This is a short story I wrote about health care in America. Ha! No, just kidding. Sorta.
The order made no sense to the intern, but that was precisely why they hired interns in the first place. The message went out via Twitter: “this is all a WH plot to distract the ppl from SOCIALISM!!! wake up America!” It went out with no fanfare, just another entry in the log.
“Sorry,” Devon said, pulling her head in the door and closing it gently behind her. “I had to make sure it was sent on schedule.”
“You’re keeping busy down here,” nodded the Chief of Staff. “How’s D.C. treating you?”
“I haven’t had a chance to see it,” Devon said, sliding into her chair and checking the grid. The next milestone was fifteen minutes off. “I’m hoping for a chance to eat out this Sunday. It looks like there’s a break in the schedule.”
“You don’t get many of those, do you?”
“Only in the middle of the night, sir.”
“Well, I’d offer to take you, but I don’t think I’ll make it.”
“No, sir,” she said. He chuckled the way he did on TV when the NBC bureau chief was dogging him for facts. It was the exact same chuckle. Devon was impressed. Consistency was hard to pull off.
“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked.
“The President has read the latest report and has some questions.”
“Of course.”
He adjusted in his seat and leaned back, hands perched lightly in his lap. Casual. At ease.
“You indicated that the health care track of the model is progressing on schedule, and we should be due for a reversal in several weeks. The… uh… fifteenth, right?”
“Yes sir. With increasing certainty.”
“And is that the last reversal we’ll be seeing, or will there be more? I know everyone’s anxious to find out when it’ll all be over. The President and I have a lot riding on this proposal.”
“That will be the last reversal of any significance, sir.”
“Excellent,” he smiled. “That’s great, thank you. I know the House leadership has been on edge, taking a pounding like they have.”
“The intricacies of the model are hard to accept sometimes,” she said with regret.
“I’ll say,” he laughed. “Nobody wants to see the President look weak like this. But you’ve never been wrong, so…”
She checked the screen again. The milestone was trending closer. She opened the details window and watched the variables cycle by. A blog post by a left-wing activist had been picked up by Digg faster than expected, and it was throwing the numbers off.
“Is there something you…” the Chief of Staff said, watching her carefully.
“Oh, no. Sorry, sir. Routine adjustments. I find it hard to look away sometimes.”
“I’ll bet,” he said. “But listen. The other thing we need to discuss is the new tracks you’re adding to the model. The President noticed a new branch called ‘Afg’ and wondered…”
“Afghanistan, yes sir.”
“I see,” he said, folding his left hand atop his right.
“Certain factors were spilling into—”
“Devon,” he said, voice gaining tension. “Devon, I’m not sure the President is comfortable with your team analysing facts beyond the scope of the original commission.”
She glanced at her screen. The milestone was moving.
“We follow the tends, sir,” she said.
“With all due respect to your ‘science’, this is not what you’re being paid to do.”
“With all due respect to the President,” she replied, “I did not give up my position at MIT to handicap my methods. If factors consistently move outside our mapping area, we are obliged to model that area to ensure our margin of error remains as low as possible. We are not requesting any classified information about military activities in—”
“And you damn well shouldn’t, is what I’m saying.”
“We fully understand that, sir. The biggest obstacle to advanced System Dynamics is the influence of the science on itself. If we asked the Secretary of Defence for information, we would be damaging our own effectiveness by an order of magnitude greater than operating, as we do, purely on publicly-known suppositions.”
He sat even further back in the chair. He was so frustrated he was sweating.
“If this leaks…” he warned.
“I won’t, sir,” she said, and picked up her phone as his face turned bright red. His breathing became sharp and agitated, and he gripped his chest suddenly. He let out a pained gasp and toppled himself off the chair. Devon stood behind her desk, glancing over.
“Yes,” she said, “I have an emergency. I think the Chief of Staff is having a heart attack.”
She hung up and walked around, laying him flat on his back and feeling his pulse.
“You… you’re k-k-killing me…?” he wheezed between shots of pain.
“No sir,” she said gravely. “You won’t die today. The medical staff here are very capable.”
He stared at her in horror, before his eyes rolled back as another wave of agony pushed him into the carpet.
She brushed hair from his forehead, and her face took on a softer quality. Caring, almost. And for a second she forgot the milestone and the rules and the consequences, and she whispered:
“I shouldn’t say this, sir, but you’ve been so good to me these last few months. The truth of the matter is the coma will last until the twelfth, at which point a complication in your treatment will lead to your passing. I’m no doctor, but my cursory research indicates you won’t feel a thing.”
The Chief of Staff tried to reach out to her, to beg for her help, for her to stop it, but his arms just flailed uselessly as the room got foggier.
“On the fifteenth, the President will deliver a speech about what you meant to him, and that, I’m afraid, will trigger the reversal you’ve been looking for. I’m just sorry you won’t be around to see it.”
He stopped breathing just as the paramedics pushed in, working desperately to save the President’s right hand man. And Devon, her trembling hands betraying her state of mind, took comfort in the sight of the milestone passing on schedule.
Thirty-five minutes until the next one.
