TITLE: Lucky AUTHOR: Kasey POST EP: War Crimes RATING: PG-13 MAIN CHARACTERS: Donna, Josh, Cliff SUMMARY: “His curiosity as to the contents of the book was growing as he retreated to a table in the corner.” DISCLAIMERS: I do not own them. Clutching the small book in his hand, he pushed open the glass door and was met with the smell of coffee, danishes, and freshly baked muffins.  He stepped out to the counter, ordered a cappuccino and a chocolate muffin, then hung back to wait a moment.  His curiosity as to the contents of the book was growing as he waited, then took his provisions and retreated to a table in the corner.  He struggled to make himself comfortable on the tall, stool-like chair, finally wrapping his legs around the chair’s legs and letting the slight heel of his wingtips catch and hold the bar as he set the book on the table and opened it. The first page, in black ink, held the name of its owner and the number 7.  He wasn’t sure what the 7 meant – a lucky number? The number of the diary? He turned to the next page – blank – and then to the next, dated 10 Octobre, 1999. //Josh is driving me crazy!// Well, it certainly was talking about Josh, he thought.  Maybe there WOULD be more in the diary of relevance than he had thought. //He acts like I should be protecting him from Mandy just because I type up his files and sit at the desk outside his office – It’s not my fault Leo hired her, nor is it my problem that she’s his ex girlfriend. //Prime example that office romances suck.// He had to laugh – he could hear Donna speaking the words as he read them and it was amusing, especially certain lines. Knowing he only had 50 more minutes, he flipped to about halfway through the book – May of 2000. The entire entry he flipped to looked like it had been written during an earthquake – the writing was shaky and didn’t move in straight lines. //17 May, 2000. //I can hardly think right now.  I’ve been sent home – Mrs. Bartlet wants me to sleep for a few hours but I can’t stop thinking long enough to even attempt that. //Barely thinking yet thinking too much anyway.  Vaguely ironic in a sleep-deprived, worried kind of way. //Last night //God, not last night like 20-odd hours ago, four hours ago.  Four hours, twenty-two minutes ago. //The President was giving a speech at the Newseum last night and as they were leaving the President was working the rope line like he always does and all of a sudden two guys started shooting from a nearby apartment and Josh was hit.  I saw there had been a shooting on the CNN feed and rushed to the hospital – it took me forever to be allowed in which I guess shows the security system works well – and I walked into the waiting room and a doctor was in there and everyone gave me a sort of pitying look ‘cause they knew Josh was hurt pretty badly and they knew I’d be upset. //Mrs. Landingham waited with me for awhile…so did Abby, so did CJ, so did Sam.  Then Abby sent me home and here I am now. //10 more hours of Josh’s surgery – the bullet lacerated a something or other artery so they couldn’t do a…something, I don’t know, I don’t understand any of it.  All I know is he’s hurt real bad, a lot worse than the President. //I should get back there – I’m so scared…I even starteed praying.  I’m not, like, religious or anything, but if it’ll save Josh, I’ll do anything.  He’s a good guy, despite all his arrogance and annoyingness sometimes…Why the hell did this happen to him? To any of us?// The strings of his Republican heart were pulled tightly.  He could picture her – blonde hair hanging in front of her red-rimmed blue eyes as she laid on her stomach on the bed, trying to capture and sort out everything in her head.  He felt a strong urge to go hug her, comfort her somehow, make up for the pain she had been dealt over a year ago on that fateful night when he himself had watched the video over and over again on the television in his office in a state of shock. The next set of entries dealt with Josh’s recovery.  It surprised him that she had nursed him back to health like a mother or something.  Maybe the best explanation of that was found in the entry of 9 Septembre. //I keep asking myself why I put up with him, with his theoretical physics and his defiance and everything.  And each time I ask, I come up with the same answer. //Because he needs me.  Because he has no one else except his mother who can’t get around too well. //And besides – I take care of him when he’s at work, I make sure he has what he needs and is where he needs to be when he needs to be there.  I take care of him.  So this makes sense to me somehow.// Then she moved on to discussing something else. A few pages later, he found an entry in shaky writing like the Rosslyn one. //21 Decembre, 2000.// She must not have had time, what with caring for Josh and easing him back into work and the midterms and everything. //Something is very wrong with josh. //I don’t know what it is, but it’s scaring me.  This cannot be normal, not for anybody and I don’t know what to do. //He let me go to the Congressional Christmas party – YoYo Ma was there and amazing..>I was a few rows behind Josh and could see him from the back, and he kept flinching like someone was hitting him.  Afterward I saw him and he looked…like Sam did the night of Rosslyn. //Rumours are going around that Josh is in trouble, that he yelled at the President.  Margaret says Leo had her call a guy from ATVA…He’s been so out of it lately.  It scares me.// The next was a very long story in scrawled script written hurriedly, as though she had been afraid she might forget it if she didn’t write it down quickly. //Christmas Eve ? Day 200 //What a day.  What a night. //Josh had his meeting with the guy from ATVA today, and Leo had taken me aside a few days ago to tell me the guy wanted to talk to me.  So I talked to Dr. Keyworth, told him all the things I’d noticed about Josh’s weird behaviour lately and about Josh’s hand which he claimed he’d cut on a glass after the Congressional Christmas party, but I had thought he’d smashed a window or something. //Turns out I was right, only I didn’t know that until a couple hours ago. //So I came in today at about 2 in the afternoon so that I’d be there when he was done.  Leo was already there, reading a briefing book in the lobby. I went and got some work done, joined Leo in the lobby for awhile, waited around ‘til a little before 11 at night when josh came out.  He talked to Leo for a bit, and I entered the scene when I heard Leo mention me.  I was gonna take him to the hospital to get his hand looked at. //On the way out, we passed some carolers – he looked freaked.  We got to my car and I turned on the radio – he immediately snapped it off.  I made some crack about ‘I know you think my music’s crap but too bad’ and he just…stared at me. //We got to the emergency room and, of course, had to wait FOREVER, and he and I were sort of alone in a corner of the waiting room and he started talking, telling me all these things, these incredibly sad and scary things about his family and his recent state of mind… //His family was well-off, money-wise, lived in a suburb of Hartford, where his father practiced law.  Josh IDOLIZED his father, went to the same schools to try and be like his father, only he didn’t like law so he went into politics thus disappointing him.  His mother never recovered after Josh’s sister died when they were little.  His mom still has never changed Joanie’s room (Joanie was his sister), nor has she packed up or changed anything of Noah’s (his father). //And he’s telling me this and trying to be, y’know, snarky and Josh-like, only he’s blinking back tears the whole time. //And all of a sudden, he asks ‘were you scared?’ So I answered ‘I’ve been scared a lot, when do you mean?’ ‘At Rosslyn.’ ‘I wasn’t there.’ ‘I know, I mean after.’ ‘Yeah,’ I say quietly, ‘cause I couldn’t’ve hidden it well.  And then he says ‘I wasn’t.  that’s the thing, I was…curious, to be sure, I wasn’ entirely sure what was going on, but I wasn’t scared.  More like…I thought I was back on the campaign, so I wa just…contented.  Like a…recurring dream you know hot it ends or something…then I woke up and was too drugged to really give a damn…’ The he pauses for a long time and finally finishes really quietly ‘I never thought to be scared until Thanksgiving.’ //It started watching the football game with Toby and Sam and CJ…Everyone was cheering for the Giants (Except him, he’s a Patriots guy) and the shouts made him flash on the Newseum.  It kept being little things he couldn’t place and it freaked him out. //Then came the nightmares.  About death and Heaven and Hell and his father and his sister and going down in a blaze of fires.  Nightmares from which he’d wake up in a cold sweat.  Then the pilot killed himself and suddenly all the dreams started being about guns and killing himself.  And, as he described it, ‘daydreams and nightmares started flwoing together, then my conscious joined in ‘til I barely knew up from down, let alone real from not or logical from insane.’ //So he’s telling me this and his hands are shaking so badly that I take them and hold them to make them stop.  I’m sorta staring at the bandage and he sees and says ‘Have ya ever had a time when…when you can’t…make your mind…stop yelling? And you want them to stop SO badly you’ll do anything to shut them up?  Or…Or you’re stuck talking to someone who won’t leave you alone and you want a loud distraction?’ He pauses.  ‘I smashed the window in my apartment.  Y’know that little one in the living room? Right now, it’s just plastic sheeting stapled to the…the wood stuff around the window.’ //Then a doctor comes out and we go in and Josh gets his hand x-rayed and stitched and bandaged and the doctor gives him a prescription of antibiotics and then I take him home. //It’s like 5 am now, so I’m gonna try and sleep.  Wish me luck.// He was barely breathing by the time he finished.  The amount of top-secret things in there…the amount of hush-hush in those pages alone…the things that had been kept from EVERYONE…The Deputy White House Chief of Staff with PTSD? Having nightmares about guns and killings? Wanting to do anything to make the voices in his head stop? A quick check of his watch told him he had 20 minutes, so he flipped further in the back and happened on the right page. //My God.  I can’t even breathe. //Toby took me into his office today and told me the President has MS and we’re going public tomorrow night and there’s not time to freak out ‘cause Josh needs my help.  So I was keeping it together until about 9 when josh came in and told me Mrs. Landingham had died in a car crash. //And y’know what I said? //I blinked and said ‘Go – you’re going into lockdown, you guys are.  I’m going home – no one else knows I know yet.  I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And I left. //This is so awful it’s…I can’t even…I can’t get my head around it…It’s too damn much.// And that was all the more it really said about the MS.  It mentioned the campaigning, the kick-off, the subpoenas.  Nothing covert, nothing that wasn’t public knowledge. Well, nothing of that sort related to the MS.  THE PTSD of Joshua Lyman would’ve been the coming of the Messiah for the Republicans. If he told them. But he wasn’t so sneaky or mean or evil as that.  He had enough personal things he wanted to keep personal to understand that Lyman probably wanted the same. Finishing his coffee, he closed the book and walked across the street.  It was cold out, but Josh and Donna were still sitting outside on the park bench.  Donna had to be freezing, he thought – she had not an ounce of fat on her and not that thick of a coat. Josh stood when he saw him coming, checking his watch as the book was placed in his hand.  “Is there gonna be a problem?” Josh asked in his best “Hatchet-Man” voice. “No.” A pause.  “You’re a lucky guy to have her, Josh.  Not everyone has someone so loyal and caring – not to mention beautiful like her.” “I know,” Josh said quietly into the increasing wind as Cliff walked off, hands jammed into his pockets against the cold.