Drops of light drizzle fell on Hayden Beckman. He sloshed through the slightly wet streets, trying to beat his previous time. With every step, it produced a tiny spritz of vapor from his sneakers. He rounded a corner and then kept trekking at his steady pace. He glanced at his brain chip visor in his eye contact. It read “one hour, seventeen minutes.” He looked up and saw a car abruptly stop right in front of him. Jolted, he paused and raised a hand to the blinding sheen of the headlights.

“Mr. Beckman. You have to come with us. It’s a matter of national security.”

That was such a standard line. He knew something had to be serious, true. The sweat and light rain made his clothes stick to him. He piled into the back of the black van. His soggy socks splashed water on the vehicle’s floor mats.

“Can anyone say what the hell is going on?”

“Sir, we’ve been advised not to let you know exactly what has happened, only that something has happened.” Beckman looked bewildered and composed at the same time somehow. He felt weighed down, not by his wet clothes but by the sheer ill knowledge of the situation. He wanted to know everything. He was the go-to guy of the Goshen Administration. He knew it couldn’t have been anything outside of the Presidential Skyscraper. It would have alerted the brain chip in his head. Rather, he just looked at the beefy security personnel in black, their Thoughtguns in their holsters.

“Look, it’s another twenty minutes to the Skyscraper. Why can’t anyone tell me what’s going on right now?” Beckman pleaded. Silence. The occasional splash of water and the windshield wipers answered Beckman. When they finally arrived at the Ultimate Leader Office, Beckman had been ushered into the room and two of the security staff stood outside like sentries to a fortress.

When Beckman got closer, he noticed that President Goshen had been laying straight on his back. He was alive and alert, for the most part. A physician addressed Goshen’s sick heart. 

“We can’t let this go to the press until you know exactly what happened,” Goshen said.

“Okay, sir. What the hell happened? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Just a little myocardial infarction.”

“I can get changed and fix all of this.” 

“Sure you can. You just have to let these docs know I feel fine no matter what they say, goddamnit.” The physician looked up at Beckman. He flashed a sly grin, indicating that Goshen would be fine. The advances in medicine up to this point had allowed for the tools of the operating room to be transported in just a digital kit that could detect and decide what happened to the patient in real time and heal them without invasive surgery. With the use of a mini cyclotron, all of this could be done with exactness. 

“You let this country-state know what happened to me. The people deserve to know what their president encountered. What if there’s a father out there, single parent household, who has the same heart condition as I have just learned I possess. He’ll be looking into this treatment, and depending on his wealth status, he’ll be able to afford something like this.”

“Yes, of course.” Beckman received the words and decided to digest them whole.

“Imagine the young girl who wants to be a ballerina and has a heart ailment. Just imagine what this would do for her world. Again, health care is not free.” He pointed to the physicians. “These people have to be paid. And it’s not just that, they have to be recognized as the life-giving forces that sustain and promote our lives.”

“I know. It’s what got me elected again. The money that flows to the poorest people could afford this treatment.”

“I pulled you from your morning run to be here, beside me. Covey’s coming over, too. I have to notify him first.”

A knock at the door announced the presence of Dr. Covey Strong.

The two men shot glances at the at once foreboding and welcome presence of the doctor. A gray sportcoat, tan trousers and a black and red trilby adorned his body.

“I’ll be…you son of a bitch. I was going to call you. How’d you….” 

“I know.” His words seemed like an email shot off into the electric ether, irretrievable and precise.  “I got an alert on my phone. Didn’t you?” He turned to Beckman who was still soaked with rain and sweat. “I guess not.”

“An alert? Nobody knows about this. I had to get a team to sweep him up from his morning run. No one knows about this.”

“Check again, Glenn.” He looked at his brain chip and decided that he would need better security in the future.

“I didn’t want this out until Hayden could gather the rest of the staff and have them ease the story out there like a boat pushed into the sea. Was it you, Dr. Merriweather? What is it you, Dr. Lee?”

The physicians looked at each other in sheer confusion.

“Sir, we just wanted to ensure that you were better. We had no time to address your condition and––”

“Alright, alright. So it wasn’t you two. That security team knows something. Anyway, it’s out there. All we need to do now is address the country-state and let the citizens know I’m fine. Hayden?”

“I want you to get dressed and report back to this office in an hour’s time. You think you can handle that?”

“Covey…Covey, I need you to get these other people with similar prefixes to yours out of this area so that we can talk.”

Dr. Strong shook hands with the physicians and ushered them out of the office. He closed the door. Just he and the president remained.

“They’re going to have to get Clara on this matter, I’m sure she knows now as well.”

“Vice President Horn will have her hands full, but I know she’ll be able to hack it.”

The two men sat adjacent to each other. Goshen relaxed with one arm on the couch in the spacious office. He lay slightly on his back in a white t-shirt and turned to Dr. Strong. 

“This whole business of keeping things quiet until the right moment has been gone for years.” He scoffed. “I should’ve just realized that this was––”

The door burst open. First Lady Anne Goshen stepped in with her twenty-year-old daughter Esther by her side. Anne looked paler and her blonde hair looked in place. She donned a white suit. Esther wore a blue blouse and jumpers. She turned to her husband. “You son of a bitch…hi, Covey.”

“Hey, Uncle Covey,” Esther refrained lowly.

“I don’t get a hug?” Goshen asked with wit in his tone.

“Do you need a hug? You’ve been in this office all night. You never came to bed. Then I had to look on the monitors and see ‘President Goshen treated for heart attack.’ How do you explain this, Glenn?”

“Daddy, it was just a heart attack, right?”

Dr. Strong then interjected. “Anne, I think we’ve all been duped but I don’t think the blame lies on the president.”

“I hear you talking, Covey. But we have to come to a conclusion no matter the circumstances. This man was supposed to come to bed last night. No, he had to work. I swear, if you do this….”

Dr. Strong interjected once more. “Again, Anne. I think we’re scolding the wrong person. Something leaked as things do and it got out. If Glenn was in the position to tell everyone, namely you both, first, I know he would have done so.”

Anne shot an icy look at Dr. Strong. It seemed like she lasered in on his soul. Then she looked back at Goshen. 

“Alright. Since you were incapacitated at that moment, I beg your pardon for being so abrupt and curt. I love you, Glenn.”

“I love you, Dad,” Esther admitted. She was tallish and bent down a bit. Her alabaster skin contrasted with her straight black hair as she kissed her father’s forehead.

“Look, ladies of my life, I had just made mental notes to address the people and tell them I’m in better shape than before the attack.” The women and Dr. Strong all sat in chairs.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. I can eat and drink what I want. That little contraption they used repaired my heart totally. I’m able to be even more of a president for the people of Smartystan.”

“The people of Smartystan? What about us?”

“Of course you, two. And Covey’s got the right to disparage me as you have already.”

Dr. Strong drew a sly grin around his mouth and looked at the two women. 

“They’re not out here to damage you, Glenn. They just feel hurt that you failed to mention your condition once you were clear.”

“I had just been cleared after the non-invasive surgery. The docs said I was okay. There is no God, but I swear to God that if I knew––”

“If you knew what, Dad?” Esther asked. Her cheeks looked like sugar lumps turning red and gave off a luster in the coming of the day. A tear streaked from one eye.

“Honey, I was just about to send a message out to you all. Everybody. And you would’ve been first. Whoever pushed this story out to the public will be finished in whatever career they may ever choose. I promise. I truly wanted to tell my family and friends first. Everyone in this room should have known only after I cleared it.”

Anne looked away. She then turned to her husband. “I’m not going to say you’re the reason for us not knowing about your condition. In this age, things fly all over the place so fast. I get it. I get it. You’re trying to conceal this whole thing, and that was admirable. It’s a shame we didn’t get a chance to have the knowledge first hand. I might have stopped them from working on you,” Anne pronounced and walked out of the door. Esther lingered behind her. The door closed.

“I don’t remember saying a word just now.”

“A pain in the ass sometimes, sure, but a mind reader? That you are not.”

“You saw them come in here and they thought I did something wrong. I’m the victim. I had a life-altering experience. I was in this office because it’s my role as the Ultimate Leader. Someone’s gotta run this place. That someone happens to be me.”

Dr. Strong looked down and then up again. “You’ve got a family that would not sacrifice but substitute their lives for you. Those beautiful women in your life would do anything. They’re just rocked and needed to convey a message of pain and anguish,” he declared.

“I know it looks out of place now. I know that. You’re President Glenn Goshen. You’ve been through tougher issues before. Hell, we’ve seen combat. At least we’re not riding around in IED mobiles anymore.”

Goshen smirked. It was a dry, hard smile that creased the side of his face.

“I think,” he started. “I think that I should’ve died at least three times in my life. Twice in Afghanistan and also when I was just here tonight. I should’ve been taken out of this life. I’m not supposed to be here.”

Dr. Strong looked solemn like a funeral director pumping embalming fluid into a corpse. “You’re alive. You’re here to ensure that millions of people will have the chance to lead better lives because your sole goal is to protect them.”

“Through all of this, it’s been like a battle just to show that we have wounds. It’s like we’re fighting only to display our scars.”

“But the scars don’t matter. The will to fight is always there to replace those injuries. That’s why we’re warriors.”

Goshen sat up some more. He looked at his friend. 

Chintan Jani

Smartystan

Heart

Drops of light drizzle fell on Hayden Beckman. He sloshed through the slightly wet streets, trying to beat his previous time. With every step, it produced a tiny spritz of vapor from his sneakers. He rounded a corner and then kept trekking at his steady pace. He glanced at his brain chip visor in his eye contact. It read “one hour, seventeen minutes.” He looked up and saw a car abruptly stop right in front of him. Jolted, he paused and raised a hand to the blinding sheen of the headlights.



Smartystan

Heart

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He Took it All Back

Smartystan

Heart

This is an Exclusive Story for supporters of .css-13w9qce-Text{display:inline-block;color:var(--text-accent);}Skyler Saunders

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Skyler Saunders

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He Took it All Back

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