The First Patient

CHAPTER 19

Even during the drinking years Gabe had never been a sound sleeper.

Later on in his life, the nurses at the hospital and the answering service operators at Tyler Connections knew that no matter what hour they called, he would answer before the second ring and would invariably sound as if he were sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee. Not even the Xanax he took when sleep simply wouldn't come at all kept him from going on instant alert.

This morning, when the phone began ringing in his Watergate apartment, Gabe was enmeshed in a bizarre and bloody dream involving being trapped inside a slaughterhouse. The woman trapped beside him might have been his ex, or Alison, or possibly even Lily Sexton. It was impossible to tell. The desperate bellowing of doomed and dying cattle was terrifying and totally vivid and yielded only reluctantly to the telephone, so that it might have been the third or fourth ring before his fumbling fingers located the receiver.

The LED on the bedside alarm read 5:00-maybe two and a half hours since he finally walked away from his nanotechnology notes.

"Dr. Singleton, it's Magnus Lattimore. I hope I didn't wake you."

At the sound of the man's voice, Gabe went cold. All he could think was that he had screwed up big-time in letting Lattimore and the Stoddards talk him out of initiating the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Why else a call at five in the morning?

"Is Drew in trouble?"

He doused the frog in his voice with water from the half-filled glass on his bedside table.

"No, no," the chief of staff replied quickly. "Everything's fine. Great. I guess I should have said that right away. Sorry. The president is doing fine. Fine. In fact, he just finished a forty-five-minute workout with his trainer."

"Terrific."

Gabe felt the tsunami of adrenaline begin to ebb. He remembered that at the Academy, Drew, like a number of the others-most of them private school kids with advanced study habits-often chose to wake up at two or three in the morning to do his work while distractions were at a minimum. Gabe also found himself wondering, in some corner of his mind, exactly what in the hell the slaughtered-cattle dream was all about.

"Believe me, Doc, you're doing a great job," Lattimore was saying.

"If he's okay, everything else is secondary," Gabe said, pointedly ignoring the praise.

"You've got that right, my friend. Well, I'm calling on his behalf with a request."

"Go on."

"There's a large meeting at the Baltimore Convention Center later this morning which the president was supposed to address. Some major political allies and donors are running the show, and one of them called quite upset that the Secretary of the Treasury had been written in to take the POTUS's place. You see, after the gastroenteritis attack the other night, you said we should stick close to home, and so we-"

"I know what I said, Magnus. Go on."

"Yes… Well, although we still have a decent lead over Dunleavy, there has been a significant slippage in a couple of the important polls. The president is feeling great, and he thinks he should go speak to these people in person. It can be a very brief address."

"And what do you think?"

"I think we have made a deal with you and we are going to keep that deal."

"But you want him to go and make this speech."

"More importantly, he wants to go."

"Can the decision wait for twenty minutes?"

"Not too much longer than that. Our advance teams are on the way to Baltimore just in case we get the green light from you, but there are some other logistical problems that need to be worked out."

Gabe glanced down at his wrists, half-expecting to see the strings of a marionette.

"In that case," he said, "give me time for a quick shower and I'll be right over. I'll decide for certain after I have seen him."

"That's all we can ask for. You're in charge, Doc. You're always in charge."

"Yeah, thanks, that's good to be reminded of."

"A car will be waiting for you outside the main entrance."

"Magnus, tell me something."

"Yes?"

"That car-where is it right now?"

There was just enough hesitation so that Gabe knew the chief of staff was deciding if there was anything to lose by telling the truth.

"The car… Yes… Well, actually, the car is waiting out in front of the Watergate right now."

"Thanks. It looks like I'm going to have to work at being a little less predictable," Gabe said.

He set down the receiver wondering if any of those ill-fated cows being herded down the chute in his dream had looked like him.

"Three sets of forty, Gabe. That's a hundred and twenty push-ups. Do you think the President of North Korea can do a hundred and twenty pushups?"

"How old is he?"

"I don't know, maybe eighty."

"I think you've probably got him. Drew, believe me, I'd be the happiest man alive if all the world's political problems could be solved by which country's leader could do the most push-ups. I'm going to look inside your eyes again. Pick a spot over there on the wall and just stare at it."

"Dilates the pupils, right?"

"You got it. Good. Looks fine in there. Now, touch my finger with your right index finger, then touch your nose. Do it five times fast. Okay, now the left index finger… Good…"

The president, sitting beside his bed, looking boyish and utterly fit, submitted to a physical and neurological examination. Nothing amiss. Absolutely nothing. Gabe tried once again to match the frightening display he had witnessed here thirty-six hours ago with any specific diagnoses-a frantic, manic, disoriented, hallucinating, hyperactive episode with cardiovascular acceleration that had come about with little warning and resolved after a couple of hours without apparent residual effects. MRI negative, CT scan normal-at least according to the coded records at Bethesda Naval. Blood work normal, although the samples were drawn eight weeks ago during his brief hospitalization, hours after his attack.

Most recent bloods, drawn by Gabe during an attack… missing.

It seemed logical that Jim Ferendelli had also drawn blood work during one of the episodes he observed, but neither the president nor Magnus Lattimore could recall any tubes being obtained until Gabe drew them.

Track down any blood chemistry results.

Gabe made a mental note and filed it with what seemed like an infinite number of other mental notes.

"Well, Doc? How'd I do?"

"You seem fine."

"I feel fine."

"If you go to Baltimore, I go."

"I wouldn't have it any other way. You're my shaman… my healer. Gabe, I know you want to treat me very conservatively until you know what's going on, but I have this sort of demanding job and-"

"I know, pal. I know. I'm doing my best to work around that demanding job, although I'll grant you, it is a bit like redecorating the bathroom with an elephant in the tub."

"Nice image. I like it. Although we really should think in terms of donkeys rather than elephants."

"From now on, donkeys in the tub. Drew, there was a message waiting for me in the office. The consultant I sent for-the psychologist-is going to be here this evening. I want him to do an interview and complete battery of what we call neuropsychiatric testing on you-intelligence-probably beginning tomorrow."

"What did you say his name was?"

"Blackthorn. Dr. Kyle Blackthorn. He's a little… um… eccentric, but he's also incredibly insightful."

"I revere eccentric and insightful. Bring him on."

"I will." Gabe fixed his gaze on the president. "Drew, do you remember the tubes of blood I took from you the other night?"

"Not really."

"Well, I did. Three of them."

"For what?"

"For whatever tests I decided I wanted."

"Fine with me."

"Except that they're gone."

"What?"

"Gone. Missing. They disappeared from the medical clinic refrigerator sometime during the day after I drew them. Any ideas?"

The president looked genuinely nonplussed.

"I have no clue what could have happened, but I'll get Treat and my staff on it right away. It would seem that quite a few people have access to that office-the doctors, the nurses, the PAs."

"Plus a couple of paramedics and one admiral," Gabe added.

"Ah, yes, Admiral Ramrod. Well, I think if taking tubes of blood isn't in the Officer's Manual of Right and Proper Things to Do, Ellis didn't take them."

"Okay," Gabe said, virtually convinced from his patient's reaction that the man had no knowledge the tubes had vanished, let alone any responsibility for the theft, "for the time being, why don't you just let me keep my eyes and ears open. I don't think there's anything to be gained by making a big deal about it-at least not yet."

"Maybe they got thrown out by accident."

"Anything's possible. So, when and where for today's deal?"

"I think ten thirty. Someone will come by your office to get you. Admiral Wright and whoever's covering today have put together the medical team. From now on, when we're going on the road, I'll have you do it. Either way, they'll all know that so long as you're around, you're in charge."

"I like the way that sounds, Drew."

"Yeah, I kind of enjoy hearing that one myself."

"It's good to be the king."

The president immediately picked up on the line from Mel Brooks's History of the World.

"You said it," he replied. "It is good to be the king."

The two friends shook hands and Gabe headed through the foyer toward the elevator. He was nearly there when his radio crackled on.

"Wrangler, Wrangler, do you read me. Over."

Wrangler was the radio name he had chosen with the help of the Secret Service. It wasn't used all the time-more often he was referred to as Doc-but Gabe liked it when it was. He threw the switch on the speaker attached to the sleeve of his jacket and spoke into it.

"This is Wrangler. Over."

"Wrangler, this is Agent Lowell-are you available to see a patient in your clinic? Over."

"I'm headed there now from Maverick's quarters. Over."

Maverick, the flamboyant, fearless Tom Cruise character in Top Gun, was the name given to the president in honor of his war record as a pilot. In accordance with White House Communications Office protocol, then, all of the First Family's call names began with the same letter as the president. Carol was Moondance, Andrew Jr. had chosen Muscles, and Rick had picked Mindmeld from Star Trek. Scotsman Magnus Lattimore was Piper after the instrument he allegedly played quite well, though seldom when he was sober.

"We'll be there in ten minutes. Do you copy? Over."

"Ten minutes. Roger that. What's the problem? Who's the patient? Over."

"The problem is a foreign body of some sort in the eye. The patient is Bear. He has specifically requested you. Do you know who Bear is? Over."

"I do. Tell him I'll be there to see him in ten minutes. Over."

"Over and out."

Curious.

Bear, named, Gabe figured, for his physique, or maybe his home state of Montana, was the vice president.

"He has specifically requested you."

Gabe stepped into the small elevator replaying yesterday's luncheon conversation with LeMar Stoddard and Stoddard's warning regarding Thomas Cooper III.

Now what? he wondered as the gears engaged. Now what?