Work Text:
When Jack first suggested that Robby should run for President, Robby's first thought was: President of what?
It seemed a ludicrous idea. The electorate voting him in as Governor of Pennsylvania had been unexpected enough; as a former ER attending retiring from medicine in the wake of losing his mentor to COVID, he was hardly the picture of a typical gubernatorial candidate. Joining the pool of presidential contenders seemed even more unrealistic an aspiration, said pool being almost exclusively composed of either career politicians or fringe-but-fervent believers lacking the knowledge and/or empathy to think through the impact of their proposed policies. Or worse, those in the overlapping section of the venn diagram between the two.
Robby didn't feel remotely like either of those models of a candidate. Abbot had dragged him into politics kicking and screaming under the argument that the only way to effect real change in the world – put a stop to future worldwide pandemics, the current environmental crisis, and gun violence as a whole – would be at a higher, systemic level.
That was a year ago. From his chair behind the Bartlet Desk in the Oval Office it seems just as ridiculous a prospect now as it did then, but here they are.
“Senior staff in five minutes, Mr. President.”
“Thanks, Dana. Where's Abbot?”
“Getting some air.”
Robby glances out the window to find the silhouette of a familiar figure just visible in the distance. From day one, the Rose Garden adjacent to the Oval has been a favorite spot of Jack's; an underrated place of peace and quiet, very much a rarity in the West Wing on even the best of days. This week has been composed of anything but the best of days.
He nods at her and it seems to be all she was looking for, for she deposits a folder of papers needing his signature on the desk and takes her leave shortly after. As his executive assistant, she has the Sisyphean task of managing the flow of traffic into and out of the Oval. That includes heads of state, federal agencies, and congressmen – most notably the Honorable Gloria Underwood, currently Speaker of the House and permanently a pain in his ass.
Robby steps out onto the terrace as quietly as he can, hands in his suit pockets as he ambles down the path to the garden. Ideally he could have a conversation with Jack in private, but that hasn’t been in the cards since he won the nomination at the DNC and subsequently acquired a retinue of Secret Service agents now attuned to his every move.
“Good morning, Jack.”
“Good morning, Mr. President. What are you doing here?”
“I'm working. And you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just lost the swing vote on a bill to increase funding for the VA. Spent six months shepherding it through committee, and now it’ll die in the house.”
“That's always a rough way to start the morning.”
“I used to have a reason for coming back, but I can't think of it right now.”
“Because this is the job that keeps on giving. Corporate lobbying. A divided Congress. Misinformation.” Jack doesn’t say anything, and Robby takes another step closer. “Besides – if you quit when you talked me into this gig in the first place, that's just rude, man.”
Jack snorts, and Robby claps a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, the new kid is starting today,” Robby says.
“Lucky, lucky me.”
-
Senior staff has assembled in the Oval by the time they return, the only fresh face of the lot their new attorney. “Welcome to the White House,” he says. “Why don't we go around the room and do a round of introductions?”
“Victoria Javadi, incoming Associate White House Counsel,” says the new kid.
“Heather Collins, Press Secretary.”
“Frank Langdon, Deputy Chief of Staff.”
“Trinity Santos, Communications Director.”
“Samira Mohan, Deputy Communications Director.”
Robby gestures at the papers on his desk, the motion encompassing both the small stack of forms Dana left for his signature and the much larger stack of briefing books Robby needed to finish five minutes ago. No matter how late into the night he reads, the pile never seems to get any smaller. He never gets ahead of it. Maybe he never will. “As you can see, our plate is always full. Our legislative agenda is mostly clogged up with riders – those are unrelated measures added to proposed legislation that's likely to pass either way. Most of them are harmless, but please keep your eye on that fine print – don't let anyone slip something through that we can't stomach.”
Javadi nods, eyes wide with what Robby hopes is excitement and not terror. Privately, he thinks that she barely looks old enough to have passed the bar.
“Where are we on the speech to the American Board of Physicians?” he asks, looking over to Samira.
“Working on it. Should be done by the end of the day.”
“It’s a short primer on the issue to get buy-in before we start drafting policy, not a keynote.” While Samira nods to indicate her understanding, he makes a mental note to follow up with her later in the day. Her Achilles heel as a speechwriter is going too far down the rabbit hole – she spends twice as much time researching each topic as the rest of her staff. The speeches themselves are always top-notch, but that’s not the point. It’s about prioritization and time management. They’re not all State of the Unions.
“Representative Driscoll is going to introduce another bill to make English the national language,” Collins says.
Santos makes an angry noise. “Because there can only be one? You know there are 77 languages in Pakistan.”
“I do,” Collins says. “And Papua New Guinea numbers into the hundreds.”
“Should I–,” Robby starts.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was–,”
“What you were going to say?”
Heather raises an eyebrow at him, and he quiets. “Maybe you do.”
“I’ll handle it. Just thought you should be aware.”
Robby rubs a hand over his face. “What else?”
“You want the good news or the bad news first?” Langdon asks.
“Start with the bad news.”
“We’re five votes down on HR802.”
There are days when Robby hates Congress, and days when Robby really, really hates Congress. They could give hospital administration a run for its money in terms of their ability to avoid being in the same zip code as an intelligent policy decision. “That’s the bill to ban certain types of assault weapons.”
“Yes.”
“The one we already made several concessions on to appease Katzenmoyer and Wick. The 3-inch grip, not the 2-inch. The 30-round clip, not the 20.”
“Yes.”
If the first six months of Robby’s administration was defined by their efforts to shore up the cracks in the healthcare system that COVID blew wide open – chronic understaffing, vaccine education, crappy and/or non-existent insurance plans leading to the ER being the first and last resort for many in need of medical care, just to get him started – the second six has been defined by all the issues they put on the backburner while trying to make progress somewhere. No matter which topic they tackle, there’s an open letter or newspaper editorial or talking head on a twenty-four hour news network there to remind him there are a thousand others in need of attention. And funding. Don’t forget the funding.
The topic of the month is school shootings. Robby would be lying if he said it wasn’t personal; after Jake’s girlfriend was killed during one in their former haunting grounds of Pittsburgh, it could hardly be anything but. “One of those weapons killed Leah. What could possibly be the good news?”
Langdon’s mouth is a thin line. It is not encouraging. “The good news is that was the only bad news.”
“What was your plan if I’d picked the good news first?”
Abbot snorts. “Please. There’s no universe, this or alternate.”
Dana sticks her head in the door. “Robby, they need you in the Situation Room.”
“Thanks, Dana. Okay, that's it – Javadi, welcome to the team, see Abbot for your first assignment.”
-
Their first Situation together as President and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Robby had thought that John Shen was aloof to the point of not taking the matter seriously. Now that they’ve gotten to know each other better, Robby understands that’s Shen’s reaction to pretty much everything. It’s a great quality in a military leader, though there’s something about that attitude during discussions of retaliation to a drone strike on a US military outpost that still rubs Robby the wrong way.
Nick Bradley was one of the three US troops killed in said drone strike. A 19-year old kid barely six months out of basic . Robby’s not so long retired from medicine that he doesn’t know how to read a chart. Nick's injuries from the explosion weren’t survivable – no eye movement with ice water, negative results from the sleep apnea study. Brain death, probably instantly. Knowing that hadn’t made it any easier to call Nick’s parents.
Robby looks over at Shen’s iced coffee and feels his eye twitch. Instead of smacking the Dunkin’ cup out of Shen’s hands he asks, “What is the virtue in a proportional response?”
He meets each of their eyes in turn until his gaze finally lands on McKay, Deputy National Security Advisor.
“What do you mean?” She asks.
“Why’s it good? They hit an outpost, so we take out a communications tower. If we already know we're going to respond that way, and they already know we're going to respond that way, what is the point of any of it?”
“It’s about impact over intent. If we go in guns blazing, the risk of bystanders getting caught up in it is much higher. We run the risk of radicalizing individuals. I’ve personally been on the wrong side of someone who hates America. It’s not a safe place to be.”
“Mr. President,” Jack says. Robby very carefully does not look in his direction. He doesn’t know what’s worse, the note of placation in his tone or the one of worry.
During the campaign, the negative ad that got the most traction among undecided voters was the one positioning Robby as unwilling to use force in a military context. They'd follow up a hollow no one's denying he was a COVID frontline hero with but isn't it first, do no harm? Is that who you want commanding our troops?
They had the right concern but the wrong reasoning; Robby is hesitant about the idea of using force, but it has much less to do with his morals as a physician and much more to do with the underlying equations involving people. The idea of acceptable casualties, as if the maximum threshold for acceptable is anything other than zero. Adamson's death broke Robby not just because of the loss itself, but because Robby had to be the one to make the call. Statistics, education, and experience all agreed that an otherwise healthy twelve year old stood a much better chance of survival on ECMO than a sixty-eight year old with comorbidities. That didn't make the cruel math of necessity any easier emotionally.
There's a slight ringing in his ear. Robby shakes his head to try and disrupt it, playing the movement off as an adjustment to his reading glasses.
“I've got a meeting with FEMA right now. In two hours time, I'd like to see military options that don't make me think we're docking somebody’s damn allowance.”
-
No one startles at Langdon’s shout of “Melissa!” across the bullpen. After nearly a year of observing the unusual relationship between the Deputy Chief of Staff and his senior assistant – her true role closer to the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff than anything – Langdon seeking out Mel’s presence for everything from policy advice to a selection of muffins and bagels from all the land doesn’t strike anyone as unusual.
Mel’s head pops around the partition dividing her desk from the adjacent hallway. “You don’t need to shout, Frank.”
“Get me Chris Wick.”
Mel brushes past him into the office, depositing a folder with no fewer than three different sticky notes affixed to the top. “You have a call scheduled with him in half an hour.”
“...oh.”
“You want to speak to Katzenmoyer first. Remind him that the White House could have given him a much harder time about his opposition to the Trade Bill with Australia. If he falls into line, Wick will follow.”
Langdon smiles. “As always – you’re crushing it, Mel.”
When Mel signed on to the Dr. Robby For America campaign, she’d been fresh off a year working with the American Autism Association and looking for a new challenge. In another lifetime, she might be in her second year of residency by this point. In this one, she’d had to drop out of medical school to cover her sister’s care costs. She’d decided to work for Robby the day he proposed making tuition tax-deductible. Putting yourself or your loved ones through school is an accomplishment. But it should be easier – just a little easier.
After watching her moderate a Town Hall so effectively they’d actually been able to talk policy for more than ten minutes of the hour-long timeslot, Langdon had offered her a job as his assistant on the spot. “I know what to say,” she remembers telling him. “Maybe how to say it.”
A knock on the door pulls both their attention away. Collins, arms crossed over her chest. “Wow, are you stupid.” She doesn’t sound angry – closer to amused with a high degree of disbelief, really. Langdon doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen her angry, which is a wonderful quality in a White House Press Secretary if not one that Langdon personally shares.
“Good morning to you too, Heather.”
“You’re planning on taking the afternoon briefing while I’m at the dentist?”
“Nothing like a little challenge every now and then to keep everyone on their toes.”
“You get hostile with the reporters.”
“Not hostile – just strict. They treat it like we’re playing Go Fish back here or something.”
Collins puts both hands on his desk, leaning in. Langdon resists the urge to sit up straight. “I want you to listen to me. Try very, very hard not to destroy us.”
-
The door to the Roosevelt room opens shortly after lunch to reveal – “Jake!”
“There he is – the man, the myth, the legend!”
“I’m making chili tonight, you should stick around.”
“Happy to – you can catch me up on how the assault weapons ban is going.”
-
It’s only eleven, and Javadi already wishes she wore her running shoes rather than her heels into work. She has no idea how these people manage to keep up the pace of conversation while doing laps around the hallway at speed walking pace, somehow always on their way to or from a meeting. “Ms. Santos?”
Victoria dodges around a two-star general and crashes into a (in her opinion, poorly placed) plant. She straightens up the small ficus as quickly as she can, jogging to catch up with the woman she’s been looking for all morning. “Christ, call me Trinity. It’ll make you sound like you’re old enough to drink.”
“Abbot said I should talk to you about the REBOA from last week? There might be some legal implications.”
Trinity glances over her shoulder but doesn’t stop moving. “The Regulatory Efficiency and Budget Oversight Act?”
“Yes,” Victoria says. “It seems you put out a cost estimate before the Congressional Budget Office had a chance to review it.”
“Oh, that. In my experience–.”
They turn the final corner and reach the apparent destination of this little jaunt – Trinity's office. Victoria takes a second to steel her nerves, reminding herself that she’s worked her ass off to reach this position at this age and in fact knows what she’s talking about. “There was a mistake in the estimate. You factored in inflation for the revenue but not the cost on the ten-year projection.” All of the colour drains from Santos’ face, and Javadi resists the urge to bite her lip.
“Happens to all of us.” From the doorway, Victoria looks into Trinity’s office to find a tall woman that looks vaguely familiar leaning against the desk, apparently lying in wait.
Santos sighs. “Victoria, meet my ex-wife, Congresswoman Yolanda Garcia.”
“Pleasure,” Garcia says, eyeing Javadi with a look nothing short of suspicious.
“Wait, Garcia?” Javadi asks. “Didn’t you stab her with a –.”
Victoria shuts up. If Santos’ eyes could burn, the intensity would carve a hole straight through her head and possibly through the wall beyond. “Not literally, Crash. Politically. ”
-
Noon finds Robby back in the Situation Room, the two additional proposals the National Security Council put together in his absence ready for his review. He puts a pin in joining them at the table to lean in at McKay’s side. “You have a second?”
“Of course, Mr. President.” She follows him out into the hallway and settles into parade rest like she’s waiting to be chewed out. “Look, I know that I–.”
“You were right.”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“I was remembering my conversation with Nick Bradley’s parents and thinking about their grief. I did not think enough about those bystanders.”
Her eyes soften. “That’s what advisors are for, you know. Exploring all of the options.”
-
Collins knows the press conference is doomed from the minute Langdon steps through the door into the briefing room. It’s the saunter to his step as he approaches the podium. Confidence is great in a Press Secretary, but only when paired with respect and humility.
It’s taken her nearly the full run of Robby’s time in office to build some semblance of credibility with the press corps. She comes from an economics background, not a media one. She’d only taken the job because Dana had asked her to, and Collins owes Dana more favors than she can count.
Gail from the Washington Post is the first to throw down the gauntlet. “Is the President worried about a surge in the deficit if medicaid is expanded?”
“The President is pleased that it will result in more people having access to preventative care,” Langdon says. “Next question.”
Internally, Heather winces. She has a Bake-Off marathon planned for her upcoming weekend off, she reminds herself. No wine – not until the painkillers from the root canal wear off, at least – but at the very least an extended period of time when she does not have to think about or deal with Langdon and his antics.
“We join him in his joy. But does he have a plan to stop the deficit from ballooning?”
“He’s a smart guy. Of course he has a plan.”
“Great. What is it?”
“I’m not prepared to share the details at this time.”
“So it’s a secret plan?”
“Yeah, we have a secret plan to enhance medicaid.”
-
Robby detours through the Communications bullpen on his way back to the Oval, poking his head into Samira’s office. “You got that speech on racial disparities in healthcare ready for me yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Jesus fucking–.”
“I'm editing it down!”
“How long is it now?”
“Only twenty pages.”
“It was supposed to be five.”
Samira won’t meet his eyes. “I know.”
Robby takes a breath, tries to martial his patience. Mohan is a strong writer – one of their strongest, in fact; she wouldn’t have made Deputy Communications Director if she wasn’t extremely skilled with a pen. But she also tends to be overly verbose, and Robby’s reading list is overwhelmingly long on a good day. There’s a balance to be struck between giving a topic the time and energy it deserves with keeping things short, sweet, and easily digestible. She hasn’t found it yet.
“In this era of bite-sized social media, we're lucky if we can hold people's attention for five minutes without them getting bored or distracted. We have to get our point across quickly and efficiently or we run the risk of an edited copy misconstruing the whole thing. I know you can do this, but I need you to do it with a conciseness that I also know you're capable of.”
-
Langdon’s secret plan to enhance medicaid tips Wick back over the fence into a ‘no’ vote on HR802, the Congressman making it clear that nothing Jack or Langdon might promise will change his mind a third time.
The news comes while Jake and Robby are eating a late lunch together in the Green Room, whispered into his ear by an apologetic Jack. Robby thanks him for the update and returns to the table quietly, taking the chair beside Jake and folding his hands neatly into his lap. If this were a death notification, he’d know how to do it. In some ways, it’s worse; there’s no medical facts to fall back on as evidence they did everything they could.
“We fought for this bill, we really did. I can’t even tell you how many favors I traded in to curry votes. But the NRA has made it clear that they’ll pull funding and run competitors in close districts for anyone who–.”
Jake cuts him off. “You’re telling me you can’t do anything about the weapon that killed Leah? I mean, this is what you do. ” It’s a direct hit, and Robby closes his eyes. He ran on the promise of change. It’s been almost a year, and they’ve lost more battles than they’ve won. The stakes are just as high here as they had been in the ER, but at least there both action and response had been immediate. Here, it takes them months to get a bill over the finish line and even longer to know if it’s having the intended effect.
“I really tried. We all did. If this had been any other bill, man…”
“What the fuck does that mean, ‘any other bill’? You would’ve gotten it done?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
Jake storms out, leaving the door to the Green Room open behind him. The waves of grief-tinged adrenaline that have been growing in magnitude over the course of the day are finally at his head. Robby crosses the distance between the Green Room and the Oval Office without a glance or a care for who he might pass along the way, slamming the door shut behind him and sinking onto the floor with his back to the closed door.
“Mr. President?” he hears, and looks up into the gentle but worried face of Dennis Whitaker, his body man. While Whitaker has a nervous disposition, he’s also shown himself to have a backbone of steel. Whitaker’s holding a small set of identical looking folders – the agenda and supporting documentation to be distributed to the participants of Robby's next meeting. Right. Fuck.
“Come on,” Dennis says, holding out a hand to help him up. “We need you, Captain.”
“You really don’t.”
“We serve at the pleasure of the President.”
-
At Jack’s request, senior staff and a handful of trusted advisors reconvene in the Oval just before five. “Alright, let’s hear ideas to get this bill over the finish line. No idea too crazy.”
“We could forge a signature,” Ellis says. “I know how to do yours, Jack.”
“Alright, one idea too crazy.”
Collins’ response to that is merely, “Might take some heat off the President’s secret plan to enhance medicaid.”
“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry, Heather?”
“Oh, at least once more.”
Samira’s suggestion is to drop a line into the upcoming Department of Education speech. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Mel says. “It might be seen as too political.”
Santos snorts. “It’s a speech. From the number one politician in the country. What do they expect, exactly?”
Robby mulls that over. It’s the best idea they’ve had yet. He knows what he wants to say. He’s just not sure if he should.
In the end, it’s Dana who shows him the way. “Look – if you think those weapons should be legal under the intent of the constitution, then I respect that. But if you won’t speak up because you think it’s too big a fight or you think you can’t win - then God, Robby, I don’t even want to know you then.”
-
“These shootings should never have happened. It’s impossible to imagine what would possess somebody to commit such a horrific act once, let alone with the frequency we’ve seen increase over the last few decades. I’m tired of grief. So are you, I think. The people we’re losing are our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends.
But we have the chance to prevent this from happening again – to see our better angels rise to the occasion, and ban these weapons once and for all. When we think we’ve hit our limit on the courage to meet a challenge, we can look up and be reminded that that courage might well be limitless.”
Amid the sea of applause, Jack turns to Samira. “When did you write that last part?”
“In the car.”
-
HR802 passes with a count of 218 in favor to 217 against, the winning vote cast by Mr. Willis of Ohio.
They watch the vote together in the residence, senior staff scattered around the room with bowls of chili, Jake quiet and distant in the corner of the room but there, which is about all Robby could really hope for.
In some ways it feels similar to the hotel suite they’d rented on election night to watch the results come in. So long ago and yet it feels like just yesterday.
Robby thinks about Jack talking him off the roof after Adamson’s death with the promise of a higher calling. “I’m tired of trying to get excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. They say a good man can’t get elected president. I don’t believe that. Do you?”
Robby claps his hands together. “Okay. What's next?”
-
Bonus :
“Lady Myrna Marbury, welcome to the White House.”
“Fruitcake.”
“You know what room you’re standing in?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. President Fruitcake.”