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[donna pov]

We all have dreams of how we think our lives are going to pan out.

When we are young we dream about the ideology of the perfect guy, the perfect wedding, and the perfect children. And at this young age, we’re generally too naïve to realise that this perfect life probably won’t turn out quite as the master plan intended.

The guy won’t be perfect. The wedding might not even happen and, even if it does, probably not as we had imagined. And as for those perfect children, well, even they don’t become what we had hoped.

Still, we are permitted these illusions, and it’s only when the life in question turns out so completely different to the ideology that we begin to come to the conclusion that perhaps the perfect life might not actually exist.

I suppose we’ll never know.

I was still quite young when the cracks in this illusion began to appear. And still only a few years older when it completely fell apart.

But then I’d not change my life now for the world. Perfect might not exist, but the achievement of undeniable happiness can almost certainly replace it.

I guess I should start at the beginning.

Or perhaps even before then.

The night of the Illinois Primary: February 2002.

The senior staff had decided to sporadically attend several state primaries (preferably the ones that they thought we had a chance of winning…) and this had been deemed one of them.

It was such an anxious time, we were sitting around too stressed out, waiting to see whether we’d won the primary or not.

And it was all too goddamn reminiscent of four years previously. Ignoring, obviously, the facts that we weren’t running this campaign, and that we had better job prospects if it all fell apart.

I think that’s what got me, really, what made it worse. I was overly aware of what Josh was doing, how he was coping with the whole situation.

His father had died on this night four years ago, and I don’t know whether it was bothering him or not.
Well, actually, subconsciously, I think I was utterly aware. He wasn’t coping too well, and not wanting to get over excited if we did win, in case there was bad news to follow as there was last time.

Consciously, however, I was working hard, he was working hard, hell, we were working hard together, and so I hadn’t much time to start conversations casually about the impact that his father’s death had on him. Not that I would have broached the subject if we hadn’t been working so much, but that’s irrelevant.

So, instead I was looking for signs.

Then it was announced: we had won.

Time for victory, we thought.

And I almost completely forgot that I was supposed to be seeing how Josh was getting on.

First, we all hugged each other enthusiastically, even Toby was half smiling, which given it was Toby was something of a miracle.

Then the champagne was opened.

The atmosphere was something that was indescribable. There was so much laughing, so much joy, hope, excitement, people shouting, phones ringing, just a general ambience of success. Which was good considering it was tentative for a while as to whether we’d even get the nomination. Considering the President’s declaration of his status of health, hell, it was tentative whether we’d get any votes.

I was so excited that I was even oblivious to Josh’s state of mind, which was saying something considering the way I think everyone realised I’d been hovering around him earlier in the day.

CJ grabbed a bottle and walked over to me, pouring a glass of the alcohol.

“There may be jobs for us at the end of this, after all,” she commented, practically downing the aforementioned beverage in one gulp.

“It’s looking more hopeful,” I replied, copying her earlier motion. She refilled both glasses.

We sat there for a while in silence, just drinking. Quietly drinking and reflecting. Might there be a chance for Bartlet after all?

Then she stood up. “I’m going to go share the good alcohol,” she said, walking off in the direction of Toby. I went and joined Sam and Josh, who were looking fairly inebriated by this point. I think they’d got a head start on the rest of us, but I wasn’t going to voice my suspicions.

“Drunk already, Joshua?” I asked, fairly hypocritically. I say that, as those three glasses I had already consumed (well, downed…) had pretty much gone to my head and soon I’d be joining them.
Josh just grinned up at me.

“We’ve only had half a bottle,” Sam protested.

“Each?” I questioned.

The evening grows a little hazy from there. Sam offered me alcohol, I accepted. We were celebrating, after all. I think I managed to drink the best part of two bottles myself, or at least one and a half, but that’s only since CJ has a better memory than I have. She told me that as far as she remembered, she didn’t think that she’d seen any of us without a glass in our hands all night.

I remember little excerpts of the night, though, they suddenly come into my conscious mind at the most unwelcome of times, floating round in a phantasmagoria sometimes, and completely coherent at others. Like I remember that someone put on music, and we all stood around not knowing what to do until Sam told us all to dance. Which we did. I think.

And I remember the conversation that I had with Josh, when we were both pretty much as drunk as I thought we could get. Apparently not, as I remember drinking some more after that. I don’t recall exactly what we said in that conversation, but Josh was being quite sweet, and told me that he found me invaluable and he didn’t know what he’d do without me. Or something along those lines, I think I’m paraphrasing. I said something about being glad that he came back to us all after the shooting – I was getting fairly maudlin at this time, I believe. He also said something about missing his father, but I don’t remember exactly what he was saying. I think I was staring at him too intently to concentrate on anything else. Or so Sam informs me. I’m not sure whether I should believe him or not.

I remember dancing with almost everyone, especially with Sam, who kept telling me that Josh was looking at him as though he wanted to kill him, and so he held me closer, just to see the reaction on Josh’s face. Apparently it wasn’t good, so when Josh came stumbling over, Sam gladly gave me up so Josh could dance with me.

I remember nothing after that.

Well, okay, when I say nothing, I mean almost nothing. I was certainly sober enough to remember getting in the cab with Josh and CJ drunkenly waving us off reminding us to not ‘do anything stupid’.

If only I’d listened.

Instead I did something so monumentally stupid that I don’t even believe now that I did it. How I got myself into such a situation.

In fact, I don’t even know what possessed us all to get so drunk. It wasn’t as if we’d won the election, and there were plenty more primaries to go before we could even win the democratic nomination. Though I suppose it was more of the idea that maybe we could do it. There could be hope.

But, I’m digressing.

Back to my complete stupidity.

Josh and I somehow managed to get back to our hotel (I tell you, he can be so drunk he doesn’t remember where he lives, but he remembered the hotel we were staying at). And instead of going back to our respective rooms, I somehow felt the need to go back to Josh’s. There was apparently some actual reason behind this, I know now, but I have no recollection of what this was. Really.

And somewhere along the way, we decide that we’re wearing far too many clothes, which was a reasonable thought, considering we had on many layers of clothing due to the cold weather, and we were now back in a heated hotel room. However, we decided that wearing no clothes at all was a far better option. And things progressed from thereon.

Yes, you see where I’m going now, right?

So, okay you’re thinking, you made a mistake, slept with your boss whilst drunk, you get over it, forget it and never mention it again, the end.

Not in this instance.

You see, I have no problem with the idea of sleeping with Josh, quite frankly the possibility has occurred to me more than several times over the time of my having worked for him, but this wasn’t just a mistake.

I never wanted to sleep with Josh whilst I was drunk, so much so that I forgot the majority of it (although, don’t worry, I have some recollection of the events, the whole remembering almost nothing worked to my advantage here…). You don’t ever want to do anything like that with someone you love. Or think you might love. You most certainly want them to at least have some idea of what they’ve done, and if the feelings are reciprocated, then great, perhaps something can develop from there.

But for them to have no idea that what you saw as potentially the most memorable night of your life (if you have as active an imagination as mine…) actually happened, and to not remember most of it yourself is somewhat frightening. And not just in the whole ‘oh my god, what did I do whilst I was drunk’ kind of frightening. That’s more of an acute embarrassment in comparison.

So to wake up at 4:47 (yes, that I remember) in the morning, naked and in the arms of your boss, at this time not remembering any of what you’ve done, is not the most reassuring of ways to come into consciousness.

So, I admit it, I got scared and ran.

Not the best moment of my life, but possibly less embarrassing than having to face the possibility of, well, having done something monumentally dumb.

I grabbed my clothes, dressed in as little as could be required of me if I were to be seen in the hallway, and quickly exited the room.

I couldn’t return. I couldn’t acknowledge what I had done. And I almost certainly couldn’t look back to see his sleeping form.

I went to my room (I was much less inebriated at this point, and so I had a good idea of the approximate location of it) and slowly crawled into bed, not bothering to dress in the pyjamas that I had brought along with me. Fortunately, I was still drunk enough that I was able to fall quickly to sleep, otherwise I’m not sure how I’d have managed.

And then I woke up at 7:05, feeling as though I could throw up (I’m lucky in the fact that I don’t get headaches with hangovers, my stomach just feels like crap for a whole day) when CJ rang me. She told me that we were getting to the airport at 8:30, instead of the previously agreed 9:00, and could I possibly inform Josh?

Putting the phone down, I remember hating CJ for sounding as though she’d had a perfectly good morning, and I ran into the bathroom where I proceeded to camp out for almost an hour before I decided that I wasn’t going to throw up, not yet anyhow. Then I phoned Josh.

This in itself was somewhat of a task. I remember my hand shaking violently as I tried to recall what room he was staying in. Praying that his usual memory loss had occurred and that he would have no recollection of the previous night’s events.

It appeared that he did not.

I’m not sure if that hurt me more. For all that I had hoped, there was the sadly misguided ideology that he remembered all, and in remembering might like to repeat the happening sometime in the near future with no alcohol involved.

Instead he sounded hung over, and pissed off when I told him that he had to be out of bed immediately and out the door several minutes after.

I was still shaking and wanting to throw up when I hung up, showered, dressed and packed for home. And remained in much the same state for the majority of the rest of the day.

The next few weeks were hellish.

There was none of our usual bantering, instead a deep down almost loathing for one another, where we bickered and fought and ignored each other, surfaced and conquered.

I remember that I used to entertain the idea that this was perhaps because Josh had an idea as to what had happened on the night of the Illinois primary and was trying to keep me at a professional distance (hey, I can dream, can’t I?). But in my more realistic moments I came to the conclusion that he was as uninformed as before, and I came to hate him more and more because of it.

Why should I know when he did not?

Why should I be the one to know what it was like to sleep with him and wake up with him in my arms when he could not?

It made me bitter, for reasons that I could not understand.

Work became something that I had mixed feelings about. Even as we came first in primaries, thanks in the majority to the campaign staff, I didn’t always feel as elated as I knew I should.

Could things ever be the same again?

I used to love getting up early and going to work, but now there was this unease; my attempts to, as I realise now, push Josh away were getting in the way of my enjoyment of life. It was becoming quite clear that ours wouldn’t be the fairy tale romance that I had (in my more naïve moments when I was still young and, well, naïve) fantasised it would be.

We could no longer stand working with each other, and it was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for me, and most certainly for those who had to work with us.

I left the White House two weeks later.

END OF PART ONE

[part two]

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