trauma room, Jackie Kennedy sits in a folding chair holding vigil.
Dr. Mac Perry, a thirty-four-year-old surgeon, now steps in to head the team. He uses a scalpel to slice open the president’s throat and perform a tracheotomy, while someone else attaches a tube to a respirator to induce regular breathing.
Jackie now rises from her chair, determined to enter the trauma room. She has heard the talk about fluids and resuscitation and is beginning to hope that her husband might just live. A nurse blocks her path, but the demure First Lady can display an iron will when she wants to. “I’m going to get into that room,” she repeats over and over as she wrestles with Nurse Doris Nelson, who shows no signs of backing down. “I’m going to get into that room.”
“Mrs. Kennedy, you need a sedative,” a nearby doctor tells her.
But the First Lady does not wish to be numbed. She wants to feel every last moment with her husband. “I want to be in there when he dies,” she says firmly.
* * *
Bobby Kennedy gets the bad news from J. Edgar Hoover.
As the head of America’s top law enforcement agency, Hoover is informed of the shooting almost immediately. The FBI director is a dispassionate man, but never more so than right now. He sits at his desk on the fifth floor of the Justice Department Building as he picks up the phone to call Bobby Kennedy. It has been fifteen minutes since Lee Harvey Oswald first pulled the trigger. The surgical trauma team at Parkland is fighting to keep the president alive.
Bobby is just about to eat a tuna fish sandwich on the patio of his Virginia home when his wife, Ethel, tells him he has a call.
“It’s J. Edgar Hoover,” she tells Bobby.
The attorney general knows this must be important. The director knows better than to call Bobby at home. He sets down his sandwich and goes to the phone. It’s a special direct government line known as Extension 163.
“I have news for you,” Hoover says. “The president has been shot.”
Bobby hangs up. His first reaction is one of great distress, and his body seems to go slack. But his next thought, as always, is to protect his older brother. He calls the White House and has all the locks on JFK’s file cabinets changed so that Lyndon Johnson cannot go through them. The most delicate files are completely removed from the White House and placed under round-the-clock security.
Bobby then fields phone call after phone call from friends and family. He holds back tears, but Ethel knows that her husband is breaking down and hands him a pair of dark glasses to hide his red-rimmed eyes.
The calls don’t stop. In the midst of them all, Bobby realizes that the tables have been turned. And he knows that he will soon get a call from a man he despises.
* * *
Jackie Kennedy gets the bad news from Dr. William Kemp Clark.
It comes just moments after, against great odds, the First Lady battles her way into the trauma room. She stands in a corner, out of the way, just wanting to be near her husband.
The sight is singularly medical, as tubes now sprout from the president’s mouth, nose, and chest. His skin is the palest white. Blood is being transfused into his body. Dr. Mac Perry presses down on the president’s sternum to restart the heart, even as the electrocardiogram machine shows a flat line. Dr. William Kemp Clark, Parkland’s chief neurosurgeon, assists Perry by monitoring the EKG for even a flicker of deviation.
Finally, Clark knows they can do no more. A sheet is drawn over JFK’s face. Dr. Clark turns to Jackie Kennedy. “Your husband has sustained a fatal wound,” the veteran surgeon tells the First Lady.
“I know,” she replies.
“The president is dead.”
Jackie leans up and presses her cheek to that of Dr. Clark. It is an expression of thanks. Kemp Clark, a hard man who served in the Pacific in World War II, can’t help himself. He breaks down and sobs.
* * *
Most people in the United States get the bad news of the president’s death from CBS newsman Walter Cronkite.
The most trusted man in America first breaks into the soap opera
* * *
Lyndon Baines Johnson gets the bad news from Kenny O’Donnell.
Shortly after 1:00 P.M., John F. Kennedy’s appointments secretary marches into the small white cubicle in the Minor Medicine section of the hospital and stands before Lyndon Johnson. O’Donnell is openly distraught. He is not the sort of man who weeps at calamity, but the devastated look on his face is clear for all to see.
Even before O’Donnell opens his mouth, LBJ knows that it is official: Lyndon Baines Johnson is now the thirty- sixth president of the United States.
* * *
Jack Ruby gets the bad news from television, just like most of America.
The nightclub owner is on the second floor of the
