Triggers (6 page)

She nodded. “Of course, baby.”

Baby.
She had always called him that. It had been five decades since he’d been as helpless as one, and yet he was again.

She moved over to his bed and leaned in—painfully, her back and knees hurting as she did so—and kissed him on the top of his bald head.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” she added.

“Thanks,” he said again, and closed his eyes.

Bessie regarded him for another half minute; he looked like his father had at the same age. Then she started the slow walk out of the hospital room and down the long corridor, heading toward the elevator.

Her eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be, but she read the signs on the doors, noting landmarks so that she could easily find Mike’s room again tomorrow; she’d gone down the wrong corridor earlier and, when every step hurt, that was the sort of thing she didn’t want to have happen again. There were a lot of people further down the corridor, but the stretch she was in now was empty. As she passed a door labeled “Observation Gallery,” the lights in the corridor suddenly went off, startling her. Emergency lighting soon came on, but she was terrified that the elevators would be off; she was on the third floor, and doubted she could manage that many stairs.

She continued to shuffle along, and after a short time the overhead lights spluttered back to life. Up ahead, she saw the elevator door open, several people get off, and several more get on; everything seemed to be back to normal.

She finally made it to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. To her surprise, there were uniformed hospital security guards and several men in dark blue suits there, but they seemed more interested in who was trying to come into the hospital than who was leaving. She headed out into the cool air, and—

—and the world had changed since she’d entered earlier today. Thousands of car horns were honking, the sidewalk outside the hospital was packed with people, there was the smell of smoke in the air. A fire, perhaps? A plane crash? Reagan was only a short distance away…

Numerous TV crews crowded the sidewalk. Near her, a reporter—a colored man wearing a tan trench coat—was holding a microphone,
waiting for a signal, it seemed, from another man who was balancing a camera on his shoulder.

It came to her that the reporter’s name was Lonny Hendricks—although why she knew that, she didn’t know. But, well, this
was
Washington, and stories from here often got national exposure; she supposed she must have seen him on the news back in Mississippi at some point.

She’d had trouble finding her way inside the hospital—the corridors took odd bends. But now that she was outside, she found herself feeling confident. Her hotel was
that
way, down New Hampshire Avenue, and—well, if she continued up there, she’d run into Dupont Circle, although…

Although she didn’t know why she knew that, either; she hadn’t had cause to go that way yet. She supposed she must have seen it while flipping through a tourist guidebook.

She slowly made her way over to the taxi stand, wondering what all the panic, all the commotion, all the
noise,
was about.

SETH
Jerrison opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, looking up at a ceiling with fluorescent tubes behind frosted panels; one of the tubes was strobing in an irritating fashion. He attempted to speak, but his throat was bone-dry.

A face loomed in: black, perhaps fifty, gray hair, kind eyes. “Mr. President? Mr. President? Can you tell me what day it is?”

Part of Seth recognized that this was a test of competency—but another part wanted his own questions answered. “Where am I?” he croaked out.

“Luther Terry Memorial Hospital,” said the man.

His throat was still parched. “Water.”

The man looked at someone else, and a few seconds later, he had a cup of ice chips in his hand. He moved it over and tipped it so that a few went into Seth’s mouth. After they’d melted, Seth asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Mark Griffin. I’m the CEO here.”

Seth nodded slightly. “What happened?”

The man lifted his eyebrows, wrinkling his forehead in the process. 
“You were shot, Mr. President. The bullet ruptured the pericardium—the sac that contains the heart—bruised the right atrium, and clipped the superior vena cava. A centimeter to the left and, well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Seth wanted to speak again, but it took him several seconds to find the strength. “Anyone else hurt?”

“Not by gunfire. Some members of the crowd were injured in the panic that ensued—broken bones, bloody noses—but nothing life-threatening.” Griffin paused for a moment, then: “Sir, forgive us for waking you up. Normally, we’d keep you under as long as possible while you heal, but, well, you
are
the president, and you need to know. First let me assure you that no one was hurt—the First Lady, as you know, is in Oregon. She’s fine, and so is everyone else. But there’s been an explosion at the White House. The bomb was spotted before it went off, and they got everyone out.”

Seth’s head swam. He’d long lived in northern California; he’d felt the ground literally shift beneath his feet before—but this was more disorienting, more terrifying: the whole world shifting, changing,
crumbling.
His heart pounded, every beat a knife thrust.

“They’re relocating most of the White House staff to a facility in Virginia, I’m told,” said Griffin. Mount Weather was an underground city there, built during the Cold War; there were contingency plans for running most of the executive branch from it.

“Take me…there,” said Seth.

“Not yet, sir. It’s not safe to move you. But your chief of staff will be at the Virginia facility soon. He can be your eyes and ears there; we’ll get you a secure line to him.” A pause. “Mr. President, how do you feel?”

Seth closed his eyes; everything went pink as the overhead light filtered through his eyelids. He tried to breathe, tried to hold on to his sanity, tried not to let go—not to let go
again.
At last, he managed to speak. “Were…were my…injuries…life-threatening?”

“Yes, sir, to be honest. We almost lost you on the operating table.”

Seth forced his eyes open. To one side, he saw Susan Dawson and another Secret Service agent whose name he didn’t know. He felt weak,
still parched, emotional agony layered atop all the physical pain. “Did you…open my chest?”

“Yes, sir, we did.”

“Did my heart stop?”

“Sir, yes. For a time.”

“They say…if you’re about to die…your life…flashes in front of your eyes.”

Griffin, still looming over him, nodded. “I’ve heard that, sir, yes.”

Seth was silent for a few moments, trying to sort it all out, trying to decide if he wanted to confide in this man—but it
had
been the damnedest thing. “And, well,” he said at last, “something like that happened to me.”

Griffin’s tone was neutral. “Oh?”

“Yes. Except…” He looked at the doctor for a moment, then turned his head toward the windows. “Except it wasn’t
my
life that I saw.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Someone else’s memories,” said the president. “Not mine.”

Griffin said nothing.

“You don’t believe me,” Seth said, with effort.

“All sorts of weird things can happen when the brain is starved for oxygen, Mr. President,” Griffin said.

Seth briefly closed his eyes—but the images were still there. “That’s…not it. I…have someone else’s…memories.”

Griffin was quiet for a moment, then said, “Well, you’re in luck, sir. As it happens, we’ve got one of the world’s top memory experts here—a fellow from Canada. I can ask him—”

Griffin’s BlackBerry must have vibrated because he fished it out and looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” he said to Jerrison, then into the phone: “Yes, Professor Singh? Um, yes, yes. Wait.” He lowered the handset and turned to Susan Dawson. “Is your middle name Marie?”

Susan’s eyebrows went up. “Yes.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Griffin said into the phone. “What? Um, okay. Sure, I guess. I’ll tell her. Bye.”

Griffin put the BlackBerry away and turned to face Susan. “Our resident memory expert would like to speak to you up in his office.”

ERIC
Redekop continued down the hospital corridor, accompanied by Dr. Jurgen Sturgess. They were both still a bit rattled from their encounter with the distraught woman named Nikki, and Eric was exhausted from the hours of performing surgery on the president. Sturgess soon headed off in another direction, leaving Eric walking alone. In the middle of the corridor was the nurses’ station, and he smiled as he saw Janis Falconi there. She was thirty-two, and she was a knockout: leggy, stacked, with long straight platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes.

He normally saw her only in her nurse’s uniform, but he’d run into her on the street once during the summer when she’d been wearing a tank top, and he’d been surprised to discover she had a large, intricate tattoo of a striped tiger stretching its way up her left arm onto her shoulder. As a doctor, Eric had an instinctive dislike for tattoos, but this one had been so elaborate, with such subtle shading and vibrant coloring, he’d had to admire it; he admired it even more when Janis told him that she herself had done the original art it had been made from.

Of course, right now, he could see no sign of the tattoo as he approached, but his memories of her on that summer day, arms and shoulders exposed, came to the fore, and—

And—
ouch!

Getting a tattoo hurt!

And getting one as elaborate as Janis’s
really
hurt.

Eric found himself looking for a way to steady himself. An empty gurney had been pushed against the corridor wall next to him; he grabbed one of its tubular metal railings, and—

And he couldn’t take his eyes off Janis.

She hadn’t looked up yet, hadn’t noticed him, but—

But he found himself reliving that summer’s day—that
August
day, standing outside Filomena, a restaurant he’d never heard of or even noticed, he was sure, but he
knew
that was its name.

His grip on the tubular railing tightened.

Cute.

Yes, yes,
she
was—very. But it wasn’t just the word “cute” that had popped into Eric’s brain. No, no, no, there was a pronoun in front of it.

He’s cute.

And, although Eric had thought this before about some babies or toddlers, this wasn’t a reference to a tyke with a teddy bear. It was about a man, a grown man. And yet Eric was, as he himself liked to say, flamingly heterosexual. But this thought was about an adult man with a bald pate and a graying beard, and—

Oh!

It was a thought about
himself.

Yes, he kept his beard neat with a barber’s electric razor, and, sure, he did try to hit the gym a couple of times a week, buthe was no narcissist; he didn’t think of himself as cute. In fact, if anything, he thought he was kind of funny-looking with beady eyes and a nose so short it might fairly be called “pug.”

And, hey, he’s checking me out.

Eric was so discombobulated that he was about to turn on his heel
and head back the other way when Janis looked up and smiled a huge, radiant smile at him, and—

It’s her,
he realized.
It’s what
she
thought about
me,
back on that August day, but—

But
how?

The pain of the tattoo.

A house—small, cramped.

A dachshund waddling along.

Pink cross-country skis.

He continued walking toward her, drawn to her.

He knew how much she made. Knew her birth date. Knew all kinds of things.

“Hello, Jan…iss.” He paused, having to force the second syllable out, it coming to him in a flash that only people at work ever called her “Janis.” Everyone else in her life called her just “Jan.”

“Dr. Redekop,” she said. “Good to see you.”

His eyes dropped—not to her breasts, although they were certainly noteworthy, but to her shoulder; he was thinking of the tattoo, and—

And the bruise…

Not bruising from having the tattoo made, but—

My God!

But bruising from…from
yesterday.

She saw where his gaze had gone, and she turned a little, as if to hide her upper arm from his sight, but then she must have realized that her nurse’s smock covered it completely, and yet, when she turned back to him, it was a long moment before she met his eyes again.

“Um,” he said, “you look well.” And as soon as the words were out, he realized it was an odd thing to say, but—

But his mind was filling now with thoughts that—God!—that
must
be hers.

He’d never believed in telepathy, or mind reading, or any of that garbage. Jesus!

But, no, wait. It wasn’t that; not quite. She was looking at him
quizzically now, and he had no idea what she was currently thinking. But as soon as he thought about the day he’d run into her in the tank top, memories of
that
came to him—from
her
point of view.

And other things kept coming to him, too—information about patients in this wing; details about some online game called EVE; a bit from
The Colbert Report,
which he never watched; and—yes, yes—more thoughts, more
memories,
about him. About the first time they’d met. He didn’t remember the specific day, but
she
did; it was her first day on the new job here, nine months ago. It had been—ah, yes, now that he thought about it, he
did
remember…or
she
did. All the decorations: it had been Valentine’s Day.

And she’d thought, after meeting him, of this bald, thin man, “Slap a British accent on him, and he’s everything I’ve been fantasizing about since I was fifteen.” She liked older men. She liked Patrick Stewart and Sean Connery and—

And Eric Redekop.

He’d always liked Janis, but he’d had no idea—none!—that she felt that way about him, and…

And she was speaking, he realized, and he’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Sorry. Um, could you repeat that?”