Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Nelson
I was wearing a track in the carpet.
Back and forth. Vanity to the door. Door to vanity. Nine steps each way — I'd counted, because when you're a man who controls every variable in his environment, counting your own pacing is the kind of thing you do when the variables have started controlling you.
The dressing room felt smaller than usual.
The cool grays and clean surfaces that normally soothed me were doing nothing tonight.
My reflection kept catching my eye in the vanity mirror as I passed — hair and makeup already done, the emerald-green shirt I'd chosen hanging on the rack beside the charcoal jacket I'd wear over it.
I looked exactly the way I was supposed to look. Composed. Prepared. Ready.
I was none of those things.
Something was wrong with me, and I couldn't name it, and the inability to name it was making me pace faster.
For the first time in years — maybe the first time since I'd sat behind the anchor desk — I did not feel in control.
Not of the broadcast, not of the building, not of the tight, restless energy coiling in my chest like a spring wound one turn too many.
I was Nelson Mackenzie. I controlled rooms, cameras, conversations, editorial meetings, and the emotional temperature of every space I occupied.
I could not control this.
This being the fact that in approximately two hours, the earpiece would go in, and Jimmy's voice would arrive inside my body, and my body would do what it had been doing for days — responding, betraying, staging its quiet mutiny beneath the anchor desk while millions of people watched the surface and saw nothing.
I turned at the vanity. Nine steps to the door.
Harry walked in without knocking, which meant he'd knocked twice and I hadn't heard it over the sound of my own agitation.
He carried a manila folder in one hand and a garment bag in the other, and he looked unreasonably cheerful for a Wednesday afternoon.
His tie was new — navy with a subtle geometric pattern — and his hair was doing the thing it did when he'd just had it cut, which was looking even more annoyingly precise than usual.
"Research file you asked for on the Pinnacle Pharmaceuticals follow-up," he said, setting the folder on my desk.
"And your dry cleaning." He crossed to the closet and hung the garment bag.
"The navy jacket, the black suit, and the ivory shirt.
They did a beautiful job on the ivory, by the way.
That wine stain from the charity gala is completely—"
"Harry."
He stopped and turned toward me.
"You're pacing," he observed.
"I'm not pacing."
"You're standing in the middle of the room with your fists clenched and there are track marks in the carpet. You're pacing." He leaned against the closet door and folded his arms. "Bad day?"
"I don't have bad days. I have days that require more management than others."
"Right. And how's the management going?"
"Harry, is there something you need, or are you just here to narrate my afternoon?"
He held up his hands in mock surrender but didn't leave. Harry never left when he sensed something. It was one of his most useful qualities and also, at moments like this, one of his most infuriating.
"I'm just in a good mood," he said. "It's a nice day. The show's been strong. The Pinnacle follow-up is going to be excellent. The sun is shining, Nelson. Sometimes the sun just shines."
I stared at him. "The sun is shining."
"Metaphorically."
"Get out."
He grinned. I did not grin. He didn't move.
"Harry." My voice dropped to the register that cleared rooms. "I said get out."
The grin faded. He straightened up, and for a moment something passed between us — not hurt, exactly, but the slight stiffening of a man who had just been reminded that the person he worked for could draw blood without raising his voice.
He nodded once. "Of course. Anything else you need before—"
"Actually." I stopped pacing. "Sit down."
Harry sat. In the chair by the vanity, the one visitors used — not that I had many visitors. He crossed one leg over the other and waited with the patient attention of a man who sensed the conversation was about to get interesting.
"What do you think of Mr. Goodman?"
The question came out more abruptly than I'd intended. Harry's eyebrows did a complicated thing — rising slightly, then settling, then holding very still in a way that suggested he was choosing his next words with extreme care.
"In what capacity?" he asked.
"As an executive producer. What do you think of his performance."
He was quiet for a moment. His fingers tapped once against his knee. "I think he's possibly the best EP this network has ever had."
The words landed in the room like a grenade rolling across a hardwood floor. I felt my jaw tighten.
"The ratings are up," he continued, carefully.
"The Vasquez interview went viral. The Chicago coverage was the best live broadcasting we've done in years.
The editorial quality of the show has improved measurably in every metric the network tracks.
The crew respects him. The correspondents want to work with him. And the audience—"
"The audience." I cut him off. "What does the audience know, Harry?
The audience doesn't see the editorial meetings or the control room.
The audience sees what I give them, which is the same thing I've been giving them for years — a flawless broadcast every single night, regardless of who's sitting in the EP chair. "
Harry looked at me. Something shifted in his expression — the professional deference cracking, just slightly, the way it did on the rare occasions when Harry Perricone decided he had something to say that I wasn't going to like.
"With respect, Nelson." His voice was firm.
"The broadcast is better. Not the same. Better.
Your delivery has changed. The pacing has changed.
There's something in the show that wasn't there before, and the numbers prove it, and pretending otherwise because you don't like the person responsible isn't—"
"Careful."
He stopped, and his jaw set. For a moment I saw something I'd rarely seen from Harry — real irritation, banked behind his eyes, held in check by professionalism but visible at the edges.
He was a man who cared about this show, who'd spent three years supporting me through every broadcast and every crisis, and I had just dismissed his honest assessment because it wasn't what I wanted to hear.
The irritation held for two seconds. Three. And then it dissolved, replaced by something else entirely.
A smile. Slow, quiet, spreading across his face like dawn breaking.
It was a smile that said he understood something I hadn't told him — that he'd understood it for a while now, and had simply been waiting to see how long I'd keep pretending.
Harry didn't say a word. He just sat there, wearing that knowing smile, and I felt more exposed than I had in thirteen years of live television.
"That will be all, Harry," I said.
He stood, straightening his new tie. Then he walked to the door, paused, and turned back.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I think the show has never been better. And I think that's because of both of you."
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
I stood in the center of my dressing room, fists unclenched now but hands trembling, and stared at the space where Harry had been sitting.
Both of you. Which meant he'd noticed the same thing the audience had noticed, the same thing the ratings reflected, the same thing I'd been refusing to name for weeks: something was happening between me and Jimmy, and it was making the broadcast extraordinary, and I was the only person in the building still pretending I didn't know what it was.
I turned back to the vanity, sat down, and opened the Pinnacle file. I scanned the pages futilely, unable to read a single word.
* * *
The earpiece went in at 6:55. I braced myself.
The countdown began. The theme music rolled. The red light ignited on Camera Two, and I looked into it and became the man that millions of people trusted.
"Good evening. I'm Nelson Mackenzie, and this is Beacon News Tonight.
We begin with an exclusive follow-up to our ongoing investigation into Pinnacle Pharmaceuticals.
Tonight, new documents obtained by this network reveal that senior executives at Pinnacle were aware of inflated drug pricing as early as 2019 and actively concealed the data from federal regulators. "
I hit the pivot, pulling from the prep notes Jimmy had delivered at three.
"The documents, which include internal emails and quarterly financial projections marked 'confidential,' paint a picture of a company that systematically prioritized profit over compliance, even as patients across the country struggled to afford life-saving medications. "
I paused. The beat that let the audience absorb the ramifications of the story.
"Toss to the package, Camera Two."
Jimmy's voice. In my ear. I delivered the toss cleanly. The package rolled.
Something nagged at the edge of my awareness — a faint wrongness, like a picture hanging a degree off-level. I couldn't identify it. I watched the Pinnacle package on the monitor — four minutes of excellent investigative journalism — and pushed the feeling aside. I had a panel to prepare for.
The package ended. I turned to Camera Two.
"Joining us now to discuss these revelations: former FDA commissioner Dr. Patricia Luke, healthcare policy analyst David Kramer, and Pinnacle Pharmaceuticals spokesperson Lindsay Stein.
Dr. Luke, let me start with you. These documents suggest a pattern of deliberate concealment. How significant is this?"
"The panel's running. Ninety seconds per guest. Standard rotation." Jimmy's voice was oddly flat in my ear.
I took the direction and moderated the panel — Luke on regulatory failures, Kramer on the policy angle, Stein getting her thirty seconds of corporate deflection before I cut her off with a question about the internal emails she clearly hadn't expected.
The work was flawless. But the nagging wouldn't stop.
Something about Jimmy's voice was different, and I couldn't pin it down, and not being able to pin it down was making me reach for the water glass more often than I needed to.
The panel ended and Jimmy's flat voice muttered, "Clean break. Two minutes. B-block on the other side."
I took a sip of water and stared at the monitor during the commercial, and that's when it clicked. Not what was in Jimmy's voice. What wasn't.
The warmth was gone.
The low register that settled at the base of my skull.
The slight rasp when he was focused. The cadence that made every direction feel like it was meant only for me.
Gone. All of it. Replaced by something efficient, professional, and completely empty.
Jimmy's voice had been stripped to its mechanical parts — the information was there, the timing was right, but the texture had been removed as cleanly as if he'd peeled it off and left it at the door.
The commercial break felt like an hour. My body, which had been waiting for the next direction with its usual conditioned hunger, was getting nothing.
The voice in my ear was delivering data.
Just data. No warmth, no texture, no easy, Nelson.
No stay with me. The room that had been warm for three weeks had gone cold, and I was only now realizing how much of Jimmy's heat I'd been depending on.
The break ended and the red light came back on.
The B-block was a live interview with a senator who'd called for a congressional investigation into Pinnacle.
I conducted it with precision. The senator was combative, but I was sharper.
Jimmy fed me a fact-check in real time — "He's wrong on the timeline.
The documents predate his committee's review by eighteen months" — and the correction was accurate, useful, and delivered in a voice so flat it could have been generated by a machine.
I used the fact-check, pinning the senator with it.
The audience saw an anchor at the top of his game, dismantling a politician's talking points with surgical precision.
But the audience didn't see what was happening inside me.
The absence of Jimmy's real voice was a physical thing now — a draft, a chill, a hunger my body had developed over weeks of being fed something it hadn't asked for and now couldn't live without.
I reached for the water glass. Took a sip. Set it down.
The C-block was lighter — a correspondent report on midterm election polling. I delivered it cleanly. Marla handled the weather toss. The broadcast moved toward its close.
"Thirty seconds. Standard outro."
Four words. No Nelson. No take it home. No you've been extraordinary. Just thirty seconds, standard outro.
"That's our broadcast for tonight. I'm Nelson Mackenzie. Thank you for watching Beacon News Tonight. We'll see you tomorrow." After three seconds, the red light died.
I sat behind the desk in the sudden silence and didn't move.
The studio crew began their post-show breakdown around me — cables being coiled, lights being adjusted, the quiet choreography of a machine powering down.
Marla unclipped her mic, glanced at me, and left without a word.
She'd felt it too. The whole broadcast had felt like driving with the parking brake on, and Marla had been on television long enough to know when something between the anchor desk and the control room was off.
Through the glass wall, the control room was dimming. I saw Jimmy in the EP chair, headset still on, his auburn hair catching the blue light of the monitors. He was writing something on his notepad, and didn't once glance toward me.
Harry appeared at my elbow, but I didn't look at him. I kept my eyes on the man sitting in the blue light who'd spent the last hour inside my ear delivering directions with the emotional temperature of a refrigerator.
"Harry."
"Yes?"
"Tell Mr. Goodman I want to see him in my dressing room."
Harry was quiet for a beat. I could feel him looking at me, reading my face, doing the calculations he always did. Then: "When?"
"Now."