail. She couldn't wait to see him and tell him what was happening and how much he'd accomplished. And she was starving. She wondered if he'd have gotten home in time to make dinner for them, or if they should just order Chinese.
She was surprised to find the house dark and quiet. Josh must still be on the Hill, then, courting Congressmen to vote against the Act. It was funny he hadn't called her to let her know, but probably he'd been too busy even to think of it. She tried him on his cell, but got a message telling her the customer she was trying to reach was unavailable; he must have switched the thing off. She rummaged in the refrigerator for the leftovers from last night's dinner, ate them, cleaned up, and went to bed alone.
The next morning Porter was in a temper. The House Leader had refused to call the vote until that afternoon. Donna smiled to herself. She tried to reach Josh on and off all morning, but he never remembered to turn his cell back on. Probably he'd forgotten to charge it and the battery was dead. She'd tease him about that sometime, but not tonight—tonight he would either be drinking from the keg of glory or in the depths of despair, and he didn't really deserve to be played with when he was feeling either way, after all he'd done.
The vote was called at 4:00. Donna held her breath till the last vote was in, and was bitterly disappointed when the Act passed. The debate had been heated, though, and the vote close. What would happen in the Senate wasn't clear. Donna held her press briefing, packed her briefcase, and went home. To her surprise, the house was still dark. She couldn't see any signs that anyone had been there at all.
She tried to call him on his cell. She tried to call him at home. She got in her car and drove to his house, but it was dark. She drove home, parked in her spot, rummaged in her dresser drawers till she found the key he'd given her years ago, then—still mindful of photographers—walked back and let herself in. Josh wasn't there. The red light on his phone was blinking; the messages were mostly hers.
She walked back home and sat up all night, waiting. He didn't come. The next morning she dragged herself into work, but couldn't concentrate. The Senate decided to postpone a vote on the bill for another day; she didn't care. She started calling hospitals, the police, but got nothing. Then she started on congressmen she thought Josh might have talked to on Tuesday. That was more productive: quite a few said he'd been in their offices, campaigning vigorously against the Act. The last one who seemed to have seen him was Congresswoman Finnegan; he'd been in her office just before the alert had been sounded and the building cleared.
Shortly after one o'clock, Will called her into his office. He was afraid he had some very bad news. Donna was amazed at her own composure. She asked when; he said probably sometime last night. She asked where; he said down by the river, a short walk from his house in Georgetown. She asked how; he said a shot to the head. The gun was in his hand. The police were investigating, but it looked like suicide.
How was she? Donna heard herself telling Will that she needed an hour or two by herself but then she would take her press briefing and make the announcement. He said she didn't have to, someone else could do it; she said she wanted to, it should be her. She told Jennifer to hold her calls, closed her door and put her head on her desk—Josh's desk. She didn't cry. Her eyes hurt, her head hurt, her whole body hurt, but she didn't cry; she couldn't. Crying was for lesser things than this. Crying usually helped, but nothing could help this. Nothing would ever help this.
At 3:00 Donna stood up and gathered up her things. She put the photos she kept on her desk in her briefcase, straightened her blouse, checked her makeup, tidied her hair. Her face in her mirror looked pinched and wan, her eyes looked bloodshot even though she hadn't cried. She picked up her briefcase and walked to her briefing room, where she steadied her hands on the podium and made her announcement: at shortly after 9:00 that morning the body of Joshua Lyman, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, had been found by a woman walking her dog in a patch of weedy trees and bushes down by the Potomac. He had been shot once in the head. The gun was in his hand. The police were investigating. Yes, the presumption was that it was suicide; however, she was certain that it was not.
Yes, Helen, she could comment further. As everyone there knew, she had worked for Josh for almost eight years. What everyone there probably did not know was that, after a period of estrangement, she and Josh had recently repaired their friendship and become lovers. She knew Josh intimately in every sense of the word, and she knew for an absolute fact that he would not have killed himself now. The last time she had seen him had been early Tuesday morning; the last time anyone else had seen him that she had been able to learn of had been just before the bomb threat at the Capitol that afternoon, when he had been visiting congressmen in an effort to prevent the passage of a bill that perilously endangered Americans' rights and protections under the Constitution. He had discussed his plans with her before he left to do this. Nothing—she was absolutely certain that nothing—would have made Josh choose to quit before he had done everything he could to stop that bill becoming law, and even when it had passed in the House she knew that he would have chosen to continue fighting to have it rejected by the Senate or overturned by the Supreme Court.
Moreover—and here Donna's voice choked a little, and she had to stop for a moment to collect herself—moreover, Josh had just learned that he was about to become a father. He had wanted a family very much, and he had been happier than she had ever seen him at the news. He had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes. Donna was not going to speculate about what had happened to him two nights ago, but she hoped that the press would not listen to calls for patriotic solidarity with an administration that had shown itself to be utterly uninterested in upholding the Constitution, as the President when he had taken his Oath of Office had sworn to do. She herself was resigning her position as White House Press Secretary, effective immediately, and intended to use whatever time was left to her to work against the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which had passed in the House but was still pending a vote in the Senate, so that Josh would not have died in vain.
While she was talking, Harold Porter was shouting at her through the closed pressroom door, but Will Bailey was standing in front of it, shouting back that only an idiot would try to stop her in front of a roomful of journalists with cameras and phone connections to newsrooms all over the world. When she had finished, Donna stepped off the podium and walked down the steps in front of her into the room. The press pool surged around her, begging for more comments, but parted to let her pass through them when she asked them to, then flowed after her through the outside door.
"You'll need police protection," one of the men from the New York Times said in her ear.
"Whether I'm protected or not will depend on who the police work for, won't it?" she answered.
"You'll be safe if the press is with you," he answered. "I can have guys outside your door twenty-four hours a day."
"Thank you," she said, and thought how ironic it was that she would turn to the press for protection when she and Josh had lived in fear of them for so long.
Josh's story and Donna's made headlines in every major newspaper across the country the next day. The Senate postponed a vote on the Patriot Act until more was known about Josh's death. The story of his previous attempt at suicide came out, but Dr. Susan Thornton made a statement declaring her professional opinion that Josh had confronted the issues that had led to that attempt and had not been at any risk for another, especially as she knew from her discussions with him that marriage and a family with Donna would have been exactly what he would have wished for. The investigation into his death was still ongoing when the Senate Majority Leader brought the Patriot Act to a vote, where it was resoundingly defeated. The next day a measure was introduced in the House to impeach the President. It failed, but later, as more was learned about Josh's death and as the war in Qari'stan grew increasingly unpopular, it was reintroduced and succeeded. To avoid becoming the first American President to be forced from office by impeachment, Bingo Bob Russell resigned.
Eric Baker, who had never been included in the Oval Office loop, succeeded him and went on to be a reasonably successful and popular president who oversaw the withdrawal of American troops from Qari'stan. After a long investigation, two of the four agents who had taken Josh from the Capitol eventually confessed, and pointed at Defense Secretary Patrick Swayne as having given them their orders. Swayne in turn pointed the finger at Harold Porter, insisting he'd been misinformed. The Oval Office taping system was subpoenaed, and while insufficient evidence was found to indict former President Russell or his Chief of Staff Will Bailey, Harold Porter was convicted and, together with Swayne and the agents, went to jail. Bob Russell disappeared from public life. Will Bailey went back to California, where he was offered the chance to help another dead man get elected to office. He declined, saying two was enough.
Donna's baby was a boy. She called him Joshua, of course, and had quite a lot of help in raising him from all their old friends. Toby took a special interest, as did Sam and C.J. and Danny, but no one was more involved than Leo, unless it was former President Bartlet himself. When Joshua was old enough, Donna gave him the battered copy of the Constitution that she'd found on Josh's shelves, and told him that his father would have wanted him to have it. President Bartlet asked to see it the next time he visited.
"He would have written something in it," Donna told him, her eyes misting over.
"What would he have said?" Joshua asked.
"I don't know," she said. "But it would have been beautiful. Your father could be very eloquent when he wanted to be, although he could sound like someone had tied his tongue in knots sometimes, too."
"I'll write in it for you, if you like," President Bartlet said.
"Yes, please, Grampy Jed," Joshua said. "Write what you think my father would have said."
Jed Bartlet thought for a minute, and then produced his favorite pen and wrote with a flourish across the inside cover of the little booklet his friend's child was holding out to him.
"Is this something my father would have said?" Joshua asked, looking at it. He was only seven, but he could read well already, and Jed had made his letters big and clear on purpose.
"I don't know if he would have said it, son," Jed said, very seriously, "but he believed it. He lived it."
"Did someone else say it?" Joshua asked. "I've seen part of it before. It's on the license plate of your and Granny Abbey's car."
"That's right, Josh," Jed said. "A man called John Stark said that part. And one called Patrick Henry said the other."
"Who were they, Grampy Jed?"
Jed looked at Donna, who was crying quietly now.
"They were patriots, son," the former President answered, softly. "Like your father."
oooooo
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Some notes, for anyone who's interested. I've just realized that this site won't let me include the links. I find that disturbing, since I did take the text for one speech (the docent's, about the Cox murals) directly from a webpage, and have always tried to give credit for it. There's a fuller version of these notes that includes the links on JDFF and on the National Library.
The quotations President Bartlet writes in Joshua's copy of the Constitution in Epilogue 1 are the New Hampshire state motto, written in 1809 by the New Hampshire Revolutionary War general, John Stark, "Live free or die: death is not the worst of evils," and Patrick Henry's famous declaration in St. John's Henrico Parish Church in Richmond, Virginia on May 23, 1775: "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death."
It can be easy to forget as time moves on, but in 2006, when I was writing this story, "extraordinary rendition," secret overseas prisons, and NSA letters demanding the sort of compliance that Josh reads about in the "Patriot Act" were major headline news. Like everyone else I knew, I was appalled. Other than donations to civil liberties organizations, this story was the only response I knew how to make. I apologize to anyone who's offended by the grimness of the ending(s), but it seemed necessary for this particular story to go that way.
The Patriot Act I write about here is not an exact version of the actual one, but a compilation of that and other bills and orders passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Anyone interested in knowing more about the actual U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act can find the text of it, a helpful summary, and discussion at the ACLU page. The Act in this story includes the main points of the real-life Patriot Act, and also provisions that, as I understand it, were issued in a Presidential Military Order on Sept 18, 2001, including "the power to declare anyone suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism, as an enemy combatant" and to hold that person "indefinitely, without charges being filed against him or her, without a court hearing, [or] . . . legal consultant." (Wikipedia, Article on "Habeas corpus," subsection "Suspension during the War on Terrorism": /wiki/Habeas_corpus#Suspension_during_the_War_on_Terrorism) In case anyone has forgotten, the actual, real-life Patriot Act was passed in a late-night session of Congress, with very little discussion, in spite of its enormous implications.
In 1994 a small plane actually did crash into the lawn behind the White House, having evaded the no-fly zone that existed over downtown D.C. even before 9/11, the radar at NationalAirport, and the Secret Service snipers on the White House roof. I'm assuming that something similar could have happened in a pre-9/11 security environment here, especially if the Secret Service was distracted by a bomb going off on the other side of the building just before the plane appeared.
The docent's speech about the Cox murals on the House side of the Capitol was taken directly from the text on a government site that I can't link to here. Please see my notes on the National Library or JDFF versions of this story if you want to find the source for that speech.
To my gratitude to Mistletoe, Aim, and Sandra that I gave at the beginning of this, I should add my thanks to Sally Reeve for letting me read her story, "The Road Less Travelled" (JDFF 21632-21637) while she was writing it. As I waited anxiously to find out where her Josh had disappeared to after wrapping his car around a tree, the idea for this story popped into my mind more or less complete and refused to be quiet and leave me alone until I'd written it. On the other hand, I didn't read Speranza's beautiful "Epiphany" until "Patriot Acts" was almost complete. Her treatment of Josh and suicide is far more subtle than mine; if you haven't read it, you should; it's on her LiveJournal site.
A while back, I re-read some stories I hadn't looked at in a long time, and realized that the idea of having Josh go to look at the house in Connecticut where the fire happened and find it for sale had come from Jacinta's "Sagatauk," the fifth chapter of her (unfortunately, unfinished) series, "Relapse." My apologies for not having realized this when I first posted this story, but I'd like to make amends by giving credit now. Sadly, it's no longer on the web. If anyone ever finds a link to it, please let me know; I'd like to read it again.
And finally, if you're not already a member of the ACLU, please consider joining.