For years after, everyone remembered where they had been when they heard the chilling news bulletin that the President of the United States had been shot.
Republican Congressman Gila Gingold was addressing the House of Representatives.
"Once again the big-spending, big-government side of our government has concocted a so-called healthcare reform package. I can tell you as House minority whip that I will do everything in my power to see that this bill goes down in defeat, just like all the other harebrained attempts to governmental- medical care in this country the Democrat in the White House has tried to jam through Congress."
A House page slipped him a note. Gila Gingold glanced at it, and his emerald green eyes went wide in his flushed face. "I-I have just had word that the President has been shot."
A hush fell over Congress.
Gila Gingold gathered his thoughts and wondered if he should call for a moment of prayer or finish what he'd started. Sensing a golden opportunity to do both, he decided to improvise.
"Even as we speak, our fallen President is undoubtedly being tended to by the finest private physicians available. Were universal health care to become law, he, like all Americans, would have to take potluck. We can't afford potluck medicine in America. So I ask you to join me in saying a resounding no to this latest travesty even as we bow our heads in prayer for the fallen author of said travesty."
IN NEW YORK CITY, in the studios of the Tell the Truth radio network, broadcaster Thrush Limburger was taking calls.
"Go ahead, caller. You're on the air."
"Roger, Thrush."
"And Roger right back to you. What's on your mind?"
"What do you think of this latest health-care proposal?"
"It's a naked grab for control of a multibilliondollar health-care industry, perpetrated by the unthinking but temporary occupants of the White House."
"They keep coming up with these bills, Thrush. Every time one gets shut down, they pop up with another. Is there anything we can do to stop it?"
"Well," Thrush said, and chuckled, "we can pray for divine intervention. Maybe God will vote this President out of office a year early, if you catch my drift."
A frantic waving hand from the control room caught Thrush Limburger's eye. His assistant, Cody Custer, had slapped a big sheet of paper against the glass. The Magic Markered words froze Thrush Limburger in midguffaw: President Shot in Boston.
"Ahem," Thrush said, rustling a commercial script between his thick fingers. "Of course, I don't actually mean that. I may be on the other side of the fence, politically speaking, from this President, but we both want the same thing. A better world."
Thrush tapped a chime and said, "Now for a word about my favorite beverage, Tipple."
PEPSIE DOBBINS, Washington correspondent of American Networking Conglomerate News, was at her desk working the phones when an aide popped his head into her cubicle and said, "The President's been shot!"
" What!"
"He stepped out of his limo, and a sniper took the top of his head off."
Pepsie Dobbins clutched the edge of her desk, slim fingers going white at the knuckles. Her face froze. Her eyes teared. She bowed her expertly coiffed shag.
"Did-did we get film?" she choked out.
"Yes. The feed's coming in now."
Pepsie lowered her head, eyes squeezing tears of relief that coursed down her makeup-powdered cheeks.
"Thank God," she sobbed.
With an effort she came out of her chair and followed the lemminglike streams of staff heading for the monitor room.
"Satellite feed's coming in now," a technician said, hoarse voiced.
All eyes went to a monitor, one of many banks of monitors in the monitor room. Pepsie's eyes raced along the grid, pausing at the one that monitored CNN, which scooped them with annoying frequency.
"Hurry, hurry," she urged. "CNN doesn't have film yet."
The feed came in.
The angle, everyone saw, was not straight on. The ANC cameraman had been blocked by the broad backs of the Secret Service protective ring. The camera jumped around several times.
Pepsie wrung her hands. "Come on. Come on. Steady it. Steady it, please."
As if in response, the camera caught the opening of the limo door emblazoned with the Presidential seal.
"Here it comes," the technician warned. "Prepare yourselves. It could be gruesome."
"Be gruesome," Pepsie whispered prayerfully. "Please, oh please, be gruesome."
The familiar steely haircut ducked up from the dark interior of the limo back, one hand fumbling for the middle button of the dark suit. Abruptly the top of the victim's head came apart.
"This is better than the Zapruder film," Pepsie screamed. "We've got to go on. We've got to go on right now!"
"Let go. Damn it, let go," the news director was saying, trying to disentangle Pepsie's claws from his collar. "I make the decisions here."
"CNN hasn't broken in yet..." the technician reported.
"No cut-ins from the other networks," an intern called.
Pepsie pleaded, "Greg, you've got to go on the air with this. Let me do it, please."
"This is the anchor's job."
"He's not here. I am. Please, please." She was bouncing on her heels now, pulling the news director by his tie as if trying to ring a church bell.
"It's news. We gotta go with something."
"All right. Do it from your desk. We'll superimpose a newsroom background over it."
"Great. Great. You won't regret this," Pepsie Dobbins said, running in her stockinged feet for her desk.
Flinging herself behind her desk, she primped her short sassy shag as she stood up straight. Her back was to a blue screen that the camera couldn't read. A computer-generated newsroom would be laid in the background. Only the audience would see it. No one would suspect it didn't exist.
The red light came on. The news director threw her the signal, and Pepsie Dobbins moistened her red lips as the announcer intoned, "This is an ANC special report."