Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

White House mess and went upstairs to call Drew Kumpuris, my father’s doctor in Little Rock. He confirmed that my father had suffered a massive stroke and been taken by ambulance to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he lay unconscious in the intensive care unit. “You’ve got to come right now,” Drew said. I rushed to tell Bill and pack some clothes. Within hours, Chelsea, my brother Tony and I were on a plane to Arkansas for a long, sad trip home.

I can’t remember landing in Little Rock that night or driving to the hospital. My mother met me outside the intensive care unit, looking drawn and worried but thankful to see us.

Dr. Kumpuris explained that my dad had slipped into a deep, irreversible coma. We could visit him, but it was doubtful he would know we were there. At first I was concerned about taking Chelsea to see her grandfather, but she insisted and I relented because I knew how close she felt to him. When we went in, I was relieved that he looked almost peaceful. Since it would have been useless for the doctors to operate on his injured brain, he was not hooked up to the tentacles of tubes, drains and monitors he had needed after his heart bypass operation a decade earlier. Although a mechanical respirator was breathing for him, there were only a few unobtrusive drips and monitors at his bedside.

Chelsea and I held his hands. I smoothed his hair and spoke to him, still clinging to a small hope that he might open his eyes again or squeeze my hand.

Chelsea sat by his side and talked to him for hours. His condition didn’t seem to upset her. I was amazed at how calmly she dealt with the situation.

Hugh arrived later that night from Miami and joined us in Dad’s room. Hugh started telling family stories and singing songs, especially the ones that used to get such a rise out of my father. One of his frequent tirades concerned my brothers’ taste―or lack thereof―in television shows. He particularly despised the theme song to The Flintstones.

So Hugh and Tony stood on either side of his bed and sang that inane song, hoping to provoke some sort of reaction―“Shut that noise up!”―as it had when we were kids. If he heard us that night, he never showed it. But I want to believe that somehow he knew we were there for him just as he had been for us when we were kids.

Mostly we took turns sitting next to Dad’s bed, watching the mysterious green blips on the monitors rise and fall, succumbing to the hypnotic whir and click of the respirator.

The center of my turbulent universe of obligations and meetings contracted to that small hospital room in Little Rock until it became a world unto itself, removed from all concerns except the things that matter most.

Bill arrived Sunday, March 21. I was so happy to see him and could feel myself relax for the first time in two days as he took charge of talking to the doctors, helping me think about the decision we would soon have to make about my father’s medical options.

Carolyn Huber and Lisa Caputo had come from Washington with me and Chelsea.

Carolyn was especially close to my parents. I had met her when I joined the Rose Law Firm, where she had worked for years as an office administrator. She had managed the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion during Bill’s first term, and we had asked her to come with us to the White House to handle personal correspondence.

Lisa Caputo had been my press secretary since the convention. She and my father hit it off the first time they met when they found out they were both from the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania. “Hillary, you did real good,” my dad told me. “You hired someone from God’s country!”

Harry Thomason flew in from the West Coast, and he also made travel arrangements for Virginia and Dick Kelley, who had been out of town and who arrived at the hospital Sunday night. Bill and I thought they had been in Las Vegas, their favorite destination.

But Harry pulled Bill and me aside to deliver more tragic news. He told us, as gently as he could, that Virginia and Dick had not been in Nevada for a vacation. They had been in Denver, where Virginia was exploring experimental treatments for the cancer that had returned and spread after her mastectomy two years before. She did not want us to know how sick she was, and Harry said she would deny it if we confronted her. Harry had tracked them down, and he felt it was something we needed to know. Bill and I thanked him for his good sense and his good heart and rejoined Virginia and Dick, who were talking to my mother and brothers. We decided to respect Virginia’s wishes for now; it was best to deal with one family crisis at a time.

The day after he arrived, Bill had to fly back to Washington. Luckily, Chelsea didn’t have to miss school because it was spring break. She stayed with me in Little Rock, and I was profoundly grateful to have her calm and loving companionship. As the hours dragged into days, Dad’s condition remained critical. Friends and family members began showing up from all over to lend their emotional support. To pass the time, we played word games or cards. Tony taught me how to play Tetris on his little handheld computer, and I sat for hours, mindlessly fitting together the geometric pieces as they floated down the screen.

I simply couldn’t focus on my duties as First Lady. I cleared my schedule, and I asked Lisa Caputo to explain to Ira Magaziner and everyone else that they should go ahead without me. Tipper graciously stepped in on several occasions to attend previously scheduled forums on health care, and Al spoke in my place to leaders of the American Medical Association in Washington and presided