She’s working. Of course she’s working. She doesn’t remember a day in the past five years she wasn’t working, let alone in the past five months. But then, she’s ok with that notion. Work is routine, familiar, comfortable. It is not the strained silence that greets her most nights when she stumbles into the apartment, just enough energy left to crawl into bed. It is not the terse glances she exchanges with her partner when getting ready for work, before even the sun has risen through the window. Work is an escape, one she has used far too often in the last half decade.
But today is different, today of all days she will not feel guilty about her commitment to the campaign or apologize for the work she has done. Today is special. Because even as a kid, she’d loved Election Day, the nervous excitement and anxious energy of nearly every resident in DC forming together to overflow the city. As a teenager, that love had only grown. Now, at thirty three years old and a senior staff member for the man who could easily be the next President of the United States, her love for Election Day had turned nearly catastrophic. Because today, they would get the Governor of Kentucky elected President, either that or would go down trying.
“Cheryl, I’m heading out for a few minutes!” she calls out to her assistant waiting in the bullpen, anxiously scribbling down notes and facts with the other staffers. Many of the others look up in surprise, though Cheryl brushes her off with a wave of her hand, not bothering to look up from their notepad in front of her or the phone at her ear. Scottie laughs under her breath at the familiar movement before stepping out the door into the crisp DC air and sighing in content.
With her coat jacket wrapped comfortably around her, she makes her way down the steps and out to the street, hailing a cab with a familiarity that growing up in the city has brought her. For the next half hour she will step away from the office, though not from politics or even the campaign itself. No, for the next half hour she will do what she can only hope a majority of United States citizens will do: vote.
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Later that night, she will stand huddled together with the team, anxiously awaiting the California vote. She doesn’t know it then, but in the next several minutes the hotel suite will be in chaos as each member processes the information rolling through to them on the television screens. Governor Walker is the new President-elect of the United States. And as far as she’s concerned, there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be to celebrate this victory.
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