Kate smiled for the first time in probably twenty-four hours. "What would I do without you, Tully?"
"Are you kidding me? Three days I wait for your call and when you do bother to call, it's to say you need more time?"
Tully leaned closer to the pay phone, trying to squeeze a small bit of privacy out of a very public place. "The family isn't ready to go public yet, Maury. The doctors are respecting their wishes. Surely you can understand that."
"Understand it? Who gives a shit if I understand it? This is world news, Tully, not some damn sorority gossip circle. CNN has reported that he has a head injury—"
"That's officially unconfirmed."
"Damn it, Tully. You're putting me in a hell of a spot. The higher-ups are pissed off. There was talk this morning of pulling you off the story. Dick wants to send—"
"I'll get you something."
"Get me the story today and I'll move you into the news nook next week."
Tully thought for a moment she'd imagined the promise. "You mean it?"
"You have twenty-four hours, Tully. At the end of that time you can be a hero or a zero. It's up to you."
Tully heard him slam the phone down. Through the glass windows of the empty lobby, she could see the reporters clustered along the sidewalk. For three days they'd been waiting for official word on Johnny's condition. In the meantime, they'd reported the known facts—the events that led up to the bombing, the field reports of his injuries, and his backstory in Central America. Additionally, they'd used this to springboard on to other tangentially related general stories, things like the danger to journalists covering wars, the specific challenges of Desert Storm, and the myriad types of injuries that commonly accompany bombings.
She stood there, wondering how in the hell she was going to do this. Everything needed to be done exactly right so that both Maury and Kate got what they wanted. It was up to Tully to make it all happen, and if she did this one thing well, it might change her future. She'd die before she'd let Edna down, and like Edna had said, Tully could do her job and still protect Kate. She'd have to break the story, but how she did it was what mattered.
Carefully. Tactfully. No mention of brain damage or potential blindness. That way everyone got what they wanted.
The news nook.
All her life she'd dreamed of that job, imagined it as the start of everything. She couldn't let go of the opportunity to have it. Surely Kate would understand the importance of that.
Of course.
Smiling, she went in search of her cameraman. They'd start with some establishing shots—background, hospital interior and exterior, that sort of thing. They'd hide the camera as much as they needed to. Fortunately, everyone who mattered knew that Kate had given Tully full access to visit Johnny.
She went to the front door and stepped out into the cold gray afternoon. Her cameraman was standing off to the side, away from the group of reporters. At her signal, he hid his camera under his quilted goose-down coat and headed toward her.
Kate sat in Dr. Schmidt's office, listening. "So the swelling isn't going down," she said, trying not to twist her sweaty hands together. She was so tired, it was a struggle simply to keep her eyes open.
"Not as quickly as we would wish. If soon there is not some improvement I am thinking we will go to surgery again."
She nodded.
"Do not worry yet, Mrs. Ryan. Your husband is very strong. We can see that he is fighting hard."
"How can you tell?"
"Why, because he is still alive. A weaker man would not be here now."
She tried to take strength from that, to truly believe it, but hope was becoming difficult to hold on to. Each passing day had sanded her down, weakened the walls of her denial; in places, fear called itself truth and poked through.
Dr. Schmidt stood. "I must to see a patient now. I will walk with you part of the way back to Mr. Ryan's room."
She nodded and fell into step beside him. For a moment, with him beside her talking in his soft, authoritative voice, she felt a longing for her father.
"Well, this is where I must turn a different way," Dr. Schmidt said, pointing down the hallway toward the radiology department.
Kate nodded. She would have mumbled a simple goodbye, but she didn't trust her voice, and the last thing she wanted to do was to show her weakness.
She stood in the hallway, watching him walk away from her. Near the end of the corridor, he merged into the white-clad sea of bodies and disappeared.
