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When a nurse spoke the president’s name, Reagan groggily opened his eyes. At about 7:15, as he began emerging from anesthesia, he reached for the breathing tube in his throat and tried to pull it out. His body convulsed and bucked. Respirators and tubes made patients “air hungry”: the president undoubtedly felt as if he were suffocating.

As gently as possible, Cathy Edmondson, a recovery room nurse, told the president to relax. “Mr. Reagan,” she said, “that is helping you breathe. Don’t touch it now. Trust me.”

The head of Reagan’s bed was raised to reduce pressure on his chest, but both the bullet wound and the surgical wounds caused excruciating pain. At 7:20, on the order of an anesthesiologist, a nurse pumped a fast-acting and powerful narcotic, Fentanyl, into one of Reagan’s IV lines; fifteen minutes later, she gave him a second dose.

As Reagan slowly began to return to consciousness, Cathy Edmondson and another nurse, Denise Sullivan, discussed the appropriate way to address their patient. Partly to reduce the stress of caring for the most powerful man in the world, they decided to call him “Mr. Reagan,” not “Mr. President.” At the moment, Reagan didn’t seem very presidential anyway. He was ashen and a machine was breathing for him. A tube snaked into his nostril, down his esophagus, and into his stomach, where it was vacuuming the stomach’s contents so he wouldn’t vomit. Another catheter was draining and monitoring his urine. He was receiving fluids through three IV lines, two in his left arm and one in his right. And every fifteen minutes or so, a doctor drew blood from an arterial line in his left wrist and sent the sample to the lab.

The president’s eyes fluttered open again, then closed. His nurses, who wanted to be able to react to even the slightest change in his condition as quickly as possible, decided to treat Reagan as if he were recovering from open-heart surgery. Such patients require two nurses to constantly monitor blood pressure, drainage tubes, and breathing.

During the president’s first forty-five minutes in the recovery room, his nurses spent most of their time ensuring that he didn’t rip out his breathing tube, since he couldn’t survive without it. When he pulled at the tube, Edmondson or Sullivan would push down his arm. At one point, Sullivan told him, “I’m going to ask you not to touch the tube, Mr. Reagan. If you are not able to leave it alone, I’m going to tie your hands to the bed.”

* * *

THE FIRST OF Reagan’s four children to arrive in Washington was his youngest, Ron Reagan, who had landed at National Airport while his father was in surgery. The others—Michael and Maureen Reagan, and Patti Davis—were still in southern California, scheduled to board a late-evening flight to Washington on a military cargo plane.

Ron, a twenty-two-year-old dancer, had started the day in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he was touring with the Joffrey II Dancers. He and his wife were eating lunch in the restaurant of the Hilton hotel there when his Secret Service agent hurried into the room. “A serious incident has taken place,” said the agent. “Someone fired shots at your father. We don’t think he was hit.”

Ron ran to his room, where he turned on the television and watched news accounts of the shooting. He called the White House and learned that in fact his father had been shot and that his mother was at the hospital. He wanted desperately to get to Washington to comfort his parents; fortunately, although there were no commercial flights from Lincoln to the nation’s capital, someone arranged a private jet to take him. As he flew to Washington, he thought about the past twenty years of political assassinations and grappled with the horrifying possibility that he might soon be attending his father’s presidential funeral.

A Secret Service car picked him up at the airport and took him straight to the hospital, where he found his mother in a waiting room, staring at a television. She remained composed, but he could see that she was