Pens from a Gomer

A pen?

I gave her a fricking pen?

*Come ON Josh!*

I flew half way across the globe to sit by this woman's bedside. This beautiful, exceptional woman. I sat there, terrified I'd hear a hitch in her breathing. Terrified to leave her side in case she called out in pain. Terrified she'd never call out at all. Ever again.

And she comes back and I give her a gift of a pen.

Ok, I know, its kind of a special pen. But hey "You almost died. I realised your the most important thing in my life. I'm an undeserving shmuck for taking you for granted all these years. Here's a .... PEN?!?!"

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not the stupidest gomer in D.C.

I go home and collapse on the sofa and get a hard-on in the dark watching C-Span whenever any small thought of her filters through my exhausted brain.
I find myself staring at the small of her back, the tilt of her head as she types away, unaware, in the bullpen and I'm peering over the Washington Post that I'm not reading. Then she turns to smile and launch into one of her babbling tirades about something or other and I look away, look at the floor, start pacing down the corridor or bumble towards the coffee machine mumbling about Senators I despise so I don't look like I've been gawking at her like a dumbstruck teenager.
I wake up in cold sweats not remembering my dreams but knowing she was in them, touching me, allowing me to please her, wanting me.
I hate Sundays. Not so much because I'm an insufferable workaholic - ok, I am - but because it's the one day I really haven't got a reason to call on her - national emergencies aside - to see her, to wake her up at six a.m by phone and start yakking on about policy and speeches and absurd situations we're going to face together throughout the day. She's out shopping, or jogging, or sitting at home reading magazines, or catching a movie with friends, or I don't know. And that's the problem. I want to know. I want to take her shopping. I want to jog beside her. I want to be in that damn movie theatre with her being anything but her damn boss.

Did I say I wanted to take her shopping?

Yeah... I must be cooked.

So I'm sitting in my office, staring - again - at this gorgeous, funny, brilliant woman who I just spent a week sitting beside on an uncomfortable chair in a military hospital reeking of antispectic, bad food and - I'm pretty sure - that metallic smell of blood that makes me gag. I've held her hand, stroked her hair, whispered reassuring words into her ear, slept with my head resting against her thigh, watched her cry from pain or fear of the operation, stayed up 72 hours waiting for results of surgery and now I'm standing here like a duck with a broom up its ass unable to do or say anything much beyond

"thanks for not dying, here's a pen, I don't want to take you for granted... mumble, mumble..."

And I want to kick the office door shut, take her in my arms, kiss the oxygen out of her and surgically graft her against my body. I, Josh Lyman, am completely nuts about Donna Moss.