If you ever have the chance to use the health care available to a President, take advantage of it. On the other hand, if you are the President, you don’t get an option. I wasn’t going home to go to bed. “Mister President, whatever happened seems to be passing. We still don’t have an answer for what happened, so we would like to run a few tests in the morning. We are going to have you stay overnight.”
I sighed and nodded. “All right. I suppose somebody ought to let the Vice President know, before he hears about it on the news in the morning.”
Doctor Rhodes smiled and looked over at the agent in the corner. He spoke up and said, “The Vice President has already been informed, sir.”
“Figures.” I looked over at Marilyn. “You’d better get in touch with the kids, so they don’t learn about it the same way.”
Marilyn glanced over at the agent, who nodded. She said, “Don’t worry. Let’s get you up to your room.”
I was too tired to argue. I slept until about 4:00 AM, at which point I was woken up so they could take my temperature and blood pressure, and then I crashed again for another four hours. When I woke up a second time, Marilyn was sitting there next to me. “How you doing?” she asked.
“Peachy! I’m in a hospital!”
“You can behave! You had me scared last night!”
I grimaced and shrugged. “Sorry. You knew it wasn’t my heart. You’ve told me often enough I don’t have one.”
“It’s not that funny when you’re in a hospital!” she protested. “The girls called when their agents told them. So did Charlie.”
“Did you tell them the inheritance is on hold for a little longer?” I asked.
“Well, Charlie did ask about your recliner, but I told him he had to wait.”
“Little bastard! I’m not even cold yet!” I protested.
“They’ll be over later on,” she replied with a smile. “They were properly nervous and worried. They’re good kids.” She nodded her head towards the door. “There’s some people here to see you. I told them you needed to take it easy.”
“Figures. Let ‘em in. Do me a favor and call Suzie. She’s probably heard about this too.”
“She can fly down from the Mayo Clinic to tell you what is wrong.”
I snorted and laughed. “That’s what happens when your sister is a nurse.”
Marilyn stood and gave me a quick kiss, and then opened the door to let in Josh Bolten and Ari Fleischer. No way was I going to be allowed to escape the job. I waved at them and said, “Hi, guys!”
“How bad is it, Mister President?” asked Josh.
“I’ll be fine, guys. Tell the Vice President he can head back to the bullpen, I’m going to make it,” I answered, smiling.
“What happened?”
I gave them a brief rundown, but right now nobody knew. I was scheduled for some more tests today.
“I’ll need to make a statement, sir. The networks have been running footage of you leaving the White House, and somebody managed to confirm that you are here,” said Ari.
I sighed and nodded. “Yeah. Listen, get together with one of the doctors and write something up. My heart is just fine. The President is resting comfortably and undergoing further testing. My family knows what is going on. Blah, blah, blah. Hell, tell them the Democrats are right, and that I really am heartless!”
Marilyn laughed at that. “Tell them the kids and I are arguing over the will already!”
I had another laugh at that. Still, Ari actually did have to issue a statement. There was an excellent chance the stock market would tank as soon as the markets opened. There had actually been cases where rumormongers had managed to plant credible stories and profited on the ensuing stock sales. I sent Ari off to speak to the doctors, and told Josh I was stuck here for a bit while they ran some more tests.
Those tests were scheduled for that morning. Again, when you are the President, you do not wait around in the hallway hoping to get fit into the schedule. Just like last night I had all sorts of senior doctors kibitzing over me, the same happened now. It wasn’t just any old technician; I had the Chief of Internal Medicine and the White House Physician overseeing the top technician in the hospital! I got another MRI scan, another ultrasound, and now got something new, a radionuclide scan of my gall bladder.
Maybe the problem before was simply that I managed to get sick in a small town in upstate New York. Anything serious that happened got farmed out to the big city, Albany or Syracuse or Rochester. Insurance wasn’t going to cover shipping my ass all over back then. In addition, there is a difference in the care you get with a small town clinic with a physician’s assistant versus a major teaching hospital in the nation’s capital. This bunch had a suspicion about my gall bladder before I even went to bed last night!
I couldn’t eat until after all the testing, which took up the entire morning, and after that I got a semi-decent meal. Early afternoon, I met with the doctors, with Marilyn next to me. The diagnosis? My gall bladder was shot. The thing had all these tiny little gallstones in it, but a few were large enough to cause problems. The cure was pretty basic, which was to remove my gall bladder surgically, via laparoscopy.
Nothing was new about this. I had been through it once before. The really good news was that this bunch figured it out a whole lot quicker than on my first go. I wasn’t going to have to go through months of guessing games while suffering. The surgery was scheduled for tomorrow morning. My lunch today was my last meal until after the surgery. Joy!
I sent Marilyn back to the White House, if simply to get her out of my remaining hair for the afternoon. She promised to bring the kids over later. I didn’t get all that much rest, however. Both Josh and John McCain came to visit. “How are you feeling, Carl?” asked the Vice President.
I looked over at Josh and smiled. “He reminds me of the Vice President at my frat house in college, the guy whose campaign slogan was ‘Only a heartbeat away!’” That got a laugh from both of them, and I told John, “I’m feeling a lot better now. Have you heard the latest?”
He shook his head. “Just what Ari told at the press briefing this morning. You were feeling better and spent the night comfortably, and that your heart is just fine.”
“That’s not precisely what he said,” added my Chief of Staff. “He told them that the reason they knew it wasn’t your heart was that the doctors had absolute medical confirmation that the Democrats were right, and that you were indeed heartless.”
I laughed at that. “He didn’t!”
He shook his head. “No, he didn’t. That would have made for a great press briefing, though, wouldn’t it? No, he just gave a standard briefing. Your heart is fine, you are resting comfortably, further tests are scheduled.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” I told him.
“Essentially. He did have a nice time informing Fox News that you were still alive.”
“Huh?”
McCain snorted and answered, “Fox News reported in an exclusive early this morning that you had a heart attack and were in a coma on life support.”
“Did they mourn or applaud?” I asked. John made a waffling motion with his hand. “Tremendous!” I said.
“So, what’s the plan, Mister President?” asked Josh.
I snorted. “My gall bladder has to come out. They are scheduling the surgery for tomorrow morning. I gather it is pretty straightforward, but I am going to be here for another couple of days, and then be stuck in the White House for a week or so. You’ll need to have Ari do some kind of a press briefing, probably with a doctor or two around. Big pictures, small words.”
“How’s Marilyn holding up?” asked John.