As he stepped away from the microphones, Nofziger heard a reporter ask one last question.
“Did he say anything?”
Nofziger turned back to the podium, feeling as if God had just sent him an angel.
“Oh, yes,” Nofziger replied, barely able to suppress a grin. Pulling out his notes about what the president had said in the emergency room and just before going into surgery, he put on his reading glasses and stared carefully at his scribbled words. Then, gesticulating with his right hand for emphasis, he regaled the journalists with the president’s one-liners and quips. He told them about the wink that Reagan had given Baker while heading to the operating room; he read the president’s joke about hoping the surgeons were Republicans. And Nofziger made certain to pass on Reagan’s first words to his wife: “He told Mrs. Reagan, ‘Honey, I forgot to duck.’”
Nofziger’s words were enormously reassuring. How could the president be seriously hurt if he was able to crack jokes? For the White House and the nation, Nofziger’s comments could not have come at a better moment.
* * *
BEN AARON HAD removed the bullet from the president’s lung, but his work wasn’t done. First he needed to stop all the bleeding in Reagan’s chest; when he spotted an artery the diameter of a pencil that had been damaged by the bullet, he stitched it closed, and that problem was finally solved. Next he had to make a decision about the left lung. Should he remove the entire lower lobe, which had suffered the most damage? Aaron wasn’t sure the lobe would fully heal. If left in place it might invite dangerous infections. On the other hand, removal would require another hour or two of surgery, and the procedure was hardly simple. Hoping he was making the right choice, Aaron decided to leave the lower lobe in place.
Aaron began the process of sewing up the president just before six p.m. He cleaned the wound thoroughly with saline and then stitched the hole in the lung with chromic catgut, an absorbable and sterile suture derived from beef or sheep intestine. He cleaned the bullet track through the chest and then began sewing up the gaps in the tissues and muscles. After placing two tubes in Reagan’s chest to drain more blood—they would remain for several days—he sewed the rib cage shut and asked his two assistants, Doctors Cheyney and Adelberg, to stitch up the president’s skin. Turning the final bit of work over to Cheyney and Adelberg was a small deed, but it showed both his confidence in them and his belief that it was important to treat the president as he would any other patient.
A nurse who had been handing Aaron instruments at the operating table began collecting scalpels, sponges, and blades. She and a colleague counted and recounted them to ensure that they didn’t leave anything inside the president. Then she turned to a Secret Service agent who had been standing a few feet from her during the entire surgery. He had watched her every move with an intense, serious stare. Smiling, she raised her middle finger at him. He grinned back, breaking any lingering tension in the operating room.
Aaron and his fellow doctors were optimistic about Reagan’s prognosis. His vital signs were solid; he seemed to have weathered both the shooting and the grueling surgery remarkably well. Even so, it had been a rough few hours. Since his arrival at the hospital, the president had lost about 3.5 liters of blood. He had received eight units of red blood cells and a significant quantity of plasma and platelets. All told, doctors had pumped a total of 5.7 liters of fluids into his veins. His lungs were not working efficiently yet, so he was receiving an air mixture that was about 40 to 50 percent oxygen, in comparison with the 21 percent in ordinary air.
Still, the three-hour operation had been a success. As his surgical team prepared to roll his patient to the recovery room for the night, Aaron was confident that the president’s darkest hours were behind him.
* * *
SOON AFTER LYN Nofziger’s successful news conference, the attention of those in the Situation Room turned to yet another urgent matter—a dairy bill, of all things. The next day, the president had to sign a bill that would halt $147 million in subsidies for the dairy industry; if he didn’t, the money would start to flow on April 1, and Reagan’s first congressional victory in his assault on federal spending would be lost. For several minutes, the secretaries of state, defense, and Treasury, the attorney general, and several others proposed ways around the problem. Could the president delegate the signing to Bush? Could he give up some of his powers without giving up all of them? Attorney General William French Smith, for one, was dubious. “He either is president or he isn’t.”
Richard Allen was only half listening to the debate. He thought it was a pointless exercise, especially since the vice president was due to arrive soon. In the end, either Reagan would be well enough to sign the bill or they would need Bush to weigh in and play a key role in any decision about succession.
Allen also knew that Jim Baker would be returning to the White House any minute, and when the chief of staff finally entered the conference room, just before 6:15, he was greatly relieved. “Here’s Jim!” Allen said, happy to steer the conversation in a new direction.
At first glance, Baker appeared no worse for wear: his blue-striped tie was carefully knotted, his expensive gray suit was smooth and free of creases, and his hair was still perfectly parted. But the skin under his eyes was puffy and he spoke in a weary, somber tone.
“The president is in good shape,” Baker reported. “I don’t know whether they have put a statement out over there or not. I assume they haven’t.… They are probably finishing up in another ten minutes. They found nothing in the abdominal cavity. They opened up his chest and found some bleeding in one lung. They stopped that bleeding. They have removed the bullet, or fragment of the bullet. It looked like it was a ricochet.” The prognosis, Baker told the group, “is better than good, but they wouldn’t say very good.”
Then Baker added, “Jim Brady’s condition is not good at all. He is still undergoing surgery.” His voice became softer, sadder. “He took a shot right in the brain.”
Soon the conversation turned back to the question of how to run the government in the president’s absence. Allen told Baker that the group in the Situation Room recommended that Bush take over many of the president’s duties the next day; among other things, he should oversee a cabinet meeting and attend a working lunch with the Dutch prime minister in Reagan’s place.
“I think that’s fine,” Baker said. But having heard earlier about the debate concerning the possible transfer of presidential powers, Baker was quick to say that he did not want to get “involved in questions of succession and incapacity and that sort of thing.” He also expressed confidence that by the following morning the president would be able to make a decision about whether a transfer was appropriate.
“There is an issue,” Allen said. “The issue is a bill, maybe two, that must be signed tomorrow, and that forces our hand.”
“That has to be signed tomorrow?” Baker said.
“The dairy bill,” Allen said.
“If he says sign it, you can sign it,” Haig said, referring to the auto-pen device that signed many documents for the president.
“A machine won’t work,” Allen said, frustrated by the way the conversation kept going in circles. “They will blow that one up. They will want to know exactly how his hand moved, if his signature was firm, so on and so forth. It’s an historic signature.”
* * *
AT 6:45, REAGAN was wheeled down the hall to the surgical recovery room, a wide-open space with pale yellow walls, a tiled floor, and a central nurses’ station. The room could accommodate up to twelve patients, but at the moment it was empty—the hospital had cleared it of others to accommodate the president. Even Agent Tim McCarthy, whose surgery had been quick and relatively simple, made only a brief stop in the recovery room before being transferred.
Reagan was parked feetfirst in the far left corner of the recovery room and his bed was cordoned off with several portable green screens. Normally patients were taken to the intensive care unit soon after a sur
gery, but doctors planned to leave the president in the recovery room overnight. It had the same equipment as the ICU, and it was close to the operating rooms in case of an emergency.
When a nurse spoke the president’s name, Reagan groggily opened his eyes. At about 7:15, as he began emerging from anesthesia, he reached for the breathing tube in his throat and tried to pull it out. His body convulsed and bucked. Respirators and tubes made patients “air hungry”: the president undoubtedly felt as if he were suffocating.
As gently as possible, Cathy Edmondson, a recovery room nurse, told the president to relax. “Mr. Reagan,” she said, “that is helping you breathe. Don’t touch it now. Trust me.”
The head of Reagan’s bed was raised to reduce pressure on his chest, but both the bullet wound and the surgical wounds caused excruciating pain. At 7:20, on the order of an anesthesiologist, a nurse pumped a fast-acting and powerful narcotic, Fentanyl, into one of Reagan’s IV lines; fifteen minutes later, she gave him a second dose.
As Reagan slowly began to return to consciousness, Cathy Edmondson and another nurse, Denise Sullivan, discussed the appropriate way to address their patient. Partly to reduce the stress of caring for the most powerful man in the world, they decided to call him “Mr. Reagan,” not “Mr. President.” At the moment, Reagan didn’t seem very presidential anyway. He was ashen and a machine was breathing for him. A tube snaked into his nostril, down his esophagus, and into his stomach, where it was vacuuming the stomach’s contents so he wouldn’t vomit. Another catheter was draining and monitoring his urine. He was receiving fluids through three IV lines, two in his left arm and one in his right. And every fifteen minutes or so, a doctor drew blood from an arterial line in his left wrist and sent the sample to the lab.
The president’s eyes fluttered open again, then closed. His nurses, who wanted to be able to react to even the slightest change in his condition as quickly as possible, decided to treat Reagan as if he were recovering from open-heart surgery. Such patients require two nurses to constantly monitor blood pressure, drainage tubes, and breathing.
During the president’s first forty-five minutes in the recovery room, his nurses spent most of their time ensuring that he didn’t rip out his breathing tube, since he couldn’t survive without it. When he pulled at the tube, Edmondson or Sullivan would push down his arm. At one point, Sullivan told him, “I’m going to ask you not to touch the tube, Mr. Reagan. If you are not able to leave it alone, I’m going to tie your hands to the bed.”
* * *
THE FIRST OF Reagan’s four children to arrive in Washington was his youngest, Ron Reagan, who had landed at National Airport while his father was in surgery. The others—Michael and Maureen Reagan, and Patti Davis—were still in southern California, scheduled to board a late-evening flight to Washington on a military cargo plane.
Ron, a twenty-two-year-old dancer, had started the day in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he was touring with the Joffrey II Dancers. He and his wife were eating lunch in the restaurant of the Hilton hotel there when his Secret Service agent hurried into the room. “A serious incident has taken place,” said the agent. “Someone fired shots at your father. We don’t think he was hit.”
Ron ran to his room, where he turned on the television and watched news accounts of the shooting. He called the White House and learned that in fact his father had been shot and that his mother was at the hospital. He wanted desperately to get to Washington to comfort his parents; fortunately, although there were no commercial flights from Lincoln to the nation’s capital, someone arranged a private jet to take him. As he flew to Washington, he thought about the past twenty years of political assassinations and grappled with the horrifying possibility that he might soon be attending his father’s presidential funeral.
A Secret Service car picked him up at the airport and took him straight to the hospital, where he found his mother in a waiting room, staring at a television. She remained composed, but he could see that she was distraught. “I’m so frightened,” she said.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Ron said. “He is going to be all right. He is strong. He is going to pull through.”
The first lady and her son were allowed to visit Reagan after he had been awake for about twenty-five minutes. Doctors escorted them into the recovery room and then stepped back as they slipped between the portable screens that cloaked Reagan’s bed.
Mrs. Reagan clasped her husband’s arm. “I love you,” she said. “Everything is going to be fine.”
Ron was shocked by his father’s appearance: his face was stone gray and he was struggling for breath. Reagan requested a pencil and paper; a nurse handed him a blank hospital record, a clipboard, and a pen.
“I can’t breathe … at all.”
“He can’t breathe!” Mrs. Reagan shouted as the president tried to sit up.
“He has to get used to it,” a doctor replied. “The respirator is breathing for him. It’s all right.”
Ron tried to reassure his father. “Dad, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re going to be fine. It’s just like scuba diving. You have to let the machine breathe for you.”
Ron had no idea why that analogy popped into his head; he knew his father had never been scuba diving. “Just relax,” he added.
As he tried to soothe his father, Ron saw the fear and confusion in his eyes. At that moment, he understood: his father had almost died.
* * *
AT ABOUT 6:20, Richard Allen received word that the vice president would be landing at Andrews Air Force Base within minutes. While they waited for Bush in the Situation Room, Allen and the others were keeping abreast of the recent movements of Soviet military forces. Allen was particularly concerned about a new intelligence assessment from the CIA delivered to him just minutes earlier, stating that “photography of Soviet forces near Poland provides the initial indications of troop mobilizations.” But the photos mentioned in the assessment were a day old, and now that the Polish strike had been averted, Allen was less worried about the possibility that the Russians would take advantage of a perceived power vacuum in Washington to move aggressively on their western neighbor. Even so, he made sure that the assessment would be passed to Bush when he arrived at the White House.
At seven p.m., the vice president finally strode into the Situation Room. Even before taking a seat at the head of the conference table, Bush asked, “What’s the latest?”
Baker told him the doctors would hold a press conference in ten minutes to inform the country about Reagan’s condition.
Allen then raised the issue they’d been debating earlier. “There are questions of shift of authority that is required,” he said, mentioning the dairy bill that had to be signed the next day.
“My view on that is we ought to wait,” Bush said calmly. “These reports are so encouraging.… The best thing would be to wait to see, tomorrow, how the president feels.”
Weinberger briefed the vice president about his decision to increase the readiness of bomber crews in the hours after the assassination attempt and told Bush that military intelligence had received no indications of a pending attack. The secretary of defense began to describe the location of the Russian submarines when Baker interrupted him.
“Excuse me? Would it be appropriate to ask about clearances?” Baker said, clearly worried that classified information might be passed inadvertently to those not approved to receive it. “It might be appropriate to make sure.”
“Let’s get it straightened out,” Bush said.
“I think we need to make sure we don’t break the law right here in the Situation Room,” Baker said.
Before Weinberger continued, a number of officials without the proper security clearances streamed out of the room.
* * *
THE FBI AGENTS leading the investigation of John Hinckley were still struggling to get a better understanding of their suspect. By now, they knew that several months ago Hinckley had been arrested at the Nashville airport with three handguns on the same day that Ji
mmy Carter was visiting the city. They also knew that Hinckley had arrived in Washington after a cross-country bus trip just a day earlier, which suggested a certain level of sophistication in his planning if his goal had been to shoot Reagan outside the Hilton. Meanwhile, Hinckley remained remarkably placid and was one of the politest suspects they had ever questioned; he even answered their questions with “Yes, sir” and “No, sir.” Whether he was a loner or part of a plot, the man they had in custody was unlike any gunman or assailant they had ever encountered.
Since arriving at the FBI’s Washington field office an hour and a half earlier, Hinckley spent most of the time sitting in a small white interview room containing a few chairs and a plain desk. Hinckley had been read his rights by the D.C. police, but FBI agents decided to read them to him again. Hinckley now agreed to talk, on condition that he could first speak to his parents. Agents made call after call in a fruitless attempt to get them on the phone.
Though unable to reach the Hinckleys at their home in Colorado, the FBI decided just before seven p.m. to make another attempt to get the suspect to open up.
The first agent to sit with Hinckley in the interview room was George Chmiel, who was among the field office’s most aggressive and thorough agents. Chmiel had been concerned all afternoon about possible accomplices, and he had been reluctant to agree with other investigators who believed that Hinckley was a troubled loner.
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