“To Union, All States of It” – Abbey Bartlet, West Wing

She wasn’t a shy woman by nature, but she was shy about her scars.  The bombing attack that had killed the Iranian President eighteen months ago and had nearly cost the U.S. President her life was very much a part of her current existence.  She still had to treat the burns on her ring hand. It wasn’t horribly disfigured but she remained self-conscious about it at any rate.  She didn’t wear a ring there anymore, instead around her neck was slim gold chain on which a band always hung.  It wasn’t only a tribute; it was a reminder.

 

                For several months she’d been forced to use a walker—the horror! And the bad press—to get around the White House. She was in no hurry to repeat that experience.  Even her mother had mocked her to some extent.  Dorothy still moved with a fair amount of grace given her advanced years.  Hillary hissed if she stepped down a stair the wrong way, which was a lasting effect of a broken pelvis she supposed.  Whenever the weather would suddenly change, she’d move about with a cane.  To her utter surprise, she started a trend.  Luckily for the rest of the female movers and shakers in corporate America, they didn’t have still-healing pelvises to contend with, so they sported theirs with a great deal more fashion forward cuteness.  Hillary stepped and flinched.

 

                In any case, she was glad to say that her relationship with Evan was on the mend.  They were back to being of one mind on most things and agreeable on others.  He’d stepped back into his role as her attack dog with thanks and satisfaction.  Being President didn’t suit him, he’d decided. She’d seen the video of him moving across the East Lawn.  She thought he was wrong, but she didn’t want to lose him so she kept her peace.

 

                Their evenings were back on.  He was there as usual with a useful word and a listening ear.  He was also notorious for a mean back massage.  He was the only one she let see the scars; she still tried to hide them, by and large, but if he caught a peek she didn’t become too dreadfully uneasy.  He was gentle the few times she’d let him touch her skin directly.  Some of the surgical scars were still healing, raised and pink.  He massaged around them, kneading gently out the knots of the unbearable day.  The woman had nearly been killed but the Congress couldn’t let up for one day.  She’d spent the first six months out of the hospital catching up on the seven weeks she’d spent in it.  If she’d had an easier time sleeping at night, she might have done it in half the time.

 

                She still didn’t sleep well but the memories were becoming somewhat lighter to bear.  Alegre Michaud’s ghost was no longer a constant companion, but an infrequent one, only present when her former subordinates were near.  She thought of that aide often, however.  He came to mind whenever she turned to the first page of a newspaper to see how her alleged romance with Evan was progressing—well by the way; Susan didn’t know but they had plans for him to divorce her by October 1^st and they’d be wed in time for the State of the Union Address.  Nowadays, she didn’t scoff at such delusions per se.  She felt a niggling anxiety about their relationship that left her increasingly unable to be as completely honest with him as she had been once.

 

                There were things she wanted to tell him, but she found herself worried that he’d take them the wrong way.  Feeling like this made her crazy given all she’d been through.  She had survived an assassination attempt, more or less intact, and she was squandering her precious time worrying about how to form a sentence.  She was stronger than that, more fierce than that.  If only she knew what to say to him, if only the words wouldn’t stick in her throat when she tried…

 

                Lost in thought about the relationship that had greatly become the center of her life, Hillary didn’t hear Evan coming.  She was staring at her former ring hand, lightly caressing the mostly-healed burns and marveling somberly over the ability to see touch but feel so little.  This was a routine for her, to fixate on her injuries when there were less constructive issues upon which to fixate.  It was a compulsion and a need.

 

                “I personally think it’s a damned fine hand.”

 

                She swung around to look at her old friend with an expectant enthusiasm.  Even if she wasn’t dripping with optimism, she could pretend she was for his sake.  “Hey, I didn’t hear you come in.”

 

                He waved off her apologies and sat down beside her on the blue-and-ivory striped couch in the center of the Oval Office.  “I noticed.  You looked pretty preoccupied.”  He took her injured hand in his to begin his own quiet inspection.  He traced the tender fault where unmarred skin met grafted tissue with a down-feather touch.  She flinched away because of his gentleness, not in spite of it.  Evan gave little indication that he’d noted her reaction, but concluded his perusal just the same, closing it with a thumb stroke across her knuckles.  “Like I said, you’ve got a damned fine hand here.  Nothing to worry over.”

 

                Hillary smiled thinly and pulled her hand reluctantly out of his grasp.  “I’m not worrying.”  He gave her a significant look.  She shrugged.  He let the falsehood pass without verbal challenge.  “So, what brings you to my neck of the White House?”

 

                He pulled a government-issue brown file folder from behind his back.  “Tales from the dark side.  John McCain wants our—or should I say, your—help on a project.”  At her quirked brow, he grinned.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.  Looks like he wants to work across the aisle again.  You’re his favorite Commander-in-Chief and all that.”  Evan leaned back and folded his hands behind his head to wait.

 

                She pulled her glasses from her pocket and took the folder to inspect its contents.    “Wow, he wants to sponsor another G.I. Bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.  He didn’t want to put his name on the last one, but he wants to head-up another effort since that one didn’t pass.”  She fingered through the loose documents and scanned the components of the articles, mentally checking the details against the Party platform.  It was surprisingly Democratic in nature.  “This does not scream Right-Wing handiwork to me.”

 

                “Nope.  That’s your maverick, coming home to roost,” he quipped.  She kicked him squarely in the shin with one heeled foot.  He yelped and grabbed the wounded appendage.  “Don’t blame me because you attract Republicans like runaway railcars,” he laughed through his pain.  “They want a little love from the President, just a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge.”  He wiggled his eyebrows, “If you know what I mean?”

 

                “Are you twelve?” she snapped.  He just laughed harder.

 

                “Only around you, Hidge.”  She rolled her eyes and smacked him fondly over the knee with the brief.  Not even a flinch about the name anymore; that’s what he’d done for her.

 

                “I thought you got paid to do a job around here.”  She tossed the folder on the coffee table and decided to forget about it for a few hours.  Wouldn’t kill her.  She tossed her feet on top of it next.  That wouldn’t kill her either.  She hadn’t slept at all last night.

 

                “Over-paid probably. I don’t think the Framers meant for the Vice-Presidency to be so enjoyable.” 

 

Hillary stretched her arms over head, trying to work the kinks out of her lower back.  The couch was comfortable as anything, but it had not so far been a comfortable day.  If she never met Harry Reid again, it would be too late to keep her from despising him.  He and Nancy made sure that any day she was in a meeting with them was going to be the absolute most unpleasant day of her week.  This day was no different.

 

                “Well, the Presidency is definitely every bit as unpleasant as they intended.  Why there aren’t more presidential suicides in history, I’ll never know.”  She threw her arm over her eyes to block out the light from the tableside lamp.

 

                “Because,” he whispered and eased closer to her reposing figure, “they had Vice-Presidents to halve the burden.”  He laid his hands on her shoulders and nudged her forth.  She resisted faintly, only to relent at the application of slightly greater force.  He moved behind her and settled his legs on each side of her body.

 

                She sighed.  “You don’t have to do this every day.  I can hire a masseuse if I need one.  Huma’s been known to give a damned respectable back rub when it’s called for.”

 

                Evan nodded slowly and responded in a soothing tone.  “I’m sure she does.  Nevertheless, the President deserves better than ‘respectable.’  Why settle for respectable when you can have world-class?” 

 

                “Oh,” she guffawed.  “We’re getting a bit full of ourselves now, aren’t we? Who ever said that your back rubs were ‘world-class’? They’re D.C.-class maybe, but anything more is reaching.”

 

With a tisk, he, first, started to knead the overwrought tendons at the base of her skull with his thumbs.  She moaned in relief, shifting slightly to give him greater access to her neck.  The corners of his mouth turned up despite his efforts.  That, to him, sounded like world-class approval.

 

“Stop smirking. It’s your hands I like, not your ego.”  He sat his chin on her shoulder with an exaggerated pout.

 

“Here I go thinking it’s my mind you want when it’s been my body all along.  I’m hurt, Hill. I really am.”

 

“Shut up and rub my back.”

 

“Slave driver,” he groused, resuming his machinations at the nape of her neck.

 

“Don’t let Barack hear you say that. He’ll use you as a witness at my impeachment hearing.  A hostile one, if necessary.”  On this rare occasion, her humor wasn’t self-deprecating.  Obama was definitely someone she’d go out of her way to take a swipe at.

 

“Ah,” he teased, “is he really as nefarious as all that?”

 

She pulled out of his grasp and turned around to look her Vice-President squarely in the eyes.  “Have you met him?”

 

Evan relented. “Fair point.”  She returned to her place under his hands.  “Begs the question, though. Why isn’t he in jail?”

 

She let out a faint hiss when he ran aground one of her more bothersome wounds.  “The same reason George Bush and Dick Cheney didn’t get to experience Guantanamo Bay for themselves.”

 

“Everything that goes to hell isn’t Nancy’s fault,” he sighed, continuing his downward trajectory.  He pressed a knuckle to what amounted to a Gordian knot of tense muscles along her spine. She twisted in discomfort but didn’t complain.

 

“Mmm, no, but you have to agree that she plays a pretty big role in opening the trapdoor.”

 

                Evan shrugged. Who was he to disagree?  Nancy Pelosi had been a splinter in the thigh of the administration before it existed—she remained an aggravated one to present day.  The Vice-President had tried to give her the benefit of the doubt to some extent, but he was becoming increasingly convinced that she had set out to lead his Commander-in-Chief off the nearest high cliff.  He didn’t like backroom espionage and he didn’t like how it upset Hillary that she knew it was happening yet remained powerless to end it.  Her power went the distance, her recommendations were first order of the session, but she could not influence those already predisposed to sink her agenda.  That killed her.

 

This wasn’t her thinking about herself; this was her thinking of the good of the Party.  Someday soon those Congresspersons were going to have to justify those ‘nay’ votes and it wouldn’t be easy.  The chances of their Democratic majority returning next go-round were diminishing by the day.

 

Quiet stretched over their closely-pressed forms, save for the combined noise of Evan’s focused digits sliding across her satin blouse and her intermittent exhales of respite as he went.  He knew perfectly which spots to press to wring out the strain and anxiety of now.  She tried to carry it all at once, all on her shoulders.  She never wanted to further split the load, to let him carry a little extra so she could go a week without seeming to be on the verge of exhaustion.

 

He understood it to a degree because she’d explained it to him once.

 

Shortly after her return to White House—still under re-construction following the suicide bombing—Evan had found her toiling in the Oval on a Sunday dawn.  The walker that had been assigned as her assistive transport stood opposite his usual seat by her desk.  Hillary was on the couch, much farther from it than she should’ve been. That told him something very clearly.  One, she hated the contraption as much as he’d imagined she would.  Two, she wasn’t relying on it nearly as much as her doctor had advised.  Two bothered him a great deal more than one.

 

He padded soundlessly through the Office’s open door to stand behind her, hands flat on the backrest of the couch.  He peeked over her head to the plethora of documents fanned out around her, on the cushions beside her, on the center table, on the carpet.  His previous concerns fled his thoughts. He was stunned—and not a little perturbed.  More than a couple of the files in her barrage was stamped with “The Office of the Vice-President.”

 

He knew he’d impishly confessed that he wasn’t suited to the Presidency himself, but he hadn’t imagined she thought him incapable of his own job, too.  It wasn’t like Hillary not to say there was a problem if she had concerns.  Given how close they had become during her hospital stay, this didn’t make sense.  Just as then, just as always, he needed to understand what was going on in her head.

 

“If you’re interested I have a whole inbox filled with things I’m evidently not qualified to handle for myself.”  He inwardly balked at his flair for the dramatic.  He couldn’t be straightforward with Hillary—she too much inspired his need to banter and parry.  He was sure that need would be the death of him someday soon.

 

His President turned with aching caution to see him.  He would have to say the look on her face was seven-parts guilt, three-parts defiance.  He was glad to see that defiance back.  During a number of their hospital visits she’d been a study in active passivity.  The old Hillary was making a return; he just wasn’t sure he recognized her.

 

“I have no doubt that you’re amply qualified to carry out the work that crosses your desk.  That’s why I hired you.”  She righted herself, rubbing carefully at her lower back.

 

“Then, why are the contents of my inbox spread out on your floor?”  A mixture of confusion and betrayal colored his voice.  This wasn’t how he spoke to his President, but this wasn’t how she usually treated him.

 

She didn’t look back at him again. “Because you’re a busy man, Evan, with an active family, and lately you’ve been devoting the great majority of your waking hours to me.  That isn’t fair to Susan or the boys.  They need to see more of you and I’m willing to work a little harder to make that happen.”

 

An odd feeling of gratitude surged within him.  He hadn’t seen his boys much lately.  Hillary’s convalescence had ensured that between checking in with her and carrying out the duties of their two offices, that he had no time to spare for his sons.  They were growing up fast and he wondered if they’d even remember him in a while.  Susan lived in a permanent state of aggravation. He sensed it each night as he crawled out of his rumpled suit and into his perpetually immaculate side of the bed.  The truth wasn’t that he didn’t want to deal with her anger regarding the state of things; he simply couldn’t.  There just wasn’t time enough in a 24-hour period for him to be prize in all the roles he had to play.  Something had to give.

 

He spoke more softly this time.  “You don’t have to do this.  I’ll manage.”

 

She pecked a bunch of numbers into an intimidating-looking calculator.  “You haven’t so far.”  She tisked semi-audibly and tapped in another series of numbers.

 

“How would you know,” he defensively inquired.  Few things raised his hackles like someone questioning his devotion to his family.

 

She yawned uproariously.  The tiredness seemed to wash right over her.  She dropped her hand away from her mouth as though she just couldn’t support it any longer.  “I have it on good authority that you haven’t spent an evening alone with Susan in seven months.” He moved to object; she dismissed his excuses.  “That was even before the bombing.  This was long before we had our falling out, and way before the peace talks began.  You don’t have an excuse, and if you’re looking for one, I won’t be it.”

 

“I don’t need an excuse not to spend time with my wife. And I don’t need my President dictating my life.”  There he was, raising his voice again.  Thankfully, the Secret Service had become used to their talks exceeding the volume of polite conversation.  Volume was their calling card, passion was their trademark.  “Hillary, I get that you mean well, but you cannot co-opt my job because you think I should be spending more time at home.  We don’t work together so that you can pass judgment on the way I lead my life.  And we’re not friends because I need your advice on how to breathe first thing in the morning.  I’ve had a mother and she broke the mold when it came to doling out her brand of wisdom.”  His President didn’t rise to the bait.  She wouldn’t justify herself to any greater extent than she already had.  She had an irascible tendency to stick to her guns once they were drawn.

 

Seventeen months hadn’t lessened her determination a lick.  She still burned her weight in midnight oil pretty much every night but she made sure that he’d cleared the OEOB in time to catch the last of the under-seventeen cartoons on Cartoon Network.  He and the twins were closer.  His wife and he…were having a harder time getting back into the swing of things.

 

That’s part of what kept him here with his President this afternoon.  She wasn’t asking him to go back to being someone else.  She wasn’t asking that he act the same way he had when he’d been just Evan Bayh, the Senator from Indiana.  He wasn’t nearly that man anymore and he wasn’t at all sure where that man had gone.

 

Hillary had recognized his inattention awhile ago.  She’d given him a pass as he always did for her when she became sidetracked by events of the past.  Their combined years had been something of a rollercoaster.  She knew firsthand how difficult it was to avoid recounting the travails and wondering how she could’ve done anything in a better way.  Sure she could have, but she didn’t think she’d be here today if she had.  Here made the maddening journey worthwhile.  If need be she’d do it again, at the same crushing cost.

 

Dossiers abandoned on the Resolute Desk were calling out to Hillary.  She knew she had to sign them and messenger them back to Congress sometime this evening to get them on the agenda for tomorrow.  Good, something to keep her busy while Evan thought.  She couldn’t be the one to bring him back from where he’d gone.  He’d return to the present when he was ready to talk.

 

Taking care not to disturb him, she rose to stand.  His hands fell from her shoulder and back where they’d fallen still when his recollections had carried him away.  His eyes were distant—and sad.  On impulse, she brushed away the hair that had fallen into them, stroking his cheek just so as she grudgingly retreated.  He turned into the loving caress with closed eyes.

 

She reddened with a gulp.  She hadn’t intended for him to feel the touch nor had she anticipated his response.  There was an inexplicable longing in his expression that unnerved her.  As far as she knew, Evan didn’t long.  He had everything he could possibly want.  He had a dream job, a lovely wife, two remarkable sons, and the world at his fingertips.  What was left for him to desire?

 

She found her answer when he opened his eyes.  Drawn unobscured in his gaze was her reflection.  Like the air had been kicked from her lungs, she took a step back—and bumped directly into the coffee table. An old pain triggered, she staggered.  He caught her in his arms and stopped her from making a very Presidential fool out of herself.

 

“You all right,” he asked, still holding on.

 

She nodded, biting her lip to prevent herself saying something she shouldn’t.  She clutched his arms while the worst of the pain aftershocks rippled to their conclusion.  “Hurts just as bad as I remember. And here I thought I might actually be healing,” she quipped awkwardly.

 

He smiled blandly at her attempt at humor.  She presumed it was blandly since she refused to meet his eyes to read the emotion they held. She didn’t want to know.  She knew as much as she could stand and she would definitely say something she shouldn’t.  It didn’t help that she was perfectly capable of staring at his lips.  They were directly in her field of vision.

 

She could still picture the yearning in his expression, as well as the answering desire that must have echoed in hers.  Widowhood had by no means made her oblivious to Evan’s attractiveness.  He’d always been handsome and had always had charm.  She wasn’t immune to it; being near him so frequently seemed to have had the opposite effect.  She was vulnerable to him and it appeared that he had become vulnerable to her, too.  She had been afraid this would happen.

 

Giving herself a stern shake, she averted her eyes from his mouth.  There was nothing there for her.  Evan wasn’t hers to want.  Truthfully, she didn’t feel free to want anyone.

 

“It’s getting pretty late and I need to get a couple of resolutions up to the Hill before the close of business.”  She removed herself from his custody, studiously avoiding matching his gaze with her own.  In his lack of insistence, she felt damned.  “Give my best to Susan, Nicholas, and Beau.  It’s been too long since I’ve caught up with them.  I don’t think I’ve seen the twins since their last birthday.  You’ll have to bring them by the Oval come some light day.”

 

She failed to see whether he was picking up on her signal, but just the same he followed her lead.  “There are no light days in the White House, Madame President.”  He comprehended unspoken orders better than any soldier she’d met.

 

“No, I suppose there aren’t.”  She stifled, only just, the great urge to sigh in regret.

 

“Regardless, I’ll find some free time to bring them by.  Saying their father works in an office across from the White House isn’t nearly as impressive as saying their favorite aunt works in the Oval Office.” At that, she could smile again.

 

“Does this ‘favorite aunt’ role require that I buy them cars for their high school graduation?”

 

He beamed proudly—she could hear it in his voice, as she stared distractedly downward.  “Nah, I’ve got that covered.  Beau wants a Kawasaki motorcycle.  Nicholas wants a Mustang GT.  At least that’s what they want now. It’ll change half a dozen times before they turn eighteen.  God, it seems like just yesterday I was holding them in my arms for the first time.  They were so small.”  He was filled with wonder at the memory and she was filled with wonder at him.

 

She gave up on signing anything else. It was futile. “How do you think I feel about Chelsea?  My little girl is not so little anymore.  She’s all grown-up.  She’s doing my old job—and better, some think.  You’ve got a few more years to keep yours close, but I’m all out of time.”  In dim contrast to her melancholy, a panoramic shot of Chelsea being sworn into the Senate gleamed in a frame on her desk.  She’d been so beautiful then and, still, so sad.

 

“There’s still time.” She started at his voice sounding against her ear.  His nearness should’ve been a comfort. “You always have time to hold those you love close.”  He couldn’t possibly know how much it hurt to hear him say that.

 

“Not all of them.”  The names went without saying.

 

He seemed to choke at that.  “No, not all of them.” He dipped down and bestowed a lingering kiss to her cheek.  “Good night, Madame President.”

 

                “Good night, Evan,” she returned quietly as she watched him go.  The door clicked silently shut and she was left alone.  In this oval room, with more exits than entrances, the loving specter that had always hung idly by faded away.  She didn’t see him, of course—she never had, but she’d felt him, in the places where, in life, he had been larger than life.  Here, he’d been his biggest, but not anymore.

 

                Maybe it was about time.

 

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