She’d actually heard one news anchor say that. Devastating. Hah! More like ratings-oriented for them. What did they know about devastating? They had watched the shooting but as observers, not as someone who should’ve been there. The “stupid cold” had saved her life. But not the life that mattered most to her.

About the only people who could be happy with such a tragedy were the heartless network executives. To them, it was a ratings contest - who could get the most information and how quickly? Them and John Hoynes, the former Vice President. Officially, he wasn’t President yet, he still had to be sworn in. And it had been but an hour since the news had arrived, so it was only a matter of time.

A bullet in the brain, she thought. What a way to die. She could only imagine what it felt like, and shuddered as the thoughts occurred to her. She’d held her husband’s hand as he died, but he’d never woken up since the shooting. Comatose for 20 hours and 26 minutes.

Her daughter’s time was at 21 hours, 17 minutes of being comatose. But the outlook wasn’t exceptionairily bright for her, either. But she’d be greeted wherever she went - by her father, her godfather, and the other man she loved, who’d died trying to protect her. It had only been when he’d fallen away that her chest had been left open.

CJ looked like a zombie in a sling. She seemed as tired as everyone else felt, and that was the face that had greeted the press exactly 17 times in the day - every time there was an update on someone’s condition, they’d first inform the families, then the press. Toby insisted on being at work, but did nothing but sit there, mumbling under his breath about adjectives and prepositions and dangling participles. Sam would’ve been more chipper, had it not been for the leg that had been shattered in the fall. He’d be in pins for months.

Mallory knocked cautiously on the door. “Abby?” she whispered tearfully. She didn’t wait for a reply, just walked across the room and sat on the bed with her godmother, the woman who’d shared losses twice as many and just as deep as her own. “Hi.” It seemed her voice was uncapable of sounding normal. But why would it be normal? Nothing was normal anymore. She’d watched her father be gunned down on television footage while grading her classes’ book reports. And then had to explain the ink smears to her class.

“Hi,” Abby whispered back. She offered Mallory the box of Kleenex, but she pulled her own out of her pocket and wiped her eyes for the zillionth time. She looked like a raccoon, smudges all around her eyes from the makeup she’d applied that morning in an effort to look like nothing was wrong. But the façade hadn’t lasted long. “Anything new on Sam?”

“No,” she whispered. “Did Margaret tell you…the, um…my dad’s…It’s Sunday evening.” She couldn’t say the word “funeral.” That would make it all real.

“Yeah. She managed to choke it out between sobs,” Abby whispered. While Mal had been most affected by Leo’s death, Margaret hadn’t been incredibly far behind. She had never gotten around to asking how Mallory’s mother was dealing with it all - after all, her last words to Leo had been regarding a divorce.

“I don’t know what to do, Abby,” Mallory whispered. “Just sitting around makes me crazy, I can’t stop dwelling on things, but I try to distract myself by throwing everything into work, but it backfires, and I…I can’t stand any more tears…” Punctuating her speech was a fresh batch, and Abby hugged her gently. Her goddaughter, practically daughter upon her own merit, had a point. There was no handbook of how to act when your husband, the president, had just been assassinated. And the idea of now being out of the White House and not knowing where to go frightened her as well. She couldn’t go back to their house in New Hampshire, it would be impossible. And she didn’t even know where else to look. The man she’d been married to for 33 - nearly 34 - years had always made those decisions. And here she was, alone, and asking herself so many things she didn’t know.

“Where are you staying?” Abby asked her.

“Last night? At apartment. Tonight? At Mom’s…” She pulled back from Abby’s embrace and looked her in the eye. “Why was this tragedy? Was it Charlie and Zoey?”

“The Secret Service thinks so…”

“Why? Because of racism? Good God, don’t you think it’s time they got over it? And not to mention, why did so many people have to die? Y’know what they’re reporting now? 72 shots were fired. That’s more than a little insurance for two people anyway…Not to mention they shouldn’t have been after those two in the first place!”

“I don’t know,” came the whispered reply. And she didn’t. She didn’t know anything, she realized. Not how to act, not where to go, not what to do, not why, not anything. But who would she ask? The new president once he was sworn in? Hah. Maybe, just maybe, she’d have a bone or two to pick with God when she met up with him. Because she wanted answers.