The butterfly-light touch of your ex-wife�s lips to the wedding band she slid on your finger over a decade before wakes you from your soap-musings. You watch her closely and note the signs that show how time has changed her. Her hair has darkened, less vibrant than it was when she was in her twenties, but you decide that the darker shade of red matches her passion better, slow burning and often surprising, but always coming a place so pure and true that you can�t fight it. There are tiny lines around her eyes that weren�t there when you met, but you can understand what put them there�congressional races, not to mention life with you, not making for the most stress-free life. Her shoulders slump a little, though her suits hide it well, and you�re sure that it is life�s disappointments that have prompted the change in her posture.
She is still so heartachingly beautiful that you are afraid to look directly at her, as if she is the sun and while staring at her is something you long to do you know it will only hurt you in the end.
Without a word Andie pulls you with her down the hall, the route circuitous enough that you avoid the White House staffers because you both want some time away from all of them, and she glances a few times at the Secret Service agent that follows you, though she knows enough to know that it�s protocol for the Senior Staff�Chief of Staff especially, though the rest of you warrant an agent or two as well�to have Secret Service protection during times of crisis. That�s the actual wording in the briefing you got when you took the job. �Times of crisis�. An intentionally vague statement that someone more than twenty presidencies ago wrote down and gave to whomever their Ron Butterfield was and now, today, you have someone in a black suit with an earwig and a wrist mic and a Sig Sauer strapped to his hip following you and your ex wife as you move through the hallways of George Washington University Hospital. Andie was with you when you read your briefing package and you caught her reading it herself a few nights after you had memorized it, and when you asked she had said that she wanted to know what she would be able to do if something happened to the President. Spouses aren�t listed as protected individuals during the �times of crisis�, she noted with a frown, and neither are children, which you both agreed didn�t make sense because no one would be able to work effectively while worrying that their husband or wife or children had been caught in the middle of whatever crisis was coming down around the White House.
�Wait out here, please,� Andie says firmly, a tone in her voice you know all too well, and it takes you a full minute to realize that she�s talking to the agent following you.
�Ma�am, that�s against protocol,� the agent replies, his voice shaking slightly with regret and something else that you can�t pin down and don�t care to spend energy trying.
�I know,� Andie said with a sigh. You wish that she didn�t know that, that you didn�t know that, and that none of you had to actually experience that, but there are so many things that you are wishing and hoping and praying for that you have lost count and you don�t want to further confuse whatever high atop the thing that is listening with requests as stupid and trivial as that when there are honest-to-god life or death situations going on all around you.