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He nodded slowly. His mother spoke this time. “I’ll be staying here for a while.” He looked confused at that. “You’re in Pittsburgh. That was the nearest big hospital,” she explained.

He nodded again.

“Time!” said the nurse. We had only been allowed five minutes.

“Megan is waiting to see you,” said Marilyn. “Can we send her in?”

At that, Charlie’s face lit up, and he nodded enthusiastically, or at least as much as he could.

“Okay,” I told him. “Charlie, before we go, I have to tell you I have to go back to Washington today. Your mom will stick around, though, and figure out what we need to do. I’ll try and get back here next weekend.” He nodded in understanding. We left and sent Holly and Megan in next, suited up in gowns like us. Molly and Bucky would go in last, and then we were probably done for the day.

Marilyn and I took off our gowns and we headed back to the conference room. As we walked, I said, “Well, that’s two.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you see how Charlie looked when you said Megan was outside? She’s got him on the hook. All she has to do is reel him in.” I formed my right index finger into a hook and mimed putting it in my mouth and tugging my cheek.

“It’s about time! Maybe she can get him to stop racing and get a real job.”

I had to laugh at that. “Honey, I don’t think Charlie is ever going to be happy doing something nine to five. Let’s just get him on his feet again first, and worry about the other stuff later.”

Back in the conference room, I told the others that Charlie was awake and conscious, and looked like he was going to live. After that Will, Frank, and I left to head back to D.C. I shook hands with the hospital administrator and all the doctors and nurses I could. Then I kissed my wife good-bye and was escorted up to the helipad, where Marine One was waiting to take us back to the White House. I smiled to myself as we got closer to D.C. For the first time since the girls had gone off to college and Marilyn had moved down to Washington with me, I was going to be a bachelor again. I expected my wife to be spending a lot of time in Pittsburgh for the foreseeable future.

As much as I wanted to go up to the Residence to get some sleep, we needed to formulate an updated press release, and see what disasters had occurred while I was away. There were a number of well wishers that I thanked for their concerns over my son’s condition, and I gave everyone the same limited but promising information.

Then things took a wrong turn. I was sitting in my swivel chair, when there was a knock on the door, and my lead agent stepped inside. “Mister President, we have a problem.” He looked terrified.

I gave him a blank look and asked, “Oh?”

“It’s the First Lady, sir. She’s in jail!”

Chapter 169: Unbelievable

Frank and Will looked as confused as I did. I said, “What did you say? It sounded like you said the First Lady was in jail.”

He gulped, and nodded. “Yes, sir. She’s been arrested and is in the Pittsburgh jail!”

Will hopped up and flipped on the television. It was already pre-tuned to CNN, and there, in living color, was the image of my wife in what looked to be a riot, and then it cut to the stunned anchor reporting that ‘Mrs. Buckman has been taken away in a police squad car, to where we don’t know yet… ‘

I looked back at the agent and said, “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

I had one eye on the television as I asked this, and I had to pause as the anchor showed the footage of what apparently started everything, Marilyn wading into a crowd of protesters and making a wild roundhouse swing at an old guy. She rocked him back slightly, but then a woman next to him punched Marilyn! At that it became a free-for-all, with the Secret Service detail and about a million cops wading in.

“Sweet Jesus!” exclaimed Frank.

“Oh… My… God!” added Will slowly. They both turned to stare at me.

I was just as flabbergasted as they were. The door knocked again and another agent barged in. It was John Thompson, the supervisory head of the Presidential Detail. He was responsible not just for me, but also the much smaller details watching over Marilyn and the kids. He came to a stop in front of my desk, and saw that we already knew something was the matter. “Mister President, I can explain…”

I looked at him while pointing to the television. “You can explain that?!”

“Well, not explain it, but I can tell you what happened,” he admitted. He motioned for the first agent to retire, and he silently slipped out.

I looked over at Frank and Will. “You two might as well stick around. I think Charlie’s accident just became old news.” I turned back to Thompson. “Proceed.”

“It all happened about fifteen minutes ago, shortly before you arrived back here. Mrs. Buckman had just visited Charlie and told him she would be back tomorrow — that’s what she told us — and was leaving the hospital with your children and Miss Morgan. I don’t know why, but her detail had the limousine brought to the main entrance rather than a side entrance. That was where the protesters were massed.”

“Protesters! What protesters!?”

“It’s the Westboro Baptist Church, sir.” I must have given a really blank look at that. “I’ll get to that, sir. Anyway, they were there protesting your son…”

“WHAT!”

“Please, sir, I’ll explain in a bit. Anyway, they had a bunch of signs and a bullhorn, and were yelling out ‘God hates fags!’ and ‘Death to Charlie Buckman!’ when Mrs. Buckman came out the door. The team was moving them down to the limo, but when they got to the limo, she kept moving, around the car and across the grass to the protesters. She barged right up to the head of the protesters, Fred Phelps, and punched him in the face.” My eyes flicked over at the others, and I was sure they were as ashen faced as I was. “At that, the woman next to Mister Phelps, a daughter we think, punched Mrs. Buckman. At that point the detail moved in to get her out of there, and the rest of the protesters moved in, and then the Pittsburgh City Police and the Pennsylvania State Police got involved. Eventually everybody was taken to the local jail to be sorted out.”

“Including my wife!?”

“Yes, sir.”

“INCLUDING MY WIFE!?” I roared out. By now I was standing and bending over my desk and yelling into the face of the agent.

“Sir, she committed assault and battery…”

“SHUT UP!”

I pushed myself off the desk and slumped back down into my chair. In a much lighter tone, I asked, “You want to tell me how she managed to do this while surrounded by the elite United States Secret Service? And how she managed to break through the combined ranks of both the Pittsburgh cops and the Pennsylvania State Troopers?” Somebody on my wife’s detail had managed to fuck up by the numbers, since I could think of about a half dozen procedural violations with this mess.

John managed to look even more embarrassed. “Not really, sir. I don’t have all the details, but it sounds like everybody was taken by surprise. It looked like she wanted to argue with them, but she just kept going, right through the line of cops. The LEOs, the local law enforcement officers, were afraid to touch her when she went through them.”

“And she is where, now?”

“It was pretty tense there, for a moment, anyway. They wanted to arrest her but her detail wouldn’t let them, and we had a standoff until Mrs. Buckman said she would go to the jail if the protesters were taken in, too. Everybody was transported to the local police station. We have a female agent with her right now. The locals have not put her in the general lockup or with the protesters,” he told me.