'You're awake,' he said, in a tone that pretended to be matter-of-fact, but knowing him as I do, I knew to be anything but. 'You all right?'
I didn't know. I didn't even know where I was. On the bedside table to my right, a laptop computer sat open and all fired up. Beside it was a large bouquet of yellow and red flowers, and beside that was an oddly shaped plastic cup with a handle that, it occurred to me even in my groggy state, I might soon be expected to urinate in. Outside the big window, it was dark, so I assumed it was night. Can't get anything by me.
I'm a reporter, so I figured I'd ask the questions, beginning with the obvious. 'Where am I?'
'Oh boy,' Martin said, shaking his head, then looking toward the door nervously, like maybe he should summon help. 'You're at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. You know what you're doing here?'
I said, 'Just help me out for a minute. I've been shot, right? Tell me what happened. Is Hutchins dead?'
Martin's never really been one to trot around the issues, and just because I was in a hospital, strapped to blinking machines that seemed to be sending all sorts of fluids coursing through my body, he wasn't about to start now.
'Jack, I hate to do this, but it's deadline. It's Thursday night, eight o'clock. The national desk up in Boston is screaming. You were a witness to an assassination attempt on the president of the United States in the middle of a cutthroat campaign, and we all thought it might be kind of nice to put this into a story.'
Attempt. He said 'attempt,' so Hutchins wasn't dead, which was good.
Neither was I, which, for me, was even better.
'Look, Peter, I'll do what I can. But before I do anything, fill me in. What am I doing here? What the fuck happened? Is Hutchins all right? Am I all right?'
Martin seemed to like that I was getting angry, evidenced by the look of relief that spilled all over his face. 'Good, good,' he said, as if to himself. 'This is going to work out fine. Here's what I know, which isn't much. I'm counting on you to tell me more.
'You were out playing golf with the president early this morning. By the way, Appleton'-the editor in chief of the paper-'is curious as to exactly why you were doing that. So am I. Anyway, you're on the sixteenth hole. Evidently, the two of you were in a sand trap getting some little clinic from this pro golfer, I don't know his name. All of a sudden, you're shot.
'The FBI is saying that it was some militia member, disguised as a maintenance worker at the course, who pulled out a Colt.45 and shot you from the other side of the fairway. He wasn't a very good aim, luckily. The first bullet hit your club, ricocheted off, then grazed Hutchins's shoulder. A second shot struck you in the ribs. I think it broke your rib bone, or severely bruised it, but I'm no doctor. One of these typical situations when an inch either way and you're dead now.
All I know is, the diagnosis is good, and you're expected to be out of here within a couple of days.'
With that, Martin looked nervously at the door again, lowered his voice a bit, and said, 'They really don't even want me in here now, so we should try to be as quick as possible.'
'How is Hutchins?' I asked.
'He's fine. A slight shoulder injury, and now the guy's a national hero. A local paramedic told a network television crew that as they were loading him into the ambulance, he looked at them with a wide grin and said, 'What kind of jerk would shoot me right in the middle of the best round of golf of my life?' He's been slipping in the public polls for days, but now analysts are saying this shooting could win him the election. The guy's being talked about like a battlefield hero.'
More and more, the scene was coming back to me-the loud cracks, Hutchins falling in a heap on a brilliant morning, the frenzy of activity, the piercing scream. 'Jesus, how's Skeeter Davis, the golfer?' I asked, assuming he was the one who screamed. 'He dead?'
'Dead? God no. I think he turned an ankle running for cover. He wasn't even hit.'
'What happened to the shooter?' I asked, again, remembering another scream and late shots.
'Dead. Secret Service says he pointed a gun at one of their agents, and they mowed him down. Six bullets, I think, all of them in the head. This is a no-shit crew.'
Martin was getting increasingly nervous, looking at the door, at the computer, at his watch, and at me, like some sort of caged animal.
He's anxious by nature, but usually it's on his turf. Slightly bookish, with the soft, pasty look of someone whose father was a dermatologist constantly preaching the evils of the sun, he knows Capitol Hill front and back. He knows things about the budget process that cabinet secretaries don't know. He knows the ages of all nine Supreme Court justices and the years they were appointed. He can cite election statistics dating back to Eisenhower's first term. In a city where most bureau chiefs survive on brass and television appearances, Martin is the opposite. He survives on his brains and his willingness to work. But this was an assassination attempt, a glorified police story, and Martin really didn't have a clue.
'If you're well enough,' he started, looking tentatively toward the door again, 'we'd like a first-person account of what happened out there. It's a blockbuster. Biggest event in the world, and no one else will have what we have.'
As Martin talked, a self-important young man in a navy blue suit strode through the door and abruptly asked, 'Is your telephone not hooked up?'
I was fortunate enough to be born with a virtually bottomless reservoir of aggravation, which I dipped inffto shoot him a look that should have stopped him dead in his tracks, though perhaps I shouldn't have been thinking in those terms on that specific day. He ignored it and quickly came around the bed to the phone, where he held up the disconnected telephone cord in the air, glanced angrily at me as if I had crossed him in some way, and plugged it back into the wall. Almost immediately, it rang.
'For you,' he said.
Through the earpiece, a voice boomed out. 'Jack, Jack, that you? For chrissakes, I'm five pars into the best nine holes of my life, and some horse's ass feels the need to take a potshot at us. What the hell is that all about?' Then came the sound of loud, wheezing laughter.
It was Hutchins. I'll be damned if I'm not the quickest thinker I've ever met, especially under duress. I motioned to Martin for a pen, and he searched furiously through a shoulder bag for a legal pad and a writing instrument, placing them carefully in my lap.
'I think that was my club pro, Mr. President, ticked off that you were taking me to the cleaners.' I had a passing thought that maybe I shouldn't be joking with the president about killing him, not now anyway. No matter. I heard him cough, then laugh into the phone.
'You all right?' he asked, but didn't pause for an answer. 'You ought to see this getup up here. It's a goddamned presidential suite, right here in the hospital. You should come up. My doctors, they think they're my mother. They won't even let me out of bed, and I've got a campaign to wage and an election to win.'
I asked, 'Mr. President, have you talked to the press yet?'
'The hell with that,' he said. 'Turn on CNN. My doctor's mugging for the cameras right now. He thinks he's Robert fucking Redford. They're showing your picture all over the place. I have Dalton'-Royal Dalton, his press secretary-'issuing a statement from me.'
As I was shaking off the grogginess and moving around my bed, it struck me just how much pain I was in. My ribs felt like they were about to snap, and even normal breathing began to hurt. My arms throbbed from all the needles and heavy tubes sticking in them. My lips were so dry they were flaking, and I was near desperate for a drink of water.
But journalism is a funny business, and not in a humorous kind of way.
There is no sympathy, only opportunity, and the fact that I was laid out in a hospital bed in Bethesda, Maryland, with a bullet hole in my chest and an injured rib that probably meant the difference between life and death was seen by my superiors as a major boon for the paper, and probably for me. And lying there, I began to see it that way myself.
'Mr. President, you mind if I throw a few questions at you for tomorrow's story?'
'You're in a goddamned hospital bed, and you're writing a story for tomorrow morning's paper?' Hutchins asked, incredulous. 'Jesus Christ, you guys just don't give it a rest, do you? But what the hell, we're in this together. Fire away.'
With that pun, he burst out laughing, then quickly calmed himself down.
