The President's Doctor

by David Shobin

  The sergeant had enough of the delaying chitchat. “Goddammit, let’s get this litter down the hill!”

  “We had a KIA, Sarge,” one of the men said, handing over the dead man’s dog tags. “The corporal took a Bouncing Betty right in the nuts.”

  “Shit! Are you bringing him down?”

  “No can do. He’s in pieces.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Move out!”

  Both squads began a defensive retreat down the mountainside, with riflemen covering the front and rear. Jon’s wound started to ache dully, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before it began throbbing. He couldn’t believe the day had turned to shit so quickly. Between the rain, the steamy sun, and the forest creatures, the patrol had begun with a kind of exotic beauty; but in an astonishingly short time, violence and death stood enchantment on its head. At war, Vietnam was an intense land of extremes.

  Walking alongside the makeshift litter, Jon changed and reinforced the captain’s quickly-saturated dressing. The brisk bleeding had slowed. Captain Meredith was going to need exploratory surgery to learn what damage had been done. It didn’t appear that anything life-threatening had been injured; his groin pulses were full and regular, and he could move his legs. Still, even a tiny piece of shrapnel could have torn through a piece of bowel, or lacerated the spleen or kidney. They were all significant injuries, but unless an artery had been severed, they shouldn’t prove mortal.

  “You’re doing fine, sir,” Jon said. “How’s the pain?”

  “Tolerable. Maybe you can hit me with some of that morphine at the LZ.”

  “No problem, Captain.”

  Meredith looked him in the eye. “Tell me something, Doc. Why did you hesitate back there?”

  “Sir?”

  “Why didn’t you shoot?”

  Jon felt his face redden. He looked away, unable to maintain eye contact. He felt an overpowering sense of shame, of having disappointed those who depended on him. With comrades killed and wounded, how could he explain to Captain Meredith that what happened to him was the truest test of his convictions, of the fabric of his person, of what he really felt about war? At least, that was his rationalization. The strangest thing was, now that he was a member of the platoon, he wasn’t sure he still felt that way. When it came right down to it, maybe he just choked.

  “I…I don’t know, sir.”

  “I’m going to say this just once, son,” Meredith continued. “Sometimes life has a way of forcing a man to see what he’s made of. And you never realize it until that moment arrives. But if you’re ever forced to make that decision again, don’t dwell on it. Just pull the damn trigger.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Great Smoky Mountains

  An unusually cold fall wind ripped across the Appalachian hilltops, sending scores of yellow and gold leaves fluttering skyward. Seen from the ridgeline, the valley that stretched toward Asheville was a quilted patchwork of farmland that neared the end of harvest season. To O’Brien, the mountains were a sanctuary of solitude in a frenzied world, a placid retreat where wilderness met rural countryside. So different from Boston, he thought. The mountains, called balds, had densely-timbered forests that suddenly gave way to open panoramas of wild, unforgettable vegetation—toothwort, mountain laurel, and Michaux’s saxifrage. There were acres of tall grasses and purple sedges that rippled in the wind. On the wooded hillsides of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the Appalachian Trail rides the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, one could easily become lost in the natural beauty. Or one could hide. It was for precisely this reason that the Southern Cross used the area as a refuge.

  There were times, though, that he longed for the bustle and crowds of Beantown, his birthplace. Southern whiskey was a frequent comfort, but it wasn’t the same as the saloon-based sociability of Charlestown and South Boston, where one could drift from one hallowed Hibernian bar to the next, where one’s loyalty was forged in a heady mixture of dark stout and chowder and daily Mass, and where the sense of history was thick in the air, like fog. What had happened to the place? His onetime cronies claimed that the city’s slide began in the early sixties, when the town fathers ran bulldozers through Scollay Square to make room for Government Center and City Hall. Nothing, they said, had been the same since. As time went by, stately old brick houses on cobblestone streets became town houses, which were turned into condominiums. The Irish left their neighborhoods, ceding the streets and the schools to minorities, to the Haitians and Lebanese and blacks who now accounted for half of the city’s population. With the infusion of immigrants, an elegant brogue yielded to the lilting sounds of foreign tongues. An exotic grocery store was on every street comer, and smells of mango and goat and curry hung in the air.

  But there was no going back now. He might travel to the Middle or Far East in search of men named Mahmoud, or to anywhere in the world for that matter, but never to his hometown. Returning to Boston would be suicidal. The door to that part of his life was closed forever, not because of his Irish heritage, but due to events in his line of work. It wasn’t simply that he had run afoul of the law; that’s what criminals did. Rather, he had crossed too many people, and he owed too many personal debts. There was one he could never repay. He owed his life to someone, and that debt bound him as inextricably to another man as if they shared the same organs. It was because of that debt that Sean O’Brien had left Boston and joined—and in many ways founded—the Southern Cross. And it was in service of that gratitude that he now followed what he considered a higher calling.

  The Gaza Strip

  From the Shati refugee camp, the tranquil westward view across the blue Mediterranean was a stark contrast to the steady undercurrent of tension within the camp.

  The camp had eighty thousand residents, and most had lived in turmoil and discomfort for years. This was especially true for the children, who made up more than half of Gaza’s population. They had to play near open sewers during the day, and they slept eight to a room at night.

  Twenty-eight-year-old Mahmoud al-Abed no longer crowded into a bedroom, for he had his own place in Gaza City with two other Palestinians. All were members of Hamas, the militant Islamic resistance movement dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Growing up a directionless, poorly-educated child, Mahmoud grew into manhood during the intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. It was then that he uncovered his sense of self. In Hamas he found a purpose, a goal that transcended the days of his life or the small space of his existence. His duty lay in waging jihad to liberate Palestine. Martyrdom, if it came to that, would be an honor.

  For months, Mahmoud had lived in a state of heightened anxiety. It was the sort of emotional dissatisfaction that could only be relieved by firm, determined action. The possibility of American troops in the Middle East was intolerable to Hamas—and, by extension, to Mahmoud—for Americans had long proved themselves to be Zionist lackeys. Not that those in the struggle hadn’t experienced similar moments before. The Oslo peace accords between Israel and the PLO were demoralizing, but Hamas had regrouped and intensified its campaign of terror. Now, too, Hamas knew what had to be done.

  As the Americans had not yet arrived, Mahmoud had no finite plans. Mahmoud did not know his part, but he knew it would be big. Over the past fifteen years, he had proven his loyalty many times, most recently in a devastating Tel Aviv bombing. Long before that, he’d spent five years in southern Lebanon, harassing Israeli troops until they finally withdrew. This time, both the Israelis and the Americans would be taught a lesson.

  Until then, however, he was tightly wound. Mahmoud was a slender, dark-haired, black-eyed man whom women found attractive. He spent the bulk of his down time—which, at present, was all the time—in cafes, trying to lessen the tension. It didn’t help that he drank coffee by the liter and smoked a carton of cigarettes every three days. His mind was constantly active. The times he needed to get away from his thoughts were becoming more and more frequent.

  When he did, his pr
oven release was the same it had been since he was a child. He would walk directly toward the sea—away from the Shati camp, across the asphalt highway, and down the barren, sandy slope toward the beach. He once walked barefoot, but now he wore designer sneakers. The slopes were littered with dangerous rubble, the detritus of a people that was losing hope.

  On the coarse brown sand, Mahmoud walked out into the gentle surf and rolled up his pants legs. He was standing in the same location that, over three thousand years before, had been invaded by the Philistines, a seafaring people that eventually overran the eastern Mediterranean. The Philistines were direct ancestors of all Palestinians.

  After several minutes of gazing out to sea, Mahmoud repeated the ritual that always soothed him as much as his mother’s breast. He felt in the moment, in the midst of an eternity that was his fate. With a long, wistful look at the watery horizon, he turned around and gazed back over the camp, across the city, and toward Israel. One part belonged to his people, the other part to their sworn enemy. Insh-Allah, one day soon the Israelis would be driven away, and all the land would be theirs.

  The thought calmed him. Restored, filled with resolve, he slowly left the water and returned to the beach. A successful jihad was both God’s will and his own destiny.

  The White House

  First Lady Roxanne Meredith slipped out of the donated black Versace dress and hung it on the valet in the bedroom. At fifty-five, ten years younger than her husband, she still had the good looks that had initially attracted him years before. At five-five and one hundred thirty pounds, her trim body was toned by daily workouts in the White House gym. Undoing the French bun in her hair, she began to brush her long blond tresses.

  Across the room, President Meredith lay on the bed in his white shirt and tuxedo pants. His arm rested across his face, its crook shielding his eyes from the light. Every so often, he coughed.

  “How’re you feeling, Bob? Any after-effects?”

  “Nothing but embarrassment. I’m just tired. Those damn Israelis are the most stubborn people I’ve ever dealt with. Getting them to go along with something is like pulling teeth.”

  “Do you think they’ll come around?”

  “They can’t afford not to. There’s too much riding on this. After the progress they made with the Palestinians, the whole world expects them make peace with the Syrians. Asad’s kid,” he said, referring to the Syrian president, “is on board with the idea of our troops, but the Israelis, God almighty.”

  “They didn’t sound opposed to it tonight.”

  “Fundamentally they’re not. They want us there. It was as much their idea as ours. It’s just the crazy kind of government they have, the coalition business. They have to kiss the butt of all their coalition partners to get the deal done, and from what I gather, their fundamentalists are just as extreme as some of the nuts we have down where I come from. So, we’re back to arm twisting and ass kissing.”

  “At that, you have no equal.”

  “Which?”

  “The arm twisting, of course.” She put down the brush, walked over, and sat on the bed beside him, stroking his nearly white hair. “Are you sure you’re okay, Bob? When I saw you standing over the dinner table gasping for air, I thought I was going to die. I haven’t been that frightened in years.”

  “Me either. Not being able to breathe has got to be the world’s most helpless feeling. I couldn’t move any air at all.” He looked across the room, reflecting. “Actually, it happened to me once before.”

  “Recently?”

  “No, I was a kid. I think I was about ten. I was up in Asheville, on vacation with my folks. I was canoeing with a friend of mine on a lake around there. For some reason the damn canoe tipped over, and the next thing I knew, I took in a lung full of water. I couldn’t breathe, and I was choking. But all I remember was the other kid yelling at me to stop making noise and to help him right the canoe.”

  “Not very sympathetic of him.”

  “At that age, who is?”

  She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “So, you’re really okay now?”

  “Yes, my dear, I am. Sometimes I might be at a loss for words, but I can’t afford to be at a loss for breath.”

  In reality, the president was rarely at a loss for words. Not only a gifted speaker, some considered him an orator, the most dynamic Oval Office conversationalist since John Kennedy. But his greater gift was more for people than words. Both leader and charmer, his natural charisma made Americans rally to his side and support his programs, including the Israeli-Syrian military peace-keeper proposal. The president’s approval ratings were consistently high.

  Part of his charm owed to his appearance. Bob Meredith had the look of a statesman. His once black hair was now a distinguished white, which he kept long and combed straight back. He was tall and fit. His long, angular face was sharp-featured, and in diplomatic discussions he had a no-nonsense, serious expression. But in casual speech, his austere appearance was transformed by a joking wit and a disarming smile that put everyone at ease.

  Now nearing the end of the third year of his first term in office, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that President Meredith would seek reelection. The country demanded it. The economy remained robust, unemployment was low, and there was nationwide prosperity. Other than for some unrest on the Pacific Rim and the Middle East, no major conflicts loomed. There was little reason for the American people to want a different leader, especially when the one they had was revered by nearly everyone.

  Meredith got off the bed and stripped down to his shorts. Rocky watched him. For a man his age, he still had a remarkably good physique. He was only ten pounds heavier than when they first met. He had a personal trainer and worked out every other day.

  If I get in five hours of sleep tonight, Meredith thought, I’ll be lucky. He was a country boy at heart, and country boys needed their slumber, working hard during the day before sleeping soundly at night. But long, undisturbed nights were now a rarity. He sometimes longed for the cool, quilt-covered nights of his youth, when the stars filled the skies over Sumter National Forest.

  Although he’d lost his Southern drawl, Robert Meredith was still very much a South Carolinian who loved his burley tobacco and bourbon whiskey. Raised in Columbia, he’d spent his pre-Washington years in Charleston. He’d been a modestly successful lawyer before Vietnam, but several years after he was discharged from the Marine Corps, he was elected to Congress. Four years later he was in the Senate, and once there, he never looked back.

  Roxanne resumed brushing her hair. “I worry about you, darling. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I’m too old and too stubborn for that, Rocky,”

  “Sixty-five doesn’t qualify as old these days. Ask anyone who wants you reelected.”

  “I have. Mitch told me CNN will broadcast the results of a poll tomorrow that has me forty percentage points above any possible challenger.”

  “Forty?” she said with a smile. “That must be some kind of a record.”

  “It is.”

  “That’s wonderful, darling. But most people your age retire, you know. Are you still certain this is what you want? No second thoughts?”

  “None whatsoever,” he said. “But even if I did, the people wouldn’t let me. They’re pretty satisfied with what I’ve done so far.”

  “So am I.”

  He reached out and squeezed her arm. His wife was the most adored first lady since Jackie Kennedy. “I don’t suppose you’d have a problem living here another four years, would you?”

  “Oh, I think I could manage it.”

  In truth, Roxanne Meredith loved being first lady. It was as if she’d been made for the job. Rocky reveled in public life the same way others cherished their privacy. She never dabbled in policy, but she was up front and outspoken on things Americans cherished most—family, health, and education. If she acted like she cared, it was because she did. She genuinely liked her fellow citizens as much as they see
med to adore her.

  It didn’t hurt that she was photogenic. Rocky had bright, flashing eyes and an effervescent smile that radiated enthusiasm. Although she dressed very well, she was never ostentatious. Even her critics conceded her understated elegance. What was most appealing, however, was her sincerity. Rocky meant what she said, and her genuine honesty was deeply appreciated by a grateful public. By almost any definition, Roxanne Meredith was the real deal, the perfect complement to an equally adored husband.

  Roxanne was the new definition of celebrity, and the press had an ongoing love affair with her. She’d been on the cover of every major newsmagazine at least once.

  There was an article, large or small, about Rocky in every issue of People, and she graced its cover an average of once every seven months. Journalists frequently purported to know “what Roxanne Meredith’s really like,” but what they generally revealed was that Rocky was an intelligent, attractive woman from Atlanta who was devoted to her husband and her country.

  In short, she looked forward to another four years as first lady as much as the voters looked forward to her being there. And why not? She represented the office with charm, wit, style, and grace.

  “Have you decided on the date of the reelection announcement yet?” she asked.

  “Probably the week before Thanksgiving. It’ll make the Sunday morning talk shows and still be on people’s minds when they get together for the holiday.”

  That was news to her. “A month from now? I thought you didn’t want to wait that long.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You did. You said yesterday that you were thinking of announcing your run a year to the day before the vote.”

  For several seconds, the president stared at his wife oddly. Then he slowly lapsed into a skeptical smile. “Come on, Rock. You funnin’ this old boy? I never said that.”

  She was equally serious. “Bob, I am not making this up. Don’t you remember, at breakfast yesterday morning? We had a long talk about it.”