She was confused. She wasn’t sure why there were doctors hovering above her inside of the Oval Office. Perhaps because of the level of exhaustion from the past several days, she had fallen into a deep sleep and an aide, noticing that she was slow to rouse concernedly called the White House physician and his team to check on her.
The confusion lasted only a moment longer; then the memory of what happened six hours prior flooded her. She tried to sit up but the doctors pushed against her gently but firmly, not allowing her to rise.
“Madam President, can you understand my words?” the masked doctor closest to her asked.
Libby nodded.
“You’ve been shot,” the doctor continued. “You’re in the recovery room post-op and need to lie back and rest. Your wound is fresh. It is sutured but unnecessary movement could jar the wound and cause you to bleed out internally. Do you understand?”
Again, Libby nodded. She laid her head back on the pillow and watched as one of the nurses added something to her IV drip. Libby wasn’t sure what it was but it relaxed her almost immediately.
She closed her eyes. She had been through quite an ordeal and it was all still fuzzy to her. As she rested, she tried to recall all of the details that led to the hospital bed.
She had traveled to Belgium to attend the commemoration of the anniversary of the Allies victory in World War I. She had just walked onto the stage towards the podium when gunfire went off.
Her attention was immediately drawn to a man standing to her left, near the monument. She could see the metal plating of the gun glinting in the early morning sunlight. The man held the gun above his head as he was swarmed by Secret Service. Within seconds, he was relieved of the gun and taken to the ground (with a few kicks and punches thrown in for good measure). Before the crowd could react, the gunman was pulled from the congregation and shoved in a vehicle that sped off.
It all happened so fast she didn’t have time to really take in what was occurring. She felt something brush against her face. Instinctively, she touched her face and then held her fingers out in front of her. She was shocked to see blood.
For a moment, everything was quiet and it seemed as if she was the only person in an infinite open area. It was in that stillness that she felt the burning in her shoulder. She touched the area and her hand pulled away the color crimson.
She was losing too much blood to be taken to Air Force One – she needed urgent medical attention. She was loaded quickly into the pre-placed ambulance and her caravan sped off on the pre-planned route. She arrived at the local medical facility two minutes later. The facility was already cleared and she was admitted directly to surgery.
Six hours later she awoke in the Belgium hospital with strange faces leering over her.
“You are in the Ypres,” the hospital administrator said to her the next morning. Somewhere in her memory, she recalled a college professor saying that the city of Ypres was nicknamed Wipers by the British during World War I because the name of the town was difficult to pronounce.
She was still weak but felt better than she had since exiting surgery. “Do you visit all of your patients personally?” she joked with the administrator.
The administrator smiled. “Only those whose care has international repercussions. Our surgeons have successfully removed the bullet and repaired the damaged artery in your shoulder. You lost quite a bit of blood but are now stable. After a few more days of rest you should be able to move around.
“You’ll need to be careful as any unnecessary jarring could loosen the sutures and you could bleed out again. In a few days, your wounds will have healed well enough for you to be transferred back to America.”
The Secret Service agents were nervous. It was obvious to the entire world where the President of the United States was being treated. The United States had just entered the war that was engulfing the world and now its President was in a country just on the northern tip of the violence, unable to relocate. American enemies to the south and west of Belgium were in prime position to weaken the United States through an attack on the nation’s leader.
American troops were brought in from Germany for additional protection and the airspace over the medical facility was secured by the American military.
By the third day, Libby was stable and awake most of the day. Secretly, the Vice President had been running the country the last three days while President Williams recovered. That would continue until she reached home and could be evaluated further.
She was briefed constantly over the next few days on the business of the United States; and she was filled in on the past seventy two hours which had seen her in-and-out of medicinally-induced states of mind.
It was during lunch on the fifth day that she overheard the doctors talk of another American who was there, who had collapsed just before her speech began and was now in a coma. The doctors were not entirely sure yet why the coma had occurred.
Libby told the Secret Service that she would like to see the man. The Secret Service had begun preparations to move her from the hospital to Air Force One and did not like that their schedule would be disrupted. Libby didn’t need to insist. She was going to visit the man; it was their job to
