Oath of Office

by Michael Palmer

  The car boxing them in accelerated. Lou reached across his seat and took hold of the wheel, pulling it clockwise, aware that the move might well cause Carolyn to lose control.

  “Lou, don’t do that! I have to warn him!”

  The tires slipped several feet, then gained purchase, pulling them into the right-hand lane. Lou released the wheel. The car shuddered and rose on two tires. There was a ferocious crack as the rig sheared off the left-side mirror. The rush of wind as it flew past was probably all that kept them from flipping over.

  “Okay, now, Carolyn,” Lou said with as much insistence as urgency. “Pull over there and let me drive.”

  Again she leaned on the accelerator and the horn. “In this fog, somebody is going to ram into the back of them.”

  “Carolyn, don’t!”

  She turned the wheel right this time, attempting to pass the intervening car via a narrow, muddy soft shoulder. Lou sat pressed against his seat back, unwilling to grab at the wheel again. The speedometer moved upward.

  Forty.

  Fifty.

  Fifty-five.

  Carolyn Meacham looked purposefully ahead, beyond reason.

  “Carolyn, stop!” Lou screamed. “You’re going to kill us both because a guy’s taillight is out!”

  They raced even with the car to their left. The driver leaned on his horn and refused to slow down.

  Lou could feel the high center of gravity in the SUV threaten to flip them. Every jolt on the uneven ground seemed magnified.

  “They’re just two cars ahead.”

  Patches of fog flew past like ghosts. Then, Lou froze. Through one of the patches, directly in front of them, a speed limit sign had appeared.

  “Carolyn!” he shouted. “Get back into your lane! Do it now!”

  Instinctively, Lou clenched his teeth and readied himself for impact. They were going sixty.

  Lou couldn’t hold back. He leaned as far to the left as his seat belt would allow, grabbed the wheel, and pushed it counterclockwise. The Volvo skidded into a left turn and fell behind the car Carolyn had been trying to pass. Perhaps instinctively, she slammed on the brakes. The front two tires dragged along the grassy shoulder, kicking up dirt and rocks. The sign slammed into the hood and sheared off, vanishing upward into the mist. Then, in a full spin, the car left the road. Lou saw a tree materialize from the fog. He shut his eyes tightly and raised his arms to his face for protection. The impact wasn’t as violent as he had expected.

  Lou’s head snapped against the window beside him as the Volvo spun viciously. Splintered glass exploded into his face and cut his neck. The rear of the Volvo was still in the center of the road. Then, without warning, the coaster ride was over.

  “Carolyn, are you all right?” he said, wiping at his forehead and seeing blood on his hand.

  “Did you see that?” she asked him, her breathing not far from normal. “Did you?”

  “You mean the taillight?”

  “Yes, the taillight. Drivers never fix them until the vehicle-inspection people tell them they have to. That guy could have caused an accident.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Throughout most of the bizarre chase to overtake the driver with one working taillight, Lou remained in what he called “emergency calm”—a state of heightened awareness and preparedness, cloaked in an external composure. It was a reaction to crisis shared by those caregivers whose business often revolved around sudden changes for the worse in their patients—intensivists, anesthesiologists, surgeons, physician assistants, nurses in the ER and various units, EMTs, and paramedics.

  Now, with the immediate danger over, it was as if whatever had been blocking the surge of adrenaline through his body had been removed. His pulse had doubled—or tripled, he was breathing heavily, if not hyperventilating, and when he opened the dashboard compartment looking for tissues, his hand was shaking.

  The cut to his brow did not look like much, and pressure with a wad of Kleenex quickly stopped the bleeding.

  “Carolyn, can you get us out of the road?” he asked, his voice louder than he had intended.

  John Meacham’s widow nodded weakly and drove the Volvo farther onto the roadside’s muddy shoulder. She appeared dazed, though to Lou’s relief, uninjured. Still, he checked her head, neck, and extremities and palpated her chest and abdomen for areas of tenderness. His blood pressure cuff and other instruments for emergencies were in a large medical bag, which he kept in the trunk of his car, but he assured himself that her cardiac rhythm was under a hundred and regular, and her radial and carotid pulses were strong.

  Finally, using a flashlight from the dash, he did a crude neurologic exam, including eye movements and pupillary response.

  “What did I do?” Carolyn muttered. “What the hell did I just do?”

  There were several cars stopped behind them. Lou gave the thumbs-up sign through Carolyn’s window, and the drivers slowly pulled out and drove away. Two of them paused long enough to say they had called 911.

  “Lou … that taillight … I was so worried the missing light would cause an accident.…”

  Her voice trailed away. She continued staring blankly out the windshield at the rain. Her hands, right at two o’clock, left at eleven, gripped the wheel tightly as though she were still driving. Lou took an umbrella from the rear floor and climbed out of the car. His left knee was stiff, and had probably taken a hit, but it was not nearly sore enough to keep him from tomorrow’s sparring session at the Stick and Move Gym. He took in several sharp breaths of chilly night air and tested the rest of his limbs. Nothing. Next, he made a quick circle around the Volvo. The damage appeared minimal. He waved to a driver who had slowed down, signaling that everything was okay. Then he climbed back into the car.

  Whatever had possessed Carolyn seemed to be resolving. Her eyes were no longer glazed. Her hands had relaxed.

  “Carolyn, the car should be okay to drive, but this time if it’s alright with you, I’ll do the driving.”

  “That would be fine,” she said, still somewhat vaguely.

  Lou patted her on the shoulder. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  “Lou, what did I do?”

  “Look, you experienced a major trauma back in the hospital. You weren’t thinking clearly. That’s all. It happens in extreme stress situations. A person just does something … something irrational. We see it in the ER all the time.”

  He felt a flash of embarrassment at what might be construed as a reference to Carolyn’s husband.

  “I was so worried about those taillights,” she said again as Lou gently separated her hands from the steering wheel. “What’s going to happen to me now?”

  Before he could answer, a siren blared behind them, and then whined down into silence. The flash of blue strobe lights danced erratically inside the Volvo’s interior. Lou glanced in the side-view mirror to see a plus-sized police officer exit his vehicle and snap open an umbrella. The policeman sauntered over to the driver’s side of the car and shone a powerful flashlight beam through the rain-spattered window onto Carolyn’s face.

  “Oh, goodness,” Carolyn said, gripping the wheel once again.

  Lou set a cautioning hand on her arm. “Roll down your window and let me do the talking,” he whispered. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Carolyn did as he asked.

  The officer, umbrella keeping them both dry, bent at the waist and poked his head inside the car. “Anybody hurt?” he asked. He spoke with a modest Southern drawl. His eyes, which Lou read as showing no threat, scanned the two of them with concern.

  Carolyn immediately became more animated. “Oh, Gilbert. Thank goodness it’s you,” she said, talking without taking a breath. “This was all my fault. I … I was chasing down a car in front of us that had one broken taillight. I got so worried they were going to cause an accident, that I ended up having one myself.”

  Lou gripped Carolyn’s arm. She nodded and stopped. He climbed out of the car, opened his umbrella, and stil
l slightly favoring his leg, walked around to the officer. “Officer, my name is Lou Welcome. I’m an ER doc from Eisenhower Memorial, and a friend of Carolyn’s and … um … of John’s.”

  “Gilbert Stone. Chief of police of Kings Ridge.” Stone took his hand and, maintaining steady eye contact, squeezed it with near bone-crushing force.

  Cap Duncan, Lou’s mentor and owner of the Stick and Move, had once told him that any statement of superiority or control a man wanted to make should begin with the handshake. Lou wondered now if the husky lawman was trying to do just that. He gave thought to matching or besting the man’s grip, but set the notion aside in his dumb-moves file.

  Stone shone his flashlight on Lou’s face, momentarily blinding him. “You sure you’re all right, son?” he asked.

  “We’re both fine. Thanks.”

  “Given what you do and where you do it, I’m inclined to trust you in that regard.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Stone inspected the front end of the Volvo and what remained of the sign, and let out a high-pitched whistle, not so different from the sound his cruiser’s siren had made. Beneath the lawman’s wool-lined bomber jacket, Lou saw a tan shirt with a silver metal star pinned to the breast pocket, and a perfectly knotted black tie.

  “Guess we got real lucky here,” Stone said, hoisting up his dark brown pants over an ample belly. “You say you’re a friend of Mrs. Meacham?”

  “I am—was—friends with her husband as well.”

  Stone’s thin lips folded into a crease that vanished inside his mouth. “Any ideas why he did what he did?”

  “Well, no, except to say I can’t imagine him doing it.”

  “But he did.”

  “Yes, he did,” Lou echoed grimly.

  He considered sharing details, right then and there, about the bizarre happenings in the ICU at DeLand Regional, and how they dovetailed with Carolyn Meacham’s odd behavior, but decided this wasn’t the time or place.

  “It’s been a hell of a day.” Stone sighed, his eyes locked on Lou’s.

  “Tough day, indeed,” Lou answered.

  “You sure you’re in no need of medical attention, son?”

  “No, thank you. I’m all right.”

  Stone just nodded. “Okay. Like I said, I trust you. Now, then, you have something you want to tell me about the accident?” Stone continued his hard stare.

  “This accident is all my fault,” Lou said. “I never should have let her drive. She’s in no condition, given what happened today, but she absolutely insisted. Said it would be best if she had something to focus on. I’d really hate to see her in trouble with the law after what she’s just been through.”

  Stone’s grin was impenetrable. “So you’re saying it didn’t happen quite the way she said it did?”

  By then, the two men had connected.

  “What if I told you the wheels lost grip? Rain-slicked roads and all,” Lou said.

  “Well, I’d be inclined to believe you. My doctor was Carl Franklin, one of the best we ever had. At the moment, I am having some mighty harsh feelings toward the man who killed him. But that doesn’t translate to the man’s wife. I didn’t know the Meachams that well, on account they haven’t lived in Kings Ridge very long. But what I did know of them, I had nothing against—even John’s history of trouble with the medical board a few years back.”

  Lou tensed. This was no hayseed sheriff. For however many years he had been the man in Kings Ridge, Gilbert Stone was not merely rattling about the town, procuring coffee and doughnuts. He was in charge of it. He also hadn’t hesitated to mention Meacham’s history to what should have been, until now, a total stranger. Either Stone was indiscreet to a fault, or somewhere in the course of gathering information about his fiefdom, Dr. Lou Welcome’s name had bopped across his desk.

  Lou warned himself to stay sharp.

  “I wish I could explain why John did what he did,” he said.

  “Me and you both, son,” Stone replied. “It sure don’t make no sense.”

  “I’m glad you understand my concern for Carolyn.”

  “Oh, I do, I surely do.”

  “So just a ticket, then?”

  Stone put his campaign hat back on. “Like I said, I’m sure Carolyn’s been through hell today. Let’s make sure her car drives fine, and I’ll send her off with a warning to be more careful on these slippery roads.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Stone hesitated a beat, then locked on to Lou’s eyes once again. “And I’m going to send you off with a warning as well,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “If you know something about my town, or the people in it such as Carolyn and John Meacham, or anyone on the staff of our hospital, and you choose to keep that information hidden from me, you won’t find me to be so easygoing.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The president and First Family lived on the second and third floors of the White House—fifteen bedrooms and fifteen bathrooms, along with a sitting room, kitchen, dining room, and spectacular solarium. Darlene had done her best to make the master bedroom feel homey and familiar to her, but to no surprise, she had yet to completely succeed. At heart, she would always be a farmers’ daughter—a woman of down-to-earth taste in furnishings and art.

  She and Martin slept in an 1820s four-poster tiger maple bed that she had chosen from notebooks of photographs that the Office of the Curator had provided to her. The rest of the room’s décor was more conventional and modern, although piece-by-piece she was changing it. Perhaps if they made it to a second term … at that moment, a big if.

  Despite her well-intentioned efforts at bedtime meditation and yoga, Darlene still felt restless enough at times to accept some help from the vial of sleeping pills in her bedside table. Tonight, with continuous news coverage of the horrific events in Kings Ridge, Russ Evans’s sad visage embedded in her mind, her lingering anger over Martin’s decision to leave her solo at the Boys & Girls Club, and a full schedule facing her in the morning, she had little doubt there was an Ambien in her near future.

  She was sitting upright in bed, rereading a paragraph from the current issue of Food Health. Finally, unable to advance past that page, she set the magazine aside and returned her attention to the eleven o’clock news, which was reporting on the latest developments in the Kings Ridge tragedy. Details of the crime and of Dr. John Meacham’s life were continuing to emerge, but there was still no clear explanation for what the man had done. A physician murdering patients and staff in his office. People remained in shock and desperate for answers.

  She clicked off the television, picked up her magazine again, and had just finished the page when the bedroom door swung open. The President of the United States slipped inside, threw his jacket and power red tie over a chair, bent down, and kissed her on the forehead.

  One look at his tired eyes, gaunt face, and graying temples, and she felt compassion and the stirrings of forgiveness for the man she had vowed to love until death. Martin had been a rodeo jock in college, and it was his piercing blue eyes, powerfully set jaw, and cowboy good looks that had first attracted her to him. Then she came to know his droll wit, tenderness, and the bottomless compassion for the causes he believed in. From that admiration came a profound and deepening love.

  If there was any aspect of his personality she had to work to accept, it was the power of his ambition.

  “Sorry I’m late getting up here. I had to give a statement about the killings in Kings Ridge.”

  “How terrible that is. Everyone seems shaken. I saw you commenting on the news a little while ago. You did an excellent job. Very honest and from the heart.”

  “Thanks, princess. The whole thing is just awful. Right out of the blue, the guy goes postal.”

  “I don’t think that’s a phrase you want to use in public.”

  Martin chuckled. “No, I suppose not. Especially since the union endorsed me. You got anything on under there?”

  “Nothing that can’t be taken of
f with the flick of a finger in, say, a nanosecond.”

  He slowly lowered the sheet. His eyes sparked. “You are just the best thing I’ve seen all day,” he said in a worn voice.

  Darlene had promised Russ Evans she would at least speak to Martin on behalf of his legislation. But the way Martin looked to her now—haggard, creases like canyons cutting across his forehead—she felt herself having second thoughts. The old saw about carrying the weight of the world wasn’t completely true for many, but it was for him. She lowered him to his belly and kneaded his shoulders.

  “You could have seen me earlier,” she said in a soft voice.

  There was a passing instant when she wished she had kept her feelings about the dedication to herself, but she had strong beliefs that a marriage without communication was doomed to turn toxic.

  Martin swung around, pressed a warm hand to the side of her face, and gently caressed her cheek. “I’ll make it up to you,” he said before giving her a quick kiss on the lips. “I know that I disappointed you today, and I’m sorry. Really and truly sorry.”

  Darlene smiled down at her husband. Whatever effects of the job she had observed seemed to have diminished. Her heart filled with love and her eyes must have reflected her desire, because Martin rolled over and kissed her hard on the lips, cupping her breast in his hand. Her mouth opened in response and she kissed him back, deeply. Their lovemaking had been occurring less frequently of late, coinciding not so much with pressures of the presidency, but with the time that Martin’s outbursts had become more common.

  He slipped off the rest of his clothes and moved her down beside him, his hands continuing to explore the spots she liked. His touch brought Darlene a profound feeling of comfort and desire. She felt him becoming aroused, and herself beginning to respond. Perhaps this night, the Ambien would stay in the drawer.

  “So, baby,” Martin said, beginning the sort of banter he enjoyed during sex. “Tell me something else about your day.”

  Darlene tensed.

  No lies, no evasions. That was the unwritten rule of their marriage.