He led me back into the Oval Office, which was getting crowded by now. The White House Physician, Doctor Tubb and a nurse had joined us when they got the word I was throwing up. Also, in addition to the regular morning briefing team of Ari, Josh, and Mindy, we also had Frank, Carter, and Will crammed in, along with a couple of Secret Service agents. The room was packed. Meanwhile, John was ordering Josh and Ari, politely, to keep a lid on this until I wanted it released.
I pulled myself together. I knew what had to be done first. “Where is the First Lady?” I asked.
Will answered, “She’s here, upstairs, I guess, getting ready. She has a lunch with the Daughters of the American Revolution.”
I snorted in laughter at that. “The DAR? Good Lord! My family sat out the war, and Marilyn’s was in Canada at the time!” I shook my head. “I’ll need to see her right now. Where are the girls?”
One of the agents responded. “They are running with Stormy down on the Mall. Hold one…” He muttered into a hidden microphone, waited a moment, and then added, “Stormy just jumped in the Reflecting Pool!”
“Good Christ! Well, get them back here. This is my doing. I need to be the one to tell them.” He began muttering into his mike again. The agents on the twins’ detail would drive up with a War Wagon and hustle them inside. They would be back here in less than five minutes. To the others I said, “Whatever my schedule is today, it just got cancelled. We don’t say anything about this until I say we do. I will let you know as soon as I know something. Right now I have to tell Charlie’s mother her son has been shot. I think I’d prefer it have been me.” The room erupted in discussion, but I ignored it. To the general and captain, I said, “Gentlemen, on me,” and led them out of the room.
We went to the elevator and rode up to the Residence, but I didn’t go beyond the vestibule. The girls weren’t back yet, but I expected them momentarily. I lowered my voice and said, “We are going to wait until they are back. I can’t do this twice.” They just nodded in understanding.
About two minutes later, the girls and the dog, all of them looking thoroughly soaked, came up the elevator. Molly saw me standing there and said, “Daddy, what’s going on?! Stormy was in the Reflecting Pool, and when we dragged her out she got us all wet!” In emphasis, Stormy shook herself all over the twins again.
Holly was more succinct, especially when she saw a pair of officers with me. “What’s wrong?”
“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.”