Chapter Ten

The ride home was a wild mix of emotions for Paul.
He regretted embarrassing the President. He didn’t regret what he’d said in particular; he just thought he should have maybe kept his mouth shut.

On the whole, though, he was rather pleased with himself. He’d been riding a rocket of publicity and he thought he’d held his own, (mostly). He’d met some really powerful and interesting people and got to hang out at the White House for a couple of days.

Last, but not least, the reason all of this had happened was that he’d saved four people’s lives. On balance, he felt pretty good about everything.

And now he could go back to his ordinary existence. The way he looked at it, he figured he had 100 positive points on the hero tally sheet and 100 negative points on the Presidential Pariah tally sheet. Doing the math, he assumed 100 minus 100 equals zero, zip, nada. The two things would cancel each other out and now everyone would leave him the hell alone.

On the other hand, he was honest enough to admit he’d miss the attention. A little.