The Day Kennedy Was Shot (28 page)

A nurse found an emergency room to satisfy Roberts and Youngblood. It had one patient—a Negro. He was taken out at once. The room, closer to the emergency entrance than Traumas One and Two, had a small window. The shades were drawn. It could hardly be called a room. There were a dozen or more cubicles in one blue-tiled room. This was the one remotest from the door, and it was screened by sheets on poles. Roberts told Rufus Youngblood to remain with the Vice-President, and guards were posted at the door.

Revolvers were drawn there and outside. Roberts convinced Youngblood and the Vice-President that, at the moment, no one knew whether this was a widespread plot to assassinate the leading men in the United States government. It could be. If it was, they would be after Johnson as well as Kennedy and
the Governor. No one knew the ramifications of the plot—assuming there was a plot—and no one knew whether anything had occurred in Washington or in Hawaii, where a big part of the cabinet was. Under the law, Lyndon Johnson was next in line for the presidency; Speaker of the House John McCormack was next. The Vice-President was entreated to please do as he was told, promptly, until the matter could be cleared up. He said: “Okay, Partner.” He began to understand that this could be a broad plot. For awhile, he understood fear. Youngblood and Roberts agreed that perhaps it would be best to get Johnson out of the hospital at once and hurry him off to
Air Force One
at Love Field.

The smooth continuation of government depended on Johnson. They had to keep him alive. The stark reality was that, apparently, they had lost their man in spite of the most extensive precautions. Even if he lived, could he reassume the burden of the presidency? When, if ever?

Those who saw the head wound, who looked inside at the scooped-out brain, were doubtful that Kennedy would ever be President again. No matter how they looked at it, the burden reverted to Lyndon Baines Johnson, a huge, rough-tough master politician from this state. The republic was in his hands, and, no matter how, they had to protect this man from all harm and get him back to Washington. Kenny O'Donnell came in, head down, took a look at the Vice-President and the guards around him, and nodded. “Not good,” he said.

Lyndon Baines Johnson's guards told him little. He kept asking for the President, and asking if it was all right to go see him, and he received suggestions in reply. Emory Roberts said, “I do not think the President can make it. I suggest we get out of Dallas.” Youngblood asked Mr. Johnson to “think it over. We may have to swear you in.” The Vice-President held his wife's hand, trying to infuse her with a courage he no longer had. Only she and Cliff Carter, his executive assistant, knew that
Lyndon Johnson, in spite of his 1959 speeches to the contrary, never really expected to be President. He heard heels clicking in the corridor, and saw the SS men run. Mrs. Johnson saw the runners, the frantic faces, and they seemed to her to be frozen motionless.

At the triage desk, the nurse asked both carts to stop. She wanted a history of the injuries and at least the names of the patients. The Secret Service paused for a moment, then went on. The arrow in the floor seemed endless, pointing past scores of people on their way out, swinging left and then, a little way farther, to the right. The stripe went through a door, changed color, and stopped in front of two square-tiled rooms which faced each other across four feet of hall. The one on the left said “Trauma Two”; on the right, “Trauma One.”

The coat had slipped off the President's head. His eyes were askew, and the jacket hung over the bottom of his nose. Mrs. Kennedy looked smaller than she had. She kept her hand touching her husband's side, and her eyes appealed mutely. She did not beg or scream. The last words she had said had been addressed to Clint Hill, out in the car: “You know he's dead. Let me alone.”

The hat was on her husband's chest. The flowers looked soggy. Damp blood penetrated the white gloves and dried in the tiny swirls of her fingers. The pink wool suit was soaked blackish down the right side. The stockings of the impeccable First Lady were wrinkled, and blood matted them to her skin. The utmost in cruelty had assailed her, and more awaited her.

The Governor was wheeled into one room, the President into the other. Dr. Charles J. Carrico, two years a physician, was ready. Nurses Diana Bowron and Margaret Hinchcliffe looked at the doctor and saw his nod. At once they took surgical shears and began to cut the clothes from the President. Carrico reached down for a pulse. There was none. The doctor tried a blood pressure cuff. There was no pressure. A huge inverted
soup bowl of a lamp stared down at President Kennedy, and the young man stared back at it.

The tie was snipped off adjacent to the knot which had been notched by a bullet. The jacket came off in sections. Each item was thrown on a chair in the corner. The striped shirt was plastered with blood from the edge of the collar all the way down the right side to the shirttail. Dr. Malcolm Perry, surgeon, hurried in. He saw a blood-spattered young woman kneeling inside the door. His impulse was to tell her to leave, but as the socks were peeled from the patient, the snowy skin, the cyanotic face, the dura mater leaking out of a massive hole in the head told him to do something and do it quickly.

Dr. Marion Jenkins, anesthesiologist, came in. Two student nurses came in. It was a small room, pale tile, a sink in the floor, a cabinet for sterile instruments, a clock which showed the time to be 12:37. Other doctors hurried in to help. Some were directed across the hall to help the Governor. He was screaming: “It hurts! It hurts!” and he could be heard down the hall. It was the only healthful sound in the hospital wing.

Dr. Fouad Bashour arrived. Dr. Richard Dulaney was working Trauma Two. Dr. Gene Akin rushed into the room. Dr. Kemp Clark was there. There had been no carts waiting outside in the hot Dallas sun; now all the medical help possible was jamming the two small rooms to a point where some must volunteer to leave. Dr. Don Curtis; Dr. A. H. Giesecke; Dr. Jackie Hunt; Dr. Kenneth Salyer; Dr. Donald Seldin; Dr. Jones; Dr. Nelson; Dr. Shaw; Dr. White; Dr. Robert McClelland; Dr. Paul Peters.

The President was down to his shorts and his back brace. The Ace Bandage he wore was permitted to remain between the thighs. One doctor was making a cut down on the right ankle; a nurse was doing it to the left arm. The skin was cool to the touch. The work was professional. Doctors, when necessary, mumbled requests or orders. The electrocardiogram had shown a faint palpable heartbeat, hesitant, irregular, and weak. Then it
stopped and the automatic pen behind the glass on the wall began to trace a steady straight line. A doctor tried to assist breathing by doing a tracheotomy and found that a bullet hole was in precisely the right spot. He enlarged it and thrust a cuffed endotracheal tube through and down into the bronchial area.

Hunt had the President on pure oxygen. Nobody stopped working. Everybody knew he was dead, but the work went on in silence as though something magnificent was about to happen. Dr. Burkley, on the wrong bus and taken to the Trade Mart against his will, came into the room. Someone said that this was the President's physician. Burkley had skin which matched his graying hair. Now it seemed paler. He had a black bag with him and he took out the hydrocortisone used to correct the President's adrenal deficiency.

The voices were soft and unhurried; priests at a White Mass, responding acolytes; the sacrifice prone on the altar. Science was trying to impose its will on God.

Agent Lem Johns, the thin man with the basso voice, arrived at the hospital. He had been dropped off in Dealey Plaza, and the motorcade had left without him. Now he was bumping into people in a long corridor, and one he bumped was Art Bales. “Are you The Bagman?” Johns said. Bales said no, Gearhart was. Lem Johns found him and ordered him to hurry to the side of the Vice-President. It was ironic that, in the past eight minutes, no one knew where The Bagman was or who he was; and The Bagman didn't know where the President was, or who he was. If there was a time when the United States could not retaliate instantaneously to a nuclear attack, these were the minutes.

The Bagman hurried to Mr. Johnson in Booth 13, but the Secret Service men didn't know him and couldn't identify him. They saw him with the satchel and shoved him into Booth 8, where he remained under the watchful eye of an agent until Emory Roberts came in and okayed him as The Bagman. All
day long, he—Warrant Officer Ira Gearhart—would be lost and found and lost again. Four Congressmen had more luck getting to the Vice-President. Thornberry, Brooks, Thomas, and Gonzalez, all of Texas, walked in glumly, studied the Vice-President awhile, and walked out glumly.

Miss Doris Nelson asked Mrs. Kennedy to leave Trauma One. She led the First Lady out, obviously against the woman's will as the surrender of her husband's body had been against her will, but she left the room, the door closed noiselessly, and someone got a chair for her and for Mrs. Connally. The two women sat with their hands in their laps, studying their fingers. There was no conversation between them; no mutual commiseration. Mrs. Connally was embittered, feeling that the Secret Service was eager to climb over her husband to get to a dead President.

The Governor had been nearest the car door. They should have taken him first. At last they did, but only because they could find no way to reach Kennedy. Mrs. Connally felt that she, too, was a First Lady and was possessed of the feeling that she was the only one in that car who wanted to help John Connally. Now her man was inside. Sometimes, when the door of Trauma Two opened, she glanced up beggingly at a doctor or a nurse for a good word, a kind word. William Stinson, administrative assistant to the Governor, came out and said that Connally had said: “Take care of Nellie.” This was worth more than all the medical opinions. If John said that, then for sure he was going to recover. Someone handed her one of her husband's gold cuff links. She turned it over in her lap, and the tears came. They rolled down freely. They were good ones.

She studied the cuff link and put it into her pocketbook. Then she looked up, and saw Mrs. Kennedy staring at her dry-eyed. The women averted their glances and looked down again. An hour ago, they had been pleasant companions, both eager for
the gala ball in Austin tonight. Now they had only two things in common: both wore pink suits, both were bloodstained.

It was fish again. Father Oscar Huber did not relish it. He sat in the downstairs dining room in the rectory alone. His curates weren't lunching with him. They were upstairs in the “rec” room watching the Kennedy welcome. The pastor had been the only one with the initiative and energy to walk up to Lemmon and Reagan and hop on tiptoe to wave to the first live President he had ever seen.

He was pushing the shreds of fish from one side of the plate to the other, thinking about all the affluent Roman Catholics at the Trade Mart who had been given a dispensation from fish today. They—la de da—were dining on filet mignon, no less. Father Thompson stood in the doorway. “There will be no dinner for President Kennedy today,” he said. The old priest didn't care for riddles. “No?” he said with asperity. “Why not?” Father Thompson sucked in a long breath. “He's been shot, Father.” “I don't believe it.” The pastor was hurt, personally hurt. He had never seen a live President. Now his triumph was marred by news which no sane person could credit. He was outraged. Father Thompson's voice became soft, coaxing: “Come on upstairs and see.” Father Huber, yanking the black trousers up a little, started up the steps. He could hear the voice on television; he could catch the excitement in it: “Several shots . . . No one seems to know . . . Parkland Hospital . . . The Governor fell. . . Bulletins as quickly as they come in . . .”

Father Huber tugged at his young confrere. “Get the car,” he said. “Get the car, Jim. You drive. Parkland Hospital is in our parish. Come on, now. Hurry.”

The organ music was soft, the tunes were sweet. Sometimes the deep timbre of the tones caused the parakeets to fly off the overhead railings, squeaking as they swooped over the waiters,
a half dozen steaks steaming darkly on each platter. Over two thousand diners chatted across the tables, and the steady decibel of conversational noise could be heard over the songs. A few diners brought out bottles of bourbon or Scotch and mixed the liquor in half-empty water goblets.

Captain Fritz and his men of Homicide made a final inspection of the head table, lifting the drapes to look underneath. The lobby was cleared. The ladies were pleased to see a huge spray of Yellow Roses of Texas at the head table. Some of the politicians said that, as the steaks were being served now, this meant that President Kennedy would not eat; he would come in at dessert, wait for the tables to be cleared, and get to his speech. Others assured each other that he wouldn't dare, in Dallas, to make a pronouncement on civil rights or the welfare state all of them feared. “If Lyndon and John have any influence, that boy is going to be moderate today,” they said.

Deputy Chief Stevenson had heard something vague on Channel Two about shots fired in Dealey Plaza. One of his men reported that the motorcade was going to Parkland Memorial Hospital; there was a story that President Kennedy had been shot. Stevenson got on the radio to ask the dispatcher what the story was. He wanted to know if the President had been wounded. If he had, would he be coming back to make the speech at the Trade Mart or was he going to send someone to make it for him? All those people were sitting around, waiting.

The big press bus waddled onto the grounds, and thirty-five reporters hopped off and ran pell-mell into the Trade Mart. They knew that something had happened—something. They ran, not knowing where the temporary press room might be, but realizing that they would have to get there quickly to find the story about Dealey Plaza. The diners saw them, and laughter spread through the vast edifice. This was what the public saw in motion pictures: reporters running. An official grabbed one writer by the wrist and said: “Hey, you can't run in here.”
The man broke loose and ran. Other diners shook with laughter. One yelled: “Somebody get shot?”