Smile

by: Kelley

Rating: TEEN
Category: A/U, general, Josh/Amy, [just for a little while], D/other, J/D
Spoilers: Anything through the first three seasons is fair game but I’ll try to stick to pre-"Stirred".
Disclaimers: I have absolutely no claim to these West Wing characters whatsoever, no matter what the voices inside my head say. As for any other references to pop culture I may make that I don’t own, I am a lowly high school student with a C+ average, no money, and a highly overactive imagination so please don’t sue! Emma Wilder, Ben Peterson, T.J. Moss, Nicole Moss-Braun, Lily Irving, Mena Falansio, and Dr. Michael Flynn are entirely my creation and I retain all rights to exclusively use them in my fics.
Feedback: I will shave a monkey’s uncle for feedback, baby!
Notes: The story starts after the Democratic National Convention, where the president was re-nominated and is pretty much A/U. There will be flashbacks that will be marked with *****. The president finally hired a replacement for Mrs. Landingham and he chose Donna. Since she, like the rest of us, can’t stand to see Josh with Amy she took the job. Also Bruno, Connie, and Doug never existed in this universe. Other than that, everything’s pretty much as is.

Donna’s Room: 6:30 am

The incessant ringing of a phone caused Josh to wake up. He groaned and turned over, placing a pillow over his head, hoping the action would make the annoying noise cease. To Josh’s surprise, it did. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Even in his foggy mind, he knew it was a Saturday, a usually light day at the office and he didn’t want to be hassled with any potential problems.

‘I wonder what Leo wanted’ Josh thought as he was about to slip quietly back into his peaceful slumber, assuming he was in his own bed in his own apartment. Then he realized that he was not lying on his comfortable mattress at home but rather on a somewhat small sofa. Right then, his brain began working in overdrive as he suddenly remembered where he was and what had transpired the night before. First he was working... than he talked with Leo... and then he came to the hospital and told Donna...

"Oh my God!" Josh cried, bolting up and falling off the sofa onto the hard linoleum floor in the process. If the realization of what he had done last night hadn’t woken him up, the whack to head he suffered on the floor sure would have.

 "What the hell was I thinking?" he thought out loud. That was the entire problem, he hadn’t been thinking. And now look what he had done! He franticly searched his memory, hoping that it had just been a vivid dream. Maybe he hadn’t really had that talk with Leo. Maybe he had just come back to the hospital check here to check on Donna real quick before he went home. Maybe it had been so late that he had just ended up staying so late that he fell asleep on the couch. Maybe he had...

"Oh who the hell am I kidding," he moaned quietly, covering his face with his hands. "I really told Donna I was in love with her."

"And you damn well better have meant it!" an unfamiliar female voice with a British accent surprised Josh. He took his hands away from his face and looked up to see someone standing over him. "Because if you didn’t," the stranger continued, "I’ll whoop your ass so hard that you’ll wish..."

"I’m sorry to interrupt," Josh cut in, "but before you continue to threaten me with bodily harm, can you at least tell me who the hell you are?"

The woman crouched down on the floor next to Josh and sat down, leaning her back against the couch and moving her expensive-looking boots close to Josh’s face. "I’m Lily Irving," she said. When she saw Josh drawing a blank, she sighed. "I’m a friend of Donna’s, we’ve met before," pointing to herself and Josh as she continued. Josh still couldn’t place her among the small handful of friends of Donna’s that he’d met over the years. "Urgh, you moron!" a frustrated Lily exclaimed. "I’m the one who got so drunk at her birthday party two years ago that I ended up making out with her landlady’s fifty-six year-old son!" 

"Oh yeah," answered Josh, the light bulb finally going off in his brain. "Right, the British one, the one who writes for the tabloid." He paused for a second. "Yeah you were pretty far gone that night," he told her, trying to hide back a smile at the hazy memory of the raven haired young woman practically dragging the poor old man into the nearest closet.

"Whatever you’re thinking about right now, I suggest that you stop immediately," replied Lily with a contemptuous glare at Josh. He promptly stifled his grin. "I take it that you are still Joshua Lyman."

"Yes," he responded, moving to sit up next to her. "How have you been?" He offered his hand to shake but when he saw the look of frosty malice in her eyes, he quickly pulled his hand back down. Josh gave her a tight grin. "So I guess it’s safe to assume you heard my ramblings just then."

"As a matter of fact, I did," she said icily. "Quite insightful those few moments were. I especially liked the one were your face suggested you seemed to be absolutely horrified to realize that you had told Donna that you loved her. Something, I might add, that she’s been wanting to hear for years know and..."

"Wait a minute," Josh said abruptly. He had had his head in his hands as listened to Lily’s scolding but his head shot up as her last comment. "What do you mean ‘she’s been wanting to hear for years’?"

Lily looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown a second head. "Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me straight to my face that you haven’t known that Donna’s been in love with you?" she asked disbelievingly. When he didn’t answer, she looked more carefully at him. The bulging out of his Adam’s apple, the creased brows, the dazed look in his eyes; the man looked like someone had just told him that the Republican Party had just bought the United States and banished all Democrats to Siberia. "Oh," she said more softly, slightly mollified. "You didn’t know."

"No," Josh croaked out. His mouth was rapidly becoming dryer than the Sahara Desert and his infamous 760 SAT verbal vocabulary had been reduced to monosyllabic words. He just couldn’t believe what Lily had told him. Donna was in love him. Donnatella Moss loved him, Joshua Lyman. Him, who took advantage of her time and allowed her almost no personal time for herself. Him, who depended on her more than it was probably healthy to. Him, who could insult her over and over again when he was in a bad mood at work yet she’d just keep on smiling and reading off his schedule to him; it just wasn’t possible. Josh being in love with Donna was one thing but the notion of her actually returning his feelings was just...

"Wha...what do you mean she’s in love with me?" Josh asked, trying to sound nonchalant and shake it off as if it had been nothing. "That’s, uh, that’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard and I’m a Democrat; I hear more insane things in one day then you’d could possibly imagine. I remember this one time this guy..."

"What on earth are you babbling about?" Lily cut him off. "I just told you Donna loves you and then you go and..."

"Exactly!" Josh exclaimed, rising to his feet and gesturing franticly with his hands as he spoke. "That’s what I’m babbling about. Well, I wouldn’t characterize it has babbling so much as...something else." He paused for a second to reclaim his thoughts. "You see, it’s not possible for Donna Moss to be in love me. There’s no possibility that Donna is love with me. You see her being in love with me would be the opposite of possible," Josh rambled on, unaware of the small smile that was all of a sudden playing across Lily’s lips. "It’s...it’s...ludicrous, it’s...ah.... infathomable, it’s preposterous, it’s just, you know..."

"Not possible?" Lily interjected from her spot on the floor.

"Yes!"

"No!"

"What do you mean ‘no’?"

"I mean ‘no’ as in you’re wrong, Josh," answered Lily, standing up to face him. "I know from Donna that you think that you can’t be wrong about anything but you can be and you know what? You’re completely wrong about this. It is possible for Donna to be in love with you. As stupid and insane as it is for her to be, she’s in love with you. And the reason I know its possible is because she told me she’s in love with you. On more than one occasion I might add," she finished, folding her arms across her chest.

"Look it’s just way too..." Josh halted his continuing argument on how Donna couldn’t be in love with him when Lily’s words finally penetrated his brain. "She...she what?" he asked dumbly.

"She told me she’s in love with you, though I seriously questioned her judgment considering her taste in men," Lily laughed lightly then stopped when she saw the look on Josh’s face. He looked like he was about to be sick to his stomach. "Are you alright?" she asked, growing concerned.

"Why?" Josh whispered.

"I’m sorry, what?" Lily replied.

"Why does she love me?" he asked in the same tone. "I mean I certainly haven’t done anything to deserve it." He rubbed his hands over his tired face and practically collapsed onto the sofa. It was a problem that had plagued Josh since he was seven years old and had watched a seemingly endless fire claim the life of his only sibling. Since that day, he had never felt deserving of the love that was given to him by the people around him. Sure he put on a good front; he smiled whenever his mother said the words to him, was involved with semi-serious relationships with women from time to time, and agreed with his therapist that he was making progress. The truth was, when it came to love, Josh was still practically as broken as he’d been since the day Joanie had died.

"Well," said Lily, having the benefit of not knowing his history and going to sit next to him, "not the way she tells it. According to her, she owes you everything. I mean she told me once that she couldn’t help wondering what would have happened to her if you hadn’t hurried her when she showed up in New Hampshire."

"I don’t know what would have happened to me either," Josh admitted. "But that doesn’t justify her being in, you know, lo...love with me." Lily started snickering at that comment. Her giggles perturbed Josh a little. "Hey I’m making heartfelt confessions here. Do you mind not laughing about it to my face?"

"Oh, I’m sorry dear," she said coyly, her laughter subsiding. "It just amuses me is all."

"What does?" asked Josh with a questioning look.

"You’re dim-witted attempts at trying to rationalize love, you fool!" she exclaimed jokingly. "Love is not something that can be rationalized. In fact, love in itself is the very opposite of rationality."

"And how do you figure that?" Josh inquired, interested in hearing what she had to say and leaning back against the couch and propping his head up against his right hand.

"Well," started Lily as she reached into her large canvas bag and rustled around for a minute before pulling out a pack of cigarettes, "people by nature are the most selfish creatures in existence. For example, we work hard at our jobs and in our lives to supposedly keep the economy from falling apart when all we’re doing is working in order to gain material necessities and comforts for ourselves." She pulled a lighter from her pocket and proceeded to light the cigarette she had gotten from the box. She was just about to light it when she stopped and looked at Josh. "Oh, I’m terribly sorry, how rude of me. Hang on a sec." Josh assumed she was going to put the cigarette away, like a normal, considerate person would. Instead she reached up behind her and opened the window, letting the cool morning breeze drift into the room. She adjusted herself on the couch so she sat closer to the window and then finished lighting the cigarette, blowing the smoke out the window. "So, were was I?"

"Human beings serve themselves and only themselves and the moral code that states that all people are born inherently good is bull," Josh answered with an amused expression on his face.

"Ah yes," said Lily with a smile. She paused for a minute to take another draft of her cigarette. "Well it’s not always so much selfishness as it is survival. In the laws of the jungle, only the strongest predators will dominate while the weaker ones are usually just trying to survive. People are just like this only we’re much more PC about it. You know, welfare, homeless shelters, unemployment all that crap."

"Hey," Josh’s political tendencies kicked in, "those happen to be programs and establishments that without which hundreds of thousands of people in our country would..."

"Well it’s not my country, first of all, and second I didn’t mean to offend you, I was just trying to make a point," Lily said, holding up her hand to indicate that Josh should stop talking. "May I continue?"

"By all means," sighed Josh. "It isn’t every day I get to hear philosophical arguments on society from a tabloid reporter.

"Thank you," she answered sarcastically. "As I was saying, it’s basically all about dominance and survival for people. And most people are fine with it like that; they float along for a good portion of their lives like that. But then," Lily paused dramatically and taking a heavy drag from her cigarette, "love enters the equation. And that’s when the shit hits the fan."

"How?" Josh asked, his brows furrowing as he tried to follow the strange British woman’s logic.

"Cause when people fall in love," Lily said, finishing her cigarette and putting it out in the ashtray she kept in her bag for handiness, "they’re more concerned with someone else’s life than they are with their own. They put their partner’s happiness and well being over anything, even their own happiness and well being. Therefore it’s not themselves that they’re living for anymore, it’s another person. Thereby eliminating selfishness from the equation and then they are just...living. And that’s not a bad path to walk down. Especially when you’re not walking down it alone," she finished with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Yeah," nodded Josh, almost to himself contemplating the words he’d just heard. "Yeah, I think you might be right."

"Well, I know I am," she said confidently. "The question is not if I’m right or not. It’s not even if you’re in love or not; the question is whether or not you’re willing to make the sacrifices it takes for love to survive in a relationship." Lily paused for a minute, trying to think of a tactful way to form her next question. Then she remembered that she had never been tactful in her life so she just plunged forward. "You are in love with Donna though, aren’t you?" she asked carefully, just to be sure. He closed his eyes and nodded slowly, a smile gracing his face. Lily bit back a shout of happiness. "When did you know?"

"Last night," he said with a small chuckle. "I should say I admitted it to myself last night. As for an exact moment, that’s a little iffy. I mean I know I always needed her but..."

"When did you know you needed her the most?" Lily interrupted.

"December 19, 2000," he said without hesitation. When he caught Lily’s perplexed look, he continued. "I, ah, I had undiagnosed PTSD for awhile after the shooting and that night..." he paused to cast his eyes downward to avoid her gaze, "I was going to kill myself. And I probably would have if it hadn’t been for her."

"What do you mean?" Lily asked quietly, looking at him intently. Donna had never mentioned this to her.

"Well," he said clearly uncomfortable but knowing that he needed to do this. Stanley had told him he needed to tell someone about this eventually and for some reason he found it easier to tell to a perfect stranger rather than any of his friends or family. "I had just cut my hand by smashing it through a window in my apartment." He indicated to the small scar on his right hand. "After I told my super that I had cut it by putting a glass down, I went back into my bedroom and just sat on the bed for awhile. Then for some reason, I spotted these sleeping pills my doctor had prescribed to me." He scratched the back of his head as he drifted back to that night. "All of a sudden, the only thing I could think about was how much I wanted to die. I wanted to just end it all, the pain, the nightmares, the problems I was having with people. I didn’t care if I hurt my family and friends or how much pain this would cause them; I just wanted it to be over. So I, uh, got up to go and get the pills and as I stood, I bumped into the table near my bed and this picture fell down. I picked it up and the first thing I saw Donna’s face." His voice started cracking then and he could feel the tears in the back of throat that were ready to spill forth. "I picked it up and looked at it through the cracked glass. It was a picture of me, Donna, and some other people of the night of our first State of the Union." He smiled just a bit at the memory. "I remember how happy she was after it was over and thinking, ‘how can one person be that happy about one thing?’. She was so beautiful that night, even if I wouldn’t admit it." He cherished memories like that and would have been perfectly content to just end it there but he knew he needed to finish the story. Not so much for Lily’s sake as he did for his own. "Anyways, I saw her face and I remembered how hard she worked to get me back on my feet after the shooting and how much time she’d put into taking care of me. I didn’t want her to feel like that had all been for nothing. I didn’t want her to be alone. Killing myself suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore so I took the pills and flushed them all down the toilet, just in case the urge to ever came again," he sighed as he finished. He hung his low, partly out of shame and partly because the story took so much emotionally out of him.

"And did it?" Lily asked quietly, unshed tears brimming in her eyes for this man whom she knew almost nothing about but who had just shared a deep part of his soul with her.

"The urge to kill myself?" he answered still not looking up. "No, not really. I had already been ordered to meet with someone to get by Leo McGarry because of an, I guess you could call it an ‘incident’. I met with a therapist a few days later and I started to get better."

She nodded slowly, and then stopped. "You know," she said, her voice quivering slightly. "I had an eating disorder for about fifteen years." Josh looked at her strangely for second and she turned to him and gave him a small, sad smile as her eyes began to water up. "I suffered from bulimia from when I was about eleven years-old until I was twenty-five. There was no reason for it, really. I mean I was popular, I had a lot of friends, I was a very well rounded student, and my parents loved me even though they were spilt up. I just, I don’t know, my life seemed like it was controlled by other people like my folks or my teachers or the mailman," she said with a short laugh. "I guess I just needed to control something about me, so I just started puking up almost everything I ate. No one could help me, though lord knows they tried. I was in therapy, in rehab, even in a nut house for a while. Then one morning, I woke and went on a major eating binge. When it was over I went into the bathroom and caught myself in the mirror before I reached the toilet. I was 6’2’’ and I weighed about 92 pounds. My skin was almost yellow, my hair was falling out, and I could barely walk across a room without feeling like I was going to pass out. So I walked back into my bedroom before I could do anything and found this old photo album tucked in my bookcase. I pulled it out and sat on the floor and started to leaf through it. I just looked at al these pictures from when I was little and saw how happy I was and how happy everybody else around me was. I wanted to get that back and I realized the only way I could do that was to get better so I did." She wiped at the tears forming at the corner of her eyes. "Donna was in the most of the pictures with me."

"Wow," said Josh softly. "I guess we’ve got more in common than we thought."

Lily didn’t know how to respond to this kind of conversation. She could deal with the heavy stuff when push comes to shove but moments like this were foreign to her. Lily wasn’t used to connecting with complete strangers. She supposed Josh expected her to make some kind of glib remark to lighten the mood but she didn’t think that would be appropriate right then. So instead, she went on instinct and leaned over to Josh and wrapped her arms around, holding him tight. His arms became rigid immediately but after a minute, she felt him relax and wrap his own arms around her back. They stayed like that for a few minutes and then awkwardly started to pull apart. They situated themselves back on their designated sides of the couch and tried to compose themselves. Straightening shirts, brushing back hair, wiping at their eyes.

Josh was uncomfortable at best, wanting to crawl out of his skin at the worst. He was not good with the intimate stuff which people who knew him understood. Add to the fact that he’d just shared some of his most private demons with someone whom he’d only talked to for five minutes over the past five years and Josh was just about ready to liquefy into the floor at that moment. The tension in the room was unbearable right then and he didn’t know what either he or Lily could say to make things better.

"So," Lily broke in all of a sudden, "what’s the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch all about really?"

Josh turned to her and gave her a peculiar look. "Huh?" was the most articulate thing he could come up with. ‘What the hell is she talking about?’ he thought to himself.

"Well I know it’s something that goes on in baseball games," started Lily. "And that it’s one of those silly songs that is really only fun to sing when you’re drunk. But at baseball games there are small children and elderly people there that may not appreciate drunkenness at a ballgame. So what’s up with it?"

"I...I really am a little lost right now," Josh admitted.

"Oh, I see," replied Lily. "You don’t want to explain it to me because then you’d have to admit that you’ve done that at games before, in front of the elderly and small children..."

"What the hell is going on here?" Josh exclaimed frustrated. "We were just having a serious conversation than you go and..."

"Which would look bad for you politically because then you’d also have to admit to public drunkenness," continued Lily without even a look at Josh, as she started gathering her coat and bag, "Especially when you’re speaking to a news journalist."

"All right, you know what," started Josh as he too got up, "first of all, you’re not a news journalist. You’re an overpaid gossip columnist who not only doesn’t care about legitimate news but you wouldn’t know what legitimate news was if it jumped out of cake and started doing a strip tease in front of you. Second, people like singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at baseball games and the only ones who get drunk when they singing are the college frat boys who are sitting in the bleacher seats away from families and old people. Third, yes I was once one of those college frat boys but so were about 87% of the current Congress. And lastly, we were very much an awkward moment back there on the couch a few minutes ago and I wanna know what the hell just happened to it!" he wrapped up, finally stopping to catch his breath.

Lily stared at him with a barely concealed smile. "Do you feel awkward anymore?" she asked him pointedly.

Josh opened his mouth to answer to the affirmative but found that he couldn’t because he no longer did. He didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore; he actually felt a little better than he had for awhile. "No," he stated bewilderedly. "No, not really. How’d you do that?"

"Misdirection," she answered with a superior grin. "You know, distract your opposition from the real issue by getting them all riled up about something else completely meaningless. I’d have thought that someone in your line of work would have..."

"Thank you," Josh told her seriously. "Just...thank you."

She patted his shoulder playfully. "Likewise. And don’t worry, I may be paid to be a gossip columnist but I’m vacation now so..."

"Yeah, likewise," replied Josh.

"So," she sighed casually. "I’m starved. Anywhere near here that we can go for some grub?"

"Well, what about Donna?" asked Josh getting worried. "We shouldn’t leave alone. Come to think of it, where the hell is she? Is she okay? Is she...?"

"Getting her treatments early today, why yes she is," answered Lily before Josh could wig out. "And she’s not alone, T.J. was with her when I left and I imagine that the She Monkey will join them shortly."

"The She Monkey?" asked Josh confused as he began looking for his coat.

"I’ll explain it on the way to breakfast," said Lily, flicking off the lights as she and Josh exited the room.

Dr. Flynn’s Office:  9:00 am Sunday

"No, Phil you’re not listening to me," the exasperated Dr. Flynn said into the phone. "This woman has borderline stage 4 aplastic anemia, she doesn’t have time to...Yes I understand that...Yes, I’m saying...No I’m not asking for you to give her special consideration, ‘cause in order to do that it would mean that you guys would have to give her actual, you know, consideration in the first place! But instead you’re coming back to me with this bureaucratic bullsh...I do hear what you’re saying and what I’m saying is that Donna doesn’t have that kind of time." The doctor sighed, closing his eyes. Listening for a minute, he suddenly sat straight up. "Yeah, I understand. Yeah...Yeah... All right, thank you very much. I won’t forget this, Phil, I promise you that. Thank you. Good-bye." He hung up the phone with a small smile, hopeful for the first time in days. Michael Flynn was known for a great many things and quitting on his patients was not one of them.

The door to his office opened and his secretary poked her head in. "Yeah what is it, Lisa?" he asked, going back to look through the massive amount of paperwork that accumulated onto his desk on a daily basis. If a law firm thought they could produce a lot of useless paperwork in a day, they should see the kind of output a hospital produces.

"Ah, um doctor?" the young woman asked in a mouse-like voice. She was, after all, only twenty-three and still not used to his intense presence. Add to that the person who was standing in the alcove and she was practically wiping the sweat off her palms.

"What?" the doctor asked looking up, noticing how pale Lisa’s face was. "Is everything okay?"

"Uh, yes but there’s someone here to see you, Dr. Flynn," she answered, fidgeting a little and wringing her hands together.

"Who?" the doctor asked, curious as to this person was that was getting his secretary all into a tizzy.

Suddenly, two large men in almost identical black suits appeared in his doorway and proceeded to situate themselves in his office. After they had given the room a swift once-over, one of them spoke into his wrist saying, "Room’s secure. Agent’s McLean and Hall standing by. Room is clear for Band-Aid."

"Band-Aid?" replied the doctor. "What the hell is...?"

"Good morning, Dr. Flynn," said the First Lady as she breezed into the room, past his near whimpering secretary and up to him. "I’m Abigail Bartlett, it’s a pleasure to meet you."

The doctor was pretty much dumbstruck at that point. "Oh, uh, um yes of course," he stuttered, forgetting for a second that he had graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern. His vocabulary had left him faster than a girl’s top at Mardi Gras. "Ho...How do you do ma’am?" he asked hesitantly.

"Fine, thank you," she answered graciously, sensing his nervousness and trying to put him at ease. "May I sit down?"

"Oh, yes by all means please do," Dr. Flynn answered, gesturing to one of the chairs that sat in front of his desk. He looked up and saw Lisa standing there with her mouth hanging open like fish. He jerked his head, indicating that she should leave the office, which she did. She was almost out of the office, going to close the door, when one of the Secret Service agents stopped.

"No miss, the door stays open," he said with an authorative tone. Lisa was just about ready to go into cardiac arrest.

"That’s all right. Adam, its fine," the First Lady interjected and he moved away, allowing Lisa to close the door. Turning back to Michael, she continued. "They don’t like the door closed when I’m in a strange place like this."

"Ah, I see," he answered thinking of nothing better to say.  Silence permeated the room.

"Well this is a very lovely office," Abbey said, attempting to make small talk. Looking around, she noticed that there seemed to be an abundance of pastels and watercolors with a distinct feminine undertone to them.

"Thank you, ma’am, that’s very nice of you to say," the doctor said back to her. "To tell you the truth though, I’m not that wild about it myself."

"Who decorated it for you?" The First Lady asked politely. "You didn’t do it yourself, did you?"

"Oh Lord no," Michael responded with a small smile. "One of my wives actually decorated it a few years back and I’ve just been too busy to remember to change it."

"Which wife was it?" Abbey bluntly questioned.

Michael thought back for a few seconds. "To tell you the truth I honestly don’t remember," he said with a small chuckle. "I wanna say it was Shelia but now that I’m thinking about it, it could have very well have been Helen. Or maybe it was Traci, she was always into..."

The First Lady began to laugh in quiet astonishment. "If you don’t mind me asking, how many wives have you had?"

"I just signed the final paperwork on divorce number seven a month ago," he said, almost cringing when he realized how bad that sounded.

"Seven marriages," said the First Lady, more than slightly amused. "I’m not sure if I should be scolding you or applauding you."

"I’d prefer the applause though I probably deserve the scolding," he answered. "It’s just hard to keep a marriage together when you’re a doc..." Michael trailed off, realizing a second too late his mistake.

Abbey smiled at him. "That’s alright," she consoled him, not seeming to mind his loose lips. She leaned back comfortably in the chair as she continued. "I remember nights when I’d come home from working three straight shifts in the ER as an intern to find that my husband had tried to cook a meal on his own, my daughters had painted a mural on the living room wall, and the house was in utter chaos. I’d just about come this close to ripping Jed’s head off."

"Oh yeah, I remember those days," he responded with a roll of his eyes, forgetting for a moment that ‘Jed’ was the leader of the free world and that she was one of the most recognizable women on the planet.

"So anyways," Abbey said, switching gears. "I think you know why I’m here."

"Wild guess," he said, going into doctor mode and reaching for one of the manila folders on his desk, "but it wouldn’t have anything to do with the blonde woman in room 2587 would it?"

"What’s her status?" asked Abbey, holding out her hand for the folder that Dr. Flynn was about to give her.

"Same thing I told the president. Borderline stage 4 aplastic anemia," he said, his voice becoming clipped and clinical, like it did when he spoke professionally with other doctors.

"You’re giving her the transfusions daily?" she asked, her eyes scanning the file.

"Six pints, everyday; three pints in the morning and three in the afternoon. No significant improvement, though," his voice suggesting that he wasn’t surprised with that fact.

"Well Donna didn’t even start the treatments until late last week so we can’t know anything for certain; these things can take their time to..." The words flew out of Abbey’s head as her eyes suddenly rested on one particular notation. The doctor knew without asking what she was reading. "Her white count is increasing," she sighed in quiet dismay.

"Yeah," said the doctor, lowering his eyes and rubbing his forehead.

"Blood pressure’s dropping," she continued, shaking her head slightly.

"Yes, but her renal output is normal," the doctor added, "It is lower than most other women in Donna’s age group, I’ll admit, but it’s still within the limits of normal. Her liver and pancreas functions haven’t changed yet. And if you look at her platelet count you’ll see... "

The First Lady didn’t seem to hear him as she closed the file and placed it on the desk. "The treatment isn’t working. She’s dying," Abbey cut in, frankly.

"Not yet," Dr. Flynn corrected empathically.

"But she will be," Abbey countered. "Soon, according to this information, she will be."

"Yes," Michael conceded. "Unless we get the marrow, which I think that we will."

"You’ve made progress in finding a match?" Abbey asked in a hopeful voice.

"Yes," he said, with a little pride. "I’ve got a good feeling. I just got off the phone with Phil Jameson; he’s the assistant director with the National Bone Marrow Registry in their East Coast office. It took some haggling and many, many favors but I just got them to upgrade Donna to status 1. We should be hearing something within the next couple of days."

"Well that’s great," said Abbey, heaving a small sigh of relief. "We’ve all just been so worried about Donna. Everyone at the White House, I mean."

"Oh, I believe that," he grinned. "The White House staff has pretty much set camp here for the last week. We’re about ready to install a bank phones on this floor just to handle all the calls we get asking about Donna." H stopped, knowing that his next question might offend Abbey but knowing that he had to ask it anyway, for his own piece of mind. "May I ask you something, ma’am?"

"Of course."

"It’s something of a somewhat personal nature, ma’am."

"Doctor, my husband is the President of the United States. I’m not allowed to have a personal life, the framers put that right there in the Constitution," she assured him jokingly.

"Why are you here?" he asked without preamble.

"I’m sorry?"

"What I mean is, Donna’s not a high-ranking Cabinet official," he continued, trying to explain his position. "She’s not a head of state; she’s not even a senior official. I’m not saying that she isn’t a wonderful person, ma’am, because she is. I’ve come to care for and admire her a lot in the past few days." He thought for a second how to phrase his next remark. "It’s just that you and the president probably don’t see her that often when you’re in the White House and I’m just wondering..." 

"Why the hell we care so much about someone we don’t even really know that well?" she finished for him.

"Well...yeah," he replied sheepishly.

Abbey nodded, her lips quirking upward slightly. "Dr. Flynn," she started gently. "When you have to tell the entire world that you did something wrong, then sit back and allow them to call you every repugnant name in the English dictionary, look around at the people who stand beside you." She gave him a meaningful look. "That’s who your family is."

Hospital Café: Same Time

"...And after she had to show up at school the next day and change for gym with the hairy back that the "Hair-Grow" had provided her, we just started calling Nicole the ‘She Monkey’," Lily finished matter-of-factly, munching on a piece of melon from her fruit salad. She and Josh were sharing breakfast in the corner of the hospital’s near-vacant café. Lily had helped herself to a bowl of fruit salad and juice while Josh had opted for an egg and cheese omelet with a steaming cup of coffee. Lily had been spending the past fifteen minutes or so filling Josh in on the history she had with Donna and Donna’s family.

Lily’s parents had divorced when she was about six and she had moved to the States with her mother soon after. They had settled in Madison, Wisconsin where her mother, Catherine, was going to open a small B&B. Lily had arrived in her new elementary school in the middle of November and according to her, when she was introduced by the teacher to her fellow first-graders, no one wanted the "funny sounding girl with the pig nose" to sit next to them. She was forced to sit by herself that first morning though her teacher assured her that her desk partner would be there that afternoon. At recess that day, Lily was teased mercilessly by her classmates until a pigtailed blonde girl in a pink dress with her two front teeth missing came up to the group that was making fun of Lily and started giving them hell. She dredged up the embarrassing moments of the young children present and told them to scatter. Then, she introduced herself to Lily as one Donnatella Moss, her missing desk partner from that morning that had had a dentist’s appointment. Lily and Donna spent the rest of the afternoon recess talking and they had been practically inseparable ever since. Lily and her mother became a fixture at Donna’s house when Donna’s mother was still alive and after her own mother past away when she was fourteen, Donna looked to Catherine Irving as a second mother. Lily had also taken care of the infamous pig nose when she was fifteen but she didn’t mention that to Josh,

Whenever Lily would go back to England for the summer to visit her father, Donna would usually accompany her for at least a few weeks. They attended the same schools through their youth, played the same sports, wore the same kind of clothes, and even liked most of the same foods. Back then, when one mentioned Donna Moss one immediately thought of Lily Irving and vice-versa. College was much the same. They had both been accepted to the University of Wisconsin, Donna on a full academic scholarship and Lily’s parents paid for her tuition. It was much the same there for them the first few months as it had been in high school, except that they didn’t see each other as much. While Donna changed majors like some women change hairstyles, Lily was always devoted to her journalism major. Her father owned several magazines that were popular in Europe and she had always wanted to be a reporter. It was for these reasons that Donna and Lily began slowly seeing less and less of each other. They were still the best of friends but things had changed. Things changed even more when Donna was nineteen and met Ben.

"Ben" was Ben Peterson, a twenty-two year old med student who had just transferred from Northwestern in Chicago. At the time, it was believed that he had transferred to Madison to finish his studies closer to his family, who lived in Green Bay. They would all later learn that Ben had been kicked out of Northwestern due to his inability to pay tuition. His parents had pretty much disowned him after high school so in his mind, his only option was to move to Madison and use the one advantage God had given him: his good looks and charming personality. And it had worked almost immediately on Donna. She’d have done almost anything for him, including give up her own education in order for Ben to pursue his. It was ideal for both of them at the time; Ben didn’t have to worry about money anymore and Donna didn’t have to worry about being alone anymore. Until four years later, when Donna discovered that the birth-control pill was effective only about 98% of the time.

Ben had wanted her to have an abortion. He told her he’d leave her if she kept it. It became a battle between them for weeks, with his threats and her pleas to let her have her baby. At last, Ben conceded that she didn’t have to have an abortion but that she had to give the baby up for adoption as soon as it was born or he’d be gone. That idea left Donna almost as terrified as an abortion. She didn’t want strangers to raise her baby. She couldn’t even fathom that notion. She knew that some women could live with that but not her. It was then she knew that no matter what it took, she was going to keep her baby and raise it. She just didn’t know how she’d do it without Ben finding out.

 The worst part was that Donna had no one to confide in. Her sister had moved to Seattle to start her own interior decorating business by that time and her brother was somewhere in South America working as an assistant to some big shot photographer. Even Lily couldn’t be there for her as she had earned her Bachelor’s degree and had moved back to London to work for one of her father’s magazines. No one knew of Donna’s troubles until the three of them flew back to Wisconsin that October for Donna’s twenty-second birthday to discover that she was almost seven months pregnant. Nicole and Lily, who usually agreed on nothing, were both adamant about finding Ben and strangling him. Ben, of course, was conveniently away visiting a cousin, [who later turned out to be a girlfriend in Milwaukee], so he managed to get away with his life. T.J. on the other hand, was more concerned about Donna and the baby. The three of them learned of Ben’s ultimatum and tried in vain to convince Donna to leave him. But for some reason, known only to her then and now, she couldn’t leave him. No matter how much he’d hurt her or how terribly he treated her, she said she absolutely couldn’t end the relationship with Ben.  It was then that she told them that she wanted the baby and she wanted the three of them to help her figure out a way for her to do that without letting Ben know. Nicole initially offered to have Donna and the baby live with her in Seattle but Donna immediately vetoed that idea. As much as she loved her sister, it had been a struggle for sanity trying to live with her when they were growing up. The next few hours brought suggestions of everything from Donna moving to Europe with Lily to having Donna let Nicole adopt the baby so it could still be part of the family. Finally, after a seemingly endless night of arguing, tears, and begging they all reached a decision. One that had indirectly effected the situation that Donna was in today and had most certainly complicated it.  

"So how do you think I should go about this?" Josh asked Lily, breaking through the mini-haze of past memories that she had drifted off into.

"Go about what?" she asked, confused as to what they were talking about.

"Go about moving forward with Donna," he clarified. "How do I approach this? How should I court her?"

"‘Court her’?" echoed Lily with a hint of bemusement in her voice. "I thought that was an expression that went out with King Arthur and his knights."

Josh rolled his eyes at her. "Are you gonna mock me or are you gonna help me?" he asked pointedly.

"Oh I’m gonna do both," she smiled at him. "But seriously, I think you’ll be okay. You’re already starting out with her being love with you so the hard part is basically out of the way." She paused and gave him a look. "There is one thing that, in my opinion, you might want to take care before you go back to see Donna and drop down on one knee though."

"What’s that?" Josh asked, trying to pretend that he wasn’t already thinking about a romantic way to propose in a hospital.

"Take a wild guess," Lily responded sarcastically.

Josh thought for a minute. "Settle things with Leo and work?" he ventured.

"Nope."

"Tell the rest of our friends?"

"You’re getting warmer."

Josh gave her a funny look. "You don’t want me to actually ask Nicole’s permission that I get involved with her sister, do you?" he asked her warily.

"Well, you could do all that," Lily declared cynically while gathering her trash and standing up. "But if I were you, I’d maybe want to break the news to my girlfriend that I’ve fallen in love with someone else."

Amy. Josh hadn’t thought about her since last night and thinking about her now made his stomach twist into a sailor’s knot. "You mean ‘Amy’," he admitted, following her lead and throwing his trash away.

"Yes, of course I mean Amy," she sighed frustrated. "Why how many girlfriends do you have?"

"One," he clarified, "though not the one I want to be my girlfriend. And trust me, Amy won’t be after today."

"Good," Lily answered, letting up on him a little. For all his faults, and Lily could tell he had many, he genuinely loved Donna and for that Lily was grateful. "I just want Donna to be happy," she continued in a gentler tone as the two of them left the café and headed out. They walked in silence until they were in the lobby and Josh spotted a gift shop.

"Can we stop in here for a minute?" he asked, moving towards the entrance.

"Why?" asked Lily, following him into the brightly lit little shop that carried everything from cards to sweatshirts with the hospital name on them.

Josh had moved towards the small flower display in the back. "I wanna get Donna some flowers."

"You sure that’s a good idea?" she asked with an amused expression on her face. "It’s not even your anniversary yet."

"She told you about that?" he replied, his cheeks blushing slightly as he tried to find the perfect bouquet. It was then he saw the medium-sized arrangement of red roses off to one side. It wasn’t too garish or showy, which Josh knew Donna hated, and maybe the flowers would perhaps in some small way convey Josh’s newly realized feelings for her.

"She’ll love them," Lily assured Josh from behind him.

"Good," he said, picking up the flowers and going to the cashier to pay for them. As the woman was wrapping them up in some paper, Josh turned back to Lily and said quietly, "I just want her to be happy too." He stopped and grinned at her. "In fact I think I wanna spend the rest of my life doing that," he finished softly.

"I’m happy for you both," she replied, patting his shoulder.

"I just wanna be with her," he continued as the cashier handed him his purchase and the two of them left the shop to head back upstairs. "I want to see her everyday, I want to marry her, I want to have a family with her..."

At that comment, Lily stopped thinking of Josh’s romantic quandary and instead shifted her thoughts elsewhere. Namely to her best friend upstairs, who was fighting for her very exsistence, and to the blonde little almost five year-old girl in Wisconsin that Donna had so desperately loved and guarded for the girl’s entire life, no matter it what cost her. ‘My poor, little walnut’ she silently thought of her godchild. ‘If only you knew, my dear Emma, how much trouble you’ve inadvertently caused.’

"Hey Lil?" Josh asked as he looked at her and she literally zoned out. The two of them had reached the bank of elevators. "You all right?"

"Yeah," she responded quietly, shaking her thoughts off. The worry over Donna and Emma lingered on.

"Don’t worry," said Josh calmly, reaching to press the elevator button. Lily was afraid for an instant that Josh had been able to somehow hear her thoughts. "I know you’re worried about Donna. God knows I am. But she’s gonna make it." He smiled at her before continuing. "Everything’s gonna be fine," he said as he turned and stepped into the waiting elevator car.

"That’s what you think," Lily predicted under her breath as she joined him.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

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