Chapter 1: If It Isn't One Thing, It's Another

Elizabeth McCord rolled over at the sound of a buzzing phone, coming face to face with an alarm clock that read 4:00. Blindly searching for the offending device, she felt around her cluttered bedside table, praying she could find it before it woke Henry, who had fallen asleep barely two hours before. Between her work negotiating a peace accord between Russia and Ukraine since Maria Ostrova's assassination and his work at the CIA, neither of them had been getting much sleep.

Finally managing to find her phone, she hit the accept button while trying to fit her glasses to her face. "Russell, do you have any idea what time it is?"

On the other end of the line, the president's chief of staff was already yelling, "Please explain to me why Sarnakoff is getting on a plane to go back to Moscow when he and the Ukrainian president are supposed to be signing the peace accord in about 8 hours?!"

"Seeing as to how it's 4:00 in the morning and I've only gotten about three hours of sleep, Russell, I honestly have no idea. Now would you please stop yelling and tell me what the hell is going on?" Elizabeth whispered in reply, trying her best to slip from the room without waking Henry. "And what do you mean that President Sarnakoff is getting on a plane? I spoke with him less than six hours ago and he was pleased with the accord."

Making it down the stairs to the kitchen, holding her phone between her shoulder and chin, she managed to start an extra strong pot of coffee knowing that she was going to need it to make it through the morning. Meanwhile, Russell continued to yell on the other end of the phone about Ukrainian president Bosak insulting Russia and how it was her fault for not heading this disaster off as if she was a mind reader.

"Russell, I will get my team on it as soon as they are awake, and then I will get back to you. Don't worry. I will get to the bottom of this." she replied, promptly hanging up the phone before Russell had the chance to continue yelling at her. She knew she would pay for it later, but her temples were already beginning to throb. There was no way she could withstand a Russell Jackson tongue lashing before she had even half a cup of coffee.

Setting her phone on the counter, she allowed herself to sag against it, already exhausted from about five minutes of consciousness. While her job had many perks, the lack of sleep and constant chaos that surrounded her was not something that she had gotten used to even after almost three years as the Secretary of State. She loved her job and the work that she did. It was truly a calling that she found herself more than willing to answer, to be a part of something that was much bigger than herself, but she often wondered what their lives would be like if she had not accepted Conrad Dalton's offer when the previous secretary had been assassinated.

The coffee was just finishing up when she heard footsteps on the stairs behind her. She knew that the shuffling feet belonged to her mutually sleep deprived husband as a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around her waist.

"Please tell me that you don't have to go save the world before 5 o'clock on a Tuesday morning?" Henry mumbled into Elizabeth's shoulder. "I really want to go back to bed."

"The world is safe for now. You head back to bed though. I have some work to do coming up with inducements to get Russia back to the table for the peace accords. I don't know what is going on but if Russel is reading me the riot act at 4:30 in the morning, none of it can be good." Elizabeth replied as she poured cream in her coffee. "Go get some sleep. I'll wake you up in a couple of hours."

Twisting in her husband's arms, she kissed his cheek, picked up her coffee, and made her way to their study. The wheels in her head were already turning as she thought of anything she could to possibly get Russia back on board with the Ukrainian peace accords. Nothing with this deal had gone as planned, and the effects of all the stressors were wearing her down more than the normal. She chalked it up to the lack of sleep and lack of adequate food intake. While Blake did a very good job of making sure she ate, the amount that was actually eaten was always up in the air, since she barely had the chance to sit in one place for more than five minutes at a time.

Shifting her glasses on her nose, she opened the document that Jay sent her the night before. Jay, being the forward-thinking policy man he was, had already come up with a short list of inducements to bring to the Russian president just in case. Glossing over much of the list, Elizabeth came to the quick decision that there was very little the United States would be able to offer Russia to get this deal signed. She knew that while they didn't have much to offer, Russia couldn't afford to make an enemy of the US in the middle of keeping peace in the Middle East. If she could appeal to Sarnakoff's better angels, maybe she would be able to coax him back to the signing out of the goodness of his heart. If not, nothing short of the threat of all out war would change the mind of the stubborn Russian president.

Two hours and a pot of coffee later, Elizabeth had drafted a short speech that would hopefully save her ass and if not, at least it sounded sincere enough. She picked up her mug and walked back to the kitchen. Rinsing the mug in the sink, she flipped on the tv above microwave. As much as she despised watching the one-sided news on any station, it did make the morning meetings easier when she actually knew what was going on in world relations and politics instead of being ambushed by her team at the elevator.

As the room filled with the annoying voice of the newest meteorologist, Elizabeth made sure to read the scrolling tape at the bottom of the screen, checking for any sign of Sarnakoff's early morning flight from Dulles. The last thing she needed was for that information to hit the news cycle before she had a chance to speak with the man.

"Thank God." she whispered to herself once she was sure there was no trace of the Russian dissent in the morning news cycle. "Now I just have to keep it that way."

Dousing the room in silence once more, Elizabeth made her way back up the kitchen stairs, towards the master bedroom. Henry had left the door cracked, and she could hear him softly snoring. Slowly she padded her way to the bed trying her best not wake him just yet. The man had been working himself to the bone, and she hated to wake him up from the first decent sleep he had gotten in weeks. Instead, she slid back between the covers and snuggled up against Henry's side, breathing in her husband's scent. The warmth of his body enveloped her in a sense of calm as he wrapped his arms around her. Pulling her close, he buried his head into the nook of her shoulder, the stubble on his chin tickling her and making her quietly giggle.

"So did you come up with the Russia inducements?" Henry mumbled, shifting in order to pull his wife on top of him. "Or did you spend the last two hours staring at the computer praying that Sarnakoff gets his head out of his ass?" His hands caressed up and down her back, finally coming to rest at the base of her spine.

Resting her chin on Henry's chest, she looked in looked into his endless ocean blue eyes replying, "I hope that the list Jay and I have put together will work, but as we both know, hope can be a long shot. We've done everything we can do at this point. I have a back-burner ultimatum ready if necessary. Let's pray to God we won't need it though."

She tangled her fingers in the hair at the base of her husband's skull, gazing at a man without whom she would not be the woman she had become. The man who taught her to look past what she could see right in front of her. Who also taught her to listen to the concerns of others in order to better understand them. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her chin and began counting the beats in order to calm herself. It had been coping mechanism she had been using since Henry told her of his first deployment during Desert Storm some twenty-five years ago. His heartbeat reminded her that she was not alone and that his strength was enough for both of them when necessary. She required that calm for the day she knew lay ahead of her. Suddenly an immense wave of nauseous hit her square in the stomach, and she had to crawl over Henry in order to make it to the bathroom before her rebellious stomach emptied itself of its meager contents. As the first wave passed, another wave reached its crest, this time accompanied by dizziness that made the white tile of the bathroom spin around her. More stomach bile than coffee came up the second time as her stomach continued to rebel against her.

Henry, who had bolted straight up as his wife had crawled over him, made his way into the bathroom to find Elizabeth sitting on the floor, her head hanging over the toilet. Bending down, he brushed loose hairs from her damp forehead, grabbed a hair tie from the counter and wrapped it around her hair to keep it from continuing to fall in her face. Rubbing gentle circles on her back, Henry could feel her begin to heeve again and whispered reassuring words in her ear.

"I swear if Noodle's meatless Monday is the reason that I am now puking my toe nails up, she won't be cooking for the family ever again." Elizabeth gasped as she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. "Can I have some water please? I would get it myself, but I don't trust my knees at the moment."

Henry grabbed one of the glasses beside the sink and filled it halfway. Handing it to his pale and sweaty wife, he sank down to the floor beside her, wrapping an arm around her. "Just sip the water and then we will see if we can get you back in bed. Russia and Ukraine are just going to have to wait a day."

"I may have just thrown up everything I've eaten for the last week, but Russia and Ukraine cannot wait for whatever this is to pass. World politics never takes a sick day which means that neither can the Secretary of State." Elizabeth replied as she sipped from the glass. "As much as I would kill for a sick day, a diplomat's work is never done."

Passing the now empty water glass back to Henry, Elizabeth braced herself on the lid of the toilet to test the strength of her wobbly knees. Once upright, her knees actually held, and she shuffled back into their bedroom to sit on the end of the bed. The last thing that she needed today was the possibility of having to rush out of the room to throw up amidst the presidents of the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. Though they no longer questioned her because of her gender, the foreign presidents would view her as weak if she missed such a big occasion because of a stomach bug.

Her worried husband followed her back to their bed and settled beside her. She leaned over to rest her head on his shoulder, thankful that the nausea had seemed to have subsided for now.

"Babe, you can't go to work like this. You can't run out on the president of two foreign countries to throw up, and then go back in and blame it on something you ate. You know that Conrad will see right through that." Henry, stated matter-of-factly, while rubbing soothing circles on Elizabeth's lower back. "I am sure that Undersecretary Sterling can handle the accord signing so that you can go to James Madison and get checked out."

"Mention going to the hospital one more time and you will be the one who needs a hospital, Henry McCord." the blonde woman snapped back at him. "It's probably just a stomach bug that will pass in a few hours and if not, I will take the day off tomorrow once all the pomp and circumstance is over. Scout's honor."

"Okay okay." Henry said, his hands up in defeat. "But if you start throwing up again, you better have Blake call me and then Undersecretary Sterling so you can go see a doctor."

Nodding, the exhausted Secretary of State heaved herself off the bed and slowly made her way into the closet on the search for her outfit of the day. She knew that she would need to stay away from orange and yellow in order to prevent herself from looking as deathly ill as she felt. Allison had been telling her that she needed to incorporate more blues and greens into her wardrobe, and today seemed to be the day. Pulling pair of her most comfortable black slacks from their hanger, she stood in the middle of her vast array of clothes trying to find the willpower to pick a shirt and continue getting ready. Skimming over the multitude of shirts, she stopped at a deep forest green collared sweater and pulled it from its hanger as well. If she had to go to work under the weather, at least she was going to be comfortable.