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“So you’ve got health and strength.”
“And we’ll steal the rest?”
“Bet your ass.”
Josh breathes a laugh. Donna-person or not, somehow it’s exactly what he needed to hear tonight.
Because the thing is – even on what is arguably one of the worst days of his career, Donna’s here with him, sharing the loss, laughing and joking and shaking it off. And she’ll be here when they inevitably move on to the next bill, the next challenge, the next day.
They’ll steal the rest.
And the promise of her presence, win, lose or draw, makes it all worth it.
i.
Josh has been in Landstuhl for forty-eight hours, yet it feels like weeks since Donna’s opened her eyes.
He refuses to move; the nurses all coax him with food and coffee and a cot down the hall, but he won’t budge. Ominous dread sits heavy in his chest from the last time he left her alone, and he’s not willing to risk it again.
So that’s where he is, ten hours and twenty-one minutes after her surgery, when he starts hallucinating.
“Josh.”
The hairs on his arms stand on end and his gut flips, but he ignores it, does everything he can to focus on the television and not on her still frame.
But then he hears it again, louder this time, more pronounced.
“Josh.”
In a tone so unmistakably Donna that even his subconscious can’t recreate.
He turns to rise, and suddenly she’s there, the depths of her irises seeping into the cracks of his soul.
“Hey,” he whispers, awestruck.
She blinks against the harsh light, melting back into the mattress when she catches sight of him.
“You’re awake.” His voice is hoarse, from the lack of sleep or the tears burning the back of his throat, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care.
“You’re still here,” she slurs, eyes drooping. His heart swoops and ducks.
“Yeah,” he swallows, gaze fixed on her battered, beautiful face. “I’m still here.”
Her breath peters out as he tucks the blankets up to her chin. “Josh,” she whispers again, straining against the exhaustion pulling her under.
“Shhhh. Sleep.”
She stubbornly opens her eyes. “Health and strength.”
He balks for a minute, thinking maybe the morphine’s too strong, until he recalls their conversation outside the Oval just over a year ago.
Back when she had both of those in abundance.
Josh leans forward, brushing his thumb along her cheekbone. “And I’ll steal the rest for you.”
Her lips turn up, the slightest of smiles, and then she’s out like a light.
ii.
The Houston air is uncharacteristically bitter and biting. Josh stares straight ahead into nothingness, attempting to calm his racing heart, when the sound of the door opening makes him jump.
He knows it’s her. She doesn’t say a word, just silently pads across the roof to join him at the railing. He manages to make a crack about the weather, though he can tell it falls flat, and resigns himself to the obvious.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I’ve been appointed,” she says, her gaze steady in the moonlight.
“For what?” he rasps.
“To make sure you’re okay.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m fine.”
“To make sure your head’s not actually gonna explode,” she continues, and it’s got just the right amount of snark that he huffs in response.
“These numbers aren’t adding up,” he says, scowling at the cement under their feet.
“They never do.”
He can feel her eyes on him, exhuming the deepest parts of him, and he wishes, for once, for the briefest moment, that she didn’t know him so well. That she’d write him off like everybody else, chalk it up to the pressure of the day.
But she doesn’t; she moves infinitesimally closer, turning to face him. “You’ve been working eighteen, twenty-hour days for the past year.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a beat, before she quietly exclaims: “It’s here. There’s nothing to do but let it run its course.”
He can’t – he can’t accept that. Can’t accept the possibility that there’s nothing left for him to do, because if he screwed this up, if he doesn’t get his guy in the White House – if he wasted everyone’s time, energy, money for nothing, put Leo on the fritz for a futile pipe dream – left the President and C.J. and Toby scrambling when he could have been helping them through their final days in office –
“There’s nothing left to do, Josh.” Donna’s words float into his stream of consciousness; they’re firm, yet soft at the edges, imploring him to listen.
She stands resolute while a sigh wracks his body, fogging up the air between them.
“Do you remember,” Donna starts again, quietly, “what I told you on the night the foreign ops bill didn’t pass?”
“You mean when I almost fell on my sword for remote prayer?” His lips twitch, just slightly, in self-deprecation.
Donna chooses to ignore him. “I said, ‘we’ve got health and strength, and we’ll steal the rest.’”
Something sour takes hold of his tongue. “Yeah, well, if that’s all we’ve got, we’ve already lost.” He runs a hand through his hair, eyes wild. “We can’t steal the votes in Florida, Donna. We can’t steal ‘em from California, or that fifteen percent of Vermont!” His voice rises a helpless octave on that last word.
Silence envelopes them; the only sound is the breeze ruffling the trees.
“I think,” Donna says at last, thoughtfully, “you’ll be surprised.”
Josh looks up at her, then; her eyes draw him in, tethering him in the turmoil.
“We did all we could do. It’s out of our hands now.” She reaches for him, tangling her fingers with his. “Let’s go back inside?”
. . .
Later, when CNN calls Nevada for Santos, when Josh can’t hear anything but the pounding in his skull amid the cacophony of cheers and shouts and drums, Donna whispers directly into his ear:
“Stole the rest.”
He clings to her.
iii.
There’s a knock on the door exactly five minutes after Donna arrives at C.J.’s.
It’s Josh. Of course it is.
He looks a little wary, one hand fiddling with his ear.
“C.J.’s not here,” Donna says plainly. She’s not really up for a repeat of their earlier discussion.
“I’m going on vacation.”
Donna blinks, caught off guard by his non-sequitur.
“With you,” he clarifies, and now she’s convinced she’s hallucinating. “If you want to,” he adds hastily. “We have to leave in five hours, but – ”
“You – today?” She cuts him off, still gobsmacked.
“Kind of, uh…” He rubs offhandedly at his nose. “Well, yeah. Today.”
She sizes him up and down; he’s seized with nervous energy, shifting from foot to foot, but other than that, he looks exactly like he did three hours ago, when he’d crushed what little hope she held for a relationship.
“Josh, what’s going on?” Her brow furrows. “You want me to go on vacation with you? Earlier – ”
“I wasn’t myself, earlier,” he jumps in, voice strained. “This is what I want.”
They stare at each other.
Donna crosses her arms, backing away in self-preservation. “We still need to talk.”
He doesn’t drop her gaze. “I know that.”
It’s the longest minute of Josh’s life.
Finally, she bites her lip around a grin. “What time does the flight leave?”
His body visibly relaxes, a wide smile of his own threatening to spill over his face. “Eleven. From Dulles, tonight.”
He keeps reaching for her, then thinks better of it and rakes a hand through his hair; Donna takes pity on him, striding forward and slanting her mouth over his in a searing kiss. Instantly his arms lock around her waist, his tongue grazing hers as a sigh tumbles down her throat.
“Tonight,” he repeats once they break apart, and Donna can’t help but feel a little dizzy.
. . .
They’re rolling down the jetway when she turns to him, the question plaguing her.
“Tell me something.”
“Anything,” he vows, rolling his neck on the headrest to meet her eyes.
“What changed your mind?”
She expects him to deflect, to skirt around the subject with a coy, one-word answer that would absolutely sweep her off her feet but do nothing to salve her insecurities.
Instead, a slow smile spreads across his face, and he ducks his head, taking her hand in both of his. “I, ah… thought about it.” He clears his throat. “I want this. You. I always have.”
She brings her free hand up to her lips, staving off tears.
“I just got it in my head that… I wasn’t,” he shakes his head, “that it wouldn’t work. Because of – of me. You know, I don’t – ” He digs his palms into his eyes, chuckling. “Shit.”
“Josh,” she prompts, gently.
“But, you know, it’s – it’s like – that thing, you said.”
Donna frowns. “I’ve said a lot of things.”
“Yeah, I know, you have,” he laughs, and she swats at him. “But this one – I don’t know, I guess it stuck with me.”
She waits, patiently, while he takes a deep breath.
“I just thought, well,” he shrugs. “We’ve got health and strength. And we’ll steal the rest. And after that… It was pretty much a no-brainer.”
And for that, well; she has to kiss him again.
iv.
On the television, New York City is a flurry of activity, wind whipping as the eager crowd holds their breath for the ball to drop. But the Moss-Lyman living room is cozy and still, a respite from the year passed and the year ahead.
Josh sits on the couch, feet up, his daughters tucked into each side and his son mirroring his position in the loveseat next to them. He can hear Donna in the kitchen, the sound of champagne glasses clinking to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
Their youngest, Sophie, has her eyes glued to the screen with her thumb stuck in her mouth. It’s the first time they’ve let her stay up with her siblings, and at three years old, she’s just barely awake, having dozed off on Josh quite a few times since the night began.
“What’s your New Year’s Resolution, Daddy?” A.J. asks, her bright blue eyes curious. She’d spent the better part of the evening writing out a list with her multi-colored markers, a grand total of forty-two resolutions.
At her sister’s question, Sophie stops sucking her thumb and turns her full attention to Josh. Noah jumps up, too, perching on the arm of the couch next to A.J.
“Have you guys ever heard the story of Fishhooks McCarthy?” Josh begins.
Three heads shake back and forth.
He glances up to find Donna, eyebrows raised in mirth, leaning against the wall that separates into the kitchen. His dimples carve deeper as she looks on with what can only be described as pride.
“Fishhooks McCarthy,” Josh recounts, holding his wife’s gaze, “was a politician in the 1930s. And every day, he’d walk to the church on his block, sit down and pray, ‘O Lord, give me health and strength. We’ll steal the rest.’”
His kids look up at him with the same befuddled expression he wore well over a decade ago. Not that it needs to, but does this story have a point?
Noah wrinkles his nose. “That sounds like a mom story.”
“Hey!” Donna shouts indignantly, coming to join them on the couch. She tickles her son and he shrieks, and soon they’re all one big pile of arms and legs as the countdown begins.
“We’ve got health and strength,” Josh says, voice warm, and Donna’s eyes cloud over.
“We’ll steal the rest.”