The One Who Shouldn't Be Alive

Chapter Two: Of Arrivals and Invitations

I rubbed my arms which were cold despite the warmth inside the Cadillac. I stared out the window at the passing lights of D.C., dimmed by the dark federal tint. It had been two days since the President had visited me in my home, and now I sat in one of the vehicles ordinarily reserved for individuals of much greater importance. The Secret Service had come to retrieve me at night under speculation that de Mohrenschildt was more likely to make an attempt on my life while the neighborhood slept.

I had spent the previous afternoon with a federal investigator detailing every insignificant habit and routine I followed in my home and life in 1964, but I only understood why he had asked me these questions when they had arrived to escort me to the White House. In my stead they were placing a woman who looked shockingly similar to me and who had been trained to act as I did. She was a diversion, a substitute should de Mohrenschildt seek the retribution John Kennedy and his administration suspected he would. I was made to appear as though I still lived in the little house so that he would not know I had been moved until it was too late.

The driver of the car peered back at me in the rear view mirror every now and then, but I ignored him. The Secret Service man who sat in the passenger seat scanned the passing scenery in a methodical fashion, and my eyes fell to the gun holstered at his hip. My stomach knotted. Was I really going to stay at the White House?

A flash of panic suddenly overcame me and I pressed my palm to my chest to feel my racing heart. What if Kennedy had been lying? What if this had been a ploy to move me willingly to a federal prison on suspicion of conspiracy to assassinate the President? What if these were't actually agents of the United States, but agents of de Mohrenschildt himself? I heard blood pound in my ears, felt my breathing increase in frequency but decrease in effectiveness, felt my hands begin to quake and goosebumps rise on my flesh. An immediate headache struck me, and I realized I was having an attack the likes of which I'd not had in several years. And, unfortunately, as panic disorder wouldn't be recognized as a medical condition until the 1980s, I didn't have any drugs to help out.

I was dimly aware of the car slipping through several gates, and of the car doors opening a few minutes later. The Secret Service man helped me out of the Cadillac and we were joined by several other men with guns in the seconds that followed. In spite of the fact that I could see and distinguish the famous White House doors, my mental state was too far gone to return without some serious psychiatric expertise—or a serious crash. In my head, the White House wasn't the White House. It was a prison. It was the home of de Mohrenschildt. These men around me didn't serve me, they served my enemies. In my head, Kennedy's name swirled. Where was Kennedy? If I could only see Kennedy...then I would know I was safe. Kennedy could be trusted, couldn't he? I had saved his life, after all.

The men led me through the doors and I was only partially aware of the one whom had helped me from the car as he spoke to me and tried to quell an attack which it was doubtful he understood. To them I must have looked crazy. I began to see colors flashing in my vision as the bright lights of the entry hall flared above me, and I looked down the hallway just in time to see the President round a corner. There was a smile on his face mirrored by the two young children that flanked him. As his eyes met mine from fifty feet away, that smile vanished. I was conscious only long enough to see him take one large, hurried step in my direction before the world went black and I collapsed to the White House floor at the same time the great doors clunked shut behind me.

When I opened my eyes, the only light in the room came from a dim, flickering candle at the side of the bed on which I lay. My head rolled to the side and I glanced at the flip-board-style, non-illuminated clock beside the candle. In the ambience, I saw it was just after 9pm.

I sat up, one of my hands pressing to my forehead and I winced. My panic attacks always left me with a tremendous migraine, but my pills for those were back in 2016 as well. I groaned, and then the events of my entrance to the White House came flooding back to me.