Page 56 of The Shield
“Subtle,” I said.
“Effective,” she said, and tucked the blanket in at my hip with one ruthless, loving hand.
The reporters didn’t make it to my room. Security and staff kept them penned in the lobby and along the curb, a hive of umbrellas and lenses buzzing for any scrap of me. I caught glimpses on the muted TV—live shots from the front entrance, a correspondent standing under a hospital awning while my name scrolled across the chyron.
Upstairs, the nurses’ station fielded calls and note-passing producers. They tried every angle—pressing the chaplain, the gift shop, even the poor cafeteria cashier. Pearl leaned on the counter with her arms folded and let them wear themselves out.
“She’ll give a written statement,” she’d told a harried intern clutching a microphone like it was a life preserver.
“Tonight?” he’d pushed.
“Tomorrow,” Pearl had said, not blinking, and turned back to charting vitals as if that settled it. It did.
My hands itched. Words are my tools. The instinct to step toward a microphone rose in me like muscle memory. But I had promised myself something. Smarter meant delegating withoutapology. Smarter meant letting the boring heroics—hydration, rest, enough salt—build the stage the big speeches deserved.
I texted Kimmy:One statement. Keep it plain.Then:No on-cam until I’m cleared and ready. Her reply arrived like confetti and strategy both:Already drafting. Public Information Officer wants to coordinate. Also, your hair looked sexier in peril than mine looks after a blowout. Unfair.
Draft:Thank you for taking care of each other today. We activated the Emergency Operations Center and we’ll keep telling the truth about where the water is and what to do about it. I’m resting tonight so I can get back to work as soon as possible.I stared at it, adjusted one verb—activatedstayed, because words mattered—and sent it back with a heart.
Pearl saw the motion and didn’t scold me. She just raised one eyebrow over the rim of my chart, which is a kind of love.
Between checks, the hospital did its hospitaling. A resident with a tired bun came to teach me about concussions like I hadn’t met one at a soccer camp when I was nineteen. “No alcohol for 48 hours, light activity only, avoid bright lights and loud sound, limit reading if it spikes your headache—your brain is a bruise.” She paused, glanced at the purple band on my wrist. “Also—no horseback tonight.”
“Noted,” I said, and imagined Flapjack snorting his disapproval.
Physical therapy rolled a cart in and made me stand, heel-to-toe, the world tilting for one treacherous breath before settling like a boat guided to its slip. The tech’s voice was cheerful. “If you feel dizzy, you call for me.”
“Okay,” I said, and Pearl, somewhere behind her, snorted.
Then the door opened on the one man who could walk into any room in Charleston and make it feel smaller and safer by twenty percent.
“Granddaddy,” I said.
Butch Kennedy looked like he’d fought the rain and negotiated a formal peace. The linen jacket had surrendered. The white hair had not. He held a bouquet of Publix sunflowers in one fist. He set them on the windowsill with unnecessary gentleness and sat where Pearl pointed, which told me everything about who ran this floor.
“Natty-girl, you’re awake,” he said, gently.
“I am.”
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said without preamble, the words rough and quieter than the man who whooped from courthouse steps.
“I scared me, too,” I admitted.
He filtered me with the old, appraising gaze. Then he exhaled through his nose, a long, unpretty sound. “It’s not my favorite business, watching you be a story.”
“You taught me how to tell them,” I said.
“I taught you how to tell truth,” he corrected, tapping the rail of the bed. “Those cameras out there don’t care about truth so much as heat.”
“I can give them both,” I said.
He stared down at his hands. The skin had thinned. The knuckles looked like little knotted roots. He rubbed his thumb across the knuckle of his ring finger where no ring sat now. When he spoke again, his voice had lost some show.
“When I first took office,” he said, “your grandmother stopped speaking to me for a week.”
I blinked. “Because you won?”
“Because I didn’t ask her if we could afford me winning.” He didn’t look at me. He looked at the sunflowers, yellow like a dare. “We weren’t rich, whatever the city liked to pretend. We were comfortable on the outside and counting commas under the table. I told myself public service would fix that, not in salary—” he waved a hand at the idea “—but in the kind of doors that openfor a man with a seal on his letterhead. I told myself it would give me purpose and her pride and our boy a father he could be proud of.”
