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He’s trying to hold his tongue and Leo and the President debate CJ and her well-being. She’s been declining rapidly, and he knows the ins and outs of this, but he’ll sit and hold his tongue, because CJ wants that for him. Josh is on one side of him, Sam beside him. Her health is becoming an objective.
“It’s a matter of whether or not she’s stable enough to do her job.”
“This hasn’t stopped her before,” Josh offers, looking at Toby, who keeps his eyes ahead. “Everyone has…rough patches.”
Except, it’s worse than just a rough patch, and Josh of all people ought to know that. She’s hanging on by a thread, and he’s watching her hold a flame closer and closer to it each day.
When they married, they kept it secret. It was a small affair with dinner in their favourite Italian afterwards, but he promised her they’d do it again when things were easier, and she’d get the dress, and the first dance, and the wedding planning book. She was very happy to wear her ring around her neck on a chain until then. Nobody was told about it — not Josh, or Leo, or her brothers, or his sisters. They kept it quiet, because it seemed to be the only privacy they could hold to their chests.
“But when that means she’s fumbling the ball every time she briefs?“
Toby knows it’s more than that. He knows she spends some nights muffling her sobs in the pillows, or in his chest. He knows about thescars on her arms and her thighs, and he knows she won’t eat unless he reminds her to. He knows that she holds herself together for the sake of a briefing, whether she screws it up or not. That should be all they can ask from her, but they don’t have that kind of luck.
“Cut her some slack. It’s tough for her right now,” Sam says quietly, except it’s much more to Leo’s feet than it is to anybody else.
“We’ve cut her more than enough slack. I love the kid, but this is the White House.”
Kid? She’s more capable and cool than most of them. Leo included, probably.
“She isn’t a kid, Leo. She’s a grown woman, and you know that,” Toby interjects after his period of silence. He’s spent a little too long drumming his fingers against his knee.
“Then why is she all of a sudden incapable of doing her job?”
Toby stills his hands. Never has he known Leo to be so cold towards CJ. To him, maybe, but he’s always put himself in the line of fire for CJ the same way Toby does.
“We wouldn’t be where we are without her, and I think everybody here knows that. Put her on paid leave or something. Just until she’s herself.“
Leo shifts uncomfortably at the silence from the president.
“It’s not as simple as that. If we put everyone who was a little stressed on a paid leave—“
“She’s more than stressed, Leo.”
“So, what do you wanna call it?!”
“Depression, for gods sake! She’s a clinically depressed woman. I don’t mean she feels a little lousy, or sad. I mean she can’t get herself up most days. She doesn’t eat, and she self destructs every so often. Cold sweats from—nightmares and—this will kill her if you don’t put her out, and that’s a guarantee!“
“How the hell can you guarantee anything?”
Toby snaps, and he loses his hold on himself.
“Because I think I know my own wife!”
The room falls silent, and Josh will inevitably furrow his eyebrows in confusion. Sam will follow, but it’ll click for Leo. The president will have known this from the start, because he’s just as sharp and quietly sentimental as Toby.
“Your wife?” Leo parrots.
“Yes, my wife. September twentieth, two thousand, at four fifteen in the afternoon. H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse. Dinner at Tortino’s afterwards.”
“Good god, you’re serious.“
“Yes.”
“You married her?“
“She wears the ring on a chain.”
Leo’s expression changes entirely.
“Why didn’t you t—“
“That doesn’t matter. We both know we can’t afford to lose her. Think about the paid leave.”
The President speaks up, for the first time in a while.
“You can leave. Take her home, Toby. Be a husband to her. I’d want the same for Abbey.”
Toby looks up now, setting his jaw and nodding gratefully. He supposes they’re the same, in one way or another.
“Thank you, sir.”
He leaves, Josh and Sam’s questions unanswered and Leo’s guilt hanging heavy in the air. He makes a beeline for her office, where he’ll dry her eyes before taking her home and weathering the storm by her side.