Three Phone Calls
The first phone call was made seconds after her father hung up the phone.
"Sam, have you heard?"
"Heard what? Who is this?"
"It's Mallory. My father called me. I've just, my father just got off the phone."
"What happened?"
Mallory breathed heavily. "Zoe's been taken."
"Taken?" Sam paused. "Oh."
"I thought you needed to know."
She hung up quickly, afraid her father would be trying to call her. She didn't want to scare him.
Sam hung up the phone and turned on the TV -- a reflex he thought he'd left back in Washington. He shifted a pile of paper and books to sit in the closest chair, his hand running nervously through his hair as he watched the home videos of his former boss and the daughter.
He found himself writing phantom statements.
He found himself wondering why he had chosen to walk away.
He wanted to call Donna and Josh and Toby and CJ, wanted to find out the latest news, wanted to feel part of things again.
He loathed himself for being so detached from it all.
The second call was made during a lengthy contemplation of a bottle of pills. She remembered the promise she'd made her mother and dialled.
"My father talked to me," she told him.
"I hate not knowing what's going on."
"There's no knew information."
"How's Mrs. Bartlet?"
"She's upset. Oh, and Andi had the babies."
"Do they have names?"
"The boy is called Huck."
"Nice."
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Sam if he wanted her to pass on congratulations. But it was the wrong time, and as far as she was concerned, it had been his choice to walk away.
"Why?" she's asked, in an email, when she was still pissed at him.
"I needed separation," he'd replied, and she could hear the hurt tone in his words. "it was time to move on, to try new things. I wanted to make a difference."
She wasn't sure what kind of difference he could make holed up in a dimly lit house.
The third phone call came ten minutes before the announcement was made.
"He'll do what!?" Sam exclaimed.
"He's going to stand aside."
"Is he crazy?"
"Possibly."
"It's going to change the country, the world even. He's making history."
"Do you wish you were there?" There was no response from across the country.
"Sam?"
"No. I don't."
He turned off the television and spent a restless night trying to sleep.