"We need to go inside and talk with your mother.", I told them.
"What's wrong?", added Molly.
"Is it Charlie? What happened!?"
"Charlie is fine. Let's go see Mom." I ushered them into the living room, where I found Marilyn reading a short speech she was supposed to give about motherhood and apple pie, or some such nonsense.
She looked up and said, "What are you doing here so early? And why do our daughters look like drowned rats? What did they do now?".
"Mom!", squawked both the girls. If that fazed Marilyn, it didn't show.
Marilyn stood up when she saw the visitors. "Hello."
"Marilyn, please sit down. Girls, you too." I said. I went to my wife and moved her towards the couch.
She must have noticed the Marine uniform. "What's wrong, Carl? Is it Charlie? I thought you said he would be safe!"
"Let's sit down, honey." I pushed her down onto the cushion of the couch and sat next to her. Both our daughters had terrified looks on their faces. As soon as she was seated, and with me still holding her hands, I said, "Charlie's been wounded, but he's alive and is going to be okay." The girls went into an uproar at this, but Marilyn turned white as a ghost. I just pressed on. "This is General Jones and Captain Hmong. The captain is a doctor and has talked to the doctors on Charlie's ship. Charlie will be okay."
Marilyn turned an icy glare on the two men. "What happened!?"
The general repeated his review of what happened, and Captain Hmong reported that he had talked to the surgeons who had treated Charlie, and that our boy would be fine. When he mentioned calling the ship, Marilyn jumped at it. I directed General Jones to a phone in my study and told him to set up the call. Monrovia was 5 hours ahead of us, so it was early afternoon local time. He came back in after a few minutes and said that it would be a few minutes and they would call when they had the connection.
Marilyn fixed him with a glare and said, "I'm not going anywhere. Are you?" I actually got to see a Marine general blanch and turn white.
Ten minutes later the phone rang, and we all crowded into the study. I put the phone on speaker and said, "This is the President. Who is this?"
"Hey, Dad, how's it going?"
The voice was weak, and the reception was scratchy, but that was probably the best sound I had ever heard. The girls started shrieking and Marilyn started talking to Charlie, and I just collapsed into my swivel chair. After a bit, I tossed in my two cents, but Charlie just kept repeating he was fine and don't worry about him. After five minutes, Doctor Hmong got on the phone and asked to talk to one of the doctors, and they spouted medical jargon at each other for five minutes. After that, Charlie talked to us again until a doctor on the ship said he needed some rest. The connection broke down after that.
"Mrs. Buckman, Lance Corporal Buckman will be fine but he needs some rest and healing. He lost a lot of blood, but that has been replaced, and he has a lot of stitches and scars in unusual places, and he's in some pain so they have him on meds and antibiotics, but his prognosis is excellent. In a week or two he will feel like a new man, and in a couple of months he'll be as good as new.", said Doctor Hmong.
"What do you mean, unusual places?", asked Holly, beating me to the punch.
The doctor made a wry face and said, "There was a penetrating trauma to the left gluteus maximus muscle."
The girls looked perplexed, and Marilyn wasn't much better, so I translated for them. "Your brother got shot in the ass."
"Carl!", protested Marilyn, as the girls giggled.
The doctor shrugged and nodded. "More likely shrapnel from an RPG or a ricochet fragment, but that's about right."
"When can I see Charlie?", asked Marilyn.
"Well, he's confined to the hospital on the Tarawa right now. He'll be there for a few days, and then will be able to come home. The Tarawa group is actually scheduled to return to Norfolk as soon as they clean up in Monrovia, maybe another week. It might be easier to simply bring the lightly wounded home that way.", said Captain Hmong.
It was my turn to receive the death stare from Marilyn. "I want to see Charlie now!"
"Marilyn, he can't be moved yet!", I argued. "He's in the hospital! On a ship!"
"TODAY!"
"Marilyn!"
"Do you still own a plane? Do you want to bet I can't call and have that warmed up!?"
"Uh, yeah, sure." I took the coward's way out and turned to the Commandant. "General?"
"Give me a few minutes, and we will make it happen. I can probably arrange it from the Situation Room.", he replied.
I popped to my feet. "Here, let me go with you. Maybe I can help." The three of us beat feet out of there.
Once we got out of the room, I asked, "When did this happen? I thought that rescue was on Monday? How come I didn't hear about it until today?"
General Jones actually looked embarrassed at that. "It's sort of your fault, sir. I mean, everybody here knows your son is a Marine, and everybody on the Fort McHenry knew he was a Marine, but the computers still had him down as Robert NMI Buckman of Washington, D.C. When they sent the signal through to the Pentagon, they pulled up his official address and sent a notification team there last night. That's when they were told by the Secret Service where to actually go, and they turned around and went back to the Pentagon to figure out what to do."
I grunted at that. We went down to the Situation Room, where the general did his thing, and I just sat there and contemplated my navel. It's one thing to whistle up the G-IV and tell them to fly somewhere, but how do you get to a ship in the middle of the ocean? It was going to take some doing, but the Abraham Lincoln carrier group was in the process of rushing to the area, to relieve the Tarawa group and show the flag. If we got Marilyn to Naval Air Station Oceana, just outside of Virginia Beach, she could catch a COD flight to the Lincoln. From the Lincoln they could fly her on a helicopter to the Tarawa. She could be there in 24 hours.
The captain we left hanging around the lobby while General Jones and I headed back to the dragon's lair. Marilyn simply nodded and said, "When do I leave?"
I needed to get in control of this clusterfuck at some point. "Marilyn, we can probably do this today, but you need to do something for me."
"What?"
"I am going to get a lot of heat over this, about using the power of my position to send my wife halfway around the world on the taxpayers' dime. How come she can do it when all the other mothers can't? - that sort of thing. Now, I will pay the bill, and take the heat, but if we are doing this, you need to do some schmoozing while you are out there. You get on a ship, you do the tour and shake hands and wave and smile and take pictures, okay."
"Oh, I can do that, I suppose.", she said, quite amicably. Suddenly I thought I might come out of this with my marriage still intact. (If the President and the First Lady get divorced, who gets to keep the White House? Maybe I should ask Bill and Hillary.)
I grabbed a phone. "Please send Ari and that doctor up to the Residence. Thank you."
"What about us? Do we get to go?", asked Molly.
"No, and neither does Stormy. That would be all the Navy needs, the three of you loose on a warship! We'd probably end up at war with somebody!"
"Daddy!", protested her sister.
"No!"
When Ari showed up with the doctor from Bethesda, we gave him the rundown on what was happening. I simply figured he would want to issue a press release and say something at the press conference. No, that was not at all what Ari had in mind. "Mister President, let's be honest here. Your son is a wounded in action certified hero as seen on national television! The First Lady is going to fly around the world on Navy planes to see him, when no other mother can do that. This is news! We need to handle this properly." He turned to General Jones. "General, can we send a reporter or two on this junket?" He looked at me and held up a hand. "That's what the media is going to call this, true or not."