Washington

Washington City.  I struggled from the train platform through the hordes of people all rushing to get to work.  The taxi pulled up at the chalk-white steps below the Hill.  I paid the driver and got out.  Breathed the air.  It smelt of talking.  I walked up the hill, over the green grass to the spot where George Bush had said we should meet.  Now ninety years old and dying of stomach cancer, his back was straight enough with a small stoop of the shoulders, but he didn’t shuffle like I expected and his stamina was formidable. 

He put his hands on his stomach before he shook hands with me. 

“I neglected my stomach,” he told me.  “I neglected to notice what it was thinking.” 

I was tongue-tied.  I was twenty-three years old.  I knew of this man only by history books and yet what I’d read said he made too many decisions based on his gut.  He winked at me and smiled.

“Relax.  Dying is the easy part.  I’d been scared of it so long when it finally came to me I laughed.  It is almost wonderful.”

He took my hand.  "We will be friends"

“I’m a Democrat,” I blurted out, my face going hot and red, feeling foolish.  What a stupid thing to say. 

“They die too you know,” George Bush said. 

I laughed with him.  I had trained as a psychologist for the dying and George Bush was to be my first patient.  He’d heard of me through my grandfather who had praised my sensitivity, my tender hands that played Beethoven at midnight and might be a source of solace to the dying, my old man’s soul in a young woman’s body that listened so beautifully and so tenderly.

We walked across the grass together to his limousine.  He slipped an arm through mine and said, “I don’t need a walking stick but a hand I don’t mind.” 

His minder opened the door.

“Eight o’clock Monday morning then.”

“Sir?”

“You have the job.”

I nodded, trying not to grin too much, trying to maintain a professional approach.  My first paid job.  The black limousine, shiny against the neat, coiffed green of the grass, pulled away slowly as if carrying the Queen.

I almost waved.  When the car was finally out of sight, I whooped, a fist in the air, a gush of air in my lungs, a terrific noise that caused passing senators at the hill top to pause a moment and wonder.

I had a job to do.  


Written by Jedda Bradley