Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love Read online

  Still relying on the small go-bag of clothes I left Atlanta with, I found the closest Brooks Brothers and did a thirty-minute power shop to buy clothes to hold me over. There was so much going on in Washington I never even had time to return to Atlanta to get my things. Fox was nice enough to hire movers to go to my apartment, gather up my stuff, load it all on a truck, and bring it to me in Washington. My longtime friend Dave Tafuri found me a small apartment on Calvert Street in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of the city. Dave lived on the third floor of the same building, while my place was a small one-bedroom unit on the first floor.

  When my boxes from Atlanta finally arrived, the movers piled them in the center of the living room of the small place on Calvert Street I was now calling home. One weekend, when I had a few hours to catch my breath, I started to unpack the boxes. Two boxes in I discovered the movers had neatly wrapped all my dishes. Very nice of them. The only problem: the dishes were all caked with food, just the way I’d left them in my sink when I left Atlanta a month earlier.

  Unwrapping those dishes was like working at an archaeological dig at Pompeii. I had this bizarre vision of a bespectacled archaeologist clutching his dusting brush in one hand and magnifying glass in the other as he performed a squinty-eyed examination and documented in his journal all the ridges and gradations of a month-old half-eaten pizza combo. These movers were really conscientious about their work. Each dirty fork, grimy plate, and cruddy cup was individually wrapped in tissue paper like a Christmas gift from Tiffany.

  After a few more exciting archaeological finds, I started to break into a cold sweat. I still had not come across the one item I absolutely needed for survival. Finally, as I opened up the last box, I let out a giant exhale. My Titleist AP2 irons and TaylorMade Tour Burner woods had successfully made the trip north. I now had everything I needed to survive not only in D.C. but also on the seventeenth fairway at Congressional Country Club—like I would ever get a chance to play there!

  In between going to the Pentagon every day and making trips to Afghanistan, I tried my best to piece together as much of a social life as I could during my first year in Washington. My social life was a puzzle palace unto itself, with several friends trying their best to provide some of the missing pieces.

  Dave Tafuri, an associate at a big D.C. law firm, knew the crazy hours I was working at the Pentagon and how much I was traveling overseas. Dave worked long hours, too, but he never seemed to have a problem filling his evenings with one spectacular date after another. Feeling a bit merciful toward me, he took it upon himself to introduce me to some young ladies who wouldn’t be thrown by my work and travel schedule. But for all his good intentions, Dave was striking out. After a series of particularly painful blind dates, I told Dave, “No more.” And I meant it. I think I would have actually volunteered for extra trips into the war zone to avoid hearing one more of Dave’s “Dude, she’s hot. It’ll be fun!”

  Before long, matchmaker Dave had one more special project up his sleeve. Just to get him off my back, I said yes to one final blind date he and the girl he was dating at the time, Kathryn Minor, decided would be a perfect match for me. I’d heard that “perfect match” language before, so it was with some reluctance that I went along with their plan. I agreed to go with Dave, Kathryn, and “this girl from Chicago” to a Rolling Stones concert at FedEx Field in the Maryland suburbs just outside D.C. I knew the Stones would have it cranked all the way up to eleven, so if this turned out to be like any of Dave’s other picks of the week, at least Keith Richards’s guitar licks would be loud enough to fill those torturous blind-date moments of silence.

  On the night of October 4, 2002, we decided to meet at a place called the Firefly in D.C. before we drove together to the concert in Dave’s Defender. Dave and I pulled up a few minutes late and walked into the Firefly to scan the crowd. Sitting at a table in the corner, I saw Kathryn and a very attractive brunette—the girl from Chicago, Amy Hills. I knew it didn’t guarantee we would have a fun night, but I could already see that Amy from Chicago was not only gorgeous but also had this incredible smile. More than a little relieved, I turned to matchmaker-in-chief Tafuri and said, “Way to go, Dave!”

  From the moment I walked into Firefly and sat down at her table, Amy and I started talking, laughing, and bantering. Amy is a very grounded Midwestern girl who went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas with Kathryn. She’d also spent time working in New York City, so nothing about Washington intimidated her—least of all me.

  The bantering and kibitzing continued through our ride to FedEx Field, into the stadium, finding our seats, during the concert, and didn’t stop till we parted company about 1:00 a.m. after we all got back to D.C. Amy had told her parents she was going to Washington for the weekend and would be meeting this guy who was on television. Her very wise and protective father replied, “Everybody in D.C. says they are on television.” We laughed about that and every other topic that came up over the weekend as we did some sightseeing and hit several restaurants and clubs around town.

  For me, it was a Hollywood romance whirlwind weekend, and I had the time of my life. Safe to say, I was totally smitten, completely head over heels for Amy within the first five minutes of talking to her. In fact, in my head the Checklist was completely marked up:

  Very attractive/hot—Check.

  Funny/blast to talk to—Check.

  Confident—Check.

  Interesting—Check.

  Puts me in my place when required—Check.

  Did I say hot already? Check. Check. Check.

  Despite my obvious interest in Amy and the great time we had together all weekend, I was having an extremely difficult time reading her interest level, if any, in me. The weekend came to an end, and on Sunday afternoon Kathryn and I drove Amy to Reagan National so she could catch her flight back home to Chicago where she worked for the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company. After a hug, a small kiss good-bye, and promises to stay in touch, I hopped back into the car. With no hesitation or pretense, I turned to Kathryn and said something I had never said to anyone or about anyone.

  “I am going to marry that girl.”

  Over the next several weeks, Amy and I spent a lot of time on the phone together. I even made a few surprise trips to see her in Chicago. Eventually, I was able to convince Amy to come to D.C. to visit me. So a few weeks later, after returning from yet another trip to Afghanistan, I prepared for a historic trip of another kind—Amy Hills to Washington. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t have the Rolling Stones as my backup band this time around. But after all those phone conversations, Amy knew she had a complete puppy dog on her hands who was madly in love with her.

  There were still a few problems with the relationship, however. I was not altogether sure Amy was into me as much as I was into her. The other problem had to do with our completely different worldviews on the highly controversial topic of neatness. The first time I visited Amy’s condo in Chicago, I knew instantly I was in the presence of a world-class, gold-medal neat freak. Amy was probably the most organized person I had ever met. Every piece of clothing she owned, every towel, every sheet was perfectly folded and in its proper place. I think she might have coined the phrase “a thing for every place—and a place for every thing.”

  I think I had that motto monogrammed somewhere, but it must have gotten buried under the ten tons of other stuff I had filed throughout my apartment.

  Just like my place in Atlanta, my Calvert Street apartment would have easily qualified as a FEMA debris removal area. The entire “doing laundry” fad was just not something that ever took with me. I, of course, was organized in other areas of my life, but with laundry—specifically dirty laundry—I had a mental block. I had a complete aversion to keeping my clothes clean, folded, put away, and all those other things some people—including Amy—seemed to find important. Someone looking in on my situation, and specifically my apartment, might have gotten the idea I had been traumatized by a rogue Maytag as a child. Whatever the reason, ha
ving dirty laundry lying around, in the grand scheme of things, simply never bothered me. It was just not something I really thought about—let alone cared about. Until now.

  I so desperately wanted to impress my completely adorable neat freak dream girl from Chicago, I knew I better make an effort to clean my place or else. If I didn’t do something fast, Amy might get the impression I was one of those cliché unkempt bachelors who sits around till all hours of the morning in his boxer shorts, tripping over pizza boxes and trying to find the television clicker so he can catch the 2:00 a.m. ET repeat of Sports Center.

  As I said, I certainly didn’t want Amy to get that impression.

  Having just returned from overseas, I had my normal Mount Vesuvius pile of dirty clothes accumulated after several days on the road. I immediately dumped the just-back-from-Afghanistan pile directly on top of the already existing mountain in my apartment. Slight problem. By now, Amy had undoubtedly received some top-secret intelligence briefings from my double-agent friends who spilled the beans about my disinclination toward tidiness. I clearly got the idea that during her upcoming trip Amy wanted to conduct her own firsthand investigation of my place to get a better picture of how serious the situation was.

  One day back from Afghanistan, and just twenty-four hours before Amy’s visit, I was having a very busy day at the Pentagon: two separate briefings, four live shots for the network, and a full news package for Brit Hume’s Special Report. With not much discretionary time on my schedule to make my place presentable, and with Amy arriving the next day, if I didn’t get my act together, I would be toast.

  When I finally got home that night, just hours before Amy’s arrival, I had the brilliant idea I could save a ton of time washing and drying if I simply transferred all my dirty clothes to my car for the weekend. I could borrow another car while Amy was in town, and if I could just keep my own car out of sight, I should be home free.

  After carrying seven loads of dirty clothes to my car out on Calvert Street, I had successfully dismantled Mount Vesuvius, shirt by dirty shirt. However, performing a last-minute quality control check, I realized there were still five or six armloads of dirty laundry scattered helter-skelter in various nooks and crannies throughout my apartment. The Silver Bullet, as my Mitsubishi Diamante was called, was already filled to the roof. And I was afraid if I tried to crack open the door to slip in just one more pair of boxers, my dirty laundry and I would be sprawled all over Calvert Street and halfway down to the Washington Monument.

  Being the get-it-done, achieve-the-objective kind of guy I am, I systematically laid out my options:

  Number 1. I could throw out the remaining dirty clothes and take the financial loss.

  Number 2. I could ask Dave to hide the clothes in one of his closets.

  Number 3. I could simply bundle all the remaining dirty clothes into a big pile, place them along the back wall of my bedroom, and cover the whole thing up with two king-size black sheets. In short, create sort of an elongated bean-bag-chair-of-an-intergalactic-black-hole-inspired piece of bedroom-wall-furniture-art that wouldn’t draw too much attention. With the lights down low and candles burning to deaden the smell, I was confident the large black mound would be as inconspicuous as any large black mound of dirty laundry possibly could be.

  To pull this off, I would need to pick Amy up at the airport in another car, since the Silver Bullet would be pulling Maytag duty on Calvert Street. Dave, who definitely thought option number three was much better than number two, lent me his Defender for the weekend—the same car we’d used to go to the Rolling Stones concert back in October.

  I would have to tell a bit of a white lie if Amy asked why I didn’t have my own car. I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the Bible, but I remembered something someone once said about “all’s fair in love and war.” And this was definitely about love—and specifically doing everything I possibly could to convince Amy I was the perfect “no-baggage-no-issues” guy for her.

  Amy arrived at Reagan National Airport right on time, and I was out front waiting for her in Dave’s Defender.

  “Isn’t this Dave’s car?” she immediately asked after I greeted her with a big hug.

  “Yes, mine is in the shop,” I replied.

  Trying to change the topic and put my sinful ways behind me, I thought my transgression wouldn’t be as bad if I intimated that I’d borrowed Dave’s car for sentimental reasons.

  “It’s hard to believe we talked right back there just two months ago driving to the Stones concert. Remember?”

  Having taken great pains to not drive anywhere near the Silver Bullet, when we arrived at my place we went inside so I could give Amy the quick tour before dinner. With the lights down low, music playing, and candles burning, I have to admit, that little one-bedroom apartment had never looked so good—a serious bachelor pad of the first order. Feeling a little cocky about the way the place looked and smelled, I decided to go for it and give Amy the expanded tour and show her my bedroom. Immediately, Amy’s eyes went straight to the big black invisible mound along the far wall.

  “What is that?” Amy asked.

  “What is what?” I replied.

  “That big pile against the wall! Is there a dead body under there? Are those dirty clothes? Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed.

  Like an astronomer discovering a brand-new galaxy, Amy rushed over to the black hole and immediately rolled back the sheets, exposing all the dirty clothes the Silver Bullet didn’t have space for and Dave didn’t have the stomach for. I looked at Amy and smiled. “Sorry, I ran out of time,” I said.

  And, as if it really needed saying: “I was hoping you wouldn’t see that.”

  I got the impression Amy was running numbers in her head as she performed a cost-benefit analysis to determine if her investment in the Bret Baier Project could possibly be worth the effort. By the look in her eyes, I could see that if this Baier-Hills merger was going to stay on track, I was going to need to step it up a few notches in the personal hygiene department. But on second thought, maybe this wasn’t such a bad strategy after all. When you are totally outmatched and outclassed on every level by the one girl on the planet you are desperately in love with, go for the sympathy vote and try to get that “he’ll never make it without me” vibe going.

  Having barely survived Operation Dirty Laundry and now on our way out the door to go to dinner, Amy stopped to admire a picture I had on the wall.

  “That’s a great picture of you with your father,” she said.

  “Uh, Amy. That’s not my father. That’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,” I replied.

  I smiled and actually felt a little relieved. To be sure, I needed more than a little help in the area of neatness. But perhaps I would be able to help Amy in the area of politics and public affairs. Despite several complaints that someone in the neighborhood was living in their car, Amy never did get a chance to see the Silver Bullet before she left for Chicago. Now that would have been a real deal-killer.

  Throughout this entire period I continued to travel to Chicago to see as much of Amy as possible. If I wasn’t traveling overseas, I would typically take off for Chicago right after work on Friday evening and return to D.C. on the earliest Monday morning flight I could catch. It was a horrible commute to say the least. But if I could get two full days with Amy, it was fine by me, so I guess you could say it was the best worst commute I ever had.

  I was so into Amy, I discovered romantic bones in me I never knew I had.

  Once, I called to wish her happy birthday, which Amy found very sweet. I told her to go to her door because I’d had a surprise gift sent to her. I stayed on the phone as she opened the door only to see me standing there with an armful of roses. It helped that I was on a first-name basis with the security guy in her building. A modest tip didn’t hurt, either.

  Now in total, unabashed, dogged pursuit, I was pulling out all the stops in my efforts to convince Amy I was the one. Knowing how incredibly close Amy was to her parents and her thr
ee brothers, including a twin, I decided to fight fire with fire. During the 2002 Christmas holidays, knowing she would be with her family in Naples, Florida, I decided to take my brother, Tim, and my mother on a Christmas vacation, too.

  To Naples, Florida, of course.

  Not only could I spend time with Amy, but I would be able to meet her parents for the first time. It was also an opportunity for me to introduce my mother and brother to Amy and her family. The trip to Florida was strictly about romance and getting the families together. The fact that Naples has several sensational golf courses was only a minor consideration.

  Our first day there, before the great family-to-family meeting was scheduled to take place, my brother, mother, and I went to a course called Tiburon to play a round of golf. The club pro informed us we were next up, but he said he needed to send us out with a fourth, someone we didn’t know. All was fine for the first few holes. The gentleman playing with us was nice enough, but he was definitely not a great golfer. I could see this had the potential for being a very long round. After Tim and I hit our tee shots on the fourteenth hole, the stray player we picked up shanked his ball very badly, firing it directly toward my mother, who was standing by the golf cart just fifteen yards away. The ball hit my mom in the head, and she immediately started bleeding. This wasn’t just a little amount of blood, either; this was MASH unit blood all over my mother’s face, the towel I was holding on her head, and the cart. Blood was gushing everywhere.

  Pedal to the metal on the golf cart, we trailed blood all the way from the fourteenth tee to the clubhouse, where we called 911 for an ambulance. Soon we found ourselves in the Naples Community Hospital emergency room.