Whiplash

65

WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

Sunday evening

"I would like to speak to the vice president alone, Agent Jarvis. Would you and Agent Paul wait just outside, please?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but you know we can't leave the vice president alone."

"Come, Jarvis, I've known him since we were very young men. It's a personal matter that is rather urgent. I need only five minutes."

Alex Valenti opened his eyes and his mouth widened just a bit in a smile. His voice was hoarse when he whispered, "It's all right, Agent Jarvis, I'm sure the man has already been frisked like a criminal. You can stay right outside the glass door."

Agent Jarvis continued to look uncertain, but he finally nodded. "Very well, since it's important. Senator Hoffman, the vice president is very weak, so please keep it short, all right? Press the call button if you need anything." He gave Hoffman a quick nod. "Thank you, sir."

"This won't take long, I promise," Senator Hoffman said, and watched Jarvis leave, closing the glass door quietly behind him. He looked down at a nearly motionless Alex Valenti, a man he'd known for-how many years was it now? Forty? He said, "I tried to see you earlier, but was told only family was allowed. I'm glad I could see you this evening."

Valenti's voice was hoarse when he whispered, "Dave, it's good to see you. They finally took that damned tube out of my nose, what a relief."

"Your voice sounds harsh. Is your throat sore?"

"A bit, along with everything else. Since I nearly bought the big one, I'll accept a sore throat without complaint. I'm pleased they let you in. The doctors are trying to make me bore myself to death. Even in the miserable shape I'm in, I can't sleep all the time."

"No, they want you to heal. They want to get full credit for saving you. No relapses allowed. I heard your wife and family were dancing around the halls when the doctors told them you're going to make a full recovery."

"They did indeed. Elyssa was grinning so big I could see her back molars. She wouldn't stop kissing my ear. She told me the waiting room was overflowing with family and friends. I didn't feel much like talking, but I told her I didn't deserve all the attention, and she had the gall to agree.

"I'm sorry about the Brabus, Dave. It was a beautiful machine, and now it's junk."

"Maybe you'll be the first vice president to get a year-end bonus for actually making headlines. Then you can buy me a new one."

Valenti gave a small laugh, barely a sound really, but he immediately regretted it. He pressed the morphine button, waited a minute until he could handle the slowly ebbing flow of pain. "Can you imagine the public outcry? Year-end bonus. That's funny, Dave. You're here one minute and already I'm laughing. It hurts."

"You survived, that's the only important thing. I spoke to Dr. Myller. He called you amazing, the force of your spirit, your will to live. He told me he wished all his patients had your strength, mentally and physically."

Hoffman fell silent, seeing the furrow of pain on Valenti's forehead. He watched him push the morphine button again, but it was far too soon for more of the drug to be delivered, and he had to wait, his eyes closed, for his last dose to kick in.

"Thanks for telling me that," Valenti said after a couple of minutes. "Sometimes the pain seems to spike. I'm okay now. The pain gets me every once in a while."

"Would you rather never have awakened?"

"I suppose if I'd died I wouldn't know any different, so the question is really irrelevant, isn't it? No, I'm glad I'm here and breathing even though my insides feel like they're on a death march. Agent Savich was here to tell me it wasn't an accident, which I already knew in my gut. He said someone sabotaged the steering linkage, set it to blow out. He said I didn't stand a chance. I've thought about who would want to kill me, Dave, but I was forced to admit that no one hates me enough to kill me in such a convoluted way. I mean, who would want to knock off a vice president? We're about as necessary as roll bars on a Volvo."

Hoffman laughed, couldn't help it.

Valenti waggled his eyebrows. "At least as a governor I was always busy-places to go, legislation to get through, enemies to make. It doesn't make much sense that someone would try to kill me now."

Hoffman looked toward the lovely big window with its view of the National Mall in the distance. He said over his shoulder, "Nikki came to me recently. Of course I didn't realize it was her, but there she was, nearly every night around midnight, in front of my bedroom window."

Hoffman heard Valenti suck in his breath. Was it pain or astonishment at what he'd so casually said about his wife?

"Truth be told," Hoffman continued after a moment, "I believed it was a trick, I believed it was my sons, the worthless little sods, trying to drive their old man over the edge to get their hands on my money. I realized quickly enough that neither Aiden nor Benson has the imagination or the guts to pull off a stunt like that."

Valenti said quietly from behind him, "Nikki's been dead over three years, Dave. We both were with her at the end. We both held her hands. What are you saying? You really believe her ghost visited you?"

"Yes, you were there, weren't you, holding her hand? Did you know Agent Dillon Savich has a special gift, that he claims she spoke to him?"

"No, I didn't know. I do know President Holley thinks he's very bright, very intuitive. Now you're telling me he's a psychic?"

Hoffman waved his hand as he turned away from the window and walked back to Valenti's bedside. He said as he straightened the glass of water and the small cup of ice chips on the wooden arm, "Apparently. Who really knows?" He picked up the glass. "Do you want to drink some water, Alex?"

"No, not right now. To be honest, I don't think I could swallow it at the moment."

Hoffman set the glass back down. "Later then. Savich and his wife, Agent Sherlock, spent an evening at my house, and the next day Savich told me Nikki came to him to beg him to save me from some sort of trouble."

"What kind of trouble are you in? What is all this about?"

Hoffman laughed again. "You don't need to worry about me, Alex. You see, I'm quite sure it wasn't me Nikki was trying to save, it was you she was trying to protect, even after her death."

Valenti spoke, his voice barely above a whisper, but the shock was clear in his voice. "What? What did you say? Is this another one of your jokes, Dave?"

"No, I'm not joking. Do you know how long I've hated you?"

"Hated me? Dave, are you all right? What's going on here?" He glanced toward Agent Jarvis through the glass door, saw he was speaking with another agent, both of them looking directly back at him.

Hoffman leaned close. "Take yourself back, Alex, to when Nikki and I met at Stanford. She told me all about you, how you'd been her high school sweetheart, how you'd sworn your teenage undying love, but then you went off to Harvard, and Romeo and Juliet were separated. She laughed about it, but I wasn't fooled. She was still in love with you. Why did you leave her?"

Valenti said quietly, "It was a very long time ago, so long ago I can't even remember exactly how my father convinced me. He always had his ways to gain my obedience, you know that. You've locked horns with him a couple of times yourself over the years. Why do you care now? It's utterly unimportant, has been for years. Why do you hate me?"

"Because when the two of you met up again-Nikki and I had been married only six months-it started all over again. You started sleeping with her, Alex. Did you think you could divorce Elyssa and that I would divorce Nikki so you two could ride off into the sunset?

"Not going to answer that, are you? I don't blame you. When you and I held her hands as she was dying, I knew she wished she could have spent her life with you, not me. At her last breath, her last instant of life, it was you she looked at, Alex, not me."

Valenti stared up at the man he'd tried to protect from this for so many years, but he knew after all, he'd always known. It had been years ago when he and Nikki had decided to keep their families together, and he'd hurt so deeply he didn't believe he would ever stop regretting that this man was her husband and not him, that her name was Hoffman, not Valenti.

But the years passed, and the despair lessened, and what took its place was an abiding love for his own wife and his magnificent children. Now he was a grandfather, and he knew he was loved-Elyssa had danced when they said he was going to live. There was only Elyssa now, he thought, and he felt the power of his feelings for her press deep. He couldn't remember when she'd become the most important person in his life. He wondered what would have happened if he had left with Nikki all those years ago when their passion seemed the only worthwhile emotion in life, when giving in to what they felt seemed the only right thing to do? How long had that pain lasted? Valenti couldn't remember now. Nor could Nikki. They'd spoken of it when she knew her death was close, and they'd even laughed a bit about their star-crossed passion that had faded, of course, through the years. "Youth," she'd said, "youth is a wonderful dream that doesn't last. What is vital in youth doesn't stay as important as we get older, now does it?"

Then David had come into the hospital room and she'd died a few minutes later, with both of the men who'd loved her holding her hands.

What had Dave said? Something about how Nikki had looked at him, Alex, when she'd died and not at Dave?

"No," he said, "I remember clearly it was you Nikki was looking at the moment she died. She whispered good-bye to you with her last breath."

Hoffman sneered. "You have a convenient memory, Alex. How much does Elyssa know of your feelings for my wife?"

Valenti felt a great grief settle over him, a heavy grief because he knew it was Elyssa's grief and David's grief as well. They'd both known, they'd both watched, both waited. He said slowly, "At the beginning, all those years ago, Nikki and I decided to keep our families together. How can you believe Nikki wouldn't do that? She was filled with honor, with goodness.

"When she became ill, Nikki told me she'd come to love you more than she'd ever loved me, because your love for each other was real, not an old fantasy."

"You're a liar!" Hoffman straightened and nodded over to the Secret Service agents who were watching him.

Valenti said slowly, "Why do you think I would lie about that?"

"Because she told me, damn you to hell! I don't think she planned to, but she was weak and confused, even delirious near the end. She told me Aiden is yours, not mine. Nikki married me only because she couldn't have you. You'd already married Elyssa, but did that matter? Oh, no, she still had to have your child!"

Valenti slowly shook his head back and forth on the hard pillow. "No, no, that's impossible."

"You slept with her in high school, didn't you? Did you meet during college as well?"

"Back then we all slept with each other, you know that, Dave. Sex was as common as eating and sleeping, it was simple recreation. Surely you slept with college girls before you met Nikki? Before you married?"

"Yes, but you and Nikki, it was more between the two of you! Aiden was born a year and a half after Nikki and I were married. I've done the blood tests, Alex, I know for a fact I'm not his father. You are."