Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [91]
Richard Allen was only half listening to the debate. He thought it was a pointless exercise, especially since the vice president was due to arrive soon. In the end, either Reagan would be well enough to sign the bill or they would need Bush to weigh in and play a key role in any decision about succession.
Allen also knew that Jim Baker would be returning to the White House any minute, and when the chief of staff finally entered the conference room, just before 6:15, he was greatly relieved. “Here’s Jim!” Allen said, happy to steer the conversation in a new direction.
At first glance, Baker appeared no worse for wear: his blue-striped tie was carefully knotted, his expensive gray suit was smooth and free of creases, and his hair was still perfectly parted. But the skin under his eyes was puffy and he spoke in a weary, somber tone.
“The president is in good shape,” Baker reported. “I don’t know whether they have put a statement out over there or not. I assume they haven’t.… They are probably finishing up in another ten minutes. They found nothing in the abdominal cavity. They opened up his chest and found some bleeding in one lung. They stopped that bleeding. They have removed the bullet, or fragment of the bullet. It looked like it was a ricochet.” The prognosis, Baker told the group, “is better than good, but they wouldn’t say very good.”
Then Baker added, “Jim Brady’s condition is not good at all. He is still undergoing surgery.” His voice became softer, sadder. “He took a shot right in the brain.”
Soon the conversation turned back to the question of how to run the government in the president’s absence. Allen told Baker that the group in the Situation Room recommended that Bush take over many of the president’s duties the next day; among other things, he should oversee a cabinet meeting and attend a working lunch with the Dutch prime minister in Reagan’s place.
“I think that’s fine,” Baker said. But having heard earlier about the debate concerning the possible transfer of presidential powers, Baker was quick to say that he did not want to get “involved in questions of succession and incapacity and that sort of thing.” He also expressed confidence that by the following morning the president would be able to make a decision about whether a transfer was appropriate.
“There is an issue,” Allen said. “The issue is a bill, maybe two, that must be signed tomorrow, and that forces our hand.”
“That has to be signed tomorrow?” Baker said.
“The dairy bill,” Allen said.
“If he says sign it, you can sign it,” Haig said, referring to the auto-pen device that signed many documents for the president.
“A machine won’t work,” Allen said, frustrated by the way the conversation kept going in circles. “They will blow that one up. They will want to know exactly how his hand moved, if his signature was firm, so on and so forth. It’s an historic signature.”
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AT 6:45, REAGAN was wheeled down the hall to the surgical recovery room, a wide-open space with pale yellow walls, a tiled floor, and a central nurses’ station. The room could accommodate up to twelve patients, but at the moment it was empty—the hospital had cleared it of others to accommodate the president. Even Agent Tim McCarthy, whose surgery had been quick and relatively simple, made only a brief stop in the recovery room before being transferred.
Reagan was parked feetfirst in the far left corner of the recovery room and his bed was cordoned off with several portable green screens. Normally patients were taken to the intensive care unit soon after a surgery, but doctors planned to leave the president in the recovery room overnight. It had the same equipment