The (White House) doctor is in.

• Author: Mariano, Connie
• Position: Literary Scene - Personal account

THE SECRET SERVICE calls it the "kill zone." To be in the presence of the president is to stand in the kill zone and sense the rarefied, exciting, and potentially deadly experience of being in close proximity to an assassin's most prized prey. For eight years, I lived and worked in the kill zone as part of my everyday job. When I first arrived at the White House, heating from the Secret Service that someone "unstable" or evil would want to hurt the president would cause me to take offense. Why would anyone want to hurt my patient? My naivete faded quickly with each threat made and each alert issued to his staff. I accepted that Pres. Bill Clinton's fate was to live a life of danger during his term of office. My fate, in turn, was to be ready to take care of him if he were wounded or injured. At the same time, I knew that my own safety was at constant risk.

Not everyone who spends time in the kill zone escapes unscathed. In 1981, Pres. Ronald Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, became a victim of the first of John Hinckley's bullets. I thought of Brady in March 1997 when Pres. Clinton was at Bethesda Naval Hospital recovering from surgery on a tom quadriceps tendon. "Doc Connie, we've got a problem." The shift agent leader had approached me the afternoon before the president was to be discharged from the hospital. "None of our vehicles will accommodate the President in a wheelchair."

"Don't you have anything in the Secret Service garage left over from the Roosevelt era?" I quipped sarcastically to the agent, who was surprised by my offhanded remark. I had been glued to the President's side for three straight days since he tore his hamstring walking down the steps of golfer Greg Norman's home in Jupiter, Fla. I was fired, unbathed, and weary-eyed, wearing my thick nerdish glasses. All civility abandoned, I was on the edge of near exhaustion and my sense of humor was strained. I caught myself and shook my head. "Sorry, let me start again. You're telling me we're going to have a problem driving the President from Bethesda back to the White House?" I spoke softly.

"Yes, ma'am," the agent responded, all business. "Can we carry him into the limousine?"

"No way," I said, quashing that suggestion as I recalled Clinton's indignity at being physically carried by his agents from the limousine to Air Force One in Florida- "He leaves Bethesda in a wheelchair, and when we arrive on the South Portico, he stops to chat with the press while seated in his...