"About two in the tube, and two on the sheets. Maybe four hundred cc's—half the blood in her body."
A beeper went off. "Her pressure's dropping," someone said.
Marie's moaning ceased. An X ray appeared on the screen; to Mary, the white stain at its center looked like a starburst. The black woman studied it, eyes narrowing.
Turning, she ordered, "Get her to the OR—now."
* * *
Marie's eyes closed.
They hurried her to an elevator, the black doctor at her side. Mary and the social worker followed.
"She's crashing," someone said.
In the silence of the elevator, Mary looked into her niece's face, pale and still.
"Can I hold her hand?" Mary asked. When no one answered, she took the child's hand, cool to the touch.
The elevator rose two floors, then opened into a room with a long desk and steel doors marked "Room One." Slowly, Mary let Marie's fingers slip from hers.
The social worker took her arm. "I'm afraid this is as far as we can go."
Three nurses rushed the gurney inside the room, the black doctor following. Tears blurred Mary's vision. Blinking, she focused on the dark crown of Marie's head, and then the doors closed behind her.
* * *
In the dim-lit great room, Kerry gripped the telephone, watching Lara through the open door of the bedroom as she listened on another phone. Her face was pale, intent. To Kerry, the telephone was Lara's lifeline, Marie's struggle all that kept the grief and horror from crashing down on her.
"They're about to operate," the hospital director said. "All that I can tell you, Mr. President, is that Callie Hines is as good as they get."
In the bedroom, Lara's eyes closed, as if in a prayer. "As soon as you know," Kerry responded, "call us."
* * *
Struggling into her operating gown, Callie recalled the shooting of Kerry Kilcannon—cops surrounding the hospital; press jammed in the media room; the mayor of San Francisco hovering near Room One. It would happen again now. But Room One was empty and clean, a haven from chaos.
Marie lay on the table with her arms outflung. At her head three anesthesiologists administered a paralytic agent, a sedative, and a narcotic. A team of nurses ran blood to the OR. Another kept Marie's legs covered to fight the loss of body heat. The chief surgical resident, another resident and an intern watched Callie open an incision beneath the child's nipples. Perspiration began beading on her forehead—at Callie's orders, the temperature was cranked up to eighty, another measure against hypothermia. Their speech was clipped; their movements controlled. Soon they would sweat like athletes.
Callie's second cut went from the first incision to the pubis. As the head nurse inserted a retractor, dark blue blood of a hematoma erupted from Marie's abdomen.
"Clamp the aorta," Callie ordered.
The resident inserted a rib spreader, then cross-clamped the aorta to stop the flow of blood. Two others tried to staunch the bleeding with surgical packs so that Callie could do her work; a third began massaging the child's heart. Wearing double gloves, Callie searched for the bullet with a rubber tip extractor; the X ray had told her that to extract this bullet with her fingers might slash her tendons.
Callie found the bullet. Carefully, she removed it from amidst the roiling blood. Its tip had exploded into six metal shards, the pattern of a flower. Callie was tight-lipped with anger.
"Eagle's Claw," she said.
"What's that?" the intern asked.
"Quadruple the mortality rate." She had no time to explain that the shards ripped through vital organs like a buzz saw; that their jagged edges had ended surgical careers; that a shredded vena cava could be inoperable; that her chances of saving this child had slipped from probable to long; that the Eagle's Claw, in the words of her first mentor, was "God-awful," absolutely demoralizing to a surgeon; that the quiet which had descended at the name "Eagle's Claw" meant that only the young intern did not know this. "She's at 95 degrees," the head nurse said.
Racing against time, Callie searched for the wound.
* * *
On the telephone, Mary was sobbing. "I know," Lara said brokenly. "I know. But maybe they can save Marie."
She heard her sister struggle for control. "I'll adopt her . . ."
"I know you will. You'd be so good with her."
A ragged cry escaped. Grasping for hope, Lara said, "It's where they saved Kerry."
She felt his hand on her shoulder. Abruptly, her sister burst out. "You two made him so angry . . ."
* * *
The vena cava was shredded. Instead of a single clean rupture, there were three. Blood spurted from their ratty strands. The child's face was pale and still.
"No clotting," the chief resident said. "Temperature's at 94.5."
There was no time left to operate—Marie would die from hemorrhagic shock before Callie could suture the shredded vein. Sweat rolled down her face.
"Damage control," Callie snapped. Her last hope was to stop the bleeding, prop up the child's body temperature and hope the veins would begin to clot, so that tomorrow she could try to repair the wound. The head nurse pressed a plunger against the vena cava; two more nurses packed the shredded area with surgical pads; another placed a defibrillator on the child's heart, to shock it into action. Callie closed the flap of Marie's abdomen with towel clips. The child's lips fluttered.
"Ninety three degrees," the chief resident said urgently. "Her blood pressure's in free fall . . ."
Callie began to massage the child's heart. The only sound was the whirl of the ventilator.
* * *
Ten minutes later, leaving Room One, Callie Hines noticed the drops of blood on her shoes.
Cops ringed the OR. The hospital administrator and the mayor stood by the door. Callie stared at the mayor. "Get him out of here," she told her boss. "Then get me a telephone."
* * *
At eleven-oh-five, the telephone rang in Martha's Vineyard. In the living room, Kerry picked up first.
"Mr. President?" The voice was measured. "This is Callie Hines."
From the couch, Lara watched Kerry's face. "How is she?" Kerry asked.
"I'm very sorry," Hines answered softly. "But the wound simply wasn't survivable. All that I can offer you is that she felt no pain."
A numbness passed through Kerry. Gazing at Lara, he slowly shook his head. She doubled over, hands covering her face, emitting a cry of agony which made him shudder.
"The bullet was an Eagle's Claw," Hines told him. "In a child that small . . ."
PART TWO
THE
REFUSAL
LABOR DAY–MID-SEPTEMBER
ONE
At five the next morning, Clayton was at the White House, preparing to move the Presidency to San Francisco. The C-130 had landed in Martha's Vineyard; Air Force One awaited at Logan Airport in Boston. The President and First Lady would stay at a private home in Pacific Heights, joined by the Secret Service, the White House physician, the military aide in charge of the codes for responding to a nuclear attack, and a small support staff headed by Clayton himself. Closer to the time of the funerals, Kit would arrive. The President's schedule would be limited to his daily national security briefing; to protect the First Family's private time, all other communications would go through Clayton.
Shortly after eight o'clock, Clayton stopped to watch CNN.
On a glistening day on Martha's Vineyard, Lara and Kerry walked across the tarmac toward their plane. Lara wore dark glasses. Exhausted, she leaned against Kerry who, to Clayton's eyes, looked weary and tormented. The clothes they wore—Kerry's windbreaker and polo shirt, Lara's summer dress—were a sad reminder that this once had been their honeymoon. Only Clayton had talked with them. Only Clayton knew of the President's haunting request—that all files of his dealings with Joan Bowden and her husband be shipped to San Francisco.
The President and First Lady, the anchorwoman said, will fly to Andrews Air Force Base to comm
ence the long, sad journey to California—where, thirteen years ago, Senator James Kilcannon was murdered by an assassin.
President and Mrs. Kilcannon were first informed of the tragedy at around nine-thirty yesterday evening, and since then have been in seclusion. At seven this morning White House Press Secretary Kit Pace issued the following statement:
"The President and First Lady wish to express their heartfelt thanks for the thoughts and prayers of the American people at this time of deep anguish for their family, and for the three other families who lost loved ones in this senseless tragedy. In order to accompany the First Lady to San Francisco, the President has canceled his schedule for the next several days. He intends to remain in San Francisco with Mrs. Kilcannon and her surviving sister until after the interment of her mother, sister, and niece. No statement from the President or First Lady is forthcoming at this time."
On the screen, Kerry and Lara climbed the metal stairs to the C-130, Kerry's arm lightly resting on her waist. Even now, Clayton reflected, Kerry's instincts remained sound: this tableau of grief required no words from him. To the public that might seem a decision made by default, reflecting a President too shaken to express his emotions. This was partly true; speaking to Clayton, Kerry had seemed disjointed, his sentences trailing off into fragments. But then Clayton—because he must—had called to tell him that Mahmoud Al Anwar had just been killed in a cave in the Sudan. "At least they're ninety percent sure," Clayton explained. "The face is unrecognizable. But everything else, including height, says it's him."
There was a long silence. "Who knows?" Kerry had asked.
"A tight chain. Our people on the ground, General Webb, and the Secretary of Defense."
"Tell them to sit on it until after the funeral," the President had ordered coldly. "Any way you can. I don't want anyone thinking about anything but this."
As Clayton watched, Kerry and Lara vanished inside the plane. In Washington, the anchorwoman said, sentiment is already growing that these shocking murders may change the terms of the gun control debate, feeding demands for the tougher gun laws which President Kilcannon has so urgently called for . . .
* * *
"We need to put out a statement," Charles Dane began. "And then we need a strategy."
The president of the Sons of the Second Amendment sat in the conference room of the four-story glass building on K Street, one symbol of its power. To either side of him, the Legislative Director, Carla Fell, and the Communications Director, Bill Campton, drank coffee from SSA mugs. Fell was a petite strawberry blonde, Campton cherubic and sincere; part of their duties was to soften the SSA's public face, and Dane had never needed them more than now. The sheer volatility of the moment complicated the fixed imperatives of Dane's world—maintaining the SSA's daunting image of power; raising the money needed to fuel it; pleasing a board of true believers so alarmist that nothing put their minds at ease—and added a new one: ensuring that the murders changed nothing.
Putting down his mug, Campton began reading from a typed page with interlineations in red pen. " 'Our sympathy goes out to the victims of the massacre at SFO. The President and First Lady are in the prayers of all decent, law-abiding Americans, including the over four million responsible gun owners who constitute our membership . . .' "
"Cross out 'massacre.' " Lean, dark-haired and saturnine, Dane spoke in a resonant, commanding baritone which, even when muted, sounded as though it could fill a hall. "It sounds like melodrama from some bad military history—the kind of portentous pap liberals think we stay up nights to read."
With a sheepish smile, Campton inserted "tragedy" for "massacre," and then continued: " 'We hope this terrible loss of life will engender a common commitment from all spectrums of our society to reduce gun violence by enforcing existing law. What is needed is not more laws, but a new resolve to punish lawbreakers who misuse guns to commit a crime . . ."
"The problem," Fell broke in, "is that this guy's already punished himself."
Dane turned to her. "Then the law should have punished him first. Bowden was a wife-beater—the Kilcannons said so on live TV. If they'd locked him up, no one would have died."
"Do we know where he got his gun?" Fell asked. "Or who made it?"
"Not yet. Pray that it's foreign-made, and that Bowden bought it on the street." Dane turned to Campton. "Look for some gun law on the books that Bowden violated. There's always something."
Nodding, Campton returned to his draft. " 'We must never diminish the constitutional right of all Americans to self-defense . . .' "
"Careful how you phrase that," Dane instructed. "We can't be heard as saying the First Lady's mother should have been better armed."
As Campton made corrections, Dane turned to Carla Fell. "What about Congress?" he inquired.
"The problems are worst in the Senate," Fell answered. "We've got four or five wobbly Republicans, like Palmer." Pausing, she took a last quick swallow of coffee. "If I know Kilcannon, he's already calculating how to use this. He's as cold-blooded a politician as ever passed through Washington. His former colleagues may not all love him, but he scares the hell out of most of them."
"So do we," Dane answered. "We can't let them forget that."
The telephone rang. "Speaking of which," Fell informed the others, "that's our conference call with Frank Fasano."
Dane pushed the button for the speakerphone. "Charles?" Fasano began.
"Good morning, Frank," Dane said to the Senate Majority Leader. "If you can call it that under the circumstances. This is a tragedy, and a threat to gun rights."
"I'll be making a statement shortly, saying just that. Except the part about the threat." Fasano's voice was sober. "Imagine losing most of your family. I feel for them—her especially."
"Kilcannon will want more laws," Dane responded. "He'll use her to get them."
Fasano was silent. "He may well succeed," he said at length. "Before he does, we should consider whether there's something symbolic we can give him."
It was time, Dane decided, to be blunt. "We expect you to stand firm, Frank. We've spent a lot of time and money keeping you in the majority."
"I haven't forgotten," Fasano answered with equal directness. "But let me give you some advice—disappear. This is the President's moment: he can say whatever he wants, but you can't be seen as playing politics with the First Lady's misery. Lie low, Charles—your moment will come in time."
"How long?"
"Kilcannon can't move too fast—it would look unseemly, like he's exploiting his wife's dead relatives. I control the Senate agenda, so I can string this out. The more time passes, the more passions will cool."
"What about Chuck Hampton?" Carla Fell inquired.
"The Democrats have problems, too," Fasano answered crisply. "If some of Hampton's people never have to vote on a gun bill again, they'd bow and kiss his feet. Or mine."
Glancing at Fell, Dane slowly shook his head. "Kilcannon may not let them off the hook," he said. "The folks who say all liberals are wimps forget to account for him."
Over the speaker box, Fasano's laugh was low and humorless. "That's how I got my job—the last one to get in Kerry Kilcannon's way was Macdonald Gage. In twenty-four hours Mac went from the third most powerful man in America to a walking corpse. It took him almost that long to fathom he was already dead." Softly, Fasano finished, "Don't worry, Charles. My reflexes are sharper."
With that, Fasano got off.
* * *
In the kitchen of his Vermont farm, Senator Minority Leader Chuck Hampton ate bacon and eggs and monitored MSNBC. As he finished, the picture became a live shot of Kerry and Lara Kilcannon boarding Air Force One.
The President and First Lady are expected to arrive in California at twelveseventeen, Pacific Daylight Time . . .
As always, Hampton reflected, Air Force One was an icon of speed and power, a symbol of Presidential authority. The White House Military Office planned each flight to the minute, and its arrival never failed to create a
sense of occasion. But he could not easily imagine the nature of this flight. It triggered a series of memories which had begun when Hampton was twelve: the flight from Dallas, when Jacqueline Kennedy, her coat stained with blood, accompanied her husband's body; the terrible majesty, five years later, of the funeral train for Robert Kennedy; the day, one year after Hampton entered the Senate, when the Presidential campaign of James Kilcannon ended with a funeral watched by millions.
On this day, Chuck Hampton felt more depressed than at any time in his public life. And, perhaps, more worried. It was too soon to contact Kerry Kilcannon, either to convey his condolences or his concerns. But soon enough to call Senator Vic Coletti of Connecticut—as Kerry Kilcannon once remarked, for Vic Coletti, politics, like rust, never sleeps.
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