Charles Wheelan - The Rationing

“I spent seventeen years working with a city council,” the Acting Secretary said. “The people in this room, they’re just like the city council. Some are smarter. Some are meaner. They’re all better dressed. But at the end of the day, politics is politics.”

“I can make things very hard for you,” the Speaker said.

“Really?” the Acting Secretary replied. His tone suggested he was unsurprised by the threat but curious what form it would take.

“You may be an executive branch appointment, but don’t think for a second that I couldn’t make your job go away.”

“Like today?”

“Like that,” the Speaker said, snapping her fingers to emphasize the point.

The Acting Secretary exhaled audibly, acknowledging the threat, and then took his cell phone out of the breast pocket of his jacket. He pushed a single button, presumably speed dial, and waited for an answer. The Speaker looked on, wary and confused. The volume on the Acting Secretary’s phone was loud, perhaps on purpose, and I could here the answer: “Pro shop, Dustin speaking.”

“Hey, Dustin, it’s Charles Mingo here. How do things look this afternoon after three?”

“I’ve got three-ten, three-twenty, or three-fifty?” Dustin replied.

“Fantastic,” the Acting Secretary said. “Will you hold three-ten for me and put my clubs on a cart? Looks like I’m going to get fired, in which case I really want to take advantage of this beautiful spring day.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Mingo.”

The Acting Secretary hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. “Now all my bases are covered,” he said jauntily to the Speaker.

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she challenged.

“Oh, I do. I most certainly do.”

MAYBE I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THE ROOM WHO DID NOT know what had happened to the Strategist’s brother. During the break, after the Acting Secretary arranged for his tee time, I did a quick Internet search; the details were easy to find. The Strategist’s older brother had spent his career in Army intelligence, doing two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. During the Afghanistan tour, he had been riding in an armored vehicle that drove over an improvised explosive device. Everyone in the vehicle survived. The injuries were not life-threatening, but the Strategist’s brother had taken a serious blow to the head. After he returned to the States, he began to suffer crippling headaches, mood swings, depression. There was a lot of finger-pointing after the fact, but the gist of the story is that he never got the treatment he needed—a sadly typical story, as the Strategist would say. I could not tell from my quick reading whether his brother fell through the bureaucratic cracks, or if there simply were not enough resources to provide the support he needed. (I suppose the Strategist would argue that it is a false distinction: if you put enough resources against a problem, there will be fewer cracks.) In any event, it ended badly. His brother was shuffled through various facilities, eventually to a group home in New Jersey where no one was responsible for monitoring his daily meds. On a particularly cold night in February, he walked out the front door and disappeared. Three days later, the police found him frozen to death on a park bench.

The Acting Secretary resumed his presentation, the essence being that any temporary shortage of Dormigen should be managed by lottery. “We are talking about a couple of days here, at most,” he reminded us. At that moment, the door to the Cabinet Room opened and the President’s scheduler stepped demurely into the room. She signaled to get the Chief of Staff’s attention, but it was the President who responded. “What?” he said impatiently.

“Prime Minister Abouali’s people want to know if this is still a good time for his impromptu visit,” the scheduler explained.

“Oh, Christ,” the President said. At the same time, the Chief of Staff looked quickly at her watch; an expression of panic swept across her face. The President continued, “It’s hard to imagine a worse time, frankly.”

The National Security Adviser said, “Sir, given the Saudi situation, we need to give Abouali some face time. It’s important to his credibility in the region. He just needs to be able to tell his people that he met with the President of the United States—”

“Five minutes in the Oval Office,” the President agreed. “That’s it.”

“That will work just fine,” the National Security Adviser assured him.

“Okay, five minutes, everybody, while I try to make the Palestinians feel better about themselves,” the President announced.

As the President and the National Security Adviser walked out of the room, the Chief of Staff motioned subtly to the President’s scheduler. The two of them walked to a corner of the Cabinet Room. “Can you call Dan and tell him that I won’t be able to make the lacrosse banquet?” the Chief of Staff asked the scheduler.

“Of course.”

“Please order a bouquet of balloons for Maddie—you know, the big helium ones,” the Chief of Staff instructed. The scheduler made a note to herself on her phone and the Chief of Staff continued. “And get one balloon for each of the five seniors. There is a list with their names on my desk.”

“Where is the banquet?” the scheduler asked.

“Dan can give you all that information.”

“Got it,” the scheduler said officiously. “Anything else?”

“Can you find me a new family?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m kidding,” the Chief of Staff said with more sadness than humor. “Thank you for this. Make sure it doesn’t get charged to the White House. Dan can give you a credit card number.”

“Of course.”

WHEN THE PRESIDENT RETURNED TO THE CABINET ROOM, he made an offhand comment about the political incompetence of the Palestinians, and then, for the third time, the Acting Secretary of HHS gave a brief summary of his plan to allocate Dormigen by lottery should a shortage arise. “Hundreds of thousands of people will be affected,” the Senate Majority Leader said.

“Yes. Some will get Dormigen, some won’t,” the Acting Secretary explained. “But if you do it by lottery, or some other random mechanism, at least it will be fair and transparent.”

“It’s so callous,” the House Speaker said.

The President interjected impatiently, “There’s not really a kindhearted solution here. If we don’t have enough Dormigen, we don’t have enough Dormigen. That problem is not going away.”

“But some people are sicker than others,” the Chief of Staff said, though she made it sound like a question.

“Yes,” the Acting Secretary answered. “I think it would be up to the medical establishment to screen out anyone who doesn’t really need Dormigen.”

“Or those who are too sick to benefit from it,” the Strategist added.

“That’s right,” the Acting Secretary agreed.

“Every citizen is eligible?” the House Speaker asked.

The Acting Secretary answered, “That’s for the people in this room to decide. I would propose that all citizens be included, maybe everyone with a Social Security number.”

“Just a little background here,” the Secretary of Defense interjected. “We have two million prisoners in this country. With the exception of a small number of illegal immigrants serving sentences for violent crimes before they are deported, every one of those prisoners has a Social Security number.”

“Of course,” the Acting Secretary said. “Every American citizen has a Social Security number, as do all permanent residents, temporary workers, and so on.”

“So you’re proposing that all of these folks are eligible for your Megaball drawing?” the Defense Secretary asked.