Avoid, at all costs, bringing a hearse to a birthday party.  Chelsea had so never wanted to see this again.  The antiseptic smell assaulted her with the force of a linebacker.  Flashbacks were bad, but the present ached worse.  Last time, it had been her father and his faulty heart.  This was her mother, her mother’s good intentions, and an assassin’s sinister wishes.

 

There were electrodes of course, all over.  Her lung capacity had been severely diminished for such a period of time that they worried about possible brain damage.  She had yet to regain consciousness so that would have to be determined then.

 

She was on a respirator.  A large chunk of fireplace wall had fallen on her mother in the blast, crushing her lungs and obscuring her from her rescuers.  Inadvertently, they’d treaded over her in their pursuit of her.  It was an irony Chelsea couldn’t appreciate at the moment but maybe in a couple of decades she’d be able to.

 

Her grandmother had no such timeframe.  For someone who was usually so stoic, Dorothy Rodham could not have been more a picture of devastation.  She had had so many dreams for her little Hillary and they had all come true, but this travesty wasn’t a part of the plan.  Those dreams had never ended in her burying her girl.

 

Hillary’s left hand lay mummified at her side.  The fire had soldered her wedding ring to her skin.  It had taken surgery to remove it; it was a mostly ruined piece of scrap now with a deformed rock inside.  Chelsea had taken it and tucked it away in her purse.  Somehow she knew her mother would be upset if it was lost.

 

She sat side-by-side her mother all night, and for several days afterward.  She didn’t care when the sun rose since there weren’t any windows. She didn’t care about food because the food was terrible even in private facilities.  She only left to shower and change.  She and her grandmother took turns guarding Hillary.  They didn’t want her to ever be left without a familiar face at her side—just in case she woke up.  As the sun rose and fell, it was beginning to feel inevitable that she wouldn’t wake at all.

 

The doctors were cautious optimists, as they all were.  They didn’t want to be charged with having told the First Family that their mother and daughter might re-awaken only for her to take a turn for the worse.  She’d been badly injured, to be sure.  The extent of the physical damage could only be alluded to; the brunt of surviving remained on Hillary herself.

 

                She had suffered extensive internal bleeding due to blunt force trauma; a fractured pelvis due to the same.  The burns on her left hand were lasting.  The doctors had performed skin grafts as soon as was expedient and they seemed to take with no complications.  Chelsea was glad for that much.  Her mother’s life of late seemed fraught with enough difficulty.

 

The ever-present D.C. scandals had weighed heavily on the mind of the second Clinton President.  She was fine with being slandered herself—she’d come to expect it, actually—but she despised seeing those close to her subjected to that sort of treatment.  She was the eye of the storm and they were smacked with hailstones.  Chelsea knew that it was the latest batch of headlines that irked her mother most.  The New York Daily News was selling papers on the breakdown of her relationship with Evan, and it kept her up nights.

 

With a sardonic smirk, Chelsea concluded that the fight between her mom and Evan was probably over.  She didn’t see Evan keeping his distance for long.  He was too devoted a friend and then some to loiter in other pursuits when he could be with his President.  It was a tendency he was infamous for in Washington circles.  “Don’t keep Evan too long now.  He’s got to get home in time to tuck the President in,” they’d say in the same jeering tones with which they mocked her father’s life’s work.

 

In a manner growing ever similar to her mother, he would smile good-naturedly, remind them most winningly of their insignificance, and if need be knock their chairs from under them on their way out the door.  Their reactions didn’t alter the reality, however.  Before the “conflict that shook the White House,” Evan had never missed an opportunity to walk her to the Residence at the close of day.  He was always there to say good night.

 

The world kept turning outside of that her mother’s hospital room, but Chelsea didn’t hear much more than her assistant managed to get through on her Blackberry.  Vice-President—President Bayh was still in hiding under order of the Secret Service.  There was no imminent threat to the general public, but the White House was off-limits within a six-mile radius in every direction.  There was very discreet concern of bio-weapons.  Although nothing had set off the meters yet, they were taking no chances that something might.

 

Chelsea checked her watch for the umpteenth time.  Late was the hour, and unimportant.  Congress wouldn’t be coming near the Hill for weeks due to Secret Service’s continuing reservations.  Effectively, American government had come to a stop.  She had nowhere else to be.

 

Disheartened by her mother’s continuing lack of response, she decided on a walk to clear her head.  She leaned down and kissed her mother’s bruised cheek.  “I’ll be back later, okay?  Love you, mom.”

 

She walked out of the eerily quiet hospital room with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans.  Everybody said she had hands just like her father.  She hadn’t given it much thought when he’d been around, but she guessed she could see it now.  With the heart monitor’s beeping fading behind her, it wasn’t her father’s hands that she missed. It was his arms. 

 

In this very hospital she had stood vigil with her father as his life had slipped away.  She felt like she was doing so all over, but it was taking longer.  If he was here, she knew her mother would have woken up by now.  There was nothing like him begging on his knees.  Her mom had told her once that when she was suffering from complications during her Cesarean, that Bill had begged her not to go—that he couldn’t do a damned thing alone with a pretty little girl with her mother’s eyes.  He had begged—and she had stayed.  He had done so much begging over their lifetime for her not to go.  In that same irony that Chelsea still couldn’t laugh about, it made sense that he wouldn’t be here when the begging mattered most of all.

 

Chelsea took a deep sterile breath halfway down the corridor leading to the chapel.  There was just one person her mother might come back for now.  She hoped—no, she prayed—that he would come.  And even if he failed to be the saving grace they were searching for, she hoped he’d remember her, his old friend’s daughter, because God knows she could really do with his kind of hug right about now.

               

Well, It Didn’t Break the Heart. Days after the assassination attempt that shook up the Western World, Evan was finally allowed out of containment.  The boys had long since been ready; they’d been going stir-crazy for a while and driving their mother batty.  Once he’d realized there was really nothing he could do, he’d taken the time to spend with his family as much as he could.  He had difficulty resisting the impulse to call Chelsea every ten seconds or to bug the agents at the hospital for updates. He’d rather they spent time protecting Hillary than indulging his insatiable need to know.

 

                Now that he was out, she was his first stop.  He was unsure whether he should pick up flowers or if that would be a completely absurd thing to do for an unconscious person.  In the end, he picked up a dozen peach and yellow roses.  Red had been easy, but wrong. White reminded him too much of a funeral and he’d watched enough of those in the aftermath of the bombing that he didn’t think he could look at another rose lest he himself suffer death by a million silken petals.  No, yellow and peach were safe.  Friendship was safe.

 

                When he was led to her room and he laid eyes on her for the first time, he was so glad to see she wasn’t covered in blood. In all of his nightmares—the ones that woke Susan and, he had begun to notice, upset her—Hillary had been drenched in blood. It was everywhere.  Here, she was a symphony of pallid shades.  She had pale beige cheeks, pale grayish-tinted lips, pale rose eyelids under which shifted the bluest of eyes, and pale translucent skin to show off the bluest of blood vessels.  She had been all color in awareness—what was she now?

 

                “You are the most incredible person I have ever known, Madame President, and I am proud to serve at your pleasure.”  He stroked her unbound hand gently.  She had bruises up and down her visible skin.  He knew there had to be more given how she’d been found.  They’d nearly had to crush her to free her and the damage was evident.  He wondered whether he’d ever find his President again—maybe even the woman he’d kissed.  “You in there, Hidge?  This jackass Vice-President of yours is out here and he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.  You were right, I’m made to be an attack dog. I don’t want to be King of the Castle. That’s all on you.  But you’ve gotta come to us, honey.  We need you.  Chelsea, your mom, me, the country, we all need you.  Please come home,” he begged. “Please.”

 

                Seeing nothing more than the delicate rapid eye movements of her active mind, he thought he wasn’t getting through.  “All right.  I won’t take up anymore of Dorothy and Chelsea’s time with you. I have to get back to the White House and pretend I know what I’m doing.  I’ll be back though.  I hope you’ll be here waiting for me.”  He leaned down and softly kissed her cheek.  As he went to put down her hand, he could’ve sworn he felt slightest tightening in the fingers.  He would’ve believed it a delusion if she hadn’t done it again.  “Hillary, are you there?”

 

                She couldn’t do much more than moan in pain, but it was something. Thank God it was something.  She was there, somewhere within that shattered shell.  She wasn’t gone. He smiled, astonished up at Chelsea and Dorothy, who laughed tearfully and sagged in relief.  His best friend wasn’t lost. 

 

He tried and failed to ignore the anxious questions beckoning to him from his conscience.  They asked him, why did it feel as though he hadn’t breathed for days?  Why had he felt for so long as though he’d never laugh again?  Why had he kissed her? Loudest of all, they demanded to know exactly why the idea of her being only his best friend and President burned so terribly, if that was really all she was.

 

                He didn’t have a ready answer to any of them.  Least of all one he was willing to admit.

Next Part

Last Part

 

General Disclaimer: Every character, with the exception of those specified, belongs to their respective writers, producers, studios, and production companies.  NO money was made during the conception of these stories or their distribution.  No copyright infringement is intended.