Will Bailey did not consider himself a man prone to hero worship. After all, growing up the youngest son of the Supreme Commander of NATO forces instilled in Will the kind of hero worship that centered almost exclusively on his father.

At age seven, Will learned that men are just men, and fallible. He learned that he had a sister whose mother wasn't his, which he didn't quite understand. But he understood his mother's tears, and so Will realigned his universe with no compelling, commanding figure at the center. People could disappoint you, but the ideals his father taught him -- those couldn't let you down.

Will considered himself an American, but casually, the way kids from Iowa who go to college in California still consider themselves Iowans. He attended the international school in Brussels, and disagreed with American foreign policy on any number of issues.

Will followed American politics and voted by absentee ballot when he was overseas, but he never got past his cynicism to really support a candidate. The United States was led by men and men are fallible. Somehow, Will still expected America to live up to its ideals, or at least to live up to its promise.

When he was 27, he watched the genocide in Rwanda spool out on CNN, unanswered by the U.N., by the U.S., by his father's troops, and his belief in the system faltered. But it's hard not to believe in anything. Will chalked up the inaction to the fallible men in charge and decided to believe in the power of ideas.

When he was 29, he told himself he was excited for a Bartlet presidency not because of the man, but because of his ideas.

And then he woke up one morning in Shimla, the heat pressing in on him like a physical force and his sister's voice echoing down the hallway. Will squinted out the screened windows. Their audience with the Dalai Lama was still hours away, judging by the sunlight, and there was a monkey perched on the balcony, grooming its fur.

Will rolled out of bed, told the monkey to go away (it fixed an unimpressed gaze on him, then went back to its task), and opened his door as Elsie started pounding on it.

"What time--?"

She was in a loose sundress with lemon-colored flowers on it, and she was holding a printout from the New York Times site. The headline stopped him midsentence: "BARTLET ILL."

"Elsie--?"

"He has M.S.," she explained, thrusting the paper at him. "Read it."

Will shook his head, as if that would make it not true. "M.S.?"

Elsie, who didn't bother to hide her emotions, raised her voice in bitter emphasis. "Diagnosed *seven years ago*."

He couldn't think of anything to say, so he smoothed the papers and started to read as Elsie stomped off.

He learned at age 32 that maybe he was prone to hero worship, and the taste of betrayal is never less than bitter.