Executive orders - Tom Clancy [475]
In this case, I did. I was wrong. I owe an apology to the President, and I owe an apology to you. This might well be the end of my career as a broadcast journalist. If so, I want to leave it as I entered it, telling the truth as best I can.
Good night, from NBC News. Plumber took a very deep breath as he stared at the camera.
What the hell was that all about?
Plumber stood before he answered. If you have to ask that question, Tom-
The phone on his desk rang-actually, it had a blinking light. Plumber decided not to answer it, and instead walked to his dressing room. Tom Donner would have to figure it out all by himself.
TWO THOUSAND MILES away, over Rocky Mountain National Park, Arnold van Damm stopped the machine, ejected the tape, and carried it down the circular stairs to the President's compartment in the nose. He saw Ryan going over his next and final speech of the day.
Jack, I think you will want to see this, the chief of staff told him, with a broad grin.
THERE HAS TO be a first one of everything. This time it happened in Chicago. She'd seen her physician on Saturday afternoon and been told the same as everyone else. Flu. Aspirin. Liquids. Bed rest. But looking in the mirror, she saw some discoloration on her fair skin, and that frightened her even more than the other symptoms she'd had to that point. She called her doctor, but she got only an answering machine, and those blotches could not wait, and so she got in her car and drove to the University of Chicago Medical Center, one of America's finest. She waited in the emergency room for about forty minutes, and when her name was called, she stood and walked toward the desk, but she didn't make it, instead falling to the tile floor in sight of the administrative people. That caused some instant reactions, and a minute later, two orderlies had her on a gurney and were wheeling her back to the treatment area, her paperwork carried behind by one of the admissions people.
The first physician to see her was a young resident most of the way through his first year of post-graduate study in internal medicine, doing his ER rotation and liking it.
What's the problem? he asked, as the nursing staff went to work, checking pulse, blood pressure, and respiration.
Here, the woman from admissions said, handing over the paper forms. The physician scanned them.
Flu symptoms, looks like, but what's this?
Heart rate is one twenty, BP is-wait a minute. The nurse ran it again. Blood pressure is ninety over fifty? She looked much too normal for that.
The doctor was unbuttoning the woman's blouse. And there it was. The clarity of the moment made passages from his textbooks leap into his mind. The young resident held up his hands.
Everybody, stop what you're doing. We may have a major problem here. I want everybody regloved, everybody masked, right now.
Temp is one-oh-four-point-four, another nurse said, stepping back from the patient.
This isn't flu. We have a major internal bleed, and those are petechiae. The resident got a mask and changed gloves as he spoke. Get Dr. Quinn over here.
A nurse trotted out, while the resident looked again at the admission papers. Might be vomiting blood, darkened stool. Depressed blood pressure, high fever, and subcutaneous bleeding. But this was Chicago, his mind protested. He got a needle.
Everybody stay clear, okay, nobody get close to my hands and arms, he said, slipping the needle into the vein, then drawing four 5cc tubes.
What gives? Dr. Joe Quinn asked. The resident recited the symptoms, and posed his own question as he moved the blood tubes onto a table.
What do you think, Joe?
If we were somewhere else
Yeah. Hemorrhagic fever, if that's possible.