9

WHEN I AWAKE, MORGAN IS wearing a pair of spectacles and appears to be staring right at me with a blank look on her face.

“Morgan?”

She doesn’t answer. My vision appears to be more symmetrical, which is a relief. Morgan’s full lips tip up at the corners. I know that look well.

“Morgan!”

“Oh.” She takes off her spectacles. “I was reading a novel.” She stands and comes near the bed.

“Romance novel via spectacles, huh?” Lying there in a hospital gown, I know I don’t fit her fantastic notion of an ideal lover, even with my six-pack. But who could possibly live up to the fanciful images in her novels?

She nods. “Killing trees is so unnecessary.” She taps the button to contact the nurses’ station. “My husband’s awake.”

I feel weak, but alert. My blurry vision has completely resolved. I press my hand against my left leg. “Yes! My feeling’s back.”

Morgan rests her hand on my chest. “Their tests confirmed that it would be so.”

“How long has it been?”

“Since the explosion? Three days.”

I try to sit up in bed, but I’m covered in tubes and wires.

“They repaired your damaged brain tissue with some experimental stem cell transplantation.” She smiles, pulls in closer, and kisses me on the cheek. “Ivan did it himself. They kept you sedated until the tissue healing matured. They’ve been feeding you intravenously, and using electrodes to keep your muscles toned, but you’ve shriveled a bit.”

I yawn and pull against the wires. “Unstrap me, please.”

She unstraps my wrist ties with one hand, and with the other presses her fingers into my toned abs. “That’s the laziest three days these muscles have experienced in eight years.”

A fleet of nurses rush into the room, along with Drs. Ivan Wilkes and Cranton and two other physicians to welcome me back from the edge of the grave, and to congratulate themselves on another breakthrough in New Body science.

* * *

“Thank you, Madame President,” I say into the phone, trying to minimize my barely perceptible slur. I remove my slippers and lean back in the reclining leather chair they have brought into my private hospital room.

“You take your time and get better. We’re getting a lot of mileage out of your handicap, so don’t you feel any guilt about not being on the field in front of the cameras . . . ”

Handicap? My minimally weak hand and foot and my barely perceptible facial droop is hardly a handicap. “It’s almost completely gone, Madam President. Dr. Wilkes’ and Dr. Cranton’s procedure repaired my damaged brain tissue.”

“Do me a favor. Fake the limp while walking the hospital grounds for a couple of days? I have a fleet of cameras there prepared for my impromptu press conference, which may be as early as tomorrow morning in front of your hospital.”

“Here? I thought we weren’t exactly on speaking terms as far as the press is concerned.”

She laughs. “Well, as it turns out, the Republicans have boasted a veto-proof majority behind your bill. In record timing. You’re a natural, and you get all the credit, Raymond.”

“Wow.” Of all my accolades and awards, there are no words quite as pleasurable as personal praise from the President of the United States. She credits me for single-handedly harnessing the formidable power of the political right to unknowingly carry the President’s own agenda. “I can’t believe it worked.”

“They raised a hundred million ameros for a campaign to fight us in the House, Ray. They’re idiots. The religious right waves the flags we knit for them and lobbies hard for the bills we trick them into backing.”

My brother comes to mind, and I grimace. The right wing is teeming with religious opportunists with no principle but personal gain, and no accomplice so comforting as the undemanding divine grace that covers their hypocritical judgments and perpetual moral deficiencies.

“You see, all your suffering has not been in vain, Ray. Thanks to your influence on the public, I have come around to your compromise, albeit reluctantly. You should know I still will accuse you of capitulating to the religious fanatics . . . ”

“Of course.” This game is so entertaining. “I’ll be glad to fake the limp for a couple more days and be the target for your darts, as long as you will not hold offense when I throw mine.”

She laughs. “Oh, I could kiss you right now.”

“I assume that you do not want me at your press conference?”

“You assume correctly. We’re not that close.”

“Kissing enemies. Of course.”

“The bitterest.”

“Have you discovered who is responsible for the explosion?” There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. “Madame President?”

“Yes, I’m here. I thought you knew. It was your sister.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “Tamara? It’s politically expedient and serves your cause, I know, but . . . ”

“Our cause.”

“Yes, our cause. But I know that she wouldn’t have done that, and setting your investigators on her gives the real culprits time to cover their tracks.”

“Have you even met her or spoken to her in the past 27 years?”

“Well, no, but I know that she’s committed to peaceful activism. Peaceful. She’s the abortion clinic sidewalk counseling type. No guns. No bombs. Fasting and praying in jibberish are her weapons of choice.”

“Well, the evidence points to her organization, I’m sorry to say. This terrorist attack happened under her guidance, not in spite of it.”

I frown. I should pay Tamara a visit. “Where is she being incarcerated?”

“If you’re thinking of visiting her, don’t. If it gets out to the press, it’ll hurt your influence with the public.” For the first time, I sense disappointment in her voice. “Will you call NBS, and have them run a piece on you from your hospital room?”

I clear my throat. “Gladly.”

As soon as I get off the phone with President Sayder, Morgan taps behind her right ear to conclude her phone call.

“What’s got you so excited, Morgan?”

“I’ll tell you at dinner tonight. At our favorite place, on the boardwalk overlooking the Bay.”

I smile at her invitation. “Are they going to let me go?”

“Yes, our date meets with Dr. Cranton’s approval.”

“Always looking for a reason to celebrate, aren’t you, babe?”

“Life’s too short to . . . ”

She and I make eye contact. Her old cliché doesn’t apply now that we get a new body every 25 years.