Long May She Reign (33 page)

“Upstairs,” Cheryl elaborated.

If this was the beginning of some supposedly uplifting speech about God, Meg was pretty sure she was going to start screaming. But she nodded, more cautiously this time. Vicky had strolled over in their direction, and Meg had the strong impression that she might be about to intercede.

Cheryl bit her lip, looked away, and shifted her weight some more.

“I'm having trouble following the direction of this conversation,” Meg said, keeping her voice as pleasant as possible.

Cheryl sighed. “My friend Olivia works in Pediatrics, and she—well, they all know you come here regularly, and—well—”

Okay. She wasn't in the mood, but it was manageable. “In other words,” Meg said, “someone up there's pretty sick, and your friend was wondering if I would stop by to say hello.” Although why in the hell anyone would want to
meet
her was a phenomenon Meg had yet to figure out. Regardless of how often it happened.

Cheryl looked at her unhappily. “More than one.”

Right. This was a hospital. “Okay,” Meg said, although the thought of having to go up there and be captivating and witty and encouraging made her feel more like bursting into tears than anything else.

Vicky frowned at Cheryl. “Today's sessions were a little grueling. Why don't we think about that for Monday, maybe?”

“Yes,” Cheryl said, instantly. “Of course. Monday would be better. We can just—”

Meg shook her head, slowly taking off the ice packs, and strapping her splint and brace back on. “No, it's all right. Today is fine.” She would just duck in, smile, shake a couple of hands, sign a cast or two, and then, she could leave. If she'd known in advance, she could have brought along a few of those little Air Force One boxes of M&M's or something to hand out, but—well, it probably didn't matter, since they wouldn't know what they were missing.

Vicky was still glaring at Cheryl, but the truth was, she could pretty much do a Pediatrics ward visit in her sleep. Been there, done that, for
years
.

Luckily. Or—unfortunately. Depending upon one's point of view. There were times, when she was little, that it felt as though accompanying her mother on public appearances was practically the only time she ever got to
see
her.

Not that she was still angry about it, years later. Hell, no.

She hoisted herself up onto her good leg, feeling dizzy enough to concede—to herself—that she should have gotten a damn sandwich or something at the Grab 'n' Go before coming over here.

Five minutes. Ten, at the most. No big deal.

She let a couple of her agents go ahead to decide whether her route out to the hall, into the elevator, and up to the ward would be sufficiently secure. While they waited, Cheryl got more and more contrite.

“You, um, you really don't have to do this today,” she said. “Or
ever
, for that matter. I mean—”

Meg raised her good hand abruptly to cut off the rest of the sentence before it went any further, and Cheryl subsided.

She couldn't help hoping that the only patients up there would be rapidly recovering from minor things like tonsillectomies—but, she knew better. Wan, big-eyed children, quietly frantic parents, cheerful nurses with brightly colored scrubs and sad expressions—it was always the same. Only the names were different.

So, she was going to have to steel herself to do this. Figure out a way to look and act engaged, while making sure to keep herself inwardly detached. There'd been times, over the years, at hospices, and nursing homes, and hospitals—and animal shelters—when it had been a terrible struggle to keep from sobbing openly. Once, she had seen her mother start to completely lose it, because something about one
particular
brave young mother with terminal cancer hit her unexpectedly hard. She regained control immediately—as she always did—but later on, in the limousine, she'd covered her eyes with her hand. Most of the way back to the White House. She'd been in pretty rough shape after they'd made official visits to the sites of former concentration camps in Europe, too—to the degree that later, on Air Force One, the medical people thought she was having trouble getting her breath and clandestinely gave her some oxygen in the private Presidential suite.

Except that Meg had seen her react the exact same way, when she was ten years old and her grandfather died. She had loved him a lot, so it had been very sad, but her strongest memory from that day was her mother's silent, trembling grief, although she had never cried, and the long, heartfelt eulogy she had given had been flawless, and even made people laugh fondly here and there. When the family was finally alone, back at his rambling apartment on Fifth Avenue—which her parents sold a few months later, a hasty move they now sort of regretted—her mother had gone into the library without a word to any of them, closed the door, and didn't come out for several hours.

Brian came into the room and made a small “All clear” motion with his hand, and Meg nodded, took a few deep breaths, and lifted herself back up onto her cane.

Her mother, of course, had been gifted with the truly great politician's trifecta—a photographic memory for names and faces, the ability to make instant personal connections with total strangers, and the underrated skill of being able to convey genuine sincerity. Today, Meg figured she'd be doing well if she remembered to smile the whole time, and was able to hide the fact that she was mostly going through the motions.

Neal always liked talking to people he didn't know, but Steven hated philanthropic visits even more than she did—both of them were shy as hell, as a rule—and her father wasn't too crazy about making public appearances, either. He was just better at masking it. Her mother really seemed to enjoy doing it, most of the time, but—strangers were easy. It was only when her mother had to deal with people to whom she was actually
close
, that she—but Meg wasn't mad at her. Nope. No way. Never happen.

And not anything to dwell upon, at the moment.

She met a little boy with two broken legs, another boy who had burned his arm badly when he bumped against a wood stove, and a girl recovering from a bout of pneumonia. An incredibly sweet and very small girl with leukemia—Jesus—and a painfully thin bald boy about Steven's age, who also obviously had some form of cancer.

Which was about the time that her chest started feeling very tight, and her heart seemed to be beating much harder than it should be.

But, she kept going. Met a boy who had sickle-cell anemia, a girl who actually
had
had a tonsillectomy—and so many others that she had trouble remembering the various diagnoses—and names—once she had left a given room. The kids who were well enough were gathered together in a communal ward, and most of them were out of bed, playing with toys and puzzles, watching television, and so forth. The children who were more seriously ill or injured were in smaller single or double rooms. They were all shockingly pleased to see her, which was flattering—and disconcerting.

Vicky must have called ahead to warn the head nurse on the shift, Olivia, because she lingered close by, and kept asking whether she was too tired to continue. The answer was hell,
yes
, but Meg just smiled, and shook her head, and kept moving from bed to bed, and room to room, with a couple of her agents trailing nearby, but staying out in the corridors the entire time.

Some of the kids were asleep, but one mother actually insisted upon waking her son up, because he would be so disappointed not to have gotten a chance to see her in person.

And how strange was
that
? Meg, for one, found herself underwhelming, even on her best days.

She didn't get back to school until after the dining halls had stopped serving, but in the car, Ed had remarked that he was starving, and asked if she would mind if they took a quick detour to the pizza place at the shopping center. It was a transparent ploy, on his part, but she wasn't about to call him on it, and when he asked, casually, if he could order something for her, too, she thanked him and gave him enough money to get her a meatball grinder.

Which she was too tired to eat, but she stuck it in her refrigerator for later, and then went to bed without checking her email or voice-mail—or doing anything more than taking off her sneakers and dropping her jacket on the floor before she got under the covers.

Since it was Friday night, the dorm was even louder than usual, and she kept waking up every time music unexpectedly starting playing or someone shouted. She would do her best to doze back off—only to have some new noise wake her right back up again. A telephone ringing— her
own
telephone, two of the times; doors slamming; a bunch of people laughing. Benign sounds, which were getting on every single god-damned nerve she had.

In the morning, before she even opened her eyes, she could hear icy sleet against her window—and decided that there was no chance in hell that she was going to try walking down to the dining hall. So she heated up the meatball sandwich in the microwave, and had that for breakfast, along with a Coke.

She was bored, and feeling very lonely, so she turned on the television to watch C-Span for a while—nothing like watching Congress dither and argue and spout platitudes to brighten up the day. But, since it was the weekend, they were mostly only showing book stuff, and she lost interest almost immediately, and switched to CNN, instead. Somehow, the more homesick she felt, the more she felt a desperate need to get as much current events as possible. Among other things, she really missed reading her mother's non-classified daily news summaries, to say nothing of being able to request any newspaper or magazine she wanted, pretty much around the clock. Plus, at home, she could watch press briefings, or events in the Rose Garden or wherever, live, on closed-circuit television, which made it easy to keep up.

And, yeah, it made her feel better every time she caught a glimpse of her mother. Got to see how she looked, what she was doing. Knew for sure that she was
safe
, at least for the moment. Sometimes she got lucky and saw her father, too, generally with Preston standing a few feet away, looking dapper.

It was much less entertaining when she saw
herself
, but—Thank God for small mercies—that wasn't happening very often lately.

Her door was partway open, and Susan knocked on the doorjamb.

“How you doing?” she asked.

Time for the obligatory daily JA check-in. Christ. “Fine,” Meg said. “You?”

Susan nodded.

They both glanced at the television, as the lead stories heading into the top of the hour were announced, more than one of them relating to the President, of course.

“It isn't weird for you to watch that?” Susan asked curiously.

Meg shook her head. “It's kind of comforting, actually.”

Susan seemed to find that a little hard to fathom, but she nodded. Meg waved her into the room, and she sat down in the desk chair. They watched as there was a sound-clip of the President speaking about what the commentators were characterizing as “bold domestic policy initiatives.” The one they were focusing on involved a detailed new health care reform plan, which already had the apparent, and somewhat surprising, backing of a good percentage of the AMA, although not the insurance companies. Yet. The Administration's legislative activities had been noticeably enterprising of late, although, as ever, the odds were very much against the prospect of the more humanistic ones succeeding.

“What do you see?” Susan asked. “When you look at that.”

Unfortunately, she saw what she always saw—her mother was very tired and unhappy. Meg sighed. “I see a person who isn't getting much sleep.” And who was worrying herself sick—possibly literally—about too many things. “What do
you
see?”

Susan shrugged. “Someone who actually wants the best for the country, and is trying to do something about it. For all I know, there's stuff going right over my head, but it sure doesn't come across that way.”

“No, it's accurate,” Meg said. “I mean, Christ knows she's a politician, but she can pretty much get away with it, because she doesn't have any kind of private agenda. I think it really all
is
for the greater good.” And, on the occasions when she suspected otherwise, it usually only took one glance at her rigidly moral father to realize that the very fact that they were still together, however tenuously, was a strong indication that her mother was pretty close to being exactly who Meg hoped she was. Politically, anyway. On the other hand, her parents were so utterly private, that it was possible that, despite having lived with them her entire life, she had no idea whatsoever about what their marriage was
really
like.

“Do you think it'll actually get through Congress?” Susan asked.

Meg shook her head. “Not a chance.” And the obvious reality of that was very annoying, now that she thought about it. Her mother should be too smart for this. “It's bad timing, and it's stupid. She's wasting a lot of perfectly good political capital, when she really just ought to pack her little bags on this one, and come back and fight another day. Aim lower, for now. I mean, you know what huge segments of the country are hearing practically every time she opens her mouth lately? They're hearing, ‘Guess what, boys? As soon as I finish this,
I'm coming after your guns!
'”

“Sounds good to me,” Susan said.

True enough. Despite being the ultimate pipe dream. “Yeah, but,” Meg winked at her, “you're a Northeastern intellectual at a very exclusive college—what the hell do
you
know?”

Susan smiled. “Not a damned thing,” she said.

But the actual political ramifications of what was going on suddenly made perfect sense—and Meg felt pretty dumb. Which was a relief. If her mother had suddenly lost her impeccable Washingtonian instincts, it would have been immeasurably disappointing. “Except, I'm wrong,” she said. “By making these moves, she can't lose. Either there's some kind of miracle, and most of the stuff gets through somehow, and the country takes a remarkable, positive turn, and she has this wonderful place in history—or she blows herself out of the water, even though it
looks
as though she's just trying to push some ambitious new policies.”