He had to sleep.
He knew that and yet he still stared at the ceiling, counting the tiles, wishing they hadn't taken away the remote to the television, telling him that CNN was making his heart rate increase and somehow that wasn't good. He wasn't sure how, he didn't want to know how.
He had to sleep.
Donna was taking him home tomorrow. He knew how much she hated the hospital, how sad she looked when she thought he wasn't watching her-the she just walked through the door, into his room, her head still down but the sadness radiating off of her. He would have gladly fought off the tubes they had inside him, just so he could hug her and beg her to stop looking so sad.
He couldn't wait to go home, couldn't wait to get out of this damn hospital. His friends visited him when they could, but that wasn't nearly often enough. Donna came everyday though. She came to have lunch with him, dinner with him and stayed until he fell asleep. She stayed all day in the beginning, refusing to go home unless it was to change clothes. Mrs. Bartlett had admonished her for that-telling her that she was no use to Josh if she was dead on her feet and looking like someone had killed her dog.
Josh laughed at the memory.
He wished that Donna was with him right now. She would tell him about the latest book she was reading, or something in the paper she read that she became angry about, or how terrible he was when he was confined to a bed. Maybe she would play Go Fish with him to pass the time, or tell him pointless stories about her years in high school.
He would do anything to be distracted right now.
It was easier to sleep when Donna was here anyway.
Like it was all ok.
He wanted to call her. Tell her that he couldn't sleep. She would sigh and gripe that he kept her up and how could he expect her to become both an assistant and a nurse when he was calling her up at all hours of the night? But then she would smile, he knew, and then she would talk to him until he fell asleep.
He needed to sleep. He needed her. But he couldn't do that. It would make things too weird and she would be right, she would need to be awake to listen to the doctors.
If Josh Lyman had his way, he would be in his office right now. Not strapped to this damn hospital bed. Unfortunately, powers were working against him, particularly a boss with a doctor for a wife, Donna who wouldn't even let him adjust the pillows and Leo who told him his main priority was getting well and healed.
He felt useless. There were so many meetings, so many things that he could do that the others couldn't. They had enough to do, they shouldn't have to take on his work, not when he was capable of doing it himself.
But there would be weeks left of this still. Weeks of therapy and healing and scar tissue that would never really go away.
He should be happy, he survived, after all. But he hated looking at the scar. He wasn't even sure why.
He didn't really want to know why.
There were folders next to him, folders on various things that Toby and CJ deemed important, yet he started to lose the forest for the trees, unable to connect one with another as long as he wasn't in the fishbowl.
His fingers itched to grab the phone and call her, have it make it all better. It wasn't her job to make him feel better, he knew that. But they were friends…
CJ and Sam were also his friends. Would he be willing to call them at two in the morning?
Not that he would really have much to say to them. They would just ask him how he was holding up, how Donna was, tell him that they missed him, couldn't wait to have him back and maybe throw him a bone and tell him what was going on in the White House.
They wouldn't just chatter, not like Donna, taking his mind away from this damn hospital room with its stupid restrictions and its disgusting food.
What he wouldn't give for a cheeseburger…