The Election (36 page)

Word about the newest visitor spread like wildfire through the confines of the hospital and soon reached the seventh floor. One of the day-shift nurses knocked lightly on Jed's door and stuck her head in far enough for Naomi to see her. “They found Jake Reed, Ms. McClellan,” she said softly. “And he's alive.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Naomi replied and clutched her hands together under her chin, as if she were praying. “Thank you.”

 

Rachel arrived at the hospital only minutes after the ambulance had delivered Jake. She burst through the sliding-glass emergency-room doors, demanding to see her husband. Two nurses, who knew what she was going through, because they had seen it so many times before, calmed her down and took her to a private room where the attending physician could meet with her after Jake got out of surgery. It had been a horrible few hours, but finally she was able to rest. Jake was alive, and that was all that mattered.

 

“Jackson-Madison County General Hospital,” the receptionist answered.

“Yes, ma'am, this is Blake Joyner with NBC news in Memphis,” lied Agent Sam Chambers. Saul Sanders had instructed him to check and verify that Osborne and Moyers had, in fact, completed the assignment. Sam spoke with a manufactured Southern accent. “We're following up on a story about attorney Jake Reed. Can you confirm whether he has been admitted to your hospital?”

“Sir, we cannot give out patient information.”

Sam quickly realized he wasn't going to get any information from the receptionist, and she probably didn't have what he needed anyway. “I understand. Can you connect me with someone in the emergency room? Perhaps they can help me.”

“I'll connect you, sir, but I doubt they'll help you either. Hospital policy prohibits the release of patient information.” Before Sam could respond, the receptionist transferred the call to the emergency-room nurses' station. Other calls were ringing into the switchboard, and she was too busy to speak any longer with someone from the media.

“ER,” said a nurse at the emergency-room admissions desk when Sam's call rang through.

“This is Blake Joyner with NBC news in Memphis. I'm trying to get an update on Mr. Jake Reed's condition for the twelve o'clock news.”

“Sir, I'm sorry. I can't give out any information about a patient.”

“I understand the importance of maintaining patient confidentiality, but can you at least tell me whether he is a patient at your hospital, or not?”

 

Sanders residence, Arlington, Virginia

“What do you mean he's alive?!” Saul Sanders screamed when Agent Chambers called him with the report he'd received from the hospital in Jackson. Saul was hiding out at his house in Arlington and planned on staying there until after the election. He didn't want to see Charlie Armacost or Randolph or anybody. “How can he be alive? Al assured me the job had been done.”

“I don't know what Al saw or thought he saw, but Jake Reed is by no means dead.”

“I can't believe this is happening,” Saul said. He rubbed his forehead in an attempt to ease the pain.

After a few seconds of silence Sam asked, “Director Sanders, are you OK? Do you need me to do anything?”

“That's OK, Sam. I can handle it from here.”

Saul replaced the receiver on the telephone and opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk to reveal a small, nickel-colored .38 caliber revolver. He removed the loaded revolver and laid it on top of his desk. As he stared at the cold metal object in front of him, he wasn't certain he was brave enough to do what needed to be done. He thought about his life and the poor decisions he had made during it that had brought him to this point in time. He also thought about what he would do if he could go back twenty years and start over. Those decisions would have been different, he told himself.

But would they really? Would he have done anything differently? He wasn't sure he knew the answer. Perhaps he'd never have agreed to join forces with Randolph Winston. Or would he?

Randolph
, he repeated in his mind, chuckling at himself. He had grown to despise the name and the person associated with it, yet now Randolph filled every crevice of Saul's mind. How could he have been so stupid? There was nothing he could do about it now, he told himself. There was no going back, and that meant he had one final decision to make. Did he wait on Randolph, or did he do the job himself?

It took only a few seconds for Saul to settle on an answer. No longer would he allow Randolph to make decisions for him. He would decide his own way of dying. He slid one bullet into the chamber of the pistol and raised it to his temple. Randolph would never have the satisfaction of seeing Saul tortured and killed.

Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, Jackson, Tennessee

“Ms. Reed, I'm Dr. Lawrence,” the man in white said as he entered the room where Rachel was waiting. “I'm the attending physician for your husband.”

“Is he going to be OK?” was Rachel's first question. She would have plenty of others later, but the most important one came first.

Dr. Lawrence sat down in the chair beside Rachel and took her hand. “He's been through quite a bit of trauma, Ms. Reed.”

Rachel searched the doctor's eyes for the answer she desperately wanted.

“But, yes,” the doctor continued, “I think he's going to make it.”

Rachel began to cry softly. The kind of cry that came not from fear or pain or sadness, but from releasing her pent-up anxiety. “Can I see him?” she managed.

“He regained consciousness a few minutes ago and is still pretty groggy. But I think it will be all right for you to see him. I want to warn you, though, Ms. Reed. It's not a pretty sight. His head is bruised and lacerated from the impact, and he's got a compound fracture of his right leg. The seat belt probably saved his life, but it left a lot of bruising on his chest and abdomen. We also repaired some internal bleeding, and it may take awhile for him to recuperate. But he's alert now and asking for you. So come on—I'll take you to him.”

Rachel followed Dr. Lawrence through the halls of the hospital to the intensive care room, where Jake was recovering from surgery. She saw him through the window in the door before entering and began to cry again. Not tears of sorrow from his battered appearance, as terrible as it was, but tears of joy. Jake really was alive, and she could see it with her own eyes.

 

The door of the IC room opened, and Jake Reed slowly, painfully turned his head.

Rachel, his wife, entered. She approached the side of the bed and leaned over the rail. “How are you doing?”

Through his swollen eyes he could see her wiping away tears from under her eyes with one hand, and he felt her stroking his hair with the other. Rachel leaned over and lightly kissed his forehead.

“I'm going to make it,” he whispered, attempting a smile. “How do I look?”

She cocked her head. “Well, you're not going to win any beauty contests for a while.”

Jake chuckled and winced. “Don't make me laugh. It hurts too bad.”

“I'm sorry.” Rachel smiled. “You had us all worried, you know. We were afraid we lost you.” She caressed the side of his face.

Yet even as gentle as Rachel's touch was, Jake grimaced from the pressure. It would take awhile to heal, he realized.

“I'm sorry, honey. I know you had to be worried.” His words continued to be soft in sound, but painful to deliver. He paused briefly to shift from one position to another, trying to find one that was less painful. “How are the kids?”

“Scared to death. My parents have them now. They know you're all right, but they want to come see you. I think that will do them more good than anything. Especially Courtney. When I told them you were in an accident, I saw that same fear in her eyes that I saw the morning after her attack.”

“Maybe they can come later when they move me to a room. I need to see them too.”

“I don't know what we would do if you had been killed.”

Rachel's words caused Jake to recall the last conversation he'd had with Naomi. If he had died last night, would he have gone to heaven? He admitted to himself that he didn't know the answer. He shifted again in his bed, still trying to find the most comfortable position. Finally he realized there wasn't one. Momentarily exhausted, he lay quietly, reflecting on where he was and his weakened condition.

“Why don't you rest for a while?” Rachel suggested. She moved to a vinyl-covered wooden chair in the corner of the room.

“I'm fine,” Jake assured her. “I don't want to sleep right now. There's something else I want to talk to you about. It's something I've been thinking about lately, even before last night. But almost dying made me realize that I'm not going to live forever.”

Jake turned his head away from Rachel, toward the opposite wall. He wasn't sure how she would react to what he was about to say, and he was afraid to look in her eyes to find out. “I've been having this feeling that there's something missing in my life, and I can't put my finger on it.”

“Are you talking about the conversation you had with Naomi?”

How had she recognized what he was going through? Jake turned slowly back toward Rachel. “That's part of it. That day she and I walked to the chapel downstairs, she asked me a question that I don't know the answer to. She asked me whether I would go to heaven when I died. I don't know the answer to that question. Do you know if you'll go to heaven when you die?”

“Yes.” Rachel raised her head in confidence. “I know that I'll go to heaven when I die.”

“How do you know?” he asked in an almost pleading tone.

“Because I've asked Jesus to come into my heart as my Lord and Savior.”

Rachel's words echoed through his mind.

For a few minutes, as Jake struggled with Naomi's question and Rachel's answer, the only sound in the room was the hum of the IV monitor.

“You remember Reverend Hall, the pastor who came to see Courtney?” Rachel finally said. “I passed him in the hallway when Dr. Lawrence brought me to see you. He may still be in the hospital. He can probably answer some of your questions. Do you want me to see if the nurses can find him?”

The inner battle for Jake's soul raged. Part of him didn't want to see Reverend Hall, while the rest of him yearned for his questions to be answered.

“I'll have the nurses page him,” Rachel said when Jake didn't respond.

A few minutes after Rachel asked the nurses to page Reverend Hall, Jake heard a light knock at the door.

Reverend Hall, still looking like a lawyer, entered the room and closed the door behind him. “I heard about your accident, Mr. Reed. I'm glad to see you doing well.”

“It has been a trying few days,” Rachel interjected.

“Yes it has,” Reverend Hall acknowledged. “And how is little Courtney doing?”

“She's doing very well. Thanks for asking.”

“Tell her I said hello, will you?” Reverend Hall hesitated, then continued, “The nurses said you asked to see me. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Reverend,” Rachel began. “Jake and I talked about what would happen had he died. We talked about what would happen to the kids and me, but we also talked about what would have happened to him.”

“I don't know whether I would go to heaven or not,” Jake interrupted. He was unable to keep quiet any longer. The words erupted from his mouth like they had been trying desperately to get out for a long time.

“Let me ask you something, Jake. May I call you Jake?”

“Certainly.”

“Are you a Christian?” the reverend asked, his green eyes intent on Jake's response. “Because if you're a Christian, then you
will
go to heaven when you die.”

“Sure, I'm a Christian.” Jake shrugged.

“How do you know you're a Christian?” the reverend asked.

“I don't know what you mean. I've just always been one.”

“What I mean is, do you recall a specific time in your life where you prayed to ask Jesus Christ to become your Lord and Savior?”

Jake searched the recesses of his mind for an event such as the one described by Reverend Hall but couldn't find one. Still, the battle raged.

“Reverend, I believe in God,” Jake defended. “I always have, and that makes me a Christian. I may not go to church all the time like I should, but I'm going to do better at that. So, yes, I would say that I'm a Christian.”

Reverend Hall bowed his head. “That's not how it works, Jake. Until you recognize that you're a sinner, that your sins will result in your spiritual death, that Christ died for your sins; and that, without Christ, you'll spend eternity in hell, you cannot be a Christian. Think about what would have happened if you had died in that wreck last night. Without having accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, you would have died and gone to hell. That's what the Bible teaches, Jake.” He shook his head in an expression of awe. “For some reason your life's been spared, and you've been given another opportunity.”

Jake swallowed hard, trying to calm himself. From the beginning of his conversation with Reverend Hall until now, the rate of his heartbeat had steadily increased until his heart felt like it was ready to explode. There was a strange tingling all over his body—the same feeling he'd experienced with Naomi in the chapel.

“It's the Holy Spirit, Jake,” Reverend Hall said calmly.

The same words Naomi had used,
Jake thought.

“The Holy Spirit is making you feel the way you feel right now,” the reverend continued. “He wants you to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. The question is, do you want to become a Christian and be certain that you'll spend eternity in heaven?”

Jake recognized Reverend Hall's words as being similar to the ones Naomi had spoken. He also knew that he could no longer lie to himself and those around him. He wasn't a Christian, he finally admitted to himself. He wasn't a Christian, but at that very moment he wanted to be a Christian more than anything else imaginable.

“Yes,” he whispered as tears streamed from his bruised eyes. “I want to be a Christian.”

“I had hoped that would be your answer, Jake.” Reverend Hall smiled broadly. “I want you to repeat a prayer with me.”

And Reverend Hall led Jake through a simple, yet purposeful, prayer. In the prayer Jake repented of his sins and prayed to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He couldn't remember the last time he had prayed. But with his head bowed and eyes closed, Jake prayed, and it felt right.

When he finished praying, he raised his head, opened his eyes, and smiled. The smile felt different. It was the kind of smile that could only come after a person's entire life had been changed. Just as Jesus Christ had changed Jake's. And Jake knew it. He was finally a Christian.

 

Rachel, Reverend Hall, and Jake visited for several more minutes before Reverend Hall departed. Rachel walked with him to the elevator. After Rachel and Reverend Hall left, Jake began to think about all the terrible things that had happened and tried to determine who was responsible for it all. He wanted to believe that responsibility lay at the feet of someone associated with Edward Burke. But was Burke himself responsible?

And what involvement did Dalton Miller and the FBI have? Mr. Miller was the one who had told him about the FBI, and that had been accurate. He also knew about the F-PAC documents Jake had received from Earline Thompson before Jake had told Drake Highfill about them. How did Mr. Miller know about the documents that quickly? And for whom did the PI work?

The attacks on Jake and his family had happened only after he'd talked to Drake Highfill and after the visit from Agent Simon. He surmised that Highfill and Miller weren't connected.

But what about the FBI? Whose side were they on? There were two possibilities. Either Mr. Miller was trying to scare Jake into helping him, which didn't seem likely from what Jake had seen of the man. He didn't seem the type. Or Edward Burke was trying to keep Jake quiet. Obviously the F-PAC documents and photographs of the murder scene were important to everybody, but the only person he'd told about the Federalists was Drake.

Agent Simon hadn't told Jake what he was looking for or what information he thought Jake possessed. That meant the FBI probably didn't know what that information was. If Simon was connected to Burke, then he would have known that the information involved the Federalists. Since he didn't, that meant he wasn't involved with Burke. And that pointed to Burke as being the one behind the attacks. Although Jake tried to convince himself of that fact, it was all still very confusing. Especially in his groggy state of mind after surgery.

Jake finally determined that there was only one way to find out for sure who was responsible and at the same time try to stop Burke from being elected. When Rachel returned from escorting Reverend Hall, Jake asked her to find his wallet.

Five minutes later she returned from the nurses' station with the remainder of Jake's personal belongings. He removed a waterlogged business card from it and used Rachel's wireless phone to call the number. Although the phone number on the card was barely legible after its soaking, Jake was able to get the number right on the first try.

“Mr. Miller, this is Jake Reed. Do you remember me?”

“Jake Reed?” There was a pregnant pause. “I thought you were dead.”

“Perhaps I should be, Mr. Miller. But I'm alive and well.”

“I must say that after our last conversation I'm a little surprised to hear from you.”

“I'm a little surprised to be calling. If this were a week ago, I wouldn't be. But a lot of things have happened in the last week, and I've decided that I want to talk to you. How quickly can you be at the hospital?”