Read The Gambit for Free Online

entered my mind like a strange foreign body would enter my blood. I wanted to rid myself of the thought.
    I couldn’t come to grasp with what happened last night. It played from my memory like a blur—the screams, the smoke, and the terror in people’s faces. The final debate before the election and now this happened. Who could have done such a thing? How did pipe bombs get past security?
    Questions manifested so rapidly it was almost dizzying. I inhaled deeply to calm myself down. I heard two quick raps on the door.
    “Mr. Marina, are you ready?” asked the doctor.
    “Yes.”
    “Please, follow me.”
    Sore and stiff, I trailed him down the corridor. His white gown flowed behind his legs like a cape.
    I heard the ding from the elevator as the doctor pressed the button. When the doors opened, I stepped in behind him. Cole was on the fourth floor. The smooth hum, which I have heard so many times using the elevator at my apartment, didn’t make me feel relaxed as it always did. This humming noise made me sick, as if behind the elevator doors there would be something waiting for me, something terrifying, when they opened. Cole Pavich is in critical condition …
    I pushed air out of my nose and shook my head in an attempt to forget those words.
    When the doors opened I followed the doctor. Within fifty feet, he stopped and turned to face a room on the left.
    The top half of the wall was made of glass and allowed me to see inside. My heart fluttered, as I saw Cole with more tubing, gauze, and monitors than any person should have at one time. I clutched my mouth as I saw him and winced in pain as my forehead scrunched, fully-flexed. The only things that were recognizable above the disarray of equipment were his gray hair and his face. Doctors and surgeons surrounded him.
    I imagined if he was awake, he would swat away at all of these prodding doctors and immediately demand his wife to bring him a drink.
    His wife… “Doc, where is his wife Carla?”
    “She is in a nearby room out of surgery. If everything remains stable, she will be removed from the ICU before noon.”
    I felt a slight wave of relief as he said that. If Cole woke up to his wife dead, I couldn’t imagine how he would continue on. He had been with her since his college years.
    “Mr. Marina,” the doctor began hesitantly. “I know how much you don’t want to hear this, but…don’t get too attached to the idea that Mr. Pavich will make it through. He has lost a lot of blood and received lacerations to major arteries. Overnight, while you were still unconscious, he was undergoing cardiovascular surgery. We were surprised he made it this far. It didn’t help that he had alcohol in his blood, which thinned it.”
    “I’m not surprised. The man loves to drink,” I joked, trying to swallow the information I was just given. “He will make it through, I know it.”
    I heard a pager go off. The doctor looked down at his waistband.
    “Well, I must go. I am needed on another floor. Mr. Marina, I’m not saying he won’t pull through. I’m just saying you need to say a prayer…and also come to terms that this may be the last time you see him.”
    He patted me on the back and disappeared.
    I felt like a small piece of me had been torn away as he said that.
    That reality he spoke of, one in which Cole Pavich, the co-founder, my mentor, and most importantly my friend—didn’t exist—was something I couldn’t handle. A reality I couldn’t face. If he died, that would leave me as the only founder of the Convergence Party left. We were a team. We both created the party. Neither one of us took the title as the creator. We were the two founders.
    I neared the glass, and I put my hand up to it. I sniffled and tried my hardest to restrain tears from coming out, but regardless they became glassy. In that moment, I sent all the positive energy and thoughts within me through the glass to him.
    Hang in there Cole . We both have to watch Goodman win. You still owe