Jed's adrenaline was running high as he walked the portico towards the Oval Office on the morning following the State of the Union speech. Over breakfast he and Abbey had flicked from C-SPAN to CNN to NBC and a myriad of other channels – and the words 'challenging', 'positive', 'far-reaching' – even 'inspirational' and 'electrifying' – were voiced over and over again.

But that was not the only reason for his good humour. He'd been awoken early by Abbey sliding her hand down his chest, and even before he had opened his eyes, locks of her silky hair were falling over his face as she lent over him to bring her mouth down on his.

Forcing his eyes open, he'd looked up into inviting green eyes. "More?" he asked with a grin.

She returned the grin. "You complaining?"

"Definitely not!"

"So?"

In reply, Jed put his hand behind her head and pulled her down until their lips met again in a long sensuous kiss that left them both aroused and needing more...

--

Now, after a cheerful greeting to the agents outside the door to the Oval Office, Jed started looking through the folders that Mrs Landingham had left on his desk. He found himself humming Sinatra's 'Old Black Magic', breaking into the words of 'icy fingers down my spine' and smiling to himself.

Outside the open door of the Oval Office, Charlie glanced across at Mrs Landingham who was pouring coffee into the President's mug.

"The President seems to be in a very good mood this morning, Charlie."

"Yeah – and my guess is that it's not just because it was a good State of the Union, Mrs Landingham."

Mrs Landingham looked over her glasses at him. "Is there something you're not telling me, Charlie?"

Charlie grinned. "Sorry, Mrs L – can't disclose, it was an executive order."

"I don't think you should be grinning like that, Charlie," Mrs Landingham scolded gently.

Charlie straightened his face. "It was man to man, Mrs Landingham."

"I'm sure it was." Her voice said it all. "Now, would you like to take his coffee in for him – and stop him singing that silly song?"

"It's Sinatra's 'Old Black Magic'."

"I've been with him long enough to know ALL Sinatra's songs, Charlie. Just take the coffee in, dear."

Charlie took the mug from her and went into the Oval Office.

The President was still singing. "Down and down I go, round and round I go, like a something that's caught in the – oh, morning, Charlie."

"Leaf," Charlie said as he put the mug of coffee on the Resolute Desk.

"What?"

"Like a leaf that's caught in the tide."

Jed looked at him in surprise. "You're a young man, Charlie. I thought you'd be into the Foo-Fingers or Plum Jam – not Sinatra."

"Foo-Fighters and Pearl Jam? Not my scene. Anyway, my Mom was a Sinatra fan – I was brought up on Sinatra."

Jed nodded. "That explains a lot." He picked up his mug of coffee. "And er – thanks for – er – organising things last night, Charlie."

"Was everything – um – to your satisfaction, sir?"

Jed raised amused eyes from his coffee. "Oh yes – very definitely. And where the hell did you manage to get those roses from?"

"Carmen's House of Flowers, sir – it's the White House's usual supplier."

"At eight thirty in the evening?"

"Say the words 'White House' to Carmen and she'll produce a White Bolivian Fuchsia if you ask for one!"

"A White Bolivian–? Is there such a thing?"

Charlie grinned. "I don't know, sir – you want me to check it out?"

"Not really. But anyway, thanks, Charlie. Oh – and by the way, Zoey likes roses too."

"Yes, sir." Charlie's dark skin hid the blush that rose to his cheeks, but he had caught the twinkle in the President's eyes.

"So – what do we have today?"

"The staff want you to look at last night's polls – oh, and Leo asked for a quick word with you before the staff meeting."

Jed glanced at his watch. "Okay." He put the coffee mug down on the desk and started to move towards the door of Leo's office, then looked back at his body man with a grin. "And thanks again, Charlie."

Leo looked up as his office door opened and then stood up. "Mr President."

"Sit down, Leo." It still amazed him at times that his old friend always observed all the protocol afforded to the President. "Charlie said you wanted a quick word."

"Yeah, I've scheduled a half hour for you with Fitz."

Jed frowned slightly. "Something's happened with India and Pakistan?"

"Nope, situation's still the same there – India's withdrawing."

"So why–? Oh." Realisation dawned.

"You remember what we talked about yesterday morning?"

"Yeah. I was just – well, I thought that maybe–"

"You thought that maybe if you put it off long enough, it would go away."

Jed gave him a sheepish grin. Leo knew him too well. "Yeah, I guess so. Okay, Leo, what time?"

"Eleven thirty – in the Oval Office."

Jed nodded and returned to the office, no longer singing but starting to go over in his mind just what he was going to say to the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. Even during the morning staff meeting, his mind was only half on the dial up results, the overnight polls and the press headlines and comments that his staff was eagerly discussing. Coupled with the American influence on the Indian withdrawal, the approval rating had hit 65.

At the end of the meeting, however, he remembered that he needed to call Josh and Sam back. "I want you to start investigating a deal," he said to them once the door had closed behind the other staff.

"A deal, sir?" Josh's eyebrows had risen.

"Yeah – whatever you can find that will stop Leo having to go to a hearing. It might have slipped off the front pages after yesterday, but they'll be back for blood – and I'm not having that."

Sam grinned his approval. "We'll find something, sir."

"Something we can put in the drawer for a while?" Jed suggested.

"Yes, sir." Sam glanced at Josh who nodded.

"Yeah, we can do that, sir."

"Okay – oh, and would you ask CJ to come back for a few minutes, I need to talk to her about the Lydells."

The morning was taken up with the immediate minutiae of the day and it wasn't until a quarter past eleven that Jed had a short breathing space.

He sat down at the desk in the Oval Office and called Abbey's office.

"65 and still rising – you did well there, boyfriend!" she said with a laugh in her voice. "But you still get a hundred and ten percent from me."

Jed grinned. "Only ten percent over?"

"Well, I could be persuaded to up that percentage–"

He laughed. "Special garments get extra points from me, you know!" Then his voice changed. "Listen, Leo's fixed a meeting for me with Fitz in fifteen minutes – and I'm not sure how I'm gonna play it."

Abbey's voice lost its teasing tone too. "You just gotta tell him the truth, Jed."

"Yeah."

"D'you want me to come across?"

"No, it's okay. I'll handle it. Guess it all depends on how much Fitz knows about MS."

"He'll go away and do his research like Leo did."

"And then he'll wonder about my mental state every time I'm in the Situation Room." Jed said with a trace of bitterness then heaved a sigh. "I know that Leo's right – I know that he should be told, but I'm not looking forward to it." He hesitated then went on, voicing his fears, "What if he thinks that the other Chiefs should be told – and Nancy McNally too?"

Abbey hesitated too. "I'm not sure how to answer that, Jed. How would you feel about that?"

"The more people who know, the more chance there is of it breaking before we're ready for it."

"Yeah." She knew all the reasons for Jed's fears – even before he'd voiced them the previous day when he'd talked about people seeing past his disease to him as a person. But, with her medical experience, she knew that only too often that was the only thing that people saw. She'd seen her heart patients wrapped in cotton by their families, instead of being allowed to continue their lives; she'd seen the frustration of wheelchair patients being ignored as all conversation was directed at their carers, instead of at the patients themselves; and she knew too that MS was so misunderstood generally that many people treated those with the disease as invalids when all they wanted was to lead as normal lives as possible. "Look," she said, "see what Fitz has to say first huh? If he wants it to go further, then tell him you'll think about it. Then you and Leo can discuss it and make the decision."

Jed nodded. "Yeah, that was that conclusion I was reaching too." He glanced round as the door from Leo's office opened. "Gotta go, honey – they're here."

"Call me afterwards, Jed."

"Okay."

Jed put the phone down and stood up as Leo came into the office, followed by Admiral Fitzwallace, resplendent as ever in his uniform. Jed knew that protocol demanded the full dress uniform but wished at the same time that he didn't find it so intimidating.

"Morning, Fitz – what's happening in Kashmir this morning?"

"Well, it's evening now over there, sir – and although there have been hundreds of messages during the day from the Pakistan front line commanders back to their government, they're still holding their line."

"And the Indians are still withdrawing?"

"Yes, sir." Fitz glanced round at Leo and Jed knew that he was wondering why he had been summoned to the Oval Office to report on something that would normally have been a standard Situation Room conversation.

He walked round the Resolute Desk and beckoned Fitz across to the couch. ""Take a seat, Admiral. There's something that I need to tell you."

As he sat down across from Fitz, Jed glanced quickly at Leo who had remained standing then looked back at the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. "I realise now that this is something that you should have known the minute I set foot in this office – my Chief of Staff has pointed that out very clearly to me – but since it's something that he himself has only known for two days, I take full responsibility for failing to inform you when I should have done so."

"Sir?" Fitz's face remained impassive and for a split second Jed wondered just what was going on in his mind.

"Before I go on, I need to ask you something. How do you feel about knowing – and keeping – a secret?"

"Mr President, I'm in the armed forces, I've been privy to and have kept secrets for most of my working life."

"Okay – well, I guess I'm gonna ask you to keep another one – although I will, of course, respect your decision if you feel that this is something that you cannot keep to yourself."

"So long as you haven't sent any burglars into the Watergate hotel, sir, I think I can probably accept that whatever it is has been done with the best of intentions."

"Yeah, well, maybe not everyone will see it that way," Jed said ruefully.

Concern and uncertainty flashed through Fitz's eyes at the same time. "With respect, Mr President, shouldn't you be having this conversation with the White House counsel?"

"No, this is a personal matter." Jed drew in a deep breath and looked the other man straight in the eye. "I have MS, Admiral."

Fitz's dark eyes rested on him. "MS?"

"Yes. I assume you know–"

"Yes, sir. Multiple Sclerosis."

Jed nodded. "In my case, it's the relapsing-remitting type, which means that I should experience full recovery between attacks. It was diagnosed seven years ago, and in that time I've had four or five attacks, none of which have had any lasting effects."

Fitz nodded slowly. "Relapsing-remitting is the good sort of MS, sir. In contrast to the secondary progressive."

"Yeah," Jed replied, then looked sharply at the Admiral. "You seem to know more than most people do about it."

Fitz returned his look. "Yes, sir. My sister has MS."

"Ah." Jed leant back against the couch, not knowing whether to feel relieved or not by this unexpected revelation. "Okay. Tell me about her."

"Well, sir, she started with some numbness in her arm – and then some problems with her sight – things getting blurry – but it took a couple of years to get the full diagnosis."

Jed nodded. "Yeah, same here – except it was my leg not my arm." He was starting to feel some of the tension leaving him, knowing that Fitz knew and understood the disease. "So she got a relapsing-remitting diagnosis too?"

Fitz shook his head. "No, sir. Lillian went almost straight away into secondary progressive."

Jed's eyes widened. "What happened?"

"Her left arm remained virtually paralysed after a bad attack, sir – and about five years ago, her left leg too. She has to use a cane now."

"Is she coping?"

Fitz grinned. "Mr President, she's the chair of the local MS group and organises seminars, social evenings and fundraising events almost every week, she's the church treasurer and sings in the church choir – and she's just come back from a cruise up the Amazon. I'd say she was coping fine, wouldn't you?"

Jed chuckled. "I sure would. How old is she, Fitz?"

"Sixty-five last November."

"And all her symptoms are physical?"

Fitz nodded. "So far, yes. But she's aware – as I'm sure you are – of the possible effects on cognitive functions."

"Yeah," Jed said briefly and drew in his breath. "Language processing, concentration and short-term memory – and then impaired intellectual reasoning and judgment."

"With respect, sir, I would suggest that all of us when we reach our sixties can experience all of that, with or without MS. I have a pretty good command of language but there are times when I have to search for a word I want to use–"

Jed broke in. "You didn't have any problem with 'egregious'!" he said with a grin. Fitz looked puzzled and, after a quick glance at Leo, Jed went on, "My Chief of Staff had to look that up in the dictionary – and he's only in his fifties!"

Fitz smiled. "Military terms are second nature to me, sir. But my wife tells me I have the concentration span of a goldfish when she's trying to tell me something! And I think we can all say that we can easily remember things that happened forty years ago – even details of conversations – but you ask me what I said last week to Nancy McNally, and I wouldn't have a clue."

Jed started laughing. "And if Abbey was here, I'm sure she'd totally agree with you there! She tells me where she's going the next day or the next week, and then despairs of me when I don't remember what she's told me."

"That's age – or a mind that's occupied with many other things, and not MS, sir."

Jed nodded. "Yeah, but–" he hesitated then went on, "what about impaired reasoning and judgment?"

Fitz looked at him steadily. "Mr President, if I ever suspected that you were being irrational or were displaying dysfunctional cognitivity, I'd tell you to get the hell out of my Situation Room, make no mistake about that. But in the meantime, my job is to serve the United States of America – and its elected President. And I shall continue to do so, to the best of my ability."

Jed drew in a deep breath. "Thank you, Fitz," he said in a voice that was suddenly choked with emotion. "I can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciate that."

"Just remember, sir, MS doesn't necessarily lead to cognitive problems – and, judging by the infrequency of your episodes, you still have a long way to go before your relapsing- remitting develops inside secondary-progressive – if it ever does."

Jed nodded and paused for a few moments before he went on. "But I now need to go back to the real issue which I mentioned to start with–" He glanced across at Leo. "And this includes you too, Leo – so will you please come and sit down while we talk this through." He waited until Leo had sat down on the couch next to Fitzwallace and looked at them both. "Until two days ago, the only people who knew about this were my family and my personal physicians."

"And John Hoynes," Leo interjected.

"And John Hoynes," Jed agreed. "I had to tell him when I asked him to be my running mate, Fitz. But the point I want to make is this – I have never lied, and I have never asked anyone else to lie. And I'm not going to start asking anyone to do that either. But what I am asking you both is whether you are prepared to keep this thing to yourselves for as long as it's humanly possible? Fitz, Leo already knows my reasons for this – but to put it briefly, I'm well aware that MS is seen by many as a disabling disease – and I don't want the White House staff – or even worse, the American public – to start thinking that I am incapacitated or that I can't handle the job. From a professional point of view, I want to be seen as a President who can make things happen – and from a personal point of view, I want live a normal life for as long as this disease allows me to. I'm also aware that the decision that Abbey and I made several years ago to keep this thing under wraps could be construed by some as unbelievably stupid, even as totally wrong – but we made that decision and we now have to live with it. Am I making any sense to you, Fitz?"

"Sir, I'll remind you of what I said earlier – which was that I could probably accept that whatever it was, it had been done with the best of intentions. And I have no reason whatsoever to retract that statement." He paused momentarily. "If I may mention my sister again, sir–"

"Yes, of course. Say whatever you need to say, Fitz."

"When Lillian first started with her symptoms, she was the Dean of Baltimore College – and she too concealed the fact that she had been diagnosed with MS. Fifteen years ago, her reason was that the disease was even more misunderstood than it is today and that she would immediately have been pressured to resign. Sadly, as you've already pointed out, sir, we haven't made a lot of progress on that score despite the best efforts of the MS Society to re-educate the public – there's still a lack of understanding as well as negative attitudes towards the disease and people with MS are still seen by many as invalids." Fitz paused for a moment then smiled. "But Lillian's favourite saying is 'I'm Lillian Healey – look at me and not at my disease.'"

Jed glanced quickly at Leo, remembering how he had used almost the same words the previous day. Slowly he nodded his head. "She said it right there, Fitz."

"Yes, sir. And when I look at you, I'm looking at Josiah Bartlet, and not at MS."

"Thank you, Fitz." Jed had to bite his lip hard and then turned to Leo. "Leo?"

"I think that Fitz has said everything more than adequately, sir – and I'm happy to agree with him one hundred percent."

Jed stood up. "I'm very grateful to you both."

As he reached to shake Fitz's hand, the Admiral looked at him. "I'm proud that you felt that you could trust me with this, sir."

Jed nodded and then had to look down as Fitz turned to leave the Oval Office. When he'd gone, he turned to Leo. "I – I'd like a few minutes alone, Leo."

Leo nodded. "Yes, sir."

Once on his own, Jed sat down again and leaned back against the couch, blinking rapidly to force back the tears that had flooded to his eyes. Never in a million years could he have anticipated the depth of understanding from Admiral Fitzwallace – and at the same time a wave of relief swept through him. If only, he thought, if only everyone else's reactions could be the same...But he knew that was a vain hope.

After a minute or so, while he collected himself, he stood up and crossed to the desk, picking up the phone and hitting the buttons that would connect him to Abbey's office.

"Abbey," he said when she answered, "I need to see you."

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, honey."

After he'd put the phone down, Jed walked across to the door to Leo's office.

Leo was standing by the window and turned when the door opened. "Sir?"

Jed knew at that moment that Leo had been affected as emotionally as he himself had been.

"It was okay, wasn't it?"

Leo smiled. "Yes, sir. It was totally okay,"

"I mean, we couldn't ever have known about Fitz's sister – or that he would have understood so much–"

"Yeah, that was a real bonus."

"Having MS can never be called a bonus."

"That wasn't what I meant."

"No, I know it wasn't. The bonus was Fitz's understanding of all the implications."

Leo nodded. "Yeah." He gave Jed his lopsided grin. "Though I still can't see you taking kindly to him throwing you out of the Situation Room!"

Jed grinned too, then his face stilled. "If it ever comes to that, Leo, then you remove me forcibly, okay?"

Leo looked at him steadily. "Please God it never comes to that."

"Amen," Jed replied. He glanced back at the Oval Office as he heard the portico door open, then looked back at Leo. "Give me a few minutes, will you? I asked Abbey to come down."

Leo nodded. "Okay."

Jed went back into the Oval Office and closed the door behind him.

"Jed?" Abbey said. "Is this about Fitz? What happened?"

He moved across to her, put his arms round her and hugged her tightly. "It's okay," he breathed eventually. "Fitz understood – his sister has MS. It's okay."

Abbey smiled tremulously at him. "So you've cleared another hurdle."

"Yeah," Jed nodded then paused a few moments before going on, "Two days there were just twelve – suddenly there are two more. Who's going to be the fifteenth?"

"We'll face that hurdle when we reach it," Abbey said quietly...

The End