32. I Tripped
32
I TRIPPED
DARREN
T he waiting room is quiet at the moment and Evangeline is curled up, her head resting in my lap, when Audrina walks into the room.
“I’ve been,”—she pauses, noticing Evangeline asleep, and lowers her voice—“trying to get hold of you.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and notice it’s dead.
“Any news?” she asks.
“Still waiting for him to wake up,” I explain.
“I can’t believe it. As soon as I heard I came.”
“Mr. Walker?” a nurse interrupts. “Mr. Rausch is waking up. You can go in and see him now.” As much as I want to shoot straight out of my seat, I don’t want to wake Evangeline.
“Here, let me,” Audrina holds out her sweater, folding it like a pillow, and I gently place it under her head. “It’s okay, I’ll stay with her. You go,” she offers, waving me off.
“Thank you.” I follow the nurse through the double doors and down the long hallway.
The smell and the thought of seeing him make me woozy, but I press on.
In the doorway, I watch the monitors track his heart rate and God only knows what else. His eyes are closed, and he looks fragile and small, not at all like the imposing figure he usually is—not at all like the kingmaker.
I take the seat next to his bed and put my face in my hands, trying to wipe away the weariness.
Rausch turns his head to the side and clears his throat. His voice is gravelly. “You can’t get rid of me that easy, Darren.”
I let out a small laugh.
“Jesus, do I look that awful?” he croaks.
“No, you look good,” I lie.
“You were never a good liar, Darren,” he says, turning his head straight and closing his eyes again.
“Good for someone who was just shot,” I add.
I notice the pitcher of water and cup next to his bed and assume he’d be okay to drink, so I pour him a cup and offer it to him. “Here, have some water.”
He opens his eyes, taking the cup from me with a shaky hand, so I try to hold it to his lips for him. “I don’t need a nursemaid,” he grumbles.
I look around the room. “Apparently, you do.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“What is all this?” he fusses with the tubes attached to his chest.
“You were shot,” I remind him. “And you just got out of surgery.”
“I was talking about the tubes, Darren. I don’t have amnesia,” he grumbles and then settles back onto the pillow with a loud huff, having given up the battle.
“I was really worried about you,” I admit.
“Even after all the times you tried to fire me?” he chokes out a laugh.
“I can’t get elected without you,” I admit.
“You don’t need me.” He waves me off. “You can do that all on your own.”
“Is there anyone you need me to call?”
“No,” he grunts and then the room settles into silence except for the steady rhythm of the monitor beeping.
“Listen, about what I said before…”
“Let’s not rehash all of that,” Rausch states.
“I need to say this.” I let out a breath. “I was angry, and I said things I shouldn’t have.”
“You have every right to be angry. It’s not something I should have kept from you,” Rausch admits.
“I was angry because it felt like one more thing about my father that I didn’t know, and you did. It’s childish, I know, but I just wanted to feel like I knew him,” I admit.
“You did know him. Believe me, you did,” he reassures.
I rub at my jaw. “I found a letter my mother wrote to him,” I explain, and Rausch turns his head to look at me. “It must have been after she found out about you.”
Rausch’s eyes widen, the blue a little paler than before.
“She said she’d made a decision, that she understood,” I explain to him. “He kept it in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson .” The corners of his mouth tilt into a small smile.
“It’s the same book you were reading that night I came to your house to argue about things I don’t even remember now.”
“You accused me of keeping information from you about Evangeline donating the money,” he reminds me.
I laugh, “You have a good memory.”
“I have a long memory,” he corrects. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I was missing him that night,” Rausch admits, and it makes sense now. “Reading Emerson was a way to feel close to him again.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this, to know that my whole life growing up, my parents’ marriage was an arrangement, a way for my father to keep his political career while he was in love with you,” I express.
“Things were different back then. People weren’t as tolerant or forgiving. And you know what his family’s like,” he trails off.
“Is that why he decided not to run for President?” I ask.
“Langley threatened to expose him. I wanted him to run anyway, to come out in the open, but he didn’t want to do that to Merrill,” Rausch admits.
I run a hand along my jaw, processing all of this. “As much as I didn’t want to become that family, under so much scrutiny—it feels like something was stolen from him.”
I look up from my lap to see Rausch staring at me.
“Was my mother…?” I pause, unsure how to phrase the question of whether she was happy or not, because I’m not even sure if I want to know.
“Your father loved her immensely,” he says. “He would have given up his political career for her to be happy, but she wouldn’t let him. Merrill was”—he gives a small laugh, as if a memory passes through his mind—“stubborn, and loyal. Maybe too loyal. But she believed in him. We both did.”
Maybe that’s the answer I was looking for.
I don’t want to carry this anger around with me. What happened today has put things into perspective.
“You took a bullet for me.”
“I tripped.”
I burst into laughter.
Rausch does the same, which dissolves into fits of coughs and sputters, causing the monitors to blare. A nurse enters the room to check on him and he tries to wave her off. She looks about as stubborn as he is but he’s in no position to boss anyone around.
“I should let you sleep,” I say, standing.
“You can come back and visit him in the morning,” the nurse offers. “I need to take some vitals.”
When she passes by, I stop her for a moment. “Is he going to be okay?”
She looks back at him fighting with the IV lines again. “There’s always a risk for complications,” the nurse explains, and she must see the worry in my eyes.
“Don’t worry.” She looks back at him and smiles. “He looks like a fighter.”
I smirk, knowing how true that is.
“Darren,” he calls out before I leave.
We stare at each other, and I can feel a lump form in my throat. I nod as if to say I understand, so he doesn’t have to say it, and then leave the room.
When I enter the waiting room Evangeline is awake and looks to be in deep conversation with Audrina, their heads together, holding each other’s hands tightly.
As soon as she notices me, she jumps from her seat. “How is he?”
“He looks good,” I lie, and she purses her lips as if she can see right through me. “Ornery that he has to stay in the hospital,” I add, which is the truth.
Audrina pulls me into a hug. “If I had lost you too,” she doesn’t get the rest of the words out, but I’m distracted by what’s playing on the television above the chairs.
“What in the fuck?”
Audrina and Evangeline turn around to watch Jonathan Langley on the steps of the Capitol building commenting on the day’s events as if he’d been there.
“Darren, what are you doing?” Evangeline calls after me as I head for the door.
“Audrina, stay here with her,” I instruct.
“Darren!” Evangeline yells, following me out the double doors.
“I’m not going to let him use this to his advantage.”
“You’re emotional. I’m afraid you’re going to do something stupid,” she warns.
“Of course I’m emotional. Rausch almost died! Do you trust me?” I ask.
“Of course,” she replies without hesitation.
“Then stay here with Audrina and let me know if you hear anything. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I kiss her before I race through the parking lot and call Bailey.
The hospital is just over the Potomac and when I get to the Capitol Building, I find Langley just leaving, the camera crew packing up.
“How dare you?” I yell, stopping him on the steps.
“Ah, Darren, I’m so glad to see that you’re okay. The shooting earlier was unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate? Rausch almost died.”
“And I hope he’s recovering,” Langley replies. “But I don’t see why you felt the need to ambush me.”
“You’ll take any opportunity to spin something in your favor. You want to take credit for passing bills, but what about the ones you didn’t, like gun reform, which might have prevented what happened today?”
“I didn’t vote any different than my party,” he argues.
“And that’s the problem.”
“I see you’re going to make a lot of friends in Congress. That’s if you can manage to get elected, the playboy son of a senator who cares more about partying than legislature,” he sneers. “So don’t think you can school me on policy.”
“You think you can tell the public something they don’t already know about me?” I ask, noticing the camera crew has set back up and it’s pointing directly at us. “How’s this? Yes, I was a fuckup for most of my life. I partied, got thrown out of bars, arrested for public drunkenness. I even hired an escort, which is something you can relate to, and coerced her into marrying me so I could get my inheritance.”
“Your wife’s press conference to gain public sympathy doesn’t clean the slate for who she is. And the Virginia voters know that because they are hardworking people who understand family values, which is something I’ve stood for my entire career.”
“What you don’t know is that my wife is the most generous person you’ll ever meet. She donated the five million dollars I paid her to be my wife to the Abigail Pershing Foundation, which helps thousands of battered women in the DC area. She volunteered her time and mine to serve food at a Clarksville church on Thanksgiving. You don’t know about that because it wasn’t for political publicity, unlike you scooping turkey for a veteran, smiling for the camera, and as soon as they were gone, so were you!” I bark.
The camera points in my direction and I take full advantage of it.
“My wife is the best thing that has ever happened to me. If it weren’t for her, I would have never taken the Bar, and might I add, pass on the first try.” I look at him pointedly. “She made me feel worthy, not the other way around, enough so that I actually thought I could make a difference in this world. She is the reason I’m running for the fifth congressional district in Virginia, and she is the reason I will win.”
I turn to leave when Langley stops me. “You want to accuse me of being inauthentic? Fine. But since you’re spilling family secrets, I think you’re missing one.” He raises an eyebrow and I know exactly what he’s getting at.
“Oh, you mean the one where my father, the late Senator Kerry Walker, was in love with the man who just took a bullet for me?”
Langley’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Or how you blackmailed my father by threatening to divulge this information so he wouldn’t run for President?” The anger starts to boil over inside me and Langley’s face turns red.
“You were his friend!” I point a menacing finger at him, the adrenaline running through my veins making my limbs shaky with anger.
“Those are very serious accusations,” Langley says.
“Doesn’t matter, because this is between me and you, and I’m tired of you lording this information over the people I love.”
“Which is why you attacked me on the Capitol steps,” he accuses.
“You wanted all this to come out anyway. I just did you a favor. And if you think I’m attacking you now then just wait until I win, because it won’t be on the steps of the Capitol, it’ll be on the senate floor.”
“Oh, and by the way, vote for Darren Walker.” I wink into the camera and then flip off Langley before I descend the steps.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out to five missed calls from Evangeline.
“Darren,” she answers the phone with a shaky voice, and I already know why she’s calling without her even saying. “It’s Rausch.”
I grab onto the nearby column to steady myself.
“They said there were complications,” she explains, and I barely register the rest. “There was too much fluid around his heart, and the pressure caused a hemorrhage.” I don’t hear the rest because I drop the phone.