Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games.
Sometimes, he thinks that things always seem to pile on at the worst possible moments because he is being punished for being naively hopeful in his youth. He had not believed that he was single handedly going to change their world or anything inane like that, but he had truly believed that there were things that could be accomplished via small increments and steady applications of logic to the situations at hand that would be able to make things better. He still believed that that was possible; he was just no longer certain that logic was something that the higher levels with which he was dealing used in reference to their decision making.
He takes a deep breath and settles his shoulders against the seat in an attempt to look less tense for the benefit of anyway that may be paying attention. The train ride toward the Capitol is passing painfully slowly. He usually feels as if the miles are being eaten entirely too quickly on the way there - he is usually dreading the meetings that are to come and trying to make decisions about the best possible way to phrase things that will straddle the line between safety and attempts at still pushing the issues that are desperately in need of pushing. Those are not his thoughts on this occasion. He is not planning for the awkward side stepping and dangerous never ending games of bureaucratic finagling that are awaiting him. He is only thinking of how soon he will be able to get home again.
His work is time consuming on any given day, and the trips that are sporadically required do not aide in the endeavor to balance that consumption of time with his responsibilities at home. They do not provide notice for these requests of attendance at any level that would be helpful. It is a part of their paranoia - even when there are no particular reasons to feel insecure, they see no reason to allow the opportunity for engaging in planning. He goes when they summon and counts himself lucky if he has time to tell his family in person that he is leaving. All of the Mayors in the twelve Districts do the same. He honestly does not believe that there has ever been anything to occur at one of these insisted upon meetings that could not be accomplished just as well via long distance communication but that, he knows, is not the point. The point is that even District officials (maybe most especially District officials) are only there to follow orders. It would not do for them to go thinking that they actually have any sort of true power in the capacity of their positions after all.
He is only adding to his anxiousness by thinking about that, but he needs to think of something other than the chaos that he left behind him at home. He can only hope that it has not become more chaos by the time that he returns. The timing is awful, but no one would have cared if he had bothered to mention that. One does not mention personal inconveniences - one knows better than to have personal inconveniences unless they wish to have permanent ones. He should not be angry, but he is having trouble not resenting Brie Worth for the horribleness of her timing.
She has not done an impeccable job in her time as the housekeeper in his home, but she has always shown up when she was supposed to be there. He has always known that someone would be present if his wife needed help. He has always known that Madge would not be coming home to a house where there was no adult available. He has no such assurances for whatever time frame it is before he can return. Madge had assured him that she would take care of everything. "Don't worry, Daddy," she had told him with a soft smile and a pat on his hand. "I'm not little anymore."
His daughter is nine. She may not be little anymore, but she is hardly of an age to be responsible for herself and a house and her mother. It may not be as bad as he suspects, but they have no way of knowing how Mira will react to this new treatment that the doctor has prescribed. She had had a decent run of what she called minor inconvenience days before the headaches had escalated to such an extreme level that she had not moved out of their rooms for eight days when the doctor had offered to make the request.
He still is not sure why the request had been granted. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to know that if it does work that will be one more thing to be held over his head - requests for shipping of items can be revoked at any time with no explanation or warning. He is suspicious of the granting of the request; he is suspicious of the doctor for making the request. He is suspicious in general, but he can also not watch Mira in that sort of pain any longer and not try anything that might alleviate it.
They had just injected the contents of the first vial into Mira's vein when the two hour notice for his departure by train had arrived. Brie had been waiting in the kitchen with her announcement of her resignation when he got down the stairs. She could not be prevailed upon to stay. She was off to the Justice Building for signing her paperwork with Ed Mitchell from the Tessara Registry (who was forty five if he was a day to Brie's nineteen), and she was not getting married just to keep working in other people's houses - her words. He has fifteen years on his own wife, so he tends not to be overly suspicious of age gaps - that does not stop him from cringing at the thought of all the times he came home to find Ed hanging about his kitchen with some report or other that should have been left for him at work and what may or may not have been going on all those times in his home.
In the end, he had literally had no time to make any other arrangements. Madge was home alone with her mother while she rode out the aftermath of whatever reaction to this new medication she might have. He could only hope that the doctor would actually bother to come by and check up on his wife in a timely fashion, but he was not going to hold his breath. He knew better than to have much in the way of expectations in that direction. It might be that a confluence of best case scenarios would occur while he was gone and he would return to a family and home in better shape than when he had left them, but he no longer believed that best case scenarios were what occurred in Panem.