deal. Is the story you’re running tomorrow going to hurt Azure Dragon directly?”
“Nothing they can’t survive. There was something in the PDF file that hinted at a quid pro quo between Azure Dragon and Senator Sumner—or that’s how I read it—but I told Ben to hold that back until we know more. I’m hoping my source will flesh that out with the next delivery. If there is another delivery.”
“What alias did you say the source used?”
“Mark Felt.”
She looked as though she were trying to recall the name of a song playing on the radio. “Was he one of the Watergate burglars?”
“No, he was Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s secret source.”
“Right. Got it.” She shook her head, a wicked smile on her face. “Man, oh, man, when that trail camera photo of Beau Holland with Buck hits tomorrow, Beau’s going to lose it. He’ll be truly desperate. He won’t know who he can trust. I’d love to be there when he opens that paper.”
We’ve sat in companionable silence for a while since that conversation, Nadine reading a novel on her phone while I text back and forth with Ben about tomorrow’s stories. When a woman of about seventy walks in and sits in a shiny brown chair on the opposite side of the waiting room, Nadine leans close and whispers, “So Ben Tate is editing this issue alone?”
“He’s writing it alone, for the most part. Building the pages, everything. I’m just giving him a little guidance. I may read the stories before he sends out the final file, but I trust Ben. All but the front page we’re contracting to a paper in a nearby city.”
“Why not the front page? Legal issues?”
“Bingo. My dad’s old press men are trying to run off a front page with the original Watchman masthead, but I don’t know how much luck they’re having. If they succeed, we’re somehow going to have to recruit a crew to wrap that page around the main issue, as well as deliver the papers before sunup.”
“That sounds like a lot of work. How many papers?”
“Our normal run is seven thousand. But we’re going to try for ten thousand tomorrow and just throw them at every house. To hell with the subscriber list.”
Nadine looks intrigued. “That sounds like something I could help with, organizing some of that. Or grunt work, whatever. I know how to fold.”
“Would you really?”
She smiles. “Sure. I can do whatever those guys need, plus keep you up to speed, since you’ll be stuck here.”
“I’ve got to say, I’m surprised.”
She laughs. “Hey, I may be pragmatic, but I won’t stand by while a bunch of Daddy Warbucks–types subvert the free press.”
I can’t help but smile. After giving her Ben Tate’s contact info, I text Ben that Nadine will be calling him and that he should trust her. While she walks down the hall to talk to Ben out of earshot of the other visitor, I lean back on the hard plastic sofa and wonder how Jet fared tonight. How long did it take her to get a ride to her Volvo? To get home to Paul and Kevin? She hasn’t texted me, so I’m guessing things must be tense over there. I’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow to get any answers.
My watch shows thirty minutes until my next ICU visit. They’ve obviously let Mom overstay her allotted time, unless she’s in the restroom. I’m so dazed by all that Jet told me on Parnassus Hill that I’ve found myself focusing on other things, however painful. The last ten minutes I spent in the ICU were nothing like the sixty seconds that Mom left me alone with Dad last night. Last night I could have nudged him awake, brought him back to the present, into the flow of human existence. But standing over him tonight, I knew that if I nudged him, nothing would happen. He’s sedated, yes, but he was unconscious when the paramedics brought him in, and Dr. Kirby made it clear to me that he might never wake up. How can it be that only this morning, I called Dad and got a long, well-reasoned answer about why he never went after the Poker Club in print? Tonight he can’t even hear my questions. I fear that my mother’s dream of Dad and me having a cathartic conversation, one in which forgiveness is at least a possibility, is receding to the unreachable horizon of might-have-been. It may not be too late, of course. But it feels