The Consequences of Snow
MC
Note: The following story was written over the course of about six hours and incorporates the ideas and requests of several board members. They asked for certain characters, locations and diseases. I put together a story that included them. It makes things a bit less realistic, so keep it in mind.
"Sam, what's up?" Josh slid into step beside him and they continued down the hall.
"I have the thing with Senator Jackson and his Aide." He stopped and patted his pocket, looking for his schedule. "But I don't remember where."
Josh laughed at him. "You need a Donna."
"I have a Ginger and a Bonnie, thank you. And frankly the Wing can handle only one Donna."
Donna appeared around the corner. "I heard that. And I was going to pass on your schedule, which you left lying on your desk and which Bonnie rescued, but after that comment, I think I'll find a shredder." She flipped her hair and planted her hands on her hips, clearly ready for a sparring match.
Sam just sighed. It was too early for this. He'd been back from his weekend off for only a day and already he felt buried in work. He tried to remember that he'd just been basking calmly in the winter sun of Utah as he skied down the best powder slopes in the United States.
"Donna, I'm sorry. Can I please have my schedule?"
"Yes. But only because you look so cute with your little sunburned nose." She handed him the list and walked off. Josh looked at her oddly.
"How come she never says I have a cute nose?" Josh whined.
Sam shrugged at him and walked off.
Twelve hours later Sam walked down the same hallway. He walked considerably slower this time. He balanced his stack of folders carefully on his coffee cup. He'd spent an exhausting day on the Hill and in the Roosevelt room taking meetings with the most militant of the "Tree Huggers" as Toby called them. Since he'd been deemed environmentally friendly, the Senior Staff sent him to all the meetings.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been very popular today, because he'd had to tell them about all the things they weren't getting. He ran the possibilities for solutions through his mind as he continued down the hall to his office. He found Toby waiting for him.
"How did it go?" Toby put his own lap-top aside and looked up at Sam.
"They have some problems with it."
"And why am I not surprised. These people are just ridiculous. They expect us to save every blade of endangered grass and earthworm regardless of the cost. Better still, the groups fight over what thing is most endangered. Sometimes I just want to take a flame thrower to the whole damned wilderness." Toby ranted with force. Sam let him.
Toby continued for a few moments, then realized that he'd been waiting for Sam to interrupt him. Sam sat in his chair, looking at some notes.
Toby looked at him more closely. Sam looked tired. He looked more tired than when he'd left for his two day vacation. Toby frowned. They needed Sam for this. He was the only one who spoke Green to the environmentalists.
"Sam. Are you with me, here?"
"Yes. Are you done with thoughts of the flame throwers so we can work on this? I have seven hours before the next round begins."
"Some of which you will be spending sleeping, Sam."
"It really doesn't look that way." Sam settled deeper into the chair and took off his coat and tie. Although it was still cold outside. His office felt very warm.
*****
Sam was correct in his assumption that he'd get no sleep that night. Although he promised Toby that he'd go home for a few hours at least, he never made it out of the Communications Bullpen. He couldn't go until he found a way to make it work. Despite Toby's warnings not to take it so seriously, he felt that certain points were too important to compromise.
Ginger found him asleep at his desk the next morning when she came in to drop off his mail. She frowned. He wore the same suit as yesterday. His skis and bags were still against his wall, which meant he hadn't gone home to drop them off. He'd come back to work straight from the airport. Sam was compulsively neat. He likely hadn't been home at all. She leaned over and shook him awake.
"Sam, it's morning."
He slowly lifted his head and looked at her. "What time is it?"
"It's six. You have staff at seven, then more of the Green meetings."
He sat up and stretched. "Can you type up those notes in the blue folder for me, please?"
"Yeah, I'll do it now. Anything else?"
She saw him blink and think for a moment. "If you can find me some Tylenol or something for my headache, that would be good. And get someone to turn down the heat in my office."
Ginger looked at him quizzically. "The Tylenol I can do. We buy in bulk. But it's like fifty degrees in here, Sam. You must have already turned the heat off. How can you be hot?"
"It feels like it's a hundred degrees in here."
Ginger stepped up and placed her hand against his forehead. Her fingers felt scorched at the brief contact. "You have a fever. Why didn't you just say you were sick?"
"I'm fine. If you could just get the Tylenol--"
She gave him a stern look, but retreated.
Sam took a deep breath, then started coughing. His chest felt tight. He rationalized that it was just a cold and that he probably had a few sore muscles after skiing. Ginger returned a moment later with the whole bottle of Tylenol, a cup of coffee and some orange juice.
He guessed that he must look pretty bad.
Two Tylenol and the orange juice made him feel human again, and he took his bag with him to the locker room to change into fresh clothes. There were a few advantages to his inability to go home to drop off his bags.
Sam was freshly showered and shaved when Toby appeared at his door a few minutes before Senior Staff. Toby frowned when he saw the stack of empty coffee cups and the bottle of Tylenol on Sam's desk.
"Did you get any sleep, Sam?"
"Sure, Toby. Ginger's finishing up some notes I'd like you to look at before my next meeting at nine. Can you do that and let me know if I'm on track?" Sam shifted in his chair and reached for his coffee. He drained one cup and reached for the next.
"You're going a little strong on the coffee there. I don't want to have to scrape you off the ceiling later." Toby said it with a teasing tone, and meant to continue until Sam began to cough.
Toby didn't think much about it for a moment, but Sam didn't stop coughing. He was now leaning over in his chair holding his side, in obvious pain. When the coughing fit subsided, Toby stepped over to his side and looked at him closely. His Deputy was freshly showered and his hair was still damp. Toby had assumed he'd just come in from home. But when he looked closely he saw the telltale purple smudges under Sam's eyes.
"Damn it! You didn't leave at all last night did you? And you're sick!" Toby's voice was loud enough to carry into the hall.
CJ and Josh, walking by on the way to Staff, stopped and went in to see what Toby was yelling about. CJ took one look at Sam and started to shake her head.
"Toby, I don't think the yelling is gonna help." She stepped in and shooed Toby out.
Her glare sent Toby and Josh on to the meeting without them.
"How sick are you?"
"It's just a cold."
She stepped over and felt his forehead. "Yeah, and that's why you have a fever of 104 after you've taken all this Tylenol. Go home."
"Are you the school nurse now, CJ?" He said in with a mix of sarcasm and hostility.
"I can be many things, but that's not one of them. I'm just saying you need to rest before you really get sick."
"I'm really fine. Let's get to Staff before Leo loses it."
Sam swallowed two more Tylenol and another cup of coffee before following CJ out the door.
The meeting progressed uneventfully. There were no major disasters overnight. They continued discussions on several new bills in the balance and on preparations to back a new Democratic candidate in the next elections in Nebraska.
Sam found that he felt best if he just sat up straight and took deep breaths. He managed to keep his coughing fairly quiet, but still drew a few concerned looks from Leo as well Josh, Toby and CJ. He felt luck desert him when his last coughing fit coincided with an impromptu drop-in from the First Lady. She stopped in to give Toby a copy of a speech she wanted him to help her own team polish.
Mrs. Bartlet intended to drop the speech with Toby and make a quick visit to her husband before he started his own round of morning meetings. She'd heard someone coughing outside the room while she'd been talking with Margaret. When she entered the room, she saw it was Sam.
She gave the speech to Toby and walked over to look more closely at Sam. He looked very tired and each cough seemed to be causing him pain. She reached down and touched his forehead. He was sweating and she'd bet her medical license his temperature was over 102.
Sam bristled a bit under her touch. When he stopped coughing, he said with some annoyance, "Why does every woman in the West Wing insist on feeling my forehead to see if I have a fever?" He'd intended it to come out a bit sarcastic, but it actually sounded a bit weak since his voice broke a bit on the last word and he started coughing again.
"I'm a doctor, Sam. I can even charge you for feeling your forehead. But I really didn't need to. Why are you here at work? You obviously feel horrible."
The rest of the Staffers swiveled their chairs to watch the interchange. Abby Bartlet was a formidable woman and an even more commanding presence in 'doctor mode,' as the President had once described her current manner.
"Mrs. Bartlet, really, I'm fine. I'm just back from vacation and I caught a cold."
"Sam, it sounds like more than a cold. When you're done here, go straight to the medical unit downstairs and have them check you over. I'm calling them, so don't think of ditching it. I don't want anyone in this administration taking unnecessary chances with their health. We've all been through enough." She glanced at Josh long enough for all of them to understand her broader meaning.
He nodded in response. He knew better than to argue. After the meeting Leo dispatched Margaret with him to medical unit.
Sam walked quietly beside her. "Do you believe we have this freestanding state of the art medical facility here in the White House? It seems like a waste of money."
"Yeah. Because the White House Senior Staff and the President can always be counted on to go promptly to their own physicians when they are ill." She finished and rolled her eyes at him.
Sam wisely remained silent and signed in at desk. He was ushered back immediately. He had no doubt that the First Lady had indeed made the call.
Dr. Jason Sims met him in the exam room and gestured him up on the table.
He looked quickly at Sam, then put a thermometer in his mouth. Sam decided he actually preferred the hands of his female co-workers, but wisely said nothing.
The Doctor gestured for Sam to slip off his shirt as he noted the temperature of 102 on his new patient's chart.
"Mr. Seaborn, since Dr. Bartlet called me herself to make sure you showed up here, I'd guess you are pretty important to this administration."
Sam shrugged. "I'm the Deputy Communications Director."
Dr. Sims took Sam's blood pressure quickly and then leaned to listen to his chest. Sam began coughing when he was asked to take a deep breath.
"How long have you been sick?"
"Just today, really. But I think I may have been having a fever last night."
"What specifically has been happening?"
Sam paused a moment. They all knew he was sick, so he couldn't minimize everything. He decided that the doctor didn't need to know he'd been coughing up blood in addition to the usual phlegm. He described the fever, the cough and the headache. He added that he had some pain when he coughed but that he'd just been skiing and may have strained some muscles.
Dr. Sims looked at him critically. He was used to the White House Staff denials of illness. Many drove themselves to exhaustion. Sims mused quietly to himself that this eager young man was going to have a short drive.
Sam left the clinic with a diagnosis of bronchitis and a starter supply of antibiotic samples. He'd also received prescriptions for the rest of the course of antibiotics, cough medicine and Tylenol with Codeine. The augmented Tylenol was supposed to help with the pain and further suppress his cough. But somehow he knew that the doctor realized he wasn't going to go home and rest as he'd been advised.
Back in the Communications Bullpen, he dropped the prescriptions with Bonnie. She planned to clear her schedule in an hour and head to the closest pharmacy.
Sam managed to make it through an hour of his morning meeting before the chills hit him. He excused himself from the Roosevelt room at the next coffee break and sought out Bonnie. She nodded at him while fielding a phone call and pointed to his desk.
He swallowed two more of the Tylenol and a generous swig of the cough syrup. He didn't want to risk taking any of the codeine while he was trying to work. His head still pounded and he felt short of breath. Each round of coughing made it worse. His fever blazed on and he realized he didn't remember ever feeling this sick.
He took a deep breath and started toward his door. He managed two steps before he was aware that the room was spinning lazily an his vision was starting to dim.
Toby heard a loud thud from his office next door as Sam passed out and hit the floor.
*****
Toby's first thought when he heard the thud from Sam's office was that the skis fell down. He started to smile to himself. Then he realized that he'd heard Sam in there a moment before, but he hadn't heard him leave. He dropped the paper in his hand and bolted into the office next door.
The sight of Sam on the floor, clearly unconscious, made Toby freeze for a moment. He tried to calm his own breathing and then stepped in to kneel next to Sam. He touched his shoulder softly. When he didn't stir, he reached with a shaky hand to check his pulse. It was impossibly fast, but Toby had no trouble feeling it in Sam's wrist. He took another deep breath and leaned down closer to Sam.
"Sam, I need you to wake up."
Toby felt his own pulse bound in his throat. Sam's eyes fluttered open slowly and he looked up at Toby.
His voice was weak but surprisingly steady. "What happened?"
"Looks like you took a dive onto the floor. Don't bother to try to convince me you were napping on the floor." Toby tried to sound stern, but didn't even convince a very groggy Sam.
"I really don't feel well."
"Sam, you have a true talent for understatement at the worst of times. Did you hit your head on anything?"
"Just the floor."
"Yeah." Toby tried to keep him lying down but Sam struggled and sat up. He shifted to lean back against his desk, and closed his eyes. His breathing was rapid and shallow and his face pale under a surface flush of fever.
Toby waited a moment, then stood and went to have Ginger call down to send the medical team up.
Twenty minutes later, Sam was back in the medical unit. A very worried Dr. Sims was staring down at him. Sam had been transported on a gurney and subjected to a rapid series of blood draws and a portable chest X-ray. He was hooked to a continuous pulse oximeter to measure his oxygen level through a small strip on his finger and two small plastic lines snaked into his nostrils to give him additional oxygen.
His arm was strapped firmly to a board and a large bore IV was in place to administer fluids and intravenous antibiotics. Sam was not protesting anything on this trip. He'd been unconscious since he'd left the West Wing.
Dr. Sims reassured himself that the young man's vitals were stable and his hypoxia corrected. Seaborn was also clearly exhausted, and that exacerbated the underlying illness. He had pneumonia based on the chest films and the degree of hypoxia. He'd likely been much sicker than he'd admitted on the first visit. But Sims still worried that there was more going on than a simple bacterial pneumonia. That was certainly enough, but he felt he might be missing something in the history.
He decided to place a call to Dr. Bartlet, and to try to get more information from Seaborn's colleagues. Arrangements were being made for his direct admission to the hospital, but he was getting appropriate initial care in the unit, and there was a great deal of red tape to cut.
CJ and Josh were outside the door when Dr. Sims came out a moment later and nearly pounced on him.
Josh spoke first. "How is he? What's going on? Can we see him?"
Sims looked at the concerned Deputy Chief of Staff and sorted through his questions.
"He's fine for now. He's probably got pneumonia. You can see him in a moment, but I'd like to ask you both a few questions." The doctor recognized CJ Cregg, and knew they both worked closely with Seaborn and might give him more information.
He gestured them both to chairs. They both still looked worried, but Lyman had calmed considerably when told his friend was stable.
"Can either of you tell me how long he's really been sick?"
Josh spoke, "He just came back from a ski trip two days ago. He looked really tired yesterday, then much worse today."
CJ nodded. She really didn't know much more. She thought she really should check with Toby. He'd spent more time with Sam. God, she thought, Toby's probably going nuts upstairs. He had to stay to clear Sam's meetings.
Doctor Sims continued "He was fine before that?"
"Yeah." CJ and Sam chorused together.
"Has he traveled anywhere recently other than the ski trip?"
"We all travel a lot. How far back do you mean?" Josh clarified the question.
"The last six weeks."
"We had a trip to Florida, a trip to California, and the trip to South America." Josh answered and CJ nodded.
"When was the trip to South America?"
"Four weeks ago."
Sims leaned forward in his chair. Josh sensed his interest. "Where exactly did you go?"
Josh took a breath. "We were in San Paolo and then a few other smaller cities."
"Did you go out into the jungle at all?"
Josh smiled, "You mean other than that trip to the cocaine plantation?"
CJ promptly smacked his arm. She could tell Josh was just nervous and trying to maintain his normal sarcasm, but it was the wrong time.
Josh rubbed his arm. CJ had hit him hard. "I'm sorry, Doctor, I really was kidding. The only snow Sam has seen is the frozen kind you ski on. The DEA guys were at the meetings and talked about the coke productions sites, so we joked about it. But after the thing outside Bogota it would never happen. We stayed in the cities."
"Did you take malaria prophylaxsis."
"Yes, we had to get the specifics from the travel office. I remember Sam and I went on our lunch hour."
"Did he take it like it was prescribed."
Josh thought for a moment. "I think so, but he may have said something about missing the final dose. I can't really remember because it didn't seem important at the time."
Sims stood up and looked at them both. "Actually, it could be very important. If he missed a dose, I have to add malaria to the possible diagnoses. I'll ask him when he wakes up." He looked like he wanted to say more but was distracted when he saw Dr. Bartlet at the door.
*****
CJ and Josh swiveled quickly as Mrs. Bartlet entered the room. Dr. Sims motioned the nurse hovering nearby to take them in to see Sam while he spoke with the First Lady.
CJ let Josh step up to Sam first. He looked very pale and it was disconcerting to see him hooked up to an IV and other monitors. Josh really didn't look much better, and CJ placed a supportive hand on his shoulder.
Josh didn't hesitate. He reached out an touched Sam's arm gently. "Hey, Sam. Can you hear me?"
Sam's eyes fluttered open and he turned his head. "Josh?"
"Yeah. CJ and I are here. Are you okay?"
Sam's eyes closed again for a moment, but his hand closed firmly around the one CJ placed over his. He opened his eyes again and looked at CJ. "Hey."
CJ took a deep breath. He looked surprisingly fragile, but his eyes had lost the dull haze of pain.
Josh tightened his grip on Sam's shoulder. He wanted him to know he was there. "Sam, you really scared us. You know that Toby is likely killing people upstairs."
Sam started to speak but a coughing bout stopped him. They watched with alarm as the oxygen saturation meter started to alarm as it picked up the lower level of oxygen in his blood. Josh and CJ gripped arm and hand respectively, and looked around in concern. Before they could panic, Sam stopped coughing. The alarm silenced as the numbers climbed back into the normal range.
Sam tried again. "Josh, make sure Toby doesn't scare the Green people away."
Josh and CJ smiled at each other. They knew what he meant. Trust Sam to make it sound like a joke. It was probably intentional.
Outside the room, Abby Bartlet had her hands on her hips and was grilling the unfortunate Dr. Sims.
"Perhaps you can tell me how he became so ill just hours after you told me he just had bronchitis."
"Based on what he told me and the exam, that's what he had."
"You didn't do a chest film initially?"
"No. His lungs were clear."
"And now?" Abby prompted coolly.
"Now he has a right lower lobe pneumonia."
"You're sure about that?"
Dr. Sims actually looked back down at his feet. "Well, actually, I'm ruling out the possibility of malaria."
"Malaria?" Abby paused to consider this a moment. She remembered the trip to South America. The trip put the exposure risk at the far end of the curve. She also remembered Sam asking her advise about industrial strength insect repellent. The man hated bugs. She was sure that even if he'd missed a dose of anti-malarials he'd been soaked enough in insect repellent to make the prospect of a mosquito bite pretty unlikely.
She spoke again before giving Sims a chance to answer. "I doubt it, but you'll do the blood smear?"
"Yes, we'll get in done here and send it with him so they can read it at GW."
She nodded and stepped past him to look into the room. Josh and CJ flanked Sam and they were all smiling. It looked like Sam was doing well at the moment. She excused herself to go back to the West Wing to deliver the update on Sam.
Sam slept a great deal over the next few days. He spent the first three nights in the hospital receiving intravenous fluids and antibiotics. His malaria smear was negative, but his blood cultures showed that streptococcal bacteria had caused both pneumonia and a severe systemic infection.
On his second day at home, Toby arrived carrying the ski's he'd left in the office.
Sam grinned at the site of Toby trying to balance the skis in one hand and his lap-top in the other.
"Thanks for bringing those home for me Toby. I don't think I'll be skiing any time soon."
Toby propped the skis against the wall and put the lap-top down gently on the table.
"Sam, I'm not letting you take any more ski trips while we're in office. Snow exposure seems to have bad consequences for you."
"You could be right, Toby. But being at home I've been tortured by getting hooked on the daytime soaps. You wouldn't believe the stuff these people write. It's like they deliberately pull in all sorts of stuff and try to write themselves into a corner they can't get out of. Although that could be fun."
Toby lowered himself into the chair and tried not to laugh. Sam was clearly recovered. He was well into one of his meaningless rants.
HOME |
TITLE |
AUTHOR |
CATEGORY