Even as it was happening, I understood that Cheri and I were privileged to have this experience, and I had the feeling of being both an insider and an outsider simultaneously. I mean, my association with the senator was the only reason we were there, rubbing elbows with powerful political figures by day and partying with Darius Rucker and the rest of the band at night. This thought made me feel grateful, but also very dependent. I knew that all of it was contingent on my continuing to do a good job for both Senator Edwards and his family.

My success at Pinehurst that weekend was confirmed by the pledges of support that were offered by the wealthy supporters who attended, their enthusiasm for the senator’s candidacy, and their willingness to commit to serving as advisers and fund-​raisers as we moved forward. I also got credit from the senator for making sure that every request made by a guest was promptly satisfied, whether it involved a room upgrade, a tee time, or something that required more discreet attention. At one big event the senator held during this period, I was summoned by one of the more powerful men in the room, who happened to be there with his wife. He asked me to come to his table partway through the meal and call him to the telephone. There would be no call, he explained, but he wanted me to act as if something urgent had come up.

When the time came, I performed as requested, bustling over to the man’s table and whispering in his ear. He walked out of the room with me and explained that he was going to go back to the table and tell his wife that an emergency had arisen with one of his clients. She would stay for the rest of the weekend, he added. I would take him to the airport.

The ruse went off without a hitch. I brought my car around and whisked the big dog off to the nearby airport, which was about five miles from the hotel. Once we got there I took him out to his private jet, which was parked on the tarmac. Three young women, each of them wearing a great deal of makeup and very little fabric, waited for him in the plane.

“We’re goin’ someplace fun,” he said, adding, “Wanna come?”

I said, “No thanks,” and wished him a good trip. I knew there was nothing to be gained-by me, the senator, or anyone else-by my uttering a word about what I had seen. In fact, I decided that it would be best if I put it out of my mind completely. I got some help with this task as soon as our life took another dramatic turn.

In the three days we had been away, Gracie had given Cheri’s mother constant worries. Despite reassurance from doctors who said her condition was not serious, she had been unable to feed well and her breathing was still labored. If anything, the high-​pitched wheezing sound she made as she struggled for air was louder and more constant, and listening to it just about broke your heart. Cheri contacted a specialist she knew from work, who agreed to review the imaging done the previous week. He quickly found something the others had missed.

It turned out that a fairly large artery-it comes directly from the heart and supplies blood to the head as well as the right shoulder and arm-had developed in the wrong place and was pressing on her trachea. Between the direct pressure and the irritation of the nerves and tissues in her throat, the innominate artery was making it very difficult for her to swallow and breathe. And based on its position, this problem wasn’t going to go away on its own. It was serious and life-​threatening. However, we were told that surgery could correct the problem and help Gracie grow and develop normally. Like every parent faced with this kind of news, we were happy to have the medical mystery resolved but terrified by the idea of authorizing major surgery on our one-​month-​old daughter. But we had no choice, so on October 4 they took Gracie into the operating room and made the repair. It was by far the hardest day of my life.

As a nurse who had worked in every corner of a hospital, including the pediatric intensive care unit, Cheri knew what to expect during Gracie’s recovery. As a mother, she was fiercely protective, which meant we were bound for a confrontation when we were allowed into the PICU and found alarms going off. Despite our daughter screaming out in pain, her chest sutures bulging, and her drain hanging out, no nurse was coming to help her. We found the one assigned to Gracie gabbing about movies with other nurses on her shift, and she said, “Oh yeah, I’ll get some pain medicine and be right there.” Twelve minutes later-yes, we counted them-she finally arrived, and as she helped Gracie settle down, she agreed that, yes, our daughter seemed to be in some distress.

The state of our health care system is a topic for another book, so it’s enough to say here that I was grateful to be married to a professional who could watch over Gracie’s recovery. This was especially true when she developed postoperative complications that the staff didn’t want to recognize. While everyone else was marveling at the weight Gracie gained, Cheri kept asking why her heart and respiratory rates were climbing, why she hadn’t passed any urine, and why she looked so puff y. They brushed her off as a nervous mother-“Oh, Mrs. Young, little Gracie is fine”-until her cardiologist and surgeon finally discovered the next day that fluid was collecting around both of Gracie’s lungs. (This was the weight she was gaining.) They took Gracie to the ICU to drain some of this fluid and then sent someone from the “Risk Management Office” to calm as down. We endured scores of incidents like this that only a trained nurse like Cheri would recognize as incompetence. But after the surgery, we were thinking only about our daughter and making sure she would survive the hospital and come home to heal. (Just a few months later, the entire nation would focus on the doctor and unit that made so many critical mistakes with Gracie. A young woman named Jésica Santillán, an illegal immigrant from Mexic Santo, died because our doctor mistakenly gave her a heart and lung transplant from a donor with an incompatible blood type.)

Although we couldn’t know it at the time, the operation marked the end of the easygoing season that was the summer of 2002. Gracie’s recovery would be slow, as she still struggled to eat and breathe and seemed to catch a dozen colds in the span of three months. Cheri would have to nurse her along and care for Brody, with much less help from me because the senator’s push for the White House had become more intense and he had decided the national headquarters in Raleigh would open on January 1, 2003. The job of setting this up, which included finding space, furnishings, utilities, and more, was added to my ongoing duties as his North Carolina advance man, minder, and occasional proxy. I was so busy during this time-leaving early and coming home late-that a month passed before I realized that Cheri’s brother had moved in with us. Every step was exciting, from my filing the articles of incorporation to the first campaign e-​mail.

Campaigns on all levels are stressful, but presidential campaigns, which attract the most competitive players, can be merciless. Most workers receive little or no pay, and most have little connection to the candidate other than seeing him or her on television. You work fourteen-​hour days, seven days a week, and some people actually bring pillows and blankets and sleep under their desks. The first shift starts at four A.M. as the grunts begin searching the Internet for articles about the candidate and creating digests that run to a hundred pages or more. They will spend the whole day gleaning and or ganizing and distributing important items. The office can start to resemble a frat house, and if you don’t have protesters outside, you’re doing something wrong. E-​mails and phone messages came in at a rate of ten or twenty at a time. And you have to answer them all, because everything is an emergency and everything has to be done perfectly. During the few hours I slept each night, I could feel the vibrations of my cell phones in my dreams.