“Oh my god, I’m so sorry we didn’t think to ask if you wanted anything!” one of them had called out when she’d caught Natalie eye-drooling at the food. “Whoops!” they’d tittered, then gone back to looking incredibly busy on their iPhones, meaning they were probably YikYaking or BackStabbing or some other app she’d never heard of that had nothing to do with news.

That was an hour ago. Now, Natalie watched them giggle as Hal, perched opposite a What Girl with big blue eyes, beseeched her for help with a birthday gift for his sister. “Please try it on,” he said as he held out a piece of lime green fabric that looked alarmingly like a sports bra. “She’ll be so angry if I get it wrong and I swear you’re her size. Just please put it on real quick?”

The Whats seemed unfazed. “Hal, why are you buying your sister a bra?” one teased.

“Wait, do you also want us to try on some lingerie for your mom?” another asked, prompting tittering all around. The scene was troubling in more ways than Natalie wanted to count.

She moved her chair around to block out the Hal Show and get a better view of ATN’s prime-time news show, TalkTalk Live. Nelly Jones, her predecessor at the White House, was on set looking arrestingly beautiful in a dare-to-bare spaghetti strap dress, her golden gams flashing from behind a see-through desk, her once straight amber hair now undulating tresses of champagne blond.

Where is it written, Natalie wondered, that the higher you climb the blonder you get? Or does it work the other way around?

Nelly finished teasing her first hour-long special—Who Hates the Bunny: America’s Assault on Easter—and the show cut to boxes of pundits shouting at one another over live pictures that alternated between the summit dinner now underway at the White House and Ryan McGreavy stationed outside the Colombian embassy. Every time Ryan popped up in his superhero stance—hands on hips, legs just beyond shoulder distance apart, chest jutted forward—Natalie felt a tiny little stab in her heart. He looked born for the part of news hero. All he lacked was the cape flying behind him.

During the six hours since Ryan had broken the story of Rigo’s embassy sanctuary, the other networks had descended on the site at Seventeenth Street, drawing an impressive crowd of protesters—mostly women—now chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, Crusoe’s rapist has got to go.”

The chair that had come with the sad desk periodically emitted a deep sigh and Natalie had started to think of it as a sort of mood chair. For hours she’d been dialing doctors, searching videos, scrounging for anything that might help fill in details about the First Lady’s history of migraines—and kept coming up empty. Sigh, said the chair. Sigh, Natalie agreed.