“Can I see him?”
“He can’t have any visitors now. He’s in intensive care.”
“Oh my God! That’s bad, right?”
“That’s where everyone goes after surgery.”
Kathy realized that she still had no idea what was going on. She couldn’t believe so much time had gone by and she still knew nothing.
“What happened to him?”
“He was shot.”
Kathy thought she was going to pass out, but instead tears poured from her eyes. Brian put his arm around her and Sue Norgen extended her cold hand, offering zero comfort. “He’s going to be all right, dear, that’s the important thing. Would you like a cold drink?” Kathy nodded. “Let’s go to my office and we can discuss everything.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
People always wonder about the transition period of the American presidency. What exactly happens during the two and a half months between winning and taking office? What does the new president find out that he or she hadn’t known before? For Matthew Bernstein, it was a bit overwhelming, to say the least. He was given security briefings when he was officially the candidate, and those by themselves gave him pause. They were certainly more detailed and authoritative than the available news of the day.
There were no trusted sources of newsgathering anymore, no voice of one news organization or one reporter that people believed over another. It was a combination of professionals, amateurs, citizens, gossip, pictures fed to a world from billions of handheld devices; a whole slew of information that people had to somehow slog through and decide for themselves what they thought was true. There was even a site that claimed to know what the CIA daily briefings were. Surely that wasn’t true—or was it? So many things on that site came to pass, and every time it was shut down it reopened somewhere else.
But when he became a candidate, Bernstein started to get the same briefings as the president. This was the information that had to be perceived as real. To paraphrase Nixon, “If the president hears it, it must be true.”
What he wasn’t told was what the president already knew. He was only privy to what was happening at the moment, but the real stuff, the stuff that a president had to take office to find out—that was still out of reach.
After the election, around November 20, Bernstein was told that he was to go on a week’s retreat to a beautiful spa on the Cayman Islands. His wife was allowed to come, and he was told this would be about “filling in” details. He knew of these retreats—they were given to all incoming presidents—but he had had no idea, no idea at all, what he was about to hear.
It started out slowly. The first day was basically rest and relaxation, along with the daily briefing, which now took on an air of more significance. The candidate had been told for many months of the current threats and future threats and potential threats, but he was never given serious enough information in case he lost the election. From November 8 onward, the briefings got longer, and more privileged, but it was still nothing like the week he was about to have.
In the first official meeting on the Caymans, Bernstein sat down with three men, two in military uniform and one dressed in a suit. One of the military men started by asking him if he had any questions. Were there things he had always wondered about that were never satisfactorily answered?
“My God,” Bernstein said. “Are you kidding? Where do I start?”
“Fire away, Mr. President-elect. We’re at your service.”
“Okay. Here’s something I’ve always wondered. Did spacemen ever land here? What was Area Fifty-one?”
The man in the suit laughed.
“That’s almost everyone’s first question. No, Mr. President-elect, no one has landed here. There are no space creatures hidden anywhere, but something did go on in Area Fifty-one. The United States was testing an entirely new way of flight propulsion, and it was saucer-shaped. It crashed. People saw that. And the government at the time decided that an alien story was far better for our national security than to let our enemies suspect we had even a remote knowledge of what we were trying to accomplish.”
“What kind of propulsion was it?” Bernstein asked.
No one said anything. After a few seconds one of the military men spoke. “No one here is qualified to answer that, sir, but we will get someone to explain it to you.”
Bernstein just blinked. Was this whole week a waste of time? Were they going to tell him some things but not others? His next question was “Who really runs this country?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Who really controls this country?”
“You do, sir, starting in January.”
“I don’t believe that. There must be continuity that has nothing to do with presidents. Who has the ultimate power in the United States?”
“The Supreme Court?” one of the military men asked.
“This is not a test,” Bernstein said. “I’m asking you a question. Maybe the right way to put it is, is there a shadow government?”
The man who had given him the answer to the Area 51 question smiled.
“No, sir. There are very wealthy individuals and family dynasties that have controlled a great part of the world for hundreds of years, but they do not, as far as I know, have greater power than the government.”
“As far as you know?”
“Yes, sir, as far as I know.”
“Who killed John Kennedy?”
“Lee Harvey Oswald, sir?”
“Okay.” The President-elect got out of his chair and went to get a glass of water. “So those were my three questions. Why don’t you talk now?”
He wondered if these men were the ones who knew the secrets and, if they did, were they telling him? And if they didn’t, why wasn’t he meeting with the ones who knew?
What they did tell him over the next week was still more information than he’d ever wanted to know. The threats to the country seemed more severe than the daily briefings had made them out to be when he was just a candidate. The debt crisis sounded worse; the health care and child care and education systems all sounded as if they were beyond repair. Day after day he was shown figures, charts, data, algorithms, predictions by think tanks, names of famous people who might be trying to overthrow the country, bridges that were about to collapse, hurricane predictions, and on and on and on.
At the end of the fourth day he told Betsy he believed these transition periods were only set up to take the wind out of the sails of any new administration. “If there is a shadow government, this would be one way to make a new president feel powerless.”
Betsy took another approach. “You have nothing to lose. If it’s that bad, all you can do is make it better. Does the First Lady still get her own staff?”
“Of course.”
“There you go. Things are looking up already. What about the spacemen?”
“I asked. There aren’t any.”
* * *
Kathy and Brian sat on a couch in Sue Norgen’s office. Sue again suggested that maybe the conversation should just involve direct family and she was told again that Brian could stay. Sue never made it her decision. If family members wanted others present at times like these, it was their choice, and quite frankly she didn’t really care. She pulled up a chair and faced Kathy, only occasionally glancing at Brian.
“Your father was shot at work, as you know.”
“I don’t know anything! This is the first information I’m hearing.”
“He was shot at the school, one bullet in the left collarbone.”
“Oh my God.”
“Fortunately, it did not go into his heart, but he has lost a lot of blood, and the bullet was so deeply lodged that they had to remove quite a bit of bone to take it out. The nerve in his left shoulder may or may not have been damaged.”
“What does that mean?” Kathy was trembling.
“It means that we won’t know for a while if he is going to lose any movement or feeling in that area.”
“How m
uch movement could he lose?”
“I don’t want to speculate. It may be fine or he may lose the ability to move his arm.”
“Oh, no. Oh God.”
“I think it’s much too early to speculate. I’m just giving you the details that we have now and the information that will pertain to his recovery. He will need to stay in the hospital for a week and then he might need extensive physical therapy.”
“I understand,” Kathy said. “Whatever he needs.”
This was the part Sue didn’t like. Kathy did not understand. No one did until they were told. For the most part, Sue liked her job, but she never understood why the task fell to her to explain basic economics. So many people thought these expenses were just paid for out of thin air. Do they teach nothing in high school anymore? “Kathy … may I call you Kathy?”
“Yes,” Kathy said, knowing that that expression never led to anything good.
“Your father does not have a comprehensive insurance plan.” Kathy’s face was expressionless. She knew what was coming. But it was much worse than she thought. “As a matter of fact, he has no real insurance at all. His universal coverage lapsed a year and a half ago when he stopped making the minimum payments.”
“But he was going to make those payments up. That’s why he took that job.”
“I understand, but he didn’t. If you let your co-pay go unpaid, the government guarantee of health care is void. It is everyone’s responsibility to keep that payment going.”
“Well, can I get the money somehow and pay the co-pay myself?”
“It’s too late for that. When the government saw that too many people simply stopped their end of the bargain, just waiting until they got sick to resume their payments, they passed very strict laws regarding co-pays. It’s really the same as a mortgage. If you miss your mortgage payment, you lose your house.” Kathy was getting angry.
“We got behind in our mortgage and we didn’t lose our house.”
“How many months did you get behind?”
“Two.”
“Well, your father let his insurance payment go for almost a year and a half. Even two months would have been a problem, but at eighteen months there’s nothing I can do.”
“So what does this mean?”
“Well, the good news is, we are going to treat your father for the time he is in the hospital. We will have no ability, though, to get him physical therapy if it turns out that that’s what he needs. You will have to arrange that.”
“Okay,” Kathy said. That didn’t sound so bad to her; maybe her dad wouldn’t need therapy, maybe he would be okay. Then Sue Norgen continued and Kathy heard it, but didn’t. Her brain could not comprehend what came next.
“Kathy, the hospital bill will need to be paid.” Sue looked down at her small screen, confirming the figures before she said anything further. “The bill, including the surgery, including one week of care, no more, will be approximately three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
It was Brian who spoke first. “What did you say?” Brian was now standing.
“The surgery and the one-week stay will be approximately three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” Brian started pacing like an animal. Kathy just sat there, still not comprehending what this meant.
“He has universal care; it can’t be that much!” Brian said.
“He had no care. He let his payments lapse,” Sue replied.
“But he was going to pay them; that’s why he was working at such a shitty job!” Brian raised his voice. “That’s why he got shot!”
“I know it sounds unfair, but I do not make the rules. My job is to collect money so the hospital stays in business.”
“We don’t have the money,” Kathy said. “Are you going to kill him?”
“Of course not, you know that.” Sue got up and went back to her desk. “I am going to send to your screen various plans where you can take out a medical loan, much like any other loan. This can be dealt with in that fashion. Did you ever take out a student loan for college?”
“I didn’t go to college. I had to work.”
“Well, this can be paid back over time by anyone you choose—your father, you, anyone.” Kathy got up. She looked terrible. No color in her face, no expression.
“So I have to borrow three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“What if they won’t loan us the money?”
“Didn’t you say your father owned his home?”
“Yes, but I think he owes more than it’s worth.”
“Kathy, the medical loans are a bit more lenient because the expense has already been incurred, so I’m sure as long as someone has a job and is willing to make a serious attempt, you will get the money.”
“And what if we don’t?”
“You’re a healthy young woman. Even if your father can never work again, I’m sure you can, or someone else in your family can. And I am sure over time you can pay it back. But I’m not the lender; my responsibility is to the hospital. So when you get home, look over your choices. I can’t imagine that something won’t work out.”
“Can I see my father?”
“Not while he is in intensive care.”
“When can I see him?”
“Go home for now. Look over the material I’ve sent and I will call you and let you know when your father can have a visitor.”
Brian was furious. He wanted to punch this woman in the face. Kathy walked to the door. She honestly felt that if she didn’t take care of the money, she would never see her father again.
CHAPTER NINE
The President had asked for a meeting with several prominent health professionals for Wednesday, the twelfth of June, but something was about to alter his plans.
Wednesday morning, Jack Eller, Brad’s poorest friend, got up early. He had a terrible pain in his right foot. His insurance was the barest-bones coverage the government offered. For a low premium, he was allowed one doctor visit a year, and one visit to an emergency room every three years. Major surgery was covered if three separate medical sources wrote that it was absolutely necessary. Ambulances were not covered, home nursing was not covered, physical therapy was not covered, and the overall deductible was five thousand dollars.
The result of such a stringent plan was that patients simply stopped asking for help. If they passed out in their own home, they would be lucky to be taken to the hospital by a private car so they didn’t start out the visit owing three thousand dollars for the ambulance ride. If they were luckier, they woke up in a bed with at least two approvals for whatever it was they needed, a third approval at that point being pretty much guaranteed. Many patients died waiting for these approvals, but the government held firm.
As Jack was sitting on his bed rubbing his swollen foot, he glanced at the clock. It was 6:35 in the morning. The pain was so bad he thought maybe Brad could pick him up and he could use his one emergency room visit—he hadn’t had one in almost four years. He didn’t want to call Brad too early, so he hobbled over to the kitchenette and pressed “brew” on the coffee machine. As soon as he pressed the button, it started: a small shaking that either would be gone in a second, or not.
Living in Los Angeles, people were used to this from time to time, and most of the time it was nothing. The last sizable shake, which was in Palm Springs in 2020, measured a 7.1 and was felt throughout the Los Angeles area. Immediately after that quake, experts came on the news and declared that it wasn’t “the big one.” What did that mean, “the big one”? Everyone thought about it, but nobody had lived through a “big one,” so people could only imagine.
Jack waited for the shaking to stop. It didn’t. It had only just begun. After about twelve seconds it seemed to double in intensity, and then it tripled, and then everything fell down. Jack ran to hide under his bed. He didn’t make it. A beam from the ceiling hit him in the forehead and that was it.
Brad was literally thrown out of bed. As his ceiling started to come down, he ran
to the doorway of the bathroom and just stood, expecting to die. Every piece of glass broke in his condo, everything came out of every cabinet, and the refrigerator-communication center fell over. The framed picture of Brad and his wife meeting Bill Clinton was shattered. The Lalique crystal water faucet he was given at his retirement lunch was smashed into a hundred pieces.
The electricity ceased after the first fifteen seconds. Handheld devices now communicated directly with satellites, so Brad reached for his watch, but he didn’t know who to call or what to do. He called Herb. There was no answer. He called Jack. No answer. Then he got a call. It was his son. The fact that they never spoke didn’t matter now; he was grateful to talk to anybody.
“Dad?” His son sounded panicked.
“Tom, are you all right?”
“No. We’ve had a terrible earthquake.” That his son lived near San Diego, two hundred miles away, and thought the earthquake was centered there, gave Brad an indication of just how big this was. “Are you all right, Dad, is it bad there?”
“It’s bad here,” Brad said. “You have to protect yourself from the aftershocks.”
There was no response. “Tom?” Nothing. “Tom, can you hear me?” The connection was gone. Now it was impossible to get anything on the watch. There were too many people using the satellite system; it was overwhelmed.
Brad made his way outside as soon as the initial shaking stopped. And then he felt the first aftershock. It was an aftershock worse than any earthquake ever recorded in California.
So this was “the big one.” This was the one scientists said in 2010 had a fifty percent chance of happening in the next thirty years. Fifty-fifty. Red or black. The San Andreas Fault had not moved substantially in over three hundred years. “Overdue” was an understatement.
The initial shake was a 9.1. The first aftershock was an 8.7. The second was an 8.2. The third, an 8.0, was bigger than anything that had ever been predicted.
It was funny. Brad remembered a science show he had seen years earlier that talked about the San Andreas Fault. “Compared to other faults,” the show said, “the San Andreas is only capable of something in the high sevens.” And yet the show did point out that in the next million or so years, Los Angeles would be somewhere north of San Francisco. Brad had wondered at the time how scientists could be so sure that a fault would never go higher than a certain magnitude, since obviously it was in the process of moving hundreds of miles. Couldn’t they be wrong, just once? Couldn’t the earth decide, one afternoon, to move a little faster than geologists agreed on? How could someone be that sure about the earth’s crust? They don’t even get the weather right. Brad remembered thinking how presumptuous that was, and today he wondered if the guy who hosted that program was in the city. To have your life destroyed and be wrong—well, that would be a bad morning.
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