"CJ, what the hell is going on up there?" Leo was sitting back at his desk in Washington watching excerpts of Jed's stump speeches as the bus tour moved north into Oregon.

"What do you mean?" CJ asked. She knew exactly what he was talking about, reporters had been after her all day to explain what was going on with the President.

"Don't feed me that line, CJ, this is ME you're talking to. I've been fielding calls all day from lawmakers who are hearing through the press that the President has come out of the Convention flat."

"Maybe he's a little tired."

"A little tired?" Leo was incredulous and worried. " Jed Bartlet comes out of these events like a horse at the Kentucky Derby starting gate. He DOESN'T come out flat. I need to know. Is he sick? Is it the thing? Should I call, Abbey?"

"DON'T call Abbey?" It was only after the urgent words had come from her mouth that she realized she was only serving to raise Leo's suspicions that something was wrong.

"Why can't I call Abbey? You answer to ME, CJ, and I need to know what the hell is going on."

CJ bit her lip. Abbey had spoken to her in strict confidence, woman to woman. It wasn't something that she could betray. Not even to her boss. "Don't pull rank with me, Leo. The President is not sick. If you want to find out what the problem is then maybe you should fly up here yourself."

There, it was out. It was what she had been thinking all day. The President had been giving his speeches as if he were a robot. He was a good enough speaker that the crowds were unaware of the stiffness in his gestures, the lack of passion in his voice or the absence of any real enthusiasm emanating from him. He was merely speaking as an ordinary candidate and when Jed Bartlet spoke it was usually anything but ordinary. Oftentimes, no matter how many times CJ had heard a speech, the President could change an inflection or emphasize a point in such a way that it could still give her shivers or make her want to jump to her feet and applaud with the crowd. She had not gotten any shivers today.

Back on the bus the President had been quiet and withdrawn, often lost in thought. She watched Zoey tease him and tell him jokes but his smile never quite made it to his eyes. It had hurt CJ to watch the young woman and the two toddlers with their father, knowing that they were completely unaware of what their mother was going through and that their lives might completely be altered by the end of the week.

Leo was still in a bit of shock from CJ's last statement. "Do YOU think that I should fly up there?"

CJ watched the President get out of the bus and head toward the hotel, shoulders slumped, head down. He needed somebody to talk to, to confide in.

"Yeah, Leo, I think you should come."

****

"Hello, Abigail."

Abbey turned with surprise to see her mother-in law standing beside her.

"Emily" she wiped at her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Josiah sent me. He didn't want you to be alone."

"JED sent you?" Abbey was shocked. She was going to kill him. She didn't need to deal with Emily Bartlet on top of everything else.

"Yes, he did. After all, we may finally have something in common."

"What?" Abbey eyed her warily.

"Come now, you've always been a forthright woman, don't try to hold back on me now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"He told me. Josiah told me that he found a lump in your breast and that you're back here to have it checked out tomorrow."

"Well, it seems to me that Mr. Josiah Bartlet has a very BIG mouth." Abbey started to get to her feet.

"Don't be angry with him, dear. He's frantic at the thought of you being here alone, dealing with this alone."

"I can handle it."

"Maybe you can, but why should you have to? You're not alone, Abigail."

"Are you speaking of yourself now?"

"Yes, I've been through this. I know how you're feeling. I can help you."

Abbey looked at her mother in law completely stunned. Fifteen years earlier, Emily had undergone a double mastectomy. Nobody in the family, but John, had been told about the surgery. Abbey had found out quite by accident when a colleague had mentioned seeing her mother in law at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester. She and Jed had rushed to the hospital ready to care for her, ready to help her through the trauma. They had been angrily turned away. Emily had brushed off their concern and their need to help. Jed had continued to stop by his parents home while his mother was undergoing chemotherapy, but Emily had become so violently upset by his presence that he ceased visiting, afraid that it would do her more harm than good. The stubborn Irishwoman who had passed on those genes to her son had gone through her entire illness alone save for her husband, and with John Bartlet being the way that he was, she might as well have been completely alone.

"You want to help ME? Why should I need your help anymore than you needed mine all those years ago?"

"I was a stubborn fool. I admit it. I was embarrassed by my illness."

"You were embarrassed to have cancer?"

"BREAST cancer. I was embarrassed to have all this attention diverted…" she looked down at her chest. "…There."

Once upon a time Abbey would have answered that cancer was cancer no matter where you got it. She wasn't quite so analytical about it anymore. Breast cancer was different because it affected not just her life but a part of her body that made her a sexual being, a woman, and it was visible. Certainly there were other parts of her body that were just as linked to her womanhood, her uterus for one. But having a hysterectomy would have been different, at least at this stage of her life. She had all the children she wanted and removing her uterus was so much more private. Nobody would stare at her trying to see if they could see the difference in her body as they would if she lost her breast. SHE might feel empty, but nobody would be able to share that with her. It would be bad enough if she were dealing with this 10 years ago when she was just Dr. Abbey Bartlet. Now she was the First Lady of the United States living her life in a goldfish bowl. If she had breast cancer the entire world would know about it and be scrutinizing her. For a private person such as she was the thought of that made her physically nauseous.

"Try having the entire world looking at you…THERE."

"I guess you won't be able to hide it, will you?"

"Not the way that you did. Why didn't you let us help you, Emily? We were your family. I'm a doctor; I could have helped you find the best oncologists and helped you to take care of your incision sites. I could have brought you for chemo and taken care of you when you were sick."

"I didn't want anyone to see me weak like that. You know how John was, he hated weak people and I wanted to prove to him for once that I wasn't weak. Besides, Abigail, you were busy practicing medicine in Boston and raising your three girls. Josiah was flying in and out from Washington. I didn't want to be a burden."

"You wouldn't have been a burden. You were family and you were sick. I could have taken time off. I did it when my mother had her stroke last year."

"She's your mother."

"And you're Jed's mother. You're my children's grandmother. Whether you like it or not you're my family, too."

Abbey's eyes widened as she saw Emily's eyes get suspiciously brighter than they were a minute ago. Were those actual tears?

"I never knew that you felt that way."

"Well, you didn't make it easy. I know you never really liked me, that you never wanted me for Jed."

"It wasn't you per se."

"You wanted him to become a priest."

"Yes. I was selfish. My one rebellion in my marriage was to hang on to my faith with both hands. I tried to instill that faith into both my boys, but it was Josiah who took to it. Josiah was so much more a Flynn than a Bartlet. There was nothing cold or unemotional about him. He was loving and caring and sweet and he loved the idea of helping people. I think that was the part of his faith that was strongest, not the ritual and mystery or playing church politics. He genuinely wanted to help people. I pushed him toward the priesthood as a way of spending his life doing that and I ignored the other side to my son that would have made him a horrible priest, at least as far as the hierarchy goes, his passion."

Abbey looked up with surprise and Emily gave her a wry smile. "Not passion of the flesh, dear. That came after he met you."

Abbey smiled and continued to listen.

"There was always something in Josiah, something that caused him to question, to never accept the standard response. He does what he believes to be right and damn the consequences. It caused a lot of problems with his father over the years and it would have caused a lot of problems with the church hierarchy. Not to mention, he never really had the calling."

"I always thought that you believed it was meeting me that turned Jed away from becoming a priest."

"For a while I tried to tell myself that it was. The girls that Jed dated in high school were so different from you."

"Girls like Betsy Talbot?" Abbey wrinkled her nose.

"Yes," Emily smiled at her daughter in law's response.

"Proper, quiet, soft-spoken…"

"Colorless," Emily added. "He'd have been bored out of his mind with a woman like Betsy. You brought color into Josiah's life. Color and laughter and freedom. God, how I envied you."

"You envied me?"

"I used to watch the two of you when you would come to visit, your heads so close together, whispering, laughing and teasing, your eyes so filled with love for each other. You were so close two peas in a pod. I watched you arguing with each other over some political speech and you matched Josiah, point for points your passionate response just as strong as his. You were so outspoken and sure of yourself, so confident in who you were and of Josiah's love for you. I was jealous of that. You had a freedom that I never had. I was never sure enough of who I was or of my husband's love for me to fight back about much of anything."

"Is that why you never fought for Jed? You said that you loved the warmth and sweetness in him so why the HELL did you let John try to BEAT that out of him? I've never understood that. I'm a mother, Emily, I have five children and I can't imagine EVER letting anyone harm a hair on their heads." Abbey took a deep breath and stared Emily defiantly in the eye, not really believing that after all these years she was finally getting all of this out into the open. She was in forbidden territory here. This was a subject that did not get touched in the Bartlet household except between she and Jed.

"What are you talking about, Abigail?" Emily looked genuinely stunned. "John didn't beat Josiah."

"Yes, Emily, HE DID." Abbey said firmly.

"No, no, he wouldn't…I mean… yes he was hard on Jed, he was a hard man. He spanked him, but that was before it was politically incorrect to discipline your kids, you can't call that beating."

"I'm not talking about a tap on the rear or on the fingers. I'm talking about getting backhanded across the face and punched in the stomach and being whipped with a belt across his back."

"He NEVER...He...He couldn't have…" Emily was clearly horrified.

"But he DID." Abbey was in tears now, remembering the torment her husband's childhood had been and how hard it had been for him to open up to her about the abuse.

"I never knew, Abigail." Tears streamed down the old woman's cheeks. " You have to believe me. I swear, I never knew. Why didn't he come to me?"

"Why would he? You always seemed to take John's side about everything. Maybe you didn't see him physically strike Jed but you stood there often enough while John belittled him and ridiculed him and put down every achievement that he ever had. Jed is a wounded man, Emily. I've spent my life holding him and healing him and trying to give him all the love that he was deprived of and that he deserved, yet, to this day he still carries the scars of his childhood."

"Oh, God, if only I'd known," Emily moaned.

"Would you have stopped him?"

Emily brought her fingers to her lips and was silent for a moment, remembering the stern cold man who had been her husband and she honestly could not answer the question.

"I'd like to think that I would have tried." She looked up at Abbey with pain filled eyes. "No wonder you hate me so much."

"I don't hate you. I've just never understood you."

"How could you understand me. You're nothing like me. You have a life outside of your marriage, you're loving and affectionate and open with ALL of your emotions. Your daughters would never be afraid to come to you with their problems."

"I sincerely hope not."

"So, why are you closing off now?"

"What?"

"I think we need to talk about why I came here to begin with. You found a lump in your breast and you're having it checked out tomorrow. Tell me what you're feeling. Let me help you."

****

Jed had a few hours of down time in the hotel suite before speaking at a fundraiser later that night. His plan was to play with the twins for a little while, take a nap and leave. That was before he noticed Zoey's laptop computer left open on the coffee table. She had left it that way when she'd gone to play cards next door with some of the staffers. He sat for a while building houses out of blocks with the kids, but still that laptop beckoned. His heart was not in playtime and his children had picked up on his sour mood and were virtually ignoring him. Finally, unable to fight his curiosity, he emptied a duffel bag filled with toys and left the children to their own devices. Thankfully Zoey's password had been stored and he was able to zip onto the Internet. He found himself Google searching for breast cancer sites shocked by the statistics, and the harsh reality of the disease that stole a woman's femininity, her self-esteem and in some cases her life. He read heartbreaking accounts of fear and loss, becoming completely engrossed in the feelings and emotions of these women, many of the same feelings and emotions that his wife had shared with him the previous night. He had been so worried about Abbey losing her life he had simply brushed aside her concerns about losing her breast. It seemed like such a small thing when it came to her life. But, as he was reading here, and as Abbey had tried to explain to him, it would be an absolutely life altering event and how HE accepted it was going to be of tantamount importance when it came to any future sexual relationship or emotional intimacy between the two. He still truly believed that anything was worth saving Abbey's life but he was starting to see why she had been fixating so strongly on losing her breast.

His eyes widened with surprise when he clicked on a page that held a picture of a woman's chest not long after having had a mastectomy. He forced himself to look at it, thankful that there was no face, that he didn't have to identify this woman as a person. It wasn't so bad, really. A flat young boy's chest where once there had been a breast and a large pink puckered scar. He tried to look at the picture as if it were his Abbey and tears blurred his eyes, not because it would disgust him or repulse him, but because he knew how seeing herself like that would effect his wife.

For a while had been able to hear the kids whining in the background but had been so immersed in his reading that he had tuned them out. Both kids had picked up on his anxiety and had been a bit crabby all day. Now their cries were becoming more strident and they were arguing over a toy.

"Mine!" Aislinn pulled at the plastic guitar.

"No mine!" Nicholas demanded, pulling back hard causing Aislinn to fall on her rear and let out a loud wail of outrage.

"Will you two KNOCK IT OFF!" Jed shouted impatiently, his fist slamming down hard on the coffee table. His nerves were just not able to take their squabbling right now. Both children were dead silent with the shock of his outburst before their faces crumpled and the tears came. Their father rarely yelled at them, at least not harshly like he just had and it had scared them.

"Mama!" Aislinn cried. "Wan Mama"

"Wan Mama" Nicholas echoed his sister's sentiment, grabbing his Tigger and clutching it to his chest.

Jed stared at the children overcome with guilt. It hadn't been fair to take out his anxiety on them and now he'd frightened them. He didn't blame them for wanting Abbey. He certainly wasn't dealing with this very well.

"I'm sorry guys. Come here."

"Wan Mama!" Aislinn cried louder, backing away from him. It killed him when his children did that, knowing that that was how he had reacted to his father for most of his life. He never wanted his children to be afraid of him.

"I know you do, sunshine." He squatted before them and picked them up carrying them back to the couch to hold them tightly to his chest. "I'm sorry I yelled at you like that. Daddy's just an old grump today."

"Wan my mama… wan my mama…"Nicholas continued to hiccup against Jed's chest.

"I know, sport. I want your mama too. She'll be back with us soon." Tears burned in Jed's eyes as soothed his crying children by patting their shuddering little backs, feeling their fragile knobby spines and tiny shoulders. They were so little, so heartbreakingly young, what was going to happen to them if they didn't have Abbey? PLEASE, God, he silently pleaded. Please don't let her have cancer. They need her so much. I need her so much.

"Mr.President, would you like me to take them."

Jed opened his wet eyes to see Izzy in the doorway.

"No thanks. I'll tuck them in myself in a little while.

An hour later CJ entered the suite to make sure the President knew his soundbite answer for the night. She expected to see him relaxing on the couch, maybe taking the nap she'd strongly urged him to take. He wasn't. As she walked by the coffee table her eyes were drawn to the computer screen and the picture that he had been looking at. A strange sort of pain moved through her chest at the thought of Abbey having to endure that, at what it would do to the couple that she had come to know and love. She paused for a moment looking at herself in the mirror remembering all those times Abbey had tried to get her to show a little more cleavage and she'd laughed that she didn't have enough to show. Well, she might not have much of a bust, but what she did have she would hate to lose. She couldn't imagine what Abbey was going through with that being a very real possibility for her.

While she stood looking into the mirror she heard the President's voice coming from one of the adjoining bedrooms. She moved toward his voice and stood watching him tuck the children into their port-a-cribs. A warm feeling of tenderness spread through her as she watched him standing there in the glow of the nightlights, so handsome and out of place in his tuxedo. He was leaning down and speaking softly to each child individually, rubbing their backs, fixing their covers and kissing them good night. She heard their sleepy requests for their mother and his soft deep voice reassuring them that she would be back soon and suddenly the pain returned and it was sharp. She hadn't been much older than the Bartlet twins when she had lost her mother, the difference being that her father hadn't known how to raise a girl child. She had never had frilly party dresses and pretty hair bows or someone to go out shopping with her for her first bra, but worst of all she'd never had a parent that she could talk to. That her father loved her she had no doubt, that he had absolutely no idea what to do with her she also did not doubt. It was different with Jed Bartlet. He'd know what to do if the time came. She had seen him dress his youngest daughter in party dresses and fix her hair with bows and somehow she could even picture him bra shopping with a pre- pubescent Aislinn. He had been surrounded by females for all of his married life, but rather than remaining aloof as her father had, Jed had immersed himself in "girldom" as he referred to it. Yes, she could easily see raising his youngest two children alone, what she couldn't see was him living without Abbey. They were so connected. Two halves of a whole, partners in every sense of the word and she couldn't imagine how he would go on without her.

****

"So, tell me, Abigail. What is your greatest fear, other than dying of course?" They were walking now, through the orchard and back toward the house.

"I think you must know…"

"The disfigurement." Emily nodded.

" And how Jed will react to that. Can I ask you a question?"

"I said I was here to help, didn't I? Ask away."

"How did John react. You know, the first time he saw you after the mastectomies."

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Abbey gave her a puzzled look.

"You spent a lot of time in our house. You know we had separate bedrooms. "

"Yes, but I thought it was because John snored or something…Emily, John was alive for six years after your surgery. Are you telling me that in six years he never ONCE…uh…visited your bedroom."

"You sound very shocked."

"I am. SIX YEARS." Abbey thought that if she had to go six months without Jed in her bed she'd go insane with need, never mind six years. "I can't believe that he was that cruel."

"Who?"

"John. He wouldn't make love to you because of the mastectomies? NOW you know why I'm afraid."

"Let's back up a minute here, shall we? First of all Josiah is NOTHING like his father, and the reason that he never saw me after the mastectomies is because I moved out of the bedroom."

"You did? Why, couldn't you bear for him to see you that way?"

"Actually it was for longer than six years. I had moved out of our bedroom 10 years prior to that."

"YOU moved out. Why? Was he cheating on you?'

"Did John seem like the type of man to cheat?"

Abbey thought for a moment. Her father in law had been one of the stiffest, coldest men she'd ever met and the truth of the matter was she couldn't imagine him ever working up enough of a passion to even have sex never mind carry on with two women.

"No, I guess not." Abbey admitted. "So why did you move out?"

"I went through the change."

"So."

"Children were no longer possible."

"I repeat, so."

"Abigail, sometimes I wonder if you ever paid attention to your catechism." Emily chastised her with a shake of the head. "Marital relations are supposed to be for procreation only."

"So, you're telling me that you really believe that you can only have sex if you're trying for a baby?"

"Well, you don't have to try for it but you can't try to stop it from happening either and you shouldn't be doing it if it isn't possible. That's why the church is against birth control, you know that, we've had this discussion before. You just choose to ignore that part of your religion."

"Yes, I do. It's foolish. So, you're telling me that you haven't had sex in almost 25 years and your husband has only been gone for 7?"

"You sound appalled, dear."

"I AM appalled. How could you stand it? 18 YEARS you put him off. No wonder he was such grumpy personality."

"Oh, he was grumpy before I moved out of the bedroom. Honestly, Abigail, you act as if this is a big thing. I had done my duty for over 50 years."

"Your DUTY? You sound like some Victorian maiden. It's hardly a duty."

"Well we were never like you and Josiah anyway. You two have never been able to keep your hands off of each other. To be honest I've never known what all the fuss was about," Emily sniffed.

"Well, if you don't know then your husband was not half the lover that your son is."

"ABIGAIL, really!"

"Sorry." Abbey bit back a smile. "For a minute there you were so accessible that I forgot who I was talking to."

Emily rolled her eyes in her usual long suffering way, but then gave her a humor-laced smile. It was strange enough to have the kind of personal discussion she had been having with her daughter in law, but even stranger to be light heartedly teased by her.

Abbey inhaled deeply the scent of the apple blossoms and smiled as they neared where the orchard edged the pasture.

"What are you smiling about?" Emily asked.

"I was just remembering one fall when Zoey was still a baby and we all came out here to pick some apples so I could make the baby and the girls some homemade applesauce. While we were walking Ellie happened to find a couple of baby birds that had fallen out of their nest. She was devastated. She turned those big, sad, pleading eyes of hers on Jed begging him with all the drama of a five-year-old, "DO something, daddy, DO something. The baby birds will die down here on the ground."

"And did he?" Emily smiled, already knowing the answer.

"You know Jed. O f course he did. He carried those baby birds; just as gentle as he could be and he climbed the tree to put them back in their nest. Of course on the way back down one of the limbs broke under his weight and he crashed to the ground."

"That sounds like Josiah," Emily laughed.

"He didn't care. Elizabeth and Ellie were all over him like he was their hero and Jed was just basking in that."

"That's the kind of man that he is. Whenever you worry about Josiah not being there for you, you just remember that six months ago he saved your life. He took that knife for you, there's nothing that he wouldn't do for you, Abigail, NOTHING."

Abbey smiled through her tears. She knew that Emily was right but it wasn't Jed being there for her that she was worried about, it was that he would force himself to be with her, to touch her, out of some sense of moral duty. THAT was what would destroy her.

****

Deep in the night when the house was quiet and the demons came to call, Abbey began to shake uncontrollably. If nothing else, her mother in laws visit had kept her mind occupied during the day so that she hadn't had to dwell on her visit to the clinic in the morning. But now, alone in her bed, with no one to hold her, every worst case scenario haunted her mind. She could picture Bill Vincent sitting at his desk telling her that her lump was a tumor, telling her that it was malignant and had spread to her lymph nodes, telling her that she had 6 months to live. She drew the blankets closer, wrapped her arms tightly around herself trying to offer herself a measure of comfort. Sweat broke out on her forehead, her heart was racing, and she was still shaking so hard that her teeth were chattering. She was scared. So scared she didn't know what to do. She thought about running down the hall to Emily, but it wasn't Emily that she needed. It was Jed. She tried to be strong, tried to deal with the terror that stabbed into her every time she thought about tomorrow's visit, but it was too much for her.

It had taken Jed the better part of a couple of hours to fall asleep. He had tossed and turned and looked at the clock willing morning to come soon. So, he was not deeply asleep when he heard the musical tones of his cell phone.

"Mmm…Charlie, this better be good." He murmured sleepily. He frowned at the silence on the other line, then jolted fully awake when he heard a choked sob. "Abbey? Abbey is that you?"

"Oh, Jed. I'm scared. I'm so scared. I… I can't breath…I can't stop shaking. Please help me."

TBC...