I could see it happening again. The problem was that a lot of people liked things just the way they were. The finance companies loved it, and home buyers loved it, and Wall Street loved it, and home builders loved it. When the wheels came off in a few years, nobody would love it, and they would point their fingers at everybody else.
My solution, which I had been pushing for awhile now, was a two-parter. First, no new rules and regulations. All my life I had heard people complain, when something went wrong, "There should be a law!" Well, the odds were pretty good that there already was a law, but nobody was enforcing it. No new laws, we had plenty of them on the books already. Part Two was even simpler! We were actually going to fund the regulatory agencies! Many times Congress would pass a law to correct some sort of outrage, and mandate some new agency or program to fix something, but stop there. They wouldn't actually fund the program or office, so there might not be any employees in the agency.
Pay for some inspectors at the FDA, and some analysts and investigators at the SEC. Slip some money to the Surgeon General and pay for some of the public health programs already mandated by law. Almost every one of these programs and regulations had a positive benefit in terms of cash, in many cases saving $3 or $4 or $5 for every $1 spent. On the plus side, the U.S. government is so big, there is almost always something breaking down and letting something happen. Crank up the appropriate outrage and force Congress to get the agencies some funding. Never let a good crisis go to waste!
I almost never got everything I wanted, but I usually got some, and then simply told people to not stop pushing and go for more the next time. It's a never ending battle. I had used up a lot of my political capital getting the DREAM Act passed, and almost all of the rest of it in killing off a bunch of Pentagon weapons programs. I had gotten these bills through Congress, suitably watered down of course, but through the system, though with a fair bit of screaming. I had also lost some popularity by my refusal to lower taxes any further, and by continuing to run a modest surplus. I was going to face a backlash sooner or later over taxes, and probably sooner. On the other hand, Monrovia had built up my political capital and popularity again, by showing 'leadership in a crisis', and I was cynical enough to accept my son's wounds as part of that.
Through the winter and early spring the Democrats scrapped like a pack of feuding cats. I would have enjoyed it immensely, except for the fact that I got sick! It started out with just a routine evening in the White House Residence in mid-February. Marilyn and I had gone to bed, and for once I managed to join her at the same time. Usually she would fall asleep in her chair with Stormy, and I would chuckle when she roused herself and headed into our bedroom. I would usually watch some late television, but for whatever reason, that night she stayed up late and I went to bed around the same time she did. I wasn't feeling quite right, and had a crick in my upper back.
Marilyn snuggled up next to me, and ordered Stormy out from between us. She began running a hand across my chest, and I brought my arm up to let her rest her head on my shoulder. Somehow, doing that didn't make me feel all that comfortable, and I moved my shoulders around and tried to get comfortable. "What's the matter?", she asked.
"I don't know. My back is bothering me, a bit, anyway." I flexed my muscles and shrugged my shoulders, to see if that helped. It didn't.
"Not feeling well?"
"I'll be fine. Maybe I just need a good night's sleep."
"Okay." Marilyn kissed me quickly and then rolled over, her rump pushing against me.
I mused for a moment about missing out a chance to sample my wife's pleasures. After all these years, I still enjoyed making love to her, and never really felt any urge to stray. Still, we had been together long enough that we knew that if either one of us was feeling poorly, it wasn't a time to push things. As it was, while Marilyn zonked off to sleep in a minute or two, I just couldn't get comfortable. I twisted and turned, rolled from side to side, and kept moving. The pain in my back kept growing. It was in my upper torso, between my shoulder blades, and I was feeling a bit nauseous and sweaty. Something wasn't right.
I rolled over and sat upright, groaning as I did so. That didn't help much. I sat there on the edge of the bed, slumped over, as the pain scale kept moving up. Marilyn woke up, probably because I was moving around some, and she flipped on the bedside lamp, waking Stormy as she did.
"Carl, what's wrong?"
"I don't feel too good.", I told her.
"Do you want to see a doctor?", she asked.
Suddenly it all came back to me. Yes, I needed to see a doctor. My past history from my first life came roaring back. "I think so. I think I'm having a heart attack.", I told her.
Marilyn shrieked a little and scrambled out of the bed, grabbing her robe and running out of the bedroom. When this happened the first time, we had to call the ambulance and wait for them to show. Now, I had a doctor in residence, and an ambulance down below able to haul me away in a heartbeat. I had all sorts of amazing quality health care, probably able to give me a heart transplant at a moment's notice.
I knew it wasn't a heart attack.
I had gall stones. I was in the middle of a gall bladder attack. It is very painful and unpleasant, but not fatal. I was in my mid-40s when this happened to me the first time, too. The gall bladder is a small organ on the right side of the abdomen that is involved with digestion, and secretes bile into the intestinal tract. Every once in a while something goes wrong and the gall bladder accumulates some crystals that form into little stones, similar to kidney stones in the kidneys. When the stones work through the bile duct, it can be very difficult and painful. Nine times out of ten, that pain is located on the right side of your abdomen, somewhere near the gall bladder. You have pain there, the doctor figures it out quick, they yank your gall bladder, and you are back up and running. Okay, it's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
I am that one-in-ten patient. I don't get pain near my gall bladder. I get pain up between my shoulder blades. I spent six months and three doctors going through gall stone attacks, visiting two separate hospitals, and God alone knows how many tests figuring it out. Every fucking doctor would examine me, tell me it sounded like gall stones, but it was in the wrong place, and order more tests. Finally I went to a surgeon who told me to stop screwing around. I could live without a gall bladder, so he would yank it, and if the pain stopped, we would know I was cured. It sounded crazy, but it worked.
Now, I had to go through the whole miserable experience all over again. Whoopee.
My health on this go had been much, much better than on my first trip through. Over the years I had skipped over some diseases I had on my first trip (for example, back then I caught pneumonia at 14 but didn't this time, no idea why) and had a few I didn't have then (terminal infections in that Honduran jail cell this time). I didn't smoke, I kept my weight down, and I stayed in shape. When I was smoking I had seasonal colds, four a year (a winter cold, a spring cold... ) along with frequent sinus infections, and my weight caused a bunch of other issues. Now, I only had colds every couple of years, and the biggest health issue I had was from eating all sorts of fried foods while campaigning at state fairs. I am a Southern boy and I love fried food! That stuff will kill you, but what a way to go! As far as anything else was concerned, my cholesterol was high, and I had been on Lipitor for ten years. Other than my right knee being shot, and gradually getting worse, I was a whole lot healthier than my first time around.