The Phone Call

DISCLAIMER: West Wing and Buffy with all their trademarks belongs to Mr. Sorkin and Mr. Whedon. I'm just creating alternative stories in my little mind. The song: I'm not afraid to move on, is the Norwegian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest in Riga, 2003. It is sung by Jostein Hasselgård.

A/N: Edited for some errors and reuploaded.

CHAPTER 1

One moment out of time
Someone finds a secret
Waiting behind
Knowing there's an end to a glory
End to a story
So good, so divine

It was the Christmas Eve of year 2000 and President Bartlet's third year in office. He had currently finished making a televised address to the American people by wishing them a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, a joyous Kwanza or whatever they chose to celebrate when Samuel Norman Seaborn's cell phone vibrated. He stepped quietly outside before he answered it. "Hello, Sam Seaborn."

A mechanical hissing voice was at the other end. "Hello Samuel."

"Hello." There was a long silence, Sam considered hanging up when the voice spoke again.

"I want to speak to the President."

Sam lifted his eyebrows. "Yes, because calling my cell phone is usually how the citizens of this country manage to get hold of the man half of them voted in office." His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

"Ask him about Alberta, I'll get in touch." Sam held out his cell phone and stared at it as the door opened behind him.

"And so Charlie Chaplin came in third in the Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest..." The President trailed off as he saw Sam standing still and staring at the cell phone. "What's the matter, son. Got dumped?" Josh started to say something about having to actually have a relationship before being dumped, but his stomach magically connected to CJ's elbow.

"Who's Alberta?" Sam asked quietly, not taking his eyes of the phone. The President looked quickly at Leo before looking back at Sam.

"I am assuming you don't mean the Canadian province Alberta, then it's none of your business." They were interrupted by Sam's cell phone. He answered it, like he had before.

"So," hissed the voice. "Where is the President? Did he tell you about Alberta?"
"No, he said that it was none of my business. I don't see that it makes it your business either."

"Well, then tell him Alberta is doing just fine." The person in the other end hung up and Sam was left listening to nothingness.

"Sir, I am supposed to tell you that Alberta is doing just fine. I can't really understand anything of this..." The rest of the Senior staff watched in awe, with a little bit of terror mixed in, as their President snagged Sam's phone out of his arms and tried to figure out who had made the last call. "It came from an un-identified number, sir. I tried that the first time it called. Smashing it in the floor isn't going to help trace the caller, Mr. President." Sam bowed down and picked up the phone.

"Donna, get the First Lady to come to the Oval office, Ginger you tell the Christmas party that the President and the First Lady are delayed and will be with them when they are able to, the rest of us are going back in." Leo became the voice of reason and ushered them all back in to the Oval office. Luckily the TV crew had finished packing up and been guided out by Margaret the other entrance. The President kept wandering back and forth on his floor while the rest of them settled down in the couches, all of them fidgeting with whatever they had available. Josh had loosened his tie and messed up his hair, CJ kept spinning her bracelet around and around on her arm and Sam tried to get his cell phone back together.

Finally the First Lady made her appearance. "Why did Donna tell me to come here, instead of going down to the party?"

"We'll try to explain, Abby. For a short while ago Sam received two phone calls. The speaker wanted him to ask the President about Alberta." When Leo mentioned the name the First Lady paled. "Later the voice told him to tell the President that Alberta was doing just fine."

"Is this some sort of sick joke?" Abigail Bartlet asked her husband's staff.

"I'm not sure. If it is, it's certainly not from this office." Leo took her hand and patted it. The President kept pacing. Josh, tired of not knowing what was going on, got up and started pacing with him. Sam finally got his phone back together, shortly thereafter it rang again. He answered it; everybody stopped their pacing and fidgeting.

"Hello, Sam Seaborn."

"Hello Sam. May I speak to the President now?" Sam looked over at President Bartlet who nodded at him before taking the phone.

"This is President Bartlet of the United States of America. To whom am I speaking?" The voice cackled at him.

"Does that matter? Don't you want to know about Alberta?" Jed Bartlet nodded, forgetting that the person in the other end couldn't see him. "Well, do you or do you not?"

"I do." His voice was suddenly dry.

"She didn't die. They switched her at the hospital."

"Why are you telling me this? How do you know that it isn't her that died?"

"If she isn't dead, she'll be dead soon. Ever heard of the Initiative?" The rest of the people present couldn't hear what the other person said, but it didn't look promising when the President whitened even further.

"She's part of the Initiative?"

"Close but not quite. Save your daughter before it's too late."

"How do I know it's my daughter? The doctors told us she was dead."

"For one thing she looks just like your wife did, when you met her. But I'm sure you won't believe a word I say anyway. Why not go and see?" The voice hung up on him.

"Well, Abby. It looks like we're going to have to take a personal trip soon." Sam barely caught his cell phone in the air, when the First Lady ran into her husband, causing him to throw it in the air.

"Is she alive?" She looked up at the President as he shrugged.

"That's what we're going to find out." The Senior staff sat, waiting for their boss to acknowledge their presence to either dismiss them or to tell them what was going on. He finally did. "Well, in a few days we'll be taking a trip to California. I need my schedule cleared for that, Charlie." He looked around for Charlie.

"He is with Zoey, at the party. You told him, yourself, sir, that he should be young for once. You also remembered to tell him that the 82nd still works for you, in case you wondered." CJ told him earnestly.

"The 82nd makes me sort of glad I'm not dating one of his daughters." Josh remarked to Sam.

"Yeah." Sam trailed off. "So, Mr. President. What's the story?" The President resumed his pacing as he began to speak.

"After Zoey was born we thought we were finished having children, Elizabeth, Ellie and Zoey was more than enough. Somehow Abby wound up pregnant a few years afterwards..."

His wife hit him playfully at the arm. "I didn't get pregnant by myself."

"I didn't say you did." He grinned back at her. "Anyway, we were thrilled, all of us. Liz wasn't overly happy about her parents procreating once more. At the age of seventeen she felt we were too old and stodgy to be anything but grandparents, but she accepted it after a while. Ellie was thrilled, she loved to baby Zoey, but she was growing too old to be babied. So all of us waited with anticipation, but when the day came the baby was stillborn. It was a shock for all of us; by that time even Liz had begun talking about what she was going to play with it when it grew up. We named the girl Alberta."

"One moment," Toby held up his hand. "You named a young defenseless child Alberta? What was wrong with you?" The man who had made a name for himself in the press and American politics by being Mr. Grouchy looked indignantly at them.

Abigail Bartlet blushed. "Do we really have to go into that now?"

CJ put her elbow into Josh's midsection. "Yes we do." He practically shouted out. "I mean what if poor CJ here got that question on a press briefing, what would you say?"

The President made a dry comment. "Say we really liked the combination Bertie Bartlet?" Leo coughed. "Stay out of this, McGarry."
"It was a perfectly innocent cough." He felt obliged to protest. "Just because the two of you spent a weekend in Alberta, Canada around nine months before the birth took place, don't blame anything on me coughing."

Josh made a face. "Sometimes I know I'm lucky being plain old Joshua. Being named after my place of conception would be weirder than being named Alberta."

"Do we even want to know? How do you know about that anyway?" CJ demanded.

"Little Joshua born precisely nine months after my parents were in Savannah? Thank God they didn't have the same sort of warped notions as the two of you. Not that I meant anything by that Mr. President." He tried to apologize. "It's just I don't happen to think that Savannah or Georgia are very good masculine names." He made a face.

"Well, Abby." Jed looked at his wife. "Hoynes may have to be in charge here in Washington. It looks like we're going to Sunnydale for a while."