This 44-part series began running in WCT Nov. 8. Readers can read all the installments to date at www.windycitymediagroup.com . From the journal of John 'Jack' Quincy Adams, Chief Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, The White House. Code Name: One.
Jack Adams, the veteran Secret Service Agent assigned to the president and known as One, has been charged with assassinating George W. Bush. He is being held for psychiatric evaluation and attends daily psychiatric sessions with Dr. Debra Haber. Part of what she uncovers is that Jack, has been in love since childhood with Laura Welch ( Bush ) . Jack's beloved son Quincy is gay, lives with a partner in New York and has adopted a child. The 44-part series began running in WCT Nov. 8. Readers can read all the installments to date at www.windycitymediagroup.com .
From the journal of John 'Jack' Quincy Adams, Chief Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, The White House. Code Name: One.
Part 2. Falling in Love Forever
I believe everyone has one true love, one person who gets into his system like an antigen and stays there. It is usually the first love and it usually happens during adolescence. For me it happened at 8:29 a.m. in the bookstore of Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas. It was my first day of school in a new town and I was self-conscious as any teen.
That was the first time I laid eyes on Laura Welch and she was not only the prettiest girl I had ever seen, she was the sweetest, the funniest and the sexiest. I would see her from time to time after that, but we moved in different circles and I was never brave enough to say more than hi or good morning when we'd pass in the halls. Then, four years later, on Nov. 6, 1963 at Midland Memorial Hospital a little after 8 p.m. fate brought us together in a sad and unpredictable way. I think that was when I knew without a doubt I was in love with her.
She and a friend of hers, Judy Dykes, had been in a bad accident out on La Mesa Highway. Mike Douglas was driving the car they ran into and he was killed outright, thrown out of his Jeep and broke his neck. Mike's father was driving a car right behind him, so he saw the whole thing and he came to the hospital, too. Mr. Douglas was a mess, as any father would be, crying and trembling and asking if he could see his son and weren't we even going to try to revive him and what kind of hospital was this anyway. I kept looking back and forth from Mr. Douglas to the girl who had been driving the other car, the girl I was in love with, but who didn't know I existed. She was upset, too, although you had to be a nurse or a doctor or a trained volunteer like I was to see it.
My mother had talked me into joining her two nights a week volunteering in the Emergency Room at Midland Memorial. At first I didn't want to, but the prospect of staying at home watching my father get more and more loaded as the evening wore on was enough to change my mind, plus it would look good on my record. I'm now convinced that Fate had a hand in that. If I hadn't given in to my mother wanting me to volunteer with her I never would have had that first conversation with Laura. I may never have had any conversation with her.
Laura sat motionless on the table and stared straight ahead. She only had a couple of scratches from where the window had shattered, but dozens of pebbles of glass were lodged in her hair and stuck into her clothes. She was wearing green pedal pushers and a beige blouse. And pearls in a single strand; I couldn't help but wonder if they were real. Her black shoes with gold flecks—more like thin slippers—sat on the exam table next to her.
Doctor Gordon had already examined her and said she was fine and went off to attend to a gunshot victim. He told me the nurse would be in in a minute and that I should attend to her superficial wounds with some Betadine lotion. All I could do at first was to stare at her just sitting there like a statue, pale and almost green under the fluorescent lights. I did the only thing I could think of doing while she waited for the nurse to get to her.
'I brought you some Dr. Pepper,' I said, holding out the paper cup. 'Here's a napkin, too.'
She looked up at me, still with the vacant look of someone in shock. She said, 'Thank you,' but I could tell it was automatic, not something she was thinking about. She was just brought up to be polite. She was too polite ever to be mean to anyone, including me. All through high school, all through college at SMU, she was always nice to me, but never in the way I wanted. We became best friends, when I wanted to be lovers. But Laura had different ideas about whom she would marry, or rather her mother did. And it sure wasn't me. But that politeness, that kindness of hers was something I admired. It was a trait she would keep all her life, right up to the day she walked into The White House and back into my life.
Follow this 44-part serialized book in Windy City Times for the next several months. See www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com for past columns.
