Archive of Our Own

Every once in a while, Josh will remember the article that CJ gave him, the one about smallpox and the risks of a global pandemic. It doesn’t burden him often, but once in a while it’ll come to mind again. He remembered it once as Chief of Staff, and made sure he got fifteen minutes to brief President Santos on it, managing to convince him to establish a pandemic preparedness task force. His successor, who Josh is decidedly not fond of, cut the task force within the first hundred days, but Josh is beginning to feel vindicated in his anger at that action.

Too bad Josh’s vindication doesn’t actually help the unfolding public health crisis.

When the first reports come out and most people consider this strange new disease a faraway threat, never expecting it to touch them, Josh starts to get anxious. He gets anxious about things easily, yes, but this is different. His mind keeps drifting back to the smallpox article, to what he told CJ two decades earlier about the devastation a single molecule can bring to an increasingly globalized population. He doesn’t share this with Donna or the kids, or at least he doesn’t until it’s obvious that the problem is not going to leave any corner of the globe untouched.

In February, he starts to get antsy, checking the news too much, just waiting for a bomb to drop.

In March, his whole world, and everyone else’s, falls apart. Cases start to rise exponentially (as Josh, with the aid of an internet epidemiologist whose blog he’s more than a little obsessed with checking, predicted they would), and then nothing is at all the same.

Within the span of a few days, he learns that Georgetown will not be coming back from spring break, that his kids will not be going back to their own school, and that even Congress is going to start meeting virtually. He and Donna have their own home offices, and he’s grateful they have enough space, but he still doesn’t relish the prospect of the tight quarters for who even knows how long.

Everyone should have to stay inside for three months so that they truly appreciate the outdoors he had said after his own confinement during recovery from his gunshot wound, and he’s not sure he stands by that anymore.

“We have to be careful,” Donna points out one weekend when Josh complains about this. He had volunteered to go to the grocery store—something he never does—but Donna had instead decided to order groceries for delivery. “You’ve got lung damage already, you know how sick you could get. And this…”

“You’ve got lung damage too!” Josh points out, although he does concede the argument. Both he and Donna are at higher risk for getting seriously ill, and if anything, he doesn’t want to put his children through that.

His children. Josie has cried four times about the cancellation of the musical she’s in over a single weekend, and Noah’s already begging to see his friends despite Donna’s strict admonishments that they all need to stay home to protect each other. Only Leah has been seemingly untouched by this, although Josh thinks Donna’s description of the threat of disease has frightened her because his six-year-old has been clingier than usual.

Which is a problem when he has to log onto Zoom for the first time and Leah refuses to be lifted off his lap.

The concept of teaching class online is foreign to Josh. He’s always been technology-challenged, although he’s slowly adapted to a much more technological world. Donna still makes fun of his hunt-and-peck typing—“This is why I used to have to type everything for you,” she’ll say—but he’s at least capable now of using a computer. His classes have, for a long time, simply been lectures, papers, and presentations, so he figures he’ll try and talk at his students over the internet and see how it goes.

He’s not sure how well he can do that when his daughter is still curled up in his lap.

“Hey baby,” he says, ruffling her curls. “I have to teach class now. And you know how boring I am to listen to when I teach class, right?” Leah has spent many hours in the back of Josh’s classroom when Donna was out of town and there wasn’t a babysitter to be had; she’d become rather a favorite of his students. That was last year, however, before she started kindergarten. “Can you go play? Or do you have schoolwork to do?”

Leah shakes her head and then buries it in his shoulder. “I want to stay here.”

“Leah, baby, I have to teach. I can’t work with you right here, okay.”

“Why can’t you?” she asks, looking up at him, and something in the way she says it reminds him so strongly of Donna that it makes his chest ache.

She definitely inherited the ‘you killed my hamster’ face from Donna, the one Josh has never been able to resist. “You’ve got to promise not to be at all distracting, okay?” he says. “My students are bigger than you, but they also get easily distracted while in class. If you’re here, you have to be quiet and listen. Can you do that?”

Leah nods with firm conviction, and how could Josh ever resist that?

Josh wrestles his arm out from under her and opens up Zoom on his computer. “Wait…” he says, not really to Leah but more for himself. “How do I start this?”

She reaches out and presses a button that starts the meeting he arranged. The screen turns into a bunch of mostly blank boxes, the names of his students on each. Josh sighs heavily but begins to speak. “Hi everyone. This is a little… well, more than a little weird, but bear with me. I’ve got a…” he frowns as he realizes something. “Can you all hear me?’

“You’re muted, Daddy,” Leah whispers, reaching out to press a button.

Josh looks at her incredulously. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“We called Aunt CJ on here this weekend,” Leah says matter-of-factly. “It’s not that hard.” Josh isn’t sure where his six-year-old got her sass, but he rubs his eye behind his glasses and tries not to let his amusement show.

“You’re not muted anymore,” he hears one of his students say, and so he laughs. “Alright, everyone, I know this is weird. We’re going to do the best we can to cope with it. For this first online class, I’ve got a visitor here with me; she’s promised to be very quiet and not at all distracting.”

Leah giggles and snuggles further into his chest, and Josh begins to expand on the function of exploratory committees in presidential runs, his daughter curled up on his lap the only thing keeping his hands from waving wildly.

She insists on joining him for the first couple classes, although the novelty wears off pretty fast. It wears off for all of them, cabin fever setting in among every member of the Moss-Lyman family.

Leah stops being so clingy once she realizes that home is a place safe from the scary things she hears on the news, but instead she just begins to get whiny. Noah get antsy, spending more and more time out in the front driveway throwing a basketball at the garage door. Josie gets more withdrawn, complaining that she’s read every single book on her shelf and that nothing is interesting anymore. Donna is handling it the best out of any of them, or so it seems, but she’s broken her ‘grocery delivery only’ rule just to have an excuse to get out of the house.

For Josh, it’s better than before in some ways. The last time he was stuck inside like this, there was so much pain, he had almost no mobility or energy, and despite the support of Donna and the rest of his friends, he still felt completely alone. He’s not alone now, and his body doesn’t hurt nearly as much (the occasional weather-related chronic pain flare-up not withstanding), but he’s not sure he likes it when everyone else is struggling with him. In some ways, he thinks he’d rather take on this burden alone, if it means his kids would be spared.

It’s like before in some ways too, because Donna has banned the news from anywhere but their bedroom, after Josie spent an entire afternoon watching Fox News (“Not even CNN?” Josh had questioned indignantly and “I could swear I put parental blocks on Fox News.”) and was suddenly coming up with worst-case scenarios—her talent at this almost rivals her father’s— leading to a household ban on TV news consumption for the sake of the anxiety of the kids (and probably for Josh’s sake too).

Still, sometimes being stuck inside gets to be too much. He’ll go on walks or take the car out for a drive (thank goodness he doesn’t have Secret Service protection anymore) but one day, it gets to be too much. Josie is singing the song that was supposed to be her solo in the school musical over and over again, with a rather mournful tone, and while most of the time Josh is more than happy to watch his daughter perform, the music is overwhelming him today (why oh why had Sam introduced her to musical theatre?). “Donna,” he says, popping his head into her home office where she’s deep into making notes on a bill, “I’m going to the office.”

“Your office is open?” Donna asks. There are quite a few more restrictions on Capitol Hill than there are on the campus of Georgetown University, so she hasn’t been back to her Congressional office since March.

Josh shrugs. “Should be. I’ve got access still. I just… I have to do some grading. And honestly, it might be better if my afternoon class doesn’t have the soundtrack of Annie as background music.”

Donna chuckles in concession to this point, but frowns. “Are you sure that’s safe? You’ve seen how cases are going up, and I wonder if…”

“I’m not going to see anyone there,” Josh says firmly. “I’m going to go straight to my office, and I’ll keep the door closed, and…” he presses his lips together and lets a bit of air escape from between them, “it’ll be good for my mental health, I think. To get out of the house a bit.”

Those seem to be the magic words; Donna has been particularly concerned about his mental health since this whole thing started, and with the constant low level of anxiety and tension he’s felt since January, he can see why.

Sure enough, when he gets to the offices of the Political Science department at Georgetown, the only person who is there is the office manager, sequestered in her own office at the front. Josh gives her a tight smile, forgetting that he’s donned a surgical mask (god, the last time he wore one of these was in an operating room in Germany, and that very thought will stop him short if he allows himself to dwell on it too long), and heads towards his own office where he pulls out his laptop.

He hates grading electronic submissions. He hates Canvas. He hates how quiet it is in the building, when there’s no chatter of students outside, no one knocking on his door. There’s only the quiet hum of the air circulator and Josh’s own thoughts to entertain him.

He’d assigned a paper about primary strategies of historical campaigns, warning students that they’d have to make sure they got all their details straight if they happened to write about any of the campaigns he’d been a part of. Not many did, although he was surprised to see how many 1998 Hoynes Primary Campaign papers there were. They probably didn’t realize how involved Josh had been at the start of that campaign; sometimes, Josh forgets himself. One student, however, was bold enough to write about Bartlet for America in 1998, and Josh opens that one up on the computer.

He takes his glasses off, rubbing his eyes. He really needs to print it, he thinks, since his eyes are starting to tire of staring at a computer all day long, so he’ll go struggle with the office printer yet again and wish that one of his students who always seem to occupy the table in the middle of the office pod was there to help him figure out the unnecessarily complicated device.

Finally, he manages to print the paper (well, he actually prints it twice, and he’d feel bad about the waste of paper but he’s too tired of trying to wrestle with technology to care, and he goes back to his desk, the paper in front of him.

While then-Governor Bartlet was a good speaker and made relatively few gaffes along the primary campaign trail, when the Democratic media made an uproar about his appearance in 1988 at a Notre Dame pro-life association event, it was CJ Cregg who dealt with the situation deftly, firing off examples of the President’s equally matched political and religious convictions and how, time and again, he had proven those to be separate parts of his life. Cregg’s press conference (figure out how to cite YouTube videos you dumbass) is just one example of how Governor Bartlet became President. He was not particularly exciting as a candidate at first, as an academic governor of a small New England state, but his relative lack of controversy during the primary and his talented staffers got him to the national stage, where he suddenly seemed to be the obvious choice for President.

Josh has to laugh at the student’s filler citation—he really should mark off for lack of proofreading but he’s so amused by it that he’ll probably let it slide—but the rest of it makes his heart constrict to think about where he was almost two decades ago. God, he misses CJ, and Sam, and Toby, and President Bartlet, and Leo. Especially Leo, but that’s an ache he knows will never go away.

Still, before he can manage to continue the paper, he finds himself opening up Facetime on his phone and making a call, the desperate need for social contact with the people he loves overwhelming.

“Joshua!” he hears, as CJ’s voices comes across through the speaker. “What’s going on?”

He grins, seeing her face emerge on the screen. CJ has hardly aged, which seems unfair consider that he’s aged a great deal (“You’ve aged well,” Donna insists, again and again, but he still sometimes looks at CJ and Sam, who seem almost unchanged, with a bit of jealous). “Claudia Jean, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“You need something?”

“Just a little bit of company,” Josh says. “I’m in the office and it’s way too quiet here. I was reading a paper one of my student’s wrote, about the Bartlet for America campaign…”

“Extolling your virtues in hope of receiving a good grade, I’m sure,” CJ replies. “I can see it now, ‘Josh Lyman was the reason Governor Bartlet became President Bartlet, please give me an A on this so I can pass the class’. That’s how it goes, right?”

Josh rolls his eyes. “Actually, on this paper I usually warn them off of doing that. No, this one was actually extolling your virtues, and it… well, it made me miss you.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Joshua,” CJ replies, and while her tone is a little bit sarcastic, there’s no mistaking her smile. “You should send me that one.”

“Only with the student’s permission,” Josh says, although he’s certain no student would turn down the chance to have former Chief of Staff CJ Cregg read their paper. “Hey, I was just thinking, I know you haven’t been a guest speaker for a little while because of things like a six hour flight, but now that everything’s online and you can just hop on a call, why don’t you come speak in my class again? I think they’re all sick of hearing me talking.”

“I know the feeling,” CJ replies. “Send me the link and I’m in; someone should hear the sound of my voice at some point.”

Josh grins, and the few minutes he spend talking with CJ lift him up enough that he can make it through half of the pile of papers. He realizes that he’s made a mistake by printing them out, however; he’s going to have to scan all the papers again to be able to give students their feedback. He groans and gets up to start on another onerous technological task before he realizes it’s almost time to log onto Zoom and teach his Executive Branch course.

While Josh thought getting out of the house would have been good for him, he finds that he doesn’t enjoy teaching his class from his office. He misses Leah insistently sitting on his lap, or Noah in the corner with his schoolwork rolling his eyes as Josh tells another story he’s heard a thousand times, or Josie spread out on the floor of his office with a coloring book as if she couldn’t have found a single other place to do it. He misses the chaos of the classroom, and at home, he gets a little hint of that chaos.

He’s so used to working in chaos, being at the White House and on campaigns and in classrooms for so many years, that he doesn’t know what to do with the quiet.

He goes back home to that very chaos he misses, finding that Josie and Leah have turned his desk into a blanket fort with a considerable amount of duct tape. “Sorry, Dad,” Josie says, crawling out from behind the blankets. “We thought we’d have set up camp elsewhere by the time you got home.”

“Set up camp?” he asks, lowering himself to the floor awkwardly, as he forgot to take his backpack, overstuffed as it is with student papers, off.

Josie nods vigorously. “We’re running from our home village,” she says. “Leah’s the princess of the village, and I’m her maid, but there’s a plague. So we had to escape before it could get us,” she says solemnly.

“Oh really?” Josh says, raising an eyebrow and trying to make sure his voice is full of mirth, and he wishes he could chuckle and laugh at how adorable their pretend play is (because really, it’s quite sweet) but there’s something that hits a little bit too hard about the specificity of their fantasy.

“It’s dawn now, Leah. We have to pack up camp. The soldiers are going to come get us otherwise,” Josie says seriously, turning to her little sister, who has donned a pointy princess cap and is stubbornly seated on a pillow in the corner under Josh’s desk.

Leah frowns. “But Daddy’s not a soldier,” she complains.

Josie shakes her head. “Yes he is!” she insists, her eyes switching between her father and her little sister. “And remember, there’s a bounty on your head.”

“A bounty?”

“The soldiers want to steal you and take you back to the village.”

Leah shudders. “Daddy, you’re not going to steal me, are you?”

Josh shrugs his backpack off his shoulders and reaches under the desk, pulling Leah into his arms and picking her up. She’s much too heavy for him and he’s sure he’ll get chided by Donna about straining his back, but there’s a part of him that is once again craving the chaos that only exists over fiber-optic cables at the moment. “Of course I’m going to steal you. Because I’ll take you to the evil queen and she’ll pay me lots of money!”

“DADDY!” Leah shrieks, kicking against him. Josie is trying to look concerned, but she’s doing a very bad job of disguising her giggles.

“What’s so funny?” Josh asks.

“There’s no evil queen!” she says, as if the internal logic of whatever game she and Leah are playing should be the most obvious thing in the world to Josh.

“Well, that’s where you made your mistake. You’ve never heard of the evil queen?”

Leah has stopped shrieking, clearly uninterested in playing frightened when she’s clinging to her father. “Is she a Republican?”

Josh can’t help but let out a hearty laugh at this; he’s done a very good job, he thinks, of making his children think that Republican is a synonym for evil. Now he just needs to teach them to be a little more discreet outside of the house. “No,” he says, hoisting Leah up further onto his shoulder so he can carry her more comfortably. “She’s not a Republican, because she’s not really evil,” he explains, opening the door to his office and carrying her down the hall. Josie trails behind, still giggling.

Josh knocks on the door of Donna’s office; it’s the evening, so she should really be done with any actual work, but he knows as well as anyone that an elected official in Congress does not have a 9 to 5 job. Still, Donna doesn’t yell at him to go away, so he opens the door, Leah on his shoulder, and gives her a broad grin. “Your Majesty, I’ve brought you the princess.”

Donna leans back in her chair and a brief look of worry crosses her face, before she breaks into a grin and she plays along. “Ah, yes, thank you. I’ve been expecting her.”

“Mommy’s not the evil queen!” Leah protests.

Josh chuckles and sets her down. “She’s not evil,” he says, “but she is the queen, isn’t she?”

“No,” Josie says seriously. “We live in a democratic republic. We don’t have royalty.”

He’s taught them well, Josh thinks. “But Leah’s a princess?”

“We crossed through a portal in the hallway,” Josie says seriously. “That took us from a monarchy to a democratic republic.”

Josh can’t help but laugh at his daughter’s assertion. “You’ve been reading a lot of books lately, haven’t you, Jo?”

She nods vigorously. “I read such a good one today.”

Josh takes a look at the clock on Donna’s desk and notices that it’s already six. “You want to help me cook dinner and then you can tell me all about it?”
“Can I help cook too?” Leah asks.

Josh shoots Donna a look. “We’ve got the stuff for pizza, right?”

She nods. “Should have everything. I’ve just got to finish something up, I’ll join you down there in twenty minutes or so. If you wanted to chill a bottle of wine I wouldn’t be opposed.”

He smiles at his wife before taking Leah’s hand as she tugs at him, her usual way of asking to be picked up again. “I can’t carry you down the stairs, baby, unless you want both of us to fall.”

“Pizza!” Josie shouts, running ahead of Josh and Leah down the hall. “Noah, come help us make pizza!”

To Josh’s surprise, his teenage son, who has been acting more and more like a teenager every day, scrambles down the stairs to help out.

The kitchen is a mess by the time they have two pizzas in the oven, and there have been at least two screaming matches between the kids, but Josh feels perfectly at peace in the chaos of his kitchen.

Josh and Donna drink half the bottle of wine with dinner, and later, once Josie and Leah are down to bed (Noah has decide he doesn’t need to be put to bed anymore), they settle on the couch in the living room with another glass.

Josh lets out a heavy groan as he settles back on the couch, which probably is a mistake because Donna gives him that concerned look again. “You shouldn’t have been picking up Leah,” she says, something he’s heard from her time and time again.

“Yeah, I know,” Josh says with a heavy sigh. “She’s just too damn cute sometimes.”

“You’ve never been able to resist any of them.”

Josh takes a sip of his wine. “Nope, never.”

“Just don’t want you throwing your back out over it,” Donna says, and Josh knows this won’t be the last time they have this discussion. “How was the office, by the way?”

“Quiet,” he says softly. “Too quiet, really. Could hardly focus with how quiet it was.”

Donna nods. “You need the activity.”

“I spent so many years with my door always open in the place of central governance for the United States of America; I can’t get used to quiet anymore.”

“I know.”

“At least here we’ve got plenty of activity going on,” Josh says.

“True, although I think they’re all getting a bit sick of each other.”

“It’s been a long month.”

Donna leans back and takes a sip out of her own glass. “This might sound crazy, but what do you say we add something to the chaos?”

This is why they find themselves outside of Congressman Vincent’s house, masked up and standing closely together, as the Congressman’s wife comes out holding a small puppy in her arms.

“Mrs. Vincent,” Josh says politely, reaching out to shake her hands, but they’re too full of the little animal for her to reciprocate.

Josh isn’t sure about this whole idea; when Donna told him that one of the people on her committee had a dog who had just given birth to a litter and was looking to secure homes for them, he wasn’t certain they’d be the right people to give it a home. He hasn’t had a dog since he was a very little boy, and how could they, with their crazy campaign schedules, ever think about being able to care for a pet?

Donna had other ideas, however. “The kids have been begging for a dog for years,” she had said when she brought up the concept, “and this is the time. None of us are leaving the house much, and honestly, I think things are going to be slow for a good while yet, and these puppies need good homes, so why don’t we give one of them a home?”

“You already promised Leah she could have a puppy, didn’t you?”

Donna didn’t answer.

“You’re worse than I am!”

“She saw the email from the Congressman with the pictures, and from there it just spiraled. There was nothing I could do, especially once Josie got in on it.”

Josh had sighed but had reluctantly acquiesced. He knows just how long Josie has wanted a dog for, and it had never seemed like a realistic prospect, but suddenly it seems like it might be doable, so how can he say no?

In the back of his mind, he definitely thinks he should have said no, but he’s driving home and his wife has a puppy—their puppy—in her lap, so there’s no going back.

The kids had stayed home, since Josh and Donna didn’t want to risk any more exposure than necessary and Noah is now old enough to be trusted with the care of his siblings for a short while (a responsibility the thirteen-year-old takes very seriously), but they’re clearly excited. Josie and Leah are sitting on the front steps, and while Noah is trying to look much more cool than his little sisters sitting on the front porch, Josh can tell even from the driveway that he’s buzzing with that unburnable energy he inherited from his father.

“Do you have the puppy?” Leah asks, running towards Donna’s side of the car as she gets out.

Donna nods, moving back Leah to get towards the steps. “Let’s go inside, and then you can meet him.”

“He’s a boy?” Leah asks, her face ever so slightly downcast. “I wanted a girl dog.”

“He’s going to be a good dog,” Donna says, as she enters the living room and puts him in the middle of the little playpen they still have from when Leah was a baby.

“Now remember,” Josh says, hanging up his coat, “you guys are going to be responsible for him. That means walking him, feeding him, cleaning up his pee and poop…”

“Daddy, that’s gross!” Leah exclaims, getting down on the floor and pressing her face agains the enclosure as she watches the little golden retriever puppy explore his new surroundings excitedly.

“Maybe,” he says, “but we all have to do it, even this… little guy. You wanted a puppy, so I expect you to take responsibility for him.”

Noah peers into the enclosure. “Does he have a name?”

“That’s up to you,” Josh says. “Now, I have some suggestions. I think you should give him a political name. He seems like a Kennedy to me, don’t you think? Kennedy, or Lincoln, or maybe Roosevelt?”

Donna rolls her eyes. “Or maybe one of our lesser known presidents. Fillmore, maybe? Ooh, or Jackson.” Josh’s glare across the room just encourages her to go on. “How about Hoover? Hoover’s a good name for a dog.”

“Hoover!” Josh exclaims, almost exploding at the thought.

Leah also exclaims “Hoover!” but in a tone that makes it sound like she thinks it’s perfect.

“I think he likes it,” Josie, master interpreter of dog reactions, says from her crouched positions on the floor.

“Yeah, because that’s the sound dogs make,” Leah informs her sister. “They go ‘hoooo!’” She tries to imitate a dog, although it’s frankly unidentifiable as an animal sound.

“I think that’s wolves when they howl at the moon,” Noah contributes from his spot on the couch.

Leah frowns. “No, it isn’t. That’s what he says, so he is a ‘hoo’-ver.”

“You can’t be serious about this, right? You know who Hoover was? He was the guy who led our country to economic collapse! And he was a Republican!”

Donna raises an eyebrow, trying to calm him down with a simple, “Josh.”

“But he’s not a president, he’s a dog,” Josie says quite sensibly.

“Although coming from this family, he might just be the first dog to become President,” Noah notes.

“Dogs can’t be President, Noah,” Leah informs him matter-of-factly. She stands up and looks over the side of the playpen. “Hey Hoover! Come to me!”

The puppy obediently trots over to her.

“See,” she defends, “he knows his name already.”

Josh throws his hands up in the air. “Fine, but if we have another economic collapse, I’m blaming it on you all.” He grumbles under his breath. “Hoover. What kind of dog is named Hoover?”

“A very good one,” Josie says confidently.

Despite Josh’s reluctance and strong desire to stay away from anything having to do with the puppy, he somehow ends up with Hoover in his lap as he logs onto the computer to teach class one afternoon.

“Come on,” Josh says, trying to pick Hoover up and put him down, but he barks incessantly until Josh allows him back into his preferred nap position on his lap. “Josie!” he yells, and sometimes doing that feels like yelling for his wife amid the chaos of the White House years ago. “Josie, can you come take Hoover for a walk?”

“I already did!” Josie protests from down the hall. “He’s tired, he wants a nap.”

“Well he can’t nap on me.”

Josie comes into the room, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape. Josh knows better than to ask at this point—if he’s not careful, Josie’s descriptions of her elaborate imaginative world building will take up half of the time he’s supposed to be teaching class. “Hoover,” she says, showing her father just what she thinks of his suggest, “Do you want to come here? Come nap on your bed?” she asks, as if talking to a baby.

She tries to pick him up, but Hoover wriggles and barks in response. Josie shrugs helplessly. “He likes it there, Dad. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I can appreciate that, but I…” he glances at the screen, realizing he did start the Zoom meeting and forgot to mute his mic and turn off his camera. Most of his students have logged on, and the ones who have their cameras on are grinning at the exchange. The chat is full of comments.

Can we see your puppy?

HE’S SO CUTE!

Why didn’t President Bartlet have a dog?

Why have you never talked about your dog?

TELL YOUR DOG I LOVE THEM

University students are clearly universally unhinged whenever they catch sight of a dog. It’s the most engagement Josh has had in this particular class since they went online. He can’t help but shake his head and laugh. “Hoover’s being a distraction, Josie.”

“Good,” she says. “It’ll make your class less boring.”

One of his students forgot to turn his mic off, apparently, so he hears a low “oooo” coming out of the computer.

“Go do your homework, Josie,” Josh says, waving her off. “Yes, we just got a puppy. His name is Hoover—not my idea, let me tell you—and he’s apparently decided that my lap is his favorite napping spot.” Josh picks the puppy up under the belly and holds him so that his students can all see him.

The chat box is again filled with adoring comments about Hoover.

“Okay,” Josh says, as he lets the struggling puppy rest on his lap once again, “I can clearly see you all know how to use the chat box, so how about we start using it in class discussion?”

It becomes a problem, because at the start of every class, his students will request to see Hoover. Many of them start to bring their dogs over towards the camera, and much to Josh’s annoyance (at least outwardly), the first five minutes of class tend to be all about admiring each other’s dogs and cats (and in one interesting case, a chinchilla). Still, every time Hoover stubbornly takes his place on Josh’s lap, Josh minds less and less.

And then he gets a brilliant idea.

“Donna, we’ve got to come up with different campaign strategies, right? Because you’re not going to be able to do a whole lot of in-person campaigning, it’s going to be a much more social-media heavy thing,” Josh says one night as they’re getting ready for bed and he watches Hoover settle down on his dog bed in the corner. They hadn’t wanted him to sleep in their room, and somehow he had ended up there.

“What did we say about campaign talk in the bedroom?” Donna stretches out on her side of the bed, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Election years for the House of Representatives seem to come so quickly; Josh feels like they spend half their time campaigning to keep Donna’s seat. 

“Sorry,” he says, sounding completely unapologetic. “Hoover reminded me of something.”

“Hoover reminded you of something.”

“Yeah.”

“Our dog reminded you of an election strategy?”

Josh holds up his hands, preparing for Donna to think it’s a ridiculous idea. It probably is a ridiculous idea, but he’s really willing to try anything to make her campaign easier and more successful. “I think we should make social media for Hoover.”

“Social media for Hoover? Josh, he’s a dog, he can’t…” Donna blinks in confusion.

“I know he’s a dog,” Josh says, “but just think about it. What’s better at getting people motivated and engaged in the political processes than pictures of a cute dog?”

“Comprehensive education in civics?”

“Donna!” Josh exclaims, rolling his eyes. “Don’t you see? We set up a Twitter, an Instagram, post cute pics of Hoover in Donna Moss campaign gear, make sure the caption is full of meaningful information about your platform and where you can go vote, and it’ll be great! It’ll either just be a fun little side project for an intern on the campaign or it might go massively viral and become a huge thing, and then Hoover can be the representative of the ideals of democracy and what we want to achieve from this election.”

Donna raises an eyebrow, still looking unconvinced. “This dog is named after Herbert Hoover…”

“Much to my chagrin.”

“It’s hard to see him as a paragon of democracy.”

“We’ll get him a cute little Moss for Congress vest. What better way to show you’re an American candidate who knows and understands the values of the voters?”

“This is… unbelievably shallow,” Donna says.

Josh is about to accuse her of knowing about shallowness after working on the Russell campaign, but he bites his tongue. That’ snot really something they want to bring up, even know. “Look Donna, you know campaigning. Sometimes it’s not ideal, sometimes it feels stupid or disingenuous, but I’m telling you, this puppy is going to make your campaign a national sensation.”

“He’s named after Herbert Hoover.”

“And this is why I didn’t—“ Josh stops short and sucks in a breath before continuing. “Look, just let me set up an account, okay?”

Donna rubs her eyes again. “You’re not allowed to have Twitter. You’ll get into fights with the right-wing crazies again.”

“It won’t be my Twitter; Hoover won’t get into fights with the right-wing crazies, right?” Josh asks, his voice suddenly going higher as he crouches down by his dog. “We’re going to go out to the park and take some cute pictures of you tomorrow, huh?”

“Josh?”

He looks up sharply. “Yeah?”

“You’re talking to the dog like it’s a baby again.”

“He is a baby,” Josh insists.

“He’s really won you over, hasn’t he?”

Josh shrugs and stands up, moving over towards the bed to flop forward on his stomach, his face close to hers. “You do that better,” he says.

“Oh really? How about you show me?”

Josh grins, but it morphs quickly into a frown. “Do we have to… uh… kick Hoover out before we do this?”

Donna chuckles and pulls Josh towards her. “Maybe, if we don’t want to be interrupted.”

“Then you’re going to have to stop for a minute,” he says, almost breathless from her touch.

“Longest minute of my life.”

Josh’s ridiculous idea is met with great enthusiasm by Noah and Josie, and Leah, while not quite understanding the nuances of social media, is thrilled to help take lots of pictures of Hoover (although her pictures might be considered more abstract than anything else). Before he knows it, Hoover has Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts (“Yes, we have to do it on Facebook, too” Josh had told Noah with a sigh after he complained abut Facebook only being for old people, “because old people tend to be our most frequent voters.”) and they quickly gain in popularity.

Josh’s students are some of Hoover’s first followers, flooding the comments of his posts with heart-eye emojis. Noah, surprisingly, takes an interest in helping run the accounts, managing to find time to edit and post his own surprisingly good photos nearly every day. Josh had written the captions at first, but Noah has taken over doing that too (with Josh’s proofreading) and he’s really developed a knack for it. He’s less political than Josh would be, but he still manages to make some solid points, showing impressive understanding and campaign skills for a teenager.

Josh is very, very proud.

Hoover’s popularity grows slowly but steadily, until he jumps into frame during one of Donna’s virtual campaign events, pouncing on her lap and licking her face while she discusses healthcare policy. It’s a hit, and even gets replayed on some of the evening news shows. Suddenly, Hoover’s Twitter account has more followers than Donna’s.

“This thing has kind of spiraled out of control,” Josh admits, as he scrolls through all of the comments of the latest Twitter post. He frowns as he comes across one comment, from some right-wing troll account that makes his blood boil. He starts to type out a corrective reply about the purpose and extent of the Second Amendment when Donna comes up behind where he’s seating on the couch.

She frowns as she looks over the draft of his tweet. “Josh, remember when I banned you from Twitter?”

“You didn’t, your campaign manager did,” Josh corrects. He had gotten into Twitter arguments which Donna’s campaign manager had seemed problematic for her attempts to run a very clean-cut campaign, and had been subsequently banned from tweeting on a public account.

Donna takes the phone out of his hands and deletes the tweet. “Well, you’re getting banned by me, too.”

“Donna!”

“You were about to start a whole thing that I really don’t need to be dealing with,” she chides. “You know better!”

“He was threatening to shoot Hoover!”

Donna reports the tweet, and then closes the app and deletes it right off of his phone. “I reported him for inciting violence, but you know that’s just a troll, right?”

Josh leans back and sighs. “Yeah…”

“Let’s have one of my interns take over the account,” Donna says, “and Noah can help since he seems to be interested in that. But you…”

“This was all my idea!”

“And a brilliant one it was,” Donna replies, kissing the top of his head. “But you, much as I love you, were never meant to be a social media manager. Remember Lemon Lyman?”

Josh presses his lips together, looking slightly guilty. “Yeah.”

“Yeah. There are parts of the internet you should just stay away from,” she says, taking his phone and putting it over on the kitchen table. “You don’t want me getting jealous of all the crazies on your fansite, right?”

“They’re all envious of you,” Josh replies with a smirk.

Donna comes around to the front of the couch and sits beside him, her face coming very close to his. “They should be.”

Before anything can happen, however, they hear a scurrying of feet on the hardwood floor, and Hoover runs into the room, being chased by a breathless Leah.

“What’s going on?” Josh asks, amusement in his voice.

“I’m trying to learn how to do a magic trick,” Leah says. “There was a Youtube video, and he pulled a bunny out of a hat. I want to pull Hoover out of a hat, but he didn’t like being in the hat.”

“Perhaps one of your stuffed animals will like the hat better,” Donna says gently.

Leah considers this, and then turns around quickly and scampers upstairs, easily districted.

“Perhaps we’d better take this to the bedroom,” Donna whispers in his ear. “Or we might get interrupted by our budding magician again.”

By the end of April, Josh is beginning to realize that he wouldn’t ever have to actually teach in an online class, not if he didn’t want to. He has so many dear friends who are willing to be guest speakers over Zoom to his students that he could have one for every class period if he so desired. CJ is the first, and somehow she manages to convince all the students to turn their cameras on, a feat Josh has never been able to achieve.

“They just like me better,” CJ teases him later.

Senator Seaborn shows up in Josh’s Legislative Politics class, excited to talk about his own experiences in the Senate as well as his ambitions to run in the next Presidential race. He’s still annoyingly charming, and somehow manages to look even younger over Zoom than he does in real life; Josh glances at his own reflection while Sam speaks and feels as if he looks rather haggard. Donna has to spend quite a big of time convincing him afterwards that he doesn’t; they make sure to lock the door so no puppies or magicians come to interrupt them.

The highlight for most of Josh’s students, however, is the appearance of President Bartlet on one of the last days of his Executive Branch course. The President is more confused by the technology than Josh is, but the students are awed by the fact that the former President is on their zoom screen. They all turn on their cameras, and there is no ending to the flow of questions in the chat box. Too bad President Bartlet doesn’t understand how to use the chat box.

His classes certainly become memorable to the students, and while Josh knows just how difficult and traumatizing the past few months have been, and how hard it’s been to adjust to school online, he’s grateful that he can at least provide his students with an experience that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.

The semester ends soon enough, and Josh doesn’t have a summer class this year. He usually doesn’t teach one in election years, when he tends to be busy consulting and flying all over the country to help with various electives. This year, he does some consulting, but it’s all virtual, since Donna completely refuses to let him fly on a plane.

She does have to fly back and forth to Wisconsin for her campaigning and for residency requirements, although she does end up driving when she has the time. Josh and the kids join her for a good portion of the summer, and they spend a lot of time out in rural, isolated state parks enjoying nature. Hoover, they find, loves to go on hikes with them, and especially loves to play in the lakes they go to. Josh finally gets to claim that he’s an outdoorsman. Perhaps what he said all those years ago was true; being stuck inside for three months really does help one appreciate the outdoors.

He contemplates taking a leave of absence in the fall after he finds out classes will be back in person, at least partially. Though he’s desperate for human interaction, he knows that he still needs to be careful, that he’s at risk, and he doesn’t want to do anything to cause his family fear. Instead, he requests to continue teaching his courses online, and he’s granted an exception. He’s long known that his department will do whatever it takes to keep a professor who can get two former Presidents as guest speakers.

Still, while he wants to stay safe, he also wants to feel like he’s in contact with his students. Impulsively, he emails out an invitation for an outdoor meet-and-greet for his students, featuring Hoover. It’s still warm in September, and he figures just a few students will show up.

Almost everyone who is enrolled in a course with him shows up, eager to meet the star of the Moss campaign (and maybe their professor too). Hoover, for his part, has gotten used to the attention; on most walks around Madison, he usually got one or two admirers due to his social media fame.

“He deals with it well,” Noah says, as if he knows anything about how animals respond to fame.

In a way, Josh almost likes this campaign better than any other that Donna has done, because she’s doing largely virtually. She isn’t away in Madison for stretches at a time, and when she does need to be there, Josh and the kids can join her, still all doing school online.

It’s a difficult time, certainly, and Josh makes sure he meets with his therapist regularly to help keep his anxiety about the state of the world in check, but he’s also grateful for the time he gets to spend with his family and their goof of a dog, who, although he’s grown far bigger, still prefers to nap on Josh’s lap.

Election night is spent in the living room of their house in Wisconsin, with a camera set up for Donna to make a speech once the results come in. Although there are many more mail ballots this time than before, it doesn’t take long for her election to be called.

Donna Moss (D-Wisconsin) has been elected for a third term in the US House of Representatives.

Donna kisses Josh and hugs her jubilant children (they all insisted on staying up, even Leah, despite obvious sleepiness) and comes over to the live camera feed they’ve set up for her to give an acceptance speech. Before she can start, however, there’s significant barking in the background; Hoover has picked up on the excitement in the atmosphere.

“I can take him outside,” Josh whispers.

“No,” Donna says, picking him up. “He’s been an important part of this campaign; I’ll let him make his appearance too.”

As Donna starts her speech, Josh can’t help but burst with pride for her, and he’s so glad to be having this moment with her.

For the first time in a long time, smallpox and global pandemics aren’t on his mind. His thoughts are with his wife giving her victory speech, and his youngest daughter grabbing his arm practically begging to be picked up, and his other two children  dancing around the living room in jubilation, and his dog barking at their heels.

The world is not at peace, not now, but in his own little realm of joyful chaos, Josh thinks he’s found his peace.