Warriors

CHAPTER 12

Happy birthday, darling!” the First Lady trilled.

She swept into his darkened hospital room hidden behind an enormous arrangement of peonies in her favorite shade of pink. She went to the tall windows, threw open the curtains, and cleared a space for the flowers on a dresser top. Watery sunlight flooded the president’s room. She considered a moment, then placed the large cut crystal vase overflowing with pink peonies where it would look best.

“What do you think? I arranged them myself.”

“Beautiful, honey,” the president said, glancing up at her from his slew of binders and briefing papers. “Thanks.”

She looked over at him and smiled. A real smile. Not like the old ones, he thought, the ones that could barely mask the fear and the pity in her eyes. The ones that confirmed his own darkest nightmares and worst imaginings.

That he was dying.

“How do you feel, birthday boy?”

“Like a million bucks, baby.”

“In Confederate bills?” she said, repeating an old joke between them.

“Hell, no. Bona fide U.S. greenbacks, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Namely, me. Not bad for a seventy-year-old coot, sugar.”

“Attaboy! You go get ’em, cowboy. There’s a new sheriff in town and he’s kicking ass and walking tall.”

Tom McCloskey laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back against his pillows, and beamed at his lovely wife. She was wearing the sky blue Chanel suit he’d bought her on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. With the halo of sunlight touching her auburn hair, she looked like an angel. Which, in his humble opinion, she truly was.

He really did feel good, damn it.

In fact, he had made a remarkable recovery since his arrival at Walter Reed Hospital. He was alert, cogent, rational, and in amazingly good humor. His eyes were clear, his skin was radiant. Whatever had been bothering him these last few months, the docs here at Walter Reed were taking care of it. Now he had one overpowering obsession. He was itching to get out of here and get the hell back to work.

The world was blowing up out there. With a lot of help from China and a little added push from North Korea, war was brewing in the Pacific. The Brits had told him they had a three-star admiral in China who’d refused the Kool-Aid. This top naval-ops guy was going to “retard the process.” But so far? He hadn’t seen dick.

The Middle East, as usual, was on fire. At home, too many people were out of work. The stock market was rocketing toward twenty thousand, and yet the economy still sucked the big one. And he was one of the few people on earth with balls of sufficient size and the power to fix it.

Just last night he’d done a fifteen-minute live bedside interview with Bret Baier, the evening anchor from Fox News. Hard questions, no softballs, that was Bret. China, Japan, Iran, Putin’s massive war games. The recent bellicosity of the crazy North Koreans, their threat to nuke Hawaii. And he’d knocked every damn one of Bret’s questions out of the park. Short, concise, cogent answers, backed up with an impressive understanding of the details underlying each issue.

Bret was the former White House chief correspondent, incredibly savvy and a hell of a nice guy. All-American kid, just the way he liked them. Clean-cut, he looked like he could have been on the White House Secret Service staff. People had been calling all morning to wish him happy birthday and report that the “Twitter-verse” was abuzz with news of the president’s miraculous comeback. The New York Post, they said, was running a front-page photo of him smiling from his bed. They’d Photoshopped a white ten-gallon Stetson on his head. The headline underneath, they said, was “The Comeback Kid!” The copy would talk about how he had his health back, was itching to get back in the saddle, and would be riding tall when he did.

There was a commotion out in the hall, and Mary Taliaferro, one of his favorite nurses, stuck her pretty red head inside the door.

“Mr. President? Just wait till you see what all has shown up out here at the nurses’ station. My gosh, you just won’t believe it!”

McCloskey laughed and looked at his wife.

“All right, Bonnie, what’s this all about? You know I don’t like surprises.”

“Oh, honey, you know I wouldn’t do that. Would I?”

She crossed the room, trying to keep the smile off her face, and pulled it open.

“Oh my goodness, look who’s here!”

“Who?” the president said, sitting up and straining to see over her shoulder. “Oh, my Lord, look at that!”

The first thing through the door was a massive four-tier birthday cake. It was on a rolling table, and they wheeled it right up to his bedside. It was decorated to look like his old homestead in Colorado, the Silvermine Ranch. Miniature ranch house on top, stables, paddocks, and two little figures on horseback that looked like Bonnie and him. Even the old blue Scrambler jeep he used to get around the property. Every tier was covered with tall green fir trees, cowboys, and cattle, a tiny version of everything he cherished on this earth.

“Well, boys,” he said to the two smiling young Filipino White House waiters, “you guys have outdone yourselves this time. That cake is flat-out beautiful. That big black stallion there even looks just like my own El Alamein.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” one of the waiters said. “We are all very proud of it. The entire kitchen and waitstaff has asked me to wish a most joyous and happy birthday… and a speedy recovery.”

The president starting clapping, and everyone joined in the applause.

His wife bent and kissed his forehead.

“Happy birthday, you big hunk,” she whispered in his ear. “You come on home and get your cute little butt back in my bed, okay?”

There was a knock at the door. She smiled, straightened up, and motioned to one of the young Secret Service guys standing just inside the door.

And the next thing he knew, his favorite country singer in the whole world walked through his door. The vice president, the White House chief of staff, and Ken Beer, his personal physician, walked in, followed by about a dozen nurses all crowded inside around his bed. All of them were grinning from ear to ear.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the president said.

Damned if it wasn’t Bonnie Raitt herself.

Dressed in full cowgirl regalia, Bonnie smiled at him as she walked over to his bedside and she took his hand. She sang, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday, Mr. President,” and proceeded to sing by far the best rendition of “Happy Birthday” he’d ever heard. When she finished, the room erupted into cheers and wild applause once more.

The president’s eyes filled with tears.

“Miss Raitt,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something. Until this moment, I thought the best version of that song had been sung by Marilyn Monroe to Jack Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. But you know what, you’re not only a lot prettier than Marilyn, you’re one helluva lot better singer.”

Bonnie smiled, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Mr. President? Let’s give ’em something to talk about.”

And she bent over him and kissed him full on the lips.

Everyone in the room erupted into loud, heartfelt laughter.

“Wow. What a birthday,” he said, beaming at his wife. “You are something else, honey. Thank you so much. This means the world to me.”

“Let’s cut the cake!” she cried.

The younger of the two waiters handed the president a silver cake knife.

The president looked at his cake, beaming. “I don’t want to ruin it. Can somebody take a picture first?”

His wife got out her iPhone, started snapping shots, and said, “Go on, darling, cut the cake. You get the first bite.”

He eyed one of the horses first, but said, “I never cared much for horsemeat,” popping a frosted chunk into his mouth. “I’ll eat the jeep.”

And those were the very last words the forty-fifth president of the United States ever said.

The president’s head fell forward on his chest.

Ken Beer, his face stricken, pushed his way through the crowd around the bed and bent over the unconscious president.

The president’s heart had stopped.

“Nurse!” Ken yelled. “Cardiac arrest! Get the bed down flat. Check his pulse!”

“Ken, what is it?” the First Lady cried, her face a mask of horror. “What’s wrong with him?”

The physician plucked a piece of uneaten frosting from the cake, held it under his nose, and sniffed it.

“It’s that fucking cake,” Ken Beer said, staring at the monitor, which had flatlined. “Damn it! Get the crash cart in here now! There’s no cardiac output. Intubate him and start CPR immediately. Who’s the head nurse in here? Get all these people out of here.”

The Secret Service agent in charge got on his radio, “Rawhide is down! White House to lockdown. Secure the entire kitchen staff immediately. Nobody moves.”

An older nurse stepped forward and ordered everyone out of the room except the Secret Service, nurses, doctors, and Ken Beer. “And somebody bag that cake in a HAZMAT container. It’s lethal.”

Half an hour later, the nurse’s compressions on the president’s chest ceased.

They all stared at the monitor, and Ken Beer took the president’s pulse again.

He ordered shock pads. He ordered one milligram of atropine injected. He did everything he could.

“The patient is asystolic,” Ken said, profound sadness inscribed all over his face. “Flatlined. No cardiac output…”

The nurses waited. The First Lady had her back to the scene, facing the windows and her peonies. She was visibly shaking. When she heard Ken’s voice, she started sobbing silently.

“Okay. Let’s call it,” he said.

The president’s wife looked at his profile, her heart full of regret for all the steps and missteps that had brought them so full of hope and promise to this place and time.

Thomas Winthrop McCloskey, the forty-fifth president of the United States of America, was dead.

Murdered in his own goddamned hospital bed.

“Let’s give ’em something to talk about,” Bonnie Raitt had said minutes ago.

Within hours, the whole world would be talking.