High noon in the White House chief of staff's office. Actually the anteroom where Stephanie McCord was on duty as gatekeeper to the domain of Russell Jackson. His assistant and intern - Adele and Stevie - staggered their work hours and lunchtimes so one of them would always be available. Sometimes they were both available because they, like many staffers, often ate at their desks. Today was as quiet as any day in the west wing was likely to be so Adele had left at 11:30 and Stevie would go at 12:30. This suited both of them since Adele like to come in early and leave relatively early unless there was a crisis she had to stay for. Stevie considered 11:30 an ungodly hour to eat lunch and was happy to come in a little later and stay longer. Russell, of course, was usually in before Adele and left after Stevie. Stevie didn't know how the man kept such a schedule. No doubt it contributed to his irascible act which wasn't really an act although she had come to know how kind he could be at times.

Russell was having lunch at his desk and making phone calls between bites, which couldn't be good for his digestion. Stevie hid a proprietary interest in his health that wouldn't be welcome or appreciated. She couldn't help it. Since his heart attack she worried about him. She did not want to kneel again by his nearly lifeless body, counting as she pressed his chest, pinched his nose and blew into his mouth, repeat, repeat, repeat until the EMTs arrived. She shuddered, glad to answer the phone and have something more cheerful to think about.

"Russell Jackson's office." Stevie didn't say who she was because most callers didn't care who answered the phone. They wanted the person in the big office.

"Is this Adele?"

"I'm Stephanie McCord. May I take a message for Adele?"

"No, I need to … wait, was it you who saved Russell?"

"I gave him CPR." People always said she had saved him, including Russell, but Stevie wasn't comfortable making the claim herself.

"I'm Doctor Rosen at University Hospital. I have very bad news for Russell. News that shouldn't be delivered by phone but he needs to hear it immediately."

Doctor Rosen spoke for a few minutes. Stevie hung up. She was shaking. She was not prepared for this but Adele wouldn't be back for twenty minutes. She made a call. The team of two arrived five minutes later. They would have made it in two if it was an emergency but she had told them it was a preventive measure, just in case. She told them to wait then she knocked on Russell's door before opening it. He was on the phone but he beckoned her in. He took in her wide, scared eyes, cut the call short and stood up.

"What? The president? Your mother?"

Stevie shook her head. She was doing this badly but there was no good way to deliver the news, no way to soften the blow, and Russell had no patience for those tactics anyway.

"University Hospital called. Carol is … gone. They think it was an aneurysm. I'm so sorry." Stevie stepped forward to take Russell's arm. He bent as if he'd been punched in the stomach and she urged him back a step to sit down. His face was blank, his eyes empty. His mouth opened but he didn't say anything. His skin, always pale, looked gray.

"EMTs," Stevie called out.

The White House medics opened the door and hurried across the room with their equipment.

"I'm all right."

"We'll make sure, sir."

While they took his blood pressure and pulse and listened to his heart, Stevie made a call. She had just hung up when she heard Adele's voice behind her.

"Oh my god, is it another heart attack?"

"No." Russell's voice was flat and faint and did nothing to reassure Adele.

The EMTs looked up. "He's okay. Pulse and bp elevated slightly but that's normal considering the news. Good heart sounds and rhythm." They began packing up to leave.

Stevie spoke quietly to Adele. "Carol died at the hospital. Probably an aneurysm."

"Oh, no."

"I called your car," Stevie told Russell. "Doctor Rosen will explain everything."

Russell nodded. "You know what to do, Adele."

"I'll call the deputy chief and the president's assistant."

"Stevie, can you …?" Russell's voice trailed off.

"I'll come with you." Stevie had his jacket ready. She picked up his phone and grabbed her purse on the way out. "I'll call my mom," she whispered to Adele.

"Thanks. One less notification." Adele looked at Russell standing by the door looking as if he had forgotten something. "Take care of him. Don't let him worry about work."

Junior staffers wouldn't approach the chief of staff but a couple of senior members hoping for a quick word veered in their direction. Stevie shook her head at them and they must have seen that something was wrong because they stood back. Russell's car was waiting. His driver opened the door as they came out. It seemed wrong to Stevie that it was beautiful and sunny but not too hot, a perfect summer day in DC. If a life-destroying death hadn't occurred.

"Do you want to let your sons know?" Stevie asked.

"Not yet."

Stevie was pretty sure he was waiting to see Carol first, to make sure there hadn't been a mistake, that they hadn't revived her since Doctor Rosen called.

Russell climbed in the back. Before getting in Stevie told the driver they were going to University Hospital where Mr. Jackson's wife had just died. The driver's face was all sympathy and concern. DC is a jaded town but personal tragedy trumps politics. Usually. For a little while.

"I'm going to let sec state's office know," Stevie said. Russell was staring out the window. His phone was in her purse and he hadn't even asked about it.

"Blake, it's Stevie, I need to talk to Mom for a minute, it's urgent." Stevie was speaking quietly but there was no indication that Russell cared what was going on around him.

"Stevie, what's wrong?"

"Carol Jackson died. They think it was an aneurysm. I'm with Russell on the way to the hospital. A doctor is going to talk to him there."

Russell was making a 'give me' motion with his fingers. Stevie handed over her phone.

"Bess?" Russell's voice broke a little.

"Russell, I'm so sorry. You know if there's anything, anything at all …"

"Yeah. Adele is telling my deputy. Reach out to him. He's not used to working with your office."

"Of course. Does Conrad know?"

"Probably, by now."

"I'm not going to call you because you're going to have so much to do but you call me whenever you want to, okay? I mean that."

"Thanks, Bess." He hung up and handed the phone back to Stevie.

At University Hospital there wasn't much for Doctor Rosen to report. Carol Jackson had performed a surgical procedure flawlessly. After scrubbing out she said she had finished just in time because she suddenly had a killer headache. She collapsed and was dead.

"You probably know that medical personnel often reassure family that a patient died instantly without feeling pain, even if it isn't true. Sometimes it's the only comfort we can give. In this case Carol probably had a couple seconds of pain when the aneurysm ruptured but it was so sudden and so severe that she died immediately. She was only yards from an operating room and nothing could be done. There will be an autopsy but unless we're wrong about the aneurysm, which isn't likely, there probably won't be much more information."

"I want to see her."

"Of course. She's in a private room. Take as long as you need. Let us know where arrangements will be made and the mortuary will take care of her."

Stevie was glad they didn't have to go to a cold morgue in a dank basement. Maybe that wasn't what real morgues were like. Maybe she had seen too many horror movies. Russell told her which mortuary to use and she stayed in the hall to call them while he went into the room to be with his wife for the last time.

Russell approached, glad that Carol was in a bed instead of on a gurney or a morgue slab. Or would one of those have made it easier to accept that this was real, this was happening? He knew he was in shock and that it would dissipate soon and he would feel much worse than this vague sense of distress. This was not what was supposed to happen. He was two years older than Carol and men tend to die before women so he had always thought that he would die before her. After his heart attack, he assumed it would be a little sooner than average. Of course Carol might have an accident or injury or illness and be gone in an instant but the mind dismisses statistical improbabilities. He wasn't supposed to have to go on without her.

A sheet was pulled up to her neck. She looked peaceful and pretty, as if she was sleeping. All the clichés. He was already cursing the photographic memory that served him so well. The moments of their life together would be with him forever. He could hardly recall his ex-wife and their disastrous marriage. Some memories he could lose if he wanted to, if they weren't important. But that wouldn't work with Carol. He didn't want to lose anything and she was too important to forget. He bent to kiss her forehead. Room temperature. She hadn't been dead long enough to be cold but she was cooling. Her lips were faintly bluish and he couldn't bring himself to kiss the mouth that had been so warm in life, a mouth that smiled easily and often. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes and turned away.

He wouldn't be completely alone but the boys were grown and starting their adult lives. He would have to tell them soon. Ken was twenty and would be a junior at Northwestern. He had a summer job in Chicago. Logan was eighteen and would start at Harvard this fall. He was working in Boston for the summer.

Russell wasn't crying but he looked as if he had been. Stevie felt so bad for him. She hadn't known Carol well, certainly not as well as she had come to know Russell, but they had met at the hospital after Russell's heart attack and a few more times when Russell was recovering. She knew they had been married more than twenty years and had two sons. She had met the sons once, also after Russell's heart attack. A freshman in college and a junior at prep school then, so they were each a year older than Stevie's own sister and brother.

Stevie called for the car. It was waiting by the time they walked out of the hospital.

"Let's go home. I'll call the boys from there."

Stevie knew the Jacksons had a woman who came in for a few hours on weekday afternoons. There wasn't much to do for a couple with high-powered jobs who were away from the house most of the time but both were too busy to deal with household chores unless they felt like being domestic.

Telling Elena was tough but Russell did it well. Russell's softer side didn't surprise Stevie any more but other people didn't expect it from such an acerbic personality. Russell disappeared into his study to call his sons. Stevie commiserated with Elena in the kitchen. After the first shock Elena went into caregiver mode. The boys would be coming home and people would be stopping by.

Stevie left Elena to her duties and went to the little sitting room by the front door. Should she leave? She had delivered Russell safely home and there was probably nothing more she could do but she didn't want to go without saying goodbye. She checked her phone which had blown up with texts and a few voice messages as the word spread. She returned them, giving the bare details which were all she knew and perhaps all the info there would ever be.

There was a text from Dad and a voice message from Mom. It had been easy for her to say she wouldn't bother Russell by calling because she could call her daughter instead. But that wasn't fair and Stevie didn't mind because she knew both her parents were friends with Russell and Carol and genuinely cared about Russell despite regular clashes between the secretary of state and chief of staff. Dad had said it was actually a good thing that the two people whose advice the president valued most had differing points of view. Dad clashed with Russell, too. And Mom and Dad clashed with each other sometimes. But there was respect and liking among all of them. Liking sounded wrong when she thought of her parents but it was true. Besides loving each other, they liked each other. From the little Stevie had seen of Russell and Carol together, she thought it was the same with them. She called her mom and told her everything that had happened since answering the call from Doctor Rosen. She said Russell appeared to be as okay as it was possible to be and that he was calling his sons. She called her dad and told him the same things.

Russell came out of his study looking drained. He stopped at the entrance to the sitting room.

"You've been a big help today. Thank you."

"Whatever I can do."

Russell's head tilted slightly as if he was considering something. "You may regret saying that." There was a hint of the old Russell in his tone. He tossed his phone to Stevie. "I can't deal with all the texts and callbacks. You'll know what to say and which ones I should handle personally."

"Of course."

"The boys should be home by eight."

"I could pick them up."

Russell shook his head. "Logan gets in before Ken. They're meeting at the airport and coming here together."

"Elena will have their rooms ready."

Russell closed his eyes, wincing a little. "I'm going upstairs. I'll return calls later."

An hour later Stevie had finished with the texts and calls she could take care of. She went to the kitchen. "You leave at four?" she asked Elena.

"Not today. I'll be here every day as long as I need to be. Until things settle. Did Russell have lunch?"

"He didn't finish it."

"He should eat if he's awake. But he should sleep if he's not. Will you check?"

"Sure."

Stevie knew the layout of the house. When Russell was recovering from his heart attack, she would stop by to tell him what was happening at the office. For official and medical reasons he couldn't be involved but leaving Russell entirely out of the loop would have been more stressful for him than a controlled flow of information. Adele was busy helping the deputy chief in Russell's absence so Stevie was sent. She had meant to make her reports light and amusing but that wasn't Russell's style. He interrogated her. That's when she had learned that how something was said and the tone of voice used could mean more than the words themselves.

The bedroom door was closed. Stevie had almost knocked when she noticed the door down the hall was ajar. It was a small room off the master bedroom that Russell used when he got home late and didn't want to wake Carol if she was cutting the next day. He probably didn't want to be in the room they had shared yet.

Stevie knocked softly. No answer. The door wasn't open enough to look in and that felt like an invasion of privacy anyway. She had turned to go back downstairs when Russell's voice said, "Come in."

He was lying on his back on the narrow single bed. His jacket, tie and shoes were off. He turned his head.

"Elena made you something to eat."

"Not hungry."

"I think you know what I have to say next."

"You need to keep your strength up?"

"That's it."

"You missed lunch, too."

"I'll have a big dinner later."

Russell sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "The least I can do is feed you. Or have Elena feed you."

If it meant Russell would eat, Stevie was willing to join him. He padded downstairs behind her in socks. Russell wasn't tall, he was two or three inches shy of average. Stevie was an inch taller without shoes and several inches taller in heels. Her mother was taller, too. Stevie liked that Russell never seemed to notice that most people around him were taller. She considered it a true test of self-esteem and personal power. He was too secure in himself to care about height.

They ate at the small round breakfast table. Russell took a few half-hearted bites. Stevie tried not to scarf hers down. She was young and healthy and, while she empathized with Russell's loss, she wasn't personally traumatized and hadn't realized until now how hungry she was.

Russell asked for his phone so he could start returning calls.

"After you finish."

"What am I, eight? Hand it over."

It was encouraging to hear Russell sound so much like his usual irritable self but Stevie wished he wouldn't multi-task right now. Still, it wasn't her place to treat her boss like a child. She took his phone out of her pocket and laid it on the table with a small sigh.

Russell exhaled a louder sigh of his own and muttered, "For god's sake" under his breath. He took a bite of salad and chewed deliberately, swallowed and followed with a bite of fruit. Elena smiled and patted his shoulder. Stevie kept her eyes on her plate.

Russell went back to his study to make calls. Stevie answered the last few texts and was ready to go. The study door had been closed while he called his sons but it was open now. Russell saw her and beckoned her in. Stevie had a horrible moment of déjà vu as he ended the call, a flashback to his office almost six hours ago.

"I'm going to leave if there's nothing else …"

Russell tapped at his phone. "My car will take you. Sit down a minute. I probably won't be in for a week. Remember when you briefed me before?"

Stevie stopped herself from smiling. "You'd like to be kept updated while you're away?"

"That would be helpful. Between five and six?"

"I'll be here."

Her parents were home for family dinner. She wasn't hungry after the late lunch so she picked at her food and nobody called her on it because the talk was about Russell and Carol and she was the only witness to what had been going on all day with the one who was still living.

Her mother took a call during dinner and came back to say that the president and first lady were going to Russell's house at nine and Conrad would appreciate it if Elizabeth and Henry would stop by about nine-fifteen so he could exit smoothly if other people were there. Dalton didn't want the visit to be about him which tended to happen when the president of the United States showed up.

"Coming with us?" Henry asked.

"I'll pass. I was there all afternoon. Besides, I'll see Russell every day at five."

"He wants a briefing." Elizabeth couldn't believe it. "His wife is dead and he can't let go for a week."

"To be fair, he couldn't let go when he was almost dead," Henry said. "This is Russell Jackson after all."

Adele was leaving as Elizabeth and Henry arrived. Inside were the Jackson sons, two cabinet members, a senator and Lydia Dalton. By the time the McCords had expressed condolences to Ken and Logan, Russell's study door opened and he emerged with Conrad Dalton. The president and first lady made a graceful exit. The cabinet members and the senator followed soon after. The Jackson sons excused themselves.

"Stevie didn't come with you?"

Henry smiled. "I think she thought you'd seen enough of her for one day."

Elizabeth wasn't so tactful. "Surely you can wait until tomorrow. And the next day …"

"Don't start, Elizabeth."

"You're right and I'm sorry. How are you holding up?"

"It's beginning to sink in and it's not a good feeling."

"How are the boys taking it?"

"About the same. Logan has orientation at Harvard the end of August. Ken goes back to Northwestern the end of September. It'll be good for them. Enough time to come to grips with it but they should be pretty busy before they really start missing her." Russell's voice was husky. He cleared his throat. "They both have jobs but I haven't asked if they'll go back right away or stay for awhile. Whatever they want."

"You've had a long day and it's going to be busy for awhile," Henry said. "We're going to take off and let you get some rest."

"And before you say you won't be able to sleep," Elizabeth said, "Please, just lie down and close your eyes and give it a chance." She looked around. "Let's clear this up."

"Elena will take care of it tomorrow."

"Oh come on, everybody take a few things and it will be done tonight."

Henry was already stacking plates and collecting glasses. "You know how this is going to go, Russell."

Elizabeth agreed to leave things in the sink instead of loading the dishwasher.

Russell walked them to the door. "By the way, your daughter is amazing. And annoying. She held my phone hostage until I ate."

"That's my girl," Elizabeth said.

"Amazing and annoying: like mother, like daughter," Henry said.

"You're a lucky man, Henry."

Russell went upstairs and said goodnight to his sons before turning in. They were both in Ken's room, propped up against the headboard with a window open and the ceiling fan turning. They were sharing a joint. Russell sat on the edge of the bed and reached for it.

Logan handed it over but said, "Probably not great for your heart."

"Studies are inconclusive. And it's only a couple of puffs, I'm not applying for a medical marijuana card." He handed the joint to Ken. "You guys okay?"

"About the same as you, I guess," Ken said.

"I hoped you were doing better than that. Good night."

"Night, Dad."

Russell went to the small bedroom. He didn't want to use the master bedroom. He wouldn't close it up and make it into a shrine to Carol but he didn't want to sleep there alone yet. He got ready for bed. He was tired but not sleepy. He would try Bess's suggestion even though it wouldn't work. He lay down and closed his eyes.

He woke up seven hours later, possibly the longest uninterrupted sleep he'd had since his heart attack. He remembered Carol immediately. Her absence was acute but at least he had the energy to do what had to be done today.