The Governor's wife

FIVE

The adrenaline energized Lindsay Bonner's body. An emergency room offered a rush like no other nursing experience. She had been a certified trauma nurse. She had kept her license current, perhaps in the hope that one day she might again be a nurse. That she might again be useful.

"Mrs. Bonner," the congressman said, "all the blood…"

She removed her suit coat and tossed it to the congressman. He stood alone by the front desk with the dog; the doctor had sent the other man outside to wait. She grabbed a lab coat hanging on a rack and put it on. She pulled on latex gloves then checked the boy's pulse and took his blood pressure.

"Pulse is one-forty-two, blood pressure is seventy over forty. He's in shock from the bleeding."

She found two saline bags and attached them to a stand. She searched the shelves and found two sixteen-gauge needles and antiseptic. She wiped the boy's left wrist with antiseptic then inserted a needle into his vein. She connected the IV. The doctor opened the entry wound in the boy's right chest wall; blood spurted out.

"He is hemorrhaging. We must open him up."

"A thoracotomy, here? Without a CT first? To see what's inside him?"

"We must work blind. If we do not, he will surely die."

"Mrs. Bonner," the congressman said. "Please, I must take you back to Laredo."

The doctor looked at her.

"I'm staying," she said.

"Jesse, please," the congressman said.

"Ernesto, I cannot do this by myself. I need her help."

The congressman made the sign of the cross. The doctor turned back to the boy and performed an endotracheal intubation as if it were a daily routine. He walked over to a small refrigerator and removed yogurt and peanut butter and a blood bag.

"O-negative." He tossed the bag to the congressman. "Ernesto, please take this outside and hold it in the sun for a few minutes, to warm it up."

The congressman held the bag as if holding a live human heart. He disappeared through the door. Lindsay started another IV for the blood transfusion.

"Help me get him on his left side," the doctor said.

The doctor pushed and she pulled until the boy was propped up on his side. She held him while the doctor ran gray duct tape around the boy's waist and then around the table until he was securely in place. The doctor positioned the boy's right arm above his shoulder, then picked up a clean scalpel and leaned over the boy. He felt down the boy's side to locate the fourth and fifth ribs. He then placed the scalpel between the two ribs and slid it down the boy's side. Blood appeared along the the incision.

Blood gushed from the receiver's nose.

The scent of testosterone and the sound of large young men colliding with great force filled the bowl of the stadium. Grunts and groans, whistles and cheers, tubas and drums pounding a deep bass rhythm. The rhythm of football. And life.

At least for Bode Bonner.

The receiver tried to stand, but his legs wobbled like a newborn calf. The defensive back had tried to take his head off with a forearm across the face and had damn near succeeded. Two trainers ran over, wiped away the blood, and helped the player to his feet. His eyes were dazed and confused; he didn't have a clue. He had a concussion.

"A few more hits to the head," the Professor said, "and that boy will be drooling the rest of his life."

The trainers escorted the player off the field, and a fresh body replaced him in the line-up. There was always a replacement body. The Professor shook his head.

"Why do they do it?"

"Same reason I did it," Bode said. "Same reason I'm in politics."

"The girls?"

"The testosterone."

"You're in politics for the testosterone?"

"I'm in politics because I have testosterone." Bode pointed to the field. "Takes testosterone to play out there, and when you're too old to play football, there's politics. It's the last American blood sport, Jim Bob. Hell, a political debate's the next best thing to knocking a wide receiver unconscious… mano a mano. Man to man."

"I think it means 'hand to hand.' "

"Winning in football or politics requires testosterone. A lot of it."

The Professor pondered that a moment. Then he turned back to Bode.

"What about Bachmann? She doesn't have any testosterone."

"And she won't win."

Bode turned back to the game. The State of Texas could not afford to educate its children, but the University of Texas had money to burn on football. It was just before noon, and Bode and Jim Bob stood on the sideline at the one-hundred-thousand-seat Darrel K. Royal-University of Texas Memorial Football Stadium on the UT campus just north of the State Capitol. He watched the replay on the "Godzillatron," the massive HDTV screen above the south end zone. UT's athletic department grossed more money than any other college in the country-almost $150 million annually from tickets, merchandising, even its own cable sports network-and spent more money on football than any other college in the country. Consequently, UT was perennially ranked in the Top 10 in football, if not academics. Which meant that the most powerful man in the state was not the governor of Texas-the state paid him $150,000 a year-but the head coach of the Texas Longhorns-the university paid him $5 million. The team was playing an orange-white spring practice game before fifty thousand fans; ESPN was broadcasting the game live on national TV.

"They want to interview me at halftime?"

"Uh, no," Jim Bob said. "They've already got the head cheerleader lined up."

"Figures."

Football in Texas wasn't a sport; it was a religion. Twenty-five years before, Bode Bonner had preached the gridiron gospel on that very field, and his congregation had joined in the chorus: "Bo-de! Bo-de! Bo-de!" He would give anything to hear that chant again, to be out there on that field again, to be young and strong with his entire life ahead of him. But it was all behind him.

Youth.

Football.

The good part of life.

The sideline camera swung his way, so he flashed a politician's smile and the UT Longhorn hand sign: a fist with the index and pinkie fingers extended to fashion horns. Bode's smiling face was now displayed on the Godzillatron, but the crowd did not cheer, as if they didn't know that the governor of Texas had once been a star player on that very field-or even that he was the governor. The camera then swung over to Mandy; her bouncing breasts now filled the huge video screen.

The crowd cheered.

Bode shook his head. Once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader. All she needed were pompoms.

"You think it's gonna last forever," he said. "But you blink an eye, it's twenty-five years later and you realize those times out there on that field, those were the best times of your life."

Bode flexed his right knee, the one that had suffered four surgeries in four years of college ball, surgeries that precluded a professional career for number 44 on the Texas Longhorns. His knee always hurt, but he'd do it again in a heartbeat.

"I was a college football hero. Now I'm the governor of a broke state. That's a long fall."

"You're a hero to lobbyists."

Jim Bob chuckled; Bode didn't. He felt his spirit spiraling down into that dark place called middle age again. Jim Bob slapped him on the shoulder.

"Maybe killing something would improve your spirits."

Bode responded with a weak shrug. "Might."

"Sure it would. Let's fly out to John Ed's ranch, take the horses out for a free-range hunt… smoke cigars, drink whiskey, sleep under the stars. Last time I talked to John Ed, said he was stocking the place with exotics from Africa. Hell, Bode, you could kill a water buffalo."

"A water buffalo? That'd be like shooting a fucking elephant."

"How about a blackbuck?"

"Been there."

"Impala?"

"Done that."

"Bison?"

"Boring."

"Zebra?"

"Please. It's a pony with stripes."

"Yak?"

Bode faked a yawn.

"Lion?"

"Mountain?"

"African."

"An African lion? John Ed's got African lions on his ranch?"

"One."

"How the hell did he get an African lion into Texas?"

"Don't ask, don't tell."

"Damn. I always wanted to go on safari."

"Well, now you can. Without leaving Texas."

"Is that legal? Shooting an African lion if you're not in Africa?"

Jim Bob shrugged. "You're the governor. And John Ed's ranch is twenty-five square miles in the middle of nowhere. It's like Vegas: what happens out there stays out there."

The action came their way, a swing pass to the running back. The strong safety launched his body at the receiver and knocked him to the turf right in front of Bode.

"Good hit, number twenty-two!" Bode shouted.

He grabbed the safety by the shoulder pads and yanked him up then slapped his butt-not something one man should do to another man anywhere except on a football field. Still, the player gave Bode a funny look before retaking the field.

"Damn," Bode said, "his butt's hard as a rock. My butt used to be that hard."

"Thanks for sharing."

"You know, a lion's head up on the wall of my office, that'd look pretty damn nice."

"Real nice."

"But if it's illegal, I can't put it up in the office."

"Sure you can. We'll just say you killed it in Africa a few years back, just now got it mounted and shipped over."

"Will the press buy that?"

"They bought that lame-ass story about you killing a wolf while jogging the greenbelt-who carries a gun while jogging… even in Texas?" He snorted. "Local press ain't exactly 60 Minutes."

Jogging with a high-powered handgun had earned Governor Bode Bonner an A-plus rating from the NRA, the only A-plus he had ever gotten in his life. He turned to his strategist.

"Let's kill that lion."

"I'll call John Ed, set something up, early next month. April in the Davis Mountains, that'd be nice."

Professor James Robert Burnet, Ph. D., stepped away from the football field and pulled out his iPhone to call John Ed Johnson, billionaire and generous Republican donor, but he shook his head. Excitement. Challenge. Adventure. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. He often felt more like the activities director at a fucking summer camp for kids than the chief political advisor to the governor of the great State of Texas.

He hit the speed dial and waited for the call to ring through. He turned back to his political benefactor whooping and hollering at the play on the field. They were like brothers and had been since fifth grade. Jim Bob was the smart brother; Bode was the handsome, popular, athletic brother who always got the girl. Girls. Voted most likely to succeed, homecoming king, and class president (Jim Bob ran his campaign), he was the big brother who saved his little brother from bullies. Without Bode Bonner, Jim Bob wouldn't have survived middle school; he couldn't have afforded college at UT without Bode getting him a job tutoring football players; he wouldn't now be the resident political genius in Texas, he wouldn't be making $500,000 a year, he wouldn't be getting calls from millionaires and billionaires and lobbyists and legislators seeking favors from the governor, he wouldn't be working in the Governor's Mansion…

But still.

No man wanted to be co-dependent on another man. It wasn't Manly.

But Bode Bonner had cornered the market on manly in the State of Texas.

A gruff voice came over the phone, and Jim Bob said, "John Ed, you still got that lion?"