I don't know what this is...

He sits for a while, stunned and speechless like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, unable to think about education policy or whatever it was that he was debating when she came into the room, all showered and fresh-smelling and fiddling with her earrings, as though getting dressed in his apartment were something she had been doing for decades.

I don't know what this is, is what she'd said, and part of him, if only he could muster up the energy, wants to run after her and say I know, Donna, this is what that cheesy song is about, you know the one, some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this...

But he has never been so unsure of himself or so unable to think straight through sheer exhaustion and so he sits, stunned, with the dim, unformulated notion that if this were an episode of that sitcom she used to make him watch, the one with Matthew Perry because she thinks he's dreamy, this would be one of those lame, slightly cheating episodes where the character ponders his life while scenes from his past tumble through his mind and across the screen.

He thinks back, in no defined order, memories merging into one another, not about the hospital scenes, not even about Amy or Joey or Cliff or Jack or Colin - okay, perhaps he thinks about them long enough to wonder why there have been so many - but he thinks mainly about those small moments, the everyday acts of intimacy, like sharing popcorn when they watched Dial M for Murder, and the President saying something about him having a daughter, and when he took his place back at Donna's side he caught himself wishing for daughters with sharp minds and long blonde hair and alabaster skin, alabaster is what she calls it, right? Whatever it's called it's beautiful skin, every inch of her beautiful, every inch of her, so beautiful, and Donna, he thinks through the sleepless fog enveloping his brain, Donna I've always known what this was, but I was scared... The thing with guys like me is we scare easily...

She will be half way to work by now and still he sits, stunned and speechless. And still scared. Because he does know. He has always known. He just hasn't always known that he knew.

And now his brain hurts again. All he really does know is he does not want to screw this up. All he really does know is he loves the way it feels... What is with all these cheesy songs all of a sudden? Get a grip, he tells himself, you have a country to run. But the song keeps coming, all I know is it feels like forever... and that does nothing to alleviate his fear.

Forever is with her, he knows that, he has always known that, even if, etcetera, but forever is big and scary and he does not know if he can do it at all and he has a country to run and he has not slept for five months and what has he done with his Blackberry?