A/N: Wow. This is the last chapter guys. It's been a wild ride, I tell you what. This is probably the most popular of all of my fics, and I would never have gone on without you. There's going to be a little bit of everyone in here, just for the reason that it's the last chapter. Thanks for sticking with me even when I didn't update and for giving critical advice when I really needed it.

And just one last note: I've tried to hint at some Josh/Donna for the entire story, but not much is going to happen between them, because this is supposed to fit in right between the scenes that we were shown in the Season Two openers. Having Josh and Donna confess their love for each other would therefore, change the series. Sorry guys!

Disclaimer: This is the last one of these I'll ever need to write and Thank God. (wipes sweatdrop off)

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Josh Lyman's POV

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the first thing that I noticed when I woke up was that it felt like my throat had been rubbed with sandpaper. And then it felt like my spleen, pancreas, lungs, heart, and liver had been as well. I hurt all over. It felt like I had just been skydiving without a parachute. I immediately tried to go back to sleep, but that plan wasn't working. No, once I was awake and in pain I just had to stay awake and in pain. Add that to the fact that someone kept on calling my name and I was not in a good mood.

"Josh?" they asked me. I tried to answer, but with my throat in the state that it was it was lucky that I was still breathing. Talking was going to take a lot of work, perhaps years worth. "Josh?" I thought that I recognized that voice but I wasn't entirely sure.

The first voice whispered something to another person in the room and they responded. The longer that I was staying awake the more alert my mind became until the point where I could almost identify those two voices.

"Josh, wake up," one of them said gently and the realization hit me like a train. It was the President talking to me. Whew, thank goodness he was all right. I idly wondered how long I had been out. I could remember the shooting in a vague sort of way, but I couldn't piece together right then exactly what had happened, which was probably a good idea.

There was nothing I could say at this point. When you're lying on a hospital bed with the President standing over you, talking to you in a concerned tone of voice, "Hey! How you doing?" just doesn't seem to fit somehow. If I could have smiled I would have at the words that came out of my mouth.

"What's next?"

They stayed after that, but anything that they said to me was lost upon me. My mind decided that we didn't need to be concentrating on such complex things such as questions that wanted to know "Are you all right?" "Does it hurt anywhere?" We had better things to concentrate on, such as what happened to me. I could vaguely remember huge ripping pain in my abdomen, but I couldn't piece together what happened to me after that. Again, this was probably a strategy by my brain to save me and it did. I think that if I had thought about what happened to me at that moment then I would have gone insane and damaged the best brain in the entire West Wing.

It wasn't until I heard a distinctly different, feminine voice that I actually paid attention. Instead of sounding reassured and comforting like the President's and Leo's (I'd figured out that Leo was the other person in my room while I was spending eons of lying on the bed) it sounded tearful and vulnerable. I wanted to take that person and wrap them in my arms and tell them that everything was all right, but unfortunately I couldn't move my appendages.

"Josh?" she asked. Donna! My mind cried out, but my stupid, uncooperative throat wouldn't…er…cooperate. "I thought that you were going to die for a while,' she said. I felt semi-embarrassed. This was probably not the kind of thing that she wanted me to hear, yet what could I do to tell her to stop before she ended up saying something that she would regret? I couldn't move my body and I couldn't speak, so I had to listen to her say "I was all right, but I come in here and see you and it all falls apart again. I couldn't bear losing you."

Aw, that's sweet, I thought to myself. My benevolence faded at her next words. "Even though you're an incredible anal jerk some of the time I don't know what I would do without you lording your superiority over me." Well, I supposed that was sweet in its special way.

Donna took my hand in hers and squeezed it tightly. "Don't you ever scare me like that again Josh Lyman," she scolded me gently. "If you died then so would I. my God…everyone was right…I think that…" she stopped herself there and it was all that I could do to keep from screaming. It was like a bad romantic comedy where either the hero or heroine always gets interrupted before they can make their huge declaration of feeling to the other. Of course, it works well in a romantic comedy. Not so in real life.

She lay her head down on the side of my bed and I wished that I could lift my hand up and stroke her soft golden hair. I wished that I could do something to let her know that I felt the same way, but I was frozen and I hated it. Something told me that a moment like this would never come again, but I could not move and it was absolutely killing me.

So all I could do was merely lie there while Donna poured out her heart to me. Eventually she would put down my hand and then I didn't even have the comfortable contact of her skin with mine. But she stayed by my bed, my anchor to the world. If she had left, I have no doubt that I would have gone with her.

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President Bartlet's POV

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"Mr. Bartlet, you have a healthy baby daughter." "Mr. President, Josh Lyman is out of surgery and awake if you would like to see him." Both completely different moments in the history of my life, yet both evoking the same emotion. Thank God. My family was all right. My children were going to be all right, and would live for me to see them grow and mature.

I didn't care what else happened. The second that I heard that Josh was all right I was going to go see him. If Abbey had tried to stop me there then I would have had to seriously consider a divorce. Fortunately Abbey knew me well enough to know that there was going to be no stopping me. She let me go with a relieved sigh. If the doctors hadn't told us not to put too many people in the room I'm sure that she would have gone with us. As it was we had to beat back Toby, Donna, Sam and CJ with a stick. They were ravenous in their desire to see their friend. It really warmed their heart at how they sent mutinous glances at the doctor and how Toby mildly threatened in a soft voice that he controlled very powerful people in the justice department who could have him up for a malpractice treatment faster than you could say "No fair". I have such sweet and caring people that work for me. Leo's got a real talent for personnel.

And speaking of Leo, he was there when I went to see Josh. He'd been practically inseparable from me the entire night. To this day I have no idea of how he managed to keep things running at the West Wing and stay with Josh and me at the same time. The man must be supernatural or something. We stood over the sleeping man, who was usually so energetic. He looked older somehow, and more careworn. I felt a surge of rage go through me as I realized that we would never have exactly the same Josh back. He would come back, yes, but I'd lost the Josh that I'd come to look at as one of the sons that I'd never had.

I ran my hand gently over his forehead, smoothing back his hair. He stirred at the touch and hope sprang within me. "Josh?" I asked him. His eyes twitched underneath his eyelids and I could tell that he was fighting to regain consciousness. One thing you could say about Josh: he fought authority figures, but for all his fighting, when someone came along that he respected he did listen to them. But of course I'm flattering myself.

He moaned softly and I felt tears springing to my eyes. My God. He was awake and it didn't look like he was beyond repair. His lips moved and I immediately felt guilty that I hadn't leaned in closer to hear what he said. "I'm sorry Josh, I couldn't hear," I said, moving my ear next to his mouth. His words came out in a groan that made me cry and smile at the same time. I moved away, wiping the stray wetness away from my eyes.

"What'd he say?" Leo asked curiously. I gently rested my hand on Josh's forehead.

"He said "What's next?"" I said proudly. Soon, I could tell by the slackness of Josh's face that he was asleep and it wouldn't be worth spending any more time with him. He would wake up and soon we would have the wisecracking Josh back in the West Wing. He would be different, but he would be alive, and that was all that I cared about. It was all that I could do from dropping to my knees and praising the Lord. There might have been other people in the world that could have done Josh's job, and maybe several of them might have done it better. But no one could ever handle his job with the same passion and humor that Josh did, and the staff never would rally behind someone else like they rallied behind Josh.

The previous words that I had spoken ran through my head. "Look what happened." There was still that surge of guilt that everyone felt. If I hadn't been the President, then Josh never would have gotten hurt. I'd mentioned that to Leo, and he had quickly and necessarily brought me back down to Earth.

"Mr. President, forgive me, but that's egocentric of you to assume that," he had told me. "If Charlie hadn't been dating your daughter, if the tent had been up, if Josh hadn't gone back…there's a million things that we could have done to prevent this, and not one of them was done. It's not your fault any more than it's Charlie's fault, or Zoey's fault, or the Secret Service's fault. It was just one of those things. And what you do when something like that happens is that you thank God that it wasn't worse than it was and work to make sure that something like that never happens again. That's all you can do."

I knew there was a reason why I picked this guy for my Chief of Staff.

Leo escorted me to my room and then he was off again, saying that he had something that he had to take care of in the West Wing. "Make sure to get some sleep sometime today!" I called after him as he was leaving the room.

"I doubt very much that'll happen Mr. President," he called back as he was exiting. I smiled and shook my head. Zoey walked into the room as Leo was exiting.

"Is Josh all right?" she asked. Her eyes were red from crying. My fatherly instinct took over and I held my arms out. "I'm not going to hurt you if I hug you, am I?" she asked worriedly.

"No, you're going to be fine," I said, smiling at the careful way that she wrapped her arms around me. "Josh is going to be fine," I assured her as I rocked her back and forth. "You can go see him as soon as he wakes up if you want to."

"All right," she murmured, and then she too belonged to the ages. Abbey came in and started to say something, but quieted her voice as she saw our youngest daughter resting comfortably.

"It's been a hard night on her hasn't it?" she asked indulgently, wiping away a strand of hair from Zoey's face.

"A hard night for her?" I asked indignantly. "I was the one who was shot and had to be operated on!" Abbey shook her head and gently scratched my scalp.

"Oh Jed, don't be such a drama queen," she teased playfully. She leaned against the headboard and sighed deeply, her hand moving idly along my receding hairline. Being the leader of the free world is really hell on your devilish good looks.

"Just think Jed," she murmured, and I could tell that she was swiftly falling into the realms of sleep. "We made it out. We survived. How many other people could have been that lucky?"

And then the sleep disease must have been passed onto me, because that's the last thing that I remember being said.

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CJ Cregg's POV

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One day, I will quit my job. I will simply walk out of the White House and never return. And that day, everyone who has ever heard me threaten to quit will be amazed and astonished. They won't know what happened and then they'll be pretty darn sorry that they didn't take my threats seriously.

But unfortunately that happy day was not today, and I still had a great deal of work to do. "I quit," I muttered to myself, shuffling through several papers on my desk. I had managed to dodge a bullet with the television through Sam, and through watching his interviews, had finally figured out what had happened last night. It was a bit odd to find that your life was in the hands of someone like Sam. Not that it was a bad thing to have your life debt to Sam. It was just…odd, that was all. But he did give back my necklace, and he could have easily claimed that as payment for saving my life. I thought it was rather nice of him to give me back my necklace.

"Can I come in?" I looked up to see Danny leaning against my doorframe.

"Sure," I said with false happiness. "It's not like I have to do a lot of work. Thank God that we didn't have an assassination attempt on the President last night. Imagine the amount of work that the Press Secretary might have then. She might not have enough time to entertain you if that happened."

Danny sat down on my couch, the insolent man. "I'm sensing sarcasm," he noted calmly. I slammed some papers down on my desk and looked at him, my glasses askew.

"Really?" I asked him in frustration. "Do you think that you sense sarcasm? I can't imagine what would have given you that thought. It's all in your head."

"So they're working you pretty hard?" he asked nonchalantly. I gritted my teeth, telling myself to keep a calm head and not to kill Danny. I was finding it harder and harder to hold onto that resolution.

"Just a little bit, yeah," I told him impatiently. "Was there a reason that you wanted to come down here other than to annoy me? Because if you came down here for a comment our official position is no comment."

"No, I was just thinking over the historical significance of what happened last night," Danny said coolly. "I think that certain aspects of it have been lost here, just because of the fact that Josh and the President were both shot."

"And what are you trying to say?" I asked angrily, finally giving up on doing any work while Danny was in the office. "I've been trying to balance the story all night: trying to give the national media impersonal information while still remembering that it's one of my best friends on the operating table. Don't tell me that I've lost some aspects of the story."

"I know that you haven't," Danny said calmly, not at all fazed by my outburst. "I was thinking that maybe some Americans have. Either that, or they won't know the entire story." At my lost expression he hurried to explain. "So, it's our job to show them the entire story," he slowly explained. "And who better to show them that story than the people who lived through that night? I'm going to write a book," he explained. "It's going to show the entire story of that night. Don't worry, it won't be released until after the Presidency is over," he said, an indulgent smile on his face. "What do you think?"

I considered his idea carefully and could find no horrible wrong with it. "I think…that's a really good idea," I told him, obviously surprising him.

"I'm going to get every single person who was there, and even some who weren't," he told me, a proud smile on his face. "It's going to be the bestseller for at least several months."

And now that you're reading this, you have to tell me: Was it the bestseller? And if so, for how long?

Epilogue

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Donna's POV

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Josh was asleep again. It was ironic, the fact that he'd spent most of the night and a good deal of the morning unconscious and now he wanted to sleep. Then again, he'd looked pretty woozy when I first saw him wake up, so it was probably a good idea to let him get some sleep.

I tell you what, at that point, I wanted to get some sleep. I'd been awake nearly the entire night and I wanted to rest. I kept on drifting off while I was sitting next to his bed. My head would droop down and I would manage to pull it up at the last second. I wouldn't be able to keep this up for much longer. I was going to fall asleep and Josh was going to wake up and he would feel alone, and then he would die. At least that's the way that my mind was working at that point in time.

I tried to pinch myself, I took off my jacket to make myself feel cold, I did everything that I could think of. And I was still falling asleep. It was horrible. I couldn't make myself stay awake…I was falling asleep…going, going…

"Donna?"

I sat straight up, all thoughts of sleep immediately banished. It had to be a little ironic that I'd taken desperate measures to keep myself awake, yet it was a barely heard whisper that managed to stimulate my adrenaline and keep me going.

"I'm here," I said, shaking my head to get rid of all last traces of exhaustion. "I'm awake. Don't you even think that I'm asleep yet, because I'm not. And I wasn't going to fall asleep, I was just saying that."

"Okay," Josh said, raising his eyebrow sluggishly. He seemed more lucid this time and I didn't think that it was necessary for me to ring for a nurse. "Shouldn't you be at the office?"

"Do you want me to be at the office?" I asked him, immediately concerned. "Is there something that I should be doing? Toby said that he would send a few assistants to help with the work at your office so I could be here, but if you think that there's something that I should be doing, then I'll go back there right now and finish it." Josh raised his hand and cut off my babbling.

"There's nothing that you need to be doing and that was really sweet of Toby to do that," he mused. "I must remember to thank him one day, using exactly those words. I just thought that you might want to be somewhere else."

"No, I wanted to be right here," I told him, hoping that he wouldn't ask for a reason why. He didn't and I breathed easier. "Do you want me to go?"

"No, I really don't," he murmured, reaching out and grabbing my hand. "I actually want you to stay right here."

I squeezed his hand, tears starting up in my eyes. The way that he was looking up at me made me tear up. He was looking with absolute trust and faith in his eyes. The only thing that I'd ever seen look up at me with that much trust was a puppy that was born on the farm.

"Josh…" I stalled, thinking of what I wanted to say. I love you. "I hope you get better soon. I think you'd better go back to sleep now."

Josh lazily nodded, his eyes already closing.

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El fin.

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Wow. It took a really long time for this to be completed. Sorry that I put you through so much guys. But hey. It's over and we all survived, eh?

This collection was compiled by Danny Concanon, with help from Ms. CJ Cregg and Mr. Joshua Lyman.

Editing was supplied by Mr. Toby Ziegler and Mr. Samuel Seaborn.

Typing and filing was provided by Ms. Donnatella Moss and Mr. Charlie Young.

Task-Managing and Administrative Organizing was done by Mr. Leo McGarry.

Medical Help for breakdowns was provided by Mrs. Abbey Bartlet and Ms. Eleanor Bartlet.

A Presidential Seal of Approval was delivered by Mr. Josiah Bartlet.