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Under Siege
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Chapter 6
“Daddy, don't," Ellie tried to put her head back down, but her father wouldn't let go of her chin. Jed was still gazing with horror at the yellowish/purple bruise on his daughter's cheek and her swollen split lip.
"Ellie, who hurt you? It was Davis, wasn't it? Goddammit. I knew he was bad news right from the start. I told your mother..."
"Stop it, Daddy," Ellie cried and Jed could see her closing off to him. It was a move reminiscent of him and now he knew how Abbey felt when he did it.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell, honey. What happened?"
"Nothing. It's OK. It was just a stupid argument."
"Eleanor Bartlet, your mother and I have stupid arguments all the time. They don't lead to bruises and cut lips."
"Please, I really don't want to talk about it."
"With me, you mean," he said bitterly. "You came to see your mother."
"You'll just get angry. I..." The door to the living room opened.
"Jed, what are you doing here in the middle of the day?" Abbey asked as she entered the room. Ellie's head instinctively turned at the sound of her mother's voice and Abbey gave an involuntary gasp at the damage done to her daughter's lovely face. "Ellie, my God." The tears and emotions that Ellie had been keeping inside suddenly burst forth at the pained tone of her mother's voice.
"Mama," she cried and got to her feet to run into Abbey's outstretched arms.
"It's OK baby, ssh...everything's OK," Abbey stroked Ellie's long silky hair. She gave a questioning glance over her head at Jed who shrugged his ignorance about what had happened. Abbey pulled back slightly and gently cupped her daughter's face in her hands. "Ellie, sweetie, who did this to you?" Ellie simply burst into tears and buried her face in her mother's chest. Jed's eyes watered as he watched Ellie enfolded in Abbey's arms. The pain his two women were in was almost more than he could bear.
"It was Davis," Ellie sobbed. "Davis hit me. He was so angry with me. I've never seen him that angry. I found out today that I got my residency at Sloan-Kettering. I invited him to dinner so we could celebrate. But, he didn't want to celebrate. He wasn't happy for me at all, he was furious. He didn't get Sloan, he got his third pick," she took a deep shuddering breath. Abbey continued to stroke her back and her hair, urging her to continue on. "He called me a spoiled bitch and said the only reason I always got what I wanted was because I was the President's daughter. Then he came at me telling me that I wouldn't be gloating much longer and he slapped me across the face so hard that I fell to the floor. I still can't believe that he hit me."
"Did he hurt you anywhere else?" Abbey asked, beginning to search her daughter over with medical expertise.
"He hit me twice on the face and, when I fell down, he kicked me in the ribs."
Abbey began to lift the hem of Ellie's shirt.
"Mama, don't," Ellie sniffed, trying to push the shirt back down.
"Ellie, I have to see what kind of damage he did. He could have broken your ribs." Abbey continued to lift the shirt, her eyes narrowing at the big purple bruise across Ellie's ribcage. She didn't know whether to scream with rage or break down and cry at the damage done to her child. Ellie saw the tears filling her mother's eyes, which brought on a fresh wave of pain.
"Please don't cry, Mama," Ellie begged.
Jed had hung back by the couch allowing mother to comfort daughter, but the fury had been building in him while his daughter cried and confessed what her boyfriend had done to her. However, it was seeing that big bruise marring her flesh that had caused him to reach the breaking point and now he knew that fury was about to erupt over. Davis Hunter was going to pay for hurting his little girl.
"I'll be back," he ground out with barely restrained anger. Abbey looked at her husband over Ellie's head, seeing the icy rage burning in his blue eyes. She knew exactly where he was going and the only reason she didn't stop him from doing something that would cause him to end up in prison was because she knew Ron would take care of that. The fact of the matter was she wished she were going with him. She would like to tear Davis Hunter limb from limb for hurting her child, but that wasn't going to help Ellie right now. Ellie had her avenger out there in the form of her father, right here she just needed the comfort of her mother. Abbey turned from watching Jed leave the room to tilt Ellie's tear stained face up so she could look into her eyes that were so filled with pain and confusion.
"Ellie," she swallowed, wishing she did not have to ask this question and not knowing exactly how she was going to deal with it if Ellie had endured what she herself had gone through years before. "Did Davis hurt you in any other way?"
"What?" Ellie asked, puzzled.
"Did he sexually assault you? Because if he did we need to get you to..."
"No," Ellie said touching her mother's hand. "When he kicked me, I must have cried out pretty loud because Sophie, my agent, came in and took him down. That's why I came here. I knew Sophie would tell Ron and Ron would tell Daddy."
"Are you telling me that you only came here because you knew we would find out?"
"Partly. You should have seen him, Mom. He was so sorry for what he did. He told me he loved me and didn't mean to hurt me. He was crying, Mom."
"Bullshit."
"What?" Ellie's eyes widened at the term she rarely heard her mother use.
"That's all bullshit, Ellie. He was trying to control you into staying with him. To play on your emotions. God, Ellie, you've visited enough homes for battered women and children with me to know what these guys are like."
"He's not really like that, Mom. He's been under a lot of stress lately and his anger just got out of control this time. Come on, you and Daddy have had some knock down drag out fights. Can you honestly say that he has never once gotten so angry he hit you or shoved you?"
"Ellie," Abbey said stunned. "How could you ever believe that your father would hit me? Have you ever seen him display that kind of rage?"
"Not once, not even a little shove or something?" Ellie was pleading now and Abbey knew why. Her father was a good man, a loving man and, if in the past, he had made a mistake and struck out in a fit of rage then there was hope for Davis.
"No, Ellie, not once, not ever, you know better than that. You're also smart enough to know that the son of a bitch will do it again if you don't break it off right now."
"I know," Ellie began to cry again, leaning against her mother's chest while Abbey rocked her back and forth and murmured words of love and comfort against her hair.
+++++
Ron Butterfield had seen the President of the United States angry plenty of times, but never had he seen the man quite this enraged. He had taken the stairs of Davis Hunter's apartment building two at a time and he was now striding down the hall like a volcano ready to erupt.
"You do know, Mr. President, that I can't allow you to enter that apartment like Dirty Harry," Ron said as he and the other agents raced to keep up with him.
"That little prick beat the hell out of my daughter. He is going to pay for that."
"I understand your rage, sir, but I can't..."
"Just allow me some fatherly retribution," he said, stepping in front of apartment 114. Ron nodded his acquiescence and Jed began to pound his fist on the door.
"Open the door, Hunter," he shouted. "This is the President. You open this fucking door now or I'll kick it in." Jed stopped pounding as the door opened slightly and he saw the pale face of the young man who had beaten and kicked his daughter. Jed shoved the door open and barreled his way into the room, grabbing Davis by the shoulders and slamming him into the wall.
"You get off on hurting women, do you?" Jed seethed. "You don't look so tough now when you have to deal with a man."
"Sir...I didn't mean..."
"I don't give a shit what you meant. Only the lowest of cowards hurts a woman. You are a weak, sniveling piece of slime and the only reason I'm not beating you to a pulp right now is because Ron won't let me. But if you come anywhere near my daughter again, I swear to you that I will tear you apart with my bare hands. Do I make myself clear?"
"But Sir...I love..."
"DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR!" Jed slammed him back hard against the wall.
"Y...Yes, Sir," Davis stammered blinking his eyes to clear the stars he was seeing. Jed let go of his shoulders and looked him up and down with a look of complete and utter contempt.
"Men like you make me sick," he said with disgust and turned to leave the apartment.
Before he followed the President from the room, Ron approached the shaken young man whose eyes were already filling with anger.
"You better heed that warning, young man," he said sternly. "If you come so much as 100 yards of Ellie Bartlet, I'll let him tear you apart and I may even help out."
+++++
Jed opened the door to the living room and noted that things were a little less hysterical than when he had left. There were two cups of tea on the coffee table and Abbey was holding an ice pack to Ellie's cheek.
"There must be something wrong with me," Ellie was saying.
"There's nothing wrong with you, honey. You had a lapse in judgment. It happens. Nobody invites violence against themselves."
Jed closed his eyes at the pained tone of his wife's voice knowing exactly what she was referring to. Ellie also knew just what her mother was speaking of. She had only been six years old when her mother was raped and she certainly hadn't been told all the details of what had happened. But she had known with the vague awareness of a child that her mother had been hurt and was not the same for some time after. It was only later, when they knew the details would come out in the campaign, that her parents had sat her down with her sisters and explained the horrifying facts of what had happened that night in Boston.
"It was different for you, Mom," Ellie said. "I loved Davis. There has to be something wrong with a person who loves another person who hurts them."
"Not necessarily," Jed stated, making his presence known. Abbey turned to look at her husband and knew what he was about to explain to their daughter. She also knew just how difficult this was going to be for him.
"It's time," he said, gazing into his wife's understanding eyes.
"I'll be in the nursery if you need me," she said into his ear as she kissed his cheek and gave his hand a light squeeze of encouragement.
"What's wrong, Dad?" Ellie asked, puzzled.
"There's something I need to talk to you about," he said, sitting down beside her on the couch. "Other than your grandmother and your uncle Jon, the only person who knows about this is your Mom. Maybe I should have been more open with you girls but I wanted you to love your grandfather. And maybe I was a little ashamed and didn't want you to see your father as a victim."
"What are you saying, Dad? Are you telling me Grandfather hit you?"
"Yes." It was a three-letter word but one of the hardest Jed had ever uttered. "I spent most of my childhood trying to please that man but nothing I did was ever good enough."
"You've got to be kidding. You got a Ph.D., you won a Nobel Prize, you were a Congressman and Governor. He saw all that."
"Ellie, I could have been the greatest man alive and it wouldn't have been enough for him. What he really wanted was for me to be weak and submissive and stupid so he could shake his head in despair and revel in his superiority. But I wasn't that kind of person. Your Uncle Jon was, but I pushed him. You don't know what it's like to grow up in that kind of atmosphere. What it's like to always be walking on eggshells, never knowing what was going to set him off."
"I grew up knowing that you and Grandpa didn't get along but I never knew it was that bad. Grandpa never hit me or Liz or Zoey."
"I never wanted you to know it was that bad. Your mother and I made very sure that nothing happened to you girls. In fact, after your mother gave birth to Liz, we had a heart to heart with your grandfather. Well, I was there. Your mom did most of the talking. She told him that if he ever laid a finger on any of our children we would cut him out of our lives completely. And it worked. He never so much as raised his voice to you girls. Amazingly enough, there were times when I was even jealous of that. He loved you girls. Why couldn't he love me? Because, you know, the slaps and the punches were not the worst thing. The worst thing was that there were times I actually believed my father hated me. And I know there were times when I hated him with every fiber of my being. Before any of you girls were even conceived, I swore that I would never hit my children and that I would hug them and play with them and that they would know how much I loved them."
What he didn't tell Ellie was that it made him physically nauseous to spank his own kids even when it was just a deserving tap to the fanny. So, when it needed to be done, it was Abbey who had to do it.
"You did that, Dad. We've always known how much you love all of us."
"Do you, Ellie? Do you know what it did to me to find out from Millie that you are afraid of me?"
"I'm not afraid of you," Ellie said with surprise.
"Maybe the word is intimidated."
"Not by you. You're my Dad. But maybe I am intimidated by all of this," her hands moved to encompass the White House environs. "I know Zoey is like you. She loves all of this. She loves shaking hands and meeting people. And Liz, well other than Mom, she is the most organized person I've ever met. She loves all that strategizing and organizing on the campaign."
"I know that you're different from them, Ellie. I know you don't like the campaigning and the attention and that's why I didn't push you to take a bigger role."
"I just figured you didn't want me or need me."
"Want you?" Jed said with incredulity. "Of course I wanted you. I was very disappointed that you didn't choose to campaign more with us. But I also understood. You were just starting medical school and believe me, having lived through that with your mother, I knew how difficult that could be. I never wanted my career choice to interfere or make things difficult for you or your sisters. That was why I didn't push you. Just because your sisters share some of my traits and my interests doesn't mean that I love them more. You are so much like your mother and, just remember that I fell in love with your mother. And I fell in love with you the moment you slipped from your mother's body into my hands."
The tears began to stream down Ellie's cheeks. "I love you, Daddy," she cried, clutching on to his neck and suddenly she was a little girl again needing to feel her father's love and protection.
"I know, sweetheart," he said into her hair. "Sssh...I know."
+++++
Abbey gave a light tap and opened the door to the room her daughter slept in when she stayed in the White House. Ellie was laying in bed reading.
"It's OK, Mom, come in."
"Your father said you two had a good talk," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her.
"Mmhmm...Did you know that he actually went to Davis' apartment and pushed him around?" Ellie's voice was filled with a wonder that Abbey found surprising.
"Eleanor, your father would go through the burning fires of hell for you, for me, and for your sisters and brother."
"I know that Mom. I guess I've always known. That knowledge just got buried under all the layers of hurt."
"Well, I'm glad your father worked his way under those layers. He really does love you Ellie. Although he may love different things about each of you girls, he does love you all equally."
"I think I can actually believe that now."
"I see so much of your Dad in you, sweetheart. I see it in your earnestness, your sweetness, your empathy, and the way you are always striving to do the right thing. Why are you smiling?"
"Because Dad told me I was so much like you. He said that he sees so much of you in me and that he fell in love with you so why wouldn't he love me."
"Well, I guess, like your sisters and brother, you are an amazing combination of genetics."
"Thank God we come from a great gene pool," she grinned, then her smile faded with the memory of her father's words. "Except for Grandpa. I feel so bad for Dad that Grandpa treated him like that. I never knew."
"He never wanted you to know," Abbey tucked a strand of Ellie's hair behind her ear like she had when she was six. "It took a lot for him to even tell me in the beginning. It's still very hard for him to talk about it. He's very conflicted, even now."
"He shouldn't let it bother him. Dad is a great man, a much greater man than Grandpa ever was."
"We all see that but sometimes your father can't. Sometimes he is still that little boy who could never be good enough or smart enough. All he ever wanted was for his father to be proud of him."
"I didn't mean to make you sad, Mom," Ellie said, taking her hand.
"You didn't. It always makes me sad to think about your father and your Grandfather." At that moment there was a light tap at the door and Jed stood in the doorway with a fussing Nicholas in his arms.
"Sorry to interrupt this slumber party but I have a young man who is very hungry and Daddy just isn't cutting it anymore."
"I'm coming," Abbey said, kissing Ellie's cheek. "Good night, sweetie."
"Night Mom, night Dad."
"Sleep tight, kitten," Jed smiled tenderly as he handed Nicholas to Abbey. After taking her son into her arms, Abbey wrapped her arm around Jed's waist and kissed his cheek.
"What's that for?" He asked, puzzled.
"For being a great husband and father. And because I love you," And because you got short changed big time in the parental department and I have worked so hard since we got married to make up for that lack of love and approval, she thought sadly.
"I don't know what made you go all sentimental and mushy but I kind of like it."
"Enjoy it while you can," she gave him a saucy Abbey grin as she turned to enter the nursery.
"You know I will."
TBC...