BY 9:30 PM, protocol formally reassigned the Vice-President’s Secret Service detail to Isabel now she was officially next in line, albeit temporarily until Foster nominated his own choice as replacement for Taylor. They worked fast and would’ve acted even quicker if they’d known where she was and in what condition, but intelligence is hardly a perfect art, as the startling, unpredicted eruption against despots in the Middle East and North Africa proved yet again.
“She’s up at her mountain shack,” said George calmly when he took their call. “She’ll be back in Washington tomorrow afternoon.” He had also taken quite a few calls from media, but had told them nothing, not even that.
“No coms up there, right?” asked the Special Agent.
“Coms?” asked George, worried the goon was a Cold War throwback.
“Communications, sir. Our records say there’s no phone line, no phone network or anything else up there.”
“Correct. Taylor’s death’ll be some big shock when she finds out. After all she went through last year, to find herself now—what’s the saying?—a heartbeat away from being president…”
“Yes, sir.”
“You should phone her husband.” George wasn’t about to do it himself.
But the agent had already tried Ed’s number, and had got a voicemail message.
64
THE COUNTY HOSPITAL pulsed as the staff prepped for Isabel’s arrival. Normally not much happened around here at night, apart from occasional heart attacks that mostly turned out to be indigestion.
Dr Tom Cisco had been at his monthly Rotarians dinner when his pager buzzed, licking his lips and inhaling the window-sill aroma of the freshly baked green apple pie being brought around by the waiters. Even in Manifold, a deep Democrat town, the sudden death of a vice-president couldn’t get in the way of the town’s famous pie. But his pager could. Tom Cisco was on call tonight.
“We’ll call you again when they’re closer, so you don’t need to come over till then,” the triage duty nurse offered. She knew how much the hospital’s head surgeon looked forward to his pie.
As his slice of pie was placed in front of him, Cisco held the phone and pondered what he’d just been told. The aroma of steaming apple, cinnamon and sugar was normally heaven for him, eliminating all other sensations, but now, all he could think about was how the more apt phrase would be the hypocritic oath, what with him being a committed liberal and now apparently charged with saving the life of the new, and Republican, second in line.
But then he recalled his med school buddy Joe Giordano’s story. When President Ronald Reagan was shot, he was lying on Joe’s operating table, and he looked up at him and quipped, “I hope you’re a Republican…” Joe, a Democrat like Cisco, famously answered, “Today, Mr President, we’re all Republicans.”
The nurse crackled into the phone. “Dr Cisco, hell-o-o-o?”
“I’m coming in now,” Cisco said and hung up. For a patient like this, when the nation’s eyes would be on him, even pie would have to wait, but he took a long deep sniff of it before he left. Then a forkful.
Two, in fact.
DR Cisco was already scrubbing up when Andy’s tyres squealed into the emergency bay. The night crew knew that their initial task, in addition to staunching the blood loss, would be to get Isabel’s temperature up. The first check had her well below normal but a touch above the danger marker for severe hypothermia.
“Paul… Andy,” smiled the nurse, “you guys may have saved her life.”
Andy shrugged as if he didn’t care, which was not far from the truth. All he wanted to do was get Gretel’s two pups to the vet. Paul was already on the phone to his wife, telling her the astonishing story.
As Isabel’s gurney was wheeled inside, she drowsed in and out of consciousness. “Wha…s that?” she asked weakly, pointing to the warmed tube a nurse was inserting into a vein in her hand as they rolled down the corridor. She couldn’t make out a name on the badge. Everything was too blurry.
“It’s a heated drip, ma’am,” the nurse responded, “to get your temperature up.”
Isabel’s attention focused momentarily on the second nurse, shooting the air and a stream of liquid out of a syringe, and her brow furrowed.
“And this is a pain killer,” the nurse said.
Isabel tensed. “I need… phone… now. Must phone…”
“You’ve lost a lot of blood, ma’am,” said the nurse, still wielding the syringe, “and you’re hypothermic. We’ve got to get you warmed up before we take you into theatre. The doctors are already scrubbed and waiting.” She peeled back a ripped piece of Isabel’s parka and tried to swab her shoulder but Isabel struggled, and pushed herself back in the gurney as far as she could, her face twisting with the excruciating pain. She yanked the drip out of her vein and knocked the syringe to the floor, the needle scraping across her hand. The orderly wheeling the cart pulled to a sudden halt.
“Phone… Now!” Isabel screamed.
The two nurses looked at each other and then at the orderly. The patient was delusional. Hypothermia could do that. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“A phon…” Isabel tried to repeat, but she was fading, again.
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