Chapter Text
The first thing she’s aware of is Josh.
Well, that’s not exactly true. The first thing she’s really aware of is the dryness in her mouth. But the first thing that she can actually make sense of, the first thing that matters, is Josh’s face. It’s currently a bit fuzzy around the edges, but it’s still intimately familiar, the only familiar thing her eyes can find in the room. She doesn’t know exactly where she is or how she got there, but he’s here so she must be safe.
Upon further inspection, she realizes he looks terrible.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
He looks incredulous. “To me?”
“You need to shave.” He does. She hasn’t seen him look this scruffy in a while, and it’s usually not a good sign.
“I haven’t…really had time.”
Donna wants to continue with this topic, but her thoughts are too slippery, so instead she grabs hold of the next one she can. “Where am I?”
“You’re in Germany.” he says gently.
That doesn’t make any sense. “It doesn’t look like Germany,” she argues.
Josh starts to respond, but then a nurse comes back with a cup of water. Nurses mean hospital, she thinks, which at least answers part of her question. Donna watches through heavy eyelids as Josh rushes to help her with the straw, the water cool and soothing on her throat. Then the nurse begins to draw Donna’s blood — spurring the sudden realization that they’ve given her a central line — and Josh quickly excuses himself. She might laugh at his squeamishness if she weren’t so groggy.
He comes back in when the nurse leaves, pulling a chair up to her bed. The nurse must’ve also administered more pain meds, because Donna is struggling to keep her eyes open. She wants to talk to Josh, has so many questions she wants to ask him, but there’s also a part of her that is deeply settled by the sight of him and knows there will be time for all of that later.
“You’re in Germany,” she murmurs, part question and part assurance.
He smiles at that, the first smile she’s seen from him since she woke up. “I am.”
“Okay,” she says, and then she’s asleep.
It takes a few rounds of this same routine before she can really orient herself. Each time she wakes up Josh is there, anchoring her to the present. It’s easier to ground herself against the wave of pain medication when she can reach out for his hand and find him reaching back.
She soon comes to understand why she’s here. It’s unnerving to hear the nurses explain what happened to her while having no recollection of the event herself. She remembers getting into the SUV, but everything after that comes in painful, fragmented flashes that she does her best to push down. It does explain the pain radiating throughout her entire body, centralized in her chest and right leg, but she thinks it’s going to take her a while to process all of this.
By what Donna assumes is the next morning — she’s feeling a bit unstuck from time at the moment — her head is a little clearer. She takes stock of the room around her, the nurses that file in and out of it, and the one constant face: Josh. He really does need to shave, but she’s beginning to understand why he hasn’t, wrapping her head around what it must have taken for him to get to her. The only time he’s left her room is when the nurses come to do bloodwork, and even then he only goes out into the hallway, hovering until the nurse leaves again.
She’s just had another sample taken when Josh comes back into the room yet another floral arrangement; they’ve been arriving steadily throughout the morning and into the afternoon.
“Who are these from?” she asks.
He reads the card, his brow furrowing. “Colin? Who is that?”
Donna feels her face grow hot. “He’s…a friend. We sat next to each other at one of the meetings, he showed me around a bit.”
She’s not ashamed of sleeping with Colin, but it seems silly to bring up a casual fling to the man who had flown halfway across the world to get to her.
“Oh,” Josh says, carefully setting the vase carefully on the table across from her bed. “Well that was nice of him to send flowers.”
“Josh…”
“What? I said it was nice.”
She rolls her eyes. “Your words may have, but your tone was a little contradictory.”
“You must be feeling better if you’re policing my tone,” he grumbles, setting the flowers down next to the others. Donna snorts a laugh, wincing as it jostles her a little too much for comfort, and they don’t bring Colin up again.
Later that afternoon she wakes up again to find Josh watching TV.
“What are you watching?” she asks. He startles, likely not having realized she was awake.
“Nothing,” he replies, quickly turning off the TV and directing all of his attention to her. “Your mom’s on the way to New York. She’s gonna catch the red-eye tonight.”
Donna tries not to let her face fall. She wants to see her mom, not having realized how badly she wanted that until this moment, but surely Josh will leave once her mom arrives. “How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know, I figured if I hang around long enough one of the nurses is bound to give me a sponge bath.”
His nonchalance throws her for a bit of a loop. It’s not like Josh to be okay with being away from work for an indeterminate amount of time. “Leo doesn’t need you to —”
“I’m here as long as I need to be here,” he says, cutting her off. “Jello?”
Donna doesn’t want the Jello, nor does she know what to say, but she’s saved from both by Josh’s phone ringing.
“I don’t want to talk to anybody,” she tells him quickly.
Josh nods, answering the call. He greets CJ and gives her some shtick about Donna doing a Julie Andrews impression to deflect from what must have been CJ’s request to speak to her.
Donna watches him pace across the room as he talks and wonders who this man is and what the hell he’s done with her Josh.
It’s not until the evening after he arrives in Germany that Josh actually leaves Donna’s hospital room. She’s been sleeping for about thirty minutes, having complained of a bit of additional pain in her back and getting a pump of morphine that put her right to sleep. He double checks with the nurse to see if it’s okay for him to step out for a minute, nervous to let her out of his sight for even a moment, but she assures him that Donna will be out for a while longer.
He’s on a mission to buy her flowers. It’s not because he’s jealous of Colin — whoever the hell that is — buying her flowers, or at least that’s not the entire reason. No, he wants to buy her flowers because with every floral arrangement that arrives, the brighter her room looks, the brighter she seems to be. He’ll do anything to make her light up like that.
But first he makes a stop at the hospital cafeteria, wolfing down a sandwich because he knows that as soon as Donna is cognizant enough to realize he hasn’t had a real meal in days, she’s going to kick his ass.
After eating, he wanders around until he finds the gift shop. There are a number of elaborate arrangements available, but he finds his eyes immediately drawn to the dozen red roses wrapped in ribbon. That feels more like him, and more like Donna. A voice in the back of his mind questions the choice of flowers. He doesn’t have to be an expert in the language of flowers to know what red roses mean, but he can’t help but think that dropping everything to fly halfway around the world sends the same message.
Josh makes his way back up to Donna’s room, letting that thought roll around his mind rather than pushing it away like he usually does. He’s anxious to get back to her. It’s only been about thirty minutes, but he finds that he already misses her, longing to see her face if only to reassure himself that she’s okay.
When he arrives in her room, though, she’s not there.
No one is there; even her bed is gone. All that’s left is a mess of bloody gauze littering the floor. Josh feels faint, not because of the blood because he knows whose blood it is. His mind is almost completely devoid of any thoughts aside from find Donna, find Donna, find Donna. The flowers drop from his hand as he all but sprints to the nurse’s station.
“Where's Donna Moss?” he demands when he reaches the desk.
The nurse looks up, confused, and Josh might feel bad if he weren’t so desperate. “Excuse me?” she asks.
“Donna Moss. She's not in her room. Where is she?”
“Are you a relative?”
Blood is thundering in Josh’s ears, so loud that he can barely hear her. His body goes on autopilot, the words coming out of his mouth before he can think about them. “I work for the President of the United States, I have the diplomatic rank of a three-star general; tell me where Donna Moss is.”
Things move pretty quickly after that. Before the nurse has even finished telling him that Donna’s been taken to the surgical wing, he’s rushing away from the desk, toward the operating rooms. He storms down the hallway, frantically peering in windows, praying for a glimpse of her. It takes him far to find her, but he knows the instant that he does. Even intubated with her beautiful blonde hair covered in a scrub cap he knows it’s her; he would know her anywhere, in any way. He’s not sure how long he stands there watching her before Colonel Leahy almost runs into him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the doctor says. “You can't go in there.”
“What's...?”
“There's been a complication. She developed a pulmonary embolism. It's a blood clot.”
“A blood clot,” Josh says at the same time Colonel Leahy does, feeling the bottom of his stomach drop out. Of course he knows exactly what a pulmonary embolism is, and he knows exactly what it has the potential to do.
“We're trying to remove it now,” the doctor says before heading back to the operating room, leaving Josh alone.
Josh has no idea how his feet carry him to the waiting area, nor does he know how long he sits there. He considers calling someone, but he doesn’t know who it would be. Eventually he thinks to leave a voicemail for Donna’s mom, who is currently somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. He does his best to keep his voice from breaking as he tells her that her daughter is in her second surgery in as many days. After he hangs up, he stares blankly at the wall, terror barring him from having any coherent thoughts, until Colonel Leahy is suddenly standing in front of him.
“Ms. Moss was experiencing shortness of breath and chest pain,” Colonel Leahy informs him. “Her chest CT revealed a blood clot in her right lung. She asked if she could see you for a moment before we put her under.”
Josh doesn’t have to be asked twice, leaping out of his chair and following the doctor down the hallway. He allows a nurse to get him scrubbed up to enter the operating room, all of his focus on trying not to buzz out of his skin.
If the circumstances were different, being back in an operating room might trigger some kind of trauma response for him, but the second they let him in the room he finds that he only has eyes for Donna.
She’s lying on her back, the stark lighting making her look even more pale than usual. Her eyes land on him immediately, wide and watery.
He steps toward her, intent on reassuring her. “I just talked to the doctor; they said it's no big deal.”
Since she’s already intubated, they’ve given her a pad of paper to write on. She turns the paper toward him and he sees "NICE HAT,” scrawled in her chicken scratch handwriting.
He laughs, his chest clenching with affection. “Yeah. Stylish, huh? They tell you what they're gonna do?” She nods. “It's gonna be a snap.”
She begins to write something else, her hands trembling. When she shows him the paper again, it reads "SCARED.”
“Yeah,” he says, knowing the feeling much better than he’ll ever tell her. “Don't be. You're going to be fine, okay?”
He’s not sure he believes that, but at this moment he has to, if only for her sake.
Donna nods, but a tear slips down her cheek. Josh reaches for her, wishing he weren’t wearing gloves so she could feel his skin on hers. She grabs his hand with both of hers, clutching onto him with surprising force until the anesthesiologist puts her under and her grip slackens. He watches her eyes close, unable to tear his gaze from her face.
The last thing he wants to do is let go of her hand, but one of the nurses gently tells him he has to leave. They guide him out of the room, and the moment the door closes behind him, Josh knows.
He’s in love with Donna.
Maybe he’s always known it, but now he can’t look away from it, can’t call it anything other than what it is. He’s loved her for longer than he can remember, since the second inauguration, since she’d told him she wouldn’t stop for red lights, maybe even since that first day in the Manchester office. But the specifics don’t matter to him now. All that matters is that he loves her and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again.
Josh wanders back to the waiting area, sitting slumped in the hard plastic chair for an unknowable amount of time until he hears a vaguely familiar voice.
“Josh?”
He looks up to see Lucia Moss hustling down the hallway, a suitcase in tow. She must’ve been dropped off here from the airport, not taking the time to stop at the hotel he’d booked for her first.
Luckily, this is not the first time he’s met Donna’s mom. That was years ago, on a campaign stop in Milwaukee shortly after Donna had come back to him. In the few times they’ve seen each other since, he’s always gotten the sense that she likes him; the same cannot be said of Donna’s dad, but that’s neither here nor there. He’s not sure that she’ll like him now, though, not when he was the person who bought her daughter a one way ticket to getting blown up.
Of course, seeing as she’s Donna’s mother, she immediately proves him wrong.
“Joshua” she says, pulling him up from his chair and into a hug. She hugs like Donna just as much as she looks like her, squeezing tightly, her hands splayed and rubbing his back. He closes his eyes for a moment and lets himself be comforted.
Lucia doesn’t completely let him go when she pulls away from the hug, keeping her warm hands on his shoulders. “I got your voicemails. Have you heard any more?”
Josh shakes his head. “Not since I left you the last one. But they say no news is good news, so…”
“So now we wait.”
And wait they do. Josh has no idea for how long. It’s probably a couple of hours, but to him it feels like one long moment, stretching on and on and on until he thinks it must be about to snap from the tension. He lets Lucia keep hold of his hand, gently stroking his thumb against the back of hers just like he would if she was Donna.
Finally, Colonel Leahy emerges. Josh does his best not to notice the blood spattered on the doctor’s scrubs, tries not to remember that he knows exactly where that blood came from.
Leahy’s face is unreadable, a trait that Josh supposes is favorable for a doctor, but at this moment it makes him feel almost feral. “We encountered a few difficulties during the procedure. She lost a substantial amount of blood. We had to transfuse and call in a vascular surgeon to repair the tear.”
Donna’s mom crushes Josh’s hand in hers; he lets her do it. “Is she going to be alright?” she asks.
“She's still unconscious,” Colonel Leahy replies, which is not at all reassuring. “As soon as she's stable we'll send her off for an MRI. Between the anemia and the low blood pressure she may have suffered hypoxic brain injury. Decreased oxygen delivery can result in brain damage.”
Josh can’t speak. The blood is whooshing in his ears again, and the only thing his mind can hold onto are the words brain damage. He thinks of Donna, his Donna, her laugh and her idiosyncrasies and the way she says his name. When she wakes up, will she even know him?
Thankfully, Mrs. Moss is at least able to form words. “When can we see her?”
“She should be ready for visitors in about an hour.”
The next hour passes at an excruciatingly slow pace. When they finally clear Donna for visitors, Josh lets her mom go in alone first. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom. Once safely locked inside, he finally lets himself lose it, beginning to sob with relief and terror all at once. His shoulders shake as he grips the cool porcelain of the sink. He waits until he’s sure he’s pulled himself together before going in to see her because he won’t let himself cry in front of Donna now, even if she’s not awake to see it.
It’s not until early the next morning, after Josh has sent Mrs. Moss to the hotel to sleep with a promise to keep watch over her daughter, that Donna wakes up saying his name.
It’s the best sound he’s ever heard.
He rushes to her, unable to keep his hand from reaching out and smoothing over her hair. “You’re awake,” he murmurs. “Your mom is here, she’s at her hotel. I can call her to come now if you want.”
Donna doesn’t answer right away, her eyes a little out of focus as she searches her face. “You’re still here,” she replies, ignoring his question.
“Yeah,” he says, feeling dangerously close to breaking his rule of not crying in front of her. “I’m still here.”
“Good.” The corners of her mouth turn up in a smile, and she looks completely at peace as she closes her eyes and promptly falls asleep again.
Josh watches her sleep for at least thirty minutes, his eyes trained on the steady rise and fall of her chest. His hands are shaking with relief and exhaustion as he pulls the thin hospital blanket up to her chin and bends over her to press his lips to her forehead.
He spends the next several days glued to Donna’s bedside, thanking a God he’s hardly spoken to in years.