Chapter Text
17th November, 1965 - Afternoon
Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas
Dick Nixon
“Long time no see.”
These were the first words one Dick Nixon said to one Jack Kennedy, who was peering slightly down at him from the comfort of his hospital bed.
“Haha. We’ve been seeing each other these past couple of days, Dick.”
“Sorry, Jack. It’s just that I often…say it out of instinct.”
Filtering through the air, and enveloping Jack’s slightly slimmed-down silhouette in a continuous border of glimmering gold, were rays of sunlight piercing through the window behind him. Nixon momentarily shifted his eyes away from Jack to get a better look at the world outside the hospital. It was the afternoon, and Jack must’ve had lunch about an hour or two ago.
“Did you eat well? I hope you did.”
“Sure did. Thanks for asking, Dick.” Jack replied before turning to face the window, narrowing his eyes somewhat so as not to be blinded by the radiance of the sunlight shining directly in their faces. “The weather’s really nice today. I hope Ted’s taking advantage of it and going surfing. I wish I could join him, but I’m sure I’ll be able to sooner or later. Plus, there’s plenty of nice things here anyways. Just look, aren’t those flowers beautiful?”
Nixon followed Jack’s line of sight and spotted the flowers Jack was referring to. They were nicely arranged and set in an elegant vase on a windowsill. The design of the vase was simple but tasteful, such that it looked expensive, whereas it would have been cheap if a few crucial aesthetical details were absent. Nixon made a mental note to get a similar vase for Pat’s birthday next March. She would surely appreciate such a beautiful gift, especially if Nixon took care to buy a bouquet of flowers and let that accompany the vase as an additional present.
“Hey Dick.”
Nixon snapped out of his daydreaming at Jack’s call, knitting his eyebrows in concentration whilst shifting his gaze from the vase back to Jack, who was by now sitting up in his bed, his fragile back supported by an abundance of cushions that seemed satisfactorily plush to Nixon.
“What did you have for lunch today?”
“Oh, just the usual, Jack. Pineapple slices and a glass of milk. Oh, uh, with cottage cheese on the pineapple, too.”
“You just can’t do without the pineapple slices and cottage cheese, huh.”
“You got me there, Jack. It is actually delicious, you know.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh don’t you try to mimic what I say.”
“Haha.”
“That’s right, you better give up on it. Aaaaaah,” Nixon yawned.
“Haha, seems like you’re still tired, Dick. Why not have a nap? Go back to sleep. I’ll be fine,” Jack counselled affectionately. He shone that multi-million dollar Kennedy smile straight at Nixon, and Nixon wasn’t sure he could refuse any request by Jack when that smile was on full display, for him and him only.
“Okay, Jack,” he obliged. “You take care of yourself. Don’t try and get out of bed while I’m sleeping.”
“Promise I won’t, Dick. Now you go and take a nap now. Sweet dreams.”
When Nixon next woke up, he saw that Jack was asleep as well, judging from the relative silence of the room. Next to him were Rose and Ted Kennedy, who had unsurprisingly come to visit their loved one, and whose footsteps had woken up the former vice president, a light sleeper particularly alert given the unparalleled importance of who he was watching over. Ted looked just as groggy as Nixon felt, evidently having not gone surfing as Jack hoped he would have done. To Ted’s left, Rose stood with her left arm linked with Ted’s right and her right arm holding a handkerchief that was dry but carried a faint, near-colourless stain. Her eyes were reddened and she looked like she still could not come to terms with what had happened, despite also having made peace with it all long ago. Nixon hoped he would never have to see Pat looking the way Rose did.
“Hello, Mrs. Kennedy and Senator Kennedy.”
Rose nodded politely in acknowledgement of Nixon’s greeting, whilst Ted remained wordless, instead focusing on looking at his slumbering brother.
“Oh, I think Jack’s just tired,” Nixon said, hoping to soothe Ted. “He’s just napping a bit right now.”
It seemed that those words did not have the effect Nixon intended them to have, for Rose and Ted did not appear the least bit comforted by what he said. Ted merely looked at Nixon with a blank stare that gave away no information about what he was thinking at that moment, while Rose’s lips began to tremble slightly while her grip on her handkerchief tightened visibly. Neither said a word in response to Nixon, instead letting out effortfully controlled sighs. As Ted started heading towards the door, Rose approached Nixon and squeezed his hand lightly, before looking at him again, this time with her eyes filled with a feeling Nixon guessed was pity. He had little clue why her eyes were full of that emotion, but knew it would be unwise to ask, and so stayed quiet. After they left, Nixon was alone in the room with Jack again, the latter still fast asleep, his appearance the very picture of placid calmness.
It was clear, however, that the sunlight was beginning to warm the room up a little, given that the windows were not open and the room had essentially no other channels for ventilation beyond those and the door itself. The warmth from the sunlight had heated up Jack’s face enough such that there was now a thin but somewhat sparkly sheen of sweat coating his dashing features. Unwilling to call for a nurse over such a trivial thing, Nixon decided it would be best if he took care of Jack and made sure he wasn’t too uncomfortable whilst resting in his sleep.
He rose from his chair by Jack’s bedside and went over to the en-suite toilet in the room, grabbing the dry towel hanging on a hook adjacent to the mirror. Turning the cold water tap on, he made sure to soak the towel completely and then wring excess water out of it without making it too dry. Then, confirming with his touch that the towel was damp and cool enough to give a refreshing sensation, he went out of the toilet and got back to Jack’s bedside. Carefully, so as not to wake Jack up, he scrunched the towel around the index finger on his right hand, and began cleaning Jack’s face of the thin layer of sweat that had coated it, tapping the sweat on Jack’s face over and over again with a pressure as feather-light as he could manage. When he looked over Jack’s face afterwards and was satisfied that it was clean, he quietly backed away from the elevated bed and went back to the en-suite toilet to hang the towel back up and let it drip-dry.
Nixon then returned to Jack’s bedside, whereupon he noticed that Jack’s blanket was only partially covering his chest, probably because the blanket had fallen a little when Jack rose and his upper body stayed upright while he was propped up and talking to Nixon. Again utilising every bit of physical discretion he had, Nixon softly and nervously tugged Jack’s blanket upwards until eventually, after many delicate and almost indiscernible tugs, the blanket covered Jack’s chest and its top reached his collarbones, exposed by the hospital pyjamas he was wearing. Then, to make sure Jack wouldn’t wake up too soon because of the sunlight coming through the window, he approached the window and drew the curtains. Then, feeling exhausted again, perhaps infected by Jack’s fatigue, he decided to return to his chair and take a nap as well, resting his head on his folded arms, which were in turn placed against the thick side rails of Jack’s bed.
By the time he woke up again, the rays of sunlight that filtered through the gaps between the curtains were rather weak. Nixon inferred that it was almost evening. Immediately he spotted a small piece of paper in his field of vision. It was neatly placed on top of the foldable desk that was attached to Jack’s bed. It had something written on it, but there was no writing implement next to it on the desk. Without much thought and mostly driven by pure curiosity, Nixon picked up the piece of paper and glanced at it. It was a note addressed to him, in handwriting he had not really come across before.
Dick,
I woke up earlier and felt a nice, fresh feeling on my face. I assume it was you who wiped it while I was asleep? I was also neatly tucked into my blanket. You probably did that as well, didn’t you? Thank you kindly.
Your friend, Jack
Nixon smiled instinctively. He was touched that Jack wrote a note just to thank him for those minor, caring gestures. But the clutter of words on the note were making him drowsy again, and it would still be a few hours until it was time for dinner. Before he even made the decision in his head to resume napping, his body was already executing it. The world faded from view as he fell back into the shadows of slumber.
*
22nd November, 1963 - Morning
Baker Hotel, Dallas
Richard M. Nixon
On one hand, in the middle distance from where he sat in the lobby, Nixon’s aides were in conversation with one of the receptionists, handling the boring details of checking him out from the Baker Hotel. On the other (more interesting) metaphorical hand, in Nixon’s actual hands was a copy of that morning’s issue of the Dallas Morning News. The headline said: Storm of Political Controversy Swirls Around Kennedy on Visit.
Nixon put down the paper after giving the front-page text a cursory once-over. He was not really in the mood to pay close attention to what his rival, who was now the president, was going to do when he arrived in the very city that Nixon was about to depart. Quite frankly, he wondered whether all the other people in the hotel lobby, if they were clearly alerted to the fact that Nixon was here, would care more about his presence than the imminent arrival of the president at the airport of their home city. His heart nursed the suspicion that they would care more about the president.
The president, who had become the president because of his charm and good looks. Things Nixon simply wasn’t fortunate enough to be born with. Really, he was not going to accept that this was just fate, that he had lost a genetic lottery that he could not possibly have exerted any influence or control over. The president, a privileged Massachusetts patrician’s son who grew up on a comfortable estate and went sailing in the nearby ocean. Him, the former vice president, a humble Southern Californian who swam in the irrigation ditch built by the Anaheim Union Water Company. In the election of 1960 the American people had sent Nixon a clear message that, by the narrowest of margins, more people preferred the rich man who got to where he was by charisma and stylish appeal to the humble man who had shot to the second-highest office in the land through grit and hard graft. They had elected him when he shared a ticket with Ike, but found him inferior when he was fighting for the top job himself.
With a displeased huff Nixon put down the newspaper and glanced around the lobby, hoping to be distracted from those unhappy thoughts about the unchangeable results of an election firmly in the past. To his left, standing close to a pillar that was about a few metres away from the Chesterton three-seater where he sat, were a few of his aides who were waiting for the checkout procedures to be done so that they could escort him to the car on hold outside. The lobby was quiet enough that he could hear what they were apparently gossiping about if he strained to listen in surreptitiously. With little else to do other than keep waiting, he decided to overhear their conversation, an act he soon regretted when he heard the president’s name emerge from one of the aides’ lips. It seemed that they were talking about rising anti-Kennedy sentiment amongst some Texans. There were even leaflets circulating around the state that called the president a traitor to the country he swore an oath to protect.
Nixon decided it was of no benefit to him to continue listening in any further. He was certainly not doing himself any favours by preoccupying himself with gleaning rumours about the president’s imminent visit, when he should have been coming up with ideas for new opinion articles or speeches to deliver at upcoming speaking engagements. News of hostility towards the president did not shock him, and it was not new information either. Plus, he wasn’t going to be around when the president arrived, anyways. By the time the president touched down, he would be in the air, on a flight back to New York. As the aides who were handling checkout gestured to him from the reception desk that they were done, Nixon picked up his bag and coat and headed out the door to find the car that would drive him to the airport.
*
17th November, 1965 - Evening
Parkland Memorial Hospital
Dick Nixon
Whereas some of the previous naps Nixon took in the day were comforting and rejuvenating, he found that this one did not achieve a similar effect. Tired as he was, he had been sleeping a bit too much throughout the day, and had reached the point where he could not get much more sleep that was truly restful. As he lifted his head to survey the familiar surroundings, he noticed that on the windowsill the cluster amaryllis flowers, which had shone bright red in the rays of afternoon sun, now wore a darker shade of red that leaned towards a rich, suave crimson. Outside the windows the sky was coloured in a reddish-orange hue, the blinding sunlight that had illuminated their hospital room—his pocket-sized dimension of solace—gone by this time of day. The footsteps of time were treading solidly in the territory of evening; dinner was imminent now.
It did not surprise him that the defining thing that afforded this otherwise ordinary hospital room such a quality of solace for him was himself still slumbering without worry. The little, occasional snores that came from Jack struck Nixon as subtly endearing. Alas, it would not be wise for him to let Jack continue sleeping and risk missing dinner. Having enough food was crucial for Jack to achieve a speedy recovery. As unpleasant as it was, the task of rousing Jack was something that Nixon simply had to do. He softly placed his hands on Jack’s shoulders and lightly shook them a few times to try to awaken Jack, finding no pleasure in disturbing the rest of this man he cared deeply for.
Unfortunately, none of Nixon’s tactful shaking managed to rouse Jack from his sleep. A pang of concern immediately found its way into Nixon’s uncertain heart. He began grasping for some sort of reasonable explanation that would help him understand why Jack wasn’t waking up. But then he recognised that Jack had indeed been gravely injured, and was probably too tired to be awoken at that moment. Though by this point in time his injuries were quite a bit less severe, having recovered to varying extents, it was not inconceivable that he would need a great deal of time to get proper rest and allow his body to gradually repair itself. That he remained asleep, in light of that, was unsurprising. Nixon had not tried very hard to rouse him; he had deliberately restrained himself so as not to overly disturb Jack or shock him awake.
As he continued to silently watch over Jack, Nixon heard footsteps coming from the corridor outside the hospital room, followed by the sound of the door to the room being opened. Turning his back on the still slumbering Jack, he saw the patient’s mother walk slowly towards him. Rose Kennedy’s eyes were no longer as rimmed with red as they were when he saw her earlier in the day, and but the transparently-stained handkerchief he spotted in one of her hands was still with her, albeit not in her hand, having been half-tucked into her handbag instead. Just like their encounter in the morning, Rose approached the former vice president with an air of dignity. It was a dignity that Nixon felt to be fragile, but was stubbornly maintained by the Kennedy matriarch in spite of that.
They had not spoken when they met in the morning, but now that they were seeing each other for the second time in a single day, Nixon felt that it was necessary for him to at least speak to her in order to avoid coming across as disrespectful or disinterested. He briefly turned to his right to glance at Jack’s sleeping form momentarily, then turned back to Rose and decided to report to her what he perceived to be the present condition of her son.
“Jack is still asleep, Mrs. Kennedy, although I tried to rouse him moments ago. I should think he is still fatigued by his injuries and requires a little more rest. That seems to me the reason why he isn’t awake yet.”
“Oh…I suppose that must be the case, Mr. Nixon,” Rose replied, with a tremor in her voice that she seemed to be desperately trying to suppress. “Thank you for letting me know.”
The sight of a distressed Rose Kennedy reminded Nixon of his own mother Hannah. He could understand Rose’s sorrow to some extent; he had seen his mother weep when Harold and Arthur died from tuberculosis. In fact, he could empathise with Rose’s sorrow himself as well, having been distraught when his brothers were robbed from him. Without putting much thought into it, he politely approached Rose and opened his arms, gesturing to her that he was offering a hug. She accepted, embracing him respectfully whilst making sure not to let her tears stain his clothes. He was sure he silently mouthed “thank you” into his ear as she withdrew from the embrace, and in any case the expression she wore when she left the room was one of unmistakable gratitude.
Nixon, however, found himself unable to return the sentiment as Rose’s departure left him alone in the room again, save for the slumbering Jack. Though he was glad to have comforted Rose in her hour of sadness, he could not help but mull over the words he had heard her actually whisper into his ear. Words that Rose seemed to say to him without any intention to offend or disturb, but left him profoundly unsettled and in a state of unshakable unease.
“I wish you boys hadn’t fallen out over ‘60. I always knew Jack never really held anything against you, Dick.”
*
22nd November, 1963 - Afternoon
New York City
Richard M. Nixon
Nixon remembered that moment so clearly, it was as if each time he dredged it from the rivers of mental memory, he relived it.
Fifteen minutes. All it took for the world to come to a grinding halt.
Around the taxi cab he was in were countless cars, lorries and vans, all jam-packing the busy streets of New York City. It was the afternoon, and he had landed in Idlewild Airport about an hour and a half ago. He was on his way back to 810 Fifth Avenue, where he lived.
Before word spread of what had happened, the urban hustle and bustle around him resembled that of any other ordinary day in the Big Apple. Bored by the congestion that seemed like it wasn’t going to let up any time soon, he was killing time by thinking of geopolitical questions he could write op-eds on to solidify his image as a statesman. The occasional car beep could be heard from the middle distance, but it wasn’t as if that was going to get the drivers of New York magically dynamic and on the move. Nixon could hear the driver of his taxi cab let out a groan of annoyance, probably frustrated by the reduced clientele he would be able to serve that afternoon due to the congestion. Even if his current passenger was a former vice president and U.S. Senator from California, that fact alone was no guarantee that the driver could make enough money that day to put food on the table by the end of the week.
Nixon was contemplating whether he ought to take out his signature yellow foolscap and begin idly jotting some notes-to-self down to help pass the time. But from some abstract distance he could hear a gradually growing murmur. Pedestrians exchanged knitted brows—some speaking in hushed whispers inaudible to him, others glancing around in ignorant confusion. Did something important happen? He thought to himself. But surely it was not something that ought to concern him, given the number of things that could happen in New York City on a given da—
“The p-president has been shot! My g-goodness! President Kennedy h-has been shot!”
Nixon felt his heartbeat cease for a brief millisecond, though perhaps seizure would be a more apt description than mere cessation.
A small crowd of passersby began to gather around the distressed pedestrian who had loudly declaimed the horrible news. Nixon could see some drivers turning their heads in the direction of the news-bringing pedestrian, whilst other drivers further away from the cab he was in seemed to be yelling requests for the pedestrian to repeat what he had said more clearly, so that they could hear what it was he had said.
From all around him the cars began to beep more frequently. He inferred that it was probably because people wanted to travel to their destinations more quickly in order to enquire whether the president had really been shot. The urge of the drivers to get moving sooner only had the exact opposite effect, worsening the already horrendous congestion. It appeared to Nixon that he would not be arriving at 810 Fifth Avenue any time soon if he remained in the cab. With effort marked by an encroaching degree of franticness Nixon retrieved his wallet from his trousers’ left pocket and paid the cab fare hastily to the driver, who seemed grateful that at least he was getting decent money for his trouble. Nixon then alighted from the cab, got onto the pavement and started heading home on foot with a rapidly quickening stride. With each step his shoes applied greater pressure to the pavement. He was determined to return home as soon as possible to seek confirmation of the president’s condition.
Thankfully by the time the distressed pedestrian alleged that the president had been shot, Nixon’s cab had been stuck in traffic about ten minutes away from the building he resided in. Nevertheless, the short walk from where the cab was stuck in traffic to 810 Fifth Avenue felt like a dizzying trek. Nixon could feel the world around him spinning on a wildly fluctuating and unstable axis. He was neither inebriated nor drugged, but felt a shrill ringing in his ears and a burdensome pull from the concrete pavement inviting him to fall onto it. He did not reduce his brisk pace, unwilling to slow down and delay confirming the news with his generally well-informed doorman, but tried his very best to stabilise himself and appear normal to the passersby around him, thinking to himself that they were probably also rather disoriented at that moment.
When Nixon got to the doors of 810 Fifth Avenue he saw his trusted doorman standing on the right of the set of doors. Even from a short distance he could tell that the doorman was not in a perfect state of calmness. Controlling his own nervousness with as much poise and restraint he could muster in that fraught moment, he approached the doorman and enquired whether the allegation made by that anxious pedestrian had been true.
“Yes, Mr. Nixon. I’m afraid it is confirmed that the president has been shot. He is presently in a dangerous condition.”
Nixon felt the disconcerting spin of the world around him come to a grinding halt. Every pedestrian, every passerby, every individual that surrounded him seemed to stop in their tracks, the dynamism and motion of their bodies sucked away by some unknown, malign force. The same force knocked the air out of his lungs and left him instantly breathless and speechless, his mind unable to formulate a response to the doorman’s confirmation. As if the scenery around him had been hastily painted, he felt as if he saw layers of colour flake and peel off until all that constituted his perspective was a lifeless, soulless monochrome befitting not of the urban scene of the Big Apple, but a desolate place of death and tears, such as a morgue or a funeral parlour.
When he blinked in the next moment, the darkness within the moment his eyes lay shut felt like it lasted longer than all of time. His vision faded to an abyssal black as if he had a front-row seat to the fall of the universe.
*
17th November, 1965 - Night
Parkland Memorial Hospital
Dick Nixon
Nixon felt feeling return to him as he grasped the handles of the chair he had just been dozing off in. The scene surrounding him was a familiar one: he was sitting in a corner of Jack’s hospital room, the windows to his right, a wall to his back and a desk to his left. Several paces in front of him was Jack’s bed. On the foldable desk attached to the bed was a near-empty packed dinner that had clearly been finished with almost no food wasted. Nixon felt relieved that Jack had ultimately not missed out on his meal for the night.
He shifted his attention away from Jack, who was adorably snoring as usual, to the windows, which were now letting in traces of moonlight, made somewhat faint by the light pollution emanating from the built environment of Dallas. Bathed in the moonlight were the cluster amaryllis flowers Jack had pointed out during their conversation in the afternoon. The warm sunlight that enveloped the hospital room then had given the flowers a warm scarlet glow. In the present moment, in comparison, the moonlight afforded the slender, naturally bent petals an aloof madder glow.
Spurred on by Jack’s appreciation, Nixon decided to admire the flowers himself. He rose from his chair and approached the part of the windowsill where the vase holding the flowers stood. He had not been wrong in previously judging the vase beautiful; its white hue looked all the more pristine in virtue of the pale radiance of the moon. With the physical restraint he had developed whilst looking after Jack for the past few days, he set his fingers on the crimson amaryllis petals. Its crimson colour was striking even amongst all the red flowers he was aware of.
Nixon was planning on continuing to admire the flowers when his right index finger, left a little too loose from relaxing the restraint he had been controlling himself with, softly plunged into the heart of one of the cluster amaryllis blossoms. The lissom petals closed ranks around the tip of that finger, their natural bend giving the impression that his finger was being entrapped and devoured. Swift, unexpected flashes of disturbing red flickered in Nixon’s sight. The crimson shade of the flowers suddenly seemed to be the most abhorrent and frightening sight he had ever had the misfortune of beholding with his eyes. As if he was a prey animal startled by the realisation that its predator was about to ensnare it, Nixon recoiled from the flowers and the windowsill with a harshness of movement that reflected the strands of fear and suspicion central to his personal character. For the rest of the night he did not dare approach the windows while he was awake.