Fires of Autumn (46 page)

Riley
should have been in awe that she was surrounded by the President of the United
States as well as Arizona Senator Scott Dane, but she just couldn’t spare the
energy.  She was completely focused on her sister, and she had been since
receiving a call from Senator Dane’s Aide, Kurt Isaacson, that her sister and
the senator were on their way to Walter Reed Medical Center. 

When Riley
had arrived at the hospital, it had taken several minutes to get through the
Secret Service because the President had also apparently been informed of his
Personal Assistant’s health crisis and had arrived earlier.   The hospital was
now like a fortress.

The
President’s wife was the most visibly upset.  Tracy sat next to her husband on
the older blue couch, a tissue at her nose.  Riley didn’t know Mrs. Talbot but
she had heard a lot of good things about her from Casey.   Still, Riley was
focused on her sister and her current state of health. It was all she cared
about at the moment.

“So what’s
going on with my sister?” she asked the doctor. “Is she okay?”

The doctor
was an older man with a receding hairline.  He sat down next to Riley as he
spoke.

“First of
all, she’s extremely dehydrated,” he said.  “I’m pumping fluids back into her
and she’s feeling better, but there are still issues.”

“What
issues?” Riley demanded. “She’s been perfectly healthy for the duration of the
pregnancy.”

The doctor
nodded. “I know,” he replied. “I talked to her regular doctor. She’s on her way
over here, in fact.  She says that Casey has sailed through this pregnancy so
far.  But here’s the issue; the last time she saw the doctor was three weeks
ago and since that time, the placenta has moved to the base of the uterus and
is covering the cervix.  That’s caused the baby to shift so he’s sitting very
low in her pelvis.  With the dehydration and the fact that she’s so exhausted,
it’s brought on pre-term labor and because of the position of the placenta,
she’s bleeding fairly heavily. We’re trying to get it under control.”

Riley
looked stricken, her hand flying to her mouth in shock. “Oh, my God,” she
breathed. “She’s not going to die, is she? What about the baby?”

The doctor
held out a hand as if to forcibly calm everyone. “Right now, the baby’s
heartbeat is steady, so he’s doing fine,” he assured them. “It’s the mother I’m
worried about. I have to be honest and tell you that I’m very concerned about
the bleeding. If we can’t stop it in the next hour or so, we’ll have to do an
emergency caesarean.”

Tears
filled Riley’s eyes. “She’s not due for another six weeks.”

“I know,”
the doctor was trying to be kind and optimistic. “The baby should do fine. 
Like I said, it’s the mother I’m worried about right now.”

Riley was
struggling not to cry. “Can I see her?”

The doctor
nodded and stood up, pulling Riley with him as he moved down the corridor.  As
they disappeared around a corner, Scott turned to Russ.

“Christ,”
he hissed. “I feel like… oh, God, I feel like somehow I had a hand in this. I
shouldn’t have….”

He trailed
off and Russ lifted his eyebrows. “Why? What did you do?” he looked around,
spying Kurt standing several feet away with a host of other Secret Service
agents. “I was told you brought her to the hospital. You probably saved her
life, Scott.”

Scott hung
his head. “We were talking about… oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. She told me to
leave her alone and I didn’t. I should have.”

Russ
wasn’t oblivious to what was going on.  He’d known that the widowed senator was
very attracted to Casey and had even gone so far as to try and win Casey away
from Colt. He’d seen the man in his offices, speaking with Casey, going out of
his way to greet her, sending her flowers, so he wasn’t entirely oblivious to
the rumors that had been going around. 

“Look,” he
leaned in Scott’s direction and lowered his voice. “She’s been upset all day. 
She left for lunch and never came back, and no one could find her, so whatever
you think you did, it started well before you.  Don’t give yourself so much
credit.”

Scott was
staring at his hands. “I know she’s been seeing Sheridan,” he said softly.
“I’ve been trying to get her away from that guy from nearly the moment I met
her.  She doesn’t need to be with someone like that.  Here she is, in the
hospital, and where in the hell is he? The guy’s shady and she doesn’t need
that in her life. No one does.”

Russ
glanced at Tracy, who was looking rather angry about it.  He put his hand on
his wife’s knee, silently shaking his head at her not to say anything.

“Whatever
you think about Colt Sheridan, I can tell you from experience that he’s a man
of character and integrity,” he said quietly. “Scott, the only reason you think
Colt is shady is because you want his girlfriend.  You need to come to grips
with the fact that the woman is spoken for. She’s pregnant with his child, for
God’s sake. What more proof do you need?”

Scott
looked up from his hands. “Do you know about the man’s record, Mr. President?”
he asked. “He’s got a….”

Russ held
up a hand to quiet him. “I know all about Colt Sheridan,” he cut him off. “He’s
my special agent in charge and, yes, I know about his record. Mark Miller,
Colt’s boss, and I have had many conversations about it.  My suggestion to you
would be to forget about Casey Cleburne. She and Colt are made for each other
and there’s no chance for you.  You’d save yourself a lot of heartache if you
were to move on.”

Scott
didn’t flare. In fact, he looked back at his hands again.  He seemed pensive
and quiet for a moment, perhaps reflecting on how he’d conducted himself with
Casey since he met her. 

“Maybe,”
he finally said. “I guess… well, I guess I’ve been lonely since Sharon died but
I didn’t really realize it until I met Casey. I don’t know what it was about
her that lit me up, but everything about Casey just sets me on fire. I just
want to be with her and take care of her and… hell, it sounds stupid, I guess. 
I just looked at Sheridan as a competition. I thought I could beat him.”

“He’s
already won the competition, Scott.”

Scott
looked up at Russ again. “If that’s really true, where is he? I’m here and he’s
not.”

Russ
sighed faintly and averted his gaze. He knew that Scott had been checking up on
Sheridan; he’d known it for awhile. Word like that got around.  After a moment,
he stood up and wandered over to where Peter and some of the other Secret
Service agents were positioned.  He caught Peter’s eye and waved the man over. 

“Mr.
President?” Peter greeted him.

Russ
looked at the handsome man.  He had heard, from Mark Miller, that Intel thought
Harrios was a double-agent for the CIA.   Russ knew that Peter and Colt were
rather close and he further knew that they worked closely together. Maybe too
closely. If Colt was an agent for the Core, then it might stand to reason that
Harrios wasn’t a double-agent for the CIA after all. Perhaps he was a Core
operative as well. Colt had mentioned there were others in the President’s
security detail that were more than just Secret Service agents.  Russ was
willing to believe Harrios was one of them.

“I want
you to listen very closely to me, Peter, because this is important,” Russ
lowered his voice. “Let me preface this by saying I’m not looking for a
confession from you.  What I’m about to say is my belief and my belief only. I
think you know more about Colt than you let on, and this whole episode with
Casey running off earlier today has solidified that belief. You said she ran
off because you were talking to her about Colt. Just
what
were you
saying about him?”

Peter’s
expression remained even. “We were speaking of his absence, among other things,
Mr. President.”

“What, in
particular, about his absence?”

Peter drew
in a deep breath.  “That he’d been gone for a long time and she hadn’t heard
anything from him in awhile.  As I told you earlier today, she got upset about
it and ran off.”

Russ
digested that statement, gazing steadily at Peter, before finally shaking his
head.

“Look,” he
murmured. “I don’t know what kind of monkey business you’re in to, Harrios, but
I’ve got a pretty good idea.  I think you know more about Colt than you’re
letting on so I’m going to tell you this; I don’t care who you have to call, or
write to, or send smoke signals to, but I want you to get the message to Colt
that Casey is very ill and he needs to come home.  Is that clear? You get him
back here. I don’t care how you do it, but you get him back here. That’s an
order from your Commander in Chief and other than God himself, my word is
obeyed above all else. Do you understand?”

Peter’s
dark eyes were intense. “Yes, Mr. President.”

“You do it
now.”

“Yes, Mr.
President.”

Russ
turned away from him, heading back to the couch and praying that somehow,
someway, Colt would get the message. He knew that Peter understood the urgency.
For Casey’s sake, he sincerely hoped so.

Casey had
been given a tranquilizer which knocked her out for two days.  Her exhaustion,
her health, made her very susceptible to the numbing effects and even though
she’d tried to pull out of it a couple of times, for the most part, she slept
heavily for two days. 

Her
doctor, an older woman who had delivered a lot of politician’s babies in
Washington, was with her about every hour.  The woman’s office was close by so
she would head over to the hospital in between patients, checking on Casey to
make sure she was holding her own and that the baby was stable.   Dr. Carrie
Steele was well regarded, well liked, and the best around.  She kept a very
close eye on Casey.

Riley
hadn’t spent much time at the hospital because she needed to stay with Hunter
and Brody.  Nick and Janice Cleburne had flown in the morning of the second day
and went straight to the hospital, spending the entire day with Casey as she
slept the day away.  Casey’s mother was particularly devastated about situation
while Nick eventually went back to Casey’s house to hang out with his grandsons
so Riley could go over the hospital with her mother.   The whole Cleburne clan
was struggling to keep going through this crisis.

The next
week was uneventful for the most part.  Janice sat with her daughter all day
and into the evening, reading to her, watching television with her, or even
playing cards with her.  Riley was in and out and towards the end of the week,
Brody and Hunter were allowed to visit their mother.  Hunter pretended he was
okay about the whole thing while Brody dissolved in to tears more than once. 
Casey assured her boys that she would be fine after a little stay in the
hospital.  She was feeling a little stronger and was in better spirits, so the
boys were comforted by what they saw.   Still, Brody was having a hard time
with it and nine days after his mother went into the hospital, his grandparents
allowed him to take the day off of school to spend it with his mother.  He
didn’t even bring his skateboard.  He sat next to his mom on the big hospital
bed and watched game shows with her all day.

Scott came
every day to visit.  He would always bring something with him, like flowers or
a plant or a stuffed animal, and soon enough Casey’s room looked like a florist
shop. Casey’s mom wasn’t sure who the man was at first, then was impressed that
her daughter had a senator taking interest in her. Janice knew about Colt, as
she and her husband had had several conversations about  him with Casey since
the Thanksgiving holiday, but Casey wouldn’t tell her where he was or even why
he hadn’t come to the hospital.  She wouldn’t talk about him at all, leading
Janice to believe that the pair had broken up.  Devastated for her pregnant and
single daughter, Janice thought that the senator was perhaps a welcome
substitution.

Casey
didn’t, however. She didn’t particularly want to see Scott at all.  Every time
he came into her room, her heart rate would go up out of sheer stress and the
nurse would eventually ask him to leave.  It happened almost every time, but he
kept coming back, even when Casey finally told him not to.  He just couldn’t
stay away.

Into the
eighth and ninth day of her infirmary, Scott just came to the hospital to sit
in the waiting room simply to be near her.  He didn’t try to go into her room
anymore, not even when Janice came out into the waiting area and invited him. 
He politely declined, asked how Casey was doing, and left.  It was a sad thing
to witness.

For Casey,
the days passed slowly and the nights were excruciating.  She was glad that the
baby seemed okay but unconcerned that her life was in jeopardy.  Without Colt,
nothing seemed to matter anymore and her depression was a black, bottomless
hole. She’d virtually stopped eating, so much so that they put her on I.V.
nutrients simply to keep her strength up.  Peter had come by to see her a
couple of times but, much like Scott, any sight of him raised her blood
pressure and the nurses would chase him away.  He didn’t have anything to tell
her, anyway, and seeing him just reinforced the fact that Colt was missing.