Title: Impossible
Genre: Post series
A/N: This may have been inspired by recent personal events…
“Josh, do you have a minute for…” Carol’s question was interrupted by hurricane Donna tearing
into his office.
“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you this morning.” Josh looked up in surprise from his briefing memo.
Donna didn’t return the greeting, but instead decisively shut the door on Carol. Josh blinked in
shock. Donna was never rude to Carol; ever.
“What’s up?” Josh stood up and cautiously approached a pacing Donna. Donna never paced; that
was his thing.
“It’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?” Josh’s heart skipped a beat when he thought she might be talking about
them.
“This job.” She replied.
“Well, it’s tough, but I’m keeping my head above water so far.”
“Not YOUR job, you idiot, mine!” Donna shouted.
“Whoa…hold on…just take a breath and start from the beginning.” Josh advised.
“I don’t know what I was thinking accepting this job. I can’t possibly stay on top of all of this.”
Donna continued pacing. “It’s Chief of staff to the First Lady of the United States! You! You should
have warned me! You should have told me I was in way over my head with this.”
Josh started to laugh before he caught Donna’s death glare. “This job is NOT over your head.
What’s going on?”
“Mrs. Santos is gallivanting off in eight different directions and I can’t rein her in. The Chief Usher
is ordering me around. I’ve had to change the First Lady’s schedule 3 times today and now the
Secret Service is getting pissed at me. I can’t handle this. This job is impossible.”
“Not for you; mere mortals, maybe, but not you.” Josh said quietly and stopped her in her tracks.
“You’ve kept me reined in for the better part of a decade! You can’t tell me that handling Helen
Santos is tougher than handling me; I’ll be insulted!”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“I have to treat the First Lady with respect!” Donna replied and made Josh burst out in laughter.
“I was the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States!” Josh objected.
“Yeah? Besides I knew you before that.”
“You knew Helen Santos before she became First Lady.”
“Barely.” Donna amended. “There are too many details to keep track of.”
“For you? Too many details?” Josh felt Donna’s head as if for fever. Donna smacked his hand
away from her.
“Yes, Josh, too many details for me. The job is huge!” Donna held her arms wide in illustration.
“Huge!”
“Ah…I see what the problem is.” Josh sat down on his couch and tugged on Donna’s hand until
she joined him.
“What? What is the problem, oh omniscient one.”
“See, you think you’re mocking me, but omniscient is pretty close to the truth.”
“What have you been omniscient about?”
“Jed Bartlet. Matt Santos. Us.”
“Us?” Donna screeched. “You were omniscient about us? What a joke!”
“I was SO omniscient about us.” Josh insisted. “Why do you think I kept sabotaging all those dates
of yours? I knew we were destined to be together and I just had to wait until YOU figured it out too.
You took a long time Donnatella.”
“It took ME a long time to…Did you just say you sabotaged my dates, Joshua Lyman?”
“Come on. You had to know that.” Josh gave her a disbelieving look.
“I suspected but that’s not the same thing as knowing.” Donna explained. “What a rotten thing to
do.”
“It was for your own good, they were gomers and you were destined to be with me.”
Donna growled. “Can we get back to the point?”
“What point?”
“You’re the one who’s omniscient, you tell me.” Donna crossed her arms in front of her. Josh took
a few valuable seconds to think.
“Oh, yeah. I figured out your problem.”
“Which. Is. What?” Donna said between clenched teeth.
“You’re Donna.” Josh shrugged as if the answer was obvious.
“Excuse me?” Donna’s voice took on the steely quality that always spelled trouble for Josh so he
replayed the words he’d spoken aloud and realized where he’d messed up.
“No, no, you’re misunderstanding me. The problem isn’t that you’re you. The problem is that
because you’re you, you don’t have a Donna.”
Donna’s head fell forward in exasperation. “I take pride in my ability to translate the words that
come out of your mouth into understandable English sentences, but you’ve lost me and I’m simply
too tired to catch up.”
“Okay…let me try again.” Josh put an arm around her shoulder and drew her close to him. “I
always relied on you to handle all the myriad details of my job which you did amazingly well;
because I had you. Now you’re thrust into this admittedly challenging position and you don’t have
a Donna to rely on. You aren’t delegating are you?”
“Josh, I simply can’t delegate some of this to…”
“No, you can’t. Some of it you have to handle yourself, but a lot of it can be delegated. I was lucky,
I had you to count on while I tried to get my sea legs in the White House. You need to find your
Donna.”
“It’s that simple, is it?”
“Nothing in either wing of the White House is simple, Donnatella.” Josh brought her hand to his lips
and kissed her knuckles. “But you’ve got good people around you. People who love you and will
help you in any way they can. This job isn’t too much for you. It’s perfect for you. Just give it some
time.”
“When did you get so smart?”
“It came from years of working with you.” Josh smiled. “Plus that omniscient thing.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“I think I’m going to add that to my business cards.” Josh decided.
“I’ve created a monster.” Donna drawled.
“Nah, I was always like this.” Josh disputed. “I could have senior staff refer to me as the omniscient
one.”
“They’d love that.” Donna chuckled. “Tell me again how you knew we’d be together.”
“From the moment you told me about all the majors and minors you had in two years, I knew.” He
leaned closer and kissed her lips. “See you were so busy trying to prove how valuable you were
and I already knew it.”
“Then why did you pretend you didn’t know it?”
“Because in order to prove you were valuable to me you had to spend time with me…lots and lots
of time.” Josh grinned and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Unbelievable.” Donna shook her head, but her lips twitched.
“I loved every minute of it.” Josh admitted. “When we got to the White House I felt so overwhelmed.
Then there you were with your lists and schedules and your note cards. Then I knew it would be
okay.”
“It’s not impossible?”
“It only feels like it is for awhile.” Josh crossed his heart. “I promise.”
“I trust you.” Donna said quietly and kissed him tenderly on the lips just as the door to the Oval
opened.
“Oops. Sorry.” Said the leader of the free world who didn’t look sorry at all. “I’m interrupting.”
“No, sir. I was just leaving. I have to go find a Donna.” With another quick kiss she left the two men
alone in Josh’s office.
“Josh? She knows that SHE is Donna right?”
“Yes, sir. She needs to find her own Donna; an invaluable, detail driven assistant.”
“Won’t that be kind of difficult?” President Santos asked.
“Impossible.” Josh agreed. “But Donna can easily handle the impossible.”
The End.