Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
Never before had she been so aware of his eyes, the blackness of the pupils, the brown lines radiating into the topaz iris and the dark
brown ring that encircled it. A thin, s-shaped squiggle of redness showed in the left sclera. Moisture clumped his thick, straight lashes.
He had commanded her attention, therefore she dare not distract herself by shouting for a doctor.
In this infinitely stretched moment, she was possessed of a metaphysical certainty, a true religious’s fanaticism. Only through her gaze could she infuse Curt with a redemptive life force. The totality of her visual concentration negated her other senses. She didn’t hear the cries and stamping of the terrified crowd; she was oblivious to the pushing. She smelled neither the smoky acridity of the gunfire nor the sourish pungency of panic. She scarcely felt the brutal, unintentional kick between her shoulders, but steadied herself with her hand. Later she would find it impossible to believe that three members of the NBC team, defecting their duty to their network and the public’s right to know, had been next to her, circling Curt’s recumbent body to protect him from being trampled in the pandemonium. The second and third shots she registered only by Curt’s blinks. She never heard Crystal’s demented shrieking.
She stared into Curt’s eyes as if guiding him through the depths of some dark, primordial forest.
* * *
When the sharp sound rang outside in the corridor Joscelyn was already in the committee chamber. She never would have identified the
sudden, dry crack as gunfire if it weren’t for the ensuing blast of shouting. She immediately fell prey to her childhood fear that the very worst, either physical or metaphysical, had occurred. Jumping from her chair, she rushed in the direction of the left door.
Frenzied people were thrusting their way inside to escape the shots in the corridor, while many of those inside—either newsmen or spectators fearing that they were trapped and would be mowed down—attempted to push their way out. Over the sounds of panic repetitively came the question: “What’s happening?”
Joscelyn was trapped in the crush. As a keening wail rose over the mob sounds, higher, yet higher, Joscelyn elbowed and clawed her way to the exit. Briefly caught against the mahogany jamb, she used her fists to emerge into the corridor.
A lurching, shoulder-held camera partially obscured her vision of Crystal, who was staring down at the floor. The lovely mouth was a wide-open red circle from which came that piercing, blood-chilling shriek. Gid Talbott was shouldering his way through the crowd. Heavy features contorted, he dropped out of Joscelyn’s line of vision.
Some radio or TV correspondent was shouting near her ear, “This is awful, awful, oh my God, like Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. Blood everywhere. An unknown assassin has shot Alexander Talbott and Curt Ivory. From here it appears both men are dead.”
She thrust herself toward a human knot. Three men had linked arms to protect Curt as he lay sprawled on his back. Honora knelt over him, her dark head bent close to his, her expression calm, her lips tender, as if she were about to make love to him.
Jesus, is she ever out of it
, Joscelyn thought. She superimposed the vision of another prostrate male body bleeding onto marble that wasn’t gray but pink.
Somebody’s got to take charge
, she told herself.
An exhilirated calm descended on her, a calm made all the more powerful by her fear. Her mind working swiftly, she used her well-developed skills of organization.
“Get a doctor!” she shouted. “Get a doctor over here quickly!”
“There’s another body, I think it’s the assassin. I hope our camera’s picking him up. There’s some question whether he was shot by the Capitol’s police force or whether he turned his weapon on himself.”
“And call for the ambulance!” Joscelyn bawled. She was aware that the security people should already have dispatched this message, but she had learned how often in crises people forgot their jobs. “There’s always an ambulance stationed in back of the Capitol.”
She ducked below the swaying men who surrounded Curt, and in this crawling position laid her hand on his bloodslick chest. His heart reverberated below her palm. She began to unbutton the soaking shirt. Almost immediately, competent masculine hands took over.
“I’m a physician,” the man said, squatting next to her as he smartly ripped the Egyptian cotton.
“He’s still alive,” Joscelyn said.
“We’re trying to get our camera through to get a shot of Curt Ivory . . . .”
Joscelyn for the first time focused on Curt’s face. The flesh seemed to sag back with the force of gravity. She jumped to her feet again. “Has anybody called that fucking ambulance?” she shouted.
A crew was racing a gurney and equipment along the wide corridor.
“Here!” Joscelyn shouted in a commanding tone to avert the paramedics from tending the other fallen. “Over here!”
“Will you please move back, everybody.”
“Mrs. Ivory is kneeling over her slain husband’s body—”
“Let us through!”
An ambulance attendant was pushing an oxygen mask over Curt’s face while another said, “Gotta rush him over to the Capitol Hospital.”
Joscelyn instantly recollected denigrations of that hospital from her stint on the Washington subway. “No,” she barked. “The George Washington University Hospital!”
“Ma’am, he’s in bad shape, the nearest hospital’s the Capitol.”
“He’ll die for sure there,” somebody called out. “Do what the lady says. Take him to George Washington.”
“Key figures in the payoff scandal, Alexander Talbott and Curt Ivory, were shot only moments
ago by an unknown gunman.” The reporter’s voice was high and staccato. “Before Capitol police could apprehend the unknown murderer, he turned the gun on himself . . . .”
“Ivory appears to be alive, however Alexander Talbott is dead . . . .”
Joscelyn and Honora were in a large, private room at the George Washington University Hospital. Both women had kicked off their shoes; the bloodstained jacket of Honora’s new yellow suit had been thrown on the bathroom floor while Joscelyn’s navy flannel was neatly hung over the back of a chair. On the bed table was a litter of cups, Lipton’s teabags oozing brownly into the saucers. They had been here approximately seven hours, and Curt had been in the operating room all that time.
It was Joscelyn who had inveigled the hospital staff into allowing them to use this room, and coerced them into placing a guard by the nurses’ station to prevent intruders; she who had secured tea from the aides. Once three other Ivory vice presidents arrived, however, her executive energy abandoned her and she let the trio take over. They were manning the public phones in the downstairs waiting room and answering the unanswerable queries about Curt’s condition that flowed in from around the world. Periodically they came up to speak to Honora,
whom only one of them had met before. She looked glazed during their rapid, high-key conversations, which avoided the operating room and centered on the impact of the shooting on the Morrell Hearings. (The consensus was summed up in one remark: “Bad as this is, at least it’s broken up the damn committee’s momentum.”)
Joscelyn’s anxieties expelled themselves in hyperkinetic motion. She was forever blinking, rotating her shoulders, straightening her skirt around her narrow flanks, pushing back her hair, pacing around the room.
Honora sat with her hands loosely clasped in her lap: blood had dried on the yellow wool, but she did not see the rusty streaks. Her eyes were focused on some distant, unseeable point. Her abnormal immobility had increased as the hours dragged by.
“Honora,” Joscelyn said.
Honora turned reluctantly.
“They said the creep bastard who shot Curt looked like a Mideasterner.”
“Mmmm.”
“I’m convinced he had some connection to Khalid. The way I see it, Khalid and his bunch were afraid that Alexander was about to spill some very hot beans about Khalid, that he was about to incriminate the Holy One.”
Honora’s glance begged for silence.
Joscelyn couldn’t stop. “Everything fits like a perfectly planned scale model. The assassin’s appearance, his killing Alexander, his killing himself, the lack of ID.” (A black and white
television rested high in the wall opposite the bed, and she had kept switching channels for News Updates, catching repetitious confirmations of Alexander’s death and of the assassin’s suicide—
Police found no identification on the corpse
—and one cryptic,
Harold Fish, key witness at the Morrell Hearings, could not be reached for comment.
There were many zoom shots of the hospital’s exterior—
the George Washington University Medical Center where Curt Ivory, accused of bribery and corruption, hovers near death as doctors attempt to remove a bullet from his heart.
Just before the seven o’clock national news came on, Honora in a strangled voice had requested that the set be turned off.) “And remember what Morley Safer said about Fish being unavailable? I’ll bet a million bucks that he’s unavailable on a permanent basis.”
Honora glanced at her watch. “Five to ten,” she whispered.
“Thoracic surgery takes forever, and getting out a bullet is far more complicated than your run-of-the-mill bypass.”
Honora closed her eyes.
Her sister’s hunger for silence reached through Joscelyn’s raw compulsion to speak.
Oh, fuck it
, she thought, biting her lip and scratching ferociously at the itch between her shoulders.
At a tentative rap, they both jumped, simultaneously turning to the door with frightened expectancy.
“Who’s there?” Honora whispered at the same instant as Joscelyn said loudly, “Come on in!”
It was Gid. “I hope I’m not intruding,” he said.
Honora blinked, shaking her head. “No, not at all, Gid.”
His bloodshot eyes appeared small and narrow because of the puffiness of the lids, but otherwise, wearing a collared and striped rugby sweater with shorts that displayed stocky, hairy, tanned legs, he brought into the stale air of the hospital room an almost unbearable reminder of normal, healthy masculine flesh.
“Gid,” Honora murmured, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about Alexander.”
His Adam’s apple worked. After a pause he muttered, “I guess it’s always rough, losing a brother, but Alexander and I were so close in age. We spent huge chunks of time together, we were pretty much twins . . . .” His voice wavered.
Honora’s hands raised as if to embrace him, then fell to her sides: they had been strangers until yesterday, and her butterfly feeler delicacy informed her that she didn’t know this nephew well enough to intrude on his grief. “That’s the way Crystal and I were. How is she?”
“The doctor gave her a shot. She’s knocked out.”
“Poor Crystal . . . .”
“It’s very nice of you to drop by,” Joscelyn said gruffly. She had seen, as Honora had not, Gid’s unabashed sobbing over his brother’s body.
“I really appreciate what Mr. Ivory tried to do,” he said. “What’s happening?”
“He’s in the operating room,” Honora said thinly.
“Still? We’ve been worried about him, Anne and I.” He gave a funny little smile. “She’s here on the third floor—that’s maternity.”
“The baby’s coming?” Joscelyn asked.
“It’s a few weeks early. Not quite a month. In a way it’s good. We’re in New Guinea, and though the Talbott hospital facilities are great for there, better to be a preemie in Washington than at the Tasi.” His forehead creased in anxious wrinkles. “At least that’s what I tell Anne.”
“She’ll be fine,” Honora murmured. “But shouldn’t you be with her, rubbing her back?”
“She ordered me up here to see how Mr. Ivory’s doing.”
Honora sighed deeply, shaking her head. “We don’t know.”
“Not a word for hours,” Joscelyn said.
“There’s no way Mom and I can thank you enough for what he tried to do.”
“He saw the gun,” Honora said.
“Everybody says he was terrific. The thing I can’t figure is what the guy had against Alexander. All Anne and I can guess is that he’s a mental case—there’s an awful lot of unboxed nuts around, and—”
Honora returned to her chair. “Gid,” she interrupted, “it was dear of you to come, but I know you’re in a hurry to get back to the labor room.”
“Sure am.” He reached for the door handle. “I’ll check back later.”
After his jogging footsteps faded into the hospital night, Joscelyn ached to discuss the subject their nephew had raised: what had possessed Curt to lay his life on the line for a man he despised? Honora, hands tightly clasped, was absolutely still, her face white, her expression faraway. Joscelyn kept silent.
* * *
A half hour later a pair of surgeons slipped into the room’s tiny vestibule. They both wore bloodstained, wrinkled scrub suits and green paper boots over their shoes. The taller doctor moved into the room, his shoulders slumped wearily. In a low, sympathetic, southern accent, he explained that they had removed the bullet, repairing as much of the damage to the heart as was possible.
Honora’s eyes closed.
“How is he?” Joscelyn demanded.
“His condition’s critical.”
“How critical?” Joscelyn asked.
The shorter doctor sucked in his fleshy, wrinkled cheeks. “The prognosis is what we call guarded.”
“It can go either way?” Joscelyn asked.
“Yes.”
Honora gave a little cough. “When can I see him?”
“They’ll tell you upstairs in ICU, Mrs. Ivory.”
* * *
Joscelyn and Honora moved to Fourth Floor North. On the right of the elevators was the windowed reception desk of the Intensive Care
Unit. A thin young woman in a white coat shuffled large, blue-covered charts while behind her an orderly was pushing an elaborate piece of equipment down an ominously bright corridor.
The ICU waiting room, a narrow L-shape with a telephone booth in the corner, was empty, but somebody had left a red down jacket on a coat hook.
Honora went to the dark window and stared out at the lit windows of the hospital wings.
When Joscelyn could no longer bear the silence, she said, “I cannot for the life of me imagine what possessed Curt to do it.”