Disclaimers: See part 1
Toby felt a burst of heat in his abdomen, and a force
propelling him around. Then he fell on his back, pain radiating
from that spot of heat. The panic around him was incredible. In
the chaos, he was getting trampled. He covered his head with one
arm, trying to protect himself from the feet of the people around
him, the other going automatically to his middle, to the source
of the heat/pain. His fingers encountered a gush of hot liquid;
blood. His own blood. He had been shot.
The pain was increasing now, his torso burning. He tried to
pull his legs up, to curl himself into a ball to drive away the
pain, but he didn't know if he succeeded.
It seemed an eternity before the explosion of gunfire
stopped, before the rumble of feet beside his ears ceased, before
the chaos subsided.
The next thing he knew, there were hands gently touching his
arms, pulling them away from his body.
"Mr. Ziegler?" The voice was unfamiliar. "Mr. Ziegler, can
you hear me?"
"Yes." Toby tried to talk, but he couldn't hear himself
speak. The owner of the voice was touching him again, gently.
"Gunshot wound to the lower abdomen." Toby could hear the
voice from far away. "It's bad. Priority one."
Toby could feel himself being moved, but the pain was bad,
so bad. As the pain increased to an unbearable level, the tight
grip on consciousness slipped away.
CJ felt silly lying on the ground, getting her new dress
filthy with the dust of the street, and with Sam Seaborn lying on
top of her. She knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that
Sam had pushed her down and fell on her to save her from the
barrage of bullets raining down, but all she felt was ridiculous.
When it came, the silence was deafening. There were shouts
and running feet and loud cries of pain and shock around her, but
the lack of gunfire sounded like blessed silence.
"Sam?" She ventured, when Sam didn't move. "Sam, please
tell me I'm not lying on the street with a dead man on top of
me."
"You're not lying on the street with a dead man on top of
you." Sam said obediently. "Would you like me to get off?"
"If you would." CJ replied calmly. San slid off her and
she tried to push herself up with her hands. She whimpered in
pain; her elbow would not support her.
"Are you hurt?" Sam asked, his voice close to her ear.
"I banged my elbow." She replied. "Are you?"
"I don't think so." Sam replied cautiously. He sat up,
helping CJ to rise to a sitting position.
She looked around, cradling her arm. It was sore, but
didn't feel too bad, all things considered.
The limo was gone, hopefully with the unharmed President in
it, and there were cops, secret service agents and ambulances all
over the place. Two of them went screaming off into the night.
"Ms. Cregg? Mr. Seaborn?" Paul Dettermeier, one of the
Secret Service agents bent over the two of them, accompanied by a
paramedic. "Are you hurt?"
"My elbow." CJ replied. She allowed Dettermeier to help
her to her feet, noting that one of her shoes had lost the heel.
Sam also got to his feet and stumbled. The paramedic caught his
arm, steadying him.
"I think I may have twisted my ankle." He said and was
helped to the bumper of one of the cars.
CJ cried out in pain as the paramedic gently examined her
elbow.
"It's dislocated." He said calmly. "This is going to hurt
a lot, but it will help." She cried out again as the pain went
intense, then started to fade.
"Was there anyone else hurt?" She asked urgently, as soon
as she got her breath back.
"I don't have that information, Ms. Cregg." The paramedic
told her, fashioning a sling for her arm. "You need to go to the
hospital for xrays."
"Okay." CJ nodded. The pain was fading fast, but her elbow
still hurt. She watched Sam being put on a gurney and put into
an ambulance. "Do I have to ride on a gurney?"
"No." The paramedic shook his head. "Would you like to
ride with Mr. Seaborn?"
"Please." CJ allowed him to slip the sling over her head
and started to walk toward the waiting ambulance. She wobbled on
her broken shoe and, with an exclamation of annoyance, she kicked
off both of them and went in stocking feet.
Sam knew from the moment he put any weight on it that he had
sprained or broken his ankle. He got on the gurney quite
willingly. He had broken his ankle before and he knew that he
had to be sensible about it if he wanted to walk again. Last
time he had broken his ankle, he had not been sensible and it had
taken eight months and two operations to get the bones to knit
properly.
As he was wheeled toward the ambulance, he noted that none
of his coworkers were within sight. That was bad. If he and CJ
were the last, they were also probably the least injured.
Naturally, the President and Leo were the first priority,
followed by Zoey and, since they were together, Charlie. But the
rest of the crowd would have been taken care of based upon
injuries.
He heard an odd sound and turned to look, then wished he
hadn't. It was the sound of a body bag being zipped up. He
gulped in a huge lungful of air to force down the nausea. Who
was in that bag? One of his friends? A Secret Service agent,
gunned down in the line of duty? An innocent bystander, caught
in the chaos?
As the doors closed behind CJ and she sat down on the bench
across from his gurney, he caught a glimpse of Josh, clinging to
the fence, looking like hell.
Josh clung to the fence, unable to move. He saw the chaos
and carnage below and he couldn't make sense of it. He saw the
falling bodies, the mass hysteria and fear, the agents shooting
at the windows of the building across the street. He wondered,
in the back of his mind, why the building had not been secured.
He wondered if he would ever lose that sick/scared feeling.
It had taken years for that feeling to fade enough for him to put
it out of his mind after his sister's death in that fire. He had
watched helplessly then, too, as the stink of death and
destruction filled the air. He was paralyzed by it, as he had
been them, and consumed with the guilt that he had done nothing
to stop it.
He tried to let go of the fence, but his fingers would not
move. He could only watch, his fingers digging painfully into
the wire, as the ambulances pulled up, as the emergency vehicles
stopped askew in the street, as the presidential limo pulled away
at top speed.
The President and Leo were in that limo, he knew. He had
seen them being shoved nilly-willy into the car as it peeled
away. And Zoey and Charlie were in the next one, Charlie having
the presence of mind to simply open the door behind him, grab
Zoey and pull her inside. Gina, Zoey's agent, was on the ground
as the limo pulled away, but she was now sitting up, panting.
The first ambulance to pull away went in a different
direction from the limousines. Josh blew out a breath. That
meant the limos had gone to the White House, not to the hospital.
He saw Sam and CJ together, Sam limping and CJ holding her
arm. They went in the fifth ambulance, toward the hospital. He
didn't see Toby or Donna or anyone else from the office.
"Mr. Lyman?" One of the Secret Service agents was behind
him; he didn't remember the guy's name. "Are you hurt?"
"No." He replied. The word stuck in his throat, so he tried
again. "No, I'm okay." He found that he could now let go of the
fence.
"If you would come with me?" The agent said politely,
offering a hand up.
"Yeah." Josh finally tore his eyes from the scene. "Yeah,
to the White House."
Danny made a quick decision. He saw no use in going down to
street level; the reporters there were most likely being
corralled by the Secret Service as witnesses. They had their
story, witnesses to the shooting, but they wouldn't get anything
else. They were caught in the security net. He wasn't.
So which way? The hospital or the White House? He fished
for his keys and made sure his cell was safely in his pocket.
The hospital it was, so long as he could get there before the
security clampdown was complete.
Josiah Bartlett, President of the United States of America,
made a beeline to the Oval Office. It was his place of power,
the place where he was the leader of the most powerful nation on
earth. Here, he was surrounded by the symbols of office; he was
Mr. President. He needed the mantle of power around him right
now. Jed Bartlett was just a little too angry, a whole lot too
scared, to be the one to take care of this.
"Leo, what the hell just happened?" He ground out, speaking
for the first time since the shooting. He had waved away medical
help and shook his head to the question of his own injuries, but
he had said nothing.
"I'm not sure." Leo replied. He had his cell phone
practically glued to his ear on the ride back to the White House,
but he still knew very little. "The building across the street
had three gunmen on the fifth floor. They emptied their weapons
on the crowd. We don't know exactly how many weapons they had
yet. Ron reports that two of the gunmen are dead and one in
custody. There might be others involved in the attack, but the
actual shooters are accounted for."
"How did they get there?" Bartlett asked with ominous calm.
"Unknown at this time."
"How many injuries?"
"As far as we know right now, three people on the ground are
dead, seventeen injured." Leo replied, then waved an apologetic
hand as his cell rang. He listened for a moment, then snapped it
shut.
"What?" Bartlett looked concerned; Leo had gone pale. Leo
carefully put the phone back in his pocket and took a deep
breath.
"They're transferring calls to a secured line here." He
said quietly. "Zoey and Charlie were following us here. Gina
Toscano shielded both of them from the shots. She was wearing
kevlar. She's okay, although she has some pretty spectacular
bruises."
"And...?" Bartlett knew there was more.
"Sam has a broken ankle and CJ dislocated her elbow." Leo
continued. "Josh is okay. He's on his way here. No one else on
the staff was hurt except..." Leo broke off.
"Toby." Bartlett's voice was flat. "Is he...?"
"Not yet." Leo's voice was also flat, unemotional. "Toby
was hit and it's bad. Real bad."
To Be Continued; see part 3...
Chaos - 3
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