Capitol Conspiracy by William Bernhardt Page A

mention that she hadn’t seen him since the attack, either.
    “I’ll make sure he’s here for your briefing, Jimmy.”
    “Great. So…you do know where he is?”
    Christina tried to put on a brave face. “Yeah. I have a pretty good idea.”

4
    I NTEGRIS B APTIST M EDICAL C ENTER
O KLAHOMA C ITY , O KLAHOMA
    B en Kincaid sat, eyes closed, in the same chair he had occupied for so many days, it felt like a formfitting new pair of pants. It was almost embarrassing to stand; the cheap green vinyl retained the impression of his rear end long after he had risen. So he stayed in the chair, his head resting against the metal guardrail of the hospital bed.
    There was not much to think about. The hospital room was not furnished at all, unless you counted the television mounted on the wall. Foliage filled the empty spaces. Ben had never seen so many plants in his entire life, outside of a nursery. All tokens of affection and concern. Funny, wasn’t it—you would send flowers to an ailing female, but never a male. Manly men got plants. As if it really mattered.
    He opened his eyes and stared ahead, but he saw nothing, heard nothing of consequence. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner, already forced to do double-time by the hot Oklahoma weather.
    Mike’s eyes were closed, just as they had been every second since they pulled him from the wreckage. He did not move, not even a twitch.
    For the first few days, Ben had read him poetry. Started at the front of
The Oxford Book of English Verse
and worked his way to the end, all the way from John Gower to Seamus Heaney. Bored Ben to tears, truth be told, but he knew Mike liked that stuff. The English major to the end. So there was at least a chance he might get some pleasure out of this marathon reading. There was a theory, still unproved, that patients in a deep coma, even those teetering on the very brink of life and death, could still hear and understand. Some said that the sense of hearing was the last to go and the first to recover. And so Ben read and read and read, waiting for some indication that he was being heard.
    He never received any.
    After a few days, his voice grew hoarse and he gave up the reading. But he remained in the chair, waiting for a sign, praying for the recovery the doctors said was unlikely, and wishing he had not been so stupid as to draw his best friend into the line of fire.
    He blamed himself entirely. The attack had been a nightmare. A national nightmare, true, but one he had experienced firsthand and up close. His cheek still stung where the bullet had grazed him. But that was the least haunting memory plaguing him. All those men—dropping right before his eyes. He’d seen death before, even witnessed it—but not like that. Never like that. And the director of Homeland Security—gone. He couldn’t cry many tears about Senator Hammond. If the rest of the world knew what Ben knew about the former Senate minority leader, they would understand. But all those other people. All those public servants, all those innocent bystanders, children. And—
    And after all the times Mike had stood by him, all the times he had pulled Ben’s fat out of the fire—
    Ben repaid the debt by putting him in the intensive care unit, his right leg and arms broken, his flesh rent in more than a dozen places, his head so concussed that even if he did recover…the doctors were not sure it would be such a good thing.
    A Hispanic nurse entered to take Mike’s vitals. She was on the short side, brisk, and efficient. No-nonsense but still friendly. As Ben well knew, her name was Beatrice.
    “Get any sleep last night, Senator?”
    Was it morning? Ben instinctively clutched his jaw and felt a wealth of stubble. He must look a wreck.
    “Not much,” Ben mumbled.
    “Still having those dreams?”
    Had he told her about the dreams? Why? Must’ve been so brain-dead he didn’t realize what he was saying.
    “I…don’t remember.”
    “You know,” she said, as she