Colonial One, 15:00, the day the tylium refinery is destroyed by Cylon sympathizers
Billy was practically glowing as he exited President Roslin's quarters, thrilled that the shot he'd given her earlier in the day not only hadn't killed his boss but given her both an appetite for a late lunch and getting dressed for work.
She'd even pushed him out of her quarters to order her meal while she donned her one of her three remaining suits on her own, a feat he'd thought long past her weakened state.
He listened to the ring of the wireless call as he phoned the mess, tempted to hum a made-up tune to accompany its monotonous trill. He heard the shattering of glass from inside the badly partitioned room just as the officer picked up to take his order.
"What can I get for you today, Mr. Keikeya? Sir? Sir, are you there?"
Billy abandoned the headset and ran into the President's room, searching for her first near the couch and then her desk before finally seeing her shrunken form curled up next to the door of the head, shaking uncontrollably.
As he reached her side, he realized that she was clad only in a tank top and underwear and that she was having a seizure. Her exposed body was writhing in the shards of the glass whose destruction had summoned him from the other room.
"Madam President, hold on." Summoning the lifeguard training earned as a teen that he thought he'd never use again, he rolled the prone woman onto her side and placed the handkerchief he produced from his pocket carefully into her mouth. As her eyes rolled back in her head, he lifted as much of her body as he could onto her own to keep her skin from being sliced to shreds. Even in his panic, the irony of protecting a woman in her death throes from flesh wounds didn't escape him.
"It's alright, Madam President. Relax. You're ok. You're ok. It's all going to be alright." Billy held her tightly and cooed nonsensical, stupid, meaningless words at the smartest woman he'd ever met. Just as the tears let loose down his face, her body ceased its frantic movement and she moaned through the material of the handkerchief, spitting it out and seizing his hand with a crazed look in her eyes.
"I can stop the strike. They're just teachers. If you'll only trust me, Bill, I can take care of everything. I can fix this for us." The President's eyes lost focus as Billy tried to parse the meaning of her words. Fevered words, he realized, for the first time noticing the unnatural heat emanating from her body and causing his torso and legs where their bodies met to sweat.
"President Roslin, listen to me." He forced her staring eyes to meet his by manually moving her face with his hand. She looked at him, or at least in his vicinity, with terror. She was having trouble more trouble breathing now than he'd ever seen before and her gasps for breath were mixed with cries of pain.
Remembering how using her first name had gotten a response earlier, he tried that tact. "Laura, it's Billy. Please, let me call Dr. Cottle now. Please. I can't do this." Her eyes went wide, gripped with the knowledge that this was the end and that she couldn't force her body to cooperate long enough to tell Billy just to let her die here, in the privacy of her own bedroom.
Even without words, Billy picked up on her fear. "Madam President, I'm going to leave you for just a second and call Admiral Adama now, ok? I'm not leaving you, Laura, and I'm not sending you to Life Station, I'm just going to get Bill."
Without waiting for a response that he wasn't sure would come anyway, he carefully lifted her body off of his and onto a piece of carpet not covered in glass. The older woman recoiled in pain. "Bill. Bill." She let another long moan escape as the younger man left her side. "Bill."
Billy reached the wireless and, with the memory of accidentally alerting the press to the president's collapse a few months earlier still fresh in his mind, accessed the main communications channel.
He tried to steady the panic in his voice. "Galactica, this is Colonial One. The president needs to see Admiral Adama right away. Repeat, we need Admiral Adama on the first available shuttle to Colonial One."
Galactica CIC, 15:00
Admiral Bill Adama was not in a good mood. His finest pilot had spent the last week cavorting with a murderer, the woman who'd tried to kill him, or the Cylon who looked remarkably like the woman who'd served as one of his best pilots and tried to kill him, was pregnant by one of his officers and cooling her heels in the brig. To top it all off, he couldn't stop thinking about the chaste kiss he'd shared with the President of the Twelve Colonies a little more than 48 hours ago. He absentmindedly rubbed the sharp, triangular pins at his collar as he pondered the woman who managed to move his hard heart for the first time in twenty years.
She's dying, Bill. Leave it to you to fall for the most unavailable woman in the whole fleet.
Admiral Adama was snapped out of his reverie by Petty Officer Dualla's insistent voice.
"Sir? Admiral Adama? Admiral Adama?" As soon as he turned to face the slight Marine to his left, he knew something was terribly wrong.
"Sir, you're needed on Colonial One. Without delay." Dualla paused, biting her bottom lip. When he didn't respond immediately, she broke protocol and blurted out, "Billy's terrified. Something must be wrong with President Roslin."
Admiral Adama was gone, racing through the crowded halls of his ship to the flight deck, before Petty Officer Dualla could finish her thought.
Colonial One, 15:25
Admiral Adama banged through the hatch to the president's office without bothering to knock and, realizing the outer space was unoccupied, rushed through the curtain and into what they'd been calling that sad excuse for a presidential bedroom.
Once inside, he spotted Billy's lanky frame leaning awkwardly over the crumpled body of President Roslin. Billy looked up as the officer entered, grateful there was someone else, anyone else, there to share his burden.
Adama reached her side and took her into his strong arms, noticing for the first time her panicked breathing and bloody, bare legs.
He held her face close to his, careful not to put further pressure on her lungs. "Madam President, it's Bill. Can you hear me?"
Laura Roslin wanted to speak. She wanted to tell him that, yes Bill, I know you're here and that makes this ok. But her body was betraying her for the final time and the elegant words she wanted to bestow on her stoic fly boy came out in a mangled cry.
Adama looked up at the President's aide and started issuing orders.
"Billy, I need you to get me a medical transport to Galactica." Looking into the boy's uncomprehending face, he realized Laura's right hand man was likely suffering from shock. "Now!"
Billy leapt for the wireless, not caring or simply unable to stifle his sobs as he demanded the medical transport be sent to Colonial One. "Make sure it has oxygen. She can't breathe. She needs…" Adama overheard the transmission and yelled out to preserve the president's last shreds of dignity.
"Billy, ok. You've done that. Good man. I need you to find me her skirt now. No one's going to see her like this."
As Adama cooed the same stupid, meaningless words to the President he'd uttered what seemed like hours before, Billy stumbled into the head and located her discarded black skirt. He brought it out like a trophy and handed it to the Admiral. He couldn't bear to look at the woman struggling in his arms, whose agonized gasps for breath had turned to a low, raspy sound that he somehow remembered reading about. That sound was called a death rattle.
Adama surveyed the situation and roughly ordered Billy to get the skirt over the president's legs as he held her still, mumbling comforting sounds into her ears, all the while realizing she was planets away from them both.
"Bill." Her mind seemed to clear just as Billy clasped the skirt around her waist.
"I'm here, Laura. I'm here." He stroked her hair and continued to speak. "Stay with me, Laura."
She was conscious enough to be grateful that he'd not offered any more false promises of everything being ok. This was definitely not going to be ok.
"It hurts, Bill…" Her voice trailed off into a slur as the pain overtook her senses again. As she began to cry, he leaned into her ear and uttered the words he no longer cared if anyone heard.
"I love you, Laura Roslin."
Her eyes went wide and so did Billy's, who'd heard something he would never repeat, something that made him happy in the saddest moment of his entire life.
Adama kissed her lips softly, this time not pulling away too soon in embarrassment. Before she could respond, before he could even ascertain if she was capable of responding, the medical team burst through the door.
Bill insisted on placing her on the stretcher himself, holding her hand as the medics hooked her up to oxygen and began giving her injections to ease the agony. He never let go of her hand during the short trip to the battleship.
Once they got to Galactica, once the president was in Cottle's care and drugged beyond understanding her surroundings, Admiral Adama slipped away to the CIC.
He'd lost a son. He'd lost pilots and friends and mourned lives he himself had snuffed out. The only thing Admiral Adama could not survive was watching that woman die.