She wasn't okay.
It never occurred, not really, to Josh that Donna would be affected by this. She wasn't there, she hadn't been hurt, yet she was just as affected as the rest of them-him and Sam and CJ and the President.
The real heartbreak was she was trying to not let him see-she was hiding it and suddenly her rules and the way she acted-her exasperation when she used to ignore him suddenly made sense.
She would deny it if she said anything to him. She would put on that hideous fake smile of hers and tell him she was fine. He hated that word now. He hated how trite and deceitful it was. But she would continue to tell him she was fine and he would continue wanting to shake her, make her realize that as long as she said she was okay, he would no use to him or herself and why couldn't she see that? What was the point of waking up in the morning if she wasn't there with him?
Where did that come from?
He was concerned about her because she was his employee, his friend. Life would be worth living. He'd be able to wake up. He wouldn't wish that she was there next to him.
Oh hell, who was he kidding?
Still, he couldn't put this on her shoulders. She was hurting and he had to make the hurt go away. He could be preoccupied with his feelings when he should be helping her.
He went into her bedroom, peeking around the door first to make sure she wasn't there, of course, and then making sure that the water of the sink was still going so she couldn't hear him.
"Leo McGarry's office."
"Margaret, it's Josh. Is he busy?"
"Josh! How are you? Is Donna doing okay? We haven't seen her in a while."
"I'm fine, Margaret, and so is Donna. Can you put me through to Leo?"
"Why haven't we seen Donna in a while?"
"Margaret, get off the damn phone and let the poor boy talk to me," Leo's voice interrupted. "What's on your mind, Josh?"
"I'm worried about Donna."
Leo sighed. "We've been worried about her for a while. What's going on?"
"She was crying in her kitchen."
"What happened?"
"I don't know! She just started crying and I didn't know how to make it stop. She told me she was fine and now she's in the bathroom. She's been in there a while."
"Okay," Josh could literally hear Leo thinking. "Josh, I think Donna should talk to someone. Would she be open to the possibility?"
"I don't know. I think so."
"She's supposed to come into the office today, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'm going to talk to her, see how it goes."
"Okay. Thanks, Leo."
"No problem, kid. We all care about Donna. We don't want to see her hurt."
"Of course."
"She keeps you grounded. And bearable."
Josh snorted. "Yeah, she does."
"I'll call you later."
Josh set the phone down, ran his hand through his hair. He was deputy chief of staff, for Christ's sake. He should be able to think of a solution, he should be able to fix this. Fix them.
Yet he had no idea what to do. Sam tried to warn him about this, tried to tell him that Donna wasn't okay, that she was going to burn out, but he didn't listen, he continued to believe that as long as he closed his eyes and pretended everything was okay, it was, even if that meant ignoring everything around him.
God, he was a terrible person.
She came out of the bathroom and before he had the chance to react she was in her bedroom, getting out of her t-shirt while calling out over her shoulder to him that she would be done in a minute and then they could go to physical therapy.
"GAH!" She screamed, followed closely with, "Josh, what the hell are you doing in my bedroom?!"
He knew he should probably say something. He should probably explain that he had to make a call to Leo, except he was too distracted by the fact that she was currently just wearing a bra and even though the pain killer had worn off hours ago, he was too distracted to notice the pain, or the fact that she was currently sputtering and trying to put on her t-shirt and telling him to get out of her room. Instead, he wondered what would happen if he just kissed her, if there was a penalty if he canceled his appointment, because he found something much more interesting to do physically.
Then he found herself in the hallway, with the door locked, with her yelling at him to go sit on the couch.
This clearly wasn't working the way he wanted it to.
He did do what he was told, however. She came out sometime later wearing a new t-shirt and still blushing over what happened.
She prattled on about how she was going to take him to physical therapy and how he had to listen to the therapist and then she was going to drop him off and then go to the office to pick up the files and then she was going to cook him dinner. He wished he could say he was paying attention to what she was saying, but for once he was more concerned with her actions, how she looked. Not for appreciation, though he'd known since the moment that he met her that she was pretty, but rather to see if she looked any different. She looked older, like someone had aged her five years. She looked liked someone placed the world on her shoulders and she was going to break under its weight. She looked fragile, he realized. She didn't look like the Donna who had handled his life for the past 3.5 years.
He let her prattle on, every once in a while nodding and agreeing with her as she shepherded him out to the car, when she realized she forgot her purse and went back to get it.
It was hot again today, the car still unbearable because there was no circulation of air. It made him ache, made his lungs burn with the difficulty of breathing.
"There," she said breathlessly. "Now we can leave and with any luck we should make it on time."
"They'll see me no matter what," he said confidently.
She rolled her eyes. "Just because you're Josh Lyman doesn't mean that you can just get your way all the time, including be late to physical therapy."
"Yes, it does. Can we listen to NPR?"
"No. We're going to listen to actual music. Do you remember what music is?"
"Yes, I remember what music is," he said defensively. "Just don't put on that gooey pop stuff."
She played with the controls for a while, before giving up and concentrated on driving.
"We're going to be late."
"We're going to be fine."
They entered the parking lot of a big building that Josh thought looked more like an office than a medical facility. Donna assured him that it was indeed a medical facility, with a cardiologist and a psychiatrist and a oncologist and more importantly, a physical therapist.
Josh was grateful for the air conditioning, which didn't work in Donna's car.
"Where's the physical therapist?" he asked resignedly.
"Second level," she told him, looking at a directory. "Come on."
They rode the elevator up, the silence creating an elephant that threated to push them out of the elevator.
"I didn't see anything," he said abruptly.
"Yeah, right," she said to the door.
"Really! I looked away!" He winced as his voice got way too high for a man his age.
"What were you doing in my room?"
There was no way out of this one. He would have to tell her the truth.
"I was making a phone call."
"A phone call."
"Yes."
"Why my room?"
"I didn't want you to come out and overhear."
"Who were you calling?"
"Can we talk about this later?"
"No, Josh, because you were in my room and were making some mysterious phone call and I want to know why."
Luckily, the elevator door opened. The elephant, however, stayed with them.
The physical therapist's office was too bright, Josh thought. It was too bright and too white and smelled weird.
It did, however, have coffee. Maybe this place wasn't so bad.
He made his way to the coffee while Donna talked to the receptionist, collecting all the papers that he would have to fill out and he would just delegate to her.
"Joshua," she said in a deadly voice.
"Fine," he sighed, putting down the coffee pot he had poised above a paper cup.
"You had some this morning."
"I want more."
"No, it's bad for you."
"How is it bad for me?"
"It'll stunt your growth."
The receptionist laughed. "How long have you two been married?"
"Oh," Donna blushed, flustered. "I'm just-I'm just his friend."
The receptionist smiled. "Of course."
He sat down next to her, flipping through a Newsweek as she filled out the papers for him.
"Who do you want as your emergency contact?" she asked.
"You, of course," he said, reading an article about archeology. Or something.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I don't have anyone else."
She smiled, really smiled, and for a second Josh worried she was going to cry, but looking at her biting her bottom lip as she filled out her cell phone number and work number he finally felt like he had done something right today.
"Josh Lyman?" an athletic guy, roughly thirty, asked.
"Yeah?"
The guy pointed behind him. "Come on back. I'm Rick, your physical therapist."
"How's it going?" Josh said as he followed the therapist, looking back to Donna who was still at work on the forms.
"Have you ever had physical therapy before?"
"No."
"Okay. I'll go ahead and tell you that you will most likely hate me during your visits, but I am a trained professional, so I do know what I'm doing. The object is to get your abdominal muscles healed and working again after their ordeal. It's going to hurt, but it will not only help your breathing but make you look better, if that's any consolation."
"Oh, goody," Josh said sarcastically.
"Josh, be nice to Rick," he heard Donna call.
Rick chuckled. "Your wife?"
"No."
"Girlfriend?"
This guy was too interested in Donna. He probably would ask her out on a date while he was writhing in pain from Rick's torture.
"No, she's just a friend. But she's not dating right now."
Rick raised his eyebrows. He looked like a Ken doll, like the one Joanie had.
He led Josh into an examination room. "I want to listen to your chest and get a better handle on your lung capacity right now."
He had Josh take a couple of deep breaths, not bothering to warm the stethoscope that was freezing on Josh's back.
"You're doing your breathing exercises?"
"Donna makes me."
Rick chuckled. "Good. Are you keeping the bandage clean?"
"Yes."
"Good. Okay. Your lung capacity is a little below average, but it's nothing serious. What I want you to do now is take a deep breath and hold it for as long as you can, then exhale slowly."
Josh held his breath for a few seconds before letting it out in a rush.
"Good God! Are you trying to kill me?!"
"Not on purpose," Rick said nonchalantly. "Don't let the breath out so rapidly."
Josh did so, wishing that Donna was there so he could hear her encouragement, feel her hand on his back, urging him to keep going.
Soon he was able to hold it for fifteen seconds, then twenty.
"Fantastic work, Josh. You're making a lot of progress."
"My lungs are on fire."
"You've stretched them, that's why. I want you to do those exercises twice a day, once when you get up and then when you go to bed, okay?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Okay. Once the stitches come out, then you're going to start doing sit ups."
"Excuse me?"
Rick smiled. "You heard me. You're going to need to rebuild those muscles and what better way to do so than work for a six-pack?"
"You're enjoying my pain and discomfort way too much."
Rick's smile got wider. "I have a feeling these are going to be at the very least interesting sessions. I'll see you on Thursday."
Josh went back out to the waiting area, where Donna sat, reading a book.
"Well?" she asked, looking up him expectantly.
"He's a sadist."
"He's doing his job."
"He brings others pain."
"To make them better."
"No, not really. Let's get out of here before he decides to start torturing me again."
She got up, telling him that she was going to make him a sandwich for lunch and then go to the office and be back by five.
"And you'll give me my files?"
"Yes, though if they upset you too much I'll take them away from you."
"How am I supposed to run a country when you're withholding information from me?"
"Only information that hinders your health. I'm doing you a favor."
"No, you're not. You're preventing me from doing my job."
"In an effort to keep you alive, how cruel of me."
They rode back to his place and he hoped that the air-conditioning there, he couldn't honestly remember.
"Who were you talking on the phone with?" she asked him suddenly.
He wondered if he should tell her the truth, or if he could lie to her. He lied to her, sometimes, but he hated it. He was also bad at it, she always knew and she always had that disappointed look on her face like she expected more of him.
"I can't tell you," he told her.
Her eyes narrowed. "Can't, or won't?"
"I can't, Donna."
"I don't believe you," she whispered.
He shrugged. "You don't have to."
She looked on the verge of tears again and it killed him that he was the one who made her this way. But he couldn't tell her, he didn't have the words to tell her that he talked to Leo and he thought that she should see someone because she wasn't Donna anymore.
She walked with him into his apartment, not speaking to him the rest of the way. She made him lunch while he watched the news and didn't say a word when he muttered about the news anchors.
"I'll be back around five," she told him.
"Okay."
"Be good."
"I will."
"Promise?"
He nodded solemnly. "I promise."
She nodded. "I'll be back soon."