The Rationing

by Charles Wheelan

  The Acting Secretary exhaled audibly, acknowledging the threat, and then took his cell phone out of the breast pocket of his jacket. He pushed a single button, presumably speed dial, and waited for an answer. The Speaker looked on, wary and confused. The volume on the Acting Secretary’s phone was loud, perhaps on purpose, and I could here the answer: “Pro shop, Dustin speaking.”

  “Hey, Dustin, it’s Charles Mingo here. How do things look this afternoon after three?”

  “I’ve got three-ten, three-twenty, or three-fifty?” Dustin replied.

  “Fantastic,” the Acting Secretary said. “Will you hold three-ten for me and put my clubs on a cart? Looks like I’m going to get fired, in which case I really want to take advantage of this beautiful spring day.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Mingo.”

  The Acting Secretary hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. “Now all my bases are covered,” he said jauntily to the Speaker.

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she challenged.

  “Oh, I do. I most certainly do.”

  35.

  MAYBE I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THE ROOM WHO DID NOT know what had happened to the Strategist’s brother. During the break, after the Acting Secretary arranged for his tee time, I did a quick Internet search; the details were easy to find. The Strategist’s older brother had spent his career in Army intelligence, doing two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. During the Afghanistan tour, he had been riding in an armored vehicle that drove over an improvised explosive device. Everyone in the vehicle survived. The injuries were not life-threatening, but the Strategist’s brother had taken a serious blow to the head. After he returned to the States, he began to suffer crippling headaches, mood swings, depression. There was a lot of finger-pointing after the fact, but the gist of the story is that he never got the treatment he needed—a sadly typical story, as the Strategist would say. I could not tell from my quick reading whether his brother fell through the bureaucratic cracks, or if there simply were not enough resources to provide the support he needed. (I suppose the Strategist would argue that it is a false distinction: if you put enough resources against a problem, there will be fewer cracks.) In any event, it ended badly. His brother was shuffled through various facilities, eventually to a group home in New Jersey where no one was responsible for monitoring his daily meds. On a particularly cold night in February, he walked out the front door and disappeared. Three days later, the police found him frozen to death on a park bench.

  The Acting Secretary resumed his presentation, the essence being that any temporary shortage of Dormigen should be managed by lottery. “We are talking about a couple of days here, at most,” he reminded us. At that moment, the door to the Cabinet Room opened and the President’s scheduler stepped demurely into the room. She signaled to get the Chief of Staff’s attention, but it was the President who responded. “What?” he said impatiently.

  “Prime Minister Abouali’s people want to know if this is still a good time for his impromptu visit,” the scheduler explained.

  “Oh, Christ,” the President said. At the same time, the Chief of Staff looked quickly at her watch; an expression of panic swept across her face. The President continued, “It’s hard to imagine a worse time, frankly.”

  The National Security Adviser said, “Sir, given the Saudi situation, we need to give Abouali some face time. It’s important to his credibility in the region. He just needs to be able to tell his people that he met with the President of the United States—”

  “Five minutes in the Oval Office,” the President agreed. “That’s it.”

  “That will work just fine,” the National Security Adviser assured him.

  “Okay, five minutes, everybody, while I try to make the Palestinians feel better about themselves,” the President announced.

  As the President and the National Security Adviser walked out of the room, the Chief of Staff motioned subtly to the President’s scheduler. The two of them walked to a corner of the Cabinet Room. “Can you call Dan and tell him that I won’t be able to make the lacrosse banquet?” the Chief of Staff asked the scheduler.

  “Of course.”

  “Please order a bouquet of balloons for Maddie—you know, the big helium ones,” the Chief of Staff instructed. The scheduler made a note to herself on her phone and the Chief of Staff continued. “And get one balloon for each of the five seniors. There is a list with their names on my desk.”

  “Where is the banquet?” the scheduler asked.

  “Dan can give you all that information.”

  “Got it,” the scheduler said officiously. “Anything else?”

  “Can you find me a new family?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m kidding,” the Chief of Staff said with more sadness than humor. “Thank you for this. Make sure it doesn’t get charged to the White House. Dan can give you a credit card number.”

  “Of course.”

  36.

  WHEN THE PRESIDENT RETURNED TO THE CABINET ROOM, he made an offhand comment about the political incompetence of the Palestinians, and then, for the third time, the Acting Secretary of HHS gave a brief summary of his plan to allocate Dormigen by lottery should a shortage arise. “Hundreds of thousands of people will be affected,” the Senate Majority Leader said.

  “Yes. Some will get Dormigen, some won’t,” the Acting Secretary explained. “But if you do it by lottery, or some other random mechanism, at least it will be fair and transparent.”

  “It’s so callous,” the House Speaker said.

  The President interjected impatiently, “There’s not really a kindhearted solution here. If we don’t have enough Dormigen, we don’t have enough Dormigen. That problem is not going away.”

  “But some people are sicker than others,” the Chief of Staff said, though she made it sound like a question.

  “Yes,” the Acting Secretary answered. “I think it would be up to the medical establishment to screen out anyone who doesn’t really need Dormigen.”

  “Or those who are too sick to benefit from it,” the Strategist added.

  “That’s right,” the Acting Secretary agreed.

  “Every citizen is eligible?” the House Speaker asked.

  The Acting Secretary answered, “That’s for the people in this room to decide. I would propose that all citizens be included, maybe everyone with a Social Security number.”

  “Just a little background here,” the Secretary of Defense interjected. “We have two million prisoners in this country. With the exception of a small number of illegal immigrants serving sentences for violent crimes before they are deported, every one of those prisoners has a Social Security number.”

  “Of course,” the Acting Secretary said. “Every American citizen has a Social Security number, as do all permanent residents, temporary workers, and so on.”

  “So you’re proposing that all of these folks are eligible for your Megaball drawing?” the Defense Secretary asked.

  “I said nothing about a Megaball drawing,” the Acting Secretary said, firmly but respectfully.

  “Megaball, Powerball, Dormigen-ball. We can call it whatever we want,” the Secretary of Defense said dismissively. “If it’s a big deal when the Powerball jackpot gets to four hundred million, I can assure you that when we draw numbers to save lives, it’s going to attract a lot of attention. We can get that cute girl to prance across the stage and pull balls out of the giant drum—”

  “What’s your point?” the President asked.

  “My point is that where I come from—and probably where all of you come from—we’ve got guys in prison who raped little girls, cut them up into pieces, put them in a car trunk, and then set the car on fire.”

  “We get that,” the President said.

  “That is not hypothetical. I did not make that up. That was an actual case that went to trial while I was an officer at Fort Benning.” The Secretary of Defense looked around the table before his gaze came to rest on the Acting HHS S
ecretary, who returned the gaze but did not reply. The Secretary of Defense looked around the table again, clearly agitated by the silence. “You understand my point, don’t you?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “Go on,” the Acting HHS Secretary said.

  “What do you mean, ‘Go on’? Is this not obvious? These guys have Social Security numbers. Child molesters have Social Security numbers.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And there are ninety-five-year-old men with Alzheimer’s in nursing homes who don’t know what century this is who have Social Security numbers.”

  “Yes, assuming they are citizens or legal residents,” the Acting Secretary answered dispassionately.

  “Oh, for Christ sake!” the Defense Secretary said, looking down the table at the President. “What happens when those numbers get pulled? What happens when the media gets wind of the fact that we’ve got a finite amount of Dormigen, and we’re giving it out to some of society’s least attractive characters—people on death row? Just think about that irony for a minute! Just the notion that we would even consider putting those lives ahead of productive citizens . . . Where do I begin? How do I explain to some law-abiding, hardworking American taxpayer that his children have less chance of being protected against this terrible disease because we decided to protect murderers and rapists?” Again, the Defense Secretary looked slowly around the table, locking eyes with each participant as his gaze went around the table. He finished with the President. “Am I wrong here?”

  The Acting Secretary broke the silence. “Obviously I’ve thought about all that.”

  “And you still proposed this idea?” the Defense Secretary asked, followed by some kind of grotesque chuckle.

  “It could be a starting point,” the Chief of Staff interjected. “The lottery has a certain fairness about it. There is no reason that we can’t put some limitations on who would be eligible.”

  “Like murderers and child molesters?” the Defense Secretary asked sarcastically.

  “It’s harder than it sounds,” the Acting Secretary answered.

  At that moment, the door to the Cabinet Room opened and the President’s scheduler reappeared. The conversation paused and all eyes turned in her direction. “Who’s dropped by this time?” the President said angrily.

  The scheduler, clearly uncomfortable, looked at the Chief of Staff. “I’m sorry to interrupt, ma’am. The florist says their helium tank is broken. They can’t do balloons.”

  The President exclaimed, “The helium tank is broken? It’s just one fucking crisis around here after another.” This was not an attempt at humor, though there was some uncomfortable laughter around the table.

  “Just do flowers for all of them,” the Chief of Staff said, ignoring the President.

  “Okay. I’m sure that will be very nice,” the scheduler said, withdrawing from the Cabinet Room as quickly as possible and pulling the door closed behind her.

  “Now that we’ve managed the helium shortage successfully, where were we on Dormigen?” the President asked. That’s one thing about the President: he could be articulate in a brutally cutting kind of way. Most in the room turned their attention back to him, but I could not help but continue to look at the Chief of Staff, whose expression betrayed some combination of sadness, anger, and resolve. If I were to guess, she had come to an agreement with herself years ago: she would forgive the President’s rude outbursts because they were a response to the stress of a job that most other people could not or would not take on. The sad part was that the flowers were not going to mollify her daughter anyway (nor would helium balloons, for that matter).

  The Acting HHS Secretary continued, “I was saying that it’s difficult to make a blanket determination as to who deserves to get Dormigen and who does not.”

  “I don’t think it’s that hard at all,” the Secretary of Defense said angrily. There were subtle nods of approval around the table.

  “It’s harder than it sounds,” the Acting Secretary repeated. His voice betrayed not a hint of frustration. If the Speaker of the House was a carnivore who lay in wait for weak members of the herd and then leaped for their jugular, the Acting Secretary was an entirely different kind of predator, but a predator nonetheless. In a Discovery Channel context, he would be one of those large insects that disguises itself as a branch or a leaf and then stays absolutely still until its prey does the nature equivalent of flopping onto a dinner plate. That afternoon in the Cabinet Room, some of the smartest people in the world were walking into an ambush, without a hint of what awaited them.

  “I’m perfectly willing to go there,” the Defense Secretary said confidently. “And based on the reaction around the table, so is everybody else.”

  “Do you agree that there is some merit to the lottery idea?” the President asked.

  “Absolutely. I commend the Secretary for getting us to that point,” the Secretary of Defense said.

  “Acting Secretary,” the Acting Secretary corrected him, causing laughter around the table.

  “Well, I would vote to confirm you,” the Defense Secretary said earnestly. The tension from their previous exchange had evaporated. He continued, “I believe that we ought to place limits on eligibility.” Again, there were nods of approval around the table.

  The Acting Secretary was still standing. “Fair enough,” he said. “Since I still have the floor and there seems to be a consensus that a simple lottery is not a good idea, I would propose that we discuss who would be eligible and who would not.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” the Chief of Staff said.

  The Acting Secretary walked to a corner of the room and dragged a whiteboard closer to the conference table. “I’m on record as proposing that everyone with a Social Security number be eligible for the Dormigen drawing.”

  “Wow, it even has alliteration: Dormigen drawing,” the Senate Majority Leader interjected.

  The Acting Secretary smiled and then continued. “Why don’t we use this time to identify the broad groups who should be excluded from eligibility.” He turned to the whiteboard and wrote Child Molesters in red marker.

  “It’s broader than that,” the Secretary of Defense said, mildly peeved again. “There is no reason we should be giving out scarce medicine to anyone who has committed a serious crime, a felony.”

  “So, felons?”

  “Fine.”

  “What about ex-offenders?” the Acting Secretary asked.

  “What do you mean by that?” the Defense Secretary asked.

  The House Speaker answered, “Someone who committed a crime, did the time, and has now returned successfully to society.”

  “Once a felon, always a felon,” the Senate Majority Leader answered.

  “Not in the eyes of the law,” the House Speaker said. “They have done their time and returned successfully to society.”

  “That’s not the point,” the Secretary of Defense responded. His tone had turned analytic, more like for a military briefing, or at least how I would imagine a military briefing to be. “Suppose you have a deadly conflict going on around you. You have a bunker, but there is not enough room to keep everyone safe. Who goes in the bunker? It’s not about fairness, necessarily. Lots of people deserve a spot in that bunker. It’s about who you want in there with you, and more important, who you want with you when the conflict is over. Who comes out of the bunker to rebuild society?”

  The President said, “We’re talking about a few days without Dormigen. We are not going to have to rebuild society here.”

  “Yes, but I take the point,” the Acting Secretary said. “You’re saying we should try to choose the strongest and most capable. This should be about merit, of some sort,” the Acting Secretary said.

  “Yes, that’s it. Thank you,” the Defense Secretary answered, relieved that his point of view was finally getting some traction. It was not, of course. The Acting Secretary was merely disguising himself as that twig, luring everyone in the room closer and closer,
until they realized at the last moment that he was in fact an insect disguised as a twig, and then it would be too late.

  “Once a felon, always a felon,” the Acting Secretary repeated. “Are we in agreement?” There were nods of assent around the table and he wrote Felons on the whiteboard.

  “Well, no,” the House Speaker said. All heads turned in her direction.

  “If we can’t agree to exclude felons, we’re not going to get anywhere,” the President said.

  The Senate Majority Leader added, “There is no way I can defend any plan that puts felons ahead of law-abiding citizens.”

  “Felons or ex-felons?” the Chief of Staff asked.

  “Both,” he said.

  The House Speaker said, “It makes me uncomfortable, given the racial makeup of our prison population. But let’s go on. We can come back to this.”

  The Acting Secretary continued, “Based on our earlier discussion, I suppose we need some kind of age limit. Is that right?”

  “I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to be giving scarce medicine to eighty-year-olds,” the Senate Majority Leader offered.

  “Those are the people who need Dormigen the most,” I reminded the group. “They are the ones for whom Capellaviridae is most likely to be fatal.”

  “But still,” the Secretary of Defense insisted, “there’s just not a lot of runway there, if you know what I mean.”

  “So what’s the cutoff? Sixty-five? Seventy?” the Acting Secretary asked the group.

  “I’m not sure we have to choose that now,” the Chief of Staff said.

  “When are we going to do it?” the President asked, essentially correcting her.

  “Let’s say sixty-five,” the Speaker of the House suggested.

  “That feels kind of young to me,” the Senate Majority Leader said, generating chuckles around the room, since we all knew he was well north of sixty-five. “Seriously, there is a lot of human capital invested in folks over sixty-five.”

  “So seventy?” the Acting Secretary asked.

  “Let me take the other side of that,” the Defense Secretary answered. “Every time you give a dose to a sixty-nine-year-old, there is one less dose for a thirty-nine-year-old, who has a lot more life ahead of him.”