DAY 1

It doesn’t matter who the patient is; hospital routine is hospital routine. The day after surgery the three women were kept sedated to reduce the pain and give their bodies time to heal. The president spent much of the day in the White House taking care of business, he checked in with the nurse several times. He dropped in during the evening but none of them were awake.

The press release from the White House was handed to the reporters with no explanation and responses of “no comment” to all questions. One reporter read the release and asked, “When will we learn more.” The response was, “No comment.”

The release read, “The president’s family was wounded by gunfire in the hotel room last night. All three sustained wounds that were not life threatening. They were stabilized and moved to Walter Reed for treatment. They are now there recovering.”

In the information vacuum caused by the absence of real meat in the release left the press with no alternative. They engaged in rampant speculation. Scraps of information, unrelated events and misinformation were pieced together to create stories that fed on other stories that were built on the lack of facts. The press checked video of the doctor’s parking lot and from a camera that showed the paging monitor. They checked off doctors present. Six orthopedic surgeons were found to have arrived shortly after the call about the president’s family so the speculation was that their injuries indicated the presence of that specialty. Then someone noticed that the paging showed paging of several neurosurgeons, two gastric surgeons, and ENT and two OB GYN’s to the ER at the same time. The press actually came up with possible injuries based on this. At least one of the women, possibly two had head injuries. At least two had belly wounds and at least two involved reproductive organs. At least one had to have a throat wound. All three had some form of injury to bone structures. The next speculation was the exact placement of wounds and the press even had graphics showing the likely places of the wounds. The speculation even got to the point of one anchor asking the doctor if there was a possibility that the wounds could have rendered on or both of the girls unable to bear children. The question was answered, “It is possible.” This was in fact possible but there was nothing to support an abdominal wound for any of the woman other than the doctors called to the ER. Had they checked other admissions they would have learned that two women were brought in about a half hour before the president’s family with multiple abdominal gunshot wounds. Unfortunately the way the press handled this was to fill a vacuum. They stated it as likely, not possible as the doctor indicated.