When she’d called the White House press office, she’d been told, condescendingly, that any questions about FLOTUS’s health should be directed to FLOTUS’s press office. When she reached FLOTUS’s press office, she was told, equally condescendingly, “The First Lady’s health is a private matter. We can’t discuss it.”

“But Adam Majors discussed her migraines in the briefing,” Natalie had replied. “It’s public information. I’m just looking for a little background.”

“We can’t help you here. I suggest you reach out to the president’s press office.”

“I just spoke with them and they referred me to you.”

“Tell them I referred you back to them.” The line went dead.

Sigh, said the chair. Sigh, Natalie echoed.

The rest of her research was equally frustrating. Considering that Anita Ramirez Crusoe was constantly in the public eye, there was a surprising lack of detailed information about her—and not just about her health. Descriptions of the First Lady’s early life in Venezuela were so banal they read like tourism brochures.

FLOTUS had grown up in Maracaibo, a coastal city near Venezuela’s northern border with Colombia. As everyone knew, she’d been Miss Venezuela in her late teens and come to America on an engineering scholarship in her midtwenties. Her father was a judge. Her mother, once a bookkeeper, had become some kind of activist. Both her parents had opposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and served a brief stint in prison for speaking out against him. American campaign reporters had descended on her hometown during the primary and though they’d unearthed kindergarten teachers and the owners of local panaderías searching for any whiff of scandal about young Anita Ramirez, they’d found none.

FLOTUS herself had never mentioned headaches in any interview, or any ailments at all. The only instance Natalie could find of FLOTUS discussing her own health was in a two-year-old video from a small summertime campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In front of a group of fifty or so women at a rec center, she’d made a joke about wearing a turtleneck in summer, explaining she’d just had a worrisome mole removed from her neck. There was nothing in any way relevant to migraines, apart from the fact that researching them was giving Natalie the beginnings of a migraine herself.

Now she stared at the script, what little she’d written.

IT’S A HEADACHE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE... FIRST LADY ANITA CRUSOE—REPORTEDLY DOWN WITH A MIGRAINE... AND SKIPPING TONIGHT’S SUMMIT SOIREE... WILL LATIN AMERICAN LEADERS TAKE HER ABSENCE AS A SNUB?

At the end of the line, the cursor was blinking angrily, waiting for Natalie to come up with something—anything—Urgent and Now to wow the bosses and get her home for the night.