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The walls seemed to race by him, blurring, even though he wasn’t really going all too fast. Anything in his peripheral didn’t matter, the linoleum tile, the bland walls. All he could hear was the racing of his heart, an ever-constant pounding in his chest, the threat of a heart attack at his fingertips.
A female voice called for him to slow down, to just wait for a second, to halt in his traps.
He stopped, skidding on the tile, his tie whipping in the air as he whirled around.
“Kamala, I can’t just stand here. ” His voice croaked from his throat, rough from the broken sobs he had let out after hearing he was shot.
Would he make it?
Was he in surgery right now?
Oh, God…
What if he was already dead?
The thought made his breath hitch, his throat close up.
Kamala reached out, placing her hands on his shoulders to steady him. It hadn’t taken much effort for her to catch up to him; she was a lot younger than he was, and far more nimble.
“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack,” she said softly. “What will this nation do if both presidential candidates are injured, or worse, killed? They’re already in disarray. You need to speak to them. Comfort them. That’s your job, Joe.”
He stared at her helplessly. “Kamala, I need to get to him. He…he and I need to play golf again together. We need to argue at separate stands in debates, and get our microphones muted. I can’t just–Kamala, I can’t just lose him like this.”
Her eyes filled with sympathy. “I know. But he would want you to take care of the people first, Joe.”
His gaze turned to the ground. “He doesn’t even know how I feel about him…I–I never got to tell him.”
“There’s still time.”
~~~~~
Joe Biden stood in front of a podium, shaky hands gripping the sides. A teleprompter stood in front of him, and he opened his mouth to speak.
“My fellow American people…”
He tried to read what it said. He really, really did.
This wasn’t one of his usual slip-ups during a speech. No…
Because this time, his vision was blurred with tears. So, instead, he improvised.
“We have all heard about the tragedy that occurred mere hours ago,” he began, throat closing in on itself, making his voice even more gravely than it already was. “We will all grieve together, and thank God that the wound was not fatal. Now is the time for all of us to come together and live through this. None of us are alone.”
Donald, alone, laying on a hospital bed…
“And we will never be alone again,” he finished, choked up.
The crowd erupted into cheers, whoops, and hollers, the attendees wearing both blue and red as a sign of support. Even though it was so close to election season, instead of being divided into two factions, they were one . Whole. And, most importantly, together .
Joe turned to leave the stage, but his eyes were blurry with tears and he didn’t notice that he was going the wrong way. Kamala came to lead him off, and he finally let the tears fall. They were silent, down his cheeks, glistening in the evening sun as he got into a black lamborghini to go visit Donald.
~~~~~
He stood in front of an unassuming door, heart pounding.
“You can do it, Joe,” Kamala murmured behind him.
His hand closed around the door handle, and he took a deep breath before pushing it open and stepping inside.
In front of him, Donald lay on a bed, head wrapped in bandages on one side, but other than that, he was awake and alert. A rush of relief flooded through Joe, and he sagged against the closed door.
Donald looked up as he entered the room, and gave him that half-quirked smile that melted Joe’s heart whenever he saw it.
“Come, come. Sit down.” Donald patted the bed beside him, and Joe took a shaky seat. “You were worried about me, weren’t you, Sleepy Joe?” he teased.
Joe leveled his eyes with him. “I was, Donald. I was. A presidential assassination attempt is no joke.”
Donald sighed and leaned back on the bed. “You’re no fun Joe, just no fun.
Silence fell over the pair, and they gazed into each other’s eyes.
Being rivals with anyone was hard, but being in love with your rival? That was even more difficult.
It was heart wrenching.
Fighting against the one you loved, in front of an entire nation…no, not just the nation. The entire world .
But here? Here, they were alone.
Just the two of them.
Just the…
…
A pressure lightly fell against Joe’s cheek.
“Wh-Donald?”
“Shh…” The back of Donald’s hand caressed Joe’s cheek, trailing down his neck and stopping at his chest.
Joe shivered under his touch, scooting closer. Donalds hot breath fell against his bare neck, giving him goosebumps.
Donald lifted an eyebrow, and humor tinged his words as he spoke. “Don’t tell me you’re enjoying this, Joe. Don’t be enjoying this now. Your heart is racing, definitely racing.”
“Maybe a little,” Joe confessed. “I mean, from golf I already know that you know how to swing a big stick.”
“Making sexual references now, are we, Joe? Didn’t take you as the type, no, didn’t take you as the type.”
“We all have our own little surprises, don’t we?” He leaned closer, his wrinkly forehead gently resting against Donald’s own.
“I suppose we do, we do,” Donald murmured, and closed the gap between them.
Despite their age, a spark raced through them, starting at their lips, racing through their veins, firing their neurons, and awakening them. It felt as though they had been asleep for so, so long, and now, they were finally waking up.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to do that, Joe,” Donald breathed, his hot breath mixing on Joe’s lips.
“I feel the same,” Joe confessed.
“For how long?”
“As long as I can remember.”
“Hmm.” Donald gently tilted Joe’s head to the side, exposing his vulnerable neck. “Must not have been very long, then,” he joked.
Joe’s breath hitched. “Oh, you know what I mean.”
“Mhm. I’m sure I do, I’m sure I do.” His mouth closed on the skin just below Joe’s jaw, and Joe gasped as he began to suck on it.
As the two began to rub and grind together, alone in the hospital room, a sense of hope flooded through the nation.
No one else knew what was going on in their little slice of paradise, but people across the nation, from California to Maine, began to believe that maybe, just maybe, happy endings exist.