The President’s Night

Daniela can’t stop smiling while watching the spectacular fireworks light up the dark night sky. It’s 10pm and the votes just came in. She will be the first Puerto Rican woman to be the president of the United States of America. Surrounded by all her family, friends and team members she can finally feel the relief of crossing the finish line of what has been a lengthy and complicated campaign. Tonight she can finally breathe.

With the celebration just beginning and the high energy all around, no one notices the strange man intensely staring at the newly appointed President. He is the only person in the crowd just standing in the corner while everyone else is dancing and talking. The man takes his right hand into his pocket, takes out his cellphone and starts taking photos of the president. Then, without talking with anyone he just leaves. As the night goes on and the celebration tires down, Daniela decides to give all the proper gratitude to everyone there and call it a night and rest for the busy schedule she will have the next day as the new president. On her way home, the driver notices that the car behind them is the same car that has been behind them since they left the venue and tells the president. Concerned, she tells her driver to take an alternative route to her house because she doesn’t want the address of what will be her old home after moving to the White House tomorrow to be leaked to the public. The driver makes a sharp turn to take the long way home but notices the car still tailing them. He starts to go faster and decides to keep driving until they completely lose that car before even going near her home. She calls her security team leader who then alerts the police and sends backup to her location. Hopefully they will catch up with them before anything gets out of hand. After crossing all the city trying to get away, they are nearing the old roads that lead to the lake. The security team calls to notify them that they are just fifteen minutes away from their current location. But suddenly there is a blockage of trees and debris on the road, it seems the city still hasn’t cleaned up the old roads after the last hurricane last month. The blockage makes the driver make an abrupt stop just a couple of inches in front of the sign, the car tailing them crashing at full speed onto them from behind. And then everything went dark.

Daniela slowly begins to open her eyes, trying to adjust her sight amidst the blurred vision and darkness surrounding her. Her head throbbing with the most painful headache she had ever felt in her life. The car is wrecked but she’s unscathed for the most part only scratches and soreness. However, the driver is unconscious and there is blood everywhere on the front seats. She tries to make him respond but then realizes he is not breathing. Horrified by the scene, she tries to open the car door but it won’t open. She keeps trying again and again pushing the door and frantically hitting the window’s glass without managing to break it when she sees a shadow of a man coming near her with something in his hands. He gets right in front of the car door and smashes the glass with a big piece of rock from the ground. Daniela, relieved by the feeling of being saved, gets out of the car and thanks him and starts crying while telling him of her dead driver in the front seat thinking that maybe he is part of a rescue team or her own security team. But he wasn’t either. He drops the rock and hugs her, she hugs her savior back still in shock. He says to her “Don’t you recognize me ?”

Daniela, startled, takes a step back and looks him straight at his face while she wipes her tears away. They hear police sirens as both the police cars and her backup security team arrive at the scene. The lights of one police car blinding the man standing in front of her, finally giving her the lighting necessary to study his features. The curly hair, the freckles and sun kissed skin, he was her ex-brother in law.

The man had his hands with bloodied scratches and his shirt was stained. Having finally recognized him she asked him a series of questions “What are you doing here ?” “ Is your sister okay?” “Why aren’t you in Puerto Rico with her?”

To which he only responds with “We need to talk Daniela, Jackie is in trouble.”

The police take over the scene, addressing the body of the driver and takes them both to the ambulances to get checked out. An officer questions them if they were together in the same car or if he was the crazed driver that crashed into the new president. The man didn’t know how to answer because he indeed was the crazed driver, he had been in the venue dropping off a friend where the campaign celebration took place and when he was leaving he recognized that the president was his childhood friend, his sister’s ex-lover that he hadn’t seen in 3 years after they had broken up. Daniela, Jackie and him were best friends all throughout their childhood, growing together spending most evenings at each other's houses. Until Daniela and Jackie became girlfriends and eventually broke up after years together. Daniela wanted to pursue her career, but Jackie wanted to stay in charge of her family's farm in Puerto Rico, they couldn’t come to a compromise and decided a long distance relationship was not going to work between them and parted their own ways. Daniela came to the states and pursued her career raising a campaign to become the first puerto rican female to be the president and lost all contact with everyone back at the island.

Earlier at the venue he took a photo of the president to confirm it was her and waited for her to come out, he planned to follow her and then talk to her about his sister but what was supposed to be an innocent interaction transformed into a car chase because he was scared of never getting that close to talking to her after she lived at the White House as the president.

After clearing everything up, the police take his information and still have to arrest him for starting a high speed car chase across the city. But Daniela, the president, reassures him that he will not have bigger problems because of the crash, he will be arrested only for one night or a couple of days at most and she will go to talk to him the next day.

The officers take him and after Daniela is checked out by the ambulance they escort her to her home. Watching the night lights of buildings and cars pass by from the car’s window as she reminisces about the night's events. When she arrives home she tells her security bodyguard to grab the last luggage she had prepared to move to the White House and take it there. But decides to spend this last night in what has been her home for the last 3 years. She takes a shower, puts on comfortable clothes and goes straight to bed. While almost falling asleep she can’t help but overthink about what her ex-brother in law wants to talk to her about, what could possibly be so urgent to chase her throughout town just to tell her, what could have happened to her dear Jackie…

The next day, she goes directly to the White House to give her opening statement as the new president to the news conference and take charge of her scheduled events for the day. The events of last night are kept private so as to not alert the people. She's busy all morning but in the afternoon she'll have an one hour break to do whatever she wants in which Daniela will take advantage of and go talk to her ex-brother in law.

When her hour break comes she orders her driver to take her to jail to talk to him at his holding cell. He is asleep on the ground, his arms folded in front of his chest when she arrives. It has been a very cold night for him. She wakes him up by clearing her throat and asking him “Are you okay?”. He quickly raises his body as he hears her voice and stands close to the bars in between them.

“I've been better”, he responds.

“Can you finally tell me what happened to Jackie?”, Daniela asks with desperation in her voice.

“I have been all night and morning overthinking about it, I can't believe what happened last night, the crash, seeing you, everything, please tell me Jay.”, she continued.

“Jackie is in trouble, I came here to make money to help her”, Jay began explaining while grabbing onto the bars of the holding cell.

“What happened?” , responded Daniela.

“After you left she started drinking a lot. It got to the point that she didn't even sleep or eat correctly; the only thing she wanted was to go out to drink. I tried making her stop drinking but she didn't listen. One day Jackie was on her way home after waking up on the sidewalk of ‘Petateros Bar’. I don't know why she didn't call me-”, Jay suddenly stopped and started crying.

“She told me a man offered her a ride and she obliviously accepted, he raped her in the back of his car. Then, he went to the driver's seat and began driving like nothing had just happened. And Jackie stayed frozen, still drunk but conscious of what had occurred, sobbing a faucet of tears on her eyes, with parts of her clothes ripped off but then saw a pen in the floor of the car”, Jay continued.

Daniela's face had gone from worried to heartbroken. A part of her didn't want to hear the rest of the story but at the same time she had to know, and felt that without a doubt she had to save Jackie.

Jay stopped talking when he noticed the change of her expression and waited for some type of sign from Daniela to continue explaining. Daniela didn't say anything, she just kept looking him in his eyes and nodded for him to continue.

“When they arrived at a red light she stabbed the man who raped her on the neck and managed to get out of the car. She escaped, but her finger prints were all over that car and also on the pen stuck in his neck. She didn't go to the hospital or police, scared of what she had done. But the police found her and arrested her. They want to give her a life sentence for attempted murder even though it was self defense, but the rape wasn't even addressed, they said she made it all up. I don't know what to do, I just figured I'd come here and make money to get her a good lawyer and help her as best I can but I -”, Jay broke down again sobbing uncontrollably thinking of not being able to save her sister.

Daniela heard all she needed to hear. Her ex-girlfriend was hurt and needed her and even though they had broken up years ago, all the years from childhood until that point they had been close and that love doesn't just disappear. They didn't break up because of lack of love, it was the circumstances of life that made them go their own ways but Daniela always remembered her, always had a tiny piece of Jackie in her heart no matter where she was. And for her that was more than enough to know what she had to do.

Filled with intentions to go save Jackie from a life sentence using her influence as the new president and reunite with her and also reunite Jackie with her brother, she took out her phone to make a call to her security team leader and said

“Prepare the jet, we are going to Puerto Rico”.

She looked at Jay one last time before leaving and said “ I’m no longer the girl I was back at the island…I’m Daniela Ruiz, the first female Puerto Rican President of The United States of America. Don't worry, leave it all to me.”

It was her first official day as the President of the United States of America and she had already abused her power and gotten involved in matters that could jeopardize her image as the president but what is power if you can't use it to save a loved one…